Angel's Kiss

3. Of Angels, Demons and Monsters

3. Of Angels, Demons and Monsters

“Let me first explain that there are gaps, omissions and errors in the Bible. Some are small, and others not so small. After all, the Bible was written by man. If an angel had been charged with the task there would probably be a dozen volumes, and much of it too difficult for a mortal mind to grasp or understand. Don’t get me wrong, the Bible is a good attempt at relaying the events of our history up to a certain point… and it serves its purpose.” Danny paused to look at me, presumably to check if I was paying attention.

“Okay, so what you’re basically saying is don’t believe everything you read,” I said, to show I had been listening.

He smiled. “Something like that. There are nine choirs of angels, otherwise known as the hierarchy of the nine, or simply the nine. Whilst this is a well-known fact amongst mortals, not everyone knows it. Each tier in the hierarchy has a specific task — a function to perform — and within the tiers the order of the angels hasn’t changed since the fallen were cast out.”

“The fallen?” I asked. “You mean Satan?”

Danny nodded. “Satan was amongst the seraphim, those angels closest to Him. Their main function, aside from praising Him for all to hear, is the administration of our heaven.”

Danny could see the look of surprise in my eyes. If heaven was perfect, why did they need pencil pushers there?

“Oh yes, even a place as wonderful as heaven needs to be monitored and regulated to ensure it runs smoothly. We — the angels — aren’t all-knowing, so occasionally problems occur. In the beginning, this was mostly due to miscommunication. There were so many angels passing on instructions that it was very much like what mortals refer to as Chinese whispers, changing ever so slightly with each angel that passed it on. This led to some rather unfortunate incidents on the first earth —”

“Wait a second. First earth? You mean this,” I pointed to the floor, “isn’t the original?” It was getting harder and harder to believe what I was hearing.

“Mistakes happen,” Danny replied matter-of-factly, “though all of the mistakes were of the angels’ doing. He does not make mistakes. Have you ever heard the saying third time lucky? Well, you’re living on it, the third earth.

“Back to what I was saying. We made mistakes. Some of them were quite costly, yet He always forgave us. This is when He introduced the nine, so each would know exactly what was expected of them. We could, from then on, be held accountable. This is the system that’s been in place for more aeons than I care to remember. We were content, until Satan poisoned many of our numbers with his lies and deceit — promises of power to lesser angels. The battle with Satan and his followers had been waging for centuries when finally one of the archangels overpowered him and cast him down, out of heaven. Satan had so absolutely corrupted his followers that the threads of their life force were bound to him wholly and solely. As he fell, so did they. No longer angels, they became demons.”

I shook my head — a colossal battle between angels, resulting in a split that saw the creation of demons. Who would’ve believed it? It made our wars — even the Hundred Years’ War, if history was accurate — seem insignificant in comparison. Sure, our wars killed staggering numbers of people, however, no demons were ever created as a result of our bickering. The angels had a lot to answer for.

“How many angels fell? I mean, how many demons are there?”

Danny waved his hand through the air and images of hundreds of angels falling from the heavens appeared. He rattled off some numbers, counting the tiers of the nine with his fingers.

“Two hundred and thirty-eight seraphim, ninety cherubim, three hundred and eight thrones, four hundred and twenty-seven dominions, one hundred and seven virtues, eighty-two powers, seventy-nine principalities, one archangel and six hundred and sixty-six ordinary angels — thrice times the number of the beast. Even mortals know to associate the number six hundred and sixty-six with Satan, though the significance is lost on them.

“The names of the angels that are lost to us are not spoken of anymore. To allow us to identify them they were given new names to represent their demonic selves — Abaedian, Beliam and Cimhejres amongst others.”

“Never heard of them.”

“There’s no reason you would have. Not all of the names of the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight are known to mortals, just as not all of the angels’ names are known. In truth mortals only know a small number of names for both. They don’t even know the exact numbers on both sides.”

“Why didn’t, you know, the big guy, kill Satan and his defectors?”

I was curious as to why an omnipotent being couldn’t just click His fingers and be done with it.

Danny smiled at my hesitation to use His name. “He is all merciful. He does not kill any of His creations. And neither did we… until after Satan’s downfall. Everything changed after that. The archangels — now numbering nine and seeking redemption — took it upon themselves to rid the earth of demons. The irony that the archangels numbers were reduced, by the one fallen, to the same number of choirs, was not lost on many.

“In order to seek redemption an army was formed from those angels in the lowest tier of the hierarchy. The army was divided into a number of units, with each of the archangels assuming command of a unit. My primary function, within that army, is surveillance.”

The way he said surveillance made me think there was more to it than he was letting on. He was probably only telling me the nice part of his job, the one that didn’t involve killing.

“I am forever on the lookout for demonic activity, and to a lesser degree any significant gathering of Satan-created monsters. Once activity or a gathering can be verified I report to my superior and, depending on the threat, the army — or part of it — is marshalled to deal with the problem.”

“Which archangel is your superior?”

I only knew the names of three archangels — Michael, Raphael, Gabriel — so that left six I didn’t know.

“If I say his name out loud I will draw attention to myself. Given the circumstances, that would not be wise. Look,” Danny scribbled in the air with one finger and letters formed in a brilliant white light, “but do not speak it,” he cautioned me.

“But so many men are known by that name. How would he know I was talking about him?” I’d known many men by that name. It was one of the most common names around. How could saying it out loud cause such a fuss?

“Given the context of our conversation, it would be heard. His name, along with certain words that relate to angels, heaven or demons, acts as a trigger, on both sides.”

I pointed a finger at him accusingly. “What it boils down to is that you’re a spy.”

“That’s a mortal term. There is nothing covert about what I do. All immortals know that surveillance is constantly taking place. I like to think of myself as an early warning system. If there is little danger to myself, I’ll tackle the problem head on. Otherwise I wait for reinforcements.”

Danny tilted his head to the side and raised his eyes towards the ceiling. It looked like he was reading invisible writing, or trying to decipher a coded message.

“It’s been far too long since I last reported in, and I’ve stayed too long in the one place. I need to leave for a while. Promise me you’ll stay here, out of harm’s way.”

“Hah!” I yelled. “Out of harm’s way? Look what good coming here did me? And how do I know you’ll return?”

“I admit you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice, for your own good. As to my returning, have a little faith. I’ll be back before the sun rises.” Danny stood up to leave.

“An angel,” I mumbled, “how about that. You know, I used to dress up for some of my friends. They liked it when I wore wings —”

Danny held up his hand. “Don’t say it. I already know.”

“That’s right, you know all about me,” I said dryly. “I’ve got no dirty little secrets from you. No hidden skeletons in the closet.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, but not all angels have wings, contrary to popular mortal beliefs,” he replied, just as dryly. “Only the archangels — His favourites — have wings.”

That was an interesting titbit — God had favourites. Perhaps some of the other angels harboured some bitterness about it.

Danny turned and walked away. It took me a moment to register that with each step he was becoming transparent, the tacky wallpaper in front of him viewable through his body. By the fourth step he disappeared, just as he reached the wall.

“Wow! Who needs wings when you can walk through walls,” I mumbled.

There was so much information to process. I wondered what he meant by the administration of our heaven. Did that mean there was one heaven for angels and one for mortals, just as we thought there was a heaven for us and a heaven for dogs? Did he stay on earth for his surveillance or could he ascend high into the atmosphere, and therefore cover a much larger area?

Why the heck am I thinking about this anyway? Is any of it real? Am I still alive? Don’t I remember the never-ending searing pain? Only the pain end eventually. Doesn’t that mean I’m dead? So is it possible that in my heaven, if that’s where I am, I’m living out some fantasy I once had when I was a child?

Nothing is impossible, just highly improbable. That was as good a saying as any to describe my situation, though I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before. Why should I care? It didn’t matter if I was dead.

I gently probed my neck — the epicentre for the pain I’d experienced — with my fingers. I expected it to be swollen and tender, but I was wrong. With no mirror, and the windows boarded up on both sides, there was nowhere for me to check what I looked like. When I pulled my hand away from my neck I noticed the fingertips looked bruised. I rubbed my thumb against the tips of the other fingers to see if they truly were bruises, or simply some dirt that had worked its way into the whorls. They didn’t hurt and closer scrutiny revealed they weren’t bruises, yet I wasn’t sure what they were. It was as if I’d dipped my fingertips into a vat of dark red dye. No, that wasn’t it. It was more like I’d been fingerprinted using dark red ink instead of black ink. I sucked on one finger to see if the colour would come out — nothing happened. What the hell is that strange pigmentation under my skin? I looked at my other hand, which was free of the taint. Clearly it was something I’d touched with my left hand.

I looked around the empty room for anything that might give me a clue as to how I’d ended up with red dye on my fingers. My eyes finally settled on the body that lay no more than two metres away from me.

I was no stranger to death. I’d seen it all before. What’s one more body? I told myself. I shuffled the few metres to the body, on my butt, using the heels of my feet to help propel me. I couldn’t really see the point in standing up to walk the few paces. Maybe I was just plain lazy.

I didn’t recognise the face, pale in death. Danny had closed the eyes of my assailant and I wasn’t about to open them to see what colour they were. There was nothing special about this face — an average face on an average person, albeit a murderous one. How did he die? I wondered. Did Danny save me? I certainly wasn’t capable of doing it myself. I hadn’t eaten in days and was weak to begin with.

I patted down his coat to see if he had a wallet, and when I found the familiar telltale lump I was looking for, extracted it from his coat pocket and flipped it open. According to his driver’s licence his name was Chris Jones, and his registered address matched this very property. Why would anyone list a derelict house as their home address?

There were two credit cards in the wallet and several hundred-dollar bills. I stuffed the money into my jeans pocket. I needed the money desperately. I wasn’t foolish enough to take the cards, though. Call it recompense or restitution for his wrongdoings. Whatever, it was mine.

I carefully wiped down the cards, licence and wallet to remove all traces of my fingerprints and returned them to his coat pocket. He didn’t seem to have anything else on him. No phone, no drugs — carrying internally perhaps — no knife and no gun.

I remembered Chris — it was strange using the name of my attacker — pinned my upper arms to my sides. He pushed me hard up against the wall. That was when the pain started. I’d reached over with my left hand and used my fingers to try and prise his hand off my right arm — trying desperately to free myself. Failing that, I grasped his wrist, barely holding onto my life. I looked at my left hand again. It was the same hand that had the strange taint on the fingertips.

I picked up Chris’s right hand and examined it, looking at the back of his hand and wrist — nothing.

Wait a minute, I’m looking at the wrong hand. His left hand would have been gripping my right arm.

I let the hand drop and leaned over Chris’s body to take hold of his left hand. There was nothing on the hand itself, but when I looked at the back of his wrist there were five impressions — four on one side, one on the other — four fingers and one thumb. I wrapped my left hand around his wrist and my fingers aligned with the marks perfectly. I pulled his hand closer to my face to inspect it carefully and could even see the ridge detail of my fingerprints on his wrist. I compared the colouring of my fingertips to the colour of the marks on Chris’s wrist and noted they were exactly the same — dark red.

“Oh s**t!” I exclaimed.

This is all the evidence the police will need… even though I’ve done nothing but raid his wallet and even that was after the fact.

If there was no physical evidence of an attack on my person — and my neck seemed fine now from what I could feel — they’d never believe me. What to do, what to do?

I let Chris’s hand drop, and huddled against the wall, drawing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs. I rocked back and forth, back and forth. I’d been in trouble with the law before, sure, but never anything more serious than possession of illegal substances and solicitation. Minor offences really, compared to suspected murder.

“I’ve got to get rid of the body, or at least remove the hand — below the wrist — and dispose of that,” I mused out loud. “Burn it perhaps?”

“Burn what?”

I was startled by the voice. I’d been so focused on what to do that I hadn’t heard anyone come in. Danny knelt by my side and touched my arm gently.

“I told you I’d be back before the sun rose,” he said reassuringly. “What do you need to burn?”

Was it almost daylight already? Have I been sitting here like this for most of the night, trying to figure out what to do? Probably yes. Here was the answer to my problem. An angel would know what to do, if he was as he claimed to be.

“Danny, look at this.” I held up my left hand. “I don’t really know how it happened, or what to do about it.”

I showed him my fingertips and rubbed my thumb across the taint to show him it wouldn’t come off. He reached out and grasped my wrist, examining my hand closely. He lightly brushed one of my fingertips and recoiled instantly, trying to hide the fact that something about what he’d discovered had shocked him.

“That’s pooled blood sitting just below the surface. What have you touched?”

I crawled over to Chris and held up his left hand so Danny could see the wrist. He didn’t touch it, he had no need to. Danny knew what I knew — my fingers were a match to the marks on Chris’s wrist. This was a frightening new twist in a totally bizarre twenty-four hours. Not even during the worst of the drug-induced hallucinations I’d experienced in the past did things get this weird.

“Hmm, this explains a lot. At least I know what you were thinking about burning — his hand. There is nothing for you to worry about in that respect. I’ll dispose of the body.”

Great! He was just going to sling it over his shoulder and walk out the door with it — as though he was carrying a sack of potatoes — unless he could do the disappearing trick with a body as well.

I held up my left hand and looked at the fingertips. “Whose blood is it, mine or his?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“That doesn’t help me much,” I replied anxiously. “He could’ve had AIDS or one of a hundred other diseases of the blood. I could well end up dead anyway. I am still alive, aren’t I?”

Danny could tell I was afraid and spoke in a very calming voice, “Don’t be frightened. I won’t let anything hurt you. His blood can’t hurt you now, and yes, your heart still beats.”

His words were strangely soothing and comforting, even though that’s all they were — words. Part of me — the reserved and hesitant part — already trusted him, something I did not do easily. He hadn’t hurt me or made any physical demands of me, and had returned as he said he would. Okay, so I would trust him for now, while it suited me, but I was gone — don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out — as soon as there were any signs things were changing for the worse. Danny would have little chance of finding me if I didn’t want him to. I was very good at disappearing when the need arose. The preacher would attest to that.

“When Satan was cast out of heaven, on his way to hell he committed two acts of blasphemy on His other creations. The first was bitten savagely, the second scratched deeply. He wept for His creations — so defenceless — that had been turned into monsters by the one He had once loved most amongst all others.” I could hear the reverence in his voice when he talked about God crying. “Though they were monsters, He would not kill them, just as He would not kill Satan and his demons. Do you know what those monsters were?”

I shook my head. How the hell am I supposed to know? I was no bible basher. I’d be lucky to find a remotely religious bone in my body!

Danny waved his hand and images danced in the air of something large, dark and sinister falling, and reaching out to the earth. It looked like it was trying to stop its fall by clutching onto whatever it could.

“The creation Satan defiled was man. The bitten became a vampire, the scratched a werewolf. As they were living, breathing men before they were changed, the cycle of evolution endured through them. In turn, those they changed, or created as some would call it, continue to evolve as well.” Danny let the implication of these things being able to evolve sink in for a moment before continuing. “It is now very difficult, but not entirely impossible, to pick them out in a crowd of mortals.”

“Vampires and werewolves — that they are real is bad enough, but growing and evolving?” My head was spinning. “What other monsters are real?”

“Many,” Danny waved his hand again and a myriad of images flashed through the air, “although vampires and werewolves are considered highest amongst all of the monstrosities, as they were created by Satan. Other monsters are the result of demonic activity and interference — sirens, chupacabras, wendigos and varakianas to name a few, though not all are humanoid in form.”

The names startled me. Clearly there were more monsters than I was aware of, and the images that Danny had shown me confirmed that. I counted twenty separate images.

“Apart from vampires and werewolves, I’ve only heard of sirens,” I replied. “So are the myths about vampires and werewolves being enemies true as well?”

“Yes. They vie for the highest place amongst Satan’s favoured. To that end they are constantly at war. In some ways it serves our purposes. They keep their own numbers down through their infighting, allowing us to concentrate on the task of seeking out and destroying demons. Occasionally they work together, when a mutual threat is detected. Things tend to go back to normal once the threat has been eliminated.”

“I’m so very confused,” I rubbed my temples, “by everything. If he,” I pointed to the body on the floor, “is a vampire, what am I? Am I still mortal, because my heart beats, an angel because my blood killed him, or,” I hesitated on the last, “or a monster?”

“You can’t be mortal. No mortal could survive this,” he pointed to the lifeless body. “Are you a monster? I’m not so sure of that. Your heart continues to beat, something that would not be so if you were a vampire. If you were an angel, surely I would know…”

“Can’t you tell what I am?”

Danny ran a hand through his hair. “That I truly do not know. As I said the last time we met, I’ll need to make some discreet enquiries.”

“Maybe I’m something new?” I asked hopefully.

“I honestly don’t know,” Danny sighed. “What I’m thinking of is the stuff of angelic lore and legend.”

I waved my finger at him. “Yesterday I counted angels, demons and monsters as legendary creatures. Today I can’t be certain. Look, Danny, I need answers. My life is hanging in the balance here. What am I meant to do?”

“Do you remember yesterday when you tossed me aside so effortlessly?” he asked.

I nodded. It was something that had surprised me, given the situation I was in not long before.

“You should not have been able to do that. Angels are much stronger than mortals. In your weakened state I shouldn’t have felt even the slightest bit of pressure when you pushed me. That tells me there is something more to you. We need to tread carefully. If you can be patient I’ll be back with answers.”

“You’re leaving me again?” I asked in exasperation.

Danny nodded in response. He picked up Chris’s body and hoisted it over his shoulder, just as I imagined he would do. Chris’s left arm slid off Danny’s shoulder and his hand — the imprints of my fingers on his wrist exposed — waved around madly.

He’s saying goodbye.

“In the mortal world I can’t stay in the same place for too long. It will draw unwanted attention. Try to get some rest and I’ll be back before nightfall. We’ll talk about what you might be able to eat and moving you somewhere less austere.”

I placed an elbow on my knee and rested my head in my palm, letting out an audible sigh.

“Have faith,” Danny said, and within four steps he and the body were gone.

Have faith — he sure did seem to like using those two words. If I heard that phrase one more time I was going to throw up!