Niki Slobodian 04 - The Devil Was an Angel Read online

  The Devil

  Was

  An Angel

  by

  J.L. Murray

  Copyright © 2013 by J.L. Murray

  All Rights Reserved.

  First Kindle Edition published by Hellzapoppin Press, Honolulu Hawai'i.

  “He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.”

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  ONE

  “How'd you find me?” I said without turning.

  I knew who he was without looking. We had never met and we had never spoken. But the moment I heard the squeal of the door's hinges, I knew who it was. My father. My real father. Pineme. I finished my drink and set the glass carefully on the bar. He sat down beside me.

  “The Deep Blue Sea is supposed to be hidden,” I said.

  “This place?” he said. His voice was low and soft. Almost gentle. “Wasn't hard. You're my blood. And I can see through magic, especially angel magic. Even if I couldn't, I'd be able to find you anywhere. You're loud. Even in this chaotic world I can hear you.”

  I finally turned my head slowly to look at him. He was disheveled, but in an endearing way. His dark hair was gray at the temples and had been pulled back into a messy ponytail. He wore rumpled khakis and a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt. He looked like a middle-aged tourist on vacation in the wrong hemisphere. And he had dark eyes. Angel eyes. Like mine. Like Sam's.

  Thunder shook the walls. It had been raining all summer in the city. I swallowed thickly and reached for the bottle, pouring myself another and sloshing whiskey on the bar. “What do you mean I'm loud?” I said, trying to distract myself.

  He was watching me. “It's hard to explain,” he said.

  “Try.”

  He frowned. “It's a bit like your soul is screaming.”

  I snorted and took a drink. “I'm sure it is.”

  “This isn't going to bring him back,” said Pineme.

  “I know you're my father, but stop pretending that you know me,” I said. I glared at him. “You left us. Right after you shoved some unnatural god-power into me while I was in the womb. My mother died because of you.”

  “If I hadn't left, you both would have died, and much sooner.” There was an odd emptiness to his voice. “I have been trapped in the void since I left her. Since I left both of you. I had no idea they would find her. And you're right. It is my fault. It will haunt me for the rest of my life, as Samael's unmaking will haunt you. The guilt is killing you now, is it not?”

  “Don't say his name,” I said, my voice falling to a dangerous whisper. “Don't even speak of him.”

  “He'll never leave you. He's part of you now. I can feel him.”

  “That's creepy,” I said. I eyed him. “Why are you old? I thought angels didn't age.”

  “We age,” he said. “Very slowly, but we do grow older. My time in the Unsung made me old before my time, though. Thirty years in your world, but in the void it was an eternity.”

  “Seemed like an eternity here, too,” I said. I finished the drink and reached to pour another, but Pineme held the bottle. I looked at him, irritated.

  “Why are you here?” he said. “This place. Does it give you comfort? Because it was his?”

  “Nothing gives me comfort,” I said. “Everyone I know is dead or dying. Everyone but Bobby Gage, and he won't return my damn phone calls.”

  “You are Death now,” he said. “You will live for a very long time. Everyone you know will die.” His face softened. “I know this burden, and it is a painful one.”

  “Peachy. You're just a burst of sunshine.”

  “I know it's little comfort right now, but you have me,” he said. “I can help, if you'll let me.”

  “I'll keep that in mind,” I said.

  Pineme stood up, his movements a blur. Goddamn angels. He looked at me sadly for a moment, and I thought he would reach in for an awkward hug, but instead he just turned around and walked across the bar and out the door.

  I sat there in the silence, a bitter taste in my mouth. I pushed the empty glass away and it slid off the bar and shattered on the floor. The alcohol really didn't do as much for me anymore, not since Sam brought me back from the dead. But it dulled the sensation that I had been feeling day and night for over three months now. It was a pulling in my chest, but it was also an ache. It was anxiety and frustration and confusion all rolled up into a tight little gut-busting package. It came with my job now: Ushering the lost souls over to where they were supposed to be. When they didn't go, or they fought it, or they didn't cross over out of sheer spite or hatred or anger, I could feel it. It was like a damn dagger in my chest, and the only way to pull it out was to go to them. To tell them to cross over. Sometimes they needed a little push. Even if I just wanted to let them be, give them time to figure things out on their own, I couldn't. It hurt me when they didn't go. I could only feel that the world was not right, and that it was because they were not right.

  I remembered how exhausted Sam was at the end, when souls weren't crossing over. I couldn't imagine the constant pain and discomfort he must have felt. Michael had closed the way to Sheol, the resting place of the dead, and there had been thousands of spirits walking around in the end. Sam never complained. Not even once. Granted, he'd been doing this job for a few thousand years more than me, but he also was forced to appear as a nightmare whenever he was in the world. That appearance had been part of his agreement with Michael. I was at least allowed to look like myself, though I usually chose to remain invisible to the living. I had learned some tricks over the past months.

  Three months. That was how long it had been. Three months of grief. Three months of loneliness. Three months of guilt. But mostly guilt. I spent every day blaming myself, going over everything that happened, as if obsessing about it could change it from being my fault. But it was pointless. It was my fault that Michael started a war. My fault that Sasha had died. My fault that Sam sacrificed himself to clean up what I had almost destroyed.

  The numb bliss that the alcohol brought was fading fast. I could feel the pull again. This time I let it take me. If only to stop feeling sorry for myself. Pineme was right. It served no purpose.

  I looked around when my feet were on solid ground. I was on a narrow street wet with rain. The street sign was inscribed with strange symbols, Russian maybe. Whatever they were, I couldn't read them. The pull was irresistible now that I was so close. I walked toward the source: a quaint little house on the corner. I could see by the streetlights that it had tidy white shutters. The house was dark, but the door was open. That wasn't a good sign.

  I walked in and the smell of blood hit me right away. I'd grown used to it, but it always made me feel a little sick. I'd seen far too much of it lately. I didn't know if it was the riots spreading across the globe to protest New Government, or maybe just the tension of a regime on its last legs, but it seemed that all the people had gone crazy. I'd seen three families slaughtered in the last week alone, families that lived thousands of miles apart. I looked around the room at the carnage a
nd closed my eyes for a moment. Make that four.

  The small room was covered in blood and gore. The smell of burning skin and hair hung thick and greasy in the air. I looked over at the small fireplace, still glowing with embers, and saw why. What was left of a person's head, lying half in the grate, burned and bubbled into charred blackness. It had been a man once. I saw the rest of his body crumpled against the wall. Even half-burnt, I could see that his face had been brutally smashed .

  I made my way to the narrow staircase, the steps creaking ruefully as I went. I could hear the sound of a woman crying. Noting the framed photographs as I went up the stairs I groaned. Happy family pictures. Three children, rosy-cheeked and dark-haired, at the beach, with a picnic blanket spread on the grass, laughing in the snow. There were so many pictures, all crowding for space in the scant amount of wall. I knew the spirit would be the mother. It was always the mother.

  I reached the top of the stairs and followed the sobbing. I could feel her in my chest. Even if she'd been completely silent, I could have tracked her from the blood on the doorknob. It had dried, turning reddish brown and flaking away when I touched it. A matching bootprint stained the thin carpet in the hallway. I braced myself before I entered. I understood why some of the angels hated humans. After mere months of working as Death, I almost hated them too.

  But when I opened the door and saw a wisp of a woman crumpled on the floor next to her dead children, I knew I didn't hate all humans. Just the shitty ones. Just the ones who were capable of things like this.

  Four bodies filled the tiny room. Three small ones, and a woman's body that looked like she had been killed trying to protect the others. All of their faces had been smashed into pulp. There was so much blood that it pooled above the carpet. The woman's ghost was rocking back and forth. She was whispering to herself, sounding half-mad in a language I didn't understand. I crouched next to her, my boots sloshing in the thick wetness. I tried not to look at the kids, but I could see a pink hair ribbon out of the corner of my eye. I looked down to see it attached to a dark braid. It had been ripped out. I swallowed a gag.

  Taking a breath and trying to ignore the warm coppery smell that filled my mouth and nose, I looked to the woman's ghost.

  “I'm so sorry,” I said. “It shouldn't have to end this way. Not for anyone.”

  She looked at me, startled. Realization filled her eyes. They always knew me. I didn't need a death-mask for them to know who I was. She shook her head and words tumbled rapidly from her mouth, so fast I couldn't even make out the syllables. Then she closed her eyes and started whispering again. I realized she was praying. It would be a relief for her. She would never forget any of this, but at least I could bring her some small amount of peace.

  I reached out my hand and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She was still praying as she went, becoming a series of whirlwinds that would be invisible to any human but me. I closed my eyes at the thought. I wasn't human anymore. I was as far from human as it was possible to be. I was Death.

  I had some catching up to do after my little respite of whiskey at the Deep Blue Sea. A pair of teenage kids who looked like brother and sister crashed their SUV into a tree. Their dead bodies reeked of alcohol. The girl's ghost just shook her head at me, uncomprehending.

  “Is that it?” said the boy in a panicky voice. “Is that all we get?”

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “No one gets a do-over.” Except for me. But I couldn't tell him that.

  “Shit,” he said.

  An old man in a stone cottage stared vacantly at an old woman asleep in a rocking chair. His body slumped, not yet discovered, next to a coal-burning stove. He reached out to touch the woman's wispy white hair that fell down her shoulders. He looked up at me when I came in.

  “Who will care for my Maggie?” he said, in a gravelly brogue. “She'll die without me.”

  “You'll soon be together again,” I said gently. That seemed to give him comfort and he almost smiled as he crossed over.

  The feeling was starting to dissipate. The pain was receding with each soul that I helped. I was nearly done for the night, I could feel it. It would be nice to tumble into bed and get at least a few minutes' sleep before the feeling started again. The pain. The pull that haunted me like a knife in the back that I couldn't quite reach.

  A man with ebony skin in a ramshackle church pleaded with me in his language. His body lay behind the pulpit with bullet holes peppering his suit. All I could ever say was, “I'm sorry.” It seemed so insubstantial, yet it was the only thing I could say. And sometimes it was enough. Some spirits just needed to hear someone else comment on the unfairness of what had happened to them. And if it wasn't enough, at least I could let them sleep with a touch. But each one left me more and more drained. It wasn't physical, from what I could tell. It was as if I could feel each death as my own. Each death was personal. I didn't want it to be, but I couldn't do it any other way.

  At last, I found myself at the final stop for the night. One more soul and then sleep. It was a hospital. I'd been to so many hospitals over the past weeks that they all started to look the same to me. But there was something about this one. Something familiar.

  I walked along, feeling the pull urging me forward. I recognized a heavy nurse in scrubs, but I couldn't remember exactly how I knew her. She had ducked into an darkened hallway and was leaning against the wall. She had her fingers pressed against her sinuses, like she was trying not to cry. She looked towards me suddenly, startled, but looked right through me. She couldn't see me, but she probably sensed me. And then I recognized this hospital as the one near my neighborhood. Where Sofi's nurse worked. Where Sofi was.

  I felt my heart beating a rhythm in the back of my skull. I looked in the direction I was being pulled. Down the wide hall a man stood silhouetted against the window, slouching, his belly sticking out. He ran a hand through his hair. Even at this distance, I knew he was balding, with a goatee and red hair going gray. Lou Craig. I walked slowly, so slowly that the pressure was almost too much. Like my heart was being ripped out.

  A larger man came from the other direction and joined Lou. He put a comforting hand on the shorter, heavier man's shoulder. I saw Lou shake his head.

  “Bobby?” I said under my breath. I could hear the rumbles of their voices, and if it was possible to stop right there I would have. Anything not to hear, anything not to know. But the pulling didn't give me a choice. I was too close now.

  Sofi never woke up. The doctors said it was the cancer, but the doctors didn't know that Michael put the world to sleep to fight his stupid war. Bobby Gage moved my godmother out of the city with magic, moved her whole apartment to keep her safe, and after Michael was killed and the war ended, Bobby moved the building back, too, just as if it had never budged. Not a single crack in the foundation. But it didn't really matter whether it was Bobby's casting, Michael's magic, or the disease that kept her asleep. I didn't care, I just wanted her back. She was my baba, the woman who had raised me. She was the reason I kept returning to humanity, the reason I kept living. Sofi was the person that kept me human. I couldn't think of life without her.

  I was close enough to hear the men talking now, I could make out their words.

  “...couldn't get a hold of her. She's not answering her phone. I've tried about a dozen times. I didn't know who else to call.” Lou's face was pale with patches of bright pink on his cheeks and nose. He shook his head. “The docs worked on her for over an hour. There was nothing they could do. They said her body just gave out.”

  “You did good, Lou,” said Bobby, his voice a deep rumble. He had a full beard now and his hair, usually messy and flopping around his ears, had grown past his collar. He pushed it off his forehead. He had a big bruise on his forehead. His army surplus jacket, which could have doubled as a tent for a normal-sized person, was ripped at one shoulder. His eyes were bruised and puffy, as if he hadn't slept in days. “I'll take you home, okay? Your daughter probably misses you.”

 
Lou nodded emptily. He looked back toward the room behind him and shook his head sadly. “This is going to kill her, you know. That lady meant the world to her. She was the only family Niki had left.”

  Bobby nodded solemnly. “Guess we'll have to be her family now.” He looked quickly toward me, searching the air around me. After a moment he turned back to Lou. “Let's go. Nothing else to do here.”

  I watched them go, Bobby patting Craig on the back gently as they went. When they turned a corner and I couldn't see them anymore, I turned shakily toward the room. The door was open and I could see her in the bed, the pale green blanket tucked neatly around her. I took a step toward the doorway and saw the blanket covering her head too. Maybe it wasn't Sofi under there. Maybe they made a mistake.

  But as I took the last slow step through the door, I saw her spirit, sitting in an ugly pink padded chair, waiting for me. “No,” I said, the word catching in my throat. “No, Sofi. Not you.”

  “I knew it would be you, Nikita. It broke my heart to know, but it was always going to be you. I dreamed of you being the one to come for me. So long ago I had that dream. I had wondered if it was a vision. Now I know it was true.”

  I couldn't go to her. I couldn't touch her or she would disappear in front of my eyes. And I wasn't ready. I stepped away from her, backing into the wall and letting myself slide to the floor. I stayed there, the cold tile seeping through my jeans and making my skin cold. I hugged my knees as I had done as a child.

  “I have so much to tell you,” I said. “There's so much for us to talk about. I'm not ready for you to go.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  “You?” she said. “Not ready? I hardly believe my ears. Just look at you. Angel eyes. Brought back from the dead. Taking over for Death. Don't look surprised, I have seen it all. Did you think the visions would stop just because I was asleep?” She clucked her tongue. “You can handle anything, Nikita. You always could.” She smiled sadly. “Such a strong girl. But sometimes you make yourself fragile, I think.” The smile disappeared and her face fell. I thought maybe she would cry. But she didn't. She wrung her hands. “Please promise that you won't let this break you.”