A Rosary of Stones and Thorns

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Brad sat up. “Father… Marie’s mom is a doctor.”

  “What?” Stephen looked at him. “Marie? Your girlfriend?”

  “Her mom’s a doctor.”

  Stephen looked at the body. “Oh God, Brad. You want us to just waltz into your girlfriend’s house, dump a demon on the living room floor and tell her we’re a walk-in?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Brad said.

  Stephen looked again at Mephistopheles. His jaw clenched.

  “Come on, I’ll drive. I took the minivan to school today. Yesterday? When is it, anyway?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. God, I hate to move him….” Stephen shook his head. “Bring the van around.”

  Brad launched himself from the demon’s side, a spray of asphalt pebbles bouncing from beneath his shoes. Stephen pushed his sweater sleeves to his elbows and leaned over Mephistopheles, trying to locate the patch beneath the feathers and the harness. His hand slid on the blood-slick skin, but he found the bandage by feel and pressed on it. “Come on, dammit, stanch. Stanch! Don’t die on me, you stupid demon! There’s too much to do!”

  Mephistopheles didn’t wake. Black blood stained the priest’s hands as he waited, his heart-beats pounding out the tempo to a psalm. Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing—

  The whine of the minivan’s engine passed from one ear to the other, then up the side street and into the parking lot. It skidded to a halt a few feet away, and Brad jumped out of the driver’s side and ran around the back, sliding open the passenger door.

  Stephen steeled himself, then worked his hands under Mephistopheles’s body and lifted. “How far away does she live?”

  “Ten minutes. Next to the mall and the hospital.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll last ten minutes the way he’s bleeding.”

  Brad grimaced and slammed the sliding door on him, then ran around to the front and sprang back into the driver’s seat. “Okay, maybe she lives five minutes away the way I drive. Buckle up, Father.”

  “No time. Go!”

  The boy floored the accelerator. Stephen grabbed the arm of one of the seats and hung on, leaving blood splatters all over the carpet. He kept his other hand pressed securely against the bandage.

  The brakes screeched as Brad flew around a corner.

  “Wasn’t that a red light?”

  “Are you complaining?”

  “No—”

  “Then keep your head down!”

  Stephen closed his eyes and concentrated on rocking with the bumps and the jolts. The ride was interminable, but somehow the van stopped without crashing. The quiet of the engine struck him almost physically as the driver’s side door flew open. A few seconds later, the sliding door retracted.

  “I’ll go wake them up,” Brad said, and then darted away.

  Stephen closed his eyes, listening to the chirp of frogs and the occasional sound of a car passing on a distant road. A sharp rapping interrupted the pastoral sounds. A window slid open. He could hear the hushed voices but not the words, and then Brad reappeared in the door. “Come on. Bring him. She’s gone to wake up her mom. I didn’t tell her what he was, just that he was a friend.”

  “Great. Leave the hard stuff for me to explain.” Stephen lifted Mephistopheles again, trying not to drag the free wing along the ground. He walked up the gravel path from the driveway to the front door, unable to appreciate the carefully cultivated flowers. The blood welling with every heart-beat distracted him. I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me—

  “Come on, into the kitchen,” Brad said, pushing open the front door onto an unlit, carpeted foyer. Stephen left black footprints as he fumbled into the kitchen.

  Soft steps, muffled by matching carpet, pattered down the staircase and a light flicked on.

  “Ohmigod,” the blonde said. “Brad!”

  “He needs help,” Brad said. “Marie, please. We didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Mom said she’d be down as soon as she could grab her robe. What... what is he?”

  “Where do I put him?” Stephen interrupted.

  “Oh, God. On the floor. Brad, help me move the table….”

  The two hastily dragged the kitchen table and the chairs to the wall, and Stephen kneeled, setting Mephistopheles down on the cool ceramic tile. His entire sweater was drenched with black blood; he could smell it, heavy as the human variant, but with a different feel. More like oil. Or warm honey….

  “Cat? Are they inside yet?” A flash of messy blonde hair and then a woman appeared on the stairs, a taller version of her daughter, pixie-nosed and disheveled in a bronze robe. “Where’s the—oh.”

  It seemed as good a line as any. Stephen cleared his throat. “Ma'am. We’re hoping you take walk-ins.”

  Brad eyed him.

  Marie’s mother swept down the last steps and joined Stephen on the floor, pushing back her sleeves. “How long has he been bleeding? Are these real? Who are you, anyway?”

  “About ten minutes. They’re real. I’m Father Stephen Bann, I teach math at Jesuit High School. Brad knew your daughter and said you were a doctor.”

  The woman stripped the blouse off and found the patch. “Marie, get me some hot water. And the kit from under my bathroom sink. Quickly.”

  “You get the water,” Marie said to Brad, and scampered back up the stairs. Brad vanished into the kitchen.

  The woman placed a hand on the wing arm and gently flexed it away from the wound. “Ugly. Did he say whether he could use the wing before he dropped out?”

  “No. Nor the arm.”

  She frowned, tucked a strand of blonde hair behind one ear with a bloody finger. “One hell of a neural system he must have, to work an extra set of limbs. God knows how the joint works. This muscle’s torn… never seen anything like it. We must not have one. What is this? A knife wound?”

  “Spear head.”

  “Close enough. Was he poisoned or drugged? Is he on anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” A pause as she untied part of the harness. “Just what is he again?”

  “An angel… or was,” Stephen said, plucking his sweater’s wet front from his body.

  She stopped to stare at him, then stripped the bandage off as Marie sprinted down the stairs with the largest first aid kit Stephen had ever seen. Brad dropped the basin of hot water next to her just as his girlfriend placed the kit alongside her mother. “Okay, out of the way! This is not a road show. Marie, show the priest to a bathroom, find some old clothes for him. I should be done in a few.”

  “Will he be okay?” Stephen asked as the girl took his hand and pulled him aside.

  “He’d better be. I can't afford a malpractice suit from God.”

  Stephen allowed Marie to lead him away. In the garish brightness of the guest bathroom, he stripped the sweater and shirt reluctantly from his body, hesitating as he held them in his hands. They were drenched with the blood of demons and the perfume of angels, and had seen him to Heaven and Hell….

  He toweled off his chest and pulled on the heather gray sweatshirt.

  Brad and Marie were in the living room, leaning together on the couch. A coffee machine gurgled in the kitchen.

  “Smells good,” he said, dropping onto the rug. He’d left his shoes with the rest of his stained apparel to prevent further damage to the carpet.

  “It’s Hawaiian,” Marie said. “They call it Kona coffee. It’s raised on the slopes of the volcanoes.”

  The conversation had the stilted feel of people desperately grabbing for a semblance of normalcy in a lunatic world. Stephen smiled. “Grown in ashy soil. Appropriate.”

  Even in the dark, he could see the girl blanch. “You don’t think… he’ll… be offended?”

  Stephen chuckled. “No, Marie. I don’t.”

  The girl’s mother appeared in the arch leading to the kitchen. “Mission accomplished. The copay's sixty dollars.”

/>   Stephen stared at her. “I… don’t even think I have my wallet, Mrs…”

  “Just Chris.” She laughed. “I’m kidding. It'll be payment enough if you tell me where the hell you found him.”

  “I want to hear this too,” Marie added.

  “Must you cuddle that way in my presence, Cat?” the woman said, dropping into the stiff-backed chair.

  Blushing, Marie rose. “I’ll get the coffee.”

  Brad developed a sudden hoarse throat. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “Chris to you, too. So you’re her new flame? You definitely keep more interesting company than the others have.”

  Brad pleaded mutely with Stephen to distract her. The priest shrugged.

  “What is today? I’m afraid I’ve completely lost track.”

  One of the woman’s brows lifted. “Is it important?”

  He essayed a lopsided smile. “Yes.”

  “It’s Friday night. Talk.”

  Stephen talked. Halfway through the telling, Marie entered quietly with a tray of mugs and a pot; she fixed the priest’s coffee for him so he wouldn’t have to stop.

  At the end of the story the mugs were all drained as well as the pot, and the half-and-half was tepid. In the chair, Chris’s visage, lit only by the faint glow of the night-light, betrayed no expression Stephen could read.

  “There really is a God…?” Marie asked. She blushed. “No offense, Father, but….”

  “None taken,” he said, suddenly tired.

  “Maybe you should rest,” Chris said, standing. “You two have been on the move all day. We have some pillows and blankets.”

  Stephen looked up. “You’re kind, Chris.”

  “No, just practical. You can’t move your demon friend for at least a few hours. You might as well stay. We’ll get the pillows.”

  He did not object.

  Asrial stumbled behind the coarse rope binding her wrists together. The sky was an impossible color: neither the star-sprinkled black of true night nor the smooth plate of a sun-jeweled morning, but the forsaken time in between when neither sun nor stars showed their faces.

  The Archangel stood beside the cross, waiting for her. He had collected an audience in the entirety of the camp; she recognized Raphael behind him, and several other archangels… and the guard beside the cross was Tapheth, the same who had led her to the tent to await Michael’s judgment after her first trespass.

  Asrial stopped, hunched with her hands pulled in front of her, wings extended for balance. Her hair slid over the front of her thin shoulders as if to apologize for the poor concealment her torn chiton provided.

  Michael walked to her, gazed down at her as the guard stood out of his way, the rope between her wrists and his hand strained.

  “Are you ready for your punishment?” the archangel asked into the pre-dawn’s silence.

  “I have done nothing wrong,” Asrial said, arching her primaries forward and panting softly. The broken rib pressed the breath from her each time she gasped.

  His fingers cupped her chin and forced her to look up at his cold and beautiful face. “Do not lie, girl. Not in Heaven where God dwells.”

  Asrial shivered but said nothing, and did not blink.

  “Again I ask: are you ready for what you have earned?”

  Asrial swallowed past her narrowed throat and held her silence.

  Michael frowned, then tossed her face away and turned. “If we want her to fit on the cross, we’ll have to divest her of some of her plumage. Tapheth… help Damen tie her to the cross so we can pluck the secondary shelf.”

  Asrial dug her heels into the ground and flared her wings as the guard jerked her cord. She tumbled forward to a knee, burned the skin off as the guard dragged her through the dirt. Their cool hands on her feverish skin sent shivers running down her spine, and she struggled to tear away from them.

  They bore her to the cross, pressed her face to its wood, and tied her hands up against it before spreading her wings. Her muscles twitched violently as their hands ran along the edges of her feathers.

  “Michael… are… are you sure about this?” The unexpected voice of Raphael, timid and pleading. “Michael… what if this is wrong?”

  “This is not wrong,” Michael said. “She betrayed us to the enemy. More of our own may die because of her. Would you have her go unpunished for the crime she has committed? No act is without consequence, Raphael.”

  Raphael said, “But… she’s one of our own, Michael. One of the Ninth. We should be merciful—”

  “Mercy and justice do not dwell together peaceably,” Michael said, voice hardening. “A lesson you must obviously learn. Go, pluck the feathers. All the secondaries near her body. You’ll know better how to avoid the blood feathers.”

  Raphael’s voice tightened almost to nothingness. “I—I am a healer!”

  “Are you not also God’s servant?” Michael demanded. “Go!”

  Asrial closed her eyes, the wood pressed to her body from cheek to hips. Her heart pounded against it, wings trembling at their forced extension. She tasked herself to calm and found it very difficult, listening to Raphael’s uneven steps as he approached. When she could sense him behind her, she opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder, past him, at Michael.

  The Archangel’s body was a silhouette, black against the dark blue sky; only his face was visible, lit by the spin of his halo.

  Asrial wet her lips and throat and said, “Look well, Archangel. You should remember this day.”

  “Quiet, traitor.”

  Raphael stroked her wing-arms with hands that trembled violently. Asrial closed her eyes and rested against the wood, her forehead several inches below the foot-rest.

  A lance of pain flared in her right wing, so intense Asrial saw spots and a black field. She had only just recovered her breath and blinked away the tears when the next came. And the next.

  “Avoid the blood feathers, Raphael.”

  “I’m trying! But they’re all bleeding!” Raphael shook. “Please, Michael! We’ll kill her!”

  “She’ll die anyway. Continue.”

  “No!”

  “Raphael,” Michael’s baritone softened. “Do you think God would let her bleed to death if He had wanted her to live?”

  The healer swallowed a sob. His hands lit on her back between her wings, resting there, before he resumed his grisly work. One by one, Raphael jerked her secondaries out, leaving gaping sockets dripping gold dust and droplets of gold blood. She could hear him gulping against his own tears.

  Asrial opened her eyes, found herself looking into the face of Tapheth who was steadying her right wing. His face had set into hard lines, but his eyes had the glazed horror of a soul in shock.

  By the last feather’s fall, Asrial dripped thin sweat into the cool predawn, her entire body slick and her hair drenched nearly auburn with its rivulets. The song of God’s creation was so loud in her ears that she felt faint. Her wings no longer had a distinct bottom edge: from the inner feather of her primaries to her spine, they were joined to the ground by a cobweb of thick golden blood.

  “Now,” Michael said, voice hoarse, “we hang her.”

  Raphael turned. “Please, Michael. Isn’t it enough? She’ll never fly. The blood loss alone… it’s meaningless.”

  “The abandonment of God and one's own demands the highest price. We will finish it.”

  Asrial focused with difficulty past the ache in her wrists and became aware through it that she must have thrown herself against her bonds during the ordeal. Something in his voice....

  “Oh, God, Michael, it’s so wrong!”

  “Is it?”

  “Leave—,” Asrial took a breath, willing her rib to allow her diaphragm to expand; “Leave him alone, Archangel.”

  Her voice was a tiny, thin thread, but from the sudden silence of the crowd, it was audible.

  “You dare address me?”

  “You will kill me one way or another,” Asrial said.

  She was unpre
pared to be torn from the cross and slammed to the ground. The stones bit into her flesh and the empty sockets on her wings, smearing her blood across the earth. Asrial whimpered, clenched her teeth against it as the sandaled feet drew near.

  “Sound grateful when you say that, Fallen. Your death will set you free.”

  There it was again... that note in his voice. The one she could not match to his words. Asrial opened an eye, wheezing. “Don’t do this, Archangel. Please.”

  Michael’s eyes thinned. He hesitated.

  “Don’t do this to us both,” she whispered.

  He grabbed her by her wing and threw her to the base of the cross. “Do not hold me in your mouth!” he cried out. He turned furiously from her. “Hammer her to it! And leave her there for the dawn to find dead!”

  Asrial couldn’t move. The rocks had ripped her skin apart across her belly and sides, and the pain drowned out God’s symphony. She barely felt the guard hoisting her to the top of the cross. They stretched her left arm across the bar, pulling her wing over the bar and behind it.

  Asrial stared blearily down to the end of her arm at the sullen glow of the nail in Tapheth’s hand. He refused to look at her; he pressed her palm open, centered the nail there, and sucked in a breath before knocking it through the flesh of her hand. And then the other side, wrenching her hands obscenely open, even the bones of her palms forced apart. Her wings, drawn over the bars of the cross and behind it, were nailed together to the back of the top of the vertical bar somewhere above her head—spread so the primaries arched reflexively into a mandorla, her remaining coverts a pitiful, sopping counterpoint.

  They untied the cords around her wrists once they finished. There was no need for them: in Heaven, even an angel without a halo, even one in Shamayim, the furthest layer from God, was too light to drag her own body down.

  After they secured her feet, the two withdrew desperately into the anonymity of the crowd.

  Michael faced her, stared up at her with mad, unblinking eyes. “And so you will remain until the sun disposes of you.”

  Asrial shook, mazed with pain. A satiny tear of blood dripped to the earth beneath her.

  Michael left and with him took the host that had watched in silence.