Angel Radio

by A. M. Blaushild

  Fex, naturally, was there.

  I jumped a little. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Are you really that surprised to see me again? I told you I would come back.”

  “I swear, it’s always one thing after another. You should work on your pacing a bit—I mean I have two days of nothing, and suddenly Gavreel, Naomi, and you all come to bother me right in a row. Have you ever stopped and considered I could use an occasional break after dealing with one of you guys?”

  “I suppose our encounters can get a bit intense. But wait—Gavreel was here? What did he say to you?”

  “No. Come on, tell me what happened to you first.” Half his face was bandaged, and parts of his shoulders and upper arms were likewise wrapped up.

  “Some self-inflicted surgery, I’m afraid.” He grimaced.

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  “Oh, let me assure you it wasn’t my will. It had to be done, though, so….” He shrugged. “What could I do?”

  “I like how artfully you avoid telling me what I’m actually interested in.”

  “No, I’m not removing my bandages. Now tell me about Gavreel. What kind of lies is he somehow getting you to believe this time?”

  “Nothing really. He’s told me whatever vague thing you guys are doing to Midori isn’t going well, and wanted to know if she was previously ‘damaged.’”

  “Oh. That was the truth. Is she damaged?”

  “Yes. Don’t tell anyone, though.”

  “Would you really rather take her place?”

  “No need to make it sound so dramatic. And no, I’m just bored.”

  “I’m starting to feel concern for you. Ah. Anyway, why I’m here: I need to guide you to Eden, right? It’s right down the road.”

  “Doesn’t that seem too convenient?”

  “Well, it’s down the road, and then off to the side a great deal. It’s a mountain.”

  “A mountain, or on a mountain?”

  “A little bit of both.”

  “Sounds exciting. So you’re walking the whole way there? Too rude to just fly me over?”

  “I can’t do anything without everyone else knowing about it. If I use any power, everyone will know and likely seek me out.” He reminded me in a rather singsongy voice. Then in his normal tone he said, “And yes, I’ll be with you the whole time. Luckily it shouldn’t be too many hours.”

  “How did you get away with it last time? Wait, are your injuries related to last time? Were you beaten?” I asked.

  “No, no, don’t fret.” I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. Had I caused him harm without knowing it? Was he lying to protect me? “I simply haven’t returned and submitted my report. I decided it would be a lot easier than just lying about it.”

  “Won’t you be in a lot of trouble when we arrive, then?”

  “Maybe it’ll take away from the trouble you’ll be in.”

  “I’ll be fine. And you’ll be fine too, right?” I looked nervously up at him.

  He didn’t meet my eyes, and my heart dropped. “We’ll see. Let’s change the subject. Ask me something else.”

  “Something else? No bounds?” I said. When he nodded, I found myself asking something I hadn’t intended. “What did you do that made them take away your power?”

  He bit his lip before answering. “Before we all appeared to attack your kind, we scoped the place out a number of times over a number of years. How else do you think I can have rudimentary knowledge of your world? I was one of the scouts once, and I took a long look at your lives. I looked at many things I should not have, and I was cut out because of it. I still haven’t returned to proper form since then.”

  “What was it? Obsession? Friendship? Hatred maybe? Lov—”

  “Don’t try to humanize me!” Fex snarled, accenting his temporarily sharp teeth. The superfluous change to having only canines was likely a conscious choice to try and scare me. I didn’t flinch. “I did nothing more than disobey my calling. I don’t have to qualify for your emotional guidelines to fail to do my job—I’m doing that right now.”

  “You’re the one who said no boundaries.”

  “Then ask something else.”

  “Who is your leader? And how should I kill him?”

  Fex frowned and twitched his nose. “You’re not going to kill them.”

  “Them?”

  “The Metatron. Ask something else.”

  “What is ‘The Metatron’? Is your leader an organization?”

  “No. They are my leader, and they are someone I am not going to answer any questions on.”

  “Are you going to get angry at whatever I ask about?”

  “Maybe it’s your fault I’m getting angry about these subjects. Maybe you should work on your question-asking ability instead.”

  “I think you’re just oversensitive,” I said. “Okay, how about this: are there any other creatures besides you angels and the demons?”

  “What do you mean? No. There is no other.”

  “I just saw something like an angel, but she didn’t really look like one. No wings or eyes. And she could talk, which was kind of weird, so she wasn’t a demon—a carapace or whatever—and I was in general pretty confused by her. Also she talked by screaming into my ears.”

  “She must have been some sort of regressed carapace, then. Point her out if you see her again. That is quite odd.”

  “She was here just a couple seconds before you arrived. Didn’t you see her?”

  “Not at all.” He looked behind us, perhaps expecting to see her there.

  “She came to me asking for help. Actually, this reminds me of something else Gav said to me—is it true that angels can possess animals, and that it’s terrible if they do?”

  “I’ve told you before, we can’t possess living things. So it’d be terrible yes, but only because it’s impossible. We’re primarily shape-shifters.”

  “But wait, okay. Midori was telling me a while back that she had been possessed by an angel. I saw it leave her body, actually.”

  “What?” said Fex, seemingly confused. “You know we’re shape-shifters.”

  “I know.”

  I hadn’t forgotten, but that little inconsistency in Midori’s story—I had forgotten about it somehow. Angels didn’t possess the living. What did that make Midori?

  He shook his head. “When did this happen?”

  “She killed Kasos, not me.”

  “I could have really used this information earlier. I’m not really sure what happened to her, then—but I have a couple odd and disorienting guesses, and they’re making my skin itch. But my guess for now? Clever thinking, improper conduct, and confusion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I’m not saying I’m right. But I am saying that Midori might be an angel. In fact, she might have been one this whole time.”

  “Wouldn’t you know that, though? You’d know just by looking at her if that was true. She can’t be an angel. She’s told me all about her human life, and she has too many emotions.”

  “She wouldn’t be a regular one, though. She would have to be one like me—someone mostly cut off from the others. And she obviously hasn’t been using her power at all, right? Completely unrecognizable. A couple months back, when we were scouting you out for the last time, she must have decided to stay put. We may have sought her out, but she would be impossible to find in her new form.” Fex sounded almost excited at his theory, but I just felt sick.

  “Is her human form really that convincing? I can tell you’re an angel just by how you’re holding yourself.”

  “That body may not be her true one, but it is a body.”

  “A corpse.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Why would she do that, though? Pretend to be someone else entirely?”

  “Oh, Erika, it’s hard for you to understand. But it gets ever so lonely when you’re cut off. And ever so quiet too. You could hear a pin drop onto a patch of moss after an eighth of an inch fall.�
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  “You’re telling me.”

  Because the way things were going, I might be the last human left. Angel or not, Midori was gone, and friendly or not, Fex was still something unknowable.

  23

  IT WAS a long day of walking before we arrived in the Eden Fex had promised, but I was able to see it for a good ten minutes before arrival.

  It was like he had said: a mountain. Not quite on a mountain but almost; it was great, white, and spun like spiderwebs, and it left no impression that there ever had been a mountain there previously.

  I knew that under all that gleam had to be some sort of hill, because along the way were many signs for a ski resort and adventure park by the name of Bromont.

  “Why here, of all places?” I asked Fex. He hadn’t been talking much since telling me his theory about Midori, and his face had clouded in deep thought. It took him a moment to respond.

  “Why here? Why not, I guess. It had to be somewhere. We first began to appear on the other side of the globe, and thusly Eden had to be placed on its opposite.”

  “Is there something significant about the locations having to be opposite, then?”

  “There is something of a… time limit to what we’re doing here. So yes, it is important.”

  “You know, your habit of dodging my questions doesn’t really make sense when you consider you’re the only one around who actually has a chance of explaining them to me. Like what, is someone else willing to do it instead and you’re just not mentioning them?”

  He grimaced. It seemed to be one of the few facial expressions he had mastered. “No, it’s going to be me.”

  “You’re useless! Ah, whatever. Things will happen as they happen, I suppose. You going to take me inside or what?”

  “No, you won’t be allowed in. They already know you’re approaching, and that I’m with you, but they won’t do anything unless you get too close.”

  “Like worker bees defending a nest.”

  “Please stop making any and all reference to hives and hive minds in relation to us.”

  “Not until you prove me wrong.”

  I couldn’t tell much about Eden from the distance we were at when Fex decided it was time to split up. It did look like it was made entirely of cobweb, or perhaps yarn, and on its surface I could see little specks moving about—angels no doubt, for some reason crawling like ants.

  Eden itself seemed to qualify as a nest by its composition, and certainly the way it formed a hive-like structure, but most of the angels were in the land around it. They were everywhere, and with great variety. The smallest ones I had ever seen—little bug-like creatures with many wings—flitted about in the air and trees. Rising like dead cedar trees were others, incredibly long, tall, and gray. Even the more familiar shapes of Watchers and Ophanim were odd, all the wrong size or color.

  We split up far earlier than I had anticipated, but it was clear we had to. Two pale angels with thick, snakelike bodies were positioned, head against head, forming a sort of organic gate. I couldn’t be certain if they were alive, but it wasn’t them that forced us to part—it was another set of Ophanim, great floating bodies like old-fashioned dresses, that came up on either side of Fex and moved him forward.

  Nothing was taking notice of me, but I decided not to risk it.

  “Just take a different way in. There’s probably one or two holes,” Fex called out as he walked away, but he didn’t look back. “Just don’t follow me.”

  I walked off the road. It was mostly open land with a couple trees and shrubs, but I thought it would be enough to just be far away from the main road—not necessarily hidden. I followed Fex parallel from there.

  A smaller angel of some sort—I couldn’t identify its creed—took to following me. It had human arms, six of them in fact, but hooves instead of hands. Its head was that of a sphere, and its glassy eye stared at me with what seemed to me to be great worry.

  I brushed it away—or really, the air next to it. I was not willing to touch its skin, which looked moist. There was no visible entrance to Eden, and Fex was stopped short of the outer wall. He must have been communicating with the Ophanim in some way, because after a silent break, he began to unwrap his bandages.

  At first it went normally enough, layer after layer of white bandage coming undone. And then he continued and continued, and his shoulder began to shrink, and by the time he was done there was nothing more than an indent in his skin. It looked like his skin had been removed with a careful little shovel, or molded like it was made of clay. There were no signs of vein, muscle, or blood at all—not even on the bandages.

  He had smaller chunks missing from his chest and sides as well. Every time he finished unwrapping, the two Ophanim would lean over and inspect his skin.

  Finally he did his face—and indeed, parts of it were missing. But this time instead of a smooth cut, his skin looked like it had ruptured—bubbles of pure black had emerged from about where his left eye should have been, and seemed to have spread slowly from there.

  He seemed as horrified as the Ophanim at this development. He lightly ran his hand along his skin, and the blackness caved slightly at his touch. Part of it came off, chalklike, on his fingertips.

  The effect this had on the Ophanim was immediate: they attacked. They weren’t quite meant for combat with their bulbous bodies, but one of them flared its wings—all those hundreds of wings and eyes—and charged at Fex. He toppled over onto the ground, and got up again to face it. The other one moved aside, perhaps aware that if it joined the fight it would likely cause more harm to its ally than good.

  I would have liked to stay and watch—after all Fex had told me once before that he was of the most powerful class of angels. However, he didn’t do anything in the way of defense. In fact, as he and the Ophan took another short break, I realized he might have intended this.

  But I wasn’t going to let him do that—die, or whatever. There was no way he was getting away from me like that. I needed him to stick around. How else was I going to find my way around Eden? Not to mention all the gooey and stupidly friendly feelings I had been developing of late.

  I ran toward them. Fex stood slackly as the Ophan attacked again, this time using its five hands. The four outer ones gripped him like he was a toy, and the center one grasped his head.

  The other Ophan, meanwhile, had taken notice of me. But it was light, and I easily pushed it aside, where it steadied itself slowly.

  The Ophan holding Fex began to burn him. His skin didn’t blister and melt like human skin; instead it just crumbled and cracked all the way across his face and down his back. Parts of his human shape began to go lopsided, and then finally slip away. A wing here and an eye there, all of them fading with the fire.

  I had nothing but my bare fists, a backpack, and an overly warm coat, and I decided the best course of action was to just punch the Ophan.

  And oddly enough, that seemed to be enough. Its body didn’t feel like anything much, and though warm to touch, had no ill effect on me. It was like punching a sheet, and the Ophan toppled over pathetically. Its burning had been interrupted, but its grip kept tight.

  While it was still struggling to get up, I ran to Fex. The right side of his face was still roughly intact, though pitch black cracks ran across it. His eye itself—as he really did have only one at this point—was a foggy black, one that almost seemed to be swirling.

  The rest of his body was in a similar state of destruction. After a great deal of kicking and prying, I freed him from the Ophan’s grasp and lifted him—his body was a lot lighter than it should have been, and it wasn’t just because he was missing several hunks of flesh. He felt hollow, and I had no way of knowing if he was even alive.

  The two Ophanim were apparently still too disorientated to resist as I walked off with him into the thinning woodland. I walked for a long time before deciding to rest, but I doubt it would have made a difference. He really wasn’t slowing me down in the slightest.

  I placed him
down in a field of long grass, and waited for something to happen. I seemed to do that fairly often, waiting, but it was what had to be done. He was either going to wake up or he wasn’t, and I didn’t have much control over that.

  And then there was the matter of Naomi and the radio. Wasn’t she going to contact me again? Surely it had been long enough now.

  A wind started up, and I huddled in my coat. I guess I never thought of it before, but Fex didn’t feel cold at all, did he? The only reason he even wore clothes was probably some form of courtesy on his part, because it obviously didn’t matter that he was wearing a T-shirt in whatever degree weather this was.

  I waited for another couple of minutes. The Ophanim weren’t coming, it seemed. The other angels hovering curiously about the field didn’t seem to harbor any malice toward him, so I figured we were safe. Either way, I drew my handgun, grabbed a couple clips of ammunition and reluctantly shed one of my coats. Safety over comfort.

  When it became clear nothing much was going to happen, I set out to see if I could change that. I couldn’t stray far from Fex, but I felt oddly self-conscious near him, and ran off a couple yards to a position where I could still see his body.

  “Ada? Is that your name? Or is it Orifiel?” I mumbled, feeling utterly ridiculous. There wasn’t anything silly about this at all actually, and in fact it seemed like a quite viable method to contact the deer-angel, but I was unused to talking to what at least felt like myself.

  Trees shook, but it wasn’t because of my summons. Just the wind.

  I tried whistling next, on a whim. Then I tried to meditate, and when I found my head impossible to empty, I just tried focusing really hard on thoughts of radios.

  Thinking back to all my previous encounters with the deer-angel, it wasn’t like there was a pattern to them. It had first lured me into the woods, where it had been shot—I realized now it must have been a very regular deer that Gavreel had killed and an angel had possessed the corpse. But why would it want to do that? And what did Gavreel stand to gain?

  After that, it appeared again after Midori had killed Kasos, and again after Midori had left. The only connection there seemed to be was disaster, but even that seemed a frayed thread of hope. There wasn’t that much disastrous about Gavreel shooting a deer, after all.