“He has sinned,” the angel said. “Why else would I be here?”
“Maybe to save someone?”
“That would be a miracle.”
“We’ve all sinned,” Noir said. “Some of us worse than others.”
“I know,” the angel said, turning to look at him and then back at the empty street. “I’ve seen it. But you will all be judged in time.”
Noir didn’t ask any more questions as he drove. He tried to imagine what sort of sins a priest would commit to earn a visitation from an angel. The things he thought up made him lower the window for air.
He parked on the street a half block away from the church. He could have parked directly in front of the church because there were no other cars there, but he didn’t want to stand out in anyone’s memory.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he told the angel. “This won’t take long.” He hoped no one came along and saw the angel sitting there in the car. He didn’t want someone to steal it.
“I’m coming with you,” the angel said. It pawed at the door handle with its plastic hand for a few seconds before sighing. “Damn this body. This is like a cosmic joke.”
“I don’t really want to roam the streets with a talking sex doll,” Noir said.
“That is nothing compared to what will roam the streets one day,” the angel said.
So Noir went around to the passenger side and pulled out the angel. But when he closed the door, the angel’s hand somehow managed to get caught in it.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” the angel said.
Noir opened the door again and freed the angel’s hand. It turned its head to stare at him like he had done it on purpose.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“Are you really?” the angel asked.
Noir tucked the angel under his arm and walked to the church as fast as he could. He didn’t see anyone watching but that didn’t mean they weren’t. He went up the steps of the church and opened the front door, grabbing the handle through the sleeve of his shirt so as not to leave fingerprints. He took the angel through the lobby and into the area with the pews. He didn’t know what it was called and he didn’t want to ask the angel for fear of being judged. The lights were on inside, but only at half level. Candles burned on a table against the back wall. There was no one else in sight. It must have been near closing time, if churches closed. He wasn’t really sure about that.
“All right, where’s the contract?” Noir asked.
“All good things come to those who wait,” the angel said. “And many things that are not so good, as well.”
Noir sat in a pew halfway up the aisle. He propped the angel beside him. They both looked at the empty cross hanging on the wall behind the altar.
“It’s nice that we’re alone,” Noir said.
“It’s almost like divine intervention,” the angel said.
Noir took a hymn book out of the shelf on the pew in front of him. He flipped through the pages but he didn’t recognize any of the hymns.
“Is he ever coming back?” Noir asked.
“Who?” the angel asked, and Noir nodded at the cross.
“Oh, him,” the angel said. “Would you come back here if you didn’t have to?”
They sat in silence for a while longer. Noir could hear the sounds of someone moving around in a back room. He made sure the safety was off on the Glock. He thought about saying a prayer but then realized he didn’t know any.
“What’s your name?” he asked the angel to pass the time.
“Amber,” the angel said.
“That seems like a strange name for an angel,” Noir said.
“It was the name on my package. One mortal name is as good as any other.”
“Amber the angel.” It didn’t sound quite right.
“Amber the angel of death,” the angel said, which Noir thought sounded a little better but not much.
That was when the priest came out of a door in the back corner of the church. He was dressed in a black robe, like he was presiding over a trial. He walked over to the table with the candles and blew them out before he noticed Noir and the angel sitting in the pew.
“Good evening!” he called with a little wave.
“It most certainly is,” the angel said. Noir could only think of it as the angel, not as Amber. “For the moment of judgment is upon us.”
The priest squinted at them, as if he were trying to make them out in the half-light. He walked down the steps and came along the aisle toward them, stopping a few pews away when he could clearly see Noir was sitting with a sex doll. “This is inappropriate,” he said.
“You’re a fine one to talk with all that you have done,” the angel said.
The priest looked back and forth between the angel and Noir. “Are you some sort of ventriloquist?” he asked. So Noir figured priests weren’t any better than him when it came to seeing angels.
“No, that is definitely not what I am,” Noir said. Although he had once killed a man who had a puppet hanging on the back of his bedroom door.
“He is just as fallen as you, though,” the angel said.
“If you’re looking for sanctuary for the night, we don’t do that here,” the priest said. “I’d suggest the mission over by the park.”
“We are not here for sanctuary,” the angel said. “We are here for punishment.”
Noir shrugged because he didn’t really know why they were here. Well, he knew why he was here. Which was all that mattered in the end.
“Punishment,” the priest said, staring at the angel. He picked up a hymn book from a nearby pew and blew imaginary dust from the cover.
“You have worn garments of cloth made of two kinds of material,” the angel said. “Polyester cotton blends more times than it is fit to mention in a house of worship.”
The priest stared at the angel. Noir turned to stare at the angel.
“You want him dead because of the clothes he wears?” he asked.
“This is about sin,” the angel said. “And no sin is greater than those committed by a representative of God.”
“We all wear blends,” Noir said. “This is the twenty-first century.”
“I admit we’ve fallen behind in our judgments,” the angel said. “We’re trying to catch up. We’ll get to you all in time.”
That was when the priest ran. He lunged past them, heading for the front doors. Noir raised his gun and shot the priest. Only the priest threw the hymn book at him as he ran past and Noir shot it instead. The book exploded into a storm of pages as Noir hit it with three bullets. He spun in the pew to shoot the priest in the back, but stopped when the angel started screaming beside him.
“I have to see it!” the angel said. “Or it does not matter. Bring me to him so I can see it.”
So Noir grabbed the angel and ran after the priest, who was already through the doors and outside the church. By the time Noir made it down the steps, the priest was halfway up the street. His arms and legs flailed to the sides as he ran, as if he were some sort of mad scarecrow come to life.
“Surely even a mortal like you could manage to shoot him from here,” the angel said.
The angel was right: it was an easy shot. But Noir didn’t want to shoot the priest outside. It would be too noisy and it would draw witnesses. Witnesses who couldn’t help but notice the man hanging on to a sex doll. He wasn’t sure why the priest wasn’t calling for help, but that was working in Noir’s favour for the moment.
Noir followed the priest up the street, tucking the angel under his arm as he ran. He closed the distance between them quickly even though he was saving some energy for when he caught the priest. But then the priest glanced back at Noir and swerved to the left. He went through the entrance of a cemetery, pushing open the gate with his shoulder and not bothering to close it behind him.
“How fitting,” the angel said. “Strike him down now among the dead he has betrayed.”
But when Noir followed the priest into the cemetery h
e saw that it wouldn’t be that easy. Roman ran through leaning, moss-covered grave markers toward a tent in the middle of the cemetery. Candlelight flickered from inside the tent. The priest was going for help.
“You have my blessing to kill whoever is inside that tent along with the priest,” the angel said.
“I’ve never killed someone outside of a contract before,” Noir said.
“What’s one more murder in the dark stain that is your soul?” the angel asked.
The priest paused outside the tent and looked back at them again. Then he opened the tent and fell inside. Noir caught a glimpse of a woman in there, sitting on an air mattress with a candle beside her. She looked up from the book she was reading, and then she disappeared as the priest zipped the tent shut.
“Shoot them through the tent,” the angel said. “She is just as deserving of judgment for sheltering him.”
“I’m not going to kill some innocent woman,” Noir said.
“That is why you could never be an angel,” the angel said.
“I imagine there are a lot of reasons I could never be an angel.” He put the angel down on the ground outside the tent and opened the zipper. He pushed open the flap and looked inside the tent.
And the woman sitting on the air mattress shot him.
Noir barely had time to register the small handgun she held in a two-handed grip and the flash from the muzzle before a line of fire suddenly flared along his left side and the crack of the shot snapped in his ears.
Noir shot at her reflexively several times as he fell back among the graves. She spun to the side and cried out, so he knew he’d hit her. Then the flap dropped shut again.
Noir lunged into the tent without taking the time to check his wound. He wasn’t sure if the woman was dead or not and he didn’t want to give her time to recover or the priest time to grab the gun. He knew he was hurt bad because of how slow he moved, and the fact he couldn’t help but cry out as he crashed into the tent. He’d have to figure out how bad later.
The woman was lying half off the air mattress, curled up in the fetal position. The candle had fallen onto its side up against the back wall of the tent but it still burned. The gun was on the air mattress, and the priest was reaching for it on his knees but he froze when Noir came through the opening.
Noir waved him away from the gun even though he could have shot him and terminated the contract right there. But the angel had said it wanted to watch. So he kept his gun trained on the priest and reached back out into the graveyard. He felt around until he touched the angel, then he grabbed it and pulled it inside the tent. The priest remained on his knees and stared at him the whole time.
“Who’s she?” Noir asked, nodding at the woman. He thought maybe she was a homeless woman who camped out in the cemetery, but if so she was well armed for a homeless person.
“She’s a prostitute I’ve been trying to save,” the priest said. “She has no part in whatever this is.”
“A whore just like Mary,” the angel said. “We should have just burned the entire world when we had the chance.”
“Oh, fuck you,” the woman said without looking at them. “Fuck all of you in your tight asses.”
Now Noir took a second to glance down at his side. He was hoping to find a torn strip in his jacket, or some other sign the bullet had only grazed him. But there was a dark, wet hole instead, which told him the bullet had gone straight in. His jacket was soaked with blood. He needed to get to his doctor soon.
“I beg you for your forgiveness,” the priest said to him. “I didn’t know that what I had done was still a sin.”
“Tell the angel, not me,” Noir said. “I’m just the executioner.”
The priest stared at the angel like he still didn’t believe it was real. Noir knew the feeling. The woman looked over her shoulder at them and somehow managed to laugh at the sight of the angel.
“It’s always about fucking with you lot, isn’t it?” she said.
“Shut your damned mouth, whore,” the angel said. “Or you will be next on my list of judgment.”
“Just when you think you’ve seen every kink,” the woman sighed but put her head back down.
“All right,” the priest said, turning to the angel. “I, ah, I beg you for your forgiveness.”
“Not like that,” the angel said. “You must treat my earthly body in the manner which it deserves.”
“I, ah, I,” the priest said.
“Lie me down and spread my legs,” the angel said to Noir.
“I’m not really comfortable with this,” Noir said.
“And you think I am?” the angel said. “The sooner we do it, the sooner it’s over with.”
So Noir laid the angel on its back in the tent, which was beginning to feel crowded. He placed its legs around the priest, who was looking pale now.
“Confess your sins,” the angel said to the priest.
“I have, uh, worn garments ...” the priest said and then his voice trailed off.
“Whisper them into my pussy,” the angel said.
The priest looked at Noir, who could only shrug. He wouldn’t have done it himself, because he figured the priest was a dead man either way. He just wanted to get this done so he could call his doctor and see if he was going to live or die himself. He was feeling light-headed, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the adrenalin or the blood loss.
“Oh, like you’ve never done that before,” the woman said without moving from the fetal position.
The priest glanced at her and then bent down and placed his face in the angel’s lap. He laid his hands on the angel’s legs for support. He began to mutter words that Noir couldn’t hear.
“That’s it,” the angel said. “Just like that.”
Noir looked away because he didn’t want to watch this. So he missed the priest grabbing the fallen gun and jamming it into the angel’s pussy. He only realized what was happening when the priest pulled the trigger and a blast of escaping air from the angel hit him.
Noir brought his gun up and shot the priest in the forehead. He pulled the trigger twice, but the gun only fired once before the slide locked back. He was out of bullets. There was still a spray of blood as a hole appeared in the priest’s head. He slumped back down into the angel’s pussy again, even as the angel continued to deflate.
The woman suddenly rolled to the side and through the tent wall, like a ghost. For several seconds, Noir thought she was another strange creature like the angel. Then he saw the ragged cut in the fabric of the tent near the floor. She’d sliced an opening in the wall of the tent. Maybe while she’d been lying there, maybe sometime before. He figured it wouldn’t be a bad escape hatch for a prostitute to have.
“Help, for the love of God, help!” she cried in the night. “They killed our father!”
Noir couldn’t even shoot her to shut her up because he was out of bullets. He should have brought more magazines along with him, but he hadn’t been expecting this. Who could have known a priest would be so much trouble?
“Our time here is nearly at an end,” the angel said as it continued to deflate. “Thank God.”
The woman kept on screaming outside but her voice was growing fainter now. Noir went back through the flap and looked around. He saw people converging on the tent from all directions. Men and women with long hair and wearing layers of clothes. He could tell from a glance they were homeless people. They’d probably been sleeping in different parts of the cemetery, maybe even in tents of their own. They closed in on him with knives and bottles and wrenches in their hands. He spun in a quick circle and counted them.
There were eleven of them. The same number of contracts he’d terminated.
Twelve contracts if you counted the dead priest inside the tent.
And now he saw their faces. They were all the victims he’d killed before. There was O’Keefe staggering through the graves holding the wrench, with Caravaggio clutching a broken wine bottle close behind. Rembrandt came around the side of the ten
t with a screwdriver in his hand. Frida came out of the darkness behind the others with a small blowtorch in her hands. And so on. Noir wasn’t sure what he was imagining and what was real. He suspected it no longer mattered.
He went back inside the tent and looked for the woman’s gun, but it was gone. She must have taken it with her when she ran. The priest still lay there, face down in the angel’s crotch. The angel was as gaunt as a concentration camp survivor now. The back wall of the tent was burning, ignited by the fallen candle.
“Let the rest of the air out of me before I catch fire,” the angel said. “I don’t want to burn to death. That hurts like hell.”
Noir remembered its earlier words that it was trapped in this body until the last breath left it. He didn’t move.
“So that’s how it’s going to be,” the angel said. “All right, I will personally deliver your soul to where it belongs. How many can truthfully say they were led to judgment by an angel?”
Noir considered asking the angel if it meant to deliver him to Heaven or Hell. He doubted it was Heaven, given what he’d done in his life, but maybe he still had a chance because he’d helped the angel. Then he remembered the angel had said it had never seen Heaven.
“What are you thinking about?” the angel cried as the flames began to lick at its feet. “Deliver me, for fuck’s sake!”
Noir was thinking that it didn’t matter. He didn’t want anything more to do with angels, not after tonight.
He dropped the empty gun on the ground. He’d always told himself that when he finished his twelfth contract he would kill off the Noir character. He just never thought it would happen like this. He closed his eyes and thought of the photo in his home. He turned to leave the tent.
“You can’t be serious,” the angel said, as if it were reading his mind again. “You can’t choose that mob of fallen mortals over me. They’ll tear you apart.” And then it cried out as the flames caught hold on its legs and the plastic began to bubble and melt.
“I think I’ll take the fallen mortals over dead angels,” Noir said. He left the angel screaming in the burning tent and went out into the night with his arms spread wide, to meet whatever fate awaited him at the hands of his fellow men.
Has The World Ended Yet? Page 20