“I’m not telling you anything, so don’t even ask,” Edgemore said sternly, using Lilith’s mouth.
“I don’t think that’s the answer you want to stick with,” the angel growled, running his scarred fingers over the bloody bones.
“You don’t frighten me,” Edgemore replied sharply. Samael snapped one of the bones in half to show that he meant what he said. Lilith howled in pain, a surrogate for Edgemore’s anguish.
“Still want to be stubborn?” the red-plumed angel asked. “I can make eternity miserable for you. You can rest in peace…or not at all. The choice is yours.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about the little secret you’ve been carrying around with you in that decaying brain of yours. I want to know about Rusty Nails. How did you even get mixed up with the drug in the first place?”
Edgemore sighed. Coming from the seer’s lips the sound was almost erotic. “I ran with the wrong crowd. Got mixed up with a few really bad angels. One thing led to another.”
“Another angel is behind this?” Samael asked, immediately growing suspicious.
“I didn’t say that,” replied. “Or then again, maybe I did. Maybe I don’t even remember how I got mixed up in all of this.”
“You remember.”
“The devil made me do it,” Edgemore said with a chuckle.
“Stop tinkering with me,” Samael growled. “My patience is wearing thin with you.”
“How about answering a question for me then?”
Samael’s eyes narrowed. It was clear he was growing desperate. “Fine,” he said. “What?”
“What made you even want to try the drug in the first place?”
“It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. I’m the angel of death. I’ve killed billions. And, yes, I know it’s my job, my place in the grand scheme of things. But it’s a depressing job at times. Have you ever looked into the weeping eyes of a young mother after you’ve taken her newborn? Have you ever seen the way children cry when they learn their father won’t be coming home again? Do you know how hard it is to watch the unnatural process of parents burying their children? There are times when my job is more of an injustice than a necessity, and I feel guilt just like anyone else. I heard murmurings about the drug, and thought it would be worth a shot. Guilt is a powerful master, you know?”
Lilith stared at Samael from across the table, her eyes burning with what might have been anger or desire. For a moment, the death angel wasn’t sure who exactly was staring at him: Edgemore or Lilith. Then Edgemore took over. “That was more honest than I was expecting from you. Because of that, I’ll let you in on something.”
Samael took a deep breath. It was clear he was relieved that his little confession had done as he had intended and established a small measure of trust between him and Edgemore. “Lucifer’s disappeared,” Edgemore said from somewhere deep within Lilith.
“I haven’t heard anything about that,” Samael said, not bothering to hide his disbelief.
“You wouldn’t have. The demons are trying to keep as much havoc stirred up as they possibly can so that no one will notice anything is amiss.”
“That would make sense,” Samael conceded. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Edgemore admitted. “But it seems like an odd time for the angel of light to go missing. Here you are in the midst of a second war in heaven and the originator of the first just up and disappears.”
Samael scowled. Edgemore had a point.
“I’ll keep that information under my hat,” Samael said. “But you know what I’m after. I want to know where you stashed the Rusty Nails.”
“I can’t remember.”
Enraged, Samael snatched Lilith up from her chair and pressed his nose against hers, looking deep into those green eyes for some glimpse of the possessing spirit. Yet all he saw was the frightened look of an animal trapped in the sights of a hunting rifle.
Tired of playing this game, Samael unzipped his leather pants and urinated on the heap of bones. Lilith screamed as the chalky remains began to smoke and sizzle like tiny animals dropped in vats of acid.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Edgemore screamed. “Just don’t do that again.”
“I’m waiting.”
“It’s buried in the wall of my crypt. I left explicit instructions for the marble works and the glass company to add a little compartment inside my vault where the stash could be hidden. I lined the compartment with lead so you wouldn’t be able to sniff it out.”
“See,” the death angel said with a devious smirk on his face, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Excitedly, he bagged the bones up in the burlap sack and watched as the gleam left Lilith’s eyes in a flash of quicksilver.
Chapter 17
Samael waited until Lilith had been escorted from the junkyard before losing his composure. The fallen watched as Samael tore the seats out of an old Plymouth and heaved them angrily at the stacks of wrecked automobiles. Several of the stacks fell with a deafening crash. Nobody moved when Samael wrenched away the Plymouth’s hood and tore it in half as though it was little more than tissue paper. The sharp metal cut him in several places as he played the part of wrecking ball. The blood stained his feathers like a fine dye, and he made no attempt to stop the flow.
When his anger finally subsided and he was in control of himself again, a brooding black-feathered angel wearing a leather trenchcoat stepped out of the shadows. In such garb, he looked a little like a street corner salesmen with dozens of watches lining the folds of his coat. And, yes, he jingled a little as he walked. But it was stilettos, not watches, that were the reason for the sound.
“I don’t know how much longer I can go without,” Samael confessed.
“We all feel your agony,” Midael replied. “We’re all starting to feel remorseful for what we’ve done. There isn’t one of us here who wouldn’t enjoy a shot in the arm.”
“This would all be simpler if there was no drug to contend with. It’s made slaves out of all of us, including me.”
“It’s made slaves out of the faithful too,” Midael reminded him.
“I didn’t want to play games in this war,” Samael admitted. “I wanted to take my place as king of the angels by force. Subterfuge, as I’m sure you’re aware, is not exactly my strong suit. When it’s someone’s time to die, I’m not usually one to leave hints. I just take them when their moment comes. I thought this war would be the same way. I would line up my allegiances, plot my strategy, and charge in with force.”
“That’s what Lucifer thought too,” Midael reminded him. “Look where it got him.”
Samael ignored that bit about the angel of light, remembering what Edgemore had said about Lucifer’s disappearance.
“There’s something about all this I don’t understand,” Midael said, breaking Samael’s train of thought.
The death angel flashed him a sardonic smile. “Do tell,” he said dryly.
“I thought the whole purpose of snatching Edgemore’s bones was so you could force him to tell you where he hid what was left of the drug. From what it sounded like to me, he gave you the answer you were looking for. Why aren’t you headed to his tomb to check out his story?”
“He’s lying to me,” Samael said with some surety.
“I thought you could force him to tell the truth.”
It was all Samael could do to refrain from cursing the assassin with a plague of festering sores. “This is a very delicate matter and I wanted to be absolutely sure of myself before I said anything. That’s why I brought Lilith along, to verify what I already suspected. With all of Edgemore’s bones I can threaten his spirit with limbo if I want. The only problem is that I don’t have them all. I’m missing one.”
“Missing one?” Midael said. “We cleaned out every inch of that tomb. There were no other bones to be found.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Samael replied,
his pupils shifting from yellow to black. “But the fact remains that I don’t have all of Richard Edgemore’s remains.”
“And just how did Lilith help you determine that?’
Samael snarled, showing just a hint of yellow fang. He was getting tired of Midael questioning his methods. He also didn’t like the faint smell of Lilith that he detected on the assassin.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” the death angel growled. “But I will this once. Humans can serve as vessels for roaming spirits. Lilith invited Edgemore to possess her. And yet she needed the blood of a crow to draw him in. If we were in possession of all the bones, he would have had no choice but to do as she commanded.”
“So what‘s your plan?” Midael asked.
Samael growled once and bared his yellowed fangs. Before Midael could react, Samael had him by the lapels of his overcoat. The stiletto angel was unable to spread his wings in time to avoid being hurled into a massive stack of cars. At impact, the cars immediately toppled over like dominoes. Midael softly grunted beneath the weight of several tons of Detroit steel.
Samael didn’t wait for Midael to crawl out from under the rubble. Instead, he took to the skies of Crowley’s Point. Although it would probably turn out to be a waste of time, he had a crypt to search.
Chapter 18
When the phone rang, Dade thought that it might be Liz. After all that had happened with his father, he desperately needed to hear her voice. He was disappointed when Mrs. Hartwell answered.
“Richard’s crypt has been ransacked,” she said firmly.
“Somebody demolished the mausoleum?” Dade said.
“Tore the whole place up. Broke the stained glass. Even tore the marble columns down.”
“It just beaks my heart to hear something like that.”
“Mr. Gibson, let’s not be glib here. If you ever feel the need to rub my nose in my own problems again, just pull those Polaroids out of your wallet and study them for a moment. Maybe that will be enough to keep that mouth of yours shut.”
“Mrs. Hartwell, since you brought up the pictures I think there’s something you should know,” Dade said. “I just saw my father. He paid me a little visit. In the flesh.”
The line went silent for a moment as Louise processed the information. “That’s not possible,” she said. “Your father is dead. I’ve seen the bones.”
This time it was Dade’s turn to be quiet. “You’ve actually seen the bones?” he said for clarification.
“Yes, I’m not a woman who leaves any stone unturned. If I threaten you, then I make doubly sure I can produce on that threat. I’ve been to your father’s gravesite and seen where his remains lie.”
“You’re lying,” Dade said. “I saw my father.”
“Mr. Gibson, I don’t know who it was that paid you a visit, but I would bet my life on the fact that it wasn’t your father.”
Dade didn’t know what else to say. Strangely enough, he wanted to believe Louise Hartwell about this. He wanted to believe his father was dead. What he had seen made it both difficult and easy to believe. Yes, he had seen the man who looked every bit the carbon copy of his father. And yes, there had been enough inconsistencies about the man to make Dade question what was real and what wasn’t.
Feeling more than a little sick, Dade laid the phone down gently and grabbed his guns. It was bad enough to have an enemy like Louise Hartwell. It was even worse to think that there might be someone even more dangerous than her out there.
Chapter 19
It wasn’t everyday that you ran across a child like Rush. In fact, Father Benjamin had never seen anything like it in all of his years as a priest.
Benjamin tried to fathom why God had seen fit to place the boy in his care, why God had directed him to look down that alleyway and see the boy in need. He tried to fathom why God had given this child the ability to heal angels. But he didn’t have answers for any of it. He simply had faith that God knew what He was doing.
He tried to keep that mindset when he answered the phone. The call came from one of his parishioners whose wife had been admitted to the hospital because the terminal cancer had reached the final stages and her organs were beginning to shut down. It was a sad situation, and Benjamin had been there from the start, watching this once vital woman turn into an old crone before his very eyes. Like so many other slow deaths he had witnessed, this one didn’t seem fair either.
Rush walked in as he was hanging up the phone. The boy wore a tiny smirk on his face. It was the look of a secret, like he knew something that no one else knew. It was the look of a boy who has just pulled a prank and wants everyone to know he’s responsible without actually telling them.
Although it was a long shot, Benjamin couldn’t help wondering if Rush could do for this woman what he did for angels wounded in battle. Maybe angels weren’t the only reason the boy had been sent here. Maybe he could cure Mamie Bradford’s cancer as well. Benjamin knew better than to be too hopeful. Still, it didn’t hurt to try. He had planned to go to the hospital anyway to pray with Mamie and minister to her in these final hours of need. He would simply take Rush along for the trip and pray that God would direct the boy’s healing hand toward Mamie’s cancer. It sounded simple enough.
Rush was quiet in the car. He had listened to Benjamin’s proposal and seemed to be in deep concentration about it.
“What are you thinking about?” Benjamin asked the boy.
“Cancer,” Rush replied. “I was just thinking how it works, eating through the body like an out-of-control animal.”
“It is certainly a terrible thing to go through,” Benjamin added. “Do angels get cancer?”
“No,” Rush said. “They’re immortal. Not like humans.”
“Do you have any idea why the angels come to you?”
“They know me,” the boy said. “And they know I’ll help them.”
“How do they know you?” Benjamin asked.
“It’s a long story,” the child sighed.
“O.K.,” Benjamin said. “One last question and I’ll leave you alone. Do you think you’ll be able to do anything to heal Mamie Bradford?”
“We’ll see,” the boy said. “That’s all I can promise. Our success or failure will depend on Mamie’s willingness to be healed.”
“You’re starting to sound a little like Christ with talk like that,” Benjamin said.
Rush smirked and adjusted one of the straps on his overalls. “Let’s just say I’ve been doing my homework.”
The antiseptic hospital looked out of place in the world of smog, haze, and sin. It also looked like a safe haven to those who wanted to escape from such a world.
Benjamin knew the way to the cancer ward by heart. Since Mamie had been diagnosed, Benjamin had gone to see her at least once a week as she endured the chemotherapy treatments. Characteristically, Rush followed behind him without making a sound.
John Bradford met Benjamin at the door looking like he had spent several sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and counting the number of indentations on a square of acoustical tile. The man was haggard and deservedly so. His bristly white whiskers indicated that he hadn’t shaved in about a week. The bags under his eyes said there simply hadn’t been time for such trivialities. He had spent the past six months watching his wife withering away into little more than a husk, and now the waiting was almost at an end.
“Thank you for coming, Father,” John said as he ushered Benjamin and Rush in. The old man looked at Rush with some concern, uncertain if this was the sort of thing a child should see.
“Don’t worry, John,” Benjamin said. “I think he may be able to help Mamie.”
“I don’t understand,” John stammered, fully aware that there was nothing anyone could do to help at this point.
“I can’t explain it,” Benjamin said. “And don’t ask me to try. Just trust that God will do whatever is best for your wife.”
“Everyone dies,” Rush spoke up. “That’s a part of life. It’s what
comes after that matters anyway.”
“I suppose you’re right, son,” John Bradford admitted. “But that doesn’t keep the human side of me from wanting Mamie to stay here a while longer. If I had my way, she and I would go at the same time. That way neither of us would have to grieve.”
Rush smiled. “I’m going to lay hands on your wife now. Just calm down a bit and let me see what I can do.”
John Bradford nodded and stepped back although it was clear from the look on his face that he wasn’t very hopeful.
Mamie Bradford looked like a mummy that was being readied for embalming. Her cheeks were sunken in. Her arms were folded across her chest like sticks of kindling that had been gathered and dropped haphazardly across the bed sheet. Wisps of hair sprouted from her head like rampant weeds. Electrodes and tubes criss-crossed her body carrying information and fluids to and fro. Her breathing came in ragged bursts like wind sighing in the trees on a dark autumn night.
It was a systemized form of dying, and Benjamin felt like he was violating some basic form of Mamie’s privacy by being privy to these last hours of her life. Rush, however, seemed oblivious to all of the subtext present in the way John Bradford paced the room and stared at the ceiling from time to time as if questioning the benevolence of God. For his part, he was completely focused on the task at hand.
Rusty Nails (The Dade Gibson Case Files) Page 7