The Fallen

CHAPTER NINE

Aaron drove his ’95 Toyota Corolla down Western Avenue and into McDonough Square. He had been in this area of Lynn thousands of times since learning to drive, but had never paid quite as much attention as he did now.

This was Vilma’s neighborhood. Febonio’s Smoke Shop, Snell’s Grocery, Mitchell’s Men’s Shop—all establishments that he never knew existed until now, all landmarks he would use if he ever had the chance to return.

“It’s up here, Aaron. On the left,” Vilma said, pointing through the windshield.

Aaron followed her direction and noticed the narrow street just beyond a small store advertising “Everything Brazilian.”

“Here?” he asked, snapping on his blinker and slowing down.

“Yep,” she answered. “It’s a dead end, a real pain to get in and out of.”

Aaron waited for the oncoming traffic to slow. A guy in a black van with a crude air-brushed painting of the starship Enterprise on its side finally waved him by, and he drove down the dead-end court called Belvidere Place.

“It’s the brown house on the end,” she said, hefting her bookbag from the floor onto her lap.

The street was very small, only a little wider than his car from nose to backend. A chain link fence across the end of the street separated it from a church and its parking lot beyond. There were eight houses, four on either side, all looking pretty much the same.

Aaron pulled over in front of the last house on the right, put the car in park, and turned to look at Vilma. She was staring straight ahead, her hand starting to move toward the door handle. She can’t wait to get away from me, he thought. He knew he’d been distracted since leaving school. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the effects of his meeting with Camael, and he was afraid that his moodiness was a turnoff for Vilma.

“I’m sorry your meeting with the Emerson guy didn’t work out,” she said, her voice filled with sympathy.

He had told her that the admissions rep had been a jerk and that he had given the man some attitude, probably eliminating himself from the running for a scholarship.

“That’s all right,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t really want to go there anyway.”

He hated to lie to her—it didn’t bode well for their future—but what choice did he have? There was no way he could share with Vilma the freak show his life had become over the last week. He had even begun to wonder if it was a good idea to start any kind of relationship with her. The last thing he wanted was for to her to be sucked up into the maelstrom of insanity swirling about him.

The silence in the car was nearly unbearable. Vilma finally opened the door a crack and looked at him. He smiled.

“Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it,” she said, returning his smile. Only, Aaron thought it put his to shame. “I think I had to bring every book in my locker home tonight. My bag’s popping at the seams,” she said, patting the stuffed nylon bag resting on her lap.

“No problem,” he said as he slid the palms of his hands over the smoothness of the steering wheel. “Anytime.”

The car door was open but she wasn’t leaving. He wondered if there was some gentlemanly thing he was supposed to do like go around to the other side and help her out.

“You know you can call me if you want,” she blurted out, as she played with the zipper on her bookbag. “If you wanted to, you know, talk about stuff? Like the Emerson thing—or our paper—I could help you with yours.”

Aaron looked at her—really looked at her. Suddenly any nervousness he had been feeling—any lack of self-confidence—was not an issue. In that instant, he decided that not only was Vilma the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, but also the most real. There were no games with her. She said exactly what was on her mind and he liked that. A lot.

“Now why would you want me to do that?” he asked, looking back to the steering wheel. “I’m sure you have a lot more interesting things to do with your time than talking to me.”

She seemed to think about it for a moment and then began to nod her head slowly. “You’re probably right. Cleaning up after my cousins, doing laundry, my homework—yeah, you are right—I’d much rather do those things than talk with a cute guy on the phone.”

He was a bit taken aback, and reached up to nervously scratch the back of his head. “Are you saying that you think I’m cute, or is there some other guy you’re going to call?”

Vilma laughed and rolled her beautiful almond-colored eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be the dark, brooding guy—not the big doofus.” She shook her head in mock disbelief.

Vilma was laughing at him, but Aaron didn’t care. The sound was one of the coolest things he had ever heard, and he began to laugh as well.

“I’ve never been called a doofus before,” he said. He again looked at her. “Thanks.”

She reached out to squeeze his arm. “I like you, Aaron,” she said.

He had never wanted to kiss a girl so badly. Yeah, there had been that time with Jennine Surrette in junior high, but that was because he had never done it before. Kissing Vilma now would seem almost like his first time—like all the other kisses since Jennine were just practice leading up to this one.

He started to lean his head toward her, his lips being pulled to hers by some irresistible force that he couldn’t negate—that he didn’t want to negate. Aaron was relieved to see that she seemed to be having the same difficulty, leaning toward him as well.

There came a sudden knock at the passenger-side window, and the spell that was drawing them inexorably closer was abruptly broken.

A little girl, looking like how he imagined Vilma must have looked when she was around seven or eight, peered into the car, smiling. There was an open gap in her comical grin where her front baby teeth used to be.

Vilma shook her fist at the child and she ran off laughing.

“My cousin,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed.

The moment was gone, lightning in a bottle—now free to be captured again some other time. But that was all right. Kissing Vilma could wait—but hopefully, not for too long.

“I like you too,” he said, and briefly touched her hand. It felt remarkably warm.

Vilma unzipped the side pocket of her bookbag. She took out a tiny pink pencil and small pad of paper and began to write.

“Here’s my phone number and e-mail address,” she said as she tore the paper from the notepad and handed it to him. “Call between six and nine, my aunt and uncle kind of freak when anybody calls too late. You can e-mail me anytime and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”

He looked down at the phone number. It was as if he had been given the winning number of a billion-dollar lottery—only better.

“You can give me yours later,” she said as she got out of the car, lugging her bag behind her. “I gotta get inside and kill my cousin.” She turned and leaned back in. “Maybe you can give it to me when we talk tonight,” she suggested with another winning smile.

He was about to tell her that it was a deal when he remembered he had to work. “I can’t call tonight—gotta work and probably won’t get in until after nine.”

“Ahh, blowing me off already,” Vilma said in mock disappointment.

“Give me that pencil,” he ordered.

She handed it to him, smiling all the time, and watched as he began to write at the bottom of the piece of paper she had given him.

“I’ll give it to you now,” he said as he finished. He folded the paper and tore away his number. “This way there’ll be no mistaking my intentions,” he said as he handed her the slip of paper.

“And what exactly are your intentions, Mr. Corbet?” she asked as she slipped the paper into her back pocket.

“In time, Ms. Santiago,” he said with a devilish grin. “All in due time.”

“Thanks for the ride,” he heard her say as she laughed and slammed the door closed.

He watched her walk up to the front porch. She opened the white screen door and turned to wave before she vanished inside.

The clock on the dashboard said that it was close to three o’clock. He had less then five minutes to get across town to work, but it didn’t really bother him. As he struggled to back out of the tiny, dead-end street, he realized he wasn’t really worried about much of anything right then. Everything was going to work out just fine.

He didn’t remember ever before feeling this way.

But it was something he could get used to.

Ezekiel drank from a bottle of cheap whiskey and pondered the question of redemption.

He shifted upon his bed to get comfortable and leaned his head back against the cool plaster wall. He took a long, thoughtful pull off his cigarette.

Redemption. Strangely enough, it was something he thought of quite a bit these days, since meeting the boy.

Zeke reached down to the floor again for the bottle of spirits and brought it to his mouth. Cigarette smoke streamed from his nostrils as the whiskey poured down his throat. It burned, but still he drank.

It was a kind of punishment, he thought as he brought the bottle away from his thirsty mouth and replaced it with the cigarette, a punishment for all that he had wrought.

It’s odd thinking about this after so long, he thought, staring at the wall across from him. A cockroach had started to climb the vertical expanse and he silently wished it luck. He could have told the insect directly but the communication skills of a bug were so primitive.

Forgiveness—is it even possible? After the Grigori were exiled, they had tried to make the best of it. Earth became their home. They knew they would never see Heaven again. The idea that they might be forgiven had never even entered his mind—until the day he first saw the boy at the common.

He took another drag from his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. There he was, minding his own business, looking through the trash for redeemable cans, when he sensed him—clear across the common he could feel the kid’s presence. He’d encountered others over the centuries, but none ever had that kind of effect on him. Aaron was special. He was different.

Zeke released the smoke from his lungs in a billowy cloud. The cigarette was finished and he threw the filter to the floor. He wanted another and considered asking a neighbor to spot him one until he remembered that he already owed cigarettes to several people in the building. He would need to drown the urge to smoke.

What would I say to Him—to the Creator? he wondered as he picked up the bottle. “I’m sorry for messing things up,” he muttered, and had some whiskey.

He let the bottle rest against his stomach and gazed up at the ceiling, concentrating on a water stain that reminded him of Italy.

Was saying he was sorry even enough?

Zeke dug through the thick haze of memory to find what it was like to be in His presence. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of his recollection flood over him. If only there was a way to feel that again—to stand before the Father of all things and beg His forgiveness.

He opened his eyes and brought his fingers to his face. His cheeks were wet with tears.

“Pathetic,” he grumbled, disgusted with his show of emotion. “Tears aren’t going to do me a bit of good,” he said aloud as he brought his bottle up to drink. He leaned his head back and swallowed with powerful gulps. He belched loudly, a low rippling sound that seemed to shake the rafters. “Should’a thought how sorry I’d be before I started handing out makeup tips,” he said sarcastically.

The smell suddenly hit him. Smoke. And not the kind he desperately craved. Something was burning.

He rose from his bed and walked barefoot across the room to the door. If Fat Mary down the hall was using her hotplate again, they’d all be in trouble. The woman could burn water, he mused as he opened the door to the hallway.

A blast of scalding air hit him square and he stumbled back, arms up to protect his face. The hall was on fire and quickly filling with smoke.

Panic gripped him, not for his own safety, for he was almost sure the flames could not kill him, but for the safety of the other poor souls who called the Osmond their home.

He stumbled out into the hallway, his hand over his mouth, a bit of protection from the noxious clouds swirling in the air. There was a fire alarm at the end of the hallway, he remembered. If he could get to it, he might have a chance to save some lives.

Zeke pressed himself to the wall, feeling his way along its length.

He could hear the cries of those trapped inside their rooms by the intense heat.

The smoke was growing thicker. He got down on all fours and began to crawl. The wood floor was becoming hot to the touch, blistering the skin on his hands and knees as he moved steadily forward. He couldn’t be far now.

Zeke looked up, his seared and tearing eyes trying to discern the shape of the alarm on the wall—and that was when he saw them. There were two of them, slowly making their way through the smoke and fire.

He tried to yell, but all he could manage was a series of lung-busting coughs.

The smoke seemed to part and they emerged to stand over him, flaming swords at the ready, wings slowly fanning the flames higher.

“Hello, Grigori,” said the angel whom Zeke fearfully recognized as one who had helped to sever his wings so long ago.

“We’ve come to tie up loose ends,” said the other.

They both smiled predatorily at him.

And Zeke came to the horrible realization that the fire was the least of his worries.

Aaron pulled his car into the driveway of his home on Baker Street a little after nine o’clock. He switched off the ignition and wondered if he had the strength to pull himself from the car and into the house.

To say that he was exhausted was an understatement. It was the first time he had been back to the veterinary hospital since his language skills had—how had Zeke put it? — blossomed.

It had been insane from the minute he rushed through the door, barely on time. The docs had been running late, and the waiting area was filled with a wide variety of dogs and cats, each with its own problem. There had even been a parrot with a broken wing and a box turtle with some kind of shell fungus.

He had immediately set to work, making sure that everybody had done the proper paperwork and apologizing for the delays.

And it was as if the animals could sense his ability to communicate with them. As he attempted to carry on conversations with their owners, the pets tried everything in their power to get his attention. A beagle puppy named Lily rambled on and on about her favorite ball. Bear, a black Labrador-shepherd mix, sadly told him that he couldn’t run very fast anymore because his hips hurt. A white Angora cat called Duchess yowled pathetically from her transport cage that she felt perfectly fine and didn’t need to see a doctor. A likely story, Aaron mused, and one probably shared by the majority of waiting animals.

It was constant: Someone or something was yammering at him from the moment he had walked into the place. Aaron wasn’t sure if it was scientifically possible, but he was convinced that his head was going to explode. All he could think of was his skull as a balloon filled with too much air. Bang! No more balloon.

Aaron forced himself from the car with a tired grunt. He would have been perfectly happy to have spent the remainder of the night in the car—but he was hungry. He got his back-pack from the trunk and began the pained journey to the house.

He smiled as he recalled how he had prevented his brain from detonating at work. The animals had been carrying on, Michelle had him running back and forth to the kennels for pickups and drop-offs, the docs wanted their exam rooms cleaned so they could bring in the next patient. And there he was, on the verge of blowing up, when he thought of her. He thought about Vilma and a kind of calm passed over him. The chattering of the patients became nothing more than droning background noise, and he was able to finish out the evening with a minimum of stress. Just thinking of her smiling face, coupled with what she had said in the car—it was enough to calm him and release the internal pressure.

Maybe I’ll e-mail her after I eat, he thought with a grin.

There was a menacing rumble above him and he looked up. Thick gray clouds like liquid metal undulated across the night sky, on the verge of completely blotting out any trace of the moon and stars.

Looks like we’re in for a pretty big storm, he thought as he turned his attention to finding the back-door key.

The scream from inside was bloodcurdling.

Aaron hurriedly opened the door and shouldered his way into the house.

“Mom?” he called out. He dropped his bookbag on the floor.

There was another scream, high pitched and filled with terror. It was Stevie, Aaron was sure of it. He tore down the hallway in search of his foster parents and brother.

“Mom!” he called again as he raced through the kitchen. “Dad!”

More screams.

He found his family in the living room, huddled on the floor in front of the television, which showed only static. Lori tightly gripped the thrashing Stevie in her arms, rocking him back and forth, cooing to the child that everything was going to be fine. Gabriel paced beside them, his tail rigid, hackles up.

“What’s wrong with him?” Aaron asked. He had never seen Stevie this agitated.

“Theycom!” the child screamed over and over again. “Theycom! Theycom! Theycom!” His eyes rolled to the back of his head, foamy saliva bubbled from the corners of his mouth.

“He’s been like this for half an hour,” Tom said, panic in his voice. He stroked his son’s sweat-dampened hair. “We don’t know what he’s trying to say!”

“Theycom! Theycom! Theycom!” Stevie bellowed as he struggled to be free of his mother’s arms.

“I…I think we should call nine-one-one,” Lori stammered. There were tears in her eyes when she looked at Aaron and her husband for support.

Tom rubbed a tremulous hand across his face. “I don’t know…I just don’t know. Maybe if we wait a little longer…”

Aaron turned from his parents to find Gabriel no longer pacing, but standing perfectly still. The dog looked up at the ceiling and sniffed the air. He began to growl.

“Gabriel? What’s wrong, boy? What do you smell?”

A crack of thunder shook the home from roof to foundation. The lights flickered briefly, and then the power quit altogether, plunging the room into darkness.

“Theycom! Theycom!” the child continued to scream inconsolably at the top of his lungs.

“Something bad,” Gabriel said with a menacing edge to his bark. “That’s what Stevie is trying to say. Something bad is coming.”