Lavender Fields

by Natalina Reis

  Wiscasset is a beautiful little town where you always seem to either be going up or down. The only flat area was the waterfront. As we descended Bath Road, the main street, we stopped for a cup of coffee in a local bakery and then continued leisurely all the way down to where we said goodbye to Joan. The harbor was quiet at that time of morning, the waters still covered in a light mist, reminding me of the cloud layer between Arcadia and Earth. Suddenly nostalgic, I had a desire to share my world with Caleb as he’d shared his with me. But I couldn’t. Our worlds were so far apart, I might as well be from another planet. The weight of the realization hit my chest. Was our relationship doomed to fail?

  “Why the face?” Caleb laid his arm across my shoulders and gave me a gentle tug. “The sun is shining—well, trying to shine through the clouds. I’m healthy and alive, Joan is off to school, and you’re here. What’s to be sad about?”

  I managed a tiny smile. “Just worried about what’s yet to come.” And what may never happen. Like our happy-ever-after.

  Caleb let go and walked a few steps backward, facing me. That melt-your-heart smile was back on his face as he stuffed his hands inside the pockets of his hoodie. The air had that chilly tang announcing the impending winter. “Why worry about what you can’t change? Instead, why don’t we just enjoy this time together? Be thankful that we found each other and I didn’t die in that freaky accident.”

  I cringed a little at his words. If he only knew.

  With a shake of my head, I allowed my lips to stretch fully into a smile. He was right. We were together. He was alive and well. We loved each other. I had a new appreciation for love, the kind that came attached to no strings, no demands. The kind that made you invincible and gave you wings—even when you’d had them all your life. I threaded my arm through the loop of his and walked beside him.

  We were in no hurry, so our walk along the waterfront stretched for a couple of miles. As we were about to turn around and go back, a heaviness formed in my chest as if an elephant had sat on it. Had I not been an angel, I would’ve thought I was having a heart attack, but I knew, as certain as I was of the wings starting to twitch on my back, that we were in danger.

  A black, thick, and slimy wave of evil covered my thoughts and senses in a layer of tar-like material, flexible but impervious and opaque. Samael was using mind control on me. I didn’t even know a common angel could use that power on another angelic being, but I sure recognized the signs. Soon, I would be too confused to tell what was going on around me.

  I held on to Caleb for dear life. “What’s wrong, Sky?” I could still hear his voice, but I couldn’t see him anymore, blackness overcoming me. “Are you all right? Sky?”

  Somehow I was aware of my hold on his arm, terrified as I was of losing him, of letting him go. “He’s coming,” I managed to say—at least, I think I did. The descending darkness was almost complete and I slid down to the ground, my legs buckling underneath my weight, a fading sense of awareness in the back of my mind.

  Stars sprinkled the inside of my eyelids and the day began to slowly dawn. Only it wasn’t the morning light that began seeping through my daze. Instead, a sickly reddish gloom surrounded me and everything in sight. Strangely, I was standing up—no, floating. A weird sense of pull made me look at my hands. Straps attached to the ceiling—was there even a ceiling? I couldn’t see all the way to the top—tightly held my wrists. I glanced at my feet and realized my ankles were also bound by glowing straps, holding me spread eagle slightly over the floor.

  I studied the straps—seraphic rope. I could wiggle, stretch, and pull, but those knots weren’t going anywhere. No force on Earth or in Heaven could break the straps.

  The fuzz in my brain cleared slowly but steadily, and I could finally try to make some sense of the situation. Why had Samael taken me instead of Caleb? Or did he? Maybe he had taken both of us. I twisted around, looking for signs of my soul mate, but couldn’t find any.

  A roll of deep laughter reached my ears from the dark, invisible corners of the room, followed by a slow, mocking applause. “Don’t bother looking for your mortal. He’s not here.”

  Samael emerged from the shadows, a creature of darkness himself. His jet-black wings arrogantly unfolded behind him, his black eyes intent on me, hungry and rabid. He stopped clapping and came to stand, legs apart, next to me.

  “What do you want from me?” I scanned the room, desperately looking for something, anything that would give me the hope of escape. Samael’s eyes followed my every move, like a predator stalking his prey.

  “Just a bit of fun. Even dark angels like to amuse themselves a bit once in a while.” I dared not ask what he meant by “a bit of fun.” I knew it wouldn’t be something I cared for. “You, on the other hand, have been having all kinds of fun on Earth with your delicious little mortal. You have been a serious pain in my ass, constantly getting in my way. Aren’t angels of light supposed to be unselfish and unobtrusive? Why can’t you just stay out of my business?”

  My stomach rumbled and I tasted bile for the first time in my life. Not many things scared me, but Samael absolutely terrified me with his viscous, slithering voice and lazy, penetrating eyes. And he was after Caleb.

  “I figured I would teach you a lesson.” The dark angel paced around me slowly, his hands behind his back, wings haughtily fanned behind him. “So, sweet angel of death, I will make you squirm a bit—just as a reminder of how much I hate your interference, you understand. Once I tire of hurting you, I’ll double the fun by doing the same with your mortal.”

  The scream came out before I could stop it. I could handle whatever this creature of darkness threw at me, but I couldn’t handle it done to Caleb. Just the idea of him in the hands of this monster made me quake in horror. “Where is he? What have you done to him?”

  Samael made a mocking frown of concern. “Sweet little angel, don’t worry so much. He’s safe—or is he? I guess you’ll find out eventually.” He stopped right in front of me, poked me in the belly with a finger, and licked his lips obscenely. “In the meantime, you go first, my sweet one.”

  I closed my eyes and uttered a prayer. Whatever he was planning to do to me, I could take it, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be excruciatingly unpleasant. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing me tremble though. “Bring it on, Samael.” I hoped the bravado in my voice was a lot more convincing that what I felt inside.

  A wave of his hand and I flipped over, my head just off the floor and my ankles burning from the pull of the angelic rope. Blood surged to my head, but I was used to it from my crazy plunges to Earth. What worried me was what I saw materialize in his hands—a black whip sword that glittered in the dim light of the room, betraying the sharp shards of seraphic crystal that edged its blade. In spite of my resolve, my body trembled and my stomach churned.

  “I see you are acquainted with my friend here.” He caressed the whip sword as if patting a beloved pet, and the damned thing seemed to shimmer in delight. My eyes had to be playing tricks on me. “Oh, don’t make the mistake of thinking the blood rushing to your head is making you hallucinate. My wicked Asmy here is very much alive, blessed into being by its namesake.”

  He paced around me one more time, and I couldn’t help but shiver in apprehension every time I lost visual track of him. My wrists and ankles were bound so tightly I couldn’t move even an inch, and my stretched body, covered only in a thin pair of what looked like black pajama pants, was beginning to ache.

  “Asmodeus, my lord and master, gifted me this whip sword as a reward for having served him well. My sweetie here has a black heart like mine and enjoys much of the same sport as I do.” Fear, an unusual feeling for me, was rising in my gut and climbing up to my throat. “And neither of us likes it when some fucker gets in our way.”

  Samael came to a stop in front of me. My upside-down position had one advantage: everything, including the dark angel, seemed less real. It gave me the courage to forget my growing panic and pretend I couldn’t ca
re less what happened to me. “Stop yakking away already, Samael!” My voice came out tainted with a weariness I didn’t feel but was hoping to project. “Whatever you have planned for me, do it already! I’m getting bored.”

  I was rewarded with a cringe of surprise and annoyance. Samael was expecting groveling and fear; I was ruining his fun. On the negative side, I had just irritated the one person who could do me serious injury.

  I swallowed my fear and accepted my fate. This was going to hurt.

  ____________

  THE BURNING

  The first strike came, and I didn’t know what to expect. The whip sword had stretched and unrolled from its pommel like a lethal ribbon and slithered in the air, its crystal-shard teeth catching and reflecting flickers of light as it moved. I closed my eyes, as if by doing so I could stop it from striking my helpless body. It didn’t. The sharp teeth dug their way through the skin of my belly and chest as the weapon wrapped around me and buried its tip on my back. A scream of pain escaped my lips and I hated myself for it. So when Samael, with a flip of his hand, pulled the whip sword from me, chunks of my flesh flying away with it, I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood but didn’t scream again.

  The second blow came shortly after, the wicked whip sword’s tongue cutting deep into my legs and thighs. Amidst the agonizing pain, I was aware of the warm stream of blood that oozed from my many different wounds. I wished I could pass out, yearning as I was for oblivion, but angels didn’t react the same to the loss of blood. It would take a lot more abuse before my brain finally gave up and went blank, and Samael knew that. For him, it must’ve been a lot more entertaining to torture an angel than a human. We lasted longer. The fun was over when the victim either fainted or died, but the dark angel knew he could torment me for a very long time.

  I wasn’t sure how long the torture lasted. After the first handful of attacks, my mind—although conscious of every cut and tear of skin and muscle—went numb. In the past, I had heard humans describe a near-death experience like that. My consciousness seemed to have separated from my body and it hovered above, watching, sympathizing but distant. I watched in morbid fascination as the whip sword came down on me again and again, each time loosening a shower of blood and torn flesh into the air. The gruesome storm fell upon the dark angel, covering his face and bare arms, turning his skin a sickly red hue. Samael cackled like an old witch in near ecstasy and licked the blood drops that fell near his lips, his tongue flickering out of his mouth like that of a snake, his eyelids shuttering in pleasure.

  When I least expected it, the torture stopped. From under my bloodied eyelids, I watched the evil angel as he retracted the dripping whip sword into its pommel, sheathed it behind his back, and wiped his hand on his own pants. “Don’t you worry, sweet angel of light. I will come back. I grow tired of this game. Need a change.” He walked slowly toward one of the dark corners of the room. “It’ll give you some time to regenerate so we can have even more fun later.”

  The heaviness in my eyelids began to force them to close. As much as I didn’t want to sleep or even regenerate, there was nothing I could do to stop the natural instincts of my savaged body. When he came back, I’d have healed enough to go another long round of abuse.

  Before he was engulfed in the shadows, Samael turned around one last time. “Oh, and I’ll check on your lover while I’m at it. I want to make sure he’s safe and sound for the plucking later.”

  My eyes popped open and I fought against my restraints with all the strength I had left. “Leave him alone. You got me. What do you need him for?”

  Samael’s wicked laughter echoed through the room. “You’re fucking funny. I see why the human finds you so attractive. The more pain inflicted, the better. Watching you squirm while I do to him what I did to you will be the cherry on top.” To better illustrate what he meant, the dark angel swiped his obscene tongue across his lips. “Can’t wait.”

  Left hanging upside down, I cried. What started as whimpering quickly turned to uncontrollable sobbing. My eyes, scratched and bleeding, burned with the saltiness of the tears that erupted so unexpectedly. My chest hurt every time a sob made it spasm and quake. My tears fell for what was coming, for the horrors Caleb would have to endure while I hung there helplessly. It was all my fault. Out of selfishness, I had triggered a chain of events that I now stood powerless against. Love had blinded me to everything else, and now Caleb and his soul were in terrible danger.

  When Samael came back, I had exhausted my tears. My numbness was gone, and even though my body was beginning to quickly regenerate, pain was back in force. There wasn’t a single inch of my body that didn’t hurt. The bleeding had largely stopped, but the throbbing pain had grown and shattered my whole being. It was hard to breathe, for even the normal inhale and exhale movements made my chest burn.

  “Back so soon?” Fighting the debilitating pain, I goaded him. I hoped to distract him from his ultimate goal—bringing Caleb to this hellhole.

  Samael scowled at me. “You’re in for a special treat.” His tone stung me like a needle. “I had an interesting conversation with Asmodeus, and he had a great idea.”

  Asmodeus’s great ideas often caused great destruction and pain. Whatever he had come up with to further torment me would certainly count as a treat only for the likes of Samael. I had very little fight left, for all the good it did me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do a thing about it.

  “So, my lord and master reminded me of angelic fire.” The one thing capable of destroying angels with one strike. I twitched. Is he finally going to kill me? “I always think of it as the ultimate weapon against annoying angels. Good to get rid of the heavenly vermin. But angel fire has another function. Granted, it isn’t used very often and is frowned upon even by the dark angels, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  He had lost me. I couldn’t think of any other thing angelic fire was good for other than killing seraphic creatures.

  The dark angel started pacing again, stopping every once in a while to touch my wounds—sometimes gently, almost tenderly, other times to shove a finger in the open wound and twist. It seemed as if it were some routine he followed often, maybe something he thought he had to do to calm himself or assure himself he was still in control.

  “Unfurl your wings, angel!” The order was so unexpected I almost jumped out of my skin. He waved his hand in the air and I started moving, spinning to a standing position. My head was heavy and my sight wavered from being upside down for so long. “I want to see your beautiful, white wings.”

  Like hell he did. What’s he plotting?

  When I didn’t comply, Samael took a few steps closer to me and, flapping his own wings, floated up until his face was right in front of mine. “Unfurl. Your. Wings.” Spittle flew out of his mouth and hit me in the face. My stomach churned in disgust. “If you don’t do it on your own, I have interesting ways of doing it for you. But I can’t promise you’ll like it.”

  Not convinced, I spread out my wings anyway. Why give him reason to hurt me further? My feathers burst up from my back as a cloud of white smoke, in stark contrast with the dark environment. In spite of my situation, it felt wonderful. A sense of freedom, even in my magic shackles, invaded my spirit as peace replaced the fear and pain. At least for a moment.

  Samael’s face contorted into what passed for a smile in his world, and I saw a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. I didn’t like it. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” With a flick of his hands, a frightening, sparkling sample of angelic fire appeared. He flew behind me and panic rose in my heart. I heard him move back and forth as if stalking me. “Oh, this is going to be beautiful.”

  The pain defied explanation or definition. A tang of burnt feathers reached my nostrils and hit me with the force of a fist. I tried to turn around and look behind me, but I couldn’t move. The pain spread from the tips of my wings to their roots on my back, like a wave of locusts eating through my beloved feathers.

  What’s happe
ning?

  “Asmodeus pointed out that angelic fire will burn an angel’s wings forever. It’ll destroy your power of regeneration for good.” No, not that. Not my wings. “I’m afraid, my sweet angel, that you’ll never fly again.”

  Angel feathers don’t burn like birds’. They burn slow and hot, infusing the air with the stench of burning flesh. I threw my head back in despair and watched helplessly as the ashes of my wings floated into the air, spiraling up to the darkness above. I could hear crackling as the fire devoured my most precious of possessions, one feather at a time.

  Pain and sorrow deafened me to the sound of Samael’s mocking laughter. The dark angel had circled back to face me, watching as what defined me went up in flames. I wanted to be able to hate with the same intensity with which I was capable of loving, but I couldn’t. Sadness took over instead. In agony, I mourned for my blazing wings, my scorched heart beating to the sound of unspeakable grief.

  When my wings were nothing more than smoldering ambers burning the skin of my back, I heard it. It was faint at first, the sound of agitated voices at a distance, but even from beneath the pain-induced daze, I could hear them coming closer. Samael heard them too, his laughter dying on his lips and his eyes suddenly focused on the shadows behind him.

  A banging noise immediately followed by yelling erupted behind the dark angel, and I was conscious enough to notice him cringe—was it surprise or fear? “Bring him down. Now!” The male voice echoed in the room.

  Gabriel? Could it be, or am I hallucinating?

  Two figures came through the darkness, and I strained my aching eyes to see who they were.

  My heart jumped to my throat. Caleb! No, leave now while you can. Right beside him, Gabriel, all seven feet of him, waved a hand above his head and my restraints relaxed as I was brought down to the ground finally. My numb legs couldn’t hold me, but as I dropped to my knees, Caleb was there to soften the fall. He shimmied out of his jacket and used it to snuff out what was left of the flames at my back.