A Rosary of Stones and Thorns Page 4

  “You… you’re good with children,” the woman said.

  He could hear the words that completed the statement in her mind: for a demon. Mephistopheles said, “You’ve been to Heaven, I see.”

  “I… yes!” A sob choked her throat. “How—”

  “Your child’s swaddling clothes are familiar.” Mephistopheles smiled to reassure her, then continued. “What happened? If I may.”

  “Saint Peter… my child… I was pregnant. In a car accident.” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. “He said I could come in, but not my baby.”

  “Brave lady,” Mephistopheles said. He handed the baby back. “You’ll find Hell isn’t quite so bad as you've been led to believe. We have room here for every human soul… the not-quite-good-enough, the bad… even the uncircumcised.”

  She stared at him. In her arms, the child turned and fell asleep.

  “Good luck, lady.”

  He could feel her stare between his wings as he walked up the path to the tear. Centuries of practice helped smooth his face and hide the anger—it was typical of Michael’s Heaven, the adherence to rules even against all common sense and compassion.

  The mortal idea of Heaven as administered by God was as mythological as dragons or unicorns. Angels had always directed the fate of human souls after death… and angels, lacking Godhead, were as fallible as any other of His creations.

  By the time Mephistopheles reached the true gate to Earth, his resolve had firmed. The days in Hell did not seem altogether real, and time passed without much meaning. In the rush of endless work, he often forgot why he had followed Lucifer out of Heaven. But an Archangel that directed his minions to exile unborn babies from eternal Grace—that angel Mephistopheles could hate, though he would not dare to admit it to his lord, whose powers of forgiveness were, after all, more closely modeled on the divine.

  The air around the tear rippled. Mephistopheles secured his bag and checked his clothing over. He folded his wings around himself and stepped in—

  —Out

  Down. The air thickened as he plummeted to Earth, holding his destination in mind as clearly as possible as the winds buffeted his feathers.

  The ground rushed up to meet him, and Mephistopheles slammed into the middle of a grassy field, stomach down. He lay there for several minutes, chasing his breath back into his lungs. Turning his cheek to the ground, eyes closed, he became aware of the sunlight throbbing in the recesses of his dark wings. He spread them sinuously, fanning them shelf by shelf: primaries, secondaries, all three sets of coverts, into real sunlight from a true star made by God. A faint, cool breeze wafted through his hair, and the scent of bruised loam rose to his nostrils.

  Earth. The closest to Heaven he’d been in centuries.

  Mephistopheles opened amber eyes. The clearing was a tired but dogged green, edged with pines and oaks tangled with underbrush. He stared at the nearest tree and nursed the peace inside his core, the scent of the autumn.

  One wing tilted beneath a weight, and Mephistopheles frowned. He glanced over his shoulder, lowering the wing and drawing it forward, only to come face to face with a slender black bird with an inquisitive yellow eye.

  “Well, hello,” he said, grinning wearily. The motion had activated the inordinate amount of bruises along the flesh of his ribs. “Curious little fellow, eh? Never seen a demon before?”

  The bird’s head turned sideways, eye trained on his face.

  “Now you have. Not everything they promised. Fly off, now.” Mephistopheles twitched his wing, and it fluttered off to perch on a nearby hummock of grass, again observing with that one yellow eye.

  Mephistopheles ignored him. He sat up and performed his checks: the bag and sword remained attached to his belt and his clothing was no worse for the wear, if a little dirty. Aside from the expected bruises, he was in excellent condition. He stood, brushed himself off, and raided his pouch for the tiny folded map.

  “That way,” he murmured, and walked into the forest. The sun’s rays were like caresses where they fell through the needles of the pine boughs, and Mephistopheles frequently stopped to stand in a pool of cool light. After the weight of Hell, he felt lighter than air, than the vines and branches that tapped him as he slipped past.

  Breaking out of the brush, Mephistopheles found himself on the edge of a mown field. In the distance he could spy a large building, most likely an auditorium. As he studied his surroundings, a flash of black speared from the sky, landing beside his foot.

  “I’m really not that interesting,” Mephistopheles told the bird.

  It stared at him and clicked its beak.

  The fallen angel chuckled. “Who am I to argue.” He squinted at the sun. “It looks to be about an hour until dusk. I can’t do anything until then. It’ll really be quite boring; surely you have other things to do. Catch food. Feather your nest.”

  He walked back to the edge of the wood and found a comfortable tree. Spreading his wings on either side of the trunk, he set his back to it and slid down, one leg stretched before him and the other propped up.

  The bird lit on his knee.

  Mephistopheles stared at it. “Persistent, aren’t you?”

  The bird clicked its beak and canted its head.

  “Fine, fine!” Mephistopheles rested his head against the tree, laughing despite himself. “Here I am, a demon on Earth, a Fallen archangel tracking angel spoor. And do I get something ominous for a companion? A raven? A rook? Even a crow? No! I get a grackle.”

  The slender black bird flipped its iridescent wings insouciantly.

  Mephistopheles shook his head, then returned his attention to the field and the sky. There were no sunsets in Hell. He looked forward to rekindling the memory.

  Chapter Four

  The scribble-scratch of pencils created a white noise far too soothing for Stephen’s taste. His second cup of coffee had the consistency of tar and enough sugar to make his teeth throb, but it was proving useless against his grogginess. He’d fallen asleep quickly enough, but hadn’t managed to stay there; his dreams had been far too vivid, plucking him from sleep with contemptuous ease. He’d stolen to the threshold of his room more than once to stare at those feathers dragging to and fro against the carpet, keeping time with her breathing.

  Stephen drew in a long breath through his nose and sipped from his mug. The freshmen were all staring with fanatic concentration at their exams. Tales of a boy caught cheating earlier in the day had whipped them all to their best behavior. He hadn’t even needed to issue a few good-natured threats to get them to calm down—surely one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

  No, that wasn’t funny anymore.

  The algebra II/trig exam beneath his fingers blurred, and he glanced out the window at the pearl gray sky, worn and cool.

  Proclaiming something and facing its impending arrival were two different things entirely, Stephen concluded, thumb chafing the soft-grip barrel of his red pen. He had discussed the Apocalypse and the validity of John’s visions in Revelations in countless theology classes taught to restless teen boys, but like many other priests he’d been known to make the occasional homily treating Revelations as an allegory. The angel lying in his bed changed all of that, yet as a leaf drifted from the branch of the maple leaning over the window Stephen found he still couldn’t believe in an end to the Earth. That man could bring about his own extinction with the ill-timed use of weapons of mass destruction, certainly; that man could eventually outlive his ability to adapt and fall with Darwinian justice to some catastrophe, perhaps, though he was less apt to confess to that thought aloud… but that the agents of the end of the human race weren’t human or even alien, but Biblical?

  Somehow, he'd always believed God would give them enough time to get it right.

  The bell for the end of second period rang and Stephen started. He stood and tapped his fingers on his desk. “All right, guys. That’s it. Say your prayers and hand ‘em over.”

  Papers piled onto his desk, some dep
osited with obvious reluctance, others with an amusing celerity. Stephen patted the edges of the pile until only a few unruly corners remained, then sat again for the fifteen minute break. He should be grading… but instead, he watched the leaves fall from a tree numb with cold.

  Asrial jerked from sleep, clawing at her throat, wings sweeping up to bang against the ceiling. The air was so heavy—she couldn’t breathe, she was dying. Gravity pressed on all of her limbs, and her chest caved beneath its force with every exhalation. The angel folded her wings around herself and waited to be extinguished.

  When her end didn’t come, she stifled a sob. She had almost believed the events of the past day had been some phantasmagoric dream, but the sheer reality of the items around her, the lack of clarity of their edges, the solidity of matter almost completely disassociated with its spiritual component… the list went on and on, and left no room for doubt.

  Asrial dipped her wings to chest level and rested her hands on them, cocooned in feathers. The pallid sky was just visible through the slit of a window above the bed’s rude headboard. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and slowed her breathing, pulling carefully at the thick air. She’d thought Shamayim uncomfortable, but the First Heaven could not compare to Earth. She barely felt God’s presence at all.

  The room around her was small with few effects. The bed was narrow even for one person, clean but with a decidedly dilapidated air. A simple table beside it held a drinking glass, a battered lamp and a worn, yellowed book. A narrow closet took up half of one of the walls, and a little chest another. The plain cream wallpaper was peeling near the floor, and the only decoration hanging was a bronze cross, taller than it was wide.

  Asrial found the austerity of her surroundings reassuring. It reminded her of her dwelling in Heaven. And the blankets, though worn, were soft with a pebbly weave. They smelled ever so faintly of human sweat.

  Human.

  Asrial shivered and slid out of bed. The chill seemed to bypass her thin chiton altogether and she paused, torn between bringing the blanket and leaving it and its enticing but somehow threatening odor.

  When she entered the common room, her wings tightly mantled over the blanket. The room was barren, its friendliness leeched away by the cold hearth. Unlike the bedroom, there was clutter here: books left open and scattered on a desk, the coffee table and the mantle, colored afghans on the battered couch and rugs on the wooden floor.

  Another cross hung above the mantle; this one had a man hung suspended from it, his body shrunken and his attitude one of patient suffering. Her hands clenched on the blanket and she turned away. What a gruesome thing to decorate a wall with! Did all humans worship such misery? It was obscene!

  Lighting the fire was similar enough to the way she did it in Heaven that Asrial managed well enough. Her skin itched for a bath, her wings for the open air. Investigating the doors leading from the common room revealed a small bathroom with a tub, but she could not comfortably turn in the room even with her wings folded.

  She uncovered a thin metal basin in one of the kitchen cabinets and dragged it in front of the fire. Moving the coffee table, the angel walked from the kitchen to the basin, filling it with heated water. She tried to hold herself aloof from her surroundings, but could not help the thoughts that crowded her mind: the ingenuity of the kitchen faucet, like the pumps at the well sites but neater and far more efficient; the short box alongside it that held the coolth, and even had a plate of shaped ice. Even the packets of hot cocoa: had last night's drink come out of this paper sleeve?

  Pouring the last pot of water into her basin, Asrial slid the medallions through their holes on the shoulders of her chiton and let the fabric fall to her feet. She stepped into the basin, cupping the water and pouring it over her body.

  Somehow it did not clean and refresh as the waters of Heaven had.

  Asrial squeezed herself to a seat in the basin, beads of water on her skin glowing with reflected firelight. She lifted her head to the twisted figure over the mantle. Hadn’t the human son of God been tied to a cross and left to die? She'd heard the story once from the lips of a choir-member. Crucified, they called it. Horrible, horrible custom. Only humans would think of and tolerate such a thing.

  Why was she here? Asrial dipped her fingers into the water pooled above her stomach. It was already growing tepid. She sighed, her gaze drifting around the room. A spot of white and gold drew her eye on the floor and she focused on it: a feather.

  Asrial leaped from the basin, water splashing. She dove to her knees beside the feather and picked it up: heavy, with a solid rachis. It could be no one else’s. Frantically she arched both wings before her and spread them as far as she was able, moving each feather one by one until on her right wing no resistance met her flexion. She grabbed her wing arm and pulled it down, fanning the coverts in a plane parallel to the floor, and saw the empty spot in the second shelf of her greater wing coverts.

  Her skin had tightened in her panic. Angels didn’t lose feathers. Not even Fallen angels.

  “Dear Master,” Asrial whispered. “What is happening to me? Am I dying?” She ran a hand over the spread feathers and jerked away as another covert came loose. Her body seized and a small choked sound escaped her closed throat.

  Asrial leaped to her feet. She had barely the presence of mind to grab the blanket before tearing from the room and down the cramped stairway. The Earth air was killing her, was stripping her wings from her. She had to get back somehow, there had to be a way….

  She burst from the building into the cold, dragging the blanket around her body. Her damp hair waved around her waist as she staggered, gathered her feet beneath her. Spreading her wings, Asrial leaped—and fell, tripping on the blanket’s hem and landing hard on her side. A dull pain shot through her hip and elbow, so faint she almost missed it while catching her breath.

  Pain. Again. She had never known pain before Earth.

  “I’m dying,” Asrial whispered, clenching her teeth after the last word to cage the threatening sob. She stumbled upright and lurched through the ditch, coming to stand beneath the large oak; the parking lot where Stephen had found her was crowded with… strange things. Metal hulks, streamlined by some unfathomable purpose. She surveyed the surrounding area, her breath coming in soft, white pants. A forest bordered a field to the north, a forest where she could seek His presence, beg His aid.

  Asrial set off, wobbling.

  The sunset had drawn tears from his eyes, and he’d stared at the west until he could no longer pluck the smudge of color from the surrounding darkness.

  …but it had been nothing compared to the night. Hell existed in a kind of permanent, starless night, and darkness was no stranger to Mephistopheles: it rode his shoulders as a tar on his wings, darkened the strands of his hair and festered in his heart in the guises of weariness, doubt and cynicism. But the stars and the moon as he had not seen them for hundreds of years… God was everywhere. He couldn’t sleep or rest, hungry to hold it fast, to gather it in against the lean years that would follow if Lucifer succeeded in beating back the forces of Heaven. It was an electricity in his body; he hadn’t even realized how much he’d craved it, like a fire in need of fuel.

  So he’d kept the vigil all night; the bird flew away and back again on whatever errands such animals kept, oblivious to the wonder of its surroundings. Mephistopheles had remained, not one muscle moving.

  At dawn he rose and edged around the trunks, sliding in between the trees on his quest. God’s presence so permeated the world around him that he could not follow any Heaven-sent spoor. He had developed his preternatural senses to a fine edge in Hell, honing them to catch the faint hints of Him that Hell allowed; on Earth he was blinded, too sensitive to distinguish anything anymore. It was intoxicating.

  A thin shadow among others in the thickly clustered trees, the Fallen angel had crouched to watch the parking lot fill with cars. The souls gathered beneath Lucifer’s ink-black wings spoke of their way of life and all th
e things they’d left behind, cars, computers, coffee shops, but he had never had the chance to see them first-hand.

  Only after the parking lot had cleared entirely did Mephistopheles edge closer to the buildings. His feathers flared as he studied them, eyes thinned. The grackle perched on a branch above him, fluttering its iridescent plumage.

  “And now what, eh?” Mephistopheles said to it. “That’s a school if I’m any judge. And it’s in session. If I walk too close to it in broad daylight, someone’s sure to spot me. But I’ve seen no hair or bent leaf in the forest that wasn’t put there by me or wandering animals. What I’m seeking can’t be there—and yet it must.”

  The grackle clacked its beak.

  “Hey, now… what’s that?”

  Something had just stumbled out of one of the smaller brick buildings. After a pause beneath an oak, it set off across the field, and the sun glittered on feathers of gold and bronze. “It can’t be.”

  But it was. An angel, wrapped in a cloud-blue blanket, her wings untidily folded as she stumbled across the brown grass – an angel, and female. There had been no female angels in Heaven when Lucifer and his had left it, and though Mephistopheles’ spies had brought back reports of their birth in the Choirs of God, he had yet to see one. Her hair showed only strands of gold over ruddy waves; young, then, to not yet have hair bleached pale by her halo, which was notable in its absence.

  No halo. Mephistopheles stared harder. “No halo,” he said aloud. The grackle canted its head. “I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t see it either.” He frowned. Only the Fallen lacked halos, but Lucifer would have known instantly if she’d left Michael’s Heaven to join them. She would have appeared in Hell, not on Earth. What was she doing here?

  Mephistopheles slipped after her and shadowed her through the forest. As the cover provided, he could draw closer, close enough to see the creamy gold of her skin, kissed by a sun that rose high enough to pierce Heaven’s manifold layers; the delicate features of her face, as if sculpted; the eyes that could have been his, had he remained in Heaven to keep the reflections of God’s favor in them. The signs of her distress were even more visible: the furrow of her white brow, the tears staining her cheeks and chin, and most startlingly, the lack of clothing beneath the blanket she clutched to her body… in this cold? So deep was her turmoil that the angel passed within a few footsteps of Mephistopheles without ever even glancing his way.