The Fallen

CHAPTER SEVEN

Within the unused bell tower of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Verchiel stared into the familiar face of human mortality. Since the Powers’ return from the poisonous wasteland that was Chernobyl, their human tracker had fallen terribly ill. The poor creature lay upon a plastic tarp in a darkened area of the tower where once a bell had hung. It shivered, moaning softly as it slowly died from the radioactive poisons it had been exposed to on their last hunt.

“Is there nothing more you can do for it?” Verchiel asked the human healer who was administering to the wounded Cassiel.

The healer, called Kraus, turned his blind, cataract-covered eyes toward the sound of Verchiel’s voice.

“I’ve done all I can, my master,” he said as he nimbly plucked a golden needle from inside a worn leather satchel and deftly placed a thick thread through its eye. His lack of vision had not affected his skill with a needle. “It won’t be long before he succumbs to—”

“Its skill served me well,” the Powers’ leader interrupted, taking his eyes from the dying boy covered in black oozing sores. “It will be bothersome to find another.”

Verchiel moved across the cluttered tower, its space now used for storage, to loom over the healer and his current patient, the boy almost completely forgotten. “And you, Cassiel,” he asked smoothly, “have you served me as well?”

“Yes, my lord,” Cassiel answered breathlessly as he lay upon the dusty floor while the blind old man sewed closed his wound.

“You say that Camael was there before you?” Verchiel asked as he watched the old man, whose job it was to care for the angels’ physical forms, pull shut the wound in his soldier’s chest with skillful stitches. Though primitive by angelic standards, the human apes did occasionally surprise even him with their usefulness.

Verchiel squatted beside the healer as he completed the task. “He will heal?” Verchiel asked. “The wound will not kill him?”

Kraus flinched from the power of Verchiel’s voice. “It…it will not,” the man stammered as he turned his blind gaze toward his master. “The injury will need time to mend, but it will heal.”

What is it about the defective ones, the blind, the mentally challenged, that makes them such superior servants? Verchiel wondered, thinking of the nonimpaired humans often driven to madness just by being in the angels’ presence.

“You are done here,” Verchiel proclaimed, and gently brushed the top of the older man’s head with the tips of his fingers. “See to the tracker; ease him into death if need be.’

The man gasped aloud, his body trembling as if in rapture, as if touched by God—or the next best thing. Kraus folded shut his satchel of healing instruments and scurried away to the darkened corner to help a dying member of his own breed.

Perhaps their imperfections make them more receptive to the extraordinary. It was a hypothesis Verchiel hoped to explore further someday, when their mission was finally complete. He roused himself from his contemplation. There was still much to do.

“The Nephilim I sense so keenly—what information have you brought of him?” Verchiel asked Cassiel, who still lay upon the wooden floor.

“I bring information about Camael,” Cassiel said eagerly. “Living amongst the apes has made him frail and weak. It…it can only be a matter of time before we destroy the traitor and…”

“Frail and weak, you say?” Verchiel asked, a sour smile upon his thin lips. In the church below, Mass was beginning with the sound of a pipe organ. The melodious chords of a hymn drifted up into the bell tower. The music annoyed him. “But not so frail and weak as to prevent him from slaying Hadriel and gravely wounding you?”

Cassiel squirmed, struggling to sit up. “The…the space was cramped and there was blinding smoke. Please…”

The music from the church below came to an end and the murmuring of prayer began.

“So you bring me nothing of the half-breed?”

Cassiel pushed himself into a sitting position. A dark fluid began to seep from around the wound’s stitching as his movements pulled them taut. “The fire…it was burning out of control and Camael was already present. There was little we could do…”

The piteous words of his soldier enraged Verchiel almost as much as the monkeys’ attempts to speak with God drifting up from the ceremony in the church below. Verchiel reached down to Cassiel’s wound and dug his fingers beneath the stitching.

Cassiel screamed.

“Silence,” Verchiel spat as he tore the thick, black thread away from the angel’s flesh.

How dare they think they can speak to Him, he thought, revolted by the worshippers praying in the church below. If the Lord God will not speak with me, then why do they have the audacity to believe that He would listen to their pathetic chatter? Verchiel thought, perturbed. He cast aside the surgical thread and bits of torn skin that dangled from it.

Cassiel lay silently writhing upon the floor, his wound now gaping wide, and weeping.

“You failed me,” Verchiel growled as he picked Cassiel up from the floor and held him aloft. “And I do not deal well with failure.”

The organ played again and the monkeys were singing. Why do they insist on doing that? he wondered. Did they believe that the discordant sounds from their primitive mouths would please the Creator, He who had orchestrated the symphony of creation?

Cassiel flapped his wings as he struggled in his leader’s grasp. “Master Verchiel…mercy,” he wheezed.

Verchiel needed to hear something other than the animals’ wailing below, something that would calm his frenzied state. Holding Cassiel by the throat, he reached out and grabbed one of his soldier’s wings.

“Please…no,” Cassiel pleaded.

Verchiel took the delicate appendage in his hand and began to bend it, to twist it. The sound was horrible—sharp—as the cartilage gave way beneath his grip. The angel was screaming, begging and crying to be forgiven for his trespasses.

Verchiel let Cassiel drop from his hands. The angel sobbed, his wing twisted at an obscene angle.

“Administer to him,” Verchiel barked, knowing that the healer was listening from the shadows, waiting to serve. “Disappoint me again, and I’ll tear them both from your body,” Verchiel instructed Cassiel as he turned his back upon him.

He had decided to be merciful; it was what the Creator would have done.

Aaron was dreaming again.

An old man with a milky white eye is using a pointed stick to write on a tablet made of red clay.

Aaron looks around at his surroundings. Where the hell am I? he wonders. He is in a single-room structure, a hut, and it appears to be made out of straw and large mud bricks. Primitive oil lamps placed around the room provide the only source of light. It stinks of body odor and urine.

The old man is deathly thin, his hair and beard incredibly long. There are things living in the wild expanse of his hair. He finishes a symbol on the clay tablet and slowly raises his shaggy head to Aaron.

He points the writing instrument and in a guttural tongue he speaks. “It is you I see in the future—you I write of now.”

The bad eye rolls obscenely in the right socket, and Aaron cannot help but think of the moon.

The old man reaches down with a skeletal hand covered in a thin, almost translucent layer of spotted skin and turns the tablet so Aaron can see—so he can read.

Gazing down at the primitive script, Aaron knows what the man has written. It is a prediction of some kind, something about the union of angel and mortal woman, creating a bridge for those who have fallen.

What the heck does that mean? he wonders. He starts to speak but stops, interrupted by screams from outside the hovel, and something else.

The old man stares at him and slowly brings a hand up to cover the bad eye. “Go now,” he whispers. “You have seen your destiny. Now you must fulfill it.”

Cries of fear are moving closer, and there is another sound in the air—a now familiar sound that fills him with dread.

The pounding sound of wings.

Aaron came awake with a choking gasp. His heart raced and his body crawled with nervous perspiration.

He could still hear wings flapping, and then they were silent.

Gabriel, lying beside him atop the covers, had also awakened and was staring at him.

“Did I wake you, boy?” Aaron asked groggily as he reached out from under the bedclothes and stroked the dog’s head. “Sorry, bad dreams again.”

As he patted the dog he felt himself begin to calm, his pulse rate slow. Gabriel was as good as a tranquilizer.

The dog licked his hand affectionately. “The old man was scary, wasn’t he?” Gabriel said, nuzzling closer.

“Old man? You mean Zeke, Gabe?” Aaron asked, eyes beginning to close, still patting the velvety fur that covered the dog’s hard head.

The dog turned his gaze to him. “No, not Zeke,” he answered, “the old man in the dream. He scared me, too.”

It hit him with the force of a pile driver. Aaron struggled beneath the sheets and blanket into a sitting position. He reached over and turned on the bedside light.

“How do you know about the old man in the dream, Gabriel?” Aaron asked, terrified by what the answer might be.

“I dreamed it,” the dog answered proudly. His tail thumped happily. “I have different dreams now, not just running and jumping and chasing rabbits.”

Aaron leaned back and let his head bounce off the wooden headboard. “I can’t believe this. You had the same dream as I did?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Why did his eye look like the moon, Aaron?”

Aaron felt as though he were on a roller coaster, perpetually plunging farther and farther into darkness, picking up speed, with no sign of the horrific ride’s end.

And there was nothing he wanted more than to get off.

“Please make it stop,” he whispered.

Gabriel crawled closer and lay his chin upon Aaron’s leg. “It’s all right, Aaron,” the dog said devotedly. “Don’t be sad.”

Aaron opened his eyes and began to pat the dog again. “It’s not all right, Gabe. Everything is spinning out of control. What’s happening to me—what’s happened to you, it…isn’t right.”

Gabriel pushed himself into a sitting position and pressed his butt against his master. “I was hurt very badly and you made me better,” the dog said with a tilt of his head. “Are you upset that I’m…different now?”

Aaron looked his best friend in the eyes and shook his head. “No, I’m not upset about that. Matter of fact, that’s the only thing about this business that I’m willing to get used to.” He reached out and stroked the side of the dog’s head. “It’s everything else—the bizarro dreams, the stuff Zeke’s been telling me…”

He leaned back against the headboard again and sighed with exasperation. “I don’t want this, Gabriel. I have enough to worry about. I have to finish high school with a decent enough GPA to get into a good college.”

“GPA?” the dog questioned. “What is this GPA?”

“Grade point average,” Aaron explained. “Doing very, very well in my classes at school.”

Gabriel nodded in understanding.

“All this crap about angels and Nephilim—I don’t care if it’s true, I just can’t deal with it.” At that moment Aaron made a decision. “I’m gonna tell Zeke I’m done. I don’t want to know anything else. Everything is going to be just like it was before my birthday.”

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was close to four A.M. and he wanted to go back to sleep; he was both mentally and physically exhausted. But he also feared the dreams.

“Well, let’s give this another try,” he said as he reached over and switched off the light. He lay his head down on the pillow and put his arm around the dog.

“Good night, Aaron,” Gabriel said as he moved up to share the pillow. “Try and dream only good dreams.”

“I’ll do my best, pal,” Aaron answered, and before long, fell into a deep sleep active with dreams, not of old men, ancient prophecies, and angels, but of running very fast in the sunshine and chasing rabbits.

Verchiel noiselessly descended the winding wooden steps from the bell tower of the Blessed Sacrament Church. The stairway was enshrouded in total darkness, but it meant nothing to a being that had navigated the void before the Almighty brought about the light of Creation.

At the foot of the stairs was a locked door, and Verchiel willed the simple mechanism to open, and it swung wide to admit him to the place of worship. The angel found his way from the back room where the holy men prepared themselves to address their tribe, and went out onto the altar. He gazed above him at the steepled ceiling and the giant cross of gold, the symbol of their faith, hanging there. From his place on the altar, he looked out at the church, the early morning sunrise diluted by colorful stained glass windows. There was a certain peacefulness here that he did not expect from the animals.

Verchiel stepped from the altar and strode down the aisle. When he had traveled half the length of the church, he turned to face the great hanging cross. This was how the primitives did it, he mused, taking in the sight before him. This was how they attempted to communicate with God.

He recalled the countless times that he scoffed at their crude practices, as they built their altars of stone and wood and attempted to speak to the one true God through the act of prayer. It was a thought that filled him with unease, but perhaps this house of worship was where he could re-establish his connection with Heaven and again converse with the Creator of all things.

He recalled how they did it—how they prayed—and moved into one of the wooden pews. Awkwardly Verchiel knelt down and folded his hands before him, his dark eyes upon the altar ahead.

“It is I, Lord,” he uttered in the language of animals. “It has been too long since we last spoke, and I am in need of Your guidance.”

The angel gazed around the holy place for signs that he was being heard. There was nothing but the fading echo of his own voice.

Perhaps if he were closer. He left the pew and strode back to the altar.

“My mission, my very reason for existence, grows murky these days.”

He gazed intently at the golden cross, hanging in the air above.

“There is a prophecy of which I’m certain You are aware. It talks about forgiveness and mercy for those who have fallen from Your grace, oh Heavenly Father.”

Verchiel began to pace in front of the altar.

“It says that You will forgive them their most horrid trespasses—and that there will be a prophet of sorts, one who will act as the bringer of absolution.”

He was growing agitated, angry. The air around him crackled with suppressed hostility. “And he will be a Nephilim,” Verchiel spat, reviled by the word. “A Nephilim, a creature unfit to live beneath Your gaze, a mockery of life that I have done my best to eradicate from Your world with fire and flood.”

The angel stopped pacing. “The wicked say that the time for the prophecy is nigh, that soon a bridge between the fallen angels and Heaven will be established.” He moved up onto the altar, his gaze never wavering from the golden symbol. “You need to tell me, Lord. Do I follow my instincts and ignore the blasphemous writings of those little better than monkeys? Or do I ignore the purpose bestowed upon me after the Great War in Heaven? I need to know, my Father. Do I continue with my sacred chores and destroy all that offends You, or should I step back and let the prophecy prevail?”

Verchiel waited, expecting some kind of sign, but there was none, his plaintive questions met with silence.

The rage that had served him in war all these many millennia exploded from inside him. His wings came forth from his back and a mighty blade of flame appeared in his grasp. He shook the burning sword at the cross and voiced his anger. “Tell me, my God, for I am lost. Give me some indication of Your will.”

There was a sound from somewhere upon the altar, and Verchiel stood mesmerized.

Has the Creator heard my plea? the angel thought. Was the Almighty about to bestow upon him a sign to assuage his doubts?

An old woman came out from the back room, a plastic bucket of water in one hand and a mop in the other. It was obvious that she had heard his supplication and was curious to see who prayed so powerfully.

Her eyes bulged from her ancient skull at the sight of him. The bucket of soapy water slipped from her grasp to spill upon the altar floor.

What an awesome sight he must be to behold, he mused, spreading his wings to their full span, catching the muted, morning sunlight.

She attempted to flee, wild panic in her spastic movements, but stopped cold in her tracks. An ancient hand, skeletal with age, clutched frantically at her chest and her mouth opened in a silent howl. The old woman fell to the ground in a heap, her dying gaze rooted upon the golden symbol of her faith displayed above her.

Verchiel smiled. “So nice to hear from You again,” he purred, divining meaning from what he had just borne witness to.

“Thy will be done.”

Still in his sweatpants and T-shirt, Aaron slowly descended the stairs. Gabriel waited eagerly at the bottom. Aaron yawned and smacked his lips. The foul taste of sleep still coated the inside of his mouth. Hopefully he could get some juice and then get back upstairs to run a toothbrush around his mouth before he had to speak to anybody.

He’d slept longer than he wanted to, but seeing that he’d had some problems last night, and that it was Sunday, he wasn’t all that concerned—just very thirsty.

“Can I eat now?” Gabriel asked from his side as Aaron padded barefoot down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Just as soon as I get some juice,” he told the dog.

The linoleum was cold on the soles of his feet, and it helped to clear away the grogginess that came with morning. Lori sat at the table beneath the kitchen window, feeding cereal to Stevie.

“Hey,” Aaron said, pulling on the refrigerator door.

“Hey, yourself,” his mother answered.

Gabriel momentarily left his side to wish Lori and Stevie a good morning. Aaron almost drank from the carton, but thought better of it and reached to the cabinet for a glass. Filling it halfway, he leaned against the counter and attempted to quench his great thirst.

Lori was staring at him. She had that look on her face, the one that said something was wrong—that she had bad news to tell. Aaron was familiar with the look; it was the same one she’d worn when the family vacation to Disney World was canceled because the travel agency had unexpectedly gone out of business. They never did get to Disney.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Stevie decided to feed himself and took the spoon from her. He shoveled a mound of Sugar Smacks onto the spoon and then, halfway to his mouth, dumped it on the floor.

Gabriel immediately went to work cleaning up the spillage.

“Stevie, no,” Lori said as she took the spoon away from the child and pushed the bowl from his reach. “I have some really bad news for you,” she said, placing a soiled, rolled-up napkin on the table.

“What is it?” Aaron asked, moving to join her.

Lynn’s Sunday newspaper was on the table, and she turned it around so that he could see the headline.

PSYCHIATRIST KILLED IN BLAZE it read.

Aaron wasn’t sure why he should be upset, until he noticed the picture that accompanied the story. The picture was of Lynn firefighters as they fought the blaze in an office building. The caption below read, “Dr. Michael Jonas was killed yesterday when his office at 257 Boston Street was engulfed in flames. Fire officials are still investigating the blaze, but believe that a gas leak may have been responsible for the explosion.”

Aaron pried his eyes from the newspaper and looked at his mother. “Oh my God” was all he could manage.

Lori reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry, hon,” she said supportively. “Did you try to reach him last night?”

Aaron heard the question at the periphery of his thoughts. Dr. Jonas was dead. He was supposed to have seen the man yesterday, but after the business with Zeke, he’d completely forgotten. He’d planned on calling Monday to apologize.

His mother’s hand was still on his. She gave it a squeeze. “Aaron?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I zoned out. What did you say?”

“Dr. Jonas—he called yesterday while you were out,” she answered. “Did you try to return his call?”

Aaron slowly shook his head. “He called? I…I didn’t see the message.”

When he’d come in last night he’d been tired. The family was out to supper, and the quiet in the house was so inviting. He’d fed Gabriel, taken him out, and then gone up to bed to watch some television. He hadn’t even thought to check for messages.

“I didn’t know he called,” he said dreamily, picturing the man just two days ago, full of life and eager to help him. “How could this happen?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

“They said it was probably a gas leak,” Lori replied as she picked up the child’s cereal bowl and brought it to the sink.

Stevie got down from his chair and toddled off toward the family room, oblivious to anything in his path.

Gabriel hovered around Aaron and he realized that the dog had yet to be fed. “I’m sorry, pal,” he said, going to the drainboard at the sink and retrieving the dog’s food bowl.

Lori was doing the breakfast dishes. “If it was gas, just one spark would do the trick—”

Aaron filled Gabriel’s bowl and placed it on the mat near his water dish. His mother was still talking, but it was her last words that created the disturbing image in his mind.

He saw Zeke lighting his cigarette.

“If it was gas…”

His mother’s words echoed through his head.

Zeke lit his smoke with the tips of his fingers. Fire from the tips of his fingers.

“…just one spark would do the trick.”