Angel

by Todd Young

  The driver nodded and pulled into a gas station a few minutes later.

  Angel crossed the forecourt to the brightly lit store and felt a faint lift of spirits as he stepped inside — the lights. And all at once he knew how Cole had felt about the sunshine today, how he’d wanted the feel of it on his skin. If only it were sunny now — daytime — and they were in a field somewhere, or by the sea. Angel caught a sudden glimpse of what it might be like to swim in a pristine stream lit by sunshine, in some unspoiled corner of the earth. Then he wondered if places like that existed any more. Perhaps in Africa, or Australia.

  He selected a couple of bottles of spring water and paused in the candy aisle, figuring a Hershey Bar wouldn’t be a bad idea. They could do with a little energy. He chose two, and as he was paying felt a tug, as though from a steel wire threaded into the flesh of his chest, one that was tugging him toward the door and the cab, where Cole was seated alone.

  The driver had taken the opportunity to fill up on gas, and as Angel passed him, he said, “You sit in the cab. You don’t touch anything.”

  Angel came to a sudden halt and nodded once. He dropped his head, ashamed for the first time in years of being gay, and ashamed now too that he was an angel, but an unacceptable one, an angel trapped in the mundane world.

  “I got you a Hershey Bar,” he said to Cole, climbing into the cab. He handed Cole the Hershey Bar along with the water.

  But Cole said, “I can’t eat it. I can’t eat anything.”

  Angel tore his open and bit into it. The chocolate was delicious, but the moment he’d swallowed it, he realized it was too rich, at least right at the moment, and might easily make him ill. He slipped the Hershey Bar back into the wrapper and screwed the lid off the water, which he lifted to his lips and gulped down.

  Beside him, Cole was doing the same, both of them drinking as though they’d spent the day in a desert. When Cole had finished, he turned to Angel and smiled.

  “That sure tastes sweet,” he said.

  “Spring water,” Angel said, frowning over the label. “From Canada, apparently.”

  Cole smiled wanly and reached for Angel’s hand. “We’re going to be alright, aren’t we?”

  “Of course we are.”

  58

  The driver let them out at the corner of Wallace and Waring Avenues.

  “So which way?” Angel said, drawing his phone from his pocket. He’d looked it up before they left, but was disoriented now.

  “It’s up this way,” Cole said.

  “You know?”

  “Yeah. I know. I’ve been all over. There’s a housing project and a high school. I’ve been to the housing project before, once or twice.”

  Angel forced air through his cheeks, took a quick look around and drew Cole into a hug. The mellifluence of the harmony between them seemed stronger than ever, as though they were growing closer together with every passing moment, and now, somehow, Angel sensed Cole’s fear, and just how afraid he was.

  “You really don’t want to do this, do you?”

  “No.”

  Moments passed in silence, and then Cole said, “But I can tell how determined you are, and you’re right. It’s just this Hunter guy. It’s like I have some connection with him as well as you.”

  “But it’s like we’re telepathic?”

  “It seems like it.”

  Angel squeezed Cole a little tighter, took a deep breath and could feel Cole’s heart beating. He drew away.

  “Come on. It’s sundown,” he said.

  59

  “What the fuck?”

  “What?”

  “Here,” Cole said, drawing Angel around the corner of Matthews Avenue. “Did you see that? What’s up ahead?”

  “Some big building.”

  “Some big building? Shit, Angel, that’s not what’s meant to be there.”

  Angel let go of Cole’s hand and stepped around the corner. He couldn’t see much of the building, though it seemed enormous. He took a few steps forward and then turned to Cole, who was following warily. Angel hesitated for a moment, but then walked on frowning, his heart beating fiercely in his chest. Overhead, racing clouds revealed a full moon, one that cast a wan, feeble light over the building, and as this sheet of milky light descended like a wet cloth, Angel stopped, suddenly able to see the building clearly. He recognized it without having to think.

  “It’s a railway station. ”

  Cole reached for Angel’s hand. “A railway station?”

  “It’s … Penn Station — the original building.”

  “Penn Station’s in Manhattan.”

  “Yeah. I know. But this building was torn down. Back in the sixties.”

  Cole nodded slowly and gripped Angel’s hand so hard it hurt. “It’s a haze.”

  “A haze?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They can haze something like that?”

  “You better believe it. I’ve seen some things. But nothing like this. Nothing this big.”

  “What’re we going to do?” Angel said.

  “Now you’re frightened?”

  “It’s Penn Station, Cole. I wrote a paper on it. I can tell you everything about it. It’s a Beaux Arts masterpiece. But it doesn’t exist.”

  They stood in silence for moments. Then Cole said, “Well, it’s existing now — at least for us.”

  “You think everyone can see it?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Who knows who can see what? We’re in the dark now. If there really is a place called the Realm, then I figure we’re as far from it as we’re ever going to get.”

  60

  They continued on toward the hulking structure, a building that stretched over eight acres and towered one hundred fifty feet high. The facade faced Waring Avenue, a line of eighty-four Doric columns, gleaming in the moonlight. Though entranced, Angel felt no inclination whatsoever to enter the building. They came to a halt across the street from the grand entrance, above which, on a stone balustrade, stood a large clock draped in granite wreaths.

  According to the clock, it was midnight.

  Angel winced, staring at the sculpted maidens on the balustrade, hemmed in on either side by majestic stone eagles. Reluctantly, he let his eyes stray to the entranceway, within which shone a feeble gleam of moonlight.

  “Come on,” he said with sudden resolve.

  He reached for Cole’s hand and they crossed the street. They mounted the steps, passed through the royal portico and into a barrel-vaulted arcade, a stone passageway lined with stores, preserved, it appeared, from the nineteen twenties or thirties. The doors stood open, ready to receive customers, but the place was abandoned. Emptiness stretched in every direction. As they passed a drug store, Angel hesitated and peered inside. He saw glass-framed cabinets, boxes of goods on display, and electric lights hanging from the ceiling, giving off the faintest of glows, but no people.

  Hunter might be anywhere.

  Angel’s wings fluttered, a shudder passing beneath his shoulder blades until his feathers trembled against the small of his back. He turned to Cole, whose face was ashen in the moonlight, the moonlight sending racing shadows over his face, and over the marble on the floor and walls. Angel reached for Cole, perhaps a little desperately, but the embrace lacked the comfort it had held before. Angel gripped a little tighter and felt it — their connection, faintly — but fear had seized them both.

  At the end of the passageway there was a pair of loggias, extensive colonnaded waiting rooms, one for men and the other for women. They passed on and reached the top of the grand staircase that led to the main waiting room, a cavernous room Angel had studied photos of when he was writing his paper for college. It now seemed incredible that he was descending into it, a room inspired by the ancient Baths of Caracalla. Sixty-five foot wide windows bathed the room in moonlight. Six story high columns of pink travertine supported the ceiling. Ticket booths were carved into the room’s walls, while elaborately designed lamp posts stood on marble pedestals, t
hese too, as those in the drugstore had, giving off the feeblest of gleams.

  Yet the place was empty and the floor rang hollow.

  As they passed across the room to a further set of stairs — to those that led down to the grand concourse — their footsteps echoed, jangling. They descended the staircase warily. Halfway down, Cole hesitated. He took a firmer grip on Angel’s hand and muttered a faint curse of wonder, overawed by the size of the space they were entering.

  At the foot of the steps they stopped and gazed overhead, at the steel columns towering over them, rising into arches, and at the ceiling capped by vast expanses of glass, through which pale moonlight hung in shafts, glistening on the steel columns and the floor, a gridwork of steel that allowed light to pass beneath the concourse and into the subway below.

  Cole reached forward and whispered, his breath warm in Angel’s ear. “What do we do now?”

  Angel didn’t know, but at the brush of Cole’s breath in his ear, he closed his eyes and wished they were home, warm in bed. He heard the faintest of sounds, a plaintive cry followed by a second. It seemed to come from far beneath them, so he shifted his feet and stared into the misty depths of the subway under the grid. When he lifted his head, he was confronted with a sign that read, Down Stairs for Incoming Trains.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Cole nodded.

  They waited, heard another cry, and knew it was someone in great distress.

  Angel relinquished Cole’s hand and moved toward the staircase. At the top, he hesitated and turned to Cole, who hadn’t moved. Come on, he thought, and Cole moved reluctantly. He gripped Angel’s hand once more, and they descended into a darker space. A network of passageways led them to a platform, and from the farther end, they could hear the cries of many voices, of voices that Angel seemed to know instinctively belonged to his fellows, to his fellow angels, trapped somehow and calling to one another.

  “So you found your way okay?” Hunter said to Cole, appearing behind them as if from the air.

  Cole cried out and stepped backwards.

  “And you’ve bought ‘Angel’ with you.”

  Cole nodded and took another step, one that took him to the edge of the platform. He tottered for a moment on his heels and then suddenly lost his balance, his arms wheeling over his head as he fell.

  Instinctively, Angel reached for him, and as he did, a burst of unexpected radiance lit the subway, streaking from Angel’s hand and boring into Cole’s chest. Cole was infused with a shattering brilliance, which Angel gaped at as he reeled his hand inward, reeling Cole automatically toward him in a blaze of blinding light.

  Cole tipped toward the platform and regained his balance. A moment of silence followed in which Angel and Cole stared at one another, their chests heaving. Angel gazed at Cole, whose chest, whose whole body was radiating light, light that had streamed into him from Angel’s hand. Angel turned his hand over and stared at it in dismay as the light within it faded.

  “Your friends are up this way,” Hunter said.

  61

  “So you thought you could get away with never seeing me again?”

  Angel pressed his lips together in angry silence. He felt drained, exhausted, and a little faint. Whatever he had done in rescuing Cole, it had taken all the strength from him.

  “We’re bound, you and I. I’m bound to all of you.”

  Angel winced. The very idea of being “bound” to Hunter in any way was appalling. Hunter was all darkness, the darkest of the dark.

  “And you.” He turned to Cole. “You have some feeling for me?”

  “Yes,” Cole said weakly, and as the glow within him faded, the gloom in the subway deepened. A slender beam of moonlight speared the air here and there, falling from the vast expanses of glass in the grand concourse overhead, the full moon shimmering down here in the subway with moist, dewy light.

  “I have my offices up this way,” Hunter said, and turned to lead the way along the platform.

  Don’t follow him, Cole thought, and Angel heard the words as clearly as if they’d been spoken.

  We have to.

  It’s a trap.

  Cole …

  Listen to me.

  I’m listening to you.

  No. You’re determined to go on.

  We have to.

  Cole sighed. He reached for Angel’s hand.

  “Don’t think I can’t hear you,” Hunter said. “I can hear all of you.”

  He produced a key and unlocked a door at the end of the platform. Then he stood aside and ushered them into a gloomy room. A sconce on the wall was shining weakly, but the room was empty. Nothing but pink granite, except for the ceiling — the gridwork of steel that formed the floor of the concourse overhead. Hunter opened a second door, one that led into a passageway, and as he opened it, the sound of many voices filled the murky space.

  Hearing the pain in these voices now, Angel felt that perhaps Cole was right. They shouldn’t have come. Yet despite his unease, he felt something urging him on. He followed Hunter through the doorway and glimpsed a sudden, inner image of Finn, of Finn broken and bleeding, his wings ragged and torn.

  The cries, louder now, were not cries, but the howl of names:

  “James …?”

  “Quentin …?

  “Shane …?”

  “Andrew …?”

  “Dean …?”

  “Lane …?”

  “John …?”

  “Wade …?”

  “Chris …?”

  “Juan …?”

  It went on and on, angels calling to one another, separated somehow, Angel understood, but how?

  He swayed, feeling suddenly weak, and fell against the wall, barely conscious of Hunter beside him and of the fact that Hunter was opening a door in the wall of the passageway. He searched for Cole, but seemed to have lost him in the gloom.

  “You’re in here,” Hunter said, and thrust Angel through the doorway.

  Angel collided with someone, a warm body trying to escape, but from the force of Hunter’s thrust, he was carried forward and took whomever it was with him. Together they landed heavily on the unforgiving marble floor.

  62

  The figure was naked and feathered. Angel rolled aside and lay on his back, gasping for breath. Hunter had done something to him in the passageway, used some trick to disorient and weaken him.

  “Who’s that?” a small voice said.

  “Finn?”

  “Angel?”

  “Yeah,” Angel said, exhaling with a shallow breath.

  “Is it light outside?”

  “What?”

  “Is it daytime?”

  “No. It’s night.”

  “Oh, God,” Finn said. “I don’t think I can stand it. Not another night of darkness.”

  “Is this where you’ve been … for,” Angel swallowed, “days?”

  Silence.

  “Finn?”

  “Yes. Haven’t you heard me calling you?”

  “I thought … I mean, I supposed it might be you.”

  “Dean…?” someone cried.

  And this was followed by, “Reece…?”

  Angel wondered why he could now hear them so clearly. He rolled onto his side, and as his eyes adjusted to this deeper level of darkness, he realized he was in a cell, steel bars cutting the space from floor to ceiling on the wall opposite that through which he’d been thrust. Far above him, he could trace the gridwork of the ceiling, but it was obscured somehow.

  “He covers it with boards.”

  “What?”

  “The concourse. He covers it with boards.”

  “Can you hear me?”

  “What?”

  “Thinking.”

  “I can hear everyone.”

  Angel considered this and then lay in thoughtful silence. The thrill that had coursed through his body when he collided with Finn was cascading through him still, his cock inexplicably ballooning in the darkness.

  Finn said, “He’l
l come along in a minute and ask for your clothes.”

  “He’s with Cole.”

  “Damn Cole.”

  “Finn …”

  “Sorry. It’s just that I really loved you — love you.”

  “But you — with Jason.” Angel could barely breathe.

  “I was just … hell, Angel, I love a lot of people.”

  “You love … but aren’t you with Jason now? Didn’t you …?”

  “Yes, of course. And now we’re tied.”

  “But you’re … a shard?”

  “You heard that?”

  “You thought it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Finn sighed, releasing an apparently long held frustration. “Finally,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Someone who can hear me.”

  “Can’t Jason hear you?”

  “Not in here. He’s too weak. Hunter has us separated — and alone. I’ve been concentrating on you. I thought maybe … hell, I was trying to tell you everything: where we were, how to get us out — and then you go and get caught yourself. What did you do? Just walk in here?”

  Pretty much.

  “Well that was damn stupid.”

  “Give me your clothes,” Hunter said, a dark figure surfacing from the gloom beyond the bars.

  Just give them to him.

  Angel jolted at the sound of Finn’s voice. It broke into his mind uninvited, sounding suddenly close and familiar. Angel shivered at how intimately he knew it, and tumbled to the conclusion that he had some feeling for Finn even now, and more than he’d supposed. He got to his feet and undressed, gripping his cock in one hand. He passed his clothes through the bars and caught a glimpse of Hunter, his white teeth grinning frighteningly in the darkness.

  “Your little friend — Cole. He’s a sweet one,” Hunter said.

  Angel took a step toward the bars.

  “He and I might be able to work something out.”

  “Where’s Jason?” Finn said, stepping forward.

  “You know he’s alone.”