Angeli

by Jody Wallace

  With a grunt, Gregori curled his wings forward before smacking them back. He caught the daemon between them like a bug in a flytrap.

  Wings weren’t meant to be weapons. With force fields and blasters, multipurps and enhanced strength, additional protections were overkill. But Nikolas, the team’s mechanic, had modified their wing packs the last time they’d played flying spirits for a beleaguered planet.

  The daemon shrieked as tactanium-tipped feathers sliced its skin everywhere they touched.

  Gregori battered it repeatedly with his weaponized wings. This wouldn’t kill it any more than the bullets, but daemons did feel pain—and he liked to inflict it on them.

  The creature freed him to hover near the ceiling. Without a force field, Gregori needed to do a better job of protecting himself. He leaped into the air. His opponent was more black than red as a thousand cuts oozed dark blood. Droplets hit the floor and hissed as the ichor ate the tile.

  Gregori yanked a ceiling fan off its wiring and flung it at his opponent. While the daemon was busy dodging, he hurled himself forward.

  His blade drove into the daemon’s chest, past the nearly unbreakable breastbone. The blade stuck tight with a jolt. His hand numbed from the harsh blow. Frag his aim! He’d been going for the neck. The best way to kill a daemon was chop off its head and fend off its body while it continued to assail you.

  Eventually the body caught up with its lack of brain and keeled over.

  The daemon wheeled in midair, which pulled the tool out of Gregori’s hand. Instead of diving for Gregori, it arrowed lightning-fast toward the counter where Adelita had been.

  Gregori grabbed its scaly feet just in time. The blade in its chest wasn’t slowing it for anything. Its claws raked gouges in the countertop. Behind the counter, Adelita started ranting.

  She hadn’t run as he’d told her to. Was she offering herself up as entity takeout?

  Items began flying through the air, bouncing off the daemon’s screeching head. Adelita hurled everything behind the counter at the monster. Its jaws worked, and its powerful muscles quivered as it struggled and kicked. Wicked dewclaws on its legs missed Gregori by inches. He flapped his great wings, braced his feet against the counter, and muscled the daemon away from Adelita.

  He hauled it to the center of the store, but it was all he could do to hold it in place. With his hands occupied, Gregori couldn’t unhook another multipurp, and he couldn’t see the first one anymore. Items that could damage a daemon were limited. How was he going to kill this fucker if he was too busy trying to keep it away from Adelita?

  Unless he used the monster’s single-mindedness against it.

  His skin aflame with droplets of ichor, he propelled himself to its shoulders. As soon as Gregori stopped anchoring it, the beast jetted toward the counter. Its wiry body thrashed like a goo-covered snake. Much as the daemon had done to him earlier, Gregori scrabbled past the leathery wings to the beast’s head.

  Now he had the advantage.

  The daemon, realizing its mistake, bucked and flapped. Gregori curled his wings until the tips reached the daemon. He bore down. The serrated feathers sliced the creature’s wings, shredding them.

  The daemon crashed to the floor, face-first. If he could finish it off before it healed, it wouldn’t be zipping anywhere to call its brethren.

  He hoped this was the gatherer from the horde blotch he and Adelita had escaped, and the first he’d killed had been the guard. If so, it should be the last daemon in hundreds of miles.

  Should be.

  Angry all over again at his tech and circumstance, Gregori closed his hands around the daemon’s throat and squeezed. The beast gnashed its teeth and hissed. He wished he had claws instead of blunt human fingers, claws to rend and tear and sever heads.

  Note to Nikolas—retractable tactanium claws.

  Note to Nikolas—don’t be such a Ship-licker.

  Gregori maneuvered his feet around, pinning the daemon to the floor by its tattered wings. It heaved so violently it nearly knocked him to the ground. Still strong, still dangerous. He landed forcefully on his knees against the daemon’s spine. His weight pushed the multipurp, still wedged in the creature’s breastbone, through its back, barely missing Gregori’s shin.

  Ah, that’s where it was.

  Gregori unhooked another multipurp and used it to pry the first out of the daemon’s flesh. The daemon’s squall was music to his ears. The creature’s ichor felt as if it was flaying his own skin off his body, and his hand throbbed where the daemon had chewed on his thumb. He needed to end this and find water.

  He adjusted the two multipurps into one so it formed safe handholds and pushed it through the monster’s neck.

  It wasn’t easy. The revolting cracks and snaps, the daemon’s earsplitting cry, and the effort of sawing through bones nearly as tough as tactanium pained his shoulders. Finally the head rolled free with a splurch.

  He pinned the convulsing body until it settled. With the dripping blade, he chopped off the hands as a safeguard. Tactanium made dispatching daemons easier. Terrans, who had no tactanium, had managed to kill a few with repeated missile strikes. But not even tactanium affected the shades. Had to be blasters.

  “You can come out now,” he told Adelita.

  She peered over the counter with an expression of revulsion in her big brown eyes. “If there was anything useful in here, it’s ruined now,” she told him. “You’ve destroyed the place. You couldn’t take that thing outside to kill it?”

  “If it escaped, it would fetch reinforcements.” He didn’t expect her to sing his praises for saving her life—again—but a little thanks wouldn’t go amiss. “I didn’t exactly plan this.”

  “I thought angeli could tell when daemons were nearby.”

  Gregori wiped the multipurps on newspaper before replacing them on his arm. Blisters pebbled his skin like an all-over rash. “I’m not omniscient.”

  “I suppose not.” She walked around the counter and pinched her nose when she neared the twitching, headless daemon. “That’s a terrible smell.”

  “Don’t get too close to the head,” he warned. The jaws remained lively for hours.

  She edged past the daemon and approached Gregori. Her brows knit together. “You’re bleeding. How can this be? Angeli can’t be killed.”

  “We can be hurt.” If he told her the truth now, the discussion would last for some time. He was anxious to get the ichor off his skin before it ate through the dermis. Healing that layer itched like galactic scabies. “I need to bathe.”

  “What does that have to do with bleeding?”

  “Blood is the life,” he said as mysteriously as possible. “I need to be baptized to cleanse off my sins and all that.”

  “Cleanse off that horrible stench.” She retrieved her backpack behind the counter. “I didn’t see any water before you turned the place into rubble, but I bet we could find a pool at a motel.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” One of the buildings next to the canyon had been a likely candidate. He led the way out of the decimated store, Adelita following him with a cloth over her nose and mouth. Across the parking area was a walkway to the rim. It was still hot and windy as the sun set. The hotel’s sandy stone and timbered roof blended into the scenery, while the grass around the hotel had died. No Terrans here to water it.

  Gregori had become experienced at finding bodies of water on Terra. This close to the canyon rim, the hotel had no pool but did feature a small exercise room, sauna, and hot tub. There were also a gift shop and a restaurant that should have food and cleaning supplies.

  After a wash, he needed to disengage his wing pack and assess his tech. Before he could do that, however, he needed to finish telling Adelita what he’d intended to tell her before the daemon had found them.

  The water in the hot tub was cloudy and discolored by the time he finished. His raw skin started healing in a series of prickly waves. His tactanium armor and bands were impervious, but the ichor had etched thin sp
ots in some feathers and scorched holes in his tunic. He’d need new clothes.

  Adelita had declined his offer to let her wash first; she’d disappeared during his ablutions to return with a sack of boxes and a container of moist wipes. She used them to scrub the blood and dust off herself. Beams of setting sun poured through the windows of the exercise room in bars of red-gold.

  “That stings like fire.” She threw the dirty cloths into a trash can. “You look better.”

  “Thank you.” He flapped his wings, shaking off the water. He hoped the ichor-coated multipurp hadn’t damaged his wing pack’s endo-organic connectors when he’d sprung the feather-tip blades. If he could fix the sensor array, he wouldn’t have to manually switch his wing settings anymore.

  “Are you cleansed of your murderous ways? I still smell daemon.” She pressed her curls to her face and sniffed. “I think it’s in my hair.”

  Satisfied his wings were dry and all tactanium tips retracted, he settled one shoulder against a wall of mirrors. “We need to finish our conversation.”

  “All right.” She rubbed moist wipes over her hair. “I was about to tell you why I don’t have a death wish anymore.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Let me begin at the beginning.” She resealed the wipe container and stuck it in her bag of plunder. “At first, I doubted you. We all did. We wanted science to explain the shades and daemons and flying men. We wanted science to set us free.”

  She seemed calm, introspective. A good time to confess. “Actually, science is—”

  “No, no. You said you wanted to hear this.” She propped her arm on a treadmill a few paces from him, her posture tightening her shirt across her full breasts. The buttons strained to hold the garment closed. “Science couldn’t help us. I was ashamed of my doubts, and I came to believe. How could I not?”

  The adrenaline crash after defeating the daemon certainly hadn’t rerouted his libido. He wrenched his gaze from her bosom and concentrated on her story. “Many of your people don’t believe.”

  “Many of my people are dead,” she said flatly. “When the white light didn’t take me, I thought it was because I wasn’t worth taking and I did have a death wish for a while. But do you know what I learned?”

  “No,” he said, fascinated by the play of emotions on her face.

  She lifted her chin. “I don’t want to die. I have things to see and do in this lifetime, and I think it’s the Lord’s will that I’ve come to understand this. Suicide is one sin you won’t have to forgive me for, angeli.”

  She seemed secure in her beliefs, but her story revealed her ability to handle change. She’d trusted science first and trusted her god after Terran science hadn’t provided answers.

  He hoped to his god and hers what he was about to do was a good idea.

  “Adelita, I need to tell you something.” He closed his eyes a moment. “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “You’re not Archangel Gregori?”

  He took a deep breath and released it. Why was he nervous? She’d once hoped for a scientific explanation. It shouldn’t be a leap for her to believe in his science. But her brown eyes stared at him so trustingly.

  “I’m not angeli.”

  Chapter Seven

  It felt as if she’d been waiting for him to admit that since the moment they’d met. Perhaps since the moment he’d shown up on Earth, close on the heels of the first daemon sightings. Even so, Adelita wasn’t sure how to react. She had one impulse to throw a box of crackers at him and another to…weep. Sit down and weep.

  Neither would make the impression she needed to make on this person, whoever he was. She couldn’t show weakness. She had no reason to trust him despite the wings and holy might. He could be Lucifer in disguise.

  And none of this—not the angeli, not the demonios, not la boca del infierno—might be what she and most of the world had concluded. If this wasn’t the end of days, what was it? The theories spouted by the unbelievers didn’t seem so sacrilegious now.

  “You aren’t angeli.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as shaky to him as it felt in her tight throat. She cocked one hip and rolled her eyes to hide her confusion and fear. “I admit, I had my doubts about you.”

  May the Lord forgive her for them.

  His eyebrows arched. “I thought you said you’d come to believe?”

  She gestured dismissively. “That was before. But today? With the way you behave, and the sweating and bleeding, how could I not wonder?”

  “I can understand that.”

  Her lips were trembling, so she pretended to hide a yawn before asking, “Who are you?”

  “Gregori. It’s my name. I’m the one you’ve seen on your television.” He rubbed a hand over his head, smoothing his long, damp hair. “First you need to understand I’m here to save your people. The horde is lethal, Adelita. Every type of entity seeks only your death. They’ll destroy this planet and everyone on it.”

  “I got that much, ange—Gregori. We all got that much.” She considered the questions exploding in her mind and asked the easiest one. “What about the wings?”

  “Removable.”

  She crossed her arms to shut out the panic. “Halo?”

  He crossed his arms, too, but held her gaze. “Machine.”

  “Do you want to take over the world?”

  “No.”

  “Are you some kind of soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  It was like twenty questions, a game she always won. But it didn’t feel like she was ahead. “Did you infiltrate the real angeli?”

  “There are no real angeli.” He continued to hold her gaze, his eyes the same clear blue they’d been since the first time she’d seen him on TV. “Not how you think of them.”

  It was what she’d feared and what some had insisted all along. The believers had been deceived. But why? Why would anyone do this when people were dying? What was the point of pretending?

  A bad thought crossed her mind. She stepped closer and shook her finger at him. In the mirror behind him, her reflection did the same thing. “Is this another test?”

  His lips relaxed from a grim line to something softer. “Would I admit it if it was?”

  “Just tell me,” she snapped.

  “There are no tests.” Red tinged his skin along his high cheekbones and didn’t fade. Wait, no, it didn’t fade because he seemed to have a sunburn. His arms were pinkish between his bracelets. “I apologize if I offended you with…the first thing that wasn’t a test.”

  She couldn’t think about that when she was afraid she already knew the answer to her next question. “Did God send you to us?”

  “I can’t speak for your god, Adelita. I’m not from him, and I don’t know him. Only you can speak to your god and hear him. My people worship differently.”

  “Anyone with a soul can hear my Lord if they have open ears and an open heart,” she told him sternly. Unless Gregori wasn’t a man. “Are you a robot?”

  He kind of smiled, and it made her want to kick him. “I’m a person. I breathe and bleed and eat and sleep and—”

  She interrupted. “I can guess the rest.”

  “I’m a human, like you, with enhancements so I can do my job. Your science hasn’t achieved the level of my people yet.”

  “Your science. Your people.” Adelita clenched her fists because she needed to feel something holding her together. “So that means…”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I’m from a spaceship. This is not your Revelation, Adelita, but it might be the end of your world.”

  Her vision narrowed to a tunnel with Gregori at one end and blackness between them. She crumpled until her butt hit the floor. His words flooded over her like an onslaught of shades, sucking the energy from her body and replacing it with anguish.

  It was absolutely true, and she knew it.

  Had she always known? Who could say? It explained so many discrepancies and doubts, but it didn’t explain his people. It wasn’t as if th
e angeli, the aliens, had tried to conquer Earth. They’d fought shades and daemons. They’d saved lives. Not once had they accepted wealth or positions of power. They hadn’t allowed themselves to be worshipped, even when some had tried.

  It didn’t make sense. Gregori didn’t make sense.

  She rested her head on her skinned-up knees. “Why not tell us the truth?”

  “When we introduce our science and technology, it changes civilizations. It takes you off the paths you were meant to tread.”

  “Who cares?” She stared up at him, angry that he was beautiful, when by all rights an alien who’d lied and tricked their whole planet should be green and deformed and disgusting. “Things always happen to change civilizations.”

  “For our tech to be one of those things goes against our code. Code is our religion. We told you we were angeli because we thought that’s what you’d be most inclined to cooperate with. We thought it would have the smallest impact on your evolution.”

  “That’s absurd. How does it not alter our civilization for angeli and daemons to appear? Even if you had stopped the apocalypse, your lies have changed everything.”

  He sighed. “I’m not a philosopher or a scientist, Adelita. I’m a soldier. I do my job and—”

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a brain. You can see it’s stupid. Or is one of your enhancements where they take away your ability to reason?” She dug her fingers into her legs to squelch her rising panic. “That’s one way to make sure a soldier is obedient.”

  “My brain works fine.” His voice had a slight edge. “I don’t always agree, but it’s code. It’s for the best. I can’t begin to guess the long-range effects.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” Adelita started combing her tangled hair with her hands, powering through knots, checking for daemon odor. She didn’t want to see his face when she asked the next question. “What about the white light? Are you taking Earthlings to eat them or experiment on them?”

  “Of course not.” He lowered himself to the floor, squatting near enough that she could shove him onto his ass if she wanted. Reddish sunlight turned his blond hair fiery. “They’re being brought aboard Ship to preserve your genome. The white light is the glow of our force fields.”