More a breath than a whisper, she asked, “What is it you expect me to become?”
A great breath filled his lungs and he studied her face. “You’ll be one of the abhadhim.”
She knew the translation: destroyer. “Not seraphim,” she said, “or cherubim. Not valkyrie or muse. They all have a specific function. This title is no less obvious, is it?”
“No.”
“You trained me to slay demons. That was no secret. Being an angel was. Why?”
His gaze jerked across her face, studying her, but she made sure there was nothing for him to read.
“The other angels cannot do the job that the abhadhim do.”
“Why not?”
“Bearing the burden of murder requires a meaner creature.”
“Mean as in cruel, or as in basic?”
“Something less divine. Not an angel born of Heaven, but a mortal born of earth and then advanced—”
“Advanced?”
“You’ll have wings!”
The vision he was selling glistened like a warrior’s ceremonial badge, but she wasn’t buying the divinity advantage. At best, an angel was still a servant. Wings were just part of the uniform.
“You have trained so hard for this, I know you can do it.” He opened his duster and unbuckled the belt that carried his gladius. He offered it to her. “You have one chance. Make it count.”
Having armed herself with only light weaponry tonight, she needed a long blade if she were going to test, but his own? He wouldn’t give her this blade unless she’d need it. She searched him for a telltale clue, but of course his body language revealed nothing. He’d built that barricade to keep her out.
Jovienne stiffly accepted the heavy, thirty-three-inch blade. She preferred the lighter one she practiced with, but carrying his sword meant some part of him would be with her. “Telling me the other angels are too good to kill doesn’t explain why you omitted the angel part until now,” she pressed.
“Would you have believed me?”
She held his gaze, but before she could reply his focus shifted dismissively to the warehouse. “Don’t let the demon find any weakness. It will take advantage of any vulnerability it can find.” He lifted his chin and set his jaw. “It has been my honor to teach you.”
Jovienne’s gaze lingered on him, but he wouldn’t look at her. His rigid spine, eyes focused elsewhere, even his words… it all conveyed he was done with her.
He’s saying I’ll never see him again.
Unable to continue looking at him, she turned and studied this wretched location, the ideal place to combat a demon. Whether she died in there or became an angel, the life she knew was over. “This is not what I want,” she whispered. “This is what you want for me.” When he didn’t reply, she turned.
Andrei was gone.
She searched, but there was no sign of him. He hadn’t said goodbye.
This would have been a good time to fall to her knees and release the tears that wanted to come earlier, but that wasn’t who she was. Andrei fused her broken pieces long ago and made her into something much stronger than she would have been without him.
She fastened the gladius across her back.
TWO
JOVIENNE’S COLD FINGERS secured the buckle. Late March in the Bay Area was full of nights with temperatures in the mid-forties and this one was no exception. She tested the over-the-shoulder draw a few times. Her gaze lingered on the weapon. Comprehending now that it was a parting gift, her grip tightened around the pommel.
She sheathed it with force and checked the rest of her weaponry, then crouched low and launched up and over the fence. Stalking toward the structure, her eyes searched for the best entry as her heavy boots thumped a beat to mimic the pounding in her chest.
The front of the warehouse was a semi-trailer-sized section jutting out from the rest. Industrial handles on the extra wide doors were wound with a thick, tight chain. A fist-sized lock fastened it. The upper windows were as broken and cracked as the blacktop around it, but the lower ones were boarded-up. Breaking through the plywood seemed the most obvious way in…until the big lock popped open and thumped to the ground. Like a steel snake uncoiling, the chain writhed and slithered into a heap atop the lock. The doors creaked and swung inward.
She stopped. Those inanimate objects moving on their own made her think of her grandmother, who’d taught her to move and influence things.
This year, when Andrei’s lessons had incorporated theology, she’d sat rapt throughout those lessons, waiting for him to get to the part about ‘weaving,’ the religion Gramma taught her. But he never covered weaving, not even under another name. He focused more on explaining the differences and nuances of major religions around the world.
Turning in a slow circle, she searched for whoever had worked this weaving, but found no one.
She continued on to the open door. Her lip curled and her hands ached to draw a weapon, but she denied that impulse, determined to accept the fear so it would not rule her.
With empty hands, she entered.
Leaving footprints in what must have been years’ worth of collected dust, stagnant air filled her nostrils. Flipping the light switches produced no effect. There might not have been electricity in the wires for ages, but another kind of intangible power was present. It tickled her sensitivities, raised the hair at the nape of her neck, and itched between her shoulder blades. It pushed a warning through the dormant air and rubbed against her aura like a cat with bristled and static-laden fur.
Her body adjusted to the feel of the power, and she called on the quintanumin. She’d been given these sensory and genetic upgrades after a car accident killed her family and left her in a coma for thirteen weeks.
The dark prevented her from seeing, so she decided to feel what was before her. Activating the tactile enhancement, giant arms began to glow with ghost-like light. The arms unwound and lifted up before her. Her physical hands guided them. By tensing her arms, she stretched the ghost arms out, although that thinned them and reduced the details of what she could feel. Relaxing her muscles reversed the motion.
Using them like a blind person uses touch, she inspected the short hallway and found open wooden doors on each side. Of these two side rooms, one was empty and the other held toppled filing cabinets, their drawers open like hungry mouths. An old vinyl couch laid upside down, the underside sliced open to expose the spring coils. The scattered cushions surrounded a three-legged desk leaning in the corner.
Every detail her ghost fingertips sensed resonated in her real nerves as if her physical self touched these cold, grimy floors with surgical gloves on. Those ‘gloves’ felt caked with a layer of chalky debris.
A faint numbness fluttered through her arms.
Jovienne walked slowly down the hall. Entering the Hyde Depository interior, she added the enhanced hearing and instantly detected the faint scratch of insect legs and the patter of vermin feet. Somewhere to the left, water dripped.
The ghost arms thinned to near transparency as they spanned the distance and revealed the placement of support poles and loading docks in an otherwise barren space.
She heard the flapping of wings.
A bat closed in. Leaping into a high flip, Jovienne deactivated the ghost arms as she plucked the Pallid bat from the air and landed. The mammal shrieked and her ears throbbed. She switched off the amplified hearing, but her ears continued to ring.
The pain made her want to squeeze the rodent’s life away, but she denied the idea. Not disabling the modified hearing faster was her own fault. Her father’s temper may live on in her, but she mindfully opposed it.
“Shouldn’t you still be hibernating?” She tossed the wriggling animal into the air. “Go. Eat your bugs.”
Another sweep with the ghost arms increased the numbness, but she discerned a tighter concentration of support poles in the back half. An industrial elevator sat in the far-right corner and a cement staircase with steel railing ran along the right wall.
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After stepping toward the stairway, a shuddering occurred under her feet. She knew the feel of earthquakes, this wasn’t that kind of tremor.
She continued, the sound of her steps changing to a hollow timbre as if the cement had become a thin layer of board. The ghost hands could determine no difference.
The rumble continued, but unlike the intense and incorporeal power-greeting, this hummed into every molecule of steel around her and multiplied, growing louder as it came closer. It had been years since she’d been on the ground at sunset. She’d forgotten how the drums resonated.
Feet fixed in place, a cool, clammy dread settled upon her skin. The cement floor lost no color, but it was no longer solid. The surface rippled like water in a broad circle all around her.
Her stomach flopped. One of those things was going to rise. Right here.
She leapt away, stumbled on debris and fell to her knees. Throwing herself into a roll followed by a panicked crab-walk, she cleared the unnatural space and stopped, panting to recover her breath.
Long before she’d gained the quintanumin, this drumming caused her to hide in the basement at every sunset. That is, until that basement floor hosted a pool like this. Toys had lain scattered across the floor, including her favorite grass-skirted doll, and all sank just before the thing rose. The toys never returned.
ANDREI COULDN’T BE on the ground when the cringe came.
The sensation engulfed and immobilized him when atop the tall buildings, but its effects were so much harsher near the ground. That was why, when the hair on his arms rose as if from static, he slipped away from Jovienne, lest he have to endure the worst of it.
He hated that there were things yet unsaid, and it made him halt and look back, unseen on the edge of a building to the south. He saw her enter the warehouse, and then he ran. Knowing the maddening sensation was but a moment away, he bounded from building to building as fast as he could.
He’d never reach Bush Street in time, so he huddled against an unfamiliar rooftop access amid posts and pipes, grateful he wasn’t the one in direct proximity of the thing about to rise.
Still, all his thoughts were of her—and his failure. He’d watched her all afternoon, afflicted by the coming separation. His stomach had knotted every time he considered how to say that dreadful word: goodbye.
When the moment came, the same as every other important moment in your life, you blew it. You blurted the only advice you dared and you fled. You tucked tail and ran.
And just like that day at the cemetery, she’d proceeded without him and she didn’t look back.
His breath caught in his throat. He would see her again. She may be an angel, magnificent and too good to stay with him in the dirty slums, but she would come home to collect her things. He’d see her one more time—
Like a switch had been flipped, the cringe hit full force.
His skin buzzed and crawled as if it would tear free and leave him. Every joint bent and every muscle tightened. He shook with the effort of holding himself together. Face red, barely breathing, he fought not to scream.
He thought of her, of how she used to wrap her arms around him as this tribulation surged over him, of how she used to hum a tune to the beat of the drums she heard. She would never know how much it meant to him…or how much it hurt when she’d stopped doing it, the night of her fateful birthday.
His sixteenth birthday had been an important one for him, so in preparation of hers he’d given her more freedom. On days when she visited the library alone, he picked up pennies, cleaned windshields, shined shoes, and even panhandled so he could buy her a gift.
He knocked on her door. She bid him enter. She sat in a sunbeam on her unmade bed. The navy bedspread and sheets lay rumpled at the footboard. The pillow hung half out of the case on the edge of the mattress. On her lap was a book. When he said nothing, she asked, “What is it?”
From his pocket, he pulled a small package wrapped in paper from a brown lunch bag and secured with a broken shoestring. He offered it to her. “Happy Birthday, Jovienne.”
Her eyes widened. “You knew?”
“It isn’t much, but when I turned sixteen, it felt like a rite of passage. I was no longer a boy, but I was on my way to being a man. I thought you might be thinking of it the same way.”
She accepted the gift. “You know, I haven’t once thought I’m on my way to being a man.”
“Smart ass. You know what I mean.”
She opened it. “A lapel dagger!” The jewels caught the light and gleamed. “Oooo, with rhinestones! Cool!” She pulled the fat little dagger from the sheath and studied it before slipping it back into the pin base and jumping up. She hugged him tight and laid her head against his chest. “Thank you.”
He resisted for a moment, then hugged her back. “You are most welcome. I am very proud of you. You have—”
Her hand slipped against his groin and caressed him.
“Stop!” He pushed away from her.
“Why?”
He sputtered, unable to speak. As her beauty and her body developed, he’d struggled to see only his student. He was winning that fight, but this proved that she saw him as more than a pedagogue. She wanted him. Not only was that wrong, he was unworthy. “Never touch me like that! Never again!” He headed out the door.
In a reasonable tone, she asked, “And you’re pissed because?”
He stopped in the doorway. Over his shoulder he said, “Because it’s unethical, Jovienne. I’m your pedagogue.”
“You’re supposed to teach me about everything except affection and sex?”
Dumbfounded by her candidness, he turned and gaped at her. His toes curled in his shoes and his cheeks grew hot. “Grown men don’t do that with young girls.”
“That’s stupid,” she said matter-of-factly. “A boy wouldn’t know what to do any more than I would.” She put her hands on her hips. “Look, you taught me that demons come to this world looking for energy and often they get it through sex. Someone has to teach me about sex. Right?”
Sweat dripped down his spine. “You don’t need to know about… that…to hunt demons.” He couldn’t say the word.
“But I want to know.” She eased forward. “I’m ready to know.” She reached for his arm.
He recoiled. “No, Jovienne. No. That would be…sick.”
Her eyes widened, and for once, she held her tongue.
He’d walked away feeling like a cradle-robbing creep, although he’d done nothing but refuse her. He resented that.
And he resented having to reject her love—not for himself but for what his rejection did to her. In all their years together, she’d denied him nothing. She’d given her very best in all he asked of her. And, until that birthday, in the moments of their shared sunset torments, she gave him what he could not ask for.
He didn’t regret his choice, his moral objection reinforced his conviction to their roles. But after that birthday his temptation grew keener. Knowing she would yield made it a physical Hell to be close to her. In their situation, a lesser man would have surely taken advantage of her. Not that he thought himself a better man. He was well aware of his failings, but he meant to be a good man.
If only she’d asked him for something he could give her!
He sobbed as the cringe faded. In part from relief at the passing of the torment, in part because he’d have to repeat this agony every dusk, and in part because there was a place inside where he’d never stopped feeling like a weak, creepy, asshole of a failure.
He shivered when the phenomenon fully ended. Long minutes passed before he could uncurl. When his muscles eased enough to leave the heights, he didn’t want to go to his empty home.
Descending via fire escapes instead of rooftops, he roamed in the general direction of home. Hearing the giggling of a child, though, he halted. Ahead, blurry shadows raced up the side of a building. Youthful laughter echoed again.
Cherubim.
Continuing onward and searching the ground, he spied
a bill draped over the bar of a sewer grate. This was how the angels funded him: currency dropped in his path to be found. He snatched up the money. A twenty.
He wondered how he would make rent with this. Without a pupil, God had no obligation to fund him anymore. He’d have to start looking for a job.
Noting his whereabouts, he recalled that McGhee’s Pub was just around the corner ahead.
The last time he’d been here, he’d toppled off the curb and laid where he landed, throwing up in the street. Then the angel appeared.
Guilt and fear of the retribution the angel could have doled out made him accept the offered terms: he would be advanced to the position of pedagogue, he would train the girl, and when so commanded, he would deliver her for testing.
It was fitting, then, that with the contract fulfilled he should return to where he left off.
His fist closed, wading the thick paper.
A strong drink would ease this tension.
He resumed walking.
Within a few steps, he realized a trio of slack-jawed young men sat in the doorway of a boarded-up storefront near the corner. Heedless of the low temperature, these men wore no shirts. They seemed oblivious, but he’d been jumped by junkies before, so he approached with caution. The emaciated addicts looked like living versions of the creatures that crawled up from the ground. Andrei shuddered.
When close, he noted that their pupils were dilated and a foul smell hung in the air around them. An empty wine bottle rolled about at their feet. A syringe clinked inside it.
He’d once devoted himself to helping people like this. Before Jovienne came into his life.
His fingers un-crumpled the money.
That long-ago service made him feel good about himself, but it jaded him, too. Buying these young men a hot meal wouldn’t change anything. It might enable them to start trouble.
Besides, the curriculum he was required to teach made it clear that saving mortals was a priest’s responsibility. His only duty was training her to slay the demons. Now, that had ended.
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