Angel Dust (14 page)

The thought made all the fire inside me die. A horrid cold congealed in my throat, a sudden pain stabbed at my chest. I shivered. ‘Just the wind,' I choked, almost as if I felt it too.

Just the wind?

What was I thinking of? Marcus might catch a chill. Human beings are so fragile. One cold breeze and they all get the plague. I looked at him. His lip still bloodless, his brow all tense.

I needed to take care of him. ‘Come,' I said. I took his arm and steered him towards an arbour covered in climbing roses. Inside was a sheltered seat. Over everything spread the branches of a fruit tree.

I tried not to hurry him, but he shouldn't stay out in the wind. When we were seated I took his hand. ‘Marcus,' I said gently. ‘You are troubled; you must trust me; please tell me what it is that eats away at you, what drives you to this life of crime? I'm not at all sure it can just be about the money.' I was in deadly earnest.

A frown darkened Marcus's face. I lifted my finger to the crease lines between his eyes. I smoothed them away.

‘I know I sound serious, but we have so little time to put everything right and much has gone so wrong. This is why I'm here. I think if we can get to the bottom of your sorrow, to the thing that causes you such pain, we can start to mend it. And solutions may follow – then repentance will be much easier.'

‘You are quite lovely,' he said, suddenly. ‘And you really do care, don't you?'

Was this another joke? Was he trying to divert my attention away from everything that needed saying?

‘Is Heaven full of serious angels, like you?' he asked.

‘Of course,' I said.

‘You almost make me want to go there.' He considered this for a minute. Then whispered (conspiratorially), ‘Do any of you get up to anything . . . you know – naughty – behind the big G's back?'

He
was
joking again.

I laughed and the sun broke from behind a cloud. Then I laid one finger across his lips. ‘You mustn't think like that,' I whispered. ‘Heaven is wonderful. There's nothing impure in anything we do.'

‘So,' he said, ‘that adds up to paradise, eh?'

Was he still joking?

I couldn't tell. He was such a perplexing creature. So I just answered his question as best I could: ‘Well, it's not like Earth. Not that I don't like Earth, but here you have such sad things to deal with.' I thought of all the pain etched on faces. I thought of the dark nights, and the desperateness of everyone at that disco, all trying to have fun, as if fun was something that the minute you grabbed it just evaporated in your hand. I thought of the sad lined faces in the queues at Styx. I thought of the thin girl over there, huddled beneath the gossamer trying to accept her death. I thought of death. To know that everything ends there, to fear there's no afterlife, to count your days and see each dawn break and finish, each evening close down on another day of your life, and to know they're finite.

‘You are so beautiful when you're sad,' he said and reached out to me. I smiled. His hand hovered, touched me, ran a thumb down my cheek.

A confused look came over his beautiful face. ‘Your skin feels strange,' he said, ‘I can't seem to
really
touch you.'

‘No,' I said. ‘That is how it is. We Seraphim are of a different realm. You cannot touch me, not in an Earthly way.'

‘Not touch you,' he said, as if this were quite a new idea. ‘But I
must
touch you,' he said simply. ‘I have to touch you.' He raised his arm and reached out as if he intended to break through all the regions that lay between us. His face twisted and I could see it hurt him. He was struggling with himself. And when his arms found nothing, he let out such a cry of pain that it issued forth in a half-strangled sound. ‘
There must be a way,
' he cried. ‘
I have to touch you.
'

I looked at him. I saw his eyes ablaze with something so fierce it almost frightened me.

‘Teach me how to touch you!' he demanded.

‘I don't even know how,' I whispered. ‘I have appeared before you. You can feel me; here is my hand. But I don't think any mortal can touch the Seraphim. Not in the way you desire.'

‘Maybe this is really it,' he murmured as if he had asked himself a question. ‘I can't hold her. I can't touch her. She talks to me of goodness and of righteousness, of saving my soul and healing my pain and I want to touch her.' He seemed to find this funny and smiled a strange savage smile.

He made as if to take my hand and once again shook his head, puzzled.

How disappointed he looked. How I would have given anything to have had a real human hand, just for a few minutes, just to feel his touch on my skin. What would it have been like?

Far away a buzzer rang.

‘That means they're closing the ward,' he said. ‘It's the end of visiting.'

I smiled. The arbitrary opening and closing of hospital wards meant nothing to me.

‘And I'll have to go and be there for the pill round,' he added. ‘They've got some pretty massive painkillers. Give you one hell of a kick.' He tilted his head. ‘Who knows, if I don't get my next fix you might disappear.'

I jumped. What was I thinking of?
I had to get to the surgical ward and Collect the old man! I had to get down to intensive care and kill the baby!

In a swirl of flame, hair floating wide, wings risen, I jumped up. I'd wasted all this time. I hadn't told him about the deal, or how Larry had helped, or Joey, or what should have happened. What was
going
to happen! I hadn't informed him about my repentance plan: the charity donation, the appeal to the Halls of the Dead.

I started to feel terribly angry with myself. I could feel thunderbolts building up inside me. How remiss, how unforgivable, how incompetent.

‘Hey, Angel, calm down. You can come another time,' he said. ‘I'd like that. You can appear in a flash of light and wow me all over again.'

We had to get back to the ward. Right now.

Marcus struggled to raise an arm. He unhooked a lanyard from his neck, gathered something in his hand and pressed it at me.

I looked at him, uncertain, and helped him to his feet.

‘It's a key,' he said, ‘to my place. I haven't got anything else to give you.'

‘But you don't have to give me anything,' I said.

‘I do,' he said. ‘You saved me. I owe you. That's how it is in my world. It's the street code. Now you can call on me any time you like.'

I shook out the lanyard. Looped through it was a key.

‘I've never given that to anyone before,' he said. ‘It's just a way of saying my yard is yours, and if you want me to change, I'll give it a go. And that's a promise. I know you don't need a key. You can walk through walls.'

I was so stunned I didn't know what to say.

‘I'll look out for you, then,' he said. ‘We can argue a bit more – you know, about life and truth and reality.'

Argue? Had we been arguing?

‘About sex and drugs and rock and roll.'

Sex and drugs?

‘Just kidding,' he laughed. ‘Only drugs.'

Oh, he was joking. He didn't want to see me again.

‘Please come,' he said. ‘I'd really like it.'

I was late.

So I did everything in a rush.

I got Marcus back to his room, helped him on to his bed, but I couldn't fix all those tubes back. I couldn't wait till a nurse came to do it either. It might take forever. But if I left him?

There was nothing for it; what was five hundred years in Torium anyway? So as soon as I got out of apparition mode and back to my full powers, I performed the advanced Pick Up Your Bed And Walk Miracle (adapted, obviously). I healed him completely – right there and then. And I was right, I made a perfect A* job of it. I know, don't say it. I don't even want to think how many rules I broke.

The miracle knocked him out, though. With a strange little cry he collapsed on the bed, completely flattened. (OK, maybe it would only have got a B+.) I made him as comfortable as I could and left him lying there insentient.

Then I got moving. And I would've been OK, if I could've flown from one bedside death to the next and hurried the souls along, but Robyn slowed me down. She was so attached to her human form she insisted on walking.

I got quite cross with her. I told her to let it go. I ordered her to hold on to me and allow me to guide her. I even threatened her, told her I'd leave her if she didn't hurry up. I wasn't very nice. I'm so sorry for that. I really didn't give her a great send-off: making her wait and then bullying her to keep up.

Somehow we made it to the baby in intensive care. That was horrid. She was such a tiny little thing and was struggling so bravely to breathe, her minuscule chest inflated by machines, her incubator just a mass of tubes and plastic. It wasn't her fault she was born too early.

Her mother was hardly more than a girl herself. She looked tired and strained. She must have been sitting beside the child for days. She knew the little thing couldn't survive. She knew that each breath was a fight, each heartbeat took such courage. It was a mercy to release the infant from her painful brush with life. Maybe Marcus was right. Maybe after all life was a bad joke.

Anyway, she didn't slow me down. I simply cradled her in my arms and soothed her with a song until she fell into such sweet oblivion. It was sad she wasn't bound straight for Heaven. The mother should really have had her baptised. It would have been so much more sensible than wringing her hands. Human love. Such a complicated thing, so much emotion, so little sense.

I carried her gently for all that. Poor little soul. Life isn't fair, is it? I wondered how God explained her in His understanding of Free Will.

Free Will. So much seemed to revolve around that idea. I glanced down at the Manifest. The child's name was definitely on it. So that meant the Senior Team knew she was going to die. They knew she wasn't going to be baptised. They knew Robyn was going to die. They knew Robyn was going to kill herself. And so they knew both of them would not be bound for Heaven. So how could their actions ever have been free, if the Senior Team had known about their sin in advance? Didn't it mean God had determined their actions in advance? It confused me. Did God know about Marcus's future? Was there any hope? Any point in trying to save him at all? And how unfair on the baby. Was she to blame for Satan having tricked Eve? Why did she have to go to Hell?

So, weighed down by heavy thoughts, I finally made it to the geriatric ward. Straight away I saw the reason why we're supposed to deliver souls individually to their destinations. Bunching them up like this was very problematic. For a start the man was bedbound. He was too weak even to sit up. My arms were full, plus I'd got Robyn still comatose in tow – how the hell was I going to get them all to Hell?

I ended up having to give the baby to the girl, which wasn't ideal. Not that she could have dropped her or anything, neither of them actually having a body.

Anyway, she held the baby, or rather thought she did, because the baby wasn't too worried about bobbing about in her microscopic spirit form, and leaving the memory of her tiny little shape floating around too. While Robyn did that, I coaxed and carried the old man until he figured out that even though he was dead and wanted to stay with his body, it was much easier to leave it behind and glide.

We must have looked a very odd little band going down the broad and pleasant highway. I got quite a few disapproving looks from other Seraphim. But I just smiled and nodded. I was getting only too used to doing everything wrong.

Still, it was a relief to turn off towards Mount Purgatory and escape. I'd made a decision. I was NOT going to take the baby to Hell. If she couldn't go to Heaven then I'd take her to Torium. Not only that, I figured while I was at it, I'd give Robyn and the old man a break as well. I'd take the whole bang lot of them there.

That was probably against every Rule in the Book. But sometimes, you know, you've just had enough of rules. Plus I could interpret a piteous cry as repentance if I wanted to, couldn't I? And I don't care what they say at the Cloisters, I don't think suicide should be a sin – and Hell is no place for babies. And as for the old man, well, he was so . . . (I don't like to say it – but ‘forgetful' will do); he'd been far too confused to give a straight answer when I'd asked him to repent.

So, what the hell, I took them to Purgatorium. There you are, I did it. I handled all the aerial toll-houses on the way – the baby was too young to speak for herself, the old man too old, Robyn still thought she was in a deathly coma and I was in no mood to be trifled with.

I was in a very strange mood. Although I'd just spent the whole afternoon with Marcus, and I ought to be feeling deliriously happy, I wasn't. Instead I was feeling very flat. I didn't understand his jokes. I'd been too cowardly to own up about Joey, and I was no nearer sorting out what we were going to do about the contract. Half the time I wasn't even sure he'd believed I was really there. The rest of the time I got the distinct impression he didn't want to repent at all, and that he'd only give it a go because he felt indebted to me for saving his life. I was pretty sure that didn't count as repenting ‘freely and willingly and with a whole heart'. Plus I'd somehow managed to break a zillion more rules without even trying. I told myself that if I carried on messing up, I'd
have
to go and tell St Peter everything. Without fail.

That gave me a shock. It would no longer be a matter of Ave Marias and Our Fathers. Even if I escaped Community Service in Purgatorium, he'd have me totally grounded. But that wasn't the worst of it. If St Peter reported me to Jehudiel, not only would my fate be sealed, but Marcus's too.