Angel

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

There is a citywide epidemic of arson in San Francisco, and Detective Dave Peters and his partner, Danny, are on the case. Their routine investigation becomes more and more spontaneous and impossible. An astonishing scenario emerges: the War in Heaven, which takes place outside of time, is still being fought. Sometimes a minor demon drops out of that war and into time, on Earth, to hide - masquerading as a human. Sometimes an angel is sent to Earth to destroy these evil beings. But an angel on such an errand may care nothing for human life. Those who die go to Heaven, or elsewhere - not the angel's concern. Such an angel now stalks its prey in San Francisco - but it is newly fallen because it has begun to enjoy destruction. Dave and Danny, the only ones who believe in the angel, must track it down and, with the help of the Church, exorcise it.

Release date: May 1, 1996

Publisher: Forge

Print pages: 320

Sample

Two o’clock in the morning in San Francisco.

The policeman’s name was Reynolds but because of his shock of red hair the boys at the station called him Foxy. Reynolds didn’t like it much, he preferred to be called Ray, but he found out early in his career that the guy who is given a nickname has very little to do with its choosing. If the guys wanted to call you Dumbo or Goofy, they would do it, and the more you lost your cool over it, the more likely it was they would keep it up. It was best to wear a resigned expression and smile it off.

Foxy was off duty and on his way home, which took him through a dubious neighborhood where he parked his car and lit up a cigarette. He needed to think over his marriage, which had begun derailing itself. The cause and effect he knew was in himself: in his need for alcohol to blur the day’s events before going home. Clementine knew that he had to work long shifts, and tolerated the cop’s lifestyle, but she would not put up with his off-duty hours being eroded by booze. So here Foxy was, trying to choose between a happy marriage and the life of a single, drunken cop. Most people would not have found the choice difficult, but Foxy, with his dire need for a drink after work, could not contemplate life without either his wife or his bourbon. He was perched on the horns of a dilemma, and they were hurting him badly.

It was a chill, depressing morning and the mist was clinging to the walls of the alleys, drifting down the gutters to mingle with fumes from the effluence around the drains. A man stood on the corner of the street, looking up at the lighted window of a sleazy apartment building, just a few feet from Foxy’s car. He looked like a mary, with his long eyelashes and nails. There were other lights on, but he seemed concerned only with this one room. The rigidity of his expression showed the intensity of his interest. He might have been taken for a voyeur, except there was nothing to see, not even a silhouette on the blind.

“WHADDYA TAKE ME FOR?”

The shout, from one of the other apartments, was muted, as if the caller had his head under a pillow, or some thick blankets. There were other noises, from other rooms. This was a neighborhood that was never quiet: at least a third of its inhabitants was always awake, kept that way by the barking of the dog nobody was supposed to be allowed to keep in the building, by the eternal moving of furniture above, by the clattering of dishes and cutlery, and, worst of all, the laughter. He-he-he-he-he-he-he-he. Some unknown castrato, laughing in a high-pitched voice at something others could not see, could not hear—laughing at nothing.

Laughter. Murmur murmur murmur. Laughter. Murmur murmur murmur. Laughter.

Just when the neighbors thought the insane laughter had died, it began again, shrill and persistent, drilling through the thin walls. No one could understand why someone hadn’t killed him before tonight. With a laugh like that, he deserved to die. It drove everybody mad, it had everybody yelling, SHADDUP FOR CHRIST’S SAKES WHAT’S SO GODDAMN FUNNY YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS YOU ASSHOLE? until there was pandemonium and even Laughing-boy was screaming for quiet. QWAI-YET! Jesus!

This was a neighborhood that had a shift system for annoying those who were trying to sleep. Those who couldn’t sleep kept those who wanted to awake, so in the end nobody slept and peace only descended with the dawn, when everyone was out of their mind with frustration.

The watcher was silent, however, and maintained his vigil without moving, though it was bitterly cold. The one remaining street light that hadn’t been broken threw a dirty yellow light from its dirty glass bulb onto the face of the watcher.

A woman seeing him there, whether hooker or society hostess, would have agreed he was a beautiful young man. His eyes were pale gray, his full lips the texture of pink rose petals. His flawless complexion was as soft as the skin of women who advertise cold cream on the TV. Perhaps it was not a man at all but a woman in a man’s clothing? Or a transsexual? But somehow Foxy sensed a hardness beneath the soft-looking exterior, a terrible physical strength, that made him think this was not a woman. He couldn’t explain why, because he had met some tough females in the course of his work, but this one just felt like a man.

The man turned and looked at Foxy with languid uninquisitive eyes for a minute or two before turning away again, and fixing his stare on that certain window. Foxy felt a sudden tremor of fear run through him when those gray eyes settled on his own. Something was deeply wrong and the cop in Foxy felt urged to accost the guy, find out what he was doing there so early in the morning. However, some feeling held him back. That feeling was probably fear, though the policeman would not admit it to himself.

Foxy told himself he was glad the man had not attempted to speak to him. Foxy, unhappy with questionable genders at any time, would have hesitated before challenging this man about anything, anything at all. Still the physical appearance of the man fascinated him, held his attention as well as his unacknowledged fear. He saw before him the type of beauty English poets used to describe: the kind of good looks which frightened his manhood back into its shell.

The man stepped a few paces forward and Foxy was able to study the movements of the figure inside the white suit. As he had guessed, it was trim and athletic: a dancer’s body. Even through the cloth he could see the ridged muscle: smooth, elongated, not bulging rocks. The fingers that rested on the wall, right where a piece of graffito said RED SCORPIONS RULE, were long, slim and almost translucent.

When he moved it was with the grace of a cheetah. There was a power in that movement, as if a great engine was purring away beneath the rib cage. An engine of grace. Foxy got a chill feeling, of something savage beneath the comeliness, just looking at this character.

Foxy stared, wondering what the hell this mary was doing just standing on the street at three thirty in the morning. Maybe he was watching his own window. Maybe someone was up there with his wife. Or more likely his boyfriend. Maybe there was going to be a murder. Foxy tried to care, but couldn’t summon the energy to concern himself. His energy was all wrapped up in leaving the force, opening a restaurant. That was all he dreamed about. Him and Clem with their own bistro. Foxy fancied himself a chef. He had studied cordon bleu cooking at night school, all last year, and had been practicing since. People said he was pretty good, that you couldn’t tell the difference between one of his dinners, and one at Rannouf’s, the French restaurant, on the corner of Williams and Venus. Foxy didn’t want a restaurant, as such, with all the snooty stuff that went with such a place: what he wanted was a bistro, plain and simple. A place where he could put some can-can posters on the wall, with “Moulin Rouge” in balloon letters, like the kind painted by that French artist with the baby legs.

The man on the sidewalk moved to the doorway of the building and entered.

The screaming and shouting between the apartments continued unabated. Somewhere on the roof the alley cats were calling each other out, adding their own brand of noise to the discord. It was bedlam, but normal. Soon some uniformed cops would drive by, look up at the tenement, shake their heads and keep on going before they got a call and became involved in a domestic fight. At least if they were six blocks away, and got the call, there was a chance the ruckus would be over by the time they reached the apartment concerned. Someone would have hit someone, maybe killed someone, but it would have quietened down somewhat. There would be blood and tears, but a lull in the storm.

Foxy stubbed out his cigarette in the car’s ashtray, and reached forward to start the engine. His hand never reached the key. Instead, he was blinded by an intense white light. There was the sound of a muted explosion, and glass rained on the roof of Foxy’s Ford, like out-of-season hail. Through the bright haze, Foxy saw flames belching from the building, which appeared to spread very rapidly.

He heard the crackle and crack of metal and stone under sudden intense heat, followed by the roar of the fire rushing down hallways, devouring oxygen, eating inflammable objects in its path. Through the shattered window came a long whiplash of flame, which flayed the building opposite above Foxy’s head.

Foxy was stunned by the sudden ferocity of the fire, the swiftness of its progress and how quickly it reached such intensity. He was shocked at the speed at which it spread. It was as if hell had burst a blister, right there in that room: exposed an open wound which revealed the heart of its furnace.

Christ, he thought, another incendiary bomb! It had to be the mary that had been standing on the sidewalk.

I saw the bastard. I saw the bastard go in. I could’ve reached out and touched him.

He felt for the catch on the door, and fell out of the car onto the sidewalk. Getting to his feet, he stumbled along, half blind, feeling his way using the wall. The screams coming from the building were different now. No one was shouting SHADDUP WILLYA SHADDUP! Instead they were shrieking HELP ME SOMEBODY FOR GOD’S SAKES HELP ME!

Someone staggered from the doorway ahead, his clothes on fire. Foxy couldn’t reach him: the heat drove the policeman back. He could smell his hair singeing, his skin burning. The figure fell with a moan to the concrete and writhed around like a wounded snake, then finally lay still. The crackle of burning timber, the fumes of melting plastic and flaming rubber flowed out into the street. Foxy paused, began a coughing fit, as the gases went down into his lungs. For a few seconds he convulsed and heaved, until he managed to stagger across the street to cleaner air, and propped himself up against a post.

The heat reached him even there, with its red-hot fingers. It burned the side of his face and once more he had to retreat to find a cool doorway. He stared at the conflagration, amazed at how quickly the inferno had got out of all control. Like many people, Foxy was terrified of fire. Fire was a live thing, an entity that knew no boundaries, no friends, no aliens. Fire was the ultimate destroyer of life and property. It formed many of his nightmares.

Then something happened which caused a bolt of fear to sear through Foxy’s body. Like something from a dream, out of the doorway of the flaming building stepped the man in the white suit. Foxy couldn’t be sure, because his vision was still blurred, but he could have sworn the man’s clothes were smoking, perhaps burning. Yet the guy did not even pause in his stride, stepping over the body on the ground, and walking purposefully along the street.

“Hey, you!” Foxy yelled. “Stop right there!” He fumbled for his gun. “Freeze!”

But in his confused state he mishandled his weapon, and it fell with a clatter to the sidewalk. The figure half turned, stared. A strong draft of wind came down the funnel of the street to feed the fire and carried with it an odor which for a moment overpowered the smells of the fire. It was a scent which seemed incongruous with the situation. It was a smell which Foxy normally associated with one of those candlelit dinners which Clementine arranged for them, when she was in a romantic mood.

Then the figure moved on, swiftly, before Foxy could gather his mental reserves. Across the street his car was already in flames, the sounds of shrieking metal mingling with the screams of the hurt and dying.

There was no phone nearby. There was nothing more Foxy could do, except listen to these terrible cries, and hope that the ambulance and fire services would be along soon. He sat on the steps of the house outside which he was forced to wait, knowing what he was going to say to Clementine when he finally got home that night.

Clem, I’ve had enough. I’m leaving the force.

In a short while he heard the wail of the sirens.

The yellow truck with the Nebraska plates was stuck across the railroad tracks. There was no sound from its engine. A locomotive was hurtling down the line toward it. Inside the cab of the truck, the driver was frozen to the wheel. The passenger was also in a petrified state. Neither made a move to open their doors and escape from the oncoming train. They simply sat there, waiting for the impact.

The locomotive continued, without slowing down, toward the vehicle directly in its path. A crash was inevitable. Still there was no stirring from the interior of the truck. Suddenly, just before the impact, a hand reached down out of the sky, and eight-year-old Jamie Peters, god of this universe created by him, saved from certain damage the yellow truck and its two plastic inhabitants.

A detective sergeant was observing him from the other side of the room: his dad, Dave Peters.

“One day you’re going to let those guys down.”

“Naw. I’m real quick, Dad. I can do it a split second before the crash.”

“Superman, huh? Well, I’m telling you, one day—”

There was a ring at the doorbell. Jamie said, “That’s Mom,” and ran to open the apartment door. Dave listened, to make sure he was right. He heard Celia’s voice, then went back to thinking about what Foxy had told him.

There had been a fire the previous evening in a downtown district. Three people had died. It was another case of arson. In fact Foxy, from Dave’s precinct, had been a witness and could describe the arsonist, though he hadn’t been able to make an arrest. It was a sophisticated burning, according to Forensics, the starter probably being an incendiary device of some kind, though the investigators admitted that no residue casings had been found. It was the only way they could account for the sudden intensity of the ignition. Metal objects in the starter room had been twisted into weird and wonderful shapes as if someone had molded them like putty. The ignition flash had blinded Foxy, and the doer had got away during the time it took him to recover.

That no bomb debris had been discovered did not worry Bates of Forensic, who guessed that the casing and primer had probably melted in the intense heat of the fire, which had been fed by cheap synthetic furniture and had reached furnace temperatures. By the time Bates had been able to enter the smoking, gutted building, the incendiary casing was probably a dribble of alloy among all the other melted and twisted hunks of metal on the site. It was unusual not to find any starter debris, but not impossible.

The report on the crime was buried in the middle of the newspaper, among petty crimes, arson being a frequent news item in these firestorm days. It was the most common cause of accidental death, murder and manslaughter in the city, topping both traffic-death figures in the state of New York and the numbers of people who died from gunshot wounds in the state of Texas.

Dave sighed, knowing there was probably no immediate resolution. The politicians in their ivory towers were going berserk trying to find an answer to the situation. The mayor’s son himself was one of the most recent victims, having been caught in a conflagration when a night club burned to the ground. What the press had not discovered, and what the police had managed to conceal from them, was that the young man’s body was found fused with that of a stripper, in what remained of her dressing room. Their genitals were “locked together” as Dave’s partner, Danny Spitz, put it, “tighter than a rivet in its hole.”

Dave threw the paper aside at his wife’s dramatic entrance through the doorway.

Celia Peters staggered into the living room and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Her hat fell off, and rolled over to the sofa, where it stopped. Celia liked hats, even when they were out of fashion. She lifted one leg, kicked, and her shoe went flying in the same direction as the hat. The second shoe hit a lampshade, which wobbled, until Jamie rushed over and steadied it.

Dave Peters stared at his wife’s upside-down face.

“Tough morning’s shop at the supermarket, huh?”

She sneered at him with her famous Mexican sneer.

“Listen, you cops don’t know what tough is. Come with me next Saturday, and I’ll show you real low-life vermin. They may look like nice women from good homes, but underneath, they’re killers. You got to have elbows as sharp as knives to get to the bread, and the fruit counter—forget it …”

He laughed and reached down to pull her to her feet.

“I thought you wetbacks were used to that kind of hassle?” he said.

“Wetbacks? Watch it, gringo, my old man’s a pistol-packing cop. How was your morning, husband? Pretty rough having to sit in that chair reading the newspaper, while I’m out having a good time.”

“Somebody has to stay and look after Jamie. You know,” he said as she sat opposite him, “I think that kid’s got criminal tendencies …”

Jamie smiled at his father, knowing he was being kidded.

“… he likes to crash trucks.”

“Not me,” cried Jamie. “I save ’em.”

“You set them up, then you save them.”

“So long as he saves them. Look, hon,” said Celia to her husband, “how about a cup of coffee for a lady back from the wars?”

Dave climbed to his feet. “Coming right up, ma’am.”

He left the room and went to the kitchen.

Detective Sergeant David Wilson Peters was a tall man, a little too willowy to be called tough. He had a kind of Jimmy Stewart leanness about him, and he tended to stoop slightly when he was talking to someone smaller. It was only when you stared into his eyes, that you realized he could give you trouble, even though you might be several pounds heavier. They were not so much hard, those eyes, as uncompromising. They were the eyes of a man who has his own code of conduct all sorted out, with no woolly edges, and if you were on the right side of the law, you saw in them a man you could trust. If you weren’t, you saw that he was the type of cop you could beat to a pulp, and he would still get off the floor and fight like hell.

Celia Peters, on the other hand, was small and feisty, with the eyes of a puppy or a panther, depending on which mood you caught her in. She had seven brothers and three sisters, all small and feisty, who still lived down in Mexico City. Dave had met her while he was on vacation, and they married after three weeks. Her brothers and sisters visited every so often, but, much to Dave’s relief, usually one at a time. He liked them, but when they got into a bunch they chattered in their own language, and it nearly drove him out of his head. The time he liked to hear Mexican-Spanish was when he was making love to Celia, and she got so distracted when she climaxed that she slipped into her mother tongue. It amazed him then, and he had to admit, turned him on. He never told her this, because it might make her self-conscious, and stop doing it.

“Here’s the coffee,” he said, coming back with two cups. “What would you like, Jamie? Lemonade?”

“Coke.”

“No Coke,” said his mom, “there’s too much caffeine in it. Do you want to end up like your mother and father, drinking coffee till it comes out of your ears? Go get some lemonade.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Let him have a mix,” said Dave. “Half and half.”

Celia glared at him, shook her head as if to say “You can’t win” and then nodded. Jamie ran from the room to the refrigerator. They heard him clattering with the bottles. Celia didn’t like cans of anything, because they were made of aluminum, deposits of which over a lifetime were believed to cause senile dementia. She had all steel pans in the kitchen, plastic toothpaste tubes, and would not use foil for wrapping up the sandwiches. Celia was into alternative therapies, like homeopathy and acupuncture, and against red meat, white bread, sugar, chocolate, and would not have a smoker in the house. She had her vices, though. She drank coffee by the gallon, and she was addicted to late night TV.

Dave sipped his coffee and said, “How about we take in a movie this afternoon?”

“Jamie should get some fresh air.”

“Okay, we’ll walk to the movies, and take deep-breathing exercises as we go, filling our lungs with all the ’Frisco traffic fumes.”

“Funny. Let’s go to Golden Gate park first, give him a run, and then to the movies early evening.”

“Great idea.”

As they left the apartment block, they heard the wail of sirens. Another fire, thought Dave. When was this current spate of arson going to stop? Sure, these things went in cycles, and a downturn always came round eventually, but this had been going on for over six months. And not only in San Francisco, but in other cities in the States too. A year ago arson had been a big problem in European cities: London, Paris, Rome. They still had fires over there, but not nearly as many as American cities were getting. The whole scene seemed to have crossed the Atlantic to the USA.

The trouble with crime of this kind, Dave thought dispassionately, was that it became fashionable. One or two big blazes, and the eyes of all the fire-bugs in the country lit up, and sales of matches and cigarette lighters began to climb. If he had been a gambling man, or had a few dollars to spare, he could have made a fortune on the stock market.

Now all the copycats were out of their dark holes and torching the cities of New York, San Francisco, others. Some of them would be old-time offenders, the kind that liked playing with matches, the sort of people who needed therapy more than they needed jailing. But there would be others. People with hate in their hearts for the whole human race: the sociopaths and psychopaths. People with revenge on their minds, evening up ancient scores with their enemies. People who wanted to collect the insurance on their failing businesses. People who created diversions with fires, while they robbed some other part of the city. The whole thing blossomed like an ugly scarlet bloom, until the fire department was working night and day, losing men to the fumes and flames, getting stretched beyond their capabilities of dealing with calls. And the police too, working over-overtime, pulling in suspects, questioning them, writing out reports, getting the shit thrown at them from the politicians.

The movie was a family comedy with, of course, a happy ending, and Dave came out of the cinema feeling good and warm inside. He had Celia on his arm, and Jamie holding his hand. They were almost skipping along the sidewalk, Celia laughing gaily, and Jamie peeking up at his parents, knowing everything was all right, his face suffused with pleasure.

When they got back to the apartment, Jamie tried to push his luck, and stay up that extra hour, but Celia was having none of it.

“Bed, young man, you’ve had a good long day. Don’t spoil it. Your father will come and read to you in a minute.”

Although Jamie could read by himself, he still clung on to the storyteller in his father, who (Dave freely admitted) liked the sound of his own voice. He enjoyed making up the different voices and accents, British, Italian or French, as well as Deep South. At that moment they were halfway through Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird which was, on one level, too adult for Jamie, but he could identify with Scout and the other kids in the story, and Dave hoped the racial message was going in subliminally, if not consciously. He had no qualms about indoctrinating his kid with worthwhile values.

Jamie dropped off to sleep half-way through a chapter, and Dave finished it himself, reading silently. Then he put out the light, kissed his son on the cheek, and joined Celia in the living room.

“Hell of a kid you’ve got there,” he said.

She looked up from her own novel.

“Thanks. You too. You want to watch some TV, or what?”

“No,” said Dave. “I think I’ll get an early night. Danny and me are on a stakeout tomorrow. I may not see you for a couple of days.”

Her brow wrinkled and she tucked her feet under her skirts.

“Don’t you get relieved?”

“Sure, eventually. You know how it is at the moment, with all these fires. The guys are running every which way, and the manpower …”

“Oh, God,” she muttered.

“No, listen, hon, it’ll probably be okay, and I’ll get back by Tuesday morning, but I’m just giving you the worst scenario. Two days. That’s the worst.”

She bumped her head against his arm.

“Damn you, Peters.” She smiled, and added, “And don’t think I don’t know why you’re going to bed early. You know I don’t like staying up without you.”

He put on his best innocent look.

“I don’t know what you mean. If you want to come to bed at the same time, that’s great, but I’m sure I’ve got no ulterior motives. Look into my eyes, and tell me what you see. Pure innocence?”

“Ulterior motives,” she said.

Actually, Celia went into the bedroom first. She liked to get ready as if she were going straight to sleep, with one of her full-length nightdresses on, and her raven-black hair tied up at the back, knowing that it would only take about five minutes for the nightdress to be decorating a bedpost, and the hair to be flailing loose over the pillows.

They made love gently tonight, without the sense of urgency that sometimes overtook them. Dave found his wife’s body a continuous source of wonder. She was so rounded, so soft, he couldn’t imagine what kind of delicate business went into the making of a woman. It didn’t matter if they went at i. . .