“Abby … what …” Beverly’s mind raced. “I don’t understand.”
The man looked at Beverly. “I will fix her.” She was struck by his eyes.
“Fix her? What?”
“Her head is broken.” He placed a hand on either side of Abby’s head, closed his eyes.
Beverly gasped and took a step back when she saw the warm golden aura that encircled Abby’s head.
Abby’s eyes closed softly and Beverly felt the warmth of the glow as it brightened, expanded, then faded away.
“I must go now.” The young man turned and ran.
“Wait!” called Beverly, but he was off, loping through the flooded streets with the grace and speed of a great cat. “Sir!” But he was already out of sight.
Abby blinked up at Beverly, her eyes lucid, stunned. “He saved me.” She paused. “But my trailer is gone … the flood.” Her voice was groggy as if she were coming out of a dream. “I remember.” Her voice shook. “I remember.” Her eyes brightened. “I remember!” She looked down at the framed photograph of her deceased husband and the jar of pill bugs as if they’d just now appeared, by magic, in her hands.
Lightning ripped the sky and thunder crackled.
“Dear God,” said Beverly. “Let’s get you inside.” She ushered the woman in. What on God’s green earth is happening? “Please sit down, Mrs. Strane. I’ll be right back.” She ran upstairs to turn off the tub. When she returned, Abby was staring out the window. She turned to Beverly. “I’m so sorry to trouble you like this. This is all rather embarrassing. That young man asked me if I had a friend and … I guess I must have mentioned you. I don’t quite recall.” She gazed steadily at Beverly, her eyes lucid, bearing no trace of fog. “May I use your phone to call my sister in Red Cay?”
“You have a sister?” Beverly was stunned.
“Yes.” She pondered a moment. “I’m sure she’ll let me stay with her while I get back on my feet.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “And speaking of feet, that young man sure knows how to sweep a lady off hers!”
She laughed but Beverly was too shaken to join her. “I don’t understand this. I didn’t even know you had a sister.”
Abby nodded. “I’d forgotten all about her. All about everything.” She blinked. “But I remember now. It’s … it’s a miracle.”
* * *
Alone in his office, Gremory Jones had been enjoying the music of the storm. It was an orchestra of chaos - utterly glorious - and he took great pride in his composition. It’s one of my best yet! He smiled.
Things were going according to plan. The natural order had been disturbed. The young man with the golden hair had no idea that he was tipping the scales - no Being of Light would knowingly do so. This was the window of opportunity Gremory had been waiting for. It was time to call in the others before the angel realized its own nature, before it remembered what it truly was.
But not until the storm passes. Gremory folded his hands, sat back, and closed his eyes, listening to the elements wage their unholy war.
* * *
The power was still on, so there was that.
Madison paced the living room. Where the hell did he go? She knew she couldn’t go after him; it was too dangerous.
Dette was on the couch, scratching Pirate beneath the beak, and watching Tomorrow’s Singing Stars, as if the apocalypse weren’t happening outside. “Say Kiss my ass,” she said to the bird. He tilted his head. “Who’s a pretty boy?” Dette rolled her eyes.
“Stop teaching him that,” said Madison. “I have to take him back to the store.”
“Oh, relax. He’s not listening anyway.”
“I can’t relax.”
“You’ve got it bad for that guy, don’t you?”
“Of course not! I don’t even know him! I’m worried because he’s running around in this … storm with a fever!”
Dette shrugged. “He looked fine to me. What I saw of him as he tore off, anyway.” She took a sip of her Pepsi. “Do you have any vodka?”
“No.” Madison continued pacing. Of course I don’t “have it bad” for Alejandro. How could I? I just met him yesterday!
Thunder growled. The lights flickered, but didn’t go out.
“Uh-oh,” said Dette.
Pirate squawked.
Madison looked at the clock. It was after five. It would be completely dark soon. Where the hell is he? Her stomach writhed. She’d even tried to call the police but her cell service was out. What if he dies out there? She went to the window for what must have been the hundredth time and stared at the flooding town below. There was no way she could go looking for him.
“Boooo!” Dette called to the television. “Bitch, get off the stage. Bring the hot guy back on.” As if hearing her, the girl on the television choked just a few bars into her song, frowned, and rushed off the stage.
“Kiss my ass,” said Pirate.
Dette burst into laughter, nearly spitting Pepsi on the floor.
“Damn it, Dette! I told you not to-”
The lights strobed, stuttering as the front door burst open.
Alejandro stood in the doorway, soaked, and almost naked.
“Get in here!” Madison hurried him inside. “Where the hell did you go?”
“Holy shit.” Dette rose, her eyes moving up and down Alejandro’s body.
Madison felt a jab of possessiveness.
He stood in the foyer, his skin dripping, and his boxers clinging to his contours with lewd enthusiasm. “I took Mrs. Strane to her friend’s house.”
“Who? What friend?”
“That’s where she was supposed to go.”
Pirate squawked and flew to Alejandro’s shoulder.
Madison decided to let it go. Dette sighed, still staring.
Alejandro pulled a wet cigarette butt from the elastic of his shorts and studied it. “What is this?”
“Go take a shower and put some clothes on.” Madison pushed him down the hall.
He sighed and followed her orders as Pirate polished his beak in his hair.
Dette stepped closer and watched him walk away, her eyes bright. “My God, that’s a beautiful man.” Her eyes roved down his backside as he disappeared into Madison’s bedroom. “I think I got pregnant just looking at him.”
“Knock it off, Dette.”
Lights Out
The rain let up, and with it, the flood, leaving pools in gutters, potholes, and intersections. Overhead, the sky still raged with lightning that flashed bright in the night sky, streaking jagged paths like cracks on china, the ensuing booms of thunder rattling the windows of Nick’s new home. Since showering in the near darkness over an hour ago, there’d been a handful of minor temblors and the power remained down. Marty had supplied Nick with twin LED lanterns he kept in the Explorer, saying he could use them as long as he needed. Despite the darkened valley, Nick saw the occasional beam of headlights out the window as the townies began moving about.
Idiots.
Nick’s nerves were tight, his muscles tense, and it wasn’t just the strange events of the day that had him on edge. The hangover had long since passed and with it had come the overwhelming urge to repeat last night’s binge. Nick was itching for a drink.
He sat in the living room now, in a chair he’d dragged from the dining table, his guitar under his arm. He’d lost patience with the mellow music he generally preferred and had opted instead for quicker, harder riffs - anything to keep his mind, and his hands, occupied.
After wrapping up a clumsy rendition of Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride, he went into Heart’s Barracuda, one of his favorites for channeling nervous energy and clearing his mind.
He began the introductory riff - an open E power chord - and quickly fell into the hypnotic, repetitive rhythm, his mind instantly clearing and focusing on the music. As he hit the harmonics of the twelfth fret, the power returned, startling him. The refrigerator hummed to life.
He reached over and turned off the LED lantern, set the guitar down and began
switching on other lights. Lightning still cracked the sky outside. Returning, he decided to give his guitar a break. The urge to go buy beer - or better, Grey Goose - was strong. He told himself the stores probably weren’t open anyway, and flipped the radio on, hoping for some soothing sounds. He found a station playing some old Harry Chapin tune and sat on the couch.
When the song ended, that damned conspiracy-nut DJ - Coastal Eddie Fortune - came on, and Nick stood to change the station.
“Good evening, my babies, my ladies and gents. This is Coastal Eddie broadcasting live from KNDL-AM and FM and syndicates across the country. I want to talk about the apocalypse. Do you think it will hit the whole world at once? Or just a nation? A state? Or might it be smaller still? What if the Four Horsemen decided to just gallop through one city? Or a little town like Prominence, California?”
Nick paused.
“Let me tell you about Prominence. It’s over toward the Nevada border, straight across from the Bay Area. It’s an hour north of Mammoth Mountain and an hour south of my favorite ghost town, Bodie, and the existential weirdness of Mono Lake. Nearest big town is Tahoe, but you’ll play hell trying to get there because Prominence is nestled between the Sierra Nevadas on the west and the White Mountains to the east. In Prominence, you’re kind of a sitting duck, if you know what I mean.
“But Prominence, my babies, is under fire by the heavens. Is God involved? Lucifer? Or is it Mother Nature telling the high desert dwellers to just say no to fracking?”
Nick rolled his eyes but sat back down.
“Earlier today,” the DJ said, “a 5.7 earthquake shook the town pretty hard. They had broken windows, lots of spills of spirits and edibles and other things. In other words, the usual in a quake that size. But just as folks came out to start cleaning up, the sky opened up and the town flooded in flash-fashion in minutes. Thunder. Lightning. Very, very frightening to me. And you. World-coming-to-an-end thunder and lightning. Homes and businesses flooded and a few houses were destroyed. Mobile homes out at Prominence Court rafted the flood down a dry wash and into Devil’s Hole Dry Creek. Tonight, it’s not dry. The rain has let up a bit, and folks are checking the damage, but the thunder and lightning continues.
“I have a special guest on the line, Eric Cooterman, editor-in-chief of the Prominence Weekly News. He was witness - as was his camera - to something he claims is miraculous, something that happened today at the Prominence Court Mobile Home Park during the height of the flood. He saw a naked blond man rescue one Mrs. Abigail Strane just before her trailer crashed into the ravine.”
Naked? He wasn’t naked. Almost naked, sure, but it was just like Coastal Eddie to stretch the truth. Or that reporter, Cooter.
“The man, whose identity remains unknown, brought Mrs. Strane out of the upended trailer in his arms and leapt into the water - but he didn’t hit the ground. No, not at all. Freaky, my listeners? Listen closely. It gets freakier. According to Mr. Cooterman, the naked stranger didn’t land in the water but on it and ran over its surface at a high speed, still carrying Mrs. Strane.”
Nick recalled the incident. It had, indeed, looked strange.
Coastal Eddie continued. “It’s been reported that the man took off with Mrs. Strane, and neither have been heard from since.
“Who is this man? Did he really walk - nay, run - on water? Is he Abigail Strane’s guardian angel? Or her abductor? But did he really walk on water or was the flood letting up? The eye, after all, is known to play tricks.”
Nick sighed. The man had run on water, or so it appeared at the time. No doubt Cooter - and Coastal Eddie - would be hunting down the chief of police for a statement before long.
Tough titties, you two won’t get a thing out of me. But Nick did want to know exactly what he’d seen. Nothing that man in the gray boxers had done had been quite normal. Larger than life, maybe. And where the hell did he take Abby Strane? The whack jobs would inevitably show up if this story got any press. Who are you kidding? It’s getting press right this minute. Nick sighed and wished he hadn’t sworn off drinking. He didn’t need a circus his first day in town. He picked up his phone and punched in the number for the station, needing to find out if Abigail Strane had been located yet.
A deputy picked up on the third ring, and informed Nick that the missing woman had just now been reported safe. Beverly Simon, proprietor of The Psychic Sidekick, said the young man had dropped Strane off and that she was fine. Nick told the deputy to inform the media of that fact, then hung up, relieved.
From the speakers, Coastal Eddie prattled on. “You can see Mr. Cooterman’s photos for yourself on the Prominence News website just as soon as the power is restored. Meanwhile, let’s have a chat with the man himself. “Hello, Mr. Cooterman, how are you tonight?”
“Great Eddie. Call me Cooter.”
As Nick’s eyes rolled, someone rang the doorbell. He lowered the volume and peered out the peephole, but it was too dark to see who stood on the other side.
He opened the door and was surprised to see Roxie Michaelson, the owner of the little yellow diner. He smiled. “What are you doing out in this mess? Come on in.”
“It’s not so bad.” She stepped into the foyer. “In fact, the roads are a lot better now, except for some new potholes.” She wore a slinky red mini-dress and black flats. Her bleached blond hair was pulled up and she smelled of soft, citrusy perfume.
She looked good, but it was the bottle of red wine in her hand that had Nick’s mouth watering. He averted his eyes and led her to the living room. “Please, sit.”
She did. “My power was out and I figured yours was, too.” She looked around the room. “I see I was wrong about that, but I figured, why sit at home in the dark all by myself?” Her laugh was low.
“Well, it just came on five minutes ago.” Nick glanced at the wine and cleared his throat.
“Anyway, I thought I’d stop by and give you a proper welcome. I hope you like Burgundy.” She held the bottle up.
“Of course.” He took it from her with the guilty reserve of a child taking a coveted treat from a stranger. “Would you like some?” His voice cracked.
When she said, “I’d love some,” Grayson was both relieved and disappointed. He knew he couldn’t watch her drink without having some himself, and by the time he’d retrieved two glasses from the kitchen, he knew tonight was not the night he would quit. I’ll quit tomorrow.
“I would have called first, but I didn’t have your number.” Roxie smiled, her plum-colored lips glistening in the soft lamplight. “I hope it wasn’t rude of me to show up like this.”
“Not at all.” Nick took a seat in the La-Z-Boy opposite her, the maple coffee table between them. His mouth watered as he poured the Burgundy into glasses. He watched the crimson liquid sparkle, the subtle alcoholic scent of it tugging at some dark part of him. “I hope you don’t mind drinking your wine from a water glass. It’s all I’ve got for now.” He slid one toward her.
“Of course not.” She took it and waited for him to pour his own before raising it and saying, “To new friendships?”
“To new friendships.” He leaned forward, touched the rim of his glass to hers, extinguishing all traces of his earlier resolve to quit as the alcohol kissed his tongue and caressed his throat. It settled into his stomach like a warm kitten. It took everything he had not to guzzle the glass.
But Roxie was a methodical drinker - or at least she was in the company of men she didn’t know yet.
“It’s delicious.” He took another large gulp.
Thunder clapped with a fierce crackle and boom.
Roxie flinched as if a whip had been snapped in front of her face. The windows rattled as the thunder rolled on, growing distant like the roar of a passing freight train.
She laughed. “That scared the hell out of me!”
Nick chuckled and swallowed another mouthful of Burgundy, the alcohol already soothing his nerves. Like hydrocortisone on poison oak.
The lights flickered once, twic
e, and went out.
“Well, hell,” said Nick.
* * *
“Well, hell,” said Madison.
Thunder burst and the electricity went out. She, Dette, and Alejandro now sat in near blackness around the television where they’d been watching Sunset Blvd. In the shadows, Madison saw Alejandro raise his arm and click the remote.
“The clicker is broken,” he said.
Dette snickered.
“The power’s out, Alejandro. The clicker is fine.”
His silence confirmed what Madison already suspected: Alejandro had no idea what a power outage was. She sighed and got up. “Come on, Dette. Help me get some candles from the kitchen.”
In the darkness, Pirate asked, “Who’s a pretty boy?”
Madison and Dette found several candles in the back of a junk drawer, some of which were half-used already. But they’d do the trick.
“He smells as good as he looks!” whispered Dette.
“It’s weird, right? Like vanilla.”
“Vanilla? I think he smells like lotus blossoms. I don’t smell vanilla at all.”
Lotus blossoms? Apparently Dette’s sense of smell was short-circuiting. There was no way someone could confuse lotus blossoms with vanilla.
Unless …
She remembered how Bart Aberdeen had said Alejandro smelled like puppy breath. Maybe it’s my senses that are faulty.
She and Dette lit the candles and began setting them up.
In moments, the living room glowed amber and shadows dipped and undulated on the walls like holy rollers in the throes of a religious fervor.
Madison pulled back the white curtains and glanced outside. The majority of the town was blacked out.
“How are the roads?” asked Dette.
“Better, I think. But I wouldn’t risk it yet. You should stay a while.”
The Angel Alejandro Page 13