To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1)

by Sean M O'Connell

  Again Aaron recognized what that twinge was in Bishop’s face when Serena first asked. It was jealousy, and he felt a pang of it himself.

  “Obviously, you didn’t quite make the cut.”

  Both Serena and Scott looked at Aaron then, to see how he would react.

  He didn’t. Safer that way.

  It was ridiculous anyway, to harbor resentment or self-loathing at his own failure to qualify for God’s hand-selected army. His yearning to be good enough was probably exactly what determined that he wasn’t quite.

  For several moments, none of them spoke. Bishop’s flint stare traveled over each of them, reading how they digested the information.

  Aaron couldn’t help but ponder his sins under the faint hum of the florescent lights.

  Finally, Bishop tapped a finger on the glossy paper in front of Aaron again.

  “We sent an infiltration team to take several Possessed targets, including Hunter Valdez, into custody.”

  The single photograph told a different story.

  Aaron had a knack for recognizing plans gone wrong. The scene in Serena’s picture had botched operation written all over it.

  “You sent them in… And they got smashed didn’t they?” he probed, perhaps too eager to point out Bishop‘s failure. To remove the spotlight from his own inability to measure up when all of the people around him were becoming Angels.

  Bishop glared at him, but he couldn’t argue.

  Aaron could tell that disclosing this much information to people who had only days ago been civilians irked the man. Hard to break cloak-and-dagger habits.

  “Yes, Dayne.” No attempt to hide the irritation this time.

  About time we cut the bullshit.

  “The Knights have traditionally operated as small cells, crack teams of no more than twenty. This morning’s operation was a rare attempt at a ‘shock and awe’ tactic. The plan backfired. We grossly underestimated defense capabilities at the tower. Our comrades were overwhelmed. By numbers and by a threat that was previously unknown to us.”

  He spoke much more quietly now, as he reached into yet another folder for yet another photograph.

  “What information we were able gather from the raid came at grievous cost. Never before have the Sleepless Knights sustained so many casualties in a single day. We lost sixty-one Monks.”

  His eyes once again flitted toward Scott and Serena.

  “And fifteen others. Angels.”

  The room went silent. All around the bland table, friends and comrades looked at one another or the floor or the ceiling. Aaron’s eyes fell on the grim frown fixed over Scott Fitzpatrick’s face. The large man looked sad, and angry.

  He wished he was able to un-hear the stats Bishop had just read them.

  People were dying. Here, in Las Vegas, and all over. Serena’s parents were dead, Allie was dead, and the telltale red light that he’d tried so hard to clear out of his dreams and his thoughts was steadily creeping its way back in. Every day.

  Aaron Dayne stood and walked out of the room, effectively adjourning their meeting. Scott pushed away from the table next, followed by Serena.

  The tall sniper, who’d been leaning against a corner wall, slunk out behind them.

  Alone, the man called Bishop sighed a heavy sigh and began to pray.

  Decrypted Archival File 0019-179

  KC Brian Hin Bishop, Zion Province, USA

  Priority Entry: SACRAMENTAL PRIORITY: DE-CLASSIFICATION OF ALL SLEEPLESS KNIGHT OPERATION, HISTORY, MEMBERSHIP AND MISSION.

  Knights of the Clergy assume full command of all U.S. Military and government vehicles, personnel, property, assets, and substrates: KC Conclave, President George Bauer Jr., U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, KC Adam Ironday Pope

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  With bellies full of lasagna and fruit salad, Aaron and Scott settled back into their chairs. For both, it was a rare moment of contentment. Little Danny flashed a messy grin at them from across the table. To his left sat the boy’s mother, who smiled and doted as if it had been years since they last saw one another. At his other shoulder were his ever-present canine friends Xerxes and Pig. Both of them licked their lips and shot guilty glances at Aaron. No doubt they had each tasted lasagna for the first time from Danny’s chubby hands.

  The table was full all around. Crazy Dave, E.T. and Tim Greatwater Lougee, the Indian painter; all thanked Collie for her incredible meal, patting swollen bellies and refusing her offers for coffee and dessert.

  Seated on the other side of Serena was a lovely young woman Aaron had never met before. Her name was Haley, and Scott kept stealing glances her way throughout the meal. So far he’d asked a question or two, enough to gather that she and Aaron’s ex had worked together down in Vegas, and that she was a veterinarian. She had politely complimented Aaron on Pig’s good breeding. Though she explained she typically dealt with much larger animals. More exotic types.

  The scene was almost normal.

  Almost a happy dinner of friends and family.

  But there were important matters to discuss. Serena still hadn’t fully explained how and why she had ended up in their company, out on the dangerous west side streets. There was also the deplorable news to share about Allie, whose absence at the table was telling enough.

  Reluctantly, Aaron dismissed his cheerful son.

  “Danny boy, time to get ready for bed.”

  It ruined everyone’s mood.

  With a sigh the boy tromped down the hall to brush his teeth and change into the purple and green FutureHulk pajamas that he was already outgrowing.

  Collie busied herself clearing the table and shooing the dogs away from the leftovers. True to form, she took time to shoot a stern glance at Aaron first. His ‘Aunt’ felt like Aaron was abandoning his responsibilities as a father, going off to fight like he did. She’d made the point several times. Of course, it didn’t help that Serena had literally dropped out of the sky and immediately gone back to being the picture perfect mother.

  Finally convinced that they wouldn’t be fed any more scraps, the dogs curled up under the table. Not at Aaron’s feet, as had always been their custom. Instead, Xerxes rested his head on Serena’s feet and Pig nestled against the back of Scott’s calves. Even the animals recognized the difference between these two and the others in the room.

  Serena had never liked dogs much, Aaron remembered, but she tolerated the Great Dane’s attention with grace.

  Crazy Dave excused himself from the table to help with the dishes, mumbling dismissively about how he “never liked violence.”

  Aaron couldn’t help but smile. His mentor and friend had a hard time sending the younger men off to carry out dangerous work. It worried him. He spent his days here at the house running errands for Collie and teaching Aaron’s son how to tune the motorcycle. They all had to stay busy somehow.

  Scott started the meeting. As he did, the smile melted off his face like stage makeup.

  “Serena, I’m glad you’re here, safe.” he glanced sidelong at Aaron. “We all are. Would you mind telling us what happened in Vegas? And how you found us?”

  She brushed aside a shock of straw gold hair.

  “I don’t really know where to start Scott. Dr. Peel and I have been through quite an ordeal.”

  Beside her, the pretty brunette doctor nodded a somber agreement. The haunt in her eyes reminded Aaron of the journalists he’d met in Argentina, regular people whose sensibilities were less than suited to the violence they were forced to witness. She had indeed been through a lot.

  “We were out on the town, celebrating.” Serena slipped into a sort of narrative tone. Her voice was cool and even, like an old Norah Jones song. “It was the day my parents left to come back up here with Danny. I passed out at dinner. And when I woke up..”

  She talked on for several minutes, uninterrupted.

  They all listened.

  Scott nodded understandingly as she related her feelings of invincibility, the healing of her wounds, t
he overly-acute senses. She glanced nervously at the others before she talked about being able to fly, as if they might not believe her despite the changes they’d all seen or been through.

  Aaron felt a twinge of regret when she related the story of Julani’s demise. He also noted the way Haley squinted back tears at the telling.

  It would have been nice to have met the man, the way Serena described him. He was brave.

  Bravery is a rare thing.

  She told them about what had happened in the town of Hurricane, about the mass grave inside the farming store and the ghastly woman. Oddly, she spoke directly to him then. Maybe because he knew that he, of all of them, would understand.

  “She was so awful. So… Evil.” Serena’s words were heavier now

  “It may sound stupid to some of you, but I’m positive that she has the Devil in her. All those tattoos and scars and burns.”

  At one corner of the table, Tim Greatwater Lougee raised his shaggy head and narrowed his eyes, pulling the leather wrinkles on his face together.

  “I broke her legs and her arms. Haley helped me tie her up and duct tape her to a fence post.”

  Her next words, as she glanced sidelong at Haley, surprised Aaron, and everybody else. Aaron knew it was the truth. He could see how much it disturbed her even as she said it.

  “It wasn’t enough. I should have killed her.”

  Aaron tried to read her expression. Years ago, he could have. His former wife was now somewhat of a stranger to him. Sad.

  Nobody spoke as the hard moment stretched. Lougee’s raspy rumble finally broke the silence.

  “You’re right. You should have killed her.”

  All heads turned to him.

  The Navajo painter was one of those men who spoke so rarely that nothing he said was ever ignored.

  “I know her.” He rasped. “Or I should say, I know of her. She is a story. A legend in the desert. In town, they call her witch, or Bruja. On the Reservation, the elders won’t even talk about her. The younger ones, they laugh at the old ways and the stories. Most of them are too busy getting drunk and pregnant. They tell the children that the Bruja is a skinwalker.”

  Serena narrowed her blue eyes at the old man.

  “What is a skinwalker?”

  The aging painter hardly paid any attention, swinging as he was into the rich oral tradition of his people.

  “Way back, even before my Great Great Granddad’s time, a lot of the Southwestern tribes were isolated. Christian missionaries that brought Jesus to the desert found something else there too. The old ways of harmony with nature had a dark side. Like God and the Devil. The skinwalkers dealt in black magic. They traded away their connection with peace and love, with God, Mother Earth and Father Sky, whatever you want to call it. The elders that you can persuade to talk about them say they are shapeshifters, cannibals, and worse. Whites tell stories about them too. Even made some movies. But the folks that have seen skinwalkers work don’t joke around about it.”

  “So this woman I fought with is an Indian?”

  “Not as far as I know. Nobody really knows where she came from. But down in Virgin there’s a family who had twin daughters. One of them went missing at fourteen. Her daddy was Mexican I think, her mother was white. Worked at the trading post where they sold icecream and fake pottery.”

  He ran a hand through his black and gray hair.

  “Down there, the towns are small, everybody knows everybody. She’s about the only child unaccounted for. But nobody knows if that’s her or not.”

  The normally-smiling Serena was still unsatisfied. The witch woman had made an indelible impression.

  “She must come from somewhere. She has to live somewhere nearby.”

  “Of course.” Lougee’s tone was slightly apologetic now. “I am probably one of the few people that could tell you even this much about her, but I am still just a painter. E.T. probably knows more.”

  Until this point, Emmanuel Tyson hadn’t contributed to the conversation. Now, he turned those dead gray eyes on Serena.

  “He’s right Serena, you should have killed her.” He left the table, disappearing down the basement stairs and coming back out holding one of Bishop’s ubiquitous photo folders. He plucked a single sheet out and laid it on the table in front of Serena.

  By the look on her face, Aaron could guess what was in the photo. Blue eyes clouded with a mixture of anger and sadness.

  Scott reached a broad white hand across the table and slid the photo closer, so Aaron could see it. Traced in perfect digital relief on the glossy paper was a tanned woman suspended midair. Her ebony hair stood up straight from her head, giving the impression of falling. Purplish-black wings extended in line with her mane, fanning hugely upward so the tips met at the top of the frame. Licks of flame trailed from her hands and feet.

  She certainly looked the part of the Fallen, the demoness, the witch that everyone described her as. Aaron had never seen anyone look more demonic in fact.

  E.T. looked hard at Scott and Serena both.

  “This is the unknown threat that helped turn the tide in the attack on Babel this morning. Bishop felt like revealing as much should wait.”

  Tears welled in Serena’s eyes.

  Aaron wished that he could reach out and make her feel better. But those days were long gone. He would likely never do that again, for her or anybody else.

  E.T. kept going.

  “I don’t mean to be harsh, and I know that war is an adjustment for both of you, and for all of us. I can’t stress enough though, that we have no choice but to address this as just that. There is no subduing this enemy, no negotiating. It’s just like the Iraqi war, and the Judeo-Christian war after that. We have to kill them all.”

  Starting to sound like Bishop.

  Serena spoke again, just above a whisper. Aaron hoped that he would never hear her say anything like it again.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Silently, Peni raged.

  His breath came and went like a huge brown bellows.

  Along with the relatively few survivors of the raid on Babel, Peni had just been debriefed on the morning’s debacle -nearly twenty four hours after the fact..

  The debriefing had consisted of little more than an official body count and a rundown of the unexpected weaponry their small force had faced. Propelled grenades, armor-piercing rounds. Peni had a hard time caring, or even paying attention. He raged at the missed opportunity. The poor planning. Something had felt wrong about the mission from the beginning, but who was he to question military strategists?

  From now on, I question them. Ufa, question everything.

  Deacon stood at the front of the room and droned on in a lifeless monotone.

  It was hard not to direct anger at the man. He was the reason Peni became part of this operation, and thus far, the highest ranking officer in whatever strange hierarchy these modern day Templars subscribed to that Peni had come in contact with. The blame game would not bring back any of those lost in the botched attempt at extracting Hunter Valdez, code name “Prince”. It hardly even made the large Hawaiian feel better to have a target for his ire. He decided that enough was enough.

  No reason to sit here for this.

  He stood, rising to his full intimidating height. At the head of the room, Deacon stopped speaking. The serious man looked inquiringly up at Peni, as if expecting him to say something.

  There was nothing to say.

  Deacon didn’t call after him, or try to order him to sit back down. Peni and his ilk were granted a certain level of autonomy and respect, even in the heavily regulated environs of an Air Force Base on high alert.

  Guess they figure we’ll bail if they get bossy. Probably right.

  He himself wouldn’t leave. No matter what. There would be no more blind following of orders, but he would not just abandon the mission he’d become a part of. Even as he trudged down the narrow hallway of the command center and out into the ungodly sun of southern Nevada, Peni knew that
he would play this out until the end.

  The sun that baked his skin was unforgiving. Mean.

  No misty clouds or ocean breezes mitigated the punishing heat. Outside, the surroundings were nearly as ugly and plain as the sterile carpet and desktops of the briefing rooms. Breathing the sharp air irritated him. Worse, he could feel a sort of otherworldly pull toward the far-off tower. Like something from a bad science fiction. Babel, the black tower, the monument to decadence and sin and greed. It was there, just over the low, ugly hills of scrub and stone. A thousand-meter cliché.

  All around him, Peni noted the buzz of activity, the excess of sound. Every window of every building revealed men and women in olive drab or khaki or black bustling away to some end or another. Tanks and armored personnel carriers thundered around the endless network of blacktop pads and runways. Row upon row of helicopters and fighter jets shared the space. All of them porcupined with heavy weaponry, being checked and re-checked by the soldiers who were no-doubt thankful to be part of the solution. The private sector was a mess, but military personnel at least had something to do.

  Peni took in the entirety of the scene and decided that the heavy machinery and shock and awe weaponry might be too much. He never fancied himself a genius, but his time in the criminal underground back home had taught him many lessons. Not the least of which was an appreciation for subtlety. The tower had seen them coming, or heard them coming. Maybe Valdez, with all of his money, had paid a rat at the base to alert him when the attack force mobilized. Whatever happened, it had been wrong from the start. Peni decided that another approach might yield better results.

  Even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt to try.

  Now he doubted the wisdom of trusting Deacon’s plans. His own gut rarely led him wrong since the failed attempt at suicide on the beach. Right now, his gut encouraged him to try again, to return to Babel, but with subtlety.

  Alone, just me.

  He would wait until nightfall.