I can barely see her through the flickering bright light, and it’s … it’s—“Amy?” I say.
Nothing in me wants to let go of her, but I have to drop her and her light flickers a little, but then turns back to bright and I close my eyes and I can hear her squawking softly on the floor, and then she’s clucking and coughing, trying to stand up.
I can barely see, but she has pure white wings and white feathers all over her and they are like … plastic coated scales—smooth and hard. And a little gray angel limps over to help her get to her feet and I recognize this one right away.
“Holy shit,” I say. “Kelly?” And now I know I’m dreaming because that’s just impossible.
The little gray angel is hurt bad. Doesn’t take an angel medic to call that one. She’s limping and holding her chest with one arm, but instinctively helping her chick up with what little she’s got left. And my mind races to figure out what this new dream is trying to tell me.
“Leave her alone,” Kelly says. “What’s wrong with you? You could have killed her!”
And the rage is hard to beat back. “Killed her?” I say. “That little—” And I look down at my chest, oozing black molasses like a sap tree. “She almost killed me … twice!”
And it’s gotta be some messed-up trick, but there they are, my angel and my sweet salvation—Amy and Kelly-girl. And I look at Father Benito and he’s just finishing a pull on his flask. And I give him a what-the-fuck look.
“I realize,” he says. “I’m still trying to…” And he takes another pull.
“I thought I took that from you,” I say.
He shrugs. “All that…” he says, “I don’t think I would have made it out without—”
“Just how did you get out of there?” I ask him.
And then there’s a voice from above me, “I’ll tell you how that miserable cocksucker got here.”
As shot as my nerves are at this point, before I know it, I jump into the air. And I flap through the pain from the holes in my side and back, and I’m airborne. I fly into the heavy wooden beams, high above the pews in the church.
And a little deep-gray angel hops from beam to beam, trying to get away from me. I crash into a couple of the beams, swiping my talons at her, but she finds a tight little spot where the big timbers meet the steep angle of the roof. And she’s jammed in there—perched and cawing—laughing at me.
Then I try to swing my wings at her but they just gouge the already damaged roof. Once I slow down, I realize who it is. “Mercedes?” I say. Because that’s who I left in the arena, cawing and slashing at her father’s soul with her talons. But this cackling, cawing, devious little angel isn’t—she’s more like a copy or something. It still looks like Mercedes—rage-red hair and a little skinny from all the drugs and partying.
“That’s not my name,” she says. “You—”
“What is it now, then?” I say. And I cluck out a little laugh. “Tesla?”
“Hey, fuck you … Jump,” the little gray angel says. “You killed me—you’re an asshole.”
“Really? Still?” I say to her. “After what he—”
“I named her,” and Father Benito has found his benevolent big-boy voice. I can smell the difference. “On the ride back, I named her Fury. Her name is Fury. Now, let her alone. We have real work to do.”
And the father sounds like a referee. I guess he’s got the colors for it. So that’s how he got out. I must have had that figured right. Only angels are allowed in and out of Purgatory. And if you aren’t one, you better be on one.
“Cocksucker and his beads,” the aptly named Fury says. “I shoulda tore you in half. You wait until I get these off, old man.”
“Yes, you could have,” the father says to her. “I’m grateful you didn’t.” Then he raises his flask at her. “Blessed art thou amongst women.”
And when I look closer at her, I can see the father’s black and red Rosary beads and silver crucifix, hanging around little Miss Fury’s fine feathered neck. And I caw out a laugh at her. Then I look back at the father and wink. “Look at you, Father, all blaspheming and bronc busting.”
He smiles a little back at me. And the father has finally found his faith. Might not be the one he set out to, but faith it is. I can smell that on him, too. His spine seems a lot stronger for the revelation.
“Fuck the both of you,” Fury says. “Like, I wouldn’t even be here, if it wasn’t for you.”
I flap down and land with a thud in the middle of the center aisle to the pulpit at the front of the big church. I’m still groggy from the dream. “That must have been some ride,” I say to the father.
“She’s … spirited,” he says. And he takes another little pull from his flask. Only now there’s no trembling at all. And he looks at the other side of the church, toward Amy and Kelly. “But we have others to tend.”
And now the father has a newfound faith and a fresh flock to fret over. And isn’t that just the very definition of a priest? He’s had a big day. Hell, we all have. And I gotta get on this, because I’m about to take an ass-whipping. “Kelly?” I say, as I walk toward the both of them. She’s got her back to me and I look at her wounds. How did she get so…?
Then I figure it out. “I’m … I’m sorry.”
“For what,” she spins around and screeches at me, “almost killing our daughter? Jesus, what is wrong with you? You could have…” And she turns back to Amy or Rain or whoever that is.
I think about protesting, before I figure that’s probably not the best move. But I don’t think I was any closer to killing that bright little angel than Rain was to letting me.
It’s the least of my worries now, because despite sucking angel shit at defending myself against my little baby—the brightest, and apparently baddest, angel in Heaven—I can see by the deep punctures and scratches beneath her mother’s back and leg feathers, that I put a serious hurt on Kelly. She’s the gray angel I maimed so I could forge my way into Purgatory.
It might not be the best time for a family counseling session, because Amy … Rain … is confused, like she just snapped out of a coma and everyone is telling her she’s a god.
That’s what the father tells me he made her in his book. But right now, she’s back to being a thirteen-year-old kid, trying to figure out why her father was choking her. Dammit… The shit I gotta repent for is piling up.
Only, she’s a thirteen-year-old kid who just happens to be the brightest, whitest, most powerful angel from Heaven. She’s also back to shining sunstar bright.
And I’m squinting, trying to get a look at Kelly’s wounds. Because however intoxicated on revenge and vengeance I was when I gave them to her, now I’m like a dumb drunk, waking up after his first blackout, realizing he beat the shit out of his wife. I’m an asshole.
It’s a strange feeling—according to the father’s book, I’m just a little love child of wrath and evil. And I’m supposed to be hip-deep in the guts of humanity by now.
I’m squinting too much to worry about that, though. The bright sun off of Rain is just blinding. “Jesus, Rain,” I say. For better or badder, that’s her new name now. But she’s just so … bright. “I just wanted to—”
“Leave her alone,” Kelly says. “Haven’t you done enough? Always about what you want, isn’t it? Never even consider what anyone else needs, do you?”
And Kelly isn’t doing so well or else that tongue lashing would’ve lasted longer. She kinda peters out before she really gets it going.
I look back at Rain. “Jesus, what did they do to you?” There’s gotta be some reason she would attack her own father.
“Jesus is right,” Fury caws down at us. She’s still content to watch from the rafters. “She’s like, burning my eyes. I need some sunglasses.”
And the words barely leave her lips before the father and I are staring at each other like a couple of cavemen who touched the flame and realized, fire—hot. “Ain’t that a bitch,” I say.
He looks at me and then at
Kelly and Rain and he squints. To Seattle citizens, used to living in half dark most of the year, using sunglasses is about as obvious as … well, healing an angel with molasses.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
And little miss “Cancun,” perched in the rafters, is pleased with herself. “Yeah, who fucking knew, right,” Fury says, “not you two dumbshits.”
She’s a malcontent after my own heart. I get the rage. Considering the blood on the street below her molesting daddy’s penthouse is probably still wet, she’s being rather civilized. Because looking at Rain and feeling my guilt grow while the father walks over and tries to figure out how to patch up my handiwork on Kelly… If it was me, I’d swoop down from the top of the church and claw the living shit out of the lot of us … on principle alone.
Principle? Who am I kidding? Whatever upside-down code of conduct I might have had before I died, flew out the attic with Kelly and Amy’s souls. But now that they are back… Did they ever leave? Doesn’t matter, because it feels like I got a little good trying to claw its way back into my life.
Hope I survive that.
Father Benito’s serious voice cuts my soul-searching short, “She needs blood.”
He’s right, because Kelly has slumped down hard next to Rain on the floor. Her armored feathers have lost their shining gray tone and they are going limp. Impending death doesn’t look any better on an angel. Dying as an angel? How many levels of Hell are there? I think.
And despite this reunion, nothing is getting any better. I killed my baby in life and I’m gonna be responsible for killing Kelly after, because she’s got ten leaking holes and we are running out of time.
I hang my head a little. This is my Hell. “How long?” I ask.
The father is busy dabbing Kelly’s wounds with towels, but he knows what I’m saying. “A day and a half … maybe two,” he replies.
“Shit,” I say.
Two days to finish off humanity or it is Purgatory for everyone … forever. But whatever tiny amount of time the zoo animals have left to enjoy the smell of their own shit, Kelly has less.
“Angel blood,” I mumble, because we won’t be replacing Kelly’s bright, rosy-red liquid with molasses. That would be too simple, now, wouldn’t it? “Where the hell…?” My first thought is Rain.
“Good luck fucking finding that,” says Fury. “I hope she dies. Then you’ll know how it feels.”
The father and I look up at her and—we don’t really smile, but it’s like figuring out the answer to a tough crossword—the “ah-ha” must be written all over our faces.
God-dog or not, the father’s got the same self-satisfied look on his face as I do. Not that I have much luck with it, but sometimes it’s just better to keep your mouth shut.
“Oh, fuck no,” Fury says. “I just got my wings. The blood—that shit kills, and I’m not … what makes you think … and my mother. You can suck each other’s dicks on that.”
The father and I scrunch up our faces at the thought. I tore up the kid’s mom, threw her out a window, then put her through Purgatory. She’s probably still fucked up about getting revenge on her father. But with Kelly bleeding out on the floor of the church, I couldn’t care less about the little spoiled-spoon’s losses. She’s giving up the blood if I have to gut her to get it.
But something Fury said doesn’t sit too well with the father, because he’s staring at me funny. A kinda maniacal mad-funny.
Five minutes, off to the side of the pews, listening to the father whisper-yell at me for killing Mercedes’ mother, and I’m confused as shit.
“I realize she was one of your church-goers, Father,” I say. “But she lies with the devil, she better expect to die right beside him. As far as I’m concerned, all the credits she cracked came from her husband selling the shit that killed Rain—Amy. Just as responsible as him.”
“She was a … a good woman,” he says. “You didn’t have to—”
“She shot me,” I say to him. “What was I supposed to do?”
I never see her ease up behind me, but Kelly joins in. “Always someone else’s fault, isn’t it,” she says. I turn toward her, but she limps over to the father’s side of the argument and gives me some more. “You killed that poor girl’s mother?”
“She’s not poor,” I say. It’s a defense. Granted, not a good one, but it’s what I got. “They got rich off of—”
“If you think you can justify it with that,” she says. “Look at you—you aren’t even sorry, just looking for a way out of it. Still a little boy, aren’t you, playing like a man.”
“What the…?” I say. Then I look at the father. “Help me out here.”
He frowns and kinda laughs, but not really. “I’m on her side.”
But a couple more minutes into Kelly word-whipping me, and her eyes roll back in her head and she almost falls to the floor before we both catch her.
Then the father motions toward Fury—Mercedes. “Go ask her,” he says. “Do it nicely, or heaven help me…”
I look at Kelly. She’s passed out and we need the blood now. “All right already,” I say, “but if she says no, I’m taking it. I—we don’t have time for this shit.”
I play as nice as I can, but I think the father’s beads have more magic in them since his own fall, because Fury grudgingly flutters down from the rafters without much coaxing. Or maybe she can see the look in my eyes, that I don’t need her alive to get the blood.
Okay, okay, I wasn’t going to do it. Kelly would’ve kicked my ass anyway.
Fixing Kelly is a little simpler than a full-on transfusion, because when the father cuts Fury’s arm with his little pocket knife and pours her blood over Kelly’s wounds, they start sucking it in like little vampires. She gets better fast, faster than a human, anyway. Then again, I figured that.
However “mortal” angels have turned out to be, we flap back from an ass whooping a lot faster than a man. Or maybe it’s because she’s a woman—the whole “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe” thing, and she can take more pain than a man.
Whatever it is, I smile down at Kelly and stroke her head feathers with my hand. I think it’s funny that we’ve shit-canned the “Your husband will rule over you” part. Because if I’m sure of anything … we make it past the bloodbath chapter in the father’s little story—survive my new vengeance-filled duties… When Kelly is back to full strength and she screams “Jump!” at me, I’m probably just going to shit myself and say, “How high?”
“Rain…” Kelly manages to say. “I’ll be okay…” But she needs the rest more than she knows, and she slumps over from exhaustion more than anything else. Then she’s out cold.
I look at the father and he nods his head in understanding and gives me a “she’ll be fine” look. He better hope so. She dies because of me this time, no amount of blood is going to fill up that bucket of guilt.
The socked-in fog has got everything outside a deep gray and inside it would be just plain dark. The hole in the roof let the rain in and it shorted out the lighting in the whole church.
Rain watches us hover over Kelly like any thirteen-year-old would—scared for her mother, and a little curious, too. It was the father’s idea to put her up in the rafters after we coaxed Fury down. Rain is better light than the green cast of the fluorescent stuff, anyway.
I can tell Rain doesn’t really know what to say about me choking her. For some reason, I don’t even think she remembers trying to kill me. “Is she going to…?” she asks.
“I’m sorry … About…” I look up at my darling baby. “She’s not dying.”
“I hope she dies,” Fury says. “You killed my whole family.”
I’ll give her a little rope, because she’s right. Not too much, though, she’s starting to grind my mind with her bitching. “Give it a rest. Probably did you a fav—”
“Daddy?” Rain says. Her eyes say it all. “Why did you…?”
And for some reason, I feel like I need to justify it to her. “Her dad
was the guy who pumped those—he made your head hurt, honey. Probably a whole lotta other kids, too. So I—”
And before I can finish, Rain turns to Fury and says, “I’m sorry.”
And that shuts me up for the first time in as long as I can remember. Kid went through more physical pain than I have in my life and she’s still… She’s her mother’s daughter, that’s for sure. She sure as hell didn’t get the “forgive and let live” from me.
And it looks like Fury is going to give Rain both barrels of her wicked whip of a tongue, but instead, she flaps down from the rafters and perches on the back of one of the pews. Then she folds her wings around her entire body in an egg-shaped cone of “leave me the fuck alone.” And she starts cooing, probably brooding over the cut on her arm … and her semi-voluntary donation of blood, among other things. I hope she’s getting good and angry under there, because tomorrow I’m going to give her a place to point all that pissed-off … fury.
While everyone comes to grips with the fact that, somehow, we all ended up together in this church—as angels, no less—we listen to the sirens race through the city. Homing pigeons, I think.
And drone strike warnings vibrate the thick layer of fog over the city. Citizen stompers, letting everyone know they are going to blow the shit out of something. And about every five minutes or so, a drone screams by, rumbling the rooftops of the scrapers outside. Then a few seconds later, a huge explosion lights up the fog and shakes thunder through the ground. I guess the powers decided that the appearance of a flying man, killing their lapdogs, warranted a little martial law misery for their minions. Because anyone I left alive out in that dragnet of death is gonna wish I ripped them apart on the street.
And we listen and brood in silence and confusion about what in the hell all this shit means. Because if you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you get everything you think you want and then someone wakes you up and says, “Surprise, you’re still in your shitty life.” I can only speak for myself when I say, I just wanna go back to sleep, because this whole nightmare just sucks.
Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Page 19