by Selena Kitt
Secretly, Muriel was glad. It had left a gaping hole, a festering wound, but it was her wound, and she loved it. She loved him, even now. So when the smell of peanut butter wafted her way, bringing a fresh new hell alive for her senses, she reveled in it, even if it hurt. Especially if it hurt. If it was one thing she’d learned being human, it was that without pain, pleasure meant nothing at all.
“Do you know what I mean, Muriel?”
“Ummm-hmmm,” she agreed, not even knowing what she was agreeing to, but it was a sufficient enough response to keep Ana prattling on.
She hadn’t asked for a transfer, but they gave her one anyway. She’d now spent the better part of seventy years shooting arrows at the souls of men and women wearing Mickey Mouse ears and old folks in senior centers. And there were a growing number of same-sex pairings here in Florida than she’d ever seen in Michigan. Key West, even in December, was hot, in more ways than one. Christmas here was palm trees decorated in lights. It was a whole other world.
Sometimes she really missed Jari.
“Muriel?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed again, not opening her eyes.
Then she realized that the voice that spoke wasn’t Ana at all. She turned at the sound of her name, not quite believing it could be true, as if her thought had conjured her here. Was she seeing things?
“Jari?” Muriel blinked, shading her eyes against the sun. “What are you doing here?”
“I…” Her ex-partner shifted her weight, slinging her bow and arrow over her shoulder. “Can we talk?”
“Ana, I’ll be back.” Muriel stood, seeing the puzzled, curious look on her new partner’s face. Seventy years and she still thought of their partnership as new. “They’re not due for drinks until happy hour anyway.”
“Go ahead.” Ana squinted at Jari, then looked at Muriel, a question in her eyes, but wasn’t going to tell her anything else. No way. “I’ll be here.”
They flew together, down to the shoreline, not saying anything, but the silence was comfortable, easy. That hurt more than anything.
“The beach hasn’t changed.” Jari glanced around as they reached the water’s edge. “But the people sure have.”
“They wear a lot less.” Muriel had almost forgotten the times they had come here for their weekly vacation. “It’s been a long time, Jari. How have you been? You still in the old neighborhood?”
“Good. I guess,” Jari replied, settling on the sand and patting the space beside her. “I’m still in the same place, but I’m by myself now.”
“Are you?” Muriel sat beside her on the sand. The water was like a lukewarm bath. That made her think of him too. Seeing Jari brought it back hard. She hadn’t expected to see her again. Not ever. After the Fey Advisory Board meeting, hearing Jari tell them again how Muriel had snuck away to meet Char in secret, how she’d missed the tournament, she had finally realized how broken things were between them.
“Internet division,” Jari explained.
“Ana was just telling me about that,” Muriel said. “How do you time things?”
“These new arrows.” Jari shrugged. “Multi-spatial technology. It’s not like it used to be. Remember how precise we had to be?”
“Yeah.” Muriel nodded, watching the water rush over her feet. She knew Jari was thinking about that day, Norman and his black soul. She was too. “Jari, why are you here?”
“About that…” Jari sighed. “Muriel, I’m sorry about what happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” She turned her gaze out to the horizon where sailboats skimmed like they were sailing off the edge of the world. “You just told them the truth.”
“Have you ever seen him again?” Jari asked softly.
“No.” The stab of pain in her middle was sharp and sudden. “I’m sure he’s… well, it’s classified. The Fey Advisory Board made their decision and it was final.”
“More final than you know.” Jari used one of her arrows to draw stick figures in the sand.
“What?” Muriel cocked her head, eyes narrowing.
“I came here to tell you something.” Jari gave the stick figure a halo and then crossed it out.
“Tell me then.” She braced herself.
Jari poked vigorously at the sand with her arrow. Then she looked up at Muriel and sighed.
“Do you remember the name Zephiel?”
She didn’t at first. Had it been that long? But then she glimpsed him in her memory, catching little Henry as he fell from the teeter-totter, standing in the corner as the little boy struggled to keep breathing.
“The guardian?” Muriel nodded, feeling that memory, an old wound made fresh. “What about him?”
“You told me about him. Remember?”
Muriel nodded again. She’d probably told Jari far too much.
“I heard his name, a couple months ago.”
“So?”
“So it’s kind of an unusual name… for a human.”
“I suppose.” Muriel shrugged, not understanding where this was going, but wishing Jari would get to the point.
“Anyway, I thought he was a human,” Jari went on, still not making much sense, rambling. She was starting to remind Muriel of Ana. Maybe she’d been alone too long. And whose fault is that? “He works in a school, as a teacher. I was there on an assignment. The principal was falling for some woman over Skype in Tennessee. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. It’s him, Muriel. It’s the same Zephiel you told me about.”
“It can’t be.” She shook her head, laughing. “It’s a coincidence. Humans name their kids all sorts of strange things these days…”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first too,” Jari said. “Until I heard him talking to…”
“Talking to who, Jari?” Muriel prompted.
“Chariel.”
She hadn’t heard his name spoken out loud in so long. It hit her hard. Her hands began to tremble, and so did her voice.
“Jari, this is mean,” she whispered. “You’ve come an awful long way to play some sort of joke…”
“It’s not a joke,” Jari said, and when Muriel looked into her eyes, she knew her ex-partner was telling her the truth. “It’s really him.”
“They made him human?” Muriel choked.
What a horrible punishment. It had been years. He would be an old man now. But maybe it was better, she thought, to be human, to feel the loss burning bright and hot for as long as you were alive—and then to sink back into oblivion, a part of the whole again. She had to spend an eternity grieving the loss of him.
“He’s not human, Muriel.” Jari’s words were broken, choked. She’d never seen her so emotional before. “He’s fallen. They both are.”
“Zeph and Char?” she whispered. “They’re both fallen?”
She’d only ever heard rumors of fallen angels, cut off completely from The Maker, forced to walk the earth, knowing only the pain of separation for all of eternity.
“I’m not supposed to be here.” Jari lowered her voice, as if that would keep The Maker from hearing her, from knowing what she was doing. “But I had to tell you. He’s become… a monster. Something so dark and twisted. You don’t know. Fallen angels, they’re—”
But Muriel wasn’t listening. The only thing she could focus on was the memory of the seraphim who had loved her—who, she hoped, loved her still.
“Take me to him.” Muriel stood, her wings already buzzing, itching to fly.
“I thought you might say that.” Jari sighed, standing too. “Are you sure? The board was lenient with you last time, you know. If you defy The Maker again…”
“I need to see him.” Need didn’t even come close. “Please, Jari. Take me to see him.”
Muriel reached out, taking her ex-partner’s hand, and Jari nodded, squeezing as they took flight. Muriel didn’t even stop to tell Ana where she was going, and she only felt a little bad about that. The Maker would tell her, soon enough, she reasoned, and find her another partner. Or maybe assign Ana to one of
those new-fangled Internet divisions she was so hyped up about. Whatever happened, it really didn’t matter, not anymore.
Because Muriel was going home.
“He can’t see you,” Jari insisted, as they passed through the front door of the little house. She shouldn’t have been surprised that it was the same house that had belonged to Jack and Lucy so many years ago. She wondered if everything else was the same too. The bed? Was it the same bed? “He can’t hear you either. I tried.”
“He’ll see me.” Muriel floated down the hallway, glancing into the bathroom. It was the same black and white tile, the same claw-foot tub. He hadn’t changed a thing.
The bedroom was empty, but it was the same headboard. There was a flat-screen television on the dresser though, in front of the mirror. That hadn’t been there before.
“Where is he?” Muriel was shaking. Part of it was cold—now she knew one of the reasons the Fey Advisory Board had sent her to a warmer climate. After her time as a human, she was far more sensitive to temperature than she’d ever been before. But part of it was just emotion. The thought of seeing him, being with him again, was making her knees weak.
“I don’t know.” Jari shrugged, glancing around the room. “He lives here. He has to come back eventually.”
“I guess we’ll wait.” Muriel sat down on the bed, running her hand over the mattress.
The memory came back in flashes, like lightning. The sweet press of his lips. The heat in his eyes. The rough, urgent roam of his hands.
Come home, Char, come home.
“I have to go on a call soon.” Jari stood nervously in the doorway, shifting her weight. “Muriel, I’m not sure we’re safe here. Especially if he really can see you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Muriel wasn’t about to listen to more of Jari’s claims that fallen angels were monsters who drank human blood. “He won’t hurt me.”
“I’m telling you, he’s changed,” Jari insisted. “He’s not like he was. Come here, let me show you.”
Muriel sighed but she followed Jari down the hall, into the kitchen. It was a different refrigerator, more modern, with an icemaker in the door. The memory of the old one, standing in front of it eating Chinese food out of a carton, laughing with Char, filled her with warmth.
“Look.” Jari opened the refrigerator, pointing to the only thing in it—a glass pitcher full of liquid so dark it looked almost black. “That’s what he eats.”
She leaned in closer, grabbing the pitcher by the handle and tilting it slightly. The liquid sloshed up on the sides, leaving a shocking, dark red on the glass.
“Sure, and I bet they eat babies and sacrifice goats, too,” Muriel retorted with a roll of her eyes, shutting the fridge. But the memory of that thick, red liquid, and the smell—copper and bright—stayed with her.
“I’m telling you, he hasn’t aged at all.” Jari sat at the kitchen table. “He’s immortal still, but he’s become something else. Something… awful.”
“What are you saying?” Muriel frowned at her ex-partner, trying to make sense of her words. She hadn’t been ready to listen, not until she was faced with the reality of a full pitcher of what looked, and smelled, like blood in the refrigerator. Char would still be Char, no matter what The Maker had done to him. “You’re not talking about a fallen angel. What you’re describing is… a… a…”
She couldn’t even say the word, it was so ridiculous.
“A vampire.” Jari said it for her.
“He’s not a vampire,” Muriel insisted, shaking her head in denial.
That’s when she saw him, in the shadows. Not him, not fully, just his eyes. The gold rimmed circle of his eyes. Her whole body knew it was him in an instant. She felt the recognition sing through her limbs, and the first thing she wanted to do was run to him. She had to grip the edge of the countertop to keep from doing it.
“Yes, he is.” It wasn’t Char’s voice. Nor was it Jack’s body—why she’d expected that, she didn’t know. Maybe just because it was her only physical memory of him, as a human. He was different, taller, his hair long, shoulder-length, unkempt. And thin. Too thin.
But Jari was right, and Muriel knew it in an instant. He wasn’t human. And he wasn’t an angel either.
“He can see you?” Jari swallowed, glancing back.
“I can see you too, Jari,” he said softly but he didn’t look down at her. “I thought if I ignored you enough, you’d go away. Little pest. Now you’ve come back, and you’ve brought trouble with you.”
“Char…” Muriel took a step toward him, her whole body trembling.
“Muriel, I think we should go…” Jari stood, the chair scraping across the linoleum.
But she wasn’t looking at Jari. She was looking at him. And he was looking at her, with such a hunger in his eyes it almost scared her.
“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” he whispered hoarsely.
Jari screamed when he flew past her, taking Muriel into his arms and lowering his mouth to her throat.
Chapter Eleven
Muriel surrendered to him instantly, collapsing in his arms. The scruff of his cheek against her neck thrilled her, even without flesh to tickle. He buried his hands in her wings, holding her so tight she thought she might snap in half, and she didn’t even care.
“You’ve made a horrible mistake coming here,” he whispered. “I don’t want you to see me like this. My Muriel, my beautiful Muriel.”
“Is it true?” she asked, feeling wetness on her cheeks, realizing that, for the first time in almost a century, she had tears falling down her face. “Have you fallen?”
He nodded, letting out a pained, anguished cry.
“Are you… do you drink human blood?” she whispered, shivering at the thought, but he didn’t need to answer her.
When he pulled back to look at her, she saw her answer in the form of tears on his cheeks. They traveled in dark, red rivulets down his face.
“Oh my love.” Her hands trembled as she wiped them away. When she looked down at the blood on her fingers, she didn’t feel horror. Only sadness. “What have they done to you?”
“I did this.” He shook his head sadly. “I did this to myself. I defied The Maker. I knew the consequences.”
“You knew…” She stared at him, incredulous. “You knew this would happen?”
“It was worth every moment I spent in your arms.” The smile that touched his lips was fleeting. “I’d do it all over again, if I could.”
Muriel nodded, choking out the words, “So would I.”
“You’re both insane.” Jari threw up her hands. “Muriel, we really should go.”
“No, Jari.” She didn’t look at her ex-partner. “You brought me here. Now I’m staying.”
“Muriel…” Char shook his head sadly. “You can’t. You’re not this. You’ll never be what I am, if I can help it. You don’t want to be what I am.”
“Yes,” she whispered, going up on her tiptoes to kiss his bloody cheek. “I do.”
“No way.” Jari gasped, jumping to her feet. “Chariel, don’t you dare let her!”
“I won’t.” He pulled Muriel into another close embrace, and she smiled to herself as he tucked her head under his chin. A perfect fit, even now. The last time they’d been this way, she’d heard the steady beat of his heart, but now there was nothing. But it didn’t bother her. She’d been with him when he was celestial, when there was no heart beating beneath his tumescent torso, and she’d loved him just as much then as she did right now.
“You need to go.” He pushed her away from him, holding her at arm’s length. “Go home, Muriel. Let me suffer this for both of us. It’s my only consolation, knowing you’re still my sweet, beautiful Muriel. That you still have your light—your wings.”
He flashed her a small smile and she glimpsed him again, the seraphim she had fallen in love with. The seraphim she still loved. Maybe his form had changed, but he had not. She would know him in any form, and love him still.
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��I want to stay with you.”
Jari groaned at Muriel’s words. “I knew this was a bad idea…”
“A very bad idea,” Char snapped, glaring at Jari before turning his attention back to Muriel. “You can still go back. The Maker will forgive you your trespasses. I made sure of that.”