by Linda Welch
“Don’t the dead gain insight into the living world when they pass over?”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I don’t know, one of those things you hear but can’t remember where from.”
“Maybe it’s true, but you’re forgetting something, I didn’t pass over.” He glances back. “If I were all knowing and all seeing, I’d know who killed me. Why are you asking about River?”
I tell him what Alain said.
“I bet the guy sees conspiracies everywhere,” Castle says. “If he really knew what we can and can’t do, he’d see his ideas are convoluted. Or he spoke off the cuff without putting much thought into it.”
It didn’t sound that way to me; Alain seemed pretty sure of his reasoning.
At the end of the street, I stop walking and smack my forehead with the flat of my hand. Castle can’t help but our conversation gave me an idea. I know what can tell me about River, if I can make sense of what it says.
Castle doesn’t comment on my self-abuse; he’s looking over his shoulder again.
“What’s caught your interest?”
“The new club.”
Neon flashes a block back. People wait in line; music pounds from the entrance. I walked past the club without noticing. The music didn’t penetrate my inner contemplation.
“If you don’t have anything planned, I’m going back to lurk, listen and observe. It looks like a wild place.”
“Don’t get drunk.”
“You’re so funny it hurts. See you later, babe.” Castle salutes me with two fingers to his forehead, and blinks out.
I mount the steps to my building. River stumbles out of Angelina’s unit as I pass. His amethyst eyes are cloudy, unfocused. My heart plummets. Of all the dumb, fool, idiotic… .
I grab his arm. “Upstairs.”
I have to get him away from Angie. Pushing him in front, I shove him up the stairs one step at a time with my hands in the small of his back. He’s not exactly fighting me, more as though he’s forgotten how his legs work. Once the door is open, I force him inside.
He staggers a few paces before I catch his lapels and ram his back into the wall. “You fool! You stay away from her!”
His eyes clear and take on an obdurate aspect. “Nothing happened. And what business is it of yours?”
I’m probably overreacting; he wouldn’t have escaped her apartment had she put the fullness of her enchantment on him. I release his jacket and close my eyes as I run the back of my hand over my brow. He doesn’t understand what Angelina can do. “Something happened. You should thank the gods it didn’t go too far.”
If Angie wanted him, she would have taken him. She doesn’t as a rule invite in a future conquest for assessment, so I bet she was playing with him. Still, he’s in her sights.
A horrible thought blooms in my brain. “She didn’t sing to you, did she?”
“No.” River looks at me like I’m crazy. I inhale deeply to calm my pounding pulse. If Angie sang her siren song, I’d have to watch him every minute to stop him going back to her.
I go to the bed and collapse on the mattress. Fear for River and all the emotion makes me very, very exasperated. “She’s a siren. She’ll chew you up and spit out the husk.”
Still at the wall, River sounds awed. “She eats people?”
I can’t help it - I laugh wearily. “She feeds off a person’s essence. She siphons a man’s free will until he can’t think, can’t act, can’t do anything but be her plaything. And when he no longer entertains her, she tosses him aside.”
I meet his astonished gaze. “She’s not a bad person, not really. Most people give in to their nature and she’s no exception,” I say generously, feeling anything but munificent. Nature be damned, she has enough self-control to leave her tenants and their guests alone. I’d like to plant my foot on her beautiful face.
“You were fortunate, but please don’t go back there,” I add.
“I don’t plan to. Not that I knew about her. You could have warned me.”
“Seems I should.” Hells, didn’t think of it. Had other things on my mind, like a hundred of them. And I never guessed Angie would jump my house-guest. Bitch.
I remember what I meant to do and haul my butt off the bed. “I have to go see someone and I’d like you to come along.”
River pushes off from the wall. “Who is it?”
“The angel.”
I meant to visit the angel to ask it about Castle. Now I have another reason. It will look at River and know his past, including what motivated him. I hope it will try to warn me. Whether I can decipher the warning or what the angel knows of Castle’s murder is another matter. Still, how it reacts to River may give me a clue.
I don’t want to believe what Alain said but I’ll be a fool to dismiss it.
“An angel?”
“A fallen angel.” I warily study River’s face. He may know of the angel and what it can do if he came from the Greché. If, according to one of Alain’s theories, he’s a Downsider, he’ll definitely want to avoid a meeting.
His expression is thoughtful, eyes aglow with curiosity.
The sky is dark and sullen but I don’t smell rain. We avoid a shopkeeper who wheels display racks on the sidewalk. I trudge beside River past an antique mart and turn right along an alley. The alley takes us to another running parallel. Alert, I try to look everywhere at once. Walking here makes me edgy. I should have chosen another route through streets more populated. Dark as Hades, these empty streets are perfect for an ambush.
We stand at the entrance to Tempor Square a few minutes later.
There is something terribly desolate about the square and its old brick buildings. Daubed on before the angel came, old graffiti smears walls and sidewalks. Soot streaks charred brick and wood, burned bricks have exploded from the walls. It was always a poor area but people did live here until the angel took up residence. Land is at a premium in Gettaholt and the city would raze this place and rebuild, if not for the angel.
Jagged holes with blackened edges in several roofs are visible from the street; the castellated brick rim of another roof is all but gone. The angel throws lightning when it has a drunken temper tantrum. Thus, the residents abandoned the square soon after the angel arrived. It doesn’t intentionally hurt people but neither does it avoid them when they are in its path. I don’t know whether it notices them.
The angel is always drunk. How drunk is what one has to watch for.
Castle’s curiosity brought him to the angel years ago. He discovered it consumes prestigious amounts of alcohol, speaks in verse and sees everything. He returned several times, and although he had no idea what the angel thought of him, whether it relished his visits or couldn’t be bothered to chase him away, they did have some kind of relationship and what could pass as conversation. Did Castle intrigue the angel and break up the monotony of its existence?
Having Castle here would be handy. He understands the angel better than I do. Trust him to be elsewhere when I need him. There again, he’s not likely to appear while I’m with River.
“What is this place?” River asks.
“The Shrine of the Weeping God.”
The angel likes the derelict shrine, the tallest structure in the old part of the city. Perhaps its melancholy disposition appreciates the decay.
“Are you going to tell me why we’re here?”
“The angel knows everything. A child weeps, a bug is crushed underfoot, a man lies to his wife. Everything. I hope it can tell me who killed Castle.”
“Hope? It knows everything but may be unwilling to share?”
“No. I don’t know.” My brow wrinkles. “It speaks another language. You’ll see what I mean when we get there.”
“Castle. When are you going to tell me what happened to him?”
He’s good at lobbing awkward questions when I don’t expect them. Feeling his gaze on me as if it has substance, I look upward at the spire. My eyes swim and my teeth grind together, bu
t I decide to answer. “Someone stabbed him in the neck. They held him so he couldn’t disappear. He bled out.”
“And only a vampire or a wraith can do that.”
I nod mutely and try to swallow the lump in my throat. Will a time ever come when I speak of Castle and don’t visualize his body in a pool of blood?
My gaze slants to River. “Don’t say anything when we get up there. Sit and keep quiet. Please? The angel is unpredictable.”
His shoulders jog up, which I interpret as agreement.
The great arched porch to the shrine once had a door, now long gone. We pick a path through the entrance and into the hall over broken brick and glass. Stained glass no longer enhances the tall arched windows, the remaining lead is crooked, warped. The benches where supplicants once rested their bones are shattered splinters. Glass shards are everywhere. We go to the east corner where a spiral iron staircase disappears into the gloom above. Tiny puffs of pearly-white angel fluff lie thickly around the bottom step.
A plastic crate filled with liquor bottles waits at the bottom. Merchants leave alcohol for the angel, otherwise it will take it anyway and wreck their stores in the process; not on purpose, but it tends to go from point A to point B in a direct path and mow through anything in between. So the drink is a kind of offering, though not one of worship.
“Bombs bursting on air!” a high, thin, chillingly beautiful voice trills.
“Hells!” I grab River’s hand and haul him aside to avoid the bottle which crashes on the floor and disintegrates in shards.
I wait a moment, but nothing more flies down from above. “I think we’re safe. Come on.”
I climb the steps with River following and precede him through the trapdoor into the loft. The wooden loft is big, with a high vaulted ceiling. The angel needs space to spread its wings and the sloping east ceiling, the angel’s way out of the room, is gone but for a few broken boards around the edge.
The angel is a shade under ten feet tall today. I’ve seen it taller, and shorter. With pale, perfectly smooth skin like off-white marble, it looks like a masterfully carved statue, except divine sculptures don’t hold a bottle of malt liquor in one hand. It lounges in the loft, leaning back on the wall, one leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee. The hand not holding the bottle is fisted.
Castle thinks it drinks to numb the pain of being cast into the mortal realm.
It’s beautiful in an androgynous way. Graceful even when totally smashed, and long-limbed, its silver eyes are brilliant, dazzling and difficult to look at, like faintly faceted mirrors. Long, perfectly straight silver hair waterfalls from head to shoulders but its body is hairless. Huge wings trail along the floor either side; the fluffy feathers near the shoulders are white but the contour feathers gradually become mother-of-pearl which darkens to a burnished oil-on-water iridescence. The tips are sharp as the thinnest steel. Remarkably, considering the angel’s permanently plastered condition, the short, white sleeveless tunic is always immaculate. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.
Uncomfortably on edge, I sit cross-legged on the filthy floor. River joins me after a second. His expression mirrors mine the first time I saw the angel: awe.
“This is River,” I say unnecessarily. The angel knows his name and everything about him.
The angel stares at River, whose hand rests on the floor almost touching mine, as though he’s braced to grab me and haul me out of here.
The angel’s head cocks to one side. It regards River with a tiny quizzical frown and my nerves jitter. But the pale creature smiles, revealing glossy white teeth.
A weight lifts from my shoulders.
The woozy smile blanks out, its face settles into a stony countenance and its mouth opens on a note like liquid silver. “A silent grave. Does something of you linger here, beloved? Do your bones tie you to the earth?”
My heart trips. It must mean Castle. Does something of you linger here? It knows Castle remains as a spirit? But I can’t talk about Castle with River here.
Its alabaster brow creases. It leans over, the hand with the bottle draped on an upraised knee. With a penetrating gaze boring into me, it dramatically flourishes the bottle. “And in the depths of sorrow flowers bloom,” it warbles.
Flowers bloom in the depth of sorrow. Is that a good thing? Does the angel mean everything’s not as bad as it seems? Or is it referring to Castle, his return from the grave is a blessing? Or it merely acknowledges I put a flower on his grave? With a small smile, I nod.
Its face puckers angrily. Shit, I misinterpreted, not for the first time. Castle is so much better at this. “I don’t know what you mean. I hoped you’d tell me who killed Castle.”
It soars to its feet. I shrink back as what looks like a ten-feet-tall animated statue towers over me menacingly. River inches closer to me.
“What you in your ivory tower, deceit and death and gloom?” the angel shrills dramatically. It flings out its hand again and loses hold of the bottle, which shoots across the loft and explodes on the wall.
Letting out a frustrated grunt, I lean back on my hands to gaze up at it. “I’m sorry! I wish I understood, but I don’t!”
Its huge eyes blink once. It sways on its feet, collapses into a squat with back braced on the wall and gradually lists to one side.
“Do you care that Castle’s dead?” I don’t mean to say it aloud but the thought spontaneously produces words.
The angel opens its mouth, closes it. What looks like a bead of quicksilver forms in the corner of one eye, becoming transparent as it dribbles over a concave cheek. It falls to land with a musical tinkle. I pick up the perfect, glistening crystal before it disappears in the surrounding garbage. It glitters prismatically, like the angel’s eyes.
Movement makes me look up. The angel takes my hand and its chill flesh burns, but I hold still. It turns my hand, and a stream of crystal tears pour from its folded fist into my palm.
It saved the evidence of its sorrow for me. Humbled, I curl my fingers and bow my head. I want to bawl and let my tears mix with the angel’s.
Movement lifts my gaze. The angel is on its feet again; its wings sweep up and clash together. I squint against the glare.
A wing furls down, the tip gently rests on my head. “Sunrise. Sunset,” it sings mournfully.
“Yeah, I know, life goes on.”
I make a tiny hill of tears on the floor. I can’t keep them, won’t sell them or use them, and people kill to get their hands on angel’s tears.
River peers down. “They look like diamonds.”
“They’re worth more than diamonds.” But I don’t tell River what an angel’s tear can do.
“I almost lost my lunch when it smiled. Looked like it wanted to take a bite out of me.”
River has been yammering for five minutes but I can’t concentrate on the words.
“Hells and damnation!” I stop long enough to stamp one foot. “I’m sure it tried to tell us something important.”
“It wasn’t just nonsense?”
“No. It only sounded like nonsense to us.”
“How long have you been friends?”
“Friends? I doubt it understands the concept of friendship. Castle introduced himself long before I came on the scene. I don’t know how they got along then, but when Castle and I came we mostly talked to each other and the angel burbled something every once in a while. Castle managed to figure out most of what it meant. I think we’re the only people it has any sort of relationship with.”
“If the angel is so powerful, why didn’t it save his life?”
My stomach hurts. I didn’t think of that. It would’ve helped Castle if it could, wouldn’t it?
“It can’t predict the future, it knows the past and the present, so it knew Castle was beyond help, it was too late for that,” I reason.
“Is it really a fallen angel?”
“So it’s said. The question is, from where did it fall?”
Deep in our own thoughts, we walk in sil
ence for a moment. I wish I could decipher the angel’s messages.
“It seems so … sad,” River says.
“Little is more pathetic than fallen angels.”
“There are more?”
“Only the one in Gettaholt, but I hear there are quite a few Downside.” And they often weep, hence the black market in angel’s tears. As many times as I have visited the angel and the number of tears I could have laid hands on, I could be exceedingly wealthy. But there are some things I won’t do.
At least I feel better about River. The angel accepted him. I don’t believe it would if River means me harm or his motives are dishonest.
“Did anything it said make sense?” River asks.
I wrap my arms around myself and an inner chill seeps through my bones. As excited as the angel was, I’m positive it tried to tell me something vitally important. “No,” I tell River.
A dozen paces on, I’m walking alone. I stop and turn my shoulder to look at River where he hangs back. He regards me with a new hardness in his eyes.
“Something the matter?”
His voice is as stony as his eyes. “The angel knows everything,” he muses. “You were tight as a drum until the angel smiled at me, then you relaxed. You took me there so it could … assess me. You don’t trust me.”
Crap. I feel about two inches tall. “I’m sorry.” I give him a weak smile. “Someone put ideas into my head.”
“Like what?”
“You’re a plant for the Greché who want an in with the Peralta family.”
He visibly bristles. “That’s just … ridiculous. You could have told me.”
“What was I supposed to say, hey, dude, you a Greché spy?” I reply caustically. “You were at their house, it did seem handy.”
“Who is it? Verity?”
“It doesn’t matter, you don’t know them.”
“I fought those vampires for you.” He sounds livid. “I didn’t give a damn about Verity, it was for you.”
Make that one inch tall. I flinch in an exaggerated manner. “Can we forget about it?”
He flips hair from his face with a jerk of his head. “I can’t believe you bought into it.”
“Gods almighty!” I snap. “I hardly know you! I don’t trust easily, I don’t take things at face value and I will not spend the rest of the day apologizing. It was a legitimate concern and I dealt with it. End of story.” He needs to grow a thicker skin.