HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (18 page)

“
What do you
think I am?” he asked just to see what she would say.

She ran water in the
sink, her back to him. “I’m not sure.” She was
hesitant.

“
Can you
guess?”

She turned to him.
“Would you tell me instead? It’s not like I’m in
any position to repeat it to anyone.”

“
It wouldn’t
do you any good. No one would believe you.”

“
I figured.”
She paused. “So? What are you, devil or angel?”

“
You’ve
already answered that, haven’t you, when you said I wasn’t
bad?”

“
Angel.”

“
Just so.”
He leaned back in the chair.

“
God sent?
Guardian?” she asked.

“
Neither, I’m
afraid.”

“
Lost your
wings,” she stated.

“
No.”
He concentrated, changing molecules he had long left dormant. Wings
burst from his back, nubs of darkness that swelled and grew and
caused him to stand from the chair to accommodate their length. In
less than a half minute he stood before her revealing the fantastic
and majestic creature he truly was.

“
Oh my,”
she breathed, covering her mouth with a hand.

“
I’m not
bad,” he said. “You need have no fear, just as you first
assumed.”

She came to the
table and sat down, looking up at him and the now spread black wings
that reached out into the crowded room. “God have mercy.”

“
He has no
mercy for me, and that is my predicament.”

She blinked,
whispering, “He has mercy for us all. Perhaps you've only
forgotten all his promises...”

Nick spent two
months with Marva, the companion and friend of Mo-Mo, the owner of
the bottle tree, the far-seer. She had questions for him, naturally,
but not many he knew the answer for. He told her about Angelique and
how he’d fled from her and the evil he couldn't abide. He spoke
of Mary and an earthly love affair that had left him broken. He
tried to speak of the vast darkness where he’d been imprisoned
too long to remember, but it was difficult for a human mind to
comprehend the endlessness of it, the bone chilling cold, the agony
of self locked within self.

She told him her
life story in return. How she’d always known the insides of
people and things, even as a child. How she’d been orphaned
and then widowed, always left alone by others, and finally how she'd
found a little peace from the “ratty people” as she
called them who scared her and made her shrink away. She’d
adopted Mo-Mo, having found him wandering the highway. The bottle
tree? It was just a communion with nature, she said, having no other
words to explain it. The sound of the tingling glass, the prisms of
color that rainbowed the ground when the sun hit the bottles—these
things made her happy and she trusted that was reason enough to do
it.

“
Tell me more
about the ‘ratty people’ you try to avoid,” he
said. “Do you mean they’re evil, like Angelique?”

“
Evil, I don’t
know about. They’re dead inside and their hearts are
black—black as your wings.”

“
I guess I
should look deeper into the people I meet on my journey.”

“
If you do,
you’ll end up like me, a crazy old crone living alone in some
isolated place. Is that what you want?”

He considered the
question. “No, I’d rather not do that. It would limit
my experiences and that, I think, is all I have.”

She studied him.
“For an angel, you don’t have a lot of wisdom at hand, do
you?”

He laughed at her
abrupt way of speaking. “I guess I don’t. How would I
know? You’re the one who can see inside. If I have no wisdom,
you’d be the one to know.”

Now she looked
saddened. “You're looking for your wisdom.” She paused.
“You’re leaving soon, aren’t you? I can feel it.”

“
Yes.”

“
You’re
on a mission, but you don’t know what it is.”

“
I guess so.”

“
She’ll
come after you, you know.”

“
Angelique? I
know.”

“
She’s a
warrior. She wants it all, heaven and earth. She wants you to...to
help her.”

“
She can’t
have everything she wants, even you know that,” he said. “None
of us get everything.”

“
You’ll
be careful? I know you cloak your soul; it was mighty hard to get to
a place and an angle where I could see it. But she’s even
greater than I ever could hope to be, from what you’ve told me.
She sees farther, deeper, with more precision.”

“
I’ll be
careful.”

What he did not say
was that now they’d opened up to one another, Marva was the one
in danger. He did not say it because he was sure she knew that.

He did say, “You’ll
be careful, too?”

She agreed that she
would, to the best of her abilities, and then she packed him a
satchel of food and sent him on his way, but not before hugging him
close. He loved her and in return he felt her love for him. They were
no longer strangers, but family. Leaving her was like a small death.

He knew he would
never forget her. She was the first to teach him anything and an
unlikely person to do that, too. He knew now that he had to stop
keeping to himself so much. There had to be other teachers walking
the earth, humans who knew more in some ways than angels could ever
imagine.

CHAPTER 21

TRACKING NISROC

Angelique reclined
on a chaise lounge, her legs covered by a knitted shawl. She had
dismissed the house staff. The house echoed every creak from a high
wind rising outdoors. Charlotte was experiencing hurricane season
and a storm from out of the Atlantic beat at the walls with pelting
rain and gusts of wind that made the whole house groan.

She shivered and
drew the shawl closer around her small waist, tucking her hands
beneath. The fire in the fireplace that had been laid by the
housekeeper was dying down. She should get up and tend to it, but
she didn’t move.

Fury and a feeling
of betrayal had plagued Angelique for weeks. She had given Nisroc
his very life! Hadn’t she granted him reprieve? Hadn’t
she found him a body and called to Nisroc to infuse it with his
spirit, giving him another chance on earth? Wasn’t she the
only angel capable of having created such a miracle?

And how did he repay
her? Just because he had spent a couple of decades attached to the
pitiful creature, Mary, and then lost her to mortal death, he had
walked away from his obligations to his master, to her!
She had
known that an angel coupling with a human was an action headed toward
disaster. They could not afford attachment to humans; she had told
him that. Unless they succumbed in some strange way the two of them
could live hundreds of years in the bodies they occupied. Even the
blood that flowed through their veins and arteries was not truly
human any longer. Why had he disobeyed and ignored her warnings? Why
had he allowed himself to be so mesmerized by a mere human female?

She could not
understand it.

She didn’t
know how Nisroc was doing it, but when she searched for him with the
power of her mind, she could not discover him. He had vanished
quickly and thoroughly. He had left even before she had known the
woman was dead. Now he was like a small light at the end of a tunnel.
The closer she came to it, the more it withdrew, keeping the
distance constant.

“
Where are
you?” she asked aloud. Her voice broke the silence in the
room. She glanced again at the dying fire and shivered with cold.

What was she to do
now? She had a telephone in the house installed and took care of
their business affairs that way. But she could not remain alone, a
child without a parent, without a guardian. He had left her high and
dry, crippled in this world. Her story to the house staff that her
“father” was on a business trip could not suffice as an
excuse for his absence forever. Someone would eventually tell the
authorities that a child lived alone in the house at 10122 Garden
Place.

She knew what she
must do, what Nisroc’s leaving was forcing her to do. She
would have to abandon the carefully created persona of Angelique of
Charlotte, North Carolina, give up her home, her income sources, and
start all over again. Since she could not yet bring down another
angel to take Nisroc’s place, she would have to again find a
human to manipulate into playing the role of a parent to her.

Yet she cringed at
the very thought. Humans were temporary. She had to keep them in
check all the time by instilling fear. They were prone to run away,
even to commit suicide.

She wouldn't do it!
She'd have no more truck with the weak little creatures!

She sighed and threw
back the cover from her legs. She rushed over to the fireplace and
dropped another log into the coals. She stood holding her hands out
to catch the warmth until the chill left her body.

She couldn’t
wait any longer. She was already in jeopardy. Tomorrow she’d
call the bank and request an officer bring her all the cash left in
the account. She could imitate Nicroc's voice enough to do that. She
would pack a bag. She would leave Charlotte behind and head west,
where she knew Nisroc had run. It is all she knew for sure. He was
going west.

Maybe if she got
close enough to him, she could pick up his thoughts. If she ever
found him…

Her mouth twisted in
anger. Had Nisroc been present she knew she would have torn him
apart with her teeth if she had to. He had given her no warning. He
had taken nothing, not his clothes, not money. He’d made the
arrangements for Mary to be properly buried in the Catholic graveyard
and then he had immediately disappeared.

How could a fallen
angel truly love anyone? The idea was alien to her. Hadn’t
love been striped from them as punishment for rebellion? How had her
most trusted angel been able to love and why had he disappointed her
again—the one being in all creation he owed everything to?

The window panes
rattled in their sashes from the force of the wind. Angelique glared
at the night beyond where wind screamed at the eaves and rain slashed
at the boards of the house. It was an angry night. It suited her
mood perfectly. Were she a force of nature, she would be a hurricane.
Full of ruthless devastation. Pumped with electric energy. Swirling
with dark clouds full of debris.

“
I’ll
find you,” she muttered.

A limb of a tree
cracked and struck the ground with thunder just outside the windows.
It sounded like a small bomb going off.

“
Do your
worst!” she screamed, holding up her fists to heaven, stomping
her feet, twirling with unbridled fury. She rose from the floor and
pounded her fists on the ceiling, screaming her wrath. “You
can’t kill me,” she shouted. “You can’t stop
me! My will be done, not yours!”

With her passion
depleted, she floated slowly back to the floor. The log had caught
fire so that flames danced in the fireplace, throwing shadows across
the polished marble floor. She neared the hearth and held out her
hands, warming herself, scowling so fiercely her face was a mask of
hatred.

As the night droned
on with lightning strikes and wind gusts, Angelique trundled off to
bed unconcerned with the storm. She crawled beneath a mass of
quilts, covering her head. She dreamed of Nisroc and a black dog.
She saw bottles hanging from the limbs of a tree, scattering rainbow
light across a bare yard. “There you are,” she whispered
in her sleep. “Traitor! Deceiver!”

In the dream her
angel companion ignored her, but the dog turned his head and stared
right at her. He barked, showing his teeth and Angelique smiled.
“Tell me where you are, little pup. Tell me how to find you.”

The dreamscape
widened to show an old house with a porch, an old woman at the door.
There was fear in the woman’s dull gray eyes. Angelique moved
toward her, hands outstretched. “I’m coming,” she
said softly. “I think I know right where you are…”

She did not know
where he was. If she did she would have already made herself known.
Nick knew once he left, Angelique could not go it alone. Since she’d
tried to bring down more angels and so far had failed for reasons
neither of them understood, she would either come for him or train a
human to take his place. Knowing Angelique, she’d come for
him. She’d want to mete out punishment first, then bind him to
her in some way he could never get free again.