A Gift of Wings (28 page)

Lucky thanked him, but refused the offer. “I would like you to meet G-Ma,” she said, “and I’d like her to meet you.”

They found G-Ma in her room, working on the still life she had said she wanted to paint when Lucky last visited. At their entrance, she looked up from the painting to smile absently at Lucky.

“Hello, dear,” she said, before directing her focus back to her artwork.

Pasting a bright smile on her face, Lucky returned her grandmother’s greeting and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She was used to G-Ma getting caught up in her work—when she was in the middle of a project, she would often forget to eat—but before the onset of Alzheimer’s, no matter how involved she had been, her eyes had always warmed when she looked at her granddaughter. Now, such moments of connection were hit or miss. Lucky wondered if she would ever get used to her grandmother looking at her with the same smile of general affection she directed toward relative strangers, if she could ever accept that the deep bond that had always existed between them was now tenuous at best. She knew that as the disease progressed, G-Ma would recognize her less and less often. Lucky could only hope that the pain she felt at the lack of recognition would also lessen over time.

“G-Ma,” she said, placing a gentle hand on her grandmother’s back. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

At Lucky’s words, her grandmother again looked up from her painting, and Lucky introduced her to Zeke. When he took one of G-Ma’s hands between both his own, she greeted him with a smile several times brighter and warmer than the one she had directed at her granddaughter. Lucky felt the difference as a swift, sharp stab to her heart. The intensity lessened quickly, but she knew the dull ache that followed would be of much longer duration.

While Zeke asked her grandmother polite questions about her painting in gentle tones, Lucky looked around the room to see if she could locate the unfinished canvas from the week before. As her eyes scanned over the corner farthest from the direct light coming through the windows, she gasped in surprise and fear.

Crouched in the shadows was a creature she had never laid eyes on before in real life, but it was familiar to her from the engravings in the book she had examined with Zeke the evening before. In form, it looked very much like a gargoyle, with dark, bat-like wings of leathery skin stretched over a frame of sharp, curving bones. Its body appeared to be covered with short, fine fur of deep sable, and its eyes were large and golden, with huge pupils, like those of an owl. If it were to stand at full height, rather than crouching as it was now, its head would probably reach the base of her sternum. Somewhat to her surprise, Lucky could detect no malice in its expression, although the curiosity in its gaze seemed to be mingled with suspicion. Since she didn’t know how G-Ma would react if her granddaughter suddenly started talking to the corner of her room, Lucky offered the creature a tentative smile and lifted her hand in a wave by way of greeting. Looking at her with deepened curiosity, it inclined its head in acknowledgement.

Lucky turned away from the creature to find that Zeke was watching her, observing her reaction to the being in the corner. She noticed that neither Zeke nor the creature greeted the other, but she sensed no animosity between them. Instead, they seemed to be so familiar with one another that no acknowledgement of recognition was required, as if each regarded the other as an expected and necessary part of the order of things. When Zeke moved toward the door, gesturing for her to follow, she complied. G-Ma had returned to her painting and was paying them no attention, and Lucky was grateful for the opportunity to satisfy her curiosity.

As soon as they had stepped into the hallway, Lucky whispered to Zeke, “It’s like the creatures in the book, the ones with Lucifer in the cave. Is that a Dark angel?”

Zeke nodded. “One of them, yes.” He spoke in an equally soft voice. “There are as many different kinds of Dark angels as there are Light.”

A few steps farther down the hall, he added, “Look around you, Lucky. What do you see?”

Lucky’s eyes widened as she gazed down the expanse of the hall. A creature like the one she had seen in her grandmother’s room was standing in each doorway. A group of them had gathered at the hallway’s end. Spinning around, she saw more of them in the doorways of the rooms behind her. Every pair of round golden eyes was directed toward her. She stopped moving, heartbeat accelerating, as they came toward her from all directions.

She looked to Zeke, unsure if she wanted advice or protection, only to discover that the Cherub was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared, and the mass of Dark angels was almost upon her.

CHAPTER 18

As the creatures closed around her, Lucky fought back a wave of panic. That internal battle intensified as the ones closest to her began pulling at her arms and legs and clothing. She struggled against them, trying to push them away, but her efforts were futile against so many. In a matter of seconds, she was on her knees. Kneeling put her at much the same height as the creatures surrounding her, and she could no longer see over their heads. Her panic now flavored with the added zing of claustrophobia, she gasped for breath as the creatures moved inward.

It took a few minutes for her to realize that they had stopped tugging at her limbs and clothing once her knees were touching the floor. Now, they were stroking her with clawed appendages that were somewhere between human hands and paws. When one of them placed gentle fingertips on her cheek, she responded in like manner. After an initial jerk of surprise, the creature accepted her touch. Their dark fur, Lucky discovered, was as soft as it looked.

Sliding its hand from Lucky’s cheek to her neck, the creature slipped a claw under the gold chain she wore and tugged the amulet from beneath her shirt, so it lay exposed against her chest. The golden medallion caught the light, and the creatures drew back from her. None of them had made a sound, but Lucky sensed the wave of surprise that moved through the group. Those nearest her drew those behind her to positions where they too could see the amulet. They all gazed at her in silence, their eyes moving from her face to the Light-Bringer’s Medallion and back.

Lucky knelt before them, unmoving, not knowing what to say or do. As she contemplated whether or not she should try to explain that she was just borrowing the amulet, she felt a circle of heat against her breastbone. She looked down and could not contain a cry of surprise. The medallion was glowing, the light and heat it radiated gathering intensity by the second. When it had increased to the point where she felt as if the pendant was burning her skin through the thin material of her shirt, the light exploded outward, enveloping her and all the Angels of Darkness around her.

For what was probably only seconds, but which seemed to Lucky like an eternity, she hung suspended in a sphere of heat and light, surrounded not only by the creatures from the hallway of the assisted living facility but by a myriad of other Dark angels, as varied in form as the nocturnal creatures of the earth, all looking to her for something she did not, could not, understand.

Then she crashed back into the reality of the tiled hallway, her chest tight from holding her breath. Releasing the air from her lungs, she sat back on her heels as her torso fell forward over her bent knees. Half-rising, she sucked in a lungful of fresh air and saw that the owl-eyed Dark angels were retreating from the hall, going back into the rooms from which they had come. She remained kneeling on the floor for a few breaths. Then she tucked the medallion back beneath her shirt with an unsteady hand and rose to her feet.

Retreading the short distance to her grandmother’s room, she stepped through the door to be greeted by another curious sight. G-Ma was sitting in her rocking chair, head back and eyes closed. Perched on her left shoulder was the Dark angel, shrunken to the size of a small house cat. Its little hands moved over G-Ma’s hair in soothing motions as it brushed its soft-furred cheek against her own. Zeke stood by G-Ma’s art table, examining the still life as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

“What happened to you?” Lucky hissed at him in a stage whisper. “Did you really think that was a good time to just up and disappear?”

Lifting a finger to his pursed lips to silence her, the Cherub strolled toward the door. It was all Lucky could do not to punch him in the arm. How dare he shush her after he’d abandoned her like that? She stalked along beside him in silence as they made their way down the hall and to the exit. Once they were back on the sidewalk, she turned on him accusingly, “Will you answer me now? Why did you leave me alone back there?”

“I did not leave you alone. I removed myself to a place where you could no longer see me, but I never lost sight of you.”

“Why didn’t you want me to see you?”

“Because you needed to face them alone. You weren’t in any danger.”

“I didn’t know that!” Lucky huffed. Then, more calmly, she added, “Did you know what was going to happen?”

Zeke shook his head. “I know the Still Ones well enough to guess that they would want to touch you, to get a sense of you. They can perceive the truth of a being’s motivations and impulses through a simple touch. I assumed that, realizing you could see them, they were curious about you. What happened with the Light-Bringer’s Medallion was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. Now, I wonder if that was part of what drew them to you, if they sensed its presence on you.”

“What did happen with the medallion? Why did it do that?”

“In all honesty, I am not quite sure. I may have the Gift of Knowledge, but there are plenty of things that I don’t know. I’ve never heard of the Light-Bringer’s Medallion doing anything of this sort. It clearly gathered a great deal of power to itself and then forced that power outward. To what end remains to be seen.”

Lucky wondered if Zeke had seen what she had when the light exploded out from the medallion. Had he seen her surrounded by all the Angels of Darkness? Surely, if he had, he would have mentioned it, wouldn’t he? Tired of asking questions that led nowhere, she kept those to herself, inquiring instead about the Dark angels.

“Tell me more about the—what did you call them?—Still Ones?”

“They are the gentlest of the Dark angels, and they are drawn to those who have suffered deep and irreversible personal losses. They feed on the feelings of pain and grief and loss.”

“That doesn’t sound gentle at all,” Lucky interrupted. “It sounds horrible.”

“It may sound so, but it is not,” Zeke said. “It is a mutually beneficial relationship. The Still Ones feed through touch. Each caress, each stroke, takes away some of a sufferer’s pain or grief. Even if a being is not consciously aware of a Still One’s presence, its touch will provide comfort. Sometimes people like your grandmother, for whom the veil between this world and the others is less tangible, even recognize that a Still One is with them—though they would not be able to describe what it looks like or call it by name.”

“But if they feed on suffering, doesn’t that make them want to cause pain, to create more—food—for themselves?”

“There is enough suffering in the world already to provide for all the Still Ones many times over. They do not create suffering, although they can, in some way, be said to benefit from it. They are not gluttonous for suffering; they feed to provide a service. When a being no longer requires that service, their Still One will move on to someone else who does.”

“Like part of a cosmic ecosystem,” Lucky said.

Zeke nodded. “Exactly so.”

“Speaking of food,” Lucky remarked, as they entered the ‘L’ station, “will you be ready for lunch by the time we get downtown? That little encounter in the hallway took a lot of energy, and I think I need to refuel.”

***

After lunch at a coffee shop, Lucky and Zeke spent the afternoon wandering around downtown Chicago. They strolled through Grant Park and passed an hour or so in the Art Institute. Lucky found that her new powers increased as the day progressed, each of her senses becoming heightened, so that the world she perceived was more layered in every way. The enhancements in her vision and hearing were followed by an increase in her senses of taste and smell and touch. By afternoon’s end, her brain was so saturated with sensory information she couldn’t begin to process it all.

At her suggestion, they walked to the lakeshore, since she thought being away from the people and noise of the city streets, looking out over the expanse of Lake Michigan would give her some much-needed mental space. Her assumption was at least partly correct: the presence of fewer people and the decreased street noise did provide a little relief. Still, the natural world itself offered an overabundance of sensory input. She could hear, as well as see, the dancing display of sunlight and cloud reflections on the water, a duet of alto and tenor, spiked with soprano notes and supported by the occasional rumble of baritone or bass; in addition to seeing and hearing the lapping of the water against the shore and the ruffling of the lake’s surface in the light wind, she could also feel the flow of liquid over rock and concrete, the texture of the ripples on the surface of the water. Even the gentle touch of the breeze on her over-sensitive skin, especially when she could not only feel it, but hear it, taste it and smell it, was too much.