“Seven-four-eight-four,” he said, tossing his pistol to Cloud Hawk. “You stick with me.
Cloud Hawk nodded.
The GYs split into groups of ten, running through streets crammed with halted vehicles, alongside trains full of weary passengers. The onlookers stared glassily as the demon’s group threaded their way through to a dimly-lit sector of the city.
The resistance member was just a short distance ahead. The demon could see him, weaving between the cars of the immobile trains—a glimpse of a foot, a flash of tweed jacket. He ran with a limp.
The GYs were on his trail like coyotes, dead-ending him in an alley that was lined with rotting garbage and stank of it, too. The rebel clutched the pile of posters to his chest. He was a mousy-looking accountant of maybe forty, wearing threadbare clothing and a wedding ring. So he was a traditionalist as well. The demon almost laughed. No one hated traditionalists as much as the Government Youth. This would be easy.
“Cornered,” said the demon, crossing his arms and smiling at the man. The rebel remained strangely calm for someone who had at least five pistols pointed at him—one of which was Cloud Hawk’s.
“Any last words?” said the demon.
The man somehow found his voice. “I feel sorry for you,” he said. “For all of you.”
“Oh, spare us,” said the demon, rolling his eyes. The rest of the group behind him laughed and echoed nastily, “Yes, spare us.” “Please.” “Honestly.” “Play a violin.”
“Don’t shoot him,” came a voice from the back of the group. “Take him into custody. He doesn’t deserve murder.”
The demon nearly swore. He whipped around sharply to see the angel, huddled at the back of the group. She had somehow arrived without him noticing, and she was shivering, even though the night was hot and muggy.
“Of course he deserves murder, he’s spreading lies,” screeched GY-8321, brandishing her pistol at the accountant, who winced. “He’s a resistance member!”
“Shoot him,” said the demon in a low voice to Cloud Hawk. Cloud Hawk’s pistol hadn’t moved from its target, but his dark eyes remained fixed on the angel. The wind whistled through the alley, whipping dust and papers between the abandoned buildings.
“Cloud Hawk,” she whispered. “Don’t. Don’t do it.”
The pistol began to shake in Cloud Hawk’s grip.
“What, are you actually letting a girl tell you what to do?” the demon drawled.
The pistol’s shot was drowned out by the thunder that boomed over them. As though it had split the sky, rain burst from the clouds and poured over them in sheets.
The rain seemed to drench the GYs’ feral excitement. Cloud Hawk stared at the resistance member with wide eyes as the red-splattered posters fell from his hands and he slid to the ground.
At the back of the group, droplets coursed down the angel’s face. But the demon knew it wasn’t just rain.
Assignment over with, he disappeared from the group, avoiding any last eye contact with either Cloud Hawk or the angel.
Perhaps it had been the thunder. Or perhaps it had been the look in the angel’s large eyes. But for the first time in his existence, the demon was shaken.
❦
HERCULANEUM, ROMAN EMPIRE. DATE: 79 AD
The sky rained ash. Light flashed, too, electric snaps in the great clouds of sulfur and gas; it illuminated the ash-brine sea, filled with Roman ships slogging through the night to evacuate the people of Herculaneum before the volcano erupted. The mountain in the distance was alight in patches of fire. In but an hour, the pyroclastic flows would bury the city.
The angel coughed, because everyone else was. She didn’t need to cough, and she didn’t need to hold a rag against her mouth. But if she didn’t, it would arouse suspicion among the masses of people pressed around her. They all held bundles of their belongings, and covered their mouths with cloths in order to breathe. Panic was thick in the air—thicker than the ash. A crowd huddled under massive stone arches by the pier, waiting to load the ships. They were so packed together it seemed like everyone in the city was there. The sweltering heat was unbearable.
Among the pack and panic, a young boy streaked with soot hobbled on a crutch, coughing tiny coughs. He held a ragged little bundle under his free arm. The angel immediately recognized him, and she pushed away from the crowd to follow after him. He was part of her assignment.
She followed his slow progress—he often stumbled, or was shoved away, and he fell to his hands and knees. Her heart broke for him. In spite of all this, every time he pulled himself back into a three-legged gait and pressed onward.
Away from the throngs of the main evacuations, the angel could see where the boy was headed: a small fisherman’s boat, bobbing alongside a derelict pier of rotting wood. The boy must have known this poorer area of the docks well, for he navigated across the fallen beams and broken planks with skill.
Already the fisherman’s boat was packed to the brim with wealthy citizens of Herculaneum. Still more were boarding. A flash of light caught a glimmer of coin crossing into the fisherman’s palm; he was charging exorbitant fees to take the people to safety up north.
The boy deftly slipped among the last group boarding. The angel joined him, the rag still pressed over her mouth and nose.
He almost boarded without being noticed, but little seemed to slip past the fisherman’s beady, narrow eyes. In a blurred movement, he caught the boy’s wrist in a tight grip. The crutch clattered down the plank. The angel quickly picked it up.
“See ‘ere, boy!” the fisherman said to the struggling boy. “This ship is for paying folk! I don’t reckon you have any denarii for passage, do ye?”
The boy struggled against his grip, coughing weakly. “Please, sir,” he stammered.
From behind him, the angel spoke up firmly. “Let him come,” she urged. “Look at him, he’s awfully slight. He won’t add a bit of weight to your ship.”
The boy nodded eagerly. The ash on his face was streaked with his tears.
The fisherman hesitated, still holding the boy in his vice grip. The boat was filled with twenty citizens, and there wasn’t room for even one more person. But the angel was right: he was a starved little thing and wouldn’t add enough to make a difference.
“He’s just a child,” the angel pleaded. “Your mother taught you such kindness. It would do her memory good.”
The fisherman did not release the boy at the invocation of his mother, but he looked at the angel oddly, as though she had stirred up forgotten memories buried long ago.
“I need passage,” came a rather cool, unconcerned voice from behind them. “And I can pay.”
The angel paled. She turned quickly to see who stood at the end of the loading plank, richly dressed in Roman clothes.
She recognized him immediately. The bright gold hair, the ice-blue eyes, the overconfident air of someone who thought they knew the secrets of life. The demon. She hadn’t seen him since that particular assignment, eons ago. But she remembered everything about him.
Like her, he was coated gray with ash. But he was smiling slightly, showing a sliver of very white, straight teeth. In his hand he held a drawstring bag full of coins. He shook it, the coins jangling together.
The angel turned on him. “Rubix Grosvenor Saulus Jarhnam, don’t you dare,” she whispered angrily.
The demon Rubix nearly dropped the bag in surprise. She knew his name. All of his name. How did she know his name?
Quickly, the angel turned back to the fisherman. “Surely your heart isn’t made of coin,” she said.
The dredged emotions within the fisherman lined his ashen face. He looked at the boy, then at the demon Rubix, expecting him to say something.
And Rubix hesitated.
There was a taut moment of utter silence. Then the fisherman grabbed the boy's arm and yanked him into the boat.
“Get in,” he growled, throwing the boy into the group on the ship. “An’ don’t tip the load, or you’ll be the f
irst thrown into this sooty brine.”
The boy nodded eagerly. The angel managed to hand the crutch to him through the knotted tangle of people before the fisherman cast off, and the boat sludged across the ocean. The boy’s grateful face shone in the darkness.
In the distance, the volcano flared.
The angel turned to face the demon Rubix, who surveyed her with an unreadable expression.
“You win,” he said, in an equally unreadable voice.
“It’s not a game,” the angel replied.
“You care so much about the boy?”
“I care about the fisherman,” said the angel.
And that was that.
“Thank you,” she added quietly, “for giving him a chance.”
And then she was gone. Rubix was left alone on the pier with a bag of coins and the memory of a smile. The volcano erupted behind him, sending blasts of heat through the city, followed by fast-moving volcanic offal. It would incinerate those huddled under the arches and bury the city.
But it didn’t bother Rubix. He was used to this kind of heat. He lived with it every day.
❦
ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS. DATE: 1941 AD
The outdoor café was close to the industrial part of the city—or what had been the industrial part of the city. It had been bombed flat less than a year ago, and there were still piles of debris in the alleyways and pockmarks in the buildings from the shards.
Life continued, however, just with more soldiers. They stood on street corners and in doorways. There were even a few eating at a small bistro table near the angel and her friend, talking in German and laughing loudly.
The angel kept her voice low as she spoke with Hilda, the girl of seventeen sitting across from her, who was frowning and pushing her spaetzle around on her plate.
“Think of how many lives it could save,” the angel said quietly. “And all it would take is getting them to the resistance.”
“I don’t know,” the girl muttered.
“You could do it tonight. If it gets past curfew, I bet you could stay the night in their home. You wouldn’t be caught. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t know,” the girl muttered again.
“Well, you’d better know soon!” said the angel rather fiercely. “All you have to worry about is losing your German boyfriend! They’re going to lose their lives if you don’t help!”
Hilda stood sharply, threw her napkin down on her plate, and stormed off. The angel watched as she crossed the street, skirts swishing haughtily, adjusting her hair and refusing to look back at the small café. She disappeared around the corner. The angel sighed.
She hadn’t been the only one watching. From the shadows of the café, Rubix the demon watched as the German soldiers—still laughing loudly—paid the waiter and left, leaving the angel alone on the sidewalk, glaring at her plate.
Rubix slung his coat over his arm and strode to her table. He was dressed smartly in a well-fitted suit and fedora, and even wore a pair of perfectly round glasses. He looked no more conspicuous than a Dutch university student who’d decided to take his lunch outside.
“Bad day?” he asked.
The angel looked up, startled. The startled transformed into wary as Rubix took a chair.
“Mind if I sit with you? Thanks,” he said, without waiting for a response. He half expected her to disappear right then, even though the waiter might have seen her. But she didn’t, though she watched him a like a cornered animal.
“You,” she said.
“Me,” replied Rubix, still smiling cockily. “Relax, angel. I’m not on your assignment. How is it going, though? Rubbing shoulders with the daughter of the diplomat in charge of issuing visas? What could you be saying to her?”
The angel’s lips had become razor-thin.
“You have a temper,” he said. “I didn’t realize angels had tempers.”
“Why are you here?” asked the angel.
“I’ve been doing some work nearby.”
“I hope it’s going poorly,” said the angel feistily.
“Temper, temper,” Rubix said with a grin. The truth was, his assignment was going very well. He had nearly convinced the Dutch woman down the street to turn in her Jewish stowaway.
“I hope they see how awful you are and they don’t listen to a word you say,” snapped the angel.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” said Rubix genially. “It’s not like we can force people to choose.”
“Then I hope they choose good.”
“Well. You hope they choose well,” Rubix corrected.
“No,” she said stubbornly. “I hope they choose Good.”
Rubix rolled his eyes, but smiled in spite of himself. A waiter came to take his order, and he ordered the exact plate the angel had: a dish of potatoes, a sausage, and some kind of sauce. When the waiter returned with the plate, the angel and the demon still sat in stony silence. Rubix made a show of cutting the sausage into little pieces. Then he launched into a new topic.
“I’ve been dying to ask—figuratively, of course, but it’s been on my mind for an epoch or so now—how did you know my name?”
The angel lowered her eyes, but, to his surprise, she answered him.
“I looked you up in the Life and Death Department files,” she admitted. “They keep a record of all the demons there, too. I couldn’t help myself. I was so angry with what you did to poor Cloud Hawk.”
“Who?”
“Cloud Hawk!” she repeated, affronted.
“Oh. Right. Him,” said Rubix. His mind pulled together the vague memory of a young Navajo. He’d not given Cloud Hawk a thought since the assignment had ended. “Wait—you remember the names of your assignments?”
“First of all, they’re people,” she said, her temper flaring. “And second of all, of course I remember them. Every single one. Don’t you?”
Rubix avoided her question by parrying with a new one. “And do you remember all the demons? You remember me, obviously.”
The angel turned her fork between her fingers.
“Yes,” she finally said. “I remember you. On the docks near Herculaneum. You let the fisherman save the boy.”
“Did I?” said Rubix. “I recall almost convincing him to take me on his ship.”
“But you paused.”
“Maybe I was just shocked you knew my name.”
“I can see when a demon’s heart isn’t in his work.”
“I don’t have a heart.”
“Oh... says you.” The angel smiled teasingly.
The demon remained stone-faced. The idea that he might have actually have a heart was a new one to him. He didn’t know how he felt about it.
But he knew he didn’t want her to go. Angels often avoided demons at all costs; having a conversation with one was unheard of. And yet here was one who remembered him, who knew his name, and—of all things—thought he had some good in him. Highly irregular.
Because he didn’t want the encounter to end, Rubix changed the subject.
“Ever wonder what it tastes like?” he said, nudging the pieces of sausage around his plate. “Food?”
The angel smiled sheepishly. A-ha, Rubix thought. It was a smile that said, All the time.
Rubix speared a sausage piece with his fork and dared a bite, chewing slowly and thoughtfully. As with every time he’d eaten before, he couldn’t taste it. It was like chewing rubber that fell apart in one’s mouth. He could barely swallow it.
“Did you taste anything?” asked the angel hopefully.
“Not a thing. Mortals swear by this stuff. I don’t understand it.”
“Some of the angels have actually lived,” said the angel, “and they tell me they’d give anything to taste a potato again. Oh! And salt. They really miss salt.”
“I hear chocolate is very good, too,” said Rubix, smiling.
“Chocolate!” the angel exulted, then blushed. The waiter nearby looked up from cleaning the tables, then went back to work. From the corne
r beyond the café, a smartly-dressed Nazi officer glanced at them, his hands firmly clasped behind his back. His eyes were so bright blue, they pierced. They lingered on Rubix and the angel, then he turned his attention back to the street.
“Jonah’s our choir leader,” she said, in a quieter tone, so only Rubix could hear. “He’s a once-lived, too. He’s written a song about chocolate. It’s a lovely song. I could almost taste it.”
Rubix smiled.
“I’m—going to be born soon,” the angel went on, with the excitement of someone who had thought about the prospect for half an eternity. “I plan on eating all the chocolate bars I can stuff in my mouth!” She laughed, a sound like bells.
Rubix did not laugh. Normally it would infuriate him, talking about becoming mortal. The way angels rubbed that advantage into the demons’ faces—it was maddening. Rubix was a never-born, which meant he hadn’t been born yet, and, since he was a demon... he never would be. Every time he thought about it, he became fumingly angry. It was absolutely unfair.
But now, he couldn’t be upset. Not around this angel. He folded his arms and kept his face solemn, but he did not feel anger.
At his expression, the angel quickly sobered.
“I’m—sorry,” she stammered. “I know I shouldn’t talk about that in front of demons. The archangels tell us not to, anyway. I’m sorry. I’m just... excited.”
Rubix waved it away. “Do you get to choose when you’re born? What era, I mean?” he asked.
The angel jumped on the question eagerly. “No,” she said. “But, if I had a choice, it would be here. Assignments in this era—the Second World War—I think they’re my favorite.”
“What? Now?” Rubix looked around at the faces of the passersby, taut with worry. As the war progressed, he knew those faces would become taut with hunger as well. He frowned. “The nineteen-hundred forties? When there’s so much evil? Granted, angel, that’s merely a professional opinion.”
“Julianne,” said the angel quickly. She suddenly became very interested in adjusting her jacket and hat, but the furious blush on her cheeks betrayed her.
Perchance to Dream Page 15