Moonfire

by M. Rae Gogetap

  My breathing tamed. I nodded my head, and without asking, Dan knew that I was ready to continue.

  “Dan, where will I go when I die?”

  Dan didn’t answer my question. Instead, he directed me to keep moving me upwards. Our goal was to reach a flat plateau fifty feet up. We were only a third of the way through.

  “You don’t know.” I bit my lip. “It’s okay, where’s the fun in having your spiritual life pre-determined? I like a little mystery.”

  Dan gave me a small smile. I climbed, listening to Dan’s instructions. He comforted and coached me farther still.

  “This is so hard. You could fly to the top, what’s with the bouldering fetish? You into torture?”

  Dan laughed, the sound filling my ears was like chocolate on my tongue, sweet and satisfying. I could never get enough of his laugh.

  “What’s life without a little challenge? Pushing your limits to find new perspectives. Wait till you see the vista that few others witness. Running away from my comfort zone, it’s like my drug,” he said, puffing his chest as he flew a few feet away.

  I snorted. Was he going to start beating his chest? Me caveman. Me explore and discover.

  “Well I would never want my chocolate to taste like danger,” I muttered, concentrating on angling my grip perpendicular to the hold like Dan had instructed.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Yeah, that’s my drug. It’s not good for me so I avoid it. Sometimes I fall off the wagon and get a fix.” I grunted as I used my right arm and leg to swing to the next hold Dan had pointed out.

  “Isn’t chocolate filled with antioxidants, and aren’t there hundreds of studies touting its benefits? Woah, center yourself, Chels. Don’t hold yourself against gravity.”

  I bit my lip, then exhaled and swung to the next hold. Dan was flying right behind me, hovering over me like a bee on a flower.

  “It’s easy to criticize from that angle! So, me and chocolate. I just can’t stop when I start, all right? Stop judging my drug,” I said, huffing.

  Dan laughed again, and I smiled. If I couldn’t taste my chocolate, at least I could hear it.

  “So, is that why you all decided to do the whole ‘fall-to-Earth’ deal? Because you liked challenges?”

  “Yep, at least that’s why I fell. Other angels fell to follow their mates or their family. Get your heel there, then reach for this hold,” he said, pointing.

  “Is Heaven as perfect as we, I mean humans, make it out to be? Is that why you got bored?”

  Dan glanced around at the ground beneath us. I trained my eyes on the lock of hair covering his eye, avoiding looking at the ground.

  “No, I wouldn’t say it is perfect. But there’s more perfection there. There’s also a lot more politics, more rules, more bull shit. Earth was a distraction many fancied, an escape. Not that we planned on being stuck here for eternity.”

  I processed the information, resting in my hold position. “Do you miss home?”

  Dan looked up at the sky, as if he could see his dimension from here. He stared for a few minutes. I watched his eyes go from crinkling with humor to a longing and sadness, tightening my chest in sympathy. He missed home like a death-row prisoner longed for a get-out-of-jail-free card. Dan’s holiday to Earth had turned into a mandatory life sentence, and death was the only opportunity for release.

  “More than anything,” he whispered. He swallowed hard, then turned to me, forcing a smile. “Anyway, you made it. Dude, you just scaled fifty-feet and didn’t even puke. Awesome!”

  I army crawled to the rounded top of the boulder. Dan landed next to me. “Yay!” I jumped up and down and reached forward to hug Dan.

  “You are incredible. You conquered your fear. Crushed it. Heights can be pretty wicked amazing, right?” Dan wrapped his arms around me and pulled me down to sit on his lap. We sat in silence for a few minutes as I caught my breath.

  The perspective from just fifty-feet up was awe inspiring. Seeing views only the ancient mountains and rocks and birds knew. Forest and black earth blanketed the ground below. Except today the view was still, unmoving. Now I understood.

  “Dan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where will the demons on Earth go when they die?”

  Dan’s arm tightened around me. “When we traveled here, we upset the balance of the spirit cycle. We’re in flux, right now. The balance is upsetting not just this dimension, but the others. There are likely to be consequences, other than simply being quarantined for our behavior. Once we get… well, never mind. No use pondering the what ifs.”

  “Are you saying that you will be charged, by more than Sabathiel?”

  I was fishing, I know. For some reason, I couldn't’ bear to ask directly- was there a God? I didn’t want to hear a final answer on the question.

  I felt Dan’s shoulders lift and fall behind me. “I’ve never met the big man if that’s what you mean. For all I know, Sabathiel the great Archangel is the original Wizard of Oz. He wields power, but where that power originates is beyond me.”

  “Power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Someone has to put it there, enable it.”

  “Ever heard of dark matter, SG?”

  “You’re missing my point.”

  “No, I agree with you. Michael Fox, Sabathiel the Archangel, they are enabled leaders. The masses allow them to rule. If we want to make a change, we have to be the change.”

  I smiled, snuggling into his arms. “I wish we could stay here…” I trailed off. Dan knew what I meant.

  “Me too.”

  After the decent, I jumped up and down before hugging Dan again. We had made it back to solid ground. Dan had been right, my fear of heights decreased after climbing the old volcanic cone. I released Dan and danced around him, pumping my hand into the air. Dan’s shoulders tensed as I cheered.

  “I did-“

  A body slammed me to the ground, and grainy sand filled my mouth. I felt a rumble and heard a fierce growl. Something sharp cut into my back, clawing flesh and bone. I screamed in pain, but dirt choked my sounds. I felt hot and pain and agony. Another growl. Rust, earth. My back was fire, my head heavy.

  The pain in my back and neck felt like Edward Scissorhands sliced through my skin while his fingers were on fire. It hurt more than anything I had ever experienced in my life. My breath came out in shallow gasps. Then a human-like howl pounded my ears.

  The Scissorhands stopped slicing, and a weight lifted off of me.

  “Stay the fuck back!”

  “Dan don’t hurt it. It’s just a bobcat!” Who was that again? I knew that voice. Black spots greeted me as I tried opening my eyes.

  “That’s not a fucking bobcat!”

  A cracking noise filled my ears. Then the pain started to recede.

  “Chelsea, honey, are you with us?”

  “Chels, come on, open your eyes!”

  “She’s going into shock-“

  “No fucking shit! Chelsea wake up!”

  The pain came back full force. “It hurts,” I said, whimpering. I felt myself being lifted, lying prone in masculine arms.

  “Clear out the backseat, Seema. I need to get her to a hospital.”

  Then I closed my eyes again. My back stung. My skin was melting off.

  “Sorry, Chelsea, you can’t pass out. Wake up, silver girl. Stay with me,” Dan coaxed, whispering in my ear. That was the last thing I heard before I fell into a blissful pain-free sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Foxy

  MY EYELIDS FELT as if they weighed a hundred pounds. Bleach burned my nose, and annoying blare of car horns blasted my ears.

  Then I felt a warm hand entwined in my own. A thumb caressed my wrist. Sweet whispers from soft, familiar lips tickled my ear.

  Not car horns. Beep. Beep.

  I turned my head just right to feel those lips more fully on my ear. Although I didn’t understand the words, they coaxed me out of my sleep. I opened an eye, and glaring light and fresh pain greeted me. I was l
ying prone on a firm mattress.

  “Ughhh, I told you I’d splatter on the ground.” My voice was like gravel. Dan’s eyes crinkled as he gave me a small smile. He placed his elbows on the hospital bed that I was laying in. He looked up at me, moving a piece of greasy hair from my eyes.

  “We’re at a hospital?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  Dan nodded. “Did I ever tell you that your eyes remind me of the moss that covered my home?”

  “My eyes look slimy, huh? Nice. Luckily they do tend to change colors…”

  He shook his head. “It was a lovely kind of moss. It smelled like lavender, soft green like your eyes, felt like velvet. Blanketing my village... I miss that view the most, I think.”

  The way he spoke made me realize that he wasn’t talking about any home on Earth. His voice filled with a yearning, and with sorrow. The pillow that my cheek rested on dampened with my tears.

  “Hey, SG, you’re going to be fine,” he said, brushing the tears away with his fingers.

  “But what about you?” I asked. My shoulders began to shake with sobs, and I winced in pain as I cried.

  “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. I’ll be fine. You were attacked, and you’re lucky to be alive. Stop worrying about me,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It’s not fair! Why does humanity get a second chance? We’re far from perfect. We kill and torture and make each other bleed. We fight and we war and we create conflict to pass the time. You guys just wanted to have a little fun. Now you’ll be stuck here forever, and humanity gets to have a second try?”

  “Well, according to the Hopi it’ll be the fifth try-“

  “Exactly!”

  The beeping of the pulse oximeter became faster to alert the staff of my racing pulse.

  “Chelsea, your heart is sweeter than a newborns cry. Please don’t weep for me, I am the last one to deserve your sympathy,” Dan said. He wiped more tears with his shirt sleeve. Then stroked my cheek. “Besides, you’re going to be okay. The doctors gave you a few hundred stitches, and you’ll heal well.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “A bobcat.”

  “I hate animals.”

  Dan chuckled. “I know. Rest a little, SG. We’ll be outta here in a couple of hours.”

  He sat back in the chair next to the bed and tilted his head towards me. Our eyes locked for a few moments, my heart rate increased as I drank in his eyes, his chiseled angles, his smile. I couldn’t read his aura or his mind, but in my heart, I knew we would help each other through whatever lay ahead.

  While he checked a text message on his phone, I closed my eyes and shook my head. There was no way I was going to be fit for travel in a couple of hours. But I was too tired to argue. Within a minute, my mind was wrapped in a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

  As usual, Dan was right. I was released that evening. To avoid suspicion, a friend of Dan’s compelled the physician to recommend a release for home recovery. I was given a prescription for pain killers and instructions for the wound dressings. Since I had no clean clothes, Dan sent Seema for some necessities at my apartment.

  We held hands as we walked to his Range Rover. Our fingers intertwined, warmth traveling up my arm and straight to my heart. Despite the injuries, somehow I felt a deeper connection to my guardian. He protected me. He made sure I healed. He kept me safe.

  Dan explained the rarity of the attack that I had endured. Bobcats were nocturnal, and a day attack had never been reported in the park’s history.

  “Highly unusual,” Dan muttered, helping me into the passenger seat. I let my head rest on my arms, which were crossed on the dashboard. Sitting in a chair was going to be challenging for a while.

  “Highly unusual. That’s my new normal these days,” I said.

  “You should heal quite fast. Ever have any injuries in the past?” Dan asked, pulling out of the parking space.

  “Oh yeah, I twisted my ankle several times in cross country,” I said.

  “How long did that take to heal?”

  “Oh, a day or so. Ah,” I said, realizing that I was not just strong boned. “Another benefit of being half-demon?”

  “Yes, although an ankle sprain would only take me hours to heal,” Dan said. “But you heal faster than a normal human. Good, so you should be good as new in a few days. Skip your follow up appointment, to avoid any suspicions with the human medics.”

  Human medics. That just sounded alien to me.

  “What’s up with Seema?” I asked.

  I felt sorry for the steering wheel that Dan seemed to refashion with his grip. His knuckles were white again, and his jaw clenched.

  “Seema thinks that she is on the right side of the war. But she is blinded when it comes to love,” he said, through gritted teeth. I bit my lip. Why was he so mad at Seema? Sure, she was guarding from the skies, but how could anyone have predicted a bobcat attack? And what did love have to do with anything? I felt my chest tighten. Was she in love with Dan? Was that why she was acting so strange around him?

  “Love? What happened?” I didn’t want to ask, but had to know the truth.

  “I’ll explain later. In the meantime, I have some business to attend to. Seema will continue to guard you, but you’ll both be guarded by Alef. You’ll be safer,” Dan said.

  “Why the increase in personal guard? It was a bobcat, Dan. Not some evil-doer,” I said, resting my head on the black dashboard. I took slow breaths to avoid irritating the cuts in my back.

  “That wasn’t a normal bobcat. It was being influenced.”

  “Influenced? Like, persuasion? Can demons use persuasion on animals?”

  “You’ll be able to do that someday. You’re going to be powerful. You need someone to train you, but you’ll be able to influence any energy from a living being to your whim,” Dan said. He glanced over to me, and I rested my temple on the dash, meeting his eyes.

  “So I could tell a bush to kick a bobcat’s ass?”

  Dan laughed, making me smile. “Not precisely, but in theory you can use persuasion on anything with a central nervous system. As far as botanical species, that has yet to be mastered, but I wouldn’t discount the idea. We all thought demon procreation was impossible, and look at you. You are a rara avis, a rare bird, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t have my wings yet, darling. And the way that my back feels, I’ll be happy just to have my skin grow back at this point. No extra appendages are necessary, just a little more tissue,” I said. I sighed. “You changed the subject, anyway. So the bobcat was persuaded, but who did it?”

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Dan said. From his tone, I knew better than to argue.

  We drove the rest of the way home in silence. I turned my head to stare out the passenger window. I watched the banal world of humanity pass by, drug stores, grocery stores, restaurants with customers and employees oblivious to the complete multi-dimensionality around them. With my newfound knowledge of the reality of demons, of angels, humans seemed to exist in another plane, another dimension that I did not share. I wondered if this is what the demons felt like. Watching time pass by, humans live and die, knowing that there was so much more complexity to life than running errands or eating a meal. I closed my eyes. Would I ever be an ordinary person again?

  No, that time of innocence had passed.

  Dan helped me out of the car and insisted on flying me up to the balcony. When I protested that someone would see us, he kissed my forehead.

  “Concealment glamour. Humans can’t see us,” he said.

  Thinking back to the helicopter, I shook my head. Where had this glamour been back then? That question could wait for another day. Besides, I really didn’t want to have him carry me up the flights of stairs, anyway. Flying would be much faster.

  “What about Fia?”

  “Fia knows more than any human should ever know. That’s why you’re being guarded so heavily,” Dan said, bouncing off his toes and flying into the air. I noticed that the jacket he wor
e flapped open to let his wings free. He must have a seamstress on payroll to make the special clothing.

  The wind rushing past my skin didn’t give me goosebumps, instead it felt refreshing. I breathed in the leather and spice of Dan, my heart rate steady. Discovering that Fia was in tune to this new world wasn’t surprising. Instead, I felt a weight lifted off of my chest. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. The more I learned, that better off I would be.

  “So you’re saying that she knows about me?”

  Dan nodded. “She knows about me. I think she has her suspicions about you. Michael Fox is trying to get control of you. If he tries anything stupid, we’ll remove you from the situation. For now it’s best to make it appear that he is meeting his objective.”

  “Must have a lot of guards under contract, huh?” I asked, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice.

  “Shhh, you’re safe for now. That’s what matters,” he said, landing softly on the balcony. He held me as if I were light as a feather pillow, and he took the impact of the landing light in his knees. I felt only a slight jolt of pain. He opened the door and laid me on my bed, butt facing the ceiling.

  He left the room and came back with a hospital mug of water complete with a straw, and a one pound bag of Reeces Pieces. I groaned.

  “No, get it away, I’ll eat the whole bag!” I said.

  “It’s mostly peanut butter, hardly any chocolate. And you’re welcome. Eat the whole thing, it’ll be okay. Your body needs extra calories to heal, both the human and the angel part. I spoke with Fia, she’ll bring in dinner in a couple of hours. For now, just rest.”

  No one needed to convince me to eat chocolate. My protests were just a cover. I was already popping handfuls of the chocolatey peanut butter goodness in my mouth. Like I said, I was a chocolate addict. I sighed with contentment.

  “It’s been a while since your last splurge, yeah? Eat it up, SG. I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. He leaned down to kiss me. My mouth was full of chocolate and peanut butter, so it was a quick peck. I closed my eyes anyway and savored the touch of his lips on mine. He had a way of brining me comfort, and there was nothing that I craved more at this point in my life.