by Ireland Gill
I smiled. “Yours are black, too?”
“Yup,” he bobbed his head and slung his over-packed book bag onto his shoulders. “See you guys soon.” And then he was out of sight, right from his stance in the living room. I smiled as I kept staring at the place he had once been standing, still amazed with the means of travel for angels.
“Earth to the rainmaker,” Hayden said through his fists like a megaphone.
“Huh?” I turned to him. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Just wondered if you want your usual on the pizza.”
“Oh?” I turned to him and smirked. “And what is my usual, Angel-man?”
His brow cocked. “Are you testing me?”
“Would seem that way.” I poked with a laugh. He gave me his best you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. I really don't know what I was thinking. I knew he knew.
“So, here's the deal,” Hayden started, “I'll order the pizza...with pepperoni and mushrooms, while you go and grab that leather for me that you have hidden amongst your bags of secrets.”
“Are you sure we won't have any more interruptions today?” I was doubtful.
“Other than Luka coming back over this evening, we are free and clear of any more angel visits. Although, I can't speak for the potentially nosy neighbors. They may drop by with welcoming Jell-o salads for all we know.” He laughed.
“Speaking of food, when are we going grocery shopping?”
He smirked at me. “I was thinking I could do the shopping in the morning. Luka can stay here to look after you. But....” here it came, “I'll need the keys to the pony.”
I folded my arms and cocked an eyebrow. “I don't know, Darkwing. Are you sure you're ready for Aurora?”
Hayden looked at me incredulously. “Aurora? Oh, please don't tell me you've fallen into the world of the people who name their cars.”
“No, Hayden. I fell off of a nine-story building straight into the world amongst the living and the dead. Hardee-har-har. But, yes, I did name the car Aurora.” I grinned at him. “Get it? A-roar-a?” I couldn't contain my laughter. “She's got a mean engine.”
He shook his head at me, but finally gave in and joined in with my laughter. “You've completely lost it, haven't you?”
I stuck out my tongue and headed upstairs. “Hey, naming my car is just about the most normal thing about me anymore. And anyway, you better watch it, or I'll make it rain on you,” I called down the stairwell. But after saying that last part aloud, I wasn't so sure how funny it really was. It was more of a disturbing fact, that I could actually make it rain.
Hayden absolutely loved his new leather, and my heart swelled when I saw the huge smile on his face once he put it on. You would have thought he'd never been given a gift in his entire life. But, on second thought, I guess that didn't seem so unrealistic since he'd never had a childhood, or actual parents or family other than the Council. He checked himself out in the hallway mirror, admiring that jacket. I'd actually gotten him something that suited him perfectly. Once I saw Hayden give me that five-hundred watter and rip those tags off, it was one more thing that added to the list my heart was making; the list of reasons why I was falling in love with him. And when he said, “you did good, Pony-girl. It's perfect,” I melted into a puddle of giddy moosh.
Dusk was finally approaching by the time our pizza came. I brought up my shock over Elka's pink wings again because, of course, I still couldn't get over the fact that it was even a possibility. But even though black was still the most shocking color I'd seen thus far, I was still holding on to meeting a gray-winged angel.
Just about the time we were finished eating, Hayden's head perked up as if he sensed something. A mild grin grew on his face.
“What?” I inquired.
“Luka's here with your present.” That grin grew wider.
“You must know what it is, I'm assuming?” I pried.
“You assume right, Pony-girl.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on. We need to go outside.”
We walked out to the front of the house. The sky was coated with the most amazing oranges and yellows along the tree line and above. I noticed the grass was still a bit damp from my rainstorm; I rolled my eyes at what a pain the new gift was going to be until I learned to control it. Then I saw Luka approaching and all I could do was smile. He was, yet again, appearing out of nowhere and sporting another new t-shirt; light gray with black print: “After I saw the seven wonders of the world, I started looking for the eighth. I stopped looking when I found a mirror.”
“Charming,” Hayden muttered.
I just laughed. Luka was obviously embracing his trial time with no human to guard. “Lukster, you're back!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, the little man came back to the H.O.C. A few hours ago, so I figured you were done with dinner and ready for my visit,” Luka said.
Little man, I thought. “Jeez, between the two of you, that kid probably has a complex,” I said.
“He's a hundred and forty-two years old,” Luka said defensively.
“So I've heard,” I shook my head and smirked. “So, why are we outside, anyway?”
A grin grew on Luka's face when I asked the question. He looked at Hayden, who mirrored the same expression.
“Well,” Luka started, “remember when I said I had a housewarming gift for you?”
“Yeeaaaahhh.” My curiosity grew.
“It's more like a life-warming gift, per se,” Luka explained.
“Life-warming?” I was baffled.
“He worked really hard to get this done for you,” Hayden stole my attention. “And kinda had to break some rules.”
I sucked air and my head jerked to Luka. “You broke rules?”
“Hey,” Luka put his hands up and pointed to Hayden, “he is just as much a culprit as I am, I swear.”
“Right,” I played along. “Is that a pig flying up there above your head? Oh yeah, I think it is.” Luka laughed at me. Rules are rules, according to Hayden, and he followed them to a “T.”
Hayden folded his arms and gave me a smug look. “Okay, Luka, I think we better show her now. Her doubt in this is rather hurtful,” he said tauntingly.
I sighed, awaiting what those boys had planned for me. I watched Luka put his fingers to his mouth and whistle one of those cool, loud ones that I could never, ever do. I saw that his eyes focused on the side of the house, so I turned to see what was coming. I heard the familiar bark of a dog and discovered the animal from which it came. A collie-shepherd mix dog stopped and wagged its tail, not even ten feet from me, cocking its head with ears perked. That was when my knees slammed hard to the ground. I felt my jaw drop, and I tried to focus better. It just couldn't be.
“Is th-th-that....?” I wasn't sure how to ask what I wanted to know.
“Beau! Come here, boy,” Luka called to the dog, hunched over, clapping his knees. The dog trotted over to him, happily jumping up onto him and wagging that fan of a tail, being the same playful canine I always remembered.
I gasped as I observed the dog's every detail. Everything was identical. Everything. How could it be? There was just no way it was possible. No way. It wasn't him. It wasn't the same dog. It just couldn't be.
I hadn't noticed Hayden walk over, but he was right next to me, kneeling just as I was in that damp grass. “The nature harmon is a very powerful angel, Evika,” he said to me. I kept staring at the dog, who was now rolling around on his back, panting, as Luka scratched his hairy belly.
I could hardly find my voice. “Is it really him?” I asked in disbelief.
“Bona fide and certified, down to the last collie-shepherd hair on his tail,” Luka answered me. He got the dog to stand on all fours and tapped his behind. “Beau, go see Evika. Go on,” he waved the dog my way.
With those ears perked up, dark brown eyes wide open, tail wagging, my dog darted over to greet me with one-hundred licks of his tongue. He kissed my face as if I'd just come home from school, just like he used to do. I smelled him, inhaling and exh
aling slowly. It was that doggie-shampoo smell – like the one they smell like after a day at the pet-spa – mixed with the scent of rain. And that was when I broke down.
I threw my arms around him and squeezed his thick, hairy neck. My tears fell hard when I realized he was actually there. It was unfathomable. I was touching him again. I could feel him, smell him, nuzzle my face into his soft, brown and golden hair. He was my dog, my Beau.
“How can this be? How is this even possible?” I cried as a list of questions kept recoiling through my mind and shooting from my lips. I didn't even know which ones to ask first.
Luka smiled proudly at me and Beau. “Let's just say this is a one-time deal and I probably couldn't get away with it again.” He laughed.
I looked over my dog in amazement, feeling the shape of his body while he sat patiently, letting me poke and prod. I gazed into his big, brown eyes as he panted. “It's really you, isn't it, boy?” I whispered to him. He brought his nose to my face and started sniffing, then dove down into my lap playfully, nibbling at my hands to get me to move them. Then he lifted his head to get me to notice something. I finally saw it dangling around his neck. It was a dark blue collar with a silver dog bone tag catching the light of the porch. My hands raised to the tag. It had Beau's name engraved on it, with our new home address underneath.
“Omigod,” I choked out, looking up at Luka in amazement.
Luka shrugged. “It's only to make it official, really. You won't need it for him. He'll never run off,” he said.
“I don't get it, Luka,” I said. “How did you do it?”
“Evigreen, every animal is part of nature. Their souls belong to the World of Light. Always. They don't have a choice like we do. They just are. There is no dark realm for them. They are innocents, pure spirits produced by the Creator, Himself,” Luka explained. “Beau is not exactly....” he paused briefly to decipher his next word, “alive. I've just relocated him, pulled him out of the other world and put him in ours.”
“You mean, he's like a ghost-dog now?” I inquired as I watched Beau skip over to Hayden. He covered every inch of Hayden's face with licks of his tongue. I smiled and cried at the same time when I saw Hayden let him continue, rustling my dog's hair and squeezing his face, talking to him in that silly voice people use when they tell an animal how cute they are. It made me melt all over again.
“Well,” Luka thought for a moment, “yeah. When he's here with you, he'll be a constant, like Hayden. Constant, as in, everyone can see him, but I'm sort of his Guardian-slash-caretaker-slash-trainer now,” Luka explained, “so as long as he's with me, he can go where I go. I've sort of been working with him, training him on the ins and outs of this lifestyle. He's the same Beau, just new and improved.” Luka laughed.
I stood slowly to my feet, looking at Luka admiringly. “Luka, you didn't have to do this for me.”
He took a deep breath. “Evika,” he said, tucking his hands into his jeans' front pockets and walking over to me, “ever since this whole new life started, I know that you've been losing a lot of the past that you'd like to keep.” He shrugged. “This was the one thing I could do to bring some of it back for you.”
I saw that seriousness in those sky blue eyes again, the same kind I saw in them when we'd gone out the last time, the same kind I saw in them when he stood guard during my first save. I stepped forward and wound my arms around his neck, letting his new shirt catch my tears of joy.
“Thank you, Luka,” I choked out.
4
Line ‘em Up, Knock ‘em Down
The dreams came, the bad ones, the kind that only the most creative mind could conjure. Or, maybe I mean the kind that only my mind could conjure. The kind from which you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, clutching your chest to get your heart to stop trying to break through your sternum. Then you gather up the sheets and blankets on the bed, holding them close as you assess your room to convince yourself that it was, in fact, only a dream. I knew those kinds of dreams all too well and the fact that the reality from which they originated was enough while I was awake, it was really killing me to have to go to sleep and see the same things, the replay of all of the messes I had to see after saving the Seekers.
One of the worst dreams I had was of the last Seeker I saved for the week, Edgar Peyton. He'd raped, kidnapped and killed seventeen women. And the murders were brutal. At first, his technique was just breaking their necks or drugging them, then weighing them down to let the corpses sink to the bottom of some random lake. But later, he became more creative in taking their lives. He'd choke them with fishing line, gag them, bind them, and drown them in his laundry tub. And things got messy after a while. He started to become careless and reckless. He buried one of them alive before the drugs wore off. He even went as far as skinning one of the girls' legs and letting her bleed to death in his basement. It was the most horrifying thing I'd ever seen. What do you do when you can't shut your eyes to stop from seeing the images? But, even then, how do you train your mind never to see the images again? How is it possible to rid these things from your mind once they've been etched in there indefinitely?
The worst part about all of it: he died of a heart attack in his prison cell two days before his death sentence. It was an easy death for me, fortunately, but his infamous legacy was something I could never forget.
The most horrifying dream I had was of Edgar chasing me down. It was late at night while I ran through the woods and, after a short effort of pursuit, he finally caught up with me and attempted every one of his tactics. But the worst thing was, I wouldn't die. He was getting frustrated with me, consistently beating me across the head with anything he could find on the ground. During this entire time of torture, I couldn't speak. I couldn't even move. I just kept heaving breaths, trying to scream, terrified out of my mind.
Soon, Edgar vanished, but I was still incapacitated on the ground, in a pile of mud and soggy leaves. I looked at my surroundings, all the same, but the sun was rising. It was no longer night. The ball of fire rose above the horizon and turned completely white. The light illuminated the forest and should have been blinding to the naked eye, but I stared at it, unscathed. As I kept my eye on this strange ball of light, a figure started to form, one that I'd already seen once before. The dark form approached me slowly, spreading its wings and cocking its head. It was close enough that I could see its arms stretched out to me, its yellow eyes looking into mine so desperately. Up until then, I thought it was a Drone, but after seeing its gray face and eyes turning black, I knew it was the Watcher I'd met.
I lay there, paralyzed, as he reached out to me, the endless, white light still blazing behind him. What did it mean? Why was it coming from a source of light? It was supposed to be a dark creature. I became confused and anxious when its claws finally reached near my face. Then, his eyes were completely black.
“Tenebrae,” its voice hissed out. It was clearer than the first time it spoke to me in the streets the night Hayden was fighting the Drone.
All I could do was wonder where my angel was, like I did in every one of the nightmares that became my world after dark. Where was he? I'd ached for him whenever he was gone, and this dream was no different. Except, this time, the moment I wondered so desperately where Hayden was, he appeared behind the Watcher, beautiful black wings spread as he stood seething with wrath. He wrapped his arms around the creature and squeezed tightly, screaming with such rage, power. His booming vocals echoed through the trees and made the ground rumble. The Watcher burst into a massive cloud of smoke and dust, the delicate remains falling to the ground at Hayden's feet. The enemy was gone, and so was the blinding light. It was dark once again.
My angel's breathing was heavy as he placed his arms back to his sides and slowly looked over at me with an expression of hurt and anger. I stared back into his eyes, feeling safe again, waiting for him to come lift me into his arms and carry me home. But he didn't. He disappeared into thin air and left me there, wounded and lying on
the ground.
That was when I awoke, panting and immediately feeling around my face, my chest, anything, checking for the damages that felt so real. I panned my eyes around the dark room, and sat up, finally realizing it was all another nightmare. I felt around in the drawer of my nightstand for the pack of Marlboro Lights I'd purchased at the beginning of the week. There were only a few left. Yes, the dreams came, and the habit was back. Smoking was a vice that helped me through the rationalizing phase that I had to do after each nightmare.
I popped a cigarette in my mouth and lit the end. The smell of the sulfur from the lit match was soothing. I took a drag and inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke out slowly as I looked around the room once again, my eyes finally adjusting to the darkness.
It was a good ten seconds before I saw him sitting at the edge of the bed, his back to me, head down. There was no time to put out the cigarette then. What was the point? I'd been caught red-handed. I tried to compose myself as I leaned over to see his face, his sullen eyes gazing at the floor.
“Why haven't you told me?” he asked in a soft, disappointed tone.
I was confused. He could have meant anything. “Told you what?” I said nonchalantly as I took one last drag and regretfully tossed the cigarette in the cup of water next to the lamp. “So, I started smoking again. Big deal. At least it's not Yager, right?”
He turned and looked at me with such scrutiny, but the sadness behind his eyes was even more prominent. “These dreams, Evika,” he said, frustrated. “I've been entering into them for days now and, every night, you've been enduring these nightmares. Why wouldn't you tell me about these dreams?”
I narrowed my eyes, realizing that the last part of my dream was really him saving me from the dangerous figments I'd created just before I woke. I lay back down and rolled away from him, angry that he'd done it, meddled in my head. But honestly, I'd been warned. I knew he was capable of it and I should have known better. Nonetheless, I felt stripped of all of my privacy, weak and tired from the loss of sleep. I was straight up miserable.