Angels & Patriots

by Salina B Baker

  Angels & Patriots

  Book One: Sons of Liberty Lexington and Concord Bunker Hill

  Salina B Baker

  Culper Press

  Angels & Patriots Book One

  Copyright © 2017 by Salina B Baker

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Inquiries should be addressed to the Publisher

  Culper Press

  Austin, Texas

  First Printing 2017

  This is a work of fiction. However, some characters, dialogue, events, and places are real and some are products of the author’s imagination.

  Due to the adult content and themes, this book is not intended for persons under the age of 18.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958287

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated in memoriam to

  Dr. Joseph Warren and Major John Pitcairn.

  “Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful—but we have many friends. Determine to be free and Heaven and Earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”

  Dr. Joseph Warren

  Contents

  A Plan of the Town and Harbour of Boston

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  A Plan of the Action at Bunkers Hill

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  About the Author

  A Plan of the Town and Harbour of Boston

  One

  Wexford, Ireland May 1169

  “Get below decks!” Colm Bohannon shouted.

  His younger brother, Michael, ignored the order and stubbornly exchanged fire with the Norman soldiers, who stood on the docks and shot flaming arrows at the men aboard the cog LE’ Eithne. With Michael open to enemy fire, the other six men under Colm’s command hesitated to take the order.

  Under a waning crescent moon, the Norman lord, Robert Fitzstephen, watched and listened to the Irish die in the water and on board the cogs in the harbor. Fitzstephen’s army cut down the Irish soldiers who’d stormed the docks to defend their town and their comrades.

  Colm knew his brother was destined to die in an act of defiance. An arrow pierced Michael’s left shoulder and knocked him backward. He refused to give in to the pain, and reloaded his bow. A flaming arrow struck him in the heart. His shirt and curly black hair caught fire. He collapsed and hit the cog’s railing, causing his spine to snap with a dull crack. His limp body fell overboard and splashed into the dark water.

  “MICHAEL!” Patrick Cullen was frantic. He ran to the cog railing and looked into the water. “MICHAEL!”

  Brandon O’Flynn ran to the railing beside Patrick and looked over. Horror stained his blue eyes as they searched for Michael’s body in the water.

  Colm had tried to reach his brother in time, but failed. Enraged, he knew he couldn’t let Michael’s death render him unable to protect his other men. He jerked Brandon and Patrick away from the railing, “Get below decks, now!”

  Seamus Cullen hooked an arm around Patrick’s neck and shouted over the din of screaming men and burning cogs. “Obey Colm’s order!”

  Patrick struggled with his older brother. “Stop it, Seamus!”

  “Everyone but Liam’s out of arrows!” Seamus shouted.

  “THEY KILLED MICHAEL!” Patrick screamed. He tried to twist his head out of the crook of Seamus’ elbow.

  Ian Keogh pinned down Patrick’s flailing arms and helped Seamus drag Patrick out of harm’s way.

  Liam Kavangh returned arrow fire and covered Brandon O’Flynn and Fergus Driscoll until they could get below decks. A Norman arrow pierced Liam’s right eye and embedded in his brain. He dropped dead on the deck.

  Fergus Driscoll, Colm’s second in command, returned topside with a handful of javelins. He and Colm made their last stand with the cog’s only remaining weapons. There was a loud whoosh when the timbers of the LE’ Eithne caught fire. In less than a minute, the burning cog was at the bottom of the harbor. Colm Bohannon and his men were sucked into the water’s netherworld.

  An ethereal rain of silver crystals spiraled down from the starry night sky and gathered on the streets of Wexford and drifted against buildings. They wet the Irish and Norman soldiers’ hair and clothing. They soaked the docks and splashed into the black waters to extinguish the flames.

  The blood-rinsed waters of the harbor brightened with silver light—green, purple, yellow, red, and blue flashed within the light.

  The soldiers on both sides of the conflict feared they were witnessing the rapture. Some fled the docks in terror. Others dropped to their knees in reverence.

  The lights went out. Gossamer draped reapers arrived to escort the souls of the dead to their final destination. With their souls gone, the bodies of Colm Bohannon and his men became vessels for the spirits of eight angels, who were trying to slow the relentless pursuit of demons God had created to kill them for their disobedience.

  They had been running from the demons since the time of the Flood of Noah. Some of the angels had created what God had forbidden—the Nephilim—children of human women. Three angels copulated. Five angels tried to stop them. In God’s court, they were all found guilty and were banished from Heaven.

  The angels’ commanding archangel was desperate to protect his tiring brotherhood. He hoped taking vessels belonging to the children of man would confuse the demons and slow their pursuit. It did for 145 years.

  By 1314, the demons’ leader realized what the angels had done. He and his army of demonic spirits went to Scotland to the scene of the Battle of Bannockburn where the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, clashed with the English king, Edward II.

  There were many human vessels to be had as the soldiers died on the battlefield. The demon leader possessed the body of an English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, a man Robert the Bruce killed in the battle. Wearing their new vessels, Henry and his army continued their ruthless pursuit.

  By 1575, the archangel saw that his angels were tiring again, but now, they were killing demon-possessed living humans in their desperate attempt to survive. The angels left Ireland for England, in hopes of escaping Great Britain. On April 27, 1584, the archangel, who was now known by his human name, Colm Bohannon, and his angels left England on a ship bound
for North America.

  It would take Henry two hundred years to find them.

  Two

  Burkes Garden, Virginia December 1774

  Jeremiah Killam relaxed his aim and lowered his musket when he realized it was Colm Bohannon emerging from the dense white oak and hickory forest. Flung over Colm’s left shoulder was a doe carcass; its head flopped with each step and left bloody smears on his bearskin coat and in his long wavy brown hair. A long rifle rested against his right shoulder.

  Despite the seeds of Manifest Destiny that came across the Atlantic with the first colonists, King George III had issued the Proclamation of 1763, restricting settlement of Great Britain’s thirteen colonies to east of the summit line of the Appalachian Mountains. For nearly two centuries, Colm and his brotherhood had been living west of the Proclamation Line in a valley, now called Burkes Garden, Virginia. After their ship arrived in Roanoke Island in July 1584, the brotherhood of angels wandered for six months before they found this sanctuary.

  Jeremiah put his musket aside and said, “Liam and Seamus have been lookin’ for you.”

  Colm laid the deer on the blood-stained skinning table in front of Jeremiah’s one room cabin. He enjoyed the hunt, but he had no inclination for dressing out game. “Did they say why?”

  “They didn’t say so don’t start worrin’ about ’em.” Jeremiah slid his skinning knife from the pocket on the thigh of his breeches. He poised the knife over the deer then reconsidered. “Wait a minute. Mkwa brought whiskey, yesterday.”

  He went inside the cabin and returned with an uncorked jug. He swigged the whiskey then handed the jug to Colm. He set about skinning the doe and said, “Did I tell you what the Continental Congress is askin’ us ta do after it met last September in Philadelphia?”

  “What’s the Continental Congress?” Colm took a swig from the jug.

  “Men representin’ the colonies called a meetin’ in response ta the Brits passin’ the Intolerable Acts ta punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. The patriots dumped 340 crates of tea inta Boston Harbor ta protest the taxes Britain levied on tea. Anyway, they’re askin’ us ta boycott British goods. War’s comin’, Colm.”

  Colm considered Jeremiah with his grizzly beard, disheveled dark-blond hair, deerskin clothing, and unwashed body. He was as tough as any mountain man, but in Colm’s opinion, Jeremiah had three important divergent qualities—he could read and write, and had an appealing forty-year-old face under the beard. He was the equivalent of the town crier. Without Jeremiah, those who lived in Burkes Garden would have little knowledge of what was happening in the outside world.

  “Why do ya say that?”

  Jeremiah began to remove the doe’s hooves by slicing the leg off at the knee joint. “The British military’s been occupyin’ Boston all these years. Now, they’ve replaced the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, with General Thomas Gage. From what I hear, Gage pulled his garrisons from other places like New York, Philadelphia, and Halifax, and formed a British naval presence in Boston. Then, he angered folks by confiscatin’ provincial gun powder from some place in Massachusetts.”

  The angels had not participated in the French and Indian War because Colm had not perceived the war as a demonic threat to his brotherhood or the children of man. But what Jeremiah was describing had the potential to become a full-scale war on the thirteen colonies, and a danger to their sanctuary in Burkes Garden.

  Colm thought, I wonder if Henry suspects we’re here, and he’s fanning the flames of war to smoke us out of hiding.

  There was a sudden explosion of raucous laughter. Michael Bohannon, Patrick Cullen, and Brandon O’Flynn burst out of the forest and stumbled across the clearing in front of the cabin.

  Jeremiah paused and looked up. It was times like these, when the boys were happy and rowdy that he marveled over how much Michael and Patrick looked alike with their medium statures, curly black hair, and feminine facial features.

  Michael reached for the whiskey jug.

  “Don’t,” Jeremiah warned.

  Michael sneered at Jeremiah, snatched the jug, and raised it to his lips.

  “I warned you,” Jeremiah growled. He stabbed the tip of his skinning knife into Michael’s up turned elbow then jerked the jug from Michael’s hand.

  “Why’d you do that?” Patrick asked Jeremiah. “He ain’t hurtin’ nothin’.”

  Michael looked at his elbow. Blood wet the small tear in the elbow of his bearskin coat. He shrugged and let his arm drop to his side.

  Brandon stumbled backward then lurched forward. “That’s it, Jeremiah. We’re having a go right now!” He weaved an unsteady circle around Jeremiah with upraised fists.

  Jeremiah chuckled and said, “One jab, and you’re gonna fall forward.”

  “He’s gonna throw up before that,” Michael snorted with laughter.

  Colm crossed his arms over his chest. The boys were drunk, and it wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning. He suspected they’d been in the woods most of the night acting like fools and terrorizing the superstitious Shawnee with their drunken noise.

  Brandon stopped circling, stumbled, and threw up, which elicited more laughter from Michael and Patrick.

  “I told ya!” Michael gloated.

  Colm smiled and shook his head. Michael, Patrick, and Brandon occupied twenty-one-year-old vessels, which meant they often displayed twenty-one-year-old behavior.

  Boots crunching on the crust of frozen snow announced the arrival of Ian Keogh, Seamus Cullen, and Liam Kavangh. The angels entered the clearing and took note of the situation.

  Ian raised an eyebrow when he saw the vomit clinging to Brandon’s brown hair.

  Brandon swiped at the long dirty locks but only managed to smear vomit onto his cheek.

  Michael shoved an elbow into Patrick’s side. The boys didn’t look at each other, but they snickered.

  Seamus threw a disapproving glance at his younger brother, Patrick.

  Michael blurted out, “Colm, can me and Patrick and Brandon go to Massachusetts to fight the British?”

  Colm narrowed his eyes at Jeremiah. “Did ya fill their heads with this?”

  “It wasn’t just Jeremiah,” Michael said. “The word’s all over Garden and Brushy Mountain. I even heard it from Mkwa, Jeremiah’s Shawnee woman.”

  “Leave Mkwa outta this,” Jeremiah growled.

  “So, ya did put this in their heads,” Colm said.

  “We need to go,” Patrick said. “Liam thinks Henry suspects we’re here and—” Patrick burped. His gray eyes watered. He swallowed the disgusting bile in his throat.

  Colm knew that Liam’s opinion echoed his own thoughts about Henry.

  Twenty years ago, Colm had admitted to Jeremiah why the angels were in Burkes Garden. Jeremiah had listened to Colm’s biblical tale without comment. He just glanced up at the sky and said, “Seems like God wou’d know where you’re hidin’. Ain’t he omnipotent?”

  “Aye, but he’s not hunting us, Henry is,” Colm had replied.

  Colm regarded the angels who waited quietly for their archangel to speak, before he said, “If we do go to Massachusetts, we go together.”

  “Fergus is already gone,” Seamus announced.

  Ian and Liam exchanged glances. Michael, Patrick, and Brandon sobered in surprise.

  All eyes shifted to Colm.

  Colm tightened his jaw. Silver light flashed in his green eyes.

  Seamus stroked his neatly trimmed beard. “Fergus got the notion in his head that he wanted to be a general in a human army. He got impatient waitin’ for you to come back from huntin’. He left for Boston this mornin’ before daybreak.”

  Fergus’ lofty goal was not a laughing matter. If what they had just spoken of was true, the children of man could be facing a war that would be far worse than they could ever imagine.

  Colm considered the possible consequences. He glanced at Ian and Liam. Both angels were solitary wanderers. Ian often left Burkes Garden for months at a t
ime. Liam usually stayed on Garden Mountain, but he, too, strayed for long periods of time.

  However, as long as Colm could sense their spirits, he knew they were safe. He kept his fear of losing spiritual contact with Fergus to himself so as not to upset the brotherhood.

  The angels left Burkes Garden the next morning bound for Boston.

  Three

  Yorktown, Virginia January 1775

  Fergus Driscoll rode on horseback from Burkes Garden to Yorktown, Virginia. The winter snows were merciful outside of Burkes Garden, and the three-week journey was tolerable for both horse and rider. The fortyish looking rider with boyish dimpled cheeks, blue eyes, and blond hair wore dirty travel-worn homespun and deerskin clothing.

  In Yorktown, Fergus spoke with a man in the taproom of the Cat and Wheel Tavern, where the conversation and atmosphere was decidedly rebel leaning. The man had a pitcher of flip—an American beverage. Flip was two-thirds strong beer sweetened with molasses and rum topped by a red-hot iron loggerhead that made it foam. It had a burnt, bitter taste and packed a punch.