A Rosary of Stones and Thorns

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  He pushed an evergreen bough out of his way, frowning. “What has gotten into her?” he murmured to the grackle, observing him from its perch on a nearby tree.

  It cocked its head, then glided to the ground. As Mephistopheles watched, puzzled, it rooted in the fallen leaves until it dragged something from them. The grackle soared to his shoulder, dropping its prize into his hands.

  Mephistopheles ran his fingers along the edge of the white feather, his throat dry. The band of gold perpendicular to the rachis glistened as he tilted it. He chafed his thumb against its quill, feeling the familiar weight in his wrist, for nothing on Earth had feathers as heavy as an angel's. “Dear God.” He glanced up after the trail the angel had left, then tucked the covert reverently into his belt and followed her. Here was part of the mystery. Now he would have the rest.

  Father Stephen stood just inside the door of the room beneath his living quarters, fighting his sense of foreboding at the awkward and unusual fold of the throw rug. He found more signs on his way up: fluff from his blanket caught on the banister, water stains on the floor. He opened the door onto the common room, took in the basin, the wet rug and the glowing blisters in the fireplace, and ran into the bedroom. Nothing. His blanket missing, the angel gone. He checked the bathroom and the other unlocked rooms.

  “Asrial? Asrial!”

  The door downstairs creaked open, and Stephen raced to the stairwell. “Asrial?”

  “Father Stephen? That you?”

  “Brad!” Stephen let out his breath and frowned. “What are you—oh, that’s right, your lessons.”

  Brad stopped on the sixth step. “You’re looking distracted, Father.”

  “Well, I’m afraid something’s come up. I’m going to have to give you a rain-check…”

  “You’re the one who told me I needed the tutoring.”

  Stephen snorted. “And you do. Just not today. And I really can’t stay.” He jogged down the stairs, brushing past the teen. When Brad didn’t follow, Stephen turned and said, “I mean it, Stadler. Out.”

  Brad hopped down the stairs, hooking his thumb in the strap of his backpack. “Sure, Father.”

  Stephen escorted him out, turned and locked the door, then strode out to the tree. His first thought was to try the parking lot, but one look at the people milling in and out and the rumble of cars assured him that there was nothing unusual there.

  “If I were an angel, where would I go?” he murmured, his eyes traveling across the vista and falling on the silent forest, leaves filtering the noon-sun. He started that way.

  Leaning against the brick wall of the building, Brad watched, perplexed, as Stephen strode across the field. Seeing the usually focused priest so distracted was decidedly strange… strange enough, he reasoned, that some investigation was in order. Brad waited until Stephen was halfway across the field, then stole after him.

  Mephistopheles tracked the angel all the way across the forest as the sun traveled inch by inch across the sky. He stopped when she stopped; walked when she walked, practically breathed in time with her. So deep was his attunement that when the grackle landed on his shoulder and pecked his clavicle, the Fallen angel almost tripped.

  “What is it?” he hissed at the bird, glancing around. A swatch of gray caught his eye: a set of distant buildings seen through the gaps in the underbrush. Dilapidated, worn paint dulled to the dusty gray-brown of clinging pollution adorned ill-used apartment buildings with a bleak aura. The angel was heading for them.

  “Curse it,” Mephistopheles muttered. “We’ll cut around her.” The grackle cocked its head, then was off in a flutter of wings.

  Sliding through the underbrush proved more difficult near the human settlement. The brambles and shrubs were denser, as if the wood had grown more tangled in defense against those that pushed against its border… and perhaps it had. He was forced to detour around some particularly difficult areas, losing sight of the angel altogether. It felt like far too long before he pushed past the thorns of a particularly defiant bush and stopped for breath.

  The grackle swooped back into sight. It didn’t land on his shoulder, but zipped to and fro before him.

  “What—all right, I’m coming!” He jogged to the west and stopped at the edge of the clearing, creeping forward to stand, still as a shadow, at a pine.

  She had folded down on the grass, onto her knees. She held the blanket clutched in her hand, covering her legs and breast, but her entire back was exposed from the nape of her neck to the slope of her buttocks.

  Mephistopheles had never seen wings so beautifully streamlined, lifting from her back with a grace that complimented the sublime arch of her spine and the fragility of her neck. His hand tightened on the trunk. Her pain was nearly unbearable; the only thing that held him back was the certain knowledge that the last thing on Earth an angel wanted to see was one of the Fallen. He dragged his gaze away with difficulty.

  There was a man on the edge of the clearing. A human. He wore jeans and a shabby gray shirt and a look of greed in his eyes that Mephistopheles had seen far too often in the worst of the damned. Greed... and a hint of madness.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  The angel gasped and lifted her head, twisting her tear-bathed face toward the human. “Who—”

  The human approached her, grinning, his eyes unfocused. “Yes.”

  “Who are you?” she asked again, her clear voice quivering, like the broken surface of a pond. And then, as the man drew a knife, she shrieked.

  Asrial jerked away from the hand that grabbed for her, twisting as the knife came down toward her shoulder. The human’s miasmic breath overwhelmed her as he lunged close, covering her back. Oh, her wings! He wanted to cut her wings! She looked wildly over her shoulder at him—

  —a silver point in the man’s breast—

  —it twinkled, then erupted outwards into the length of a sword blade. The human sagged onto her as blood spattered her blanket. Petrified, Asrial slowly lifted her gaze to her benefactor.

  A hard and beautiful face with honeyed skin and long dark hair, strands of it falling over his open throat; intent amber eyes matched the embroidery on a dove-gray vest. A white linen blouse exposed part of his hairless chest, its lacing half-undone, and blood decorated the black leggings and boots. In one hand, the sword dripped crimson, in the other he held the body of her attacker, plucked from off her with every contempt… and behind him, wings a black so velvety the sun refused to enter them, even in the open clearing. As she stared, a slender black bird flew to his shoulder, mantling its glossy wings.

  “Beloved Name,” Asrial whispered, backing away hastily. The stink of mortal blood rose in her nostrils. “Dear God!”

  The demon ignored her, tossing the body aside and then using the back of its shirt to clean his sword. He turned to her only when he was finished, and his voice was a baritone so mellifluous she stopped moving. “Did he hurt you?”

  “I….”

  The demon sheathed his sword and crouched. “Did he hurt you, Lady?” The bird on his shoulder turned a bright yellow eye on her. “I swear I’ll kill him again if he did.”

  “No… I… no. I am…no.”

  His gaze was unwavering; she found herself comforted by its angelic steadiness, and disturbed that she could find anything about one of the Fallen comforting. His hands rose to his shoulders and unclipped a medallion there; moments later he offered her his black cloak. Asrial stared at it, unable to move.

  “For you,” he said. When she didn’t move, he went on, “Your blanket is blood-stained, Lady.”

  Asrial tried, but she couldn’t lift a hand. His presence was overpowering. She had never seen one of the Fallen before. She had expected… something else. Something obviously evil, or at least bitter. Not this knight with black wings and the lines of fatigue and sadness around his amber eyes. She blurted out the first words she could find in her mouth.

  “Who are you?”

  He paused, assessing her. Then said, “I am Mephistophe
les.”

  Asrial gasped.

  The demon's smile was lopsided. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

  “You are the Great Betrayer’s right hand, and a Prince of Hell!”

  “Not as pleasant as being an archangel, I’ll admit, but I hear the competition in the Eighth Choir is rather rough nowadays.”

  Asrial’s mouth dropped open. “How can you speak that way of the archangels!”

  Mephistopheles sighed. “I’ve known them much longer than you have, dear lady, if the color of your hair is any indication of your age. Now please, would you put on the cloak before the mortal blood dries on you?”

  She glanced down at the blanket, stained purple now, and shuddered. Lifting her eyes to the proffered cloak, she said, “I… I cannot take it.”

  “Because I have worn it?”

  Asrial looked away, somehow ashamed to admit it.

  His voice gentled. “Lady, my disgrace is not some disease that can be passed to you through my clothing.”

  The mention of disease brought a choked sob to her throat. The absence of her two coverts throbbed in her right wing, a constant reminder. She turned from him.

  “Oh, don’t weep, please,” Mephistopheles said, his voice deepening as it softened. Absently he lifted the grackle from his shoulder and launched it to a nearby branch, then dropped to a knee and leaned forward toward her. “I know you are confused and sick. But there is a purpose to everything—”

  Asrial jerked away from his outstretched hand, wiping her eyes hastily and clenching the blanket against her breast. “Don’t touch me!”

  The pain in his eyes startled her. She let her gaze drop and caught a twinkle of gold: one of her feathers was tucked into his belt, the one she’d dropped in her flight into the forest. “What are you doing with that? Give it back!”

  “I wouldn’t dream of keeping it,” Mephistopheles replied, his body growing stiff. He reached down to pluck the banded covert free.

  Father Stephen chose this moment to arrive, panting small puffs of white air.

  Chapter Five

  “Mother Mary!” Stephen exclaimed. There was blood everywhere—on Asrial, on the ground, on the grass, on the corpse, on the… the other angel. An angel that looked far too worldly to be anything but a demon, despite the feathered wings. “Asrial!”

  The demon’s sword hissed as it flew from its scabbard, and the Fallen stepped in front of Asrial. “Don’t touch her!”

  “Mephistopheles, no!”

  “What the—?” Stephen said, back-pedaling out of reach of the weapon. “What are you doing here! Did you hurt her?”

  “What are you talking about?” the demon growled, his voice an impressive baritone. Stephen wondered wildly what he would sound like as one of the Pharisees in the play. “You’re not here to hurt her, are you?”

  “No!”

  Asrial added, “Please, Mephistopheles… he’s helped me. Don’t kill him! He’s a priest!”

  The sword’s point described a tiny circle in the air as the demon eyed him. “You worship God?”

  Voicing his occasional ecclesiastic doubts did not seem prudent. “Yes,” Stephen said firmly.

  The demon slid his sword back into its sheath.

  Looking up at the Fallen, Asrial said softly, “That matters to you?”

  “Of course it matters to me,” he said. “Do you think I hate God?”

  Stephen said nothing. Neither did Asrial.

  Which was when Brad stumbled into the clearing, and stared. “Holy sh—”

  “Can it, kiddo.” Stephen backed away another few steps until he stood between the teen and the demon. “What on God's green earth are you doing here?”

  “Following you!”

  “Remind me to give you a few hundred demerits.”

  “I can Damn him for you if you want,” the demon said cheerfully.

  They all stared at him at that until Stephen’s sense of humor reasserted itself. He grinned. “Only if he tells people about you. Got that, Brad?”

  “Hell, yeah! Ummm… sorry.” Brad stared past the priest at the two non-humans.

  Stephen glanced at the sky, then back at the others. “So now what? It’s broad daylight. I have no idea how I’m going to get you back into my room short of throwing blankets over you and passing you off as hunchbacks. To say nothing of the fact that there’s a corpse on the ground. You’re responsible for that, I assume.”

  “He was going to hurt her,” Mephistopheles said with a one-shouldered shrug.

  “For a knight in shining armor, you’re pretty… uh… dark,” Brad offered.

  The demon grinned. “Don’t worry. I have enough soul-curdling vices to make up for my few petty weaknesses of heart.”

  Stephen was almost certain he was joking. Somehow he hadn't expected wit or humor from Fallen angels; it made them... more human, somehow, more than Stephen was comfortable with. Ignoring the mental tangle, he walked to the corpse and signed the air above it.

  “Don’t bother.” The demon stood behind him, a black bird landing on his shoulder. “His soul is already gone and in Lucifer’s hands.”

  “Right,” Stephen muttered, shaken. “Can we at least bury him?”

  “I suppose,” Mephistopheles said. “Though who are they going to arrest for murdering him? He was run through with an antique, and I have no fingerprints.”

  Stephen stared at him.

  The demon grinned. “We do get criminals in Hell, you know. They’re talkative.”

  Stephen shook his head and returned his attention to the body. “It feels wrong to just leave him here.”

  “Dear priest, if priest you be… all your rituals mean nothing. Your belief in souls is correct; your belief that praying over an empty husk will somehow help those souls is false.”

  The hint of weariness just audible beneath the cavalier tone drew Stephen’s face to one side where he could see the taller demon, just a glimpse: enough to see the matching weariness in uncanny yellow eyes. He whispered a quick prayer under his breath anyway and stood, dusting off the knees of his black pants. “All right, then. I assume your arrival has something to do with Asrial’s… and I want to hear what. But we need to get you out of the open. Come on. We’ll figure out how to cross the field when we reach it.”

  Mephistopheles offered Asrial his hand, but she stood on her own, the bloody blanket clinging to her belly. She held it to herself half-heartedly, her wings askew. Stephen didn’t miss the disappointment that flashed, swift as the flight of a bird, across the demon’s face.

  It was a strange procession through the copper light of the afternoon then; Stephen leading, dressed austerely with a charcoal gray sweater over clerical black, Asrial stumbling behind, and at the rear Mephistopheles with dark cloak sweeping in his wake. Observing the grackle flitting around the procession, never landing save on Mephistopheles’s shoulder, Stephen reflected that Brad must be its human equivalent. The boy sometimes walked next to him, and sometimes dropped back to dog the heels of one of the non-humans as discreetly as possible.

  At the edge of the forest, Stephen stopped and surveyed the field. The campus was empty; the parking lot visible on the fringe of his vision was occupied only by drifting leaves and the cool wind. Brad and the demon joined him.

  “No one around,” Brad said. “Maybe if we run?”

  Mephistopheles glanced over his shoulder at Asrial, who sagged against a tree. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s either that or wait until dark. It’ll get colder,” Stephen said.

  “Point,” the demon said.

  Stephen turned to the angel. His brow furrowed at the sight of her shivering. She held one of her wings partially folded, the other drooping. The lack of symmetry didn’t feel right. “Asrial?” he said, careful to maintain his distance. “We’re going to cross the field now. At a good clip.”

  She nodded once and pushed herself off the tree.

  Stephen turned. “Okay people. Off we go!”

&nbs
p; Brad darted across the field, the grackle soaring past him on glossy wings. Asrial followed at a quick walk with Stephen ranging before her. Mephistopheles went out last, his wings lowered so their arches pressed tightly to his shoulders and the feathers trailed behind him like a second cloak.

  They made it halfway. Then Asrial took one step, wavered like a tree deprived of roots, and slid to the ground with wings splayed, the light glittering on the bronze and golden bands.

  “Asrial!” Stephen stopped. Brad turned at his call, but he waved the boy on. “Go open the doors, Brad! Hurry on.”

  Mephistopheles stopped at her side, fell to one knee, and scooped her up with an ease Stephen could not have matched. He had no idea how the demon managed to hold her without fouling her wings, or how in lifting her he’d kept the blanket over her. The image—tall, grim man, dark hair tracing lines across his throat and black wings draped behind him holding a limp woman, her white wings dragging across the ground—struck Stephen so hard his breath stopped.

  “Is she—”

  “Unconscious,” the demon said quietly as he joined the priest. “Or she wouldn’t have let me near her. And best for her not to know that it was me who got her where we’re going.”

  Stephen managed a faint, chagrined smile. “She doesn’t like me to touch her either.”

  “She wasn’t trained to revile you all her life, though,” Mephistopheles said, and continued past him.

  Somehow they made it across the field. Stephen locked the classroom door and followed the shadowed silhouette of the demon, Asrial’s wings brushing against the walls of the stairwell.