by Todd Young
Hell, Cole, he thought, and turned away in anguish.
He wheeled abruptly again, because it struck him that neither Finn nor Hunter were in the room. “Where are they?” he said, directing the accusation at the three of them.
Angel, you really need to calm down. This was Miriam.
Angel all but spat at her, or the telepathic equivalent.
Try to keep you mind clear and your self calm.
His self calm?
“You’re a fucking bitch.” He advanced on her. “I was stupid enough to feel sorry for you and then you go and … fuck my life up. I love him.” He pointed at Cole. “Do you understand that?”
I understand.
“Fucking speak. You’ve got a mouth. Open it, you fucking bitch.”
She offered him a wan smile, but remained silent. He turned away and broke down, gripping his head and sobbing hopelessly. Wouldn’t death be better? Wouldn’t oblivion be better than this? He fell to his knees uncaring. What did it matter if he cried? If they all saw him? If he was pathetic?
If Cole couldn’t …
If Finn didn’t …
It was too much to bear. He’d been through weeks of torture. The only thing holding him together had been Cole, the knowledge he was close by and that they’d be together again. He’d known they would be. He knew they would be.
But now … it wasn’t happening?
“This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.” He lifted his head and shouted. “None of this is real!” They went on ignoring him, as though he could neither be seen nor heard.
A moment later, a tremor rocked him inwardly. Something dark and threatening swelled into his awareness, a being far more powerful than himself. His first thought was God. This was quickly amended to Satan. A moment later he recognized it for what it was as Hunter burst through the door, bound together with Finn. It looked like something from a black and white horror film, from some bizarre stop-motion animation. It was sickening, freakish, and insect-like. As it advanced into the room, they recoiled. Cole and Jason stood, even Miriam, and began to back away.
“He’s with me, Miz,” Hunter shouted. “He’s holding his own.”
He sounded triumphant.
Miriam blanched.
He was over nine feet tall, and if Finn was in there, he wasn’t recognizable. This wasn’t an angel, or if it was, then there was nothing virtuous about it. Hunter’s skin had darkened, as though with varnish. A pair of black, massive wings had erupted from his back, towering toward the ceiling. As Angel continued to back, he glimpsed a sheen of pale silver toward the tips and he guessed Finn was in there somewhere. Yet the expression on its face was all Hunter, canine and foul.
Miriam turned to Jason and Cole. They were standing by the wall, close to one another, watching her anxiously, waiting for a signal, it turned out. She nodded and they swung together. They clasped each other and held tight, perhaps the most beautiful pair of lovers Angel had ever seen. He registered a momentary pang of jealousy that only swelled as Cole and Jason twisted into one another, brilliantly lit from within as their bodies twined and fused in a brief, graceful flash. He knew immediately that this was how it was done, that this was how effortless it could be, and that Cole and Jason must have done it many times.
It struck him with the pain of a knife piercing his chest, and he gave way. He figured he didn’t care about anything or anybody anymore, and that included himself.
Even anger was useless.
They were so … stunning.
“Ha!” Hunter cried, delighted. He put his hands on his hips and considered the dazzling creature. “I might even let you live.”
“You couldn’t kill me if you tried.” Whatever it was that Cole and Jason had become advanced upon Hunter, dwarfed by him, but fearless. “You think you can hold onto Finn? You think you can live — like that — with seven …?” He paused and turned to Miriam. “Is it seven?”
She nodded.
“With seven other souls trapped within you.”
“They’re dead.” The words were all but spat, and Hunter turned away.
Angel? It was Miriam again.
Cole and Jason backed her up. “Angel?”
“What?”
Find Cole, Miriam said.
Find Cole?
He’s ready for you now.
Angel frowned, and a moment later shrank as the bright angelic majesty stepped toward him. It might have been Jason and Cole, but it was so alien his instinct was to run. Before he could move, it slipped a hand around his waist and a moment later Angel felt as though he were slipping into a hot tub. He was swirling in body and mind, roiling in liquid, unsure of what was up and where was down. The three of them began to merge tenderly with one another.
There was light and warmth. And then peace.
He sighed.
But was surprised to find himself so close to Jason. They greeted one another sheepishly, a little embarrassed, and as Angel pressed forward, wanting to understand, he grasped what had happened. Jason and Cole were in love, and this love, in which Angel was swaddled now, was a much gentler thing than the love between himself and Finn. Still, they weren’t paired. They weren’t … this wasn’t what he’d thought. Any pair or group of angels might bind, Cole was saying, but that didn’t mean they were paired. It couldn’t have happened before they’d sprouted wings. This was just … It was a plan. It was just that they — that Miriam and Finn — had worried if Angel couldn’t be trusted after he’d refused to bind with Finn. They said he’d proved himself untrustworthy.
Or not untrustworthy, Cole suggested, given how hard Angel had struggled to resist Finn. Cole shamefacedly admitted that he hadn’t done half so well with Jason when Miriam suggested it. And now a rush of memories and images from Jason’s life began to assault Angel. Along with them came his fears and strengths and desires, and mixed in with these were Cole’s, the two of them twining into him until Angel began to lose sight of where he was.
Then he realized he was no longer himself or Jason or Cole. For a moment he had been determinedly asserting he was all three. And all this while, the physical transformation had continued unabated, light streaming into the room as their bodies coiled and interlaced, weaving together. All in all, it took less than a minute, and when it was over the tips of their wings were chinking the chandelier. They were over a head taller than Hunter now.
He had his mouth open, wide-eyed.
“I told you it was possible,” Miriam said, advancing toward him.
From this vantage point, she seemed frail and weak and alarmingly small.
“You think three can’t bind? Four?” She reached for Angel’s (their) hand, and as she touched him, he understood her instinctively. In fact, he understood far more than he could possibly have imagined.
93
Hunter had consumed Miriam’s only love more than fifty years ago. In the early 1960s she had met an ad man in New York. Things had been reasonably good with Hunter at that stage. In the village, he was finding it easier to satisfy his desires, and though they still lived together, Miriam had more freedom than she’d previously had.
She met Michael at work and they became friends. She hadn’t expected romance, but despite her truest inclinations it had somehow blossomed. She brought him home. He was attractive, and she wanted Hunter to meet him. They’d more or less agreed, at that stage, to part. There was a great deal of bitterness on Miriam’s side, given the way she’d been treated in the past, but Hunter did offer some comfort; he was a fellow soul cursed with the plague.
Hunter fell for Michael immediately, and within days the two of them were spending time with one another. Miriam had a few brief weeks in which to hope, heartbrokenly, that things would change. Then Hunter tried to bind with Michael. It wasn’t the first time and it hadn’t worked. Hunter had consumed him, his personality overwhelming Michael’s. The guy was lost. He never reemerged and was part of Hunter still, along with the six others he’d picked up over the years.
Miriam’s fear right at the moment, as she twined into them, was that Finn would be lost. In fact, she was worried it had already happened.
This wealth of information was overpowering, and it was not only Miriam, but the four of them now, signaling and accommodating one another as their body swelled again, small breasts emerging as the fug of light streaming from the body dissipated a little.
They breathed heavily.
It was painful again, mentally painful as it had been with Finn. Miriam was strong, so old, and she’d been waiting so long. As she touched them she blossomed, all but consuming them in a sudden burst of dazzling glee. Angel felt it as his own, and then felt as though he were sinking, perhaps into quicksand or something warm, though he didn’t much care. He lost sight of himself again and reemerged as yet another new being, as an amalgam of four people, one of whom was not only feminine, but very peculiar.
Her thoughts were fixed on Finn. She advanced toward Hunter, who now seemed about as threatening as a cockroach. She reached out and touched him. They met with a snap, with a kind of electric crackle that shocked, yet she nevertheless held on. It wasn’t really about them now, Angel understood. Cole and he and Jason were all but bystanders. They watched on and then sensed, feebly, Finn. He was barely recognizable, a frail soul in darkness, as though he were a boy at the bottom of a well.
This thought was broken by a scream.
Hunter.
And horribly, with it, Angel saw into him and what lay at the heart of his darkness — the others he’d consumed. Even now he had them in him. They weren’t any longer people, or not recognizably, though Miriam had hoped to find Michael. She stumbled upon him unexpectedly, along with the others. He was a little stronger than the rest, but none of them were any more than shadows, mere shades of the people they’d once been, now melded with another’s mind, their bodies lost. Only upon Hunter’s death would they be released.
Realizing it was hopeless, Miriam burned with anger. She’d been waiting half a century to free Michael. She’d assumed it was hopeless, but nevertheless …. They gripped Hunter a little tighter, and a passing thought wondered if there’d be hope for Finn.
He’d tried so hard.
Hunter screamed and tried to twist away, but they had his forearm. Unexpectedly, without Angel feeling as though he took any part in it at all, they moved over and enfolded the thing that Finn and Hunter had become. Finn’s personality appeared almost instantly, twisting out of Hunter with the rapidity of a comet. Angel welcomed him gladly and their strength swelled yet again.
Now he could hear the angels, trapped in the cells but feeding from them, growing in strength and purpose.
But how would any of them break free?
Finn’s presence was followed by a sickening tendril of malice. It snaked darkly toward them and looped into their mind. Finn held his ground, but the others flinched. It was truly foul to touch Hunter, and if it weren’t for Miriam and Finn holding tight, they would at that moment have burst apart. Finn held on, and a moment later, Cole joined him, Miriam welcoming him with a wide smile of encouragement. She’d seen this strength in Cole, and a moment later the five of them were bound together, Finn folding together with Jason, Angel with Cole, while Miriam arched over them all, determined to crush Hunter out.
In order to do this they had to bind with him properly first. Miriam and Finn and Cole surged forward, Angel and Jason helplessly dragged along. They sank into an unsettled silence. It was dark and quiet and vast and … loathsome. And yet to Finn and Miriam this was familiar. There was something lovable about Hunter, apparently, and also something pitiable. He was such a reckless soul. He had strived so hard and had done … so much.
Angel couldn’t look at him.
It had occurred to him only recently that you might not always care for another person, that you might not always have the energy or even choose to feel empathy, but he knew, perhaps instinctively, that it was empathy that held the world together. Without empathy, civilization was impossible. But Hunter had given up on it long ago, and with it any real concern for himself had gone too.
He wasn’t human and he certainly wasn’t an angel.
He’s … a soul eater, Miriam said, completing Angel’s thought.
A what?
A soul eater.
This was something darker than Angel had imagined. In his desperation to find someone to pair with over the years, Hunter had first consumed one and then another angel in utero who’d found the strength to love him. It had left him drunk on power, and he’d gone on to consume three others in rapid succession. He grew a little more commanding with each and every soul, and in this lie the secret of his strength. It was only after he’d consumed Michael that he realized how hard it was going to make it for him to find anyone to pair with, anyone who might match him in power.
This was murder, and it was another thing entirely. Flashes and snatches of Hunter’s mind butted Angel no matter how determined he was to look away. He saw the people and the times as though he had lived them. It was brief. Only a certain amount could be shared given the time, but as Hunter’s memories and desires continued assaulting him, he was gradually overwhelmed by the knowledge that this was part of him now. It might as well have been he who had deceived people in such an underhanded way. And murdered them. His mind began to feel as though it would crack. He hadn’t been able to bind with Finn and he couldn’t do this either. He thought of the courage in Finn and Cole and tried to be as strong. He sank closer and fused, but as it learned that it had gained pleasure from murder, Angel fell out of the majesty and fainted.
94
He woke with a sense of deja vu. He was on the rug again, but now quite comfortably.
It was simply the noise.
He lifted his head and jolted, scrambling to his feet. Hunter was screaming, gripping his head, surrounded by the others, each of them individuals again, but glowing with light and strength. Whereas Hunter had come out of the majesty as black and insect-like as he’d come into the room. Now, shrieking, he was frail and papery and perhaps half as large. He reminded Angel of a rickety, elderly person, withered and shrunken, though from the sound he was making, he had some power still.
A pair of feeble wings had erupted from his back. They were black and twisted and tattered and pathetic, and so obviously incapable of flight Angel couldn’t help feeling pity. It surprised him. But Hunter had wanted his transformation so much, and Angel had just … he’d been … in him. He knew the longing. Now Hunter was writhing on the carpet, a sick, pathetic thing.
“Miz!” he cried, lifting his head and imploring her with his eyes.
She gazed on unperturbed. He twisted his neck in agony and glanced upward, and then the building began to shake. It had most likely been going on for a moment or two before Angel noticed it. He’d been in a few tremors and he knew, without having to be told, that this had nothing to do with the earth. This was the haze. Hunter was dying and the haze was fracturing. The chandelier began to shake, and a moment later, a window pane cracked.
Angel knew he had to move. They all did. They were beneath the earth. But they stood on, watching Hunter, who now began to squirm, his body twisting like a corkscrew, a black, tarry thing, snaking in toward the floor.
He began to smoke, a foul, dark stench rising from him.
“What the fuck?” Cole said.
He lifted his head with a final plea, and it struck Angel how badly he’d used them all. He didn’t want to feel sorry for the guy, but as he continued to crumple and buckle, it was impossible.
What were they going to do without him?
“Get out of this fucking place,” Finn said. “That’s what.” He turned and gripped Jason’s hand. “Come on.”
Jason jolted and turned to Cole. “Come on,” he said, and though Angel knew they weren’t “together” he soured as he heard the love in Jason’s voice. Cole was his, and he wanted to say this to Jason, though he right at that moment caught sight of Finn’s dick and
glanced away.
It was all so … complicated now.
He slipped an arm around Cole and dust showered them, falling from the ceiling. A moment later they were in the corridor, and then on the stairs, the house wavering and buckling as they passed through the hall. He’d taken a final glimpse of Hunter as he left the drawing room and seen a pile of steaming tar, which was still somehow breathing. They reached the first of the cells and Finn jumped toward it, moving effortlessly through the bars.
“Come on,” he said, gripping an angel’s, Damien’s, arm. Finn tugged him through the bars, the steel as malleable as liquid.
Damien stood bewildered in the corridor. “James?” he said, turning back to the cell. A white angel with bruised eyes stepped out of the shadows. He looked as though he’d been here for decades. “James?”
“Come on,” Finn said.
He gripped James’s wrists and pulled him through and the guy stood stunned, reeling.
Finn wheeled on the rest of them. “Look. You can all do it. You’ve been with me. You’ve seen.” He took a breath. “Haven’t you?”
Angel searched and found Finn’s certainty, bumping against Cole and Jason, who brightened as they understood. Miriam folded in with them, anxious to grasp how the fabric of reality could be manipulated so easily. She’d been the victim of Hunter for so long. They presented it to her and she frowned. Finn said, You have to be certain, and she frowned again. The others had apprehended it instantly, and yet for her, the notion of being certain of anything was alien. It was somehow tied up with being a sorrow angel and the ability to see time. When she glimpsed the future, it was never certain, only becoming so as it approached with increasing rapidity, like a freight train.
As it was doing now.
The cells rocked with a sudden lurch. Cole fell and Angel reached for him as the place roared with a deafening twist of metal and stone. Dust showered them from the ceiling again, but when Angel glanced at his palm, he saw that it was dark and damp. It made no sense at first, but then he realized it was soil. He stretched for Cole, and as had happened on the platform, a brilliant burst of light erupted from his hand. It enfolded Cole and lifted him to his feet and he floated to Angel. He was so beautiful, so radiant with light and life that Angel momentarily forgot where he was. How could he have thought, even for a moment, that he might have preferred Finn over Cole. It had nothing to do with the way his skin and bones had been arranged. None of that mattered. He was in love with Cole himself. He was in love with who he was.