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

by Sean M O'Connell

  “Is everyone okay? What in the hell just happened!?”

  Scott Fitzpatrick stood up from where he’d fallen and brushed grit off of his knees. He cast a crooked glance at June.

  “No time to discuss it right now.“ he warned. “The others are coming.“

  Indeed, the beating scuff of running feet reached Serena’s ears. Voices too, the mercenaries were coming.

  June kicked one of the Fallen bodies viciously and spat.

  Coppery highlights on one wing rose to meet the peacock blue of the other and she took flight, not bothering to look back.

  Serena noted the frown on Scott’s face as he watched her go. His gaze kept shifting from June’s retreating form to her three victims and back. He tromped over to where they lay and reached a bloodstained hand down to check the pulse of the fat one. Frown lines deepened, but there was no more time for investigation.

  The first of the Possessed who had failed to push past the makeshift blockade in the gym appeared over the roof and swooped low into the parking lot followed by more men with guns.

  Scott leapt into the air to follow June and the others.

  No more fighting for today. They had already lost one friend.

  Thirteen remaining Angels flew into the setting sun. Pursued by the taunts and bullets of Hunter Valdez’s mercenaries.

  Decrypted Archival File 0331-898

  KC Marcus Rossborough Monk Zion Province USA

  Entry 1: Special Assignment confirmed- KC Brian Hin Bishop. Invasion and Extraction order of Fallen stronghold at Babel.

  Entry 2: Special Assignment confirmed-KC Brian Hin Bishop. Escort of Rafael Cruz Angel- Scriptural Priority designation.

  Entry 3: Total Mobilization of Zion Province KC Operatives. Sacramental Priority Mission.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Aaron noted that Peni, if that was his real name, was gigangtic. Well over six foot and at least two-eighty. Maybe more. The hands that hung slack inside loop after loop of chain were broad and thick, as were the chest and shoulders. His calves were massive, almost as thick as Aaron’s thighs. The features, though streaked in blackish residue, were identifiable as Pacific Islander. Aaron’s days with Scott on Utah football fields had made him intimately familiar with Polynesian culture.

  He wondered what this Angel’s wings would look like when unfurled.

  Peni’s eyes broke their baleful lock on the Bruja long enough to fix themselves on Aaron’s face.

  What Dayne saw in the captive Angel’s eyes was enough to tell him his own fate.

  Peni looked apologetic and sad. He had apparently been through this before with the Bruja. The Angel, for some reason, had been brought to witness Aaron’s torture.

  Perhaps his execution.

  This is how it ends?

  Aaron’s former line of work had given him cause to think about his own mortality a great deal more than most men his age. He often wondered, after surviving the far-away battles in Argentine dawns with the Redmen, how he would die. The question gave rise to a feeling that wasn’t fear as much as it was curiosity.

  Long life scared him more than death in fact. A future filled with dottering incontinence and arthritic passes at unattainable young women held no appeal. But this…

  To die under capture in Las Vegas, Nevada at the hands of some twisted woman? After all he’d been through. After all of the things he’d seen and done that hadn’t killed him.

  Bullshit.

  The Bruja was enjoying herself, relishing the tingle of anticipation. She shared her joy aloud.

  “We are going to play a little game.” Now speaking only to Peni. “Don’t worry, this is a new game. I know you are sick of all the old stuff.”

  She nodded to the men who had pushed Peni’s wheeled prison into the room, and they stepped forward. Aaron observed the way these men moved, reading the lines of their necks and the position of their hands.

  Scared.

  “As you both well know, creativity is everything when it comes to making war.”

  Aaron was repulsed even as he listened. The Bruja spoke of sickening concepts with the voice of a young girl.

  “We have been creative, have adapted our strategies and weaponry to make our battles against your Angels and your Monks more successful” She giggled, “or at least more exciting.”

  Peni looked at the floor as the men worked around him. They reached over his shoulders and around his neck, passing chords and chains between them. It appeared to Aaron that the handlers were changing the Angel’s bonds.

  The witch wasn’t finished.

  “I hate to admit this, but even after all of this time we have made little headway in finding the proverbial chink in the Angel armor. My friends and I have our little temper problem. It often leads us to act rashly. This has cost the lives of more than I can count… poor dears.” She wiped away an imaginary tear and chuckled again.

  “Of course with people who are unchanged the weaknesses are easy to point out.” She flicked her dirty fingers in Aaron’s direction.

  “You people are weak. And I don’t just mean physically. The real problem with you normal folks is fear… You are just too easy to scare. I rarely even have to cast a spell or say a prayer or snap my fingers before you types start wetting yourselves.” she was taunting now. “Of course that fear turns to panic, and panic leads to stupidity, and then you turn on one another.”

  Another giggle. Then a contemptuous sneer as she spat the end of her diatribe.

  “Weak! All of you are weak! Even before the blessings, I refused to be like you. I sought ways to improve myself. To become stronger.”

  Aaron knew he would die soon, but he refused to do so silently.

  “Would you please just shut up! Nobody is impressed by your preaching.”

  He mirrored her distasteful face. Bravado, false or not, would help him handle what came next. “Improve yourself? We know all about your former life. The devil worship, the harassment of boy scouts, the neighborhood dogs your lured away and strung up on trees. Cowardly bullshit. All of it.”

  She frowned thoughtfully at him for a short moment. Then raked her filthy fingernails across his bare chest, deep.

  He gasped. It stung much more than a flesh wound ever should.

  “You know nothing. Nothing!” She hissed, and dragged her nails over his skin again, more slowly this time. “So let’s not pretend hmmm?”

  Pain radiated from the slices on his chest in white-hot blooms. His hope for distracting her now lost as he focused hard to keep himself conscious. Gritting his teeth, Aaron cursed under his breath. He was weaker than he’d first thought. His discomfort drew another giggle from the Bruja.

  “Don’t interrupt again Aaron Dayne. I wouldn’t want my temper to get in the way of the fun we’re about to have.”

  She turned from him and back to Peni, gripping a handful of his black curls.

  “As I was saying.. We’ve had a hard time finding the Achilles heel of your Angel friends. I have been studying this one for some time now.” She was truly enjoying this. “Thanks to Mr. Valdez’s resources, I’ve seen recordings of battles from all over the world. Brown and I,” She gestured toward one of the men who’d accompanied Peni into the room. “came up with an idea.”

  She leaned in close to the Samoan and whispered into his ear. “I’m going to miss you sugar.”

  The men, finished with their tinkering, stepped back. Aaron was surprised to see that most of Peni’s chains had been stripped away. Instead there were strange apparatus affixed to his hands, or rather his fingers. Each digit now sported a clamp not unlike the ones seen at the end of jumper cables, or on a contact welder. Similar metal pincers were attached to Peni’s ears and another three cables snaked up under the loose shorts he wore. Aaron shuddered inwardly to think of where those clamps were attached. The Angel didn’t move. Still playing the role of orator, the Bruja spoke yet again.

  “These are Cambodian Dragon Cuffs. Actually, the man who invented them was from Laos, bu
t that’s not important.” More tittering. “The clamps, as I’m sure you can already tell, are very sharp edged, and are attached to their cables in such a way that straining against them will only cause them to tighten, clamping down harder and harder the more a prisoner pulls until eventually whatever the clamp is attached to is severed completely. Quite clever. You see, they test a prisoner’s resolve to be free. If one is willing to lose a limb or a digit in order to escape, they presumably can. Most won’t do it. They are too weak.”

  Aaron had heard of these types of cuffs before. Most prisoners wouldn’t trade pieces of their body parts for freedom, or wouldn’t face the pain. The realization of this did more to break them than any measure of torture could. The few that did pull out of the cuffs, sacrificing their hands and fingers and worse, were usually shot dead anyway.

  “So today Peni, we are going to see how badly you want to escape. The fingers I don’t doubt you’ll give up. But the other bits…” She tugged playfully at the chords attached below his belt. “Those might be a little harder to part with. Of course even if you pull out of the bonds, it’s unlikely you’ll make it out of this room alive, much less back to the surface and away from Babel.”

  Back to the surface? Then we are under ground. How deep?

  Aaron’s scratch wounds still burned intensely.

  “You should also know Peni, I have done just about as much as I can think to do to you. Without much success. It’s admirable really.” She traced a hand along his jaw line in mock romance.

  “So today, we test you in a different way. Just remember, once it comes off, it doesn’t grow back. Even for you Angels.”

  Yet another lilting giggle echoed eerily around the huge space. Then she leaned in slowly and kissed the Angel on the forehead. Tenderly. Lovingly. Aaron saw blisters in the shape of lips raise and burst on Peni’s skin.

  Still, no real reaction from the Angel. Maybe just the ghost of a smile flickered across the solemn, stained face. A heartbeat later it was gone.

  “I know exactly how much you can take Peni.” the Bruja said. “But how much are you willing to let this man suffer?” She signaled silently to the others, and they unlocked the last of Peni’s many chains. Leaving him restrained by only his fingers, ears, and presumably his genitals.

  The six men stepped back.

  Rather, five of them did. The one with the pinky ring –Brown, the Bruja had called him- stepped forward and pulled a thick black rod from a duffel bag on the floor.

  A sharp clack clack and the rod had tripled in length. Now it hummed and cast tiny blue sparks from its end. An electric prod. The kind used for cattle and sheep.

  Shit. This is going to hurt.

  Brown, apparently not inclined to the same type of theatrical speech as his female counterpart, stepped forward.

  He looked Aaron straight in the face, smiled, and then plunged the end of the cattle prod into the filthy pool of water in which Aaron sat.

  The horrific sensation of electric shock blew through Dayne’s body like an icy gale. Dendrites and axons that had been cold and dying for a week jolted back to sudden, awful wakefulness.

  Muscles no longer under the command of his own nervous system lurched and contracted fiercely, harder than their connecting tissues were equipped to handle.

  Breath left him instantly.

  Had he been able to process any information coherently, Aaron would have heard the erratic beating of his own heart as it tried to make sense of the signals now overriding its movement.

  Blood vessels in Aaron’s nose, ears, and eyes burst.

  Then it was over.

  Brown stood in the exact same place. Looking not at Aaron, but at Peni. The prod still sparked, poised to plunge again.

  Aaron gasped and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs and blur of his vision. Gradually, his heart caught up to its own confusion and started to slow.

  Brown’s hand dipped again.

  More pain.

  This time Aaron closed his eyes and thought hard of his two canine companions. Through the jumping of his own body and emptying of his lungs he fought to picture their warmth and recall the feel of their fur. Their unconditional love.

  The distraction technique failed.

  The shooting pain and torturous boiling of the disgusting water consumed him.

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. One shoulder popped out of joint, then popped back in. He could do nothing.

  Again it stopped.

  Steam rose from his skin. The numbness of his limbs now replaced by an awkward tingling sensation. Dead flesh brought back to Frankenstein life.

  Still, Brown paid Aaron no attention. The stink of his own burning flesh and the sound of the Bruja’s bodyguards readying guns caused the edges of his blurry vision to infuse with a crimson glow. He didn’t fight it. He couldn’t have even if he tried. There was nothing left but to survive.

  Peni’s eyes moved from Brown, to Aaron, to the Witch. Aaron’s muscles protested as he lifted his head, but he was able to meet Peni’s gaze.

  The Angel smiled.

  And moved…

  Wings sprang into life for the first time in many months.

  Great amalgamations of muscle, bone, and feather whipped violently outward, knocking over one of the six escorts as they did.

  Peni grew up playing his sports and writing his name and eating his dinners right-handed.

  Gritting his teeth against the sacrifice, he yanked his left hand free of the Dragon clamps. Fingers gave way as the Bruja had promised, bouncing on the floor along with the disconnected clamps like five brown bloody sausages.

  The pain was insignificant in the face of what had to be done.

  He reached with his ruined limb for the cables that bound his right hand. Wrapping the cord around his wrist to absorb the tension, he jerked his head forward -sacrificing his ears- and bit down on the bundled wires. Rubber, metal, and teeth all protested, but even the muscles of his jaw had been blessed, and the cables lost their battle.

  Working as fast as he could, he reached underneath his garments to detach the clamps threatening more sensitive parts. It was ginger work, made much harder by the clamps still attached benignly to his fingers, but he managed.

  The first of the bodyguards’ gunshots rang out, missing in the panic.

  The work of a few seconds meant that Peni moved unfettered for the first time in months.

  Blood coursing from the mess of his left hand and the nubs of his ears spattered the floor as he leapt forward and leveled the man known as Brown with a wing-propelled head butt.

  The Bruja’s shouted warning to the bodyguards was already too late.

  Two more fell to his one-and-a-half hands before the others could even open fire. Once, twice, six times hot bullets hammered into his muscle and sought more vital tissues, but Peni moved like lightning.

  After months of creative torture, the simple sting of gunshots was hardly even noticeable. Adrenaline churned joyously through his cells as he surged freely for the first time in ages.

  The smallest of the six bodyguards, a slender man with an almost feminine face that contrasted with his wiry muscles, stepped too close and Peni snatched him by the neck with his good hand. He hurled the man straight up.

  Gravity failed, and the body crumpled against the ceiling above with a sickening crunch before thudding back down to the concrete floor in a broken pile.

  Another two bullets found Peni’s left wing.

  He reached down and grabbed the gun of the man he’d just killed, whirling again. With calm, practiced ease, he put holes in both of the guards that had hit him.

  They didn’t have the benefit of God’s healing grace. Not even the heightened reflexes or immunity to pain of the Fallen. One fell sideways into the shallow water of Aaron’s prison, blood mixing with the filth.

  That left only The Bruja.

  She was already headed for the door, speaking into a cell phone. The modern lines of the device seemed incongruous with
her archaic appearance.

  Peni wondered why she was running. She had bested him once before, why not try again?

  But she fled. At a dead sprint.

  The lights of the room went out as she passed beneath them, bulbs shattering in response to whatever vile magnetism she emitted.

  A few breaths later she was gone, leaving only the echoes of her girlish laughter and the bodies of her helpers.

  Peni moved to follow, hate for her and all like her welling inside of him like a geyser. But something told him to stay put. He would face her again soon enough.

  Besides, he had to free the other prisoner, Aaron.

  His work wasn’t quite finished.

  Trying not to look down at his missing fingers, Peni turned back to where the fight had just ended. The smell of blood and emptied bowels hung in the air. He decided that this Aaron must be made of pretty tough stuff, because he was already taking in the scene coherently.

  “The one she called Brown isn’t dead.” he warned Peni. Unable to move his arms, he jutted his chin forward.

  “He’s not unconscious either. Faking it.” Peni agreed, walking over to Brown and placing a vicious kick between the man’s ribs. “Get up Demon.”

  Brown grunted a soft protest to the kick and opened his eyes. His expression looked to Aaron like something halfway between anger and panic.

  Brown stood up slowly, feigning injury in order to buy himself time to think. The Samoan Angel stared hard at him.

  “Look out!” Aaron warned from behind. He had seen Brown’s hand inching toward a hip, and the weapon undoubtedly concealed there.

  Peni had seen it too. Just as Brown’s own dark wings spread, the large Angel smashed a fist into the Brazilian’s face. The first blow knocked him down. Seven more and the shape of Brown’s facial bones had changed enough that Peni was satisfied.

  He stood there breathing heavily.

  Blood had already stopped running from the stubs on his left hand, but he didn’t dare look. Not yet.