HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (30 page)

Nick carefully
reached into his back pocket to withdraw a battered wallet. “Here,
take it.”

Inside the wallet
Jody found three crisp new hundred dollar bills. “Wow, where'd
you come by this much money?”

Nick again smiled.
“Reno was a gambling town, remember? I played a little dice, a
little roulette, some cards, got lucky.”

“
That's great!
I didn't know what we were going to do for dough because sure as God
is in heaven and ignoring the hell out of us, I'm not leaving you
alone here while I go to work.”

Taking one of the
bills, Jody placed the wallet back on the bed near Nick's hand. “I'll
be back in a jiff.”

Nick lay looking at
the ceiling once Jody was gone. Jody had said, Surely as God is in
heaven and ignoring the hell out of us...

It seemed to Nick
that was an absolute truth. God hadn't taken any notice of him for
millenniums. He probably didn't even remember those of the fallen
like himself. They had fought him and been cast out and forgotten. He
wasn't going to intervene to stop a knifing by a vagrant or to heal
the wound that knife made. He wasn't in the least interested in
Nisroc, the rogue angel.

A severe sadness
overcame Nick and he shut his eyes. The sadness was like a palpable
thing, a suffocating blanket thrown over his entire body, permeating
not only his mind, but his body as well. He had felt such sadness
before, when lost in the dark void, uncared for, unforgiven. It was
so deep, this feeling, that it made him ache and weep inside. Had he
asked for forgiveness? Yes, he had, in a million different ways on a
million different occasions. His pleas went out into the cosmos and
evaporated like breath on a wind. He could not even imagine God now,
though he had once been in his presence and made of the same
substance as Him. God was an imagining anyway, appearing to each
being as that being was able to perceive Him, but after falling,
Nisroc could not even conjure up an image at all. Was God tall,
large, beautiful? Was he made of pure light? Was he energy, swirling
larger than all the universes put together?Was he man or woman or
something other?

I am sorry, Nick
thought, trying to project that thought as far into the sky above as
he could imagine. Won't you hear me?

Won't you listen?

Can't you forgive
me?

Nothing came back,
not a feeling, thought, or tingle in his being. It was as if God had
vanished and left Nick in the world on his own. Just as He'd done
leaving him in the darkness that was without end. It was as if God
did not exist and had never existed.

“
That can't be
true. I know there is a God. I am angel,” he said aloud
bravely. His words echoed in the room and made him feel foolish.

Yes, he was angel,
and lying in a bed with his gut split and sewn back together. The
pain came now that his mind had left the heavens. It was a red hot
poker in his belly, a fire that burned his veins and turned them to
dust. His mind struggled with the pain, repudiating it, willing it
away.

I deserve this and
worse, he thought. I spent all those years as Angelique's help mate,
doing as she asked—except for loving Mary—doing whatever
it took to mold people and ensnare them and deceive them for our own
reasons, for our own enhancement. I used people and pretended it
didn't matter, I was lost anyway. I let Angelique murder people and
manipulate them to her own ends while I stood by and said nothing. I
am as contemptible as she. I am as lost. I am nothing more than a
worn out, injured angel on the run, scared of my own shadow, fearful
of a bad angel in the guise of a child.

A small voice in the
back of his head said, Stop running.

His eyes flew open.
Where had that thought originated? Had he just told himself to stand
up, to be a man, to be a real angel?

He didn't know if he
could. He didn't know if he had any hope of defeating Angelique. She
had ruled over him for so long...

Yet he'd never
tested her until now. He didn't truly know whether he could defeat
her or not. Should he take that chance? If he failed it meant his
dispatch back into the nether world of nothing--where no voice at all
spoke to him, no sunlight fell on his face, no heart beat in his
chest, and no love waited for him anywhere. Existence there was a
long, unendurable suffering. A waiting. And nothing more.

Could he chance
trading this world and all its pleasures and experiences for the
dark?

He fell asleep
thinking the same thing over and over. Was it worth it? Was it worth
it? Could he chance losing everything?

When he came from
uneasy sleep, or unconsciousness, Jody hadn't returned. The light
leaking through the dirty window was thinner and the room overcome
with shadows. Nick tried to raise his head and shoulders, but the
pain that rose from his midsection was so great he groaned and fell
back.

Then she came to
him. He knew she wasn't real, she wasn't in the room in a physical
way. It was a piece of her intelligence forming the small child next
to his bed, the black wings spread and shivering.

“
Go away,”
he whispered. He could feel her malevolence like a black sheath of
hate and impending violence hanging over him. Her eyes stared hard at
where he lay, taking in his condition.

“
You're not
dying,” she said. “Not yet. Pity.”

He closed his eyes
to her, but felt forced to look again. She still stood there,
ephemeral, diaphanous as a length of sheer cloth hanging in a
breezeway. She vibrated, her whole body and great wings shimmering,
floating, going away and coming back, like a dream.

“
Leave me be.
Don't come for me.” He spoke now with more authority. She could
not hurt him as a vision. He feared her but a little.

“
I heard you
trying to talk to the Creator. Fool! He doesn't hear you.”

Nick sighed heavily.
“In that respect I'm sure you're right. And I am a fool. A fool
for ever wanting to come here to be your puppet. I hated you so much.
You have no idea how much I hated you.”

Now she laughed, but
it was as if from a distance, somewhere outside of the room, down the
hall, across the rooftop, floating to him through forests and over
plains.

“
I'm coming,
Nick. I'm coming for you. Be ready.”

Despair and lost
hope came into him—either from her or from the knowing she was
always right. She was coming. He couldn't outrun her. He couldn't
escape. Not on a ship, not on any man-made conveyance. Not even on
hope and prayer.

She wavered in the
air at his bedside, finally disappearing like a wraith going home.

He didn't know how
near or far she might be. He suspected the former over the latter
since she was able to find him and appear in his room. Since she was
able to send an assassin to try to kill him...

He had to get well
and do it soon. The antibiotics would help, but he needed to instruct
his very cells to repair the damage quicker, faster, sooner. He
needed all his strengths, both man and angel, for what was coming.
Angelique never made idle threats. She was furious with him. If she
did not destroy his human body, chasing him back to the void, she
would find some way to cause him the greatest suffering—more
than a knife wound, more than anything another man might do to him.

He thought of Jody,
the little man who seemed so devoted to him. Just then the door
opened and his friend entered. He smiled at him, but his thoughts
were dark. Angelique would destroy this man first. Just for being
with Nick, just for being in the way. She'd destroy him to make Nick
watch.

Jody brought over
his purchases. He had a covered bowl that when he set it down and
uncovered it, the rising steam smelled of chicken soup, of garlic and
onion. He pulled a bottle of red wine from a bag at his feet.

“
Look what
I've got for you,” he said. “And more bandages! And a bag
of chocolate candy! And apples and oranges.”

As he withdrew his
prizes, Nick tried to form in his mind what he would say.

“
Jody...”

The little man
stopped piling the groceries on the chair and looked up, a little
alarm going off in his eyes. “What's wrong? Are you worse?”

“
No, no, I'm
going to be all right. I'm not really...a man...you know. I'll heal
fast.” To prove it, he managed to leverage himself from the
pillow and prop himself on his elbows. He swallowed a wince.

“
What is it
then? Something's wrong, I hear it in your voice.”

“
You're going
to have to leave, Jody. You're going to have to get out of here, away
from me.”

Jody cocked his
head. “It's that freak girl, isn't it? She's been in my dreams,
trying to scare me.”

“
Has she?
Well, she can do more than that, Jody. She's the one who sent the man
at the door. It was her. She can make you wish you'd never been born.
I don't want to take the chance she might hurt you. You have to go.”

“
But...”
Jody spread his hands in supplication. “I thought...I thought
we were going to take a ship, we were going to sail away from her.”

“
There's no
point. She came to me while you were gone. She's not that far away.
She'll be here before we could leave and even if we did, she'd
follow. I'll be all right, I told you. I can manage on my own now.
I'll give you another hundred dollar bill and you take one of those
ships down in the harbor. You leave on it, the very next one leaving,
I don't care where it's going. You need to be far away from here soon
because she's coming.”

“
You know that
for sure? Can't I at least stay until you're on your feet?”

“
I know it for
sure and for certain. And no, you can't stay. I'm sorry, Jody, you've
been the best friend.”

“
You
can't...protect me if she comes?”

“
I don't know
so I can't chance it. If anything happened to you, I'd...well, I
couldn't take it. Imagine if it had been you who first opened the
door and faced that killer.”

Jody had his bag of
things together in minutes. He had let go of all protests. He leaned
down and gave Nick a brief hug. “It's been a real pleasure.”

“
Likewise,”
Nick said. He felt his vision cloud as if tears were there so he
turned his head aside and let Jody go.

Jody said at the
door, turning back, “Now I know there's a heaven when before I
wasn't sure. That is a fine gift you gave me. The best gift.”

And then he was
gone, the door closed, the room smelling of chicken soup and garlic
and onions.

Down in the second
floor stairwell, Jody moved swiftly to a narrow door he'd noticed
when climbing up the stairs earlier. It had a rusty bronzed sign on
it: CLEANING SUPPLIES. It was locked, but not too hard to open with a
nail file Jody carried in his pocket.

He slipped inside,
pushing a box farther to the back with his feet, and pulling closed
the door. It was dark as midnight, but eventually his eyes adjusted
to the gloom enough for him to find a place to perch on two boxes of
cleaning solutions. He left his bag on the floor, slid the nail file
back in his pocket.

If Nick thought he
was going to abandon him, he was mistaken. He knew there had been no
hope of changing the angel's mind, so this place was going to be home
until the devil came. No matter how long it took, he could wait. When
hungry or needing to relieve himself, he'd slip out to the lobby and
the street, otherwise he'd sleep here, wait here. In this dark musty
closet. Where only a little man could fit.

CHAPTER 35

THE MAKING OF A
MONSTER

The next leg of the
trip found them in Reno, Nevada. Angelique wasted no time in
discovering the hotel where Nick and the little person had stayed.
From there she tracked their scent to the bus station and from the
ticket man, after her description of the two, she found they had
bought tickets to Sacramento, California.

Henry drove them out
of town, admiring the new casinos as they passed them by. “I
like a bit of gambling. Too bad we're in such a rush,” he said.

“
Tell me more
about yourself.” Angelique felt the time for secrets was at an
end.

“
What, like
where I come from, who made me, that sort of thing?”

“
Yes.”
She stared off across the mountains they climbed, the forests a
blue-green in the afternoon shadows. All along the road the Truckee
River cascaded over rocks and around the curves of the mountain
range. It was a big silver snake curling through the mountains,
splashing white over big rocks, lying low and smooth and dark like
velvet ribbon through the rockless passages.