Color of Angels' Souls (42 page)

“All right, all right,” he said wearily. “I guess I was trying to be a tough guy. But if it makes you feel any better, it feels like millions of red-hot insects are stinging me all over.”

All right, that was more like it! Allison was starting to think he was some type of superhero—or maybe superAngel was more like it. Reassured now, she waited a few seconds for Jeremy to recover before continuing. When he gestured at her to let him have it, she unloaded a huge blast.

This time he dropped to his knees.

Horrified, she ran over to him.

“Jeremy!”

He got slowly to his feet.

“No, no, I'm OK, Allison; keep going. Let's get it over with.”

“But this shit's going to destroy you!”

“I can keep taking it. Look, your skin has turned pink. We're almost there! We can't stop now. You have to get all the evil out of your system. All of it, or this will all have been a waste of time.”

Allison shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, but Jeremy kissed her, savoring her soft lips, before encouraging her again:

“One last effort, Allison. Go on. Let's get it over with now.”

Allison obeyed, still weeping. She remained on her knees in front of him, closed her eyes, and sent all the power remaining inside her over to Jeremy. There was still a lot left, and it seemed to take an eternity. When she was finished, she opened her eyes, trembling, and saw that her skin was once again the color of a young blue Angel. There wasn't the slightest trace of the evil powers she'd received from Caligula.

Filled with joy, she raised her eyes to look at Jeremy and gasped in horror.

He had turned completely red.

A piercing laugh, like the sound of two metal plates being twisted and tortured, rang out behind them.

Frightened by the noise, Allison and Jeremy slowly got to their feet and turned around. Alas, both knew who it was.

Mephistopheles.

The monstrous red Angel was followed by the three red Archangels and the four blue Archangels, along with Tetisheri and Lili, whose eyes were filled with infinite sadness.

“Finally!” Mephisto cried triumphantly. “We finally got you, my little Angel: Welcome to our side!”

Jeremy slowly raised himself to full height. The last blast of power had almost knocked him out. He tried to chase away the dark spots flashing before his eyes as he raised his head to face Mephistopheles.

“To your side?” he repeated weakly.

“Yes, to our side,” Mephistopheles repeated slyly. “Come here, Khan, come say hello to your brother!”

The killer silently slipped out of the shadows in the park. Jeremy jumped. He hadn't realized Khan was there. The red Angel had grown in stature and height, and must have been over seven feet tall now. He looked absolutely terrifying. Well, not quite as terrifying as Mephisto, of course.

Reluctantly, he nodded his head slightly in Jeremy's direction.

“Talkative as always,” Jeremy quipped. “And I hardly see why I should consider our killer to be a brother—do you,
Flint
?!”

The whole gathering gasped in surprise. At a loss, the blue Archangels all turned as one toward Mephistopheles, who swore in disgust.

“Come on now, Mephistopheles, your little charade has gone on long enough,” Jeremy insisted. “I know very well that you and Flint are the same person.”

Mephistopheles gave them all a sullen look, trying to decide if he should try to keep up the pretense. But when he saw the firm and determined look on Jeremy's face he decided against it, realizing he'd been unmasked.

“How?” he growled. “How did you find out? I had everybody fooled! Flint didn't possess all the characteristics of my true personality, allowing me to keep my secret for over fifteen hundred years. And no Angel had ever made the slightest connection between the two of us, or even suspected that he was a red Archangel.”

For some reason, Mephistopheles spoke of Flint as if he were a whole other person, distinct from himself.

Jeremy took a malicious pleasure in answering him: “You gave yourself away. Flint has a verbal tic. He's always saying, ‘Death is only the beginning.' Probably thinks he sounds clever. You used the same expression earlier when you talked about Peter dying, and I finally made the connection. You and Flint are two sides of the same coin. I had already suspected that Flint was a red Angel, after everything that's happened. But I have to admit I never thought he would turn out to be one of the princes of the underworld. If such a place actually exists.”

Allison had gone white as a sheet and looked like she might faint.

“You mean I … I got kissed by that … thing?”

Mephistopheles passed his forked tongue over his hideous red lips.

“A sheer delight. And there will be many more to come over the next fifty years, since you belong to me—or rather, you belong to Flint, who appears to be quite taken with you, little Blue! I'm quite impatient to see what he will do with you. Although, I must admit, I'm hardly pleased that our young friend has unmasked my ingenious disguise. It took me almost two thousand years to perfect it!”

He angrily flapped his red leather wing.

“Oh well,” he sighed. “No matter. It was well worth it.”

“But why?” Allison exclaimed. “Why … all this fuss?”

“Oh, you mean you still don't understand, my pretty Cherub? You mean your little boyfriend hasn't shown you the mark around his little belly button?”

Allison turned and gaped at Jeremy.

“He didn't show it to me,” she finally managed to say. “But yes, I saw it. What does that have to do with—”

“Khan!” Mephistopheles commanded. “Show them yours.”

Without hesitating, the killer removed the Mist kimono he was wearing. On his abdomen gleamed a small golden mark, about the size of a large coin. It wasn't nearly as big as Jeremy's.

The faces of the blue Archangels all darkened, while the Reds gave them sickly smiles.

“You'll be surprised to learn, Jeremy, that the mark means—”

“… the mark means,” Jeremy said softly, stealing Mephistopheles's thunder, “that I'm an Archangel too!”

Mephistopheles gave him a suspicious look.

“You mean, you knew?”

“Allison thought you were after her. But as I kept telling her, too many strange things have happened since I passed over. What are the chances that I would run into two eons-old Angels, one from Europe and one from Africa, the very night I was killed? You and Tetisheri? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. I should have been doing the same things that all the other dead people do when they find themselves here: finding my family, and spending time with other young Angels like me who had passed over maybe ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, tops. So why would old Angels like you take so much interest in a little Cherub like me, when you clearly look down your noses at them—even a genius like Einstein? No. It didn't make sense. And then … everything became clear to me when I found out that Tetisheri was tailing me.”

Mephistopheles scowled at the Egyptian queen, who didn't bat an eye.

“She gave me an address, and told me that if I needed help I should come to see her. When I realized that I wasn't like the others, that I could do things that other young Angels couldn't and that the Ancients had taken an interest in me, I knew I needed to get some answers to my questions.”

Mephistopheles's eyes flashed as he glared at the Blues.

“I thought we had agreed on a non-interference pact?”

One of the Archangels, Michael, stepped forward, his magnificent, dark-blue wings towering over him.

“And luring this young Archangel toward the Red side through deceit, Mephistopheles: What would you call
that
?”

“Common sense,” snickered the red Angel. “I'm bringing him over to the winning side.”

“Intolerable interference!” retorted Michael, who didn't look like he had much of a sense of humor. “But in any case, it enabled us to reestablish an equilibrium.”

“Equilibrium, my ass!” cursed Mephistopheles as he pointed over at Jeremy. “He's a Red now. And he's all mine! There are six of us red Archangels against only four Blues. Our side wins!”

Jeremy let him crow for a few more seconds. He had always been fond of the old proverb: “The higher they climb, the harder they fall.”

“Not quite,” he said quietly.

And, as Allison looked on in alarm, Jeremy suddenly changed colors.

He had become completely blue once again. A shimmering, midnight blue. He took off his shirt so all could see that he was blue everywhere, except for the golden mark on his stomach, which had grown even bigger and now completely covered his abs.

“NO!” howled Mephistopheles. “That's impossible!”

Before anyone could react, the evil Angel sent a burst of raw power at Jeremy. Unlike the invisible blasts of Allison and Caligula, lethal blood-red flames now engulfed the young Angel. Jeremy didn't budge an inch, leaning forward as if he were resisting hurricane winds, with his wrists crossed in front of him. His skin turned red for a moment, but as soon as Mephistopheles ceased his attack, he immediately turned blue again.

“What?!” bellowed Mephistopheles furiously. “What have you done? How can you resist the force of my power? It's impossible!”

Jeremy's face was drawn.

“No. It may be painful, disgusting, and nauseating, but not impossible. When I finally realized that you were trying to corrupt me by using Allison to make me turn red, I went to have a talk with Tetisheri. She told me that, on very rare occasions, young Archangels were born. A Blue and a Red. Always in pairs. And that I was one of them.”

Of course, Jeremy failed to mention that he had to threaten the Egyptian queen first, telling her that he would turn red forever if she didn't tell him what she knew. He also didn't mention that he was a complete atheist and had never set foot in a church.

Tetisheri continued impassively: “Archangels have a special aroma, a special aura about them.” She gave Jeremy a dreamy look. “They smell absolutely wonderful. As soon as Jeremy passed over, we sensed his presence, both physically and mentally. Michael sent me out to see how he was doing. We let the red Archangel leave with the Reds. And when I saw that no one seemed particularly interested in Jeremy except for Flint, who we all thought was a friend of the Blues and who didn't seem too concerned about the Archangel, Michael respected the non-interference agreement.”

She gave Khan a look of disgust.

“I had already told him that the red Archangel would never come over to our side.”

“Because that's what you all want, isn't it?” Allison said angrily. “To steal Archangels from the other side? You separated us, made us suffer, tortured us, made me die a thousand deaths with Caligula because that bastard Mephistopheles had bewitched me, and all that because of some stupid fight between the Reds and the Blues?!”

Fast as lightning, Mephistopheles snapped his wing at Allison and smacked her on the head, sending her toppling to the ground. Jeremy leaped to her side to help her up. Her mouth was bleeding.

“Shut up, slave! The next time you call me a bastard, I'll rip your head off. Is that clear?”

Allison wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand, glaring at the Devil. The monster only ignored her, so intent was he on Jeremy.

“All we want to do is maintain an equilibrium,” replied Michael, who was used to Mephistopheles's brutality. “There were fourteen of us in the beginning. Seven red Archangels and seven blue ones. But during the dark ages, our hatred for one another resulted in six Archangels disappearing, three from each side. And so we decided to fight no more. Then, to our immense joy and surprise, you appeared, which proved that the Earth could still spawn Archangels, just when we thought that it would never happen again. But we should have been more vigilant. We thought that you were safe with Flint, and even more so when we learned about Khan's attack, and how Flint had saved you.”

“It was Flint's work of course,” Jeremy revealed to them. “He set up the whole thing that night. He had located Khan, and ordered him to attack us in order to put a fright in us and make us think we needed to remain under Flint's protection.” He turned to face Allison. “And like two little idiots, we didn't see a thing!”

“Khan's attack was staged?” Allison gasped.

“Of course. We didn't hear him enter. The guy can handle a sword like I handle my razor. Do you really think he could have missed me? He could have sliced us up into hamburger before we even had time to scream! There again, I could tell something wasn't right. If he couldn't make his tongue grow back, then how could he possibly create a sword? Of course, it was only later that I understood. It was Flint who gave him the weapon.”

Mephistopheles sniggered.

“Oh, you were so frightened, my little lambs! I had to protect you from the big bad Khan!” He suddenly looked serious again and jabbed a finger at Jeremy. “And now, tell me why you can withstand my attacks!”

But Jeremy wouldn't be cowed.

“I learned something from my grandfather, who could probably wipe up the floor with an old bastard like you! Never give information to the enemy. So no, I won't tell you how I did it. You lose, Mephisto. You won't have two red Archangels to help you plunge the world into chaos and misery … and I don't care if you are a Great Ancient—the next time you touch my girlfriend, I'll stuff your wings down your goddamn throat, is that clear?”

He grabbed Allison by the hand and walked right past the red colossus, who was beside himself with rage. Mephistopheles tried to stop him, but Michael and the three other blue Archangels interceded.

“No,” Michael said softly. “We have a new Archangel, and so do you. Let them go. The lad's right: You've lost. He outsmarted you. It's all over.”