Color of Angels' Souls (19 page)

He finally let her accompany him to the landing, with his two Angels in tow. They gave Jeremy a knowing wave, and Allison closed the door, relieved to finally be alone.

“What an idiot! Going to the police was the last thing he should have done! Maybe I'm being too paranoid, but what you see in the movies is based at least in part on reality. And it's so true! The lure of money and power is—and always will be—what really makes men tick!”

After being forced to play hide-and-seek in every room of the apartment, a cursing Allison finally managed to lure Frankenstein into her grasp by dangling a cold cut in front of his nose. When the bath was finally over, the dog was squeaky clean and had a shiny coat, but his owner sank to the floor in exhaustion, drenched with water and soap suds.

Despite how worried Jeremy was, the whole spectacle had been a laugh riot. He had especially liked the part when Frankenstein jumped out of the bathtub all covered with shampoo and Allison had to chase him down like an oiled pig.

“My goodness,” she grumbled, wiping at her wet brow with a trembling hand. “I think it would be easier to wash wild horses. Was Cerberus in your family line? For a minute there I could've sworn you had three heads!”

The dog, who kept yapping at her, was probably heaping a succession of canine insults on his owner. His eyes were still prickling from the shampoo, and he sneezed over and over. He was clearly furious with the whole affair, and, after turning a cold shoulder to Allison, walked with a dignified air over to his basket and lay down. He lowered his head onto his paws and closed his eyes. He was sulking.

Satisfied with her work, Allison smiled and began cleaning up the small bathroom with her sponge. Soon the only remaining vestiges of their epic battle were a few traces of soap suds and spilled water. She wiped those up as well, cursing all along.

“Oof!” she sighed, finally dropping tiredly onto her blue sofa. “Another six months of peace!”

After turning on her computer, she clicked a file that was protected by a password.

The file opened, showing a photograph of someone with a name written below. Jeremy immediately perked up when he read it.

Ventousi. The same name as the little boy in her class whom she was so afraid of! Jeremy was at a loss to understand. But when she clicked another file in the directory, it all became clear.

There were a series of photos: a well-dressed, distinguished-looking man in his fifties, with dark hair and slight graying at his temples. His brown eyes looked calmly into the camera, and he was holding the hand of a small boy. The caption said: “Arthur Ventousi, researcher and former CEO of the Ventousi Laboratories, with his son, Peter, at a preview of the latest Disney blockbuster.”

Jeremy frowned. If the pharmaceutical company was named after its founder, why would he want to postpone releasing a new cure for cancer on the market? It didn't make sense. And why was he the “former” CEO?

Allison must have been thinking the same thing, because she clicked the link to the company's website and started looking through the group's financial data. Both of them were startled by what they read: Ventousi was no longer the owner of his own laboratories, which in fact had been created by his father. That must have been why the article had mistakenly referred to him as the “founder” of the company, since the two men had the same name. Arthur Ventousi's father had sold his company to a large investment fund. But the business was starting to collapse. The Research and Development branch had been poorly managed. Several of their base products had fallen into the public domain and they hadn't developed any new ones to replace them. Over time, all their top researchers had left the company. From the outside, it looked as if the Ventousi Laboratories were on the brink of bankruptcy, but the financial group that owned the company wasn't ready to sell yet. They had replaced the CEO three different times, but it hadn't helped. Arthur Ventousi was no longer even a senior partner. He had been forced to move further and further down the ladder, and was now only a junior member of a research team.

After having worked for years in business circles, Jeremy could easily see what Ventousi was scheming. He would announce the latest in a series of failures at the R&D department, offer a rock-bottom price for the shares, which the group would gladly sell to avoid bankruptcy, wait a year or two to make everyone think that he had been working on a new product, and then announce his miracle drug.

And make a fortune.

The bastard.

So Jeremy had lost his life because of a sordid financial affair. He felt like screaming his head off. And crying like a baby. If he hadn't been killed, he could have met Allison—really met her, when she was alive. Maybe he would have fallen in love with her, just like he had as an Angel.

He sighed, knowing full well that, even if they had met, things wouldn't have worked out that way. He had been so obsessed with his work that he probably wouldn't have even noticed Allison. He would have blown her off with some curt reply and completely forgotten about her. It was only by dying that he finally realized the most important thing in life was exactly that: to live.

And to love …

A loud “clank!” rang out and both of them jumped. Allison stopped reading. Still grumbling about the plumbing, she turned off her computer, grabbed her jacket and took Frankenstein, who still hadn't forgiven her, outside for his evening walk. They took a nice, safe walk under the watchful eye of Jeremy and then came back to the apartment. Allison stayed home that night. By ten o'clock she was already yawning. The intermittent clanking noises kept grating on her, and after tossing and turning she finally climbed out of bed and went to get some wax earplugs that she must have kept from an airplane flight. She stuck them firmly into each ear, cursing all the while.

Then she went back to bed after making sure she'd locked the front door and attached the safety chain. Jeremy lay down next to her and, just before closing his eyes, couldn't resist the temptation of “tasting” the blue Mist that was rising out of Allison.

He almost choked, it was so delicious. He couldn't believe how intense it was, as if he had never eaten or drunk anything like it before, either as a living human being or as an Angel. It was an explosion of taste and pure joy. It blew him away.

“I love you,” he whispered in a trembling voice. “I love you and it's going to drive me crazy!”

But Allison didn't hear him. Protected by her earplugs, she began to drift off. He slowly followed suit, with his hand passing through hers on the mattress.

Jeremy would never know what woke him up. Probably the jangling of the safety chain as it snapped, and then the deep growling of Frankenstein.

Suddenly, the little dog began barking furiously and charged at the front door just as it slammed open. The dark shadow standing in the doorway had been expecting him. When the little dog leaped at him and bit down hard on the man's padded glove, he once again neutralized the dog and tied him up.

Jeremy started yelling, but with her earplugs in, Allison didn't hear the killer entering her apartment with his sword any more than she had heard the dog.

Was she going to get herself killed because Jeremy had brought a Poltergeist to her apartment and she had put in earplugs to get some sleep?!

Jeremy charged at the man and began swinging wildly, trying with all his might to stop him. All in vain of course. Put off at first, the three horrible red Angels that floated behind the killer soon began laughing at him.

Frankenstein was choking on his gag as he struggled to bark and move his legs.

All the noise and agitation must have somehow disturbed Allison's sleep, and she finally opened her eyes. A bit of light shined through the window. The moon was full, and she hadn't closed the shutters all the way. With a rapidity that took the intruder completely by surprise, she immediately understood what was happening, snatched the lamp from her night table, jumped from her bed, and lunged at the killer, screaming her head off.

He only barely managed to fend off her first blow, as he probably hadn't expected the young woman to snap awake so quickly and put up such a fight. Jeremy recalled that she had taken Kung Fu classes, and how Clark had made fun of her.

But unfortunately, it wasn't enough. The man quickly sidestepped her attacks and positioned himself to counterattack. He slammed his fist into her stomach. Allison doubled over and fell back onto the bed, dropping the lamp next to her on the sheets.

The sword hissed as he pulled it from its sheath. Allison cried out when she saw the blade. So did Jeremy.

Worried voices began crying out in the stairwell and the corridor of the building. The hit man cursed.

He brought down his sword on Allison, but she had just enough time to grab the lamp and hold it up to protect herself. She unwittingly switched on the light in the process, blinding the killer. The sword just missed her head. It smashed into the light bulb and the blade stuck in the socket. Her assailant was immediately racked by convulsions, and Jeremy quickly realized the man was being electrocuted. The sword handle was made of wood, but the hilt was made of metal and was touching his bare hand.

Then Jeremy suddenly realized that Allison was convulsing as well. The lamp was made of metal, which was probably why she'd used it to defend herself. She was clutching it with both hands and the same current was now coursing through her and the killer. Both were trembling violently and suffocating, locked in a horrible, deadly embrace.

Why didn't the fuse blow?! Jeremy ran about the apartment, incapable of doing anything to help and about to lose his mind with frustration. Suddenly the room was filled with people—probably the neighbors who had heard all the noise. One of them tried to turn on the lights and the fuse finally blew.

The killer and Allison both dropped to the floor, struck dead.

“Quick!” someone yelled in the dark. “Start doing CPR while I call an ambulance!”

“Forget about this one,” one of the men said with disgust. “Look at his sword! Must be that killer they talked about on TV. He wanted to kill the girl!”

The other man didn't stop to argue. Jeremy looked on with the red Angels as they howled furiously at the man, who ignored the Angels and began performing CPR on Allison. First he performed a heart massage and then mouth-to-mouth: He pressed down firmly on her rib cage fifteen times, then blew once into her mouth, and kept up the rhythm: fifteen to one, fifteen to one, while one of the others dialed 911.

Suddenly, Jeremy stepped back, in shock. Before him had appeared the naked, angelic form of Allison.

“No,” he whispered, horrified. “No, not yet. You can't die. I won't let you! I forbid you!”

Speechless, Allison could only stare dumbly at him. For a few seconds, Jeremy saw Allison's body begin to waver, and become transparent.

“That's it!” Jeremy yelled; “hold on a little bit longer! Go back! Go back to your body! It's not your time yet!”

Behind her, an indistinct silhouette began to slowly appear—it was the killer, whose body lay unattended on the floor. Even though he had only just died, the man's ghostly body was already a bright red. He stared wide-eyed, terrified most likely for the first time in his life, and looked about him in a stupor. Jeremy had to check a violent urge to grab him by the throat and throttle him. The three red Angels had already formed a protective barrier around him anyway.

Jeremy turned back to Allison, encouraging her with all his might to hold on, to return to the world of the living.

Medics rushed into the room and roughly pushed aside the two neighbors performing first aid. They immediately began doing the same and soon the body of the killer Angel began to vacillate as well when they began performing CPR on his real body.

For twenty long and agonizing minutes, they tried to bring Allison and the killer back to life. More than once, both appeared to be on the verge of returning to their inanimate bodies, but both had passed too far beyond the mortal veil. It was too late to save them.

After thirty minutes, first the killer and then Allison, who Jeremy had been tirelessly encouraging, both stabilized. On the wrong side. On his side. He was crushed.

The chief medic, a big strapping man, finally lowered his head. The Mist rising from his body showed how sad and powerless he felt.

“It's no use,” he said to the others, who were still massaging the hearts of the two lifeless bodies. “They're dead. Both of them.”

It was hard for Allison to speak, just as it had been for Jeremy when he passed over. She had no idea what had happened. Her brain couldn't accept the fact that she had died so suddenly, and she began trembling uncontrollably.

She sat on the floor, terrified, wrapped up into a tight ball, incapable of assimilating what had just happened, and where she could possibly be. She was still filled with the horrible fright from the last few moments of her life.

Jeremy knelt down next to her and smiled gently.

“Hello Allison,” he said slowly. “Welcome to the world of Angels.”

Allison could only stare at him with a glazed look in her eyes. She tried to say something. Without success.

Just as Flint had done for him, Jeremy explained to her how her new Angel lungs, which were still behaving like her former ones, needed to relearn how to use the air in this new world. He kept the explanation short and simple. It wouldn't be a good idea to overwhelm poor Allison with dozens of theories and explanations. She was already in shock. He did his best to reassure her and calm her down for the next hour. He didn't dare touch her; each time he held out his hand, she would wince and pull back.

The three Angels had taken the killer God-knows-where—or rather, the-Devil-knows-where—which was just fine with Jeremy. If the man had remained, Jeremy probably couldn't have resisted the temptation to pummel him with blows, and he didn't want Allison to see the dormant Neanderthal inside him awake, club in hand, at their very first meeting.