by J. R. Rain
What do you mean?
Your body is accepting its assignment. It hadn’t been fully prepared to be immortal, you know. Your cells had expected to age accordingly, with natural life stages. Now they are being asked to do something different. Commanded, if you will. It takes a body and cells some time to wrap its collective mind around its new existence.
So, the longer I am immortal...
The more your cells adjust and evolve and accommodate.
You learn something new every day.
And to answer your question: You were already on my radar, so to speak. I was only awaiting my first summons.
But how did I get on your radar?
Our worlds were already connected, Sam. Thanks to dark masters that have come before you. To put it simply, you and I had an agreement at a soul level.
Souls from other worlds can have agreements?
Not common, but yes. Especially if the worlds are connected.
And you agreed to help me?
And you as well.
I agreed to help you? I asked.
In a way, yes. It is a great honor for me to be by your side, Sam. Giving of myself and trusting another with my body has expanded my own awareness. Besides, there may come a day when I do truly need your help in return.
Of course, I thought. Anything.
I flapped my wings—his wings—slowly, enjoying the icy wind that surged around me, enjoying the sense of lift that each flap gave me, the sense of freedom, too. With these wings, I could go anywhere. Of course, with the single flame, I could truly go anywhere, too. Instantly.
And before you say it, Sam, yes, your life is weird.
I nearly laughed, but stopped myself. I had heard what Talos sounded like when he laughed, and it was not pretty.
Ouch, Sam.
I would have grinned, too, but Talos had no lips to grin with.
Ouch again, Sam.
I considered Talos’ appearance all over again and asked: So, why did I initially think of you as a bat?
You had a rather outdated preconceived concept of vampires.
And you changed to adjust to my perception?
Oh, I didn’t change.
My perception changed?
Yes.
How does Queen Autumn come to our world? I asked suddenly.
The woman from the book?
Yes.
There are many possible answers, Sam. But, in essence, her desire is great enough, and so a way was found.
I want to help her.
I know.
But I don’t know how.
Not with that attitude.
I chuckled under my breath, which caused some smoke to inadvertently waft from the corner of my lips. Talos’ lips. Good point.
An answer will come, Sam.
I thought about that. My client is a creator.
And so I heard.
He literally created her. I’ve read her story. Or parts of it. It’s unfinished.
Interesting.
What’s interesting?
That she came into your life with her story as yet unfinished.
I came into her life?
And she into yours, Sam. Think about it.
I did, and I kept on thinking about it until an answer dawned on me. I suddenly knew what was happening, and what we had to do.
I could hug you, Talos.
You could, but then we would drop like a rock.
This time I did laugh, and a great, screeching scream rent the night air. I adjusted course and aimed for Charlie Reed’s house, where Allison was waiting for me.
Finis
Bonus Scene 8: Battle
(Deleted from Moon Angel)
Author’s Note: Below is a big scene that just didn’t work. For starters, the scene felt more like a climax, rather than the opening of a book. Truthfully, the scene had taken me by surprise. I hadn’t expected there to be a demon/angel battle in the streets of Santa Ana. I just sort of went with it. Mostly, I let it play itself out until I realized the scene just stopped working. Then it promptly got cut and added to my Outtakes folder. (Side note: in this scene, I toyed with the idea of using the Biblical notion that demons are fallen angels; I would later have the devil create his own legion of demons.)
***
Ishmael’s mind was unlike anything Tammy had ever tried to look into.
Its memories were group memories, as far as she could tell. It seemed... it seemed as if the angel memories were stored in a collective database. But from that database, she had gleaned that angels often battled the demons, war after war, down through the centuries. The wars were not fought for control; rather, they had been fought for... pride, retribution. There seemed to be among the angels a resentment toward the demons, all of whom had once been brothers and sisters, friends and fellow guardians. The angels felt betrayed. Angels, Tammy had come to understand, were not quite the angelic beings she had been led to believe. They were entities with real emotions, even if most of the emotions had been kept in check. Real entities who had never, and possibly would never, be born on earth, or elsewhere. They were destined to be celestial foot soldiers and guides, and they took their jobs seriously.
Amazingly, Tammy had also sensed the angels, to put it simply, craved the conflict, needed the battle, enjoyed testing their considerable skills against a worthy opponent. The angels, Tammy could see in that collective memory bank, were often bored. And not all were guardians. No, some were much more, much bigger, more powerful than anything on this earth. And these craved a good battle. They did not crave cruelty. No, they craved to test their skills to test their limits. The demons, Tammy came to understand, kept the angels razor-sharp, and she hadn’t been fully prepared to see that.
But there was also a third reason why the angels chose to fight. Territory needed to be established, and some souls needed protecting. All souls needed protecting, surely, but some souls had a particular purpose on this earth, and these souls were watched over more carefully than others. Often by a larger group of angels. Tammy did not get the names of these special souls, but she wondered if her mother was one. Or her brother. Or maybe even her. She didn’t know for sure.
She found herself alone next to a van. Yesterday, the devil had waited for the street in front of her cul-de-sac to clear, before making his grand appearance. This was similar, except this was a whole city block, with business everywhere, all obscured by tall flames. Like her own street yesterday, this one was devoid of any people. Except her. And the dead woman, who was still, seemingly, staring at her. The devil had tried to make it seem like the woman’s death was her fault, but Tammy knew—had to believe—that the woman was relieved to be free of his control.
Still, seeing her die like that, and seeing the brief look of fear in her eye, just might haunt Tammy for a long time to come.
That is, if she got out of this mess. Whatever this mess was.
A fight, she thought. A fight between angels and demons.
The raining streaks of white light had finally stopped, and all around her, plain as day, were hulking, beautiful, out-of-this-world men and women. Superheroes had nothing on these angelic beings who wielded fiery white swords, similar to that wielded by her own brother as the Fire Warrior.
Tammy briefly wondered if these creatures mated—why else have males and females? The thought had barely crossed her mind when something rose up from the ground next to her. Not quite from the ground. No. From the shadows all around her. From the shadows beneath her feet and beneath the van.
Tammy looked over her shoulder, up and up, and into the face of something not very nice. She caught a glimpse of the most twisted, hate-filled mind she’d ever encountered—more so than even the devil himself, who, at least, seemed to have some control over his thoughts. This thing seethed hate and anger and violence, the thoughts tumbling over themselves, one after another, filling its mind, and seemingly the air around it, too, which shimmered like heat waves rising up from the pavement. Black horns that curved up from
its brow. Except these weren’t real horns. They were shadows only, like the entity itself.
More than anything, she saw the twin fires burning where the eyes should be, reminiscent of the three-headed devil dog. How these entities saw through the fire, Tammy didn’t know, but when it looked down upon her, the fire snapped taut and turgid, and Tammy screamed and stumbled away. She fell to the ground as the entity opened a clawed hand; a long, obsidian sword appeared instantly in it.
The thing stared down at her, its eyes crackling and whipping crazily, and Tammy caught a fleeting, enraged thought that both gave her relief and made her fear for the angelic beings around: The demon—and that’s what this was—could not attack her, although it desperately wanted to. It desperately wanted to render her in half and then half again. And slowly, too. But, for now, it needed to fight, and it would destroy as many of the Light Beings as it could. Tammy sensed from within it that it had been waiting for this day for a long, long time, and now, it had come. She also sensed within it that something bigger prevented it from attacking her. Some unseen force beyond it—and everything—prevented it from lopping her head right off.
It can’t kill me, she thought. But it wants to.
Another thought crossed its terrible mind. It considered breaking the covenant. It considered going rogue. Just for the pleasure of killing her now. Of watching her head roll free across the sidewalk.
Reluctantly, it turned away and leaped into the street, where it engaged with a silver entity. Black sword clashed with a molten silver blade, and shock waves tore through her; indeed, she found herself stumbling away and covering her ears.
She huddled behind a tree, clutching a trunk that had long since been carved with graffiti, a trunk that gave her an odd sense of comfort, a tree that stood tall in the middle of a crowded downtown, although there were no crowds now.
From this vantage point, Tammy observed the wall of fire burning on all sides, walls that kept the rest of the world out. And the demons and angels within. Her, too.
Lucky me, she thought.
Who had thrown up the wall and why, she didn’t know, but humans and their prying eyes, and prying iPhones, had been effectively blocked out.
Tammy counted dozens and dozens of angels, each engaged with similarly-sized demons. In fact, if not for the horns and long claws, the demons had, roughly, the same shape and bulk as the angels. Equals in all ways, except for the light and dark.
Tammy wanted to shut her eyes, but she couldn’t. Not with what was happening around her. Not with the sheer ferocity of the battles before her. Angel fought demon. Sometimes two or three demons. In fact, they were clearly more demons than angels. What they were fighting for, exactly, she didn’t entirely know, not one hundred percent. But the two sides had seemed more than ready for battle.
Curiously, Tammy spotted one angel who did not shine so bright. It was Ishmael, and he wasn’t very far from her. He moved fluidly and expertly, parrying against a black sword that had been slashing down toward his shoulder. Although her mother’s one-time guardian angel fought valiantly against a demon wielding not one but two black swords, Tammy could see that Ishmael’s movements were not quite as sharp or refined. He seemed weighted somehow. Also, she could see the occasional streaks of darkness within him. Shadows that appeared and disappeared over his glowing surface, although mostly he pulsated a dull silver.
Why an angel would give an eternity of heaven to be with her mother, Tammy didn’t know. Then again, she could probably guess. Weren’t guardian angels watching over us at all times? Didn’t she, herself, have such an angel watching over her now, unseen, hidden? Or had her own angel joined the fray? Was he out there, on the street, battling demons? She didn’t think so. Tammy gathered these were warrior angels. The badass angels, as Anthony would no doubt call them. The guardian angel remained hidden, only stepping forward when needed, not necessarily when called upon. Tammy had gleaned all of this from her mother’s own conversations with Ishmael, and from the angel’s mind himself. A guardian angel worked with a soul’s higher purpose, which may or may not include saving a soul from, say, an out-of-control bus. Truthfully, her own angel remained so hidden that she barely—barely—caught a whiff of his mind. He was around, but he lay hidden, even from her reach.
Fat lot of good he’s doing me now, she thought, and huddled closer to the tree. Nearby, an angel and a demon, both massive and hulking and as fierce as anything she had ever seen or could imagine, clashed swords, sending sparks cascading all around her.
Tammy knew that Ishmael’s close proximity to her mother had, over time, turned into love. Apparently, the great silver bastard had been watching her since time immemorial, and had finally decided to do something about it.
Don’t get any ideas, she thought silently to her own guardian angel, wherever he was.
The “doing something about it” part had resulted in Ishmael looking the other way when her mother had been attacked by that old vampire, years ago. Her mother, as she understood it, had not been destined to be a vampire, nor had she wanted to. No, Tammy knew her mother had been destined to join a trifecta of witches, of which Allison was one. Turning into a bloodsucker had thrown the trifecta for a loop, and thrown her own family for a loop, too.
We’re still looping, thought Tammy. Or we’re just loopy.
One thing led to another, and now, here Tammy was, in a once-busy Santa Ana street, hidden behind a wall of fire, as angels and demons fought for the love of fighting, fought for territory, and fought, perhaps, to save her and her family, for reasons Tammy still didn’t understand.
Her next thought was forgotten nearly as quickly as it appeared; after all, she was damn certain she had picked up on a very familiar mind. Three familiar minds, in fact.
Her mother, Kingsley, and Allison were coming for her.
And they were nearly here.
***
“Sam, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” asked Allison from the back seat.
“If you’re seeing a hundred-foot wall of fire, then yes.”
“Naw. Fifty, sixty feet, tops,” said Kingsley next to me.
“Because that’s what’s important,” I said, giving the minivan even more gas down a particularly narrow residential street. We were still a half-mile away when the towering wall of flames had appeared before us. And to think my daughter was somewhere near there...
“What is it?” I asked.
“No clue,” said Allison.
“I second that,” said Kingsley.
I pressed harder on the gas, trusting my supernatural warning system and reflexes to avoid pedestrians and cars. The closer we got to the burning wall, the more people milled about, drawn to it like so many moths to a flame. If we didn’t know what to make of it, the mortals of Santa Ana were surely flummoxed. Not to mention dangerously close to what could only be described as something terrifying. Most had their phones out and were recording.
Correction: were trying to record. I saw it now. Most were looking through their phones and then bringing them down, and pressing on what appeared to be black screens. I looked at my own iPhone. The screen was frozen.
The minivan’s engine rumbled off. We coasted to a frustrating stop. I tried starting it again and again. Dead.
“All electrical is out,” said Kingsley, looking at his own phone.
The wall of fire stretched from city block to city block, rising straight up from the street itself. There seemed to be movement behind the roaring flames, massive figures, both dark and light, but it was impossible to know for sure. Around us was a milling mass of humanity, most having come from the surrounding homes, others from stalled nearby cars.
I turned to Allie, but she had read my mind before I could get the question out. “Yes, Sam. The strands lead straight into the wall of fire.” She closed her eyes. “Except it’s not a wall. It’s a box, and there’s a battle going on inside.”
“And Tammy?”
“She’s inside, too.”
I immedi
ately began ditching my clothes.
“Whoa, that was a lot of side boob, Sam. You sure about this?”
“It’s the only way in,” I said.
“I can think of another,” said Kingsley, and he slipped out of his shoes.
“Oh, boy,” said Allie.
“Hand-made Italian shoes,” said Kingsley, and unbuckled his seatbelt, and was out the door and running faster than a grown man should ever run. It was late and he kept to the shadows, and after a particularly long stretch of shadowy bushes and shrubs, I next saw a massive wolf bounding down the road.
“Badass,” said Allie, turning to me. “What about me?”
“Wait here for Tammy,” I said.
“How will she find me?”
“She will find you.”
I opened the sunroof to the minivan—literally the only luxury this van had—and pulled my naked self through, hoping most eyes would be on the wall of fire before us. Most were. Some got an eyeful. Good for them.
Speaking of fire, I summoned the single flame.
***
Tammy cocked her head, scanning.
Kingsley, she knew, had transformed into his wolfy self. She knew this because his thoughts had gone from human—or as close to human as Kingsley could be—to something animalistic. In a snap of the fingers.
There was her mother, too, now inside the mind of Talos, a creature Tammy could never get a true read on, which was fine. Tammy rarely saw her mother in the form of the giant vampire bat/dragon thing, anyway. She knew her mother struggled with what Talos was: bat or dragon. Tammy knew the beast had aspects of both. Leathery bat wings, which was what her mother had first seen, and had initially associated with a bat. The truth was, the rest of Talos was nearly all dragon—that is, if you removed the fact that it had a sort of snub nose, not at all like the dragons Tammy was used to seeing depicted.
Anything, but anything, that could shoot fire the way her mother could—the way Talos could—was all dragon to Tammy, and that was how she preferred to think of Talos.