Angels on Fire (6 page)

The seraph shot the flying eyeball a sour look. “So I noticed, Preil. Do you not see she wears the halo?”

The mass of tentacles clustered under the eyeball shivered and flushed pinkish red as its pupil swiveled towards the floorboards in what passed for chagrin.

Lucy wasn’t exactly sure what Nisroc meant by her wearing a halo, but there was no time to worry about such things. She motioned to Joth, catching the angel’s attention. The angel looked at her, but taking its colorless eyes away from Nisroc was difficult.

“Listen to
me,
Joth,” she said firmly. “You
don’t
have to go with these bozos if you don’t
want
to! You can stay here, with me, okay?”

“Deathling! You have no idea what you are meddling with!” Nisroc growled. “It is my appointed task to retrieve this sojourner and return it to its rightful station amongst the Host! Your interference places much in jeopardy! If you would heed divine counsel, stay out of this, if you are wise! In a brief span of time—the turning of your world—all that has passed will be of no more substance to you than a tissue of dreams.” The seraph
motioned once more to Joth, mesmerizing the angel with the light reflecting off its gleaming brass talons. “Come forward, Joth. Come forward and be bathed in the Fire, so that you may once more serve the Clockwork.”

“Joth, don’t do it!” Lucy yelled, as if commanding a recalcitrant pet.
“Stay!”

The angel blinked and swayed like reed in a high wind. Then its eyes rested on Lucy and it stood still and steady. Nisroc glanced uneasily in Lucy’s direction, plucking at its mane with its claws. “What say you, Joth of the elohim? Will you come with us, or stay with the deathling?”

“Stay,” the angel replied.

Nisroc took a deep breath, its chest swelling like a balloon, and issued an ear-splitting roar that shook the windows in their panes and made Lucy jump in fright.

“So it is marked that this was the first Question,” Nisroc growled. The
seraph
gestured with its right hand, tracing elaborate patterns in the air. With each movement of its brass-tipped fingers, sparks flew and there was a smell of hot metal. A glowing doorway appeared, this time without the previous fireworks and wind-machine. Nisroc pointed a talon at Joth, glowering at the angel. “We go now— but we will return, as was decreed before the race of Man crawled from the seas. Three times the Question shall be asked. You have answered the first of these. Should you answer the same twice more, forever shall you be excluded from the Host.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, buddy,” Lucy interjected. “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass while you’re leaving! And make sure to take Mr. Peepers with you!”

Nisroc cast a final glance over its shoulder at Lucy as it stepped through the portal. “The folly you have wrought is far more than you could ever imagine, little deathling. If I tracked the
elohim
here, the Machinists will not be far behind. A grounded angel is like blood in the ocean, or a wounded zebra on the plains. You would do well to mark these words— and live in fear.”

And with that, they were gone as if they had never been there to begin with. Lucy glanced down at her wristwatch and was stunned to see that no time had passed. Either her watch was broken—which was not impossible—or time itself halted while Nisroc and Preil had made themselves manifest in her living room.

Now that the heavenly skip-tracers were gone, Joth slid onto the floor of the living room, knees drawn up to its nose, arms wrapped about its thighs. It was hard to tell if it was thinking, deeply depressed, or asleep.

Lucy suddenly realized her heart was beating so hard she could see her ribcage move. Good thing she hadn’t realized she was so terrified at the time. Then again, it’s not every day a girl gets to tell a high-ranking member of the Heavenly Host to hit the road, jack. But now that she had time to think, there were a lot of things Nisroc said that bothered her. Especially that part about blood and wounded zebras. And what the hell was that bit with “the Machinists” all about?

Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door. She stood there for a long moment, debating whether to answer it or not. It was probably one of the neighbors coming to complain about the noise. She would be surprised if Nisroc’s roar hadn’t shattered stemware for blocks around. But after appointing herself as sponsor for an overgrown Christmas ornament, being bullied by a shit-heel ex-lover, and receiving obscure threats from heavenly civil servants, arguing with Mrs. Dinkelmeier from 4C seemed like a walk in the park.

Chapter Six

To her surprise, the man standing on the doorstep was tall, lean and handsome in a hard-to-pinpoint way. He was dressed in an exquisitely tailored dark gray suit with a red silk tie that matched the bold color of his hair. But most unusual of all was that his eyes were as black as a beetle’s back.

“Ms. Bender? Ms. Lucille Bender?”

“Yesss—?” she said slowly, suspicious as to exactly why this decidedly prosperous gentleman was standing outside her door.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, a business card appearing in his hand with the speed of a magician’s bouquet. “My name is Meresin. I am the Executive Producer of
The Terry Spanner Show
. I believe you came by our offices earlier today—?”

“Look, man—I’m sorry about all that. You’re not here to have me arrested, are you?”

Meresin laughed, revealing very white, very uniform teeth. “Oh, no! Far from it, Ms. Bender! If you’ll invite me in, I’ll be
more
than happy to elaborate—”

Lucy backed up, motioning for Meresin to enter. “Oh, uh, sure—come on in—please excuse the mess—I’m afraid I haven’t been able to do much cleaning up around the house lately,” she explained while snatching up dirty laundry and loose trash that the wind from nowhere had redistributed throughout the apartment.

“Don’t worry about such things on my account, Ms. Bender,” Meresin said. “After all, I imagine you have
far
more on your hands than simple household chores, what with an angel falling into your lap!”

Lucy froze, clutching an armload of dirty brassieres, and stared at Meresin.
“Angel
—
?
You know about Joth?”

Meresin sniffed the air, his nostrils quivering like a hound’s. “My, the atmosphere is positively rank with ozone! Have you been recently visited by Celestials?”

“If you mean Nisroc and Preil—you just missed them.”

“Good. I simply can’t abide those things! While the elohim have their obtuse charms, I find seraphim to be pompous boors! And the less said of their secretaries, the better!” He clapped his long-fingered hands together and rubbed them expectantly “Now! Let’s see this Joth of yours!” A worried look crossed his face. “The angel
is
still here, is it not? It didn’t return with the others, did it?”

“N-no. It’s still here. But, look—how do you
know
all this? Who
are
you?”

“As I said, I’m the Executive Producer of
The Terry Spanner Show—”

“Yeah, but that
still
doesn’t explain why you know about all this weird crap!”

A deep, mellifluous voice said from behind her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Ms. Bender? He works for the other team.” To her surprise, the white-haired man in the Hawaiian shirt from the subway stepped out from Lucy’s bedroom.

“Now that
really
tears it!” she shouted, hurling the armload of dirty laundry onto the floor. “When the hell did my apartment turn into fucking Grand Central Station?!?”

Meresin gave no sign of noticing Lucy’s outburst, but instead nodded a greeting to the white-haired stranger, displaying a smile that was both knowing yet menacing. “Ezrael. Still playing the guardian, I see. As ever.”

“And you the deceiver, Meresin. As ever.”

There was a sudden burst of light, as if a flashbulb had gone off in a darkened room, illuminating what had been present all along, but had remained unseen. Where Meresin had stood a moment before was a humanoid creature with the lower quarters of a goat and a long, lizard-like tail that lashed back and forth like an angry cat’s. The upper torso was human in appearance, as was the head, although the ears were sharply pointed and the tongue forked. Boar-like tusks jutted from the lower mandible and leathery bat-wings were folded against its back. The only things that remained of Meresin that Lucy recognized was the shock of supernaturally red hair, which also grew down along its spine, and the black eyes.

“Come now, Ezrael!” Meresin said, genuinely miffed to have been revealed. “That was
totally
uncalled for so early in the game!”

“Be gone, Infernal beast!”

“Oh, very well! Have it your way, if you must. For now.” Meresin snapped his fingers and was, once again, clothed in the guise of a handsome television producer. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave as I came, instead of in the traditional belch of sulfur. I have a car waiting at the curb.” With that, he turned on his well-shod heel and strode from the apartment.

“That’s odd. Meresin usually puts up more of a fight than that,” Ezrael muttered as he watched the demon go.

Lucy turned to the stranger in the Hawaiian shirt, angrily shaking a finger at him. “Look, mister, I remember seeing you on the subway, and it’s not like I don’t appreciate the way you showed up that sleaze ball from the Spanner show for what he truly is—but
who
the
hell
are you and what the fuck are you
doing
in my apartment?”

“I understand your anger and confusion, Ms. Bender. But you have nothing to fear from me...”

“It still doesn’t explain
how
you tracked us down and got into my apartment! You didn’t abracadabra yourself in here, did you?”

“Tracking a grounded angel is not difficult to do, if you know what to look for. Besides, I spotted Meresin’s limo parked downstairs, so I knew I was at the right address. And as for how I entered your abode—I needn’t resort to anything as grandiose as teleportation when the fire-escape works just fine. You really should talk to your landlord about getting a better lock on that window in your bedroom, by the way.”

“So—
why
are you here?”

“To help the angel.”

“How do you know he’s an angel?”

“Because I know one when I see one.”

“How is that even possible?”

“My dear Ms. Bender!” Ezrael laughed. “After all you have experienced in the last few hours, you
still
cling to such concepts as the impossible? Believe me when I tell you that I recognized the angel the moment our eyes met—just as birds know one of their feather from that of any other. We are kin, of sorts—” Ezrael lifted his garish Hawaiian shirt and pulled on the waist of his khakis, exposing a midriff that was unremarkable for a man his age—save that it lacked a navel—”you see, once I was as it is.”

Chapter Seven

“Come, I know this is too much to handle in so short a time,” Ezrael said with a kind smile. “Why don’t I fix you some tea while you try and relax? And since our friend is in a fugue state right now, we might as well make use of the down-time.”

“Fugue state?” Lucy frowned. “You mean he’s depressed?”

“Not in the mental or emotional sense of the word, no. Elohim do not sleep, as you understand the term. However, they do have periods of inactivity, usually after physically or spiritually draining events, which permits them to regenerate their energies.” Ezrael explained as he motioned for Lucy to take a seat.

Too weary to argue, she sat and watched the white-haired stranger locate clean cups and saucers and put the kettle on the boil. He moved with surprising speed and grace for a man of his apparent years, with a minimum of wasted movement. Lucy was surprised at how Ezrael’s puttering about in her tiny kitchen did not make her feel in the least anxious, despite the fact she had known him less than five minutes. Then again, she was nowhere near as territorial as Mam-Maw, who had been notorious for snapping a wet tea-towel at intruders into what she considered her private domain.

Within minutes the kettle was whistling and Ezrael poured the hot water into waiting cups and dropped tea bags in. “Mind if I join you?” he smiled, sliding a mug of herbal tea across the dinette in her direction.

“No, of course not, go ahead.” As Lucy lifted the chamomile to her lips, she looked the old man square in the face and noticed for the first time that his eyes were golden, like those of a cat. But after all she’d seen today, such things were interesting, but hardly startling.

Ezrael sighed and put down his tea cup, glancing out the window into the air shaft before returning his gaze to her. “What I am about to tell you, Ms. Bender, is something that pilgrims have frozen on the rocky soil of Tibet attempting to learn, that crusaders sacked the Holy Land to protect, and countless heretics died under hideous torture for daring to question. I am going to divulge to you the exact nature of the creature you know as God.”

“What?! ?”
Lucy choked, sending chamomile tea out her nose.

Ezrael laughed, shaking his snowy head. “Come now, my dear! Having been witness to angels, seraphim and daemons today, surely God is not so hard a stretch?”

“It’s just that, well, I—I don’t really believe in God.”

“That’s okay. The God you’re referring to doesn’t exist, anyway. Neither does Allah, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Zeus, or any of the other millions upon millions of names for the Clockwork. But that is not to say they are completely invalid, either. They are all aspects of the Clockwork— imperfectly perceived and imperfectly translated, but there is truth in each, just as there is falsehood. But for me to explain, at least as it relates to you, I’m afraid it’s necessary to start at the Beginning. And I
do
mean
the
Beginning. Do you mind?”

Lucy shrugged. “Naw. I kind of expected it might be a, um,
complicated
story.”

Ezrael smiled and nodded. “You’re a wise woman, for this day and age. Let me start by stating that which is responsible for Creation is not a giant old man with a long beard and flowing white robes, seated high up the clouds. That which makes all things is the Divine Clockwork. None know where the Clockwork first came into being, or how it did so. Not even the Clockwork itself, for it is incapable of what you and I understand as thought or speech.”

Lucy frowned. “Wait a second—are you telling me God is
dumb?”

Ezrael shook his head. “You must not confuse the Clockwork with anything you have ever known, Ms. Bender. The Clockwork is a vast organism without beginning and without end. It excretes galaxies and exhales asteroid belts. What thoughts it may have—if any—are as far removed from mortal comprehension as opera is from the singing of quasars. The Clockwork is genuinely unknowable on that level.

“It exists in a dimension beyond this one—a realm where symbolism and metaphor are as real as atomic energy and steel are in this. That dimension is the protoverse; it is removed from Time and Space, existing separately from the rest of Creation. I guess it could be called Heaven, although the average mortal would be hard-pressed to recognize it as such.

“The Clockwork dwells in the protoverse, and the Host dwells within and upon the Clockwork. The Host are immortal and composed of rigidly observed castes, of which you have met three so far. They are, in descending order: archons, seraphim, ophanim, cherubim, and elohim. The elohim themselves are divided between the Greater and Lesser varieties.”

“What’s the difference between the two? Elohim, that is,” Lucy asked as she sipped her tea.

“Greater elohim have fiery wings, like those you saw on Nisroc. They are in charge of the Lessers during work details. The archons are the most powerful of those who tend the Clockwork. It is they who are most often mistaken for the gods mortals worship. They are the Lords of Creation, the Keepers of the Scales, the Protectors of the Clockwork. They are nearly as obscure as the Clockwork itself, but they have made themselves known from time to time.

“Below the
archons
are the
seraphim
, such as the one called Nisroc. They hold great power amongst the Host, serving as judges, inquisitors and administrators. They see to it that timetables are met and rituals observed. They are also Keepers of the Fires of Righteousness and Creation.”

“What about the eyeball-guy?” Lucy said, visibly suppressing a shudder. “I don’t remember anything about giant floating disembodied eyeballs in Sunday School.”

Ezrael snorted a laugh. “Ah! Yes! The ophanim! I was just getting to them! They are what the Christian Bible refers to as ‘Thrones,’ I believe, and which the Talmud called ‘Watchers’. They are the eyes of the Clockwork, recording all things that occur in Creation so that the truth may be known when needed. They’re a cross between stenographers and a video crew, if you will.

“Below the ophanim are the cherubim, who act as immediate supervisors over the elohim, constantly relaying orders and information up and down the chain of command. The elohim, however, are by far the most numerous of the Clockwork’s spawn. There are countless flocks of them, for they are the drones who tend the Clockwork. They minister to the Clockwork’s every need from the moment they first draw their heads from under their wings.

“Elohim are task-oriented, but their minds do not register the concept of individual accomplishment or action. They tend the Clockwork because, well, that’s what they were created to do. If something is broken, they fix it. It’s that simple. They give their actions as much conscious thought as a weaver bird does the construction of its nest. It is all instinct. There is no learning process. None of them are taught what to do or how to do it. They simply do whatever it is that needs to be done, whatever it may be, whenever it may be required. Those that are quick at maintaining the Clockwork when it malfunctions survive and continue. Those that are too slow are destroyed by the Clockwork when it malfunctions. I have seen hundreds of elohim boiled at once in a geyser of live steam, or melted in an explosion of bile. Once, I saw an entire aerie crushed by a prolapse—only to be re-created anew by the Clockwork, moments later. There is no telling how many times an elohim is destroyed and re-created, as they have no true memory.”

Lucy blinked. “No memory? But—how do they learn or remember?”

“Elohim are like dogs, if you will. They live constantly in the Present, the immediacy of the Now. The Past does not exist, except as something that is not Now. And the Future is an even more puzzling concept. It is impossible for a human to imagine an existence such as the elohim’s. After all, what is a man or a woman but the sum of their experiences? Experience is what one learns from and, eventually, develops into wisdom. If these memories are stripped from a man, he becomes a stranger in his own skin. Without a Past there can be no Future—only the Present; an eternal and unending Now. That is all our friend—what is its name, by the way? I assumed it named itself for you?”

“Joth.”

“As I said, this is all Joth has ever known—however long that might be. Joth might be no more than twelve minutes old—or more ancient than the seas. The protoverse operates outside of Time, as humans understand the term. Certainly the Celestials would have gone insane long ago if they possessed memory of any sort. But now that Joth has pierced the veil into Creation, Time can no longer be denied—although the Host has been known to cheat it now and again. And now Joth is beginning to remember those things that have gone before. Memory is a dangerous thing for those unaccustomed to it. One is constantly discovering what is good, what is bad, what works, and what does not. It is a never-ending cycle of discovery and surprise—but also anxiety and uncertainty, where every defeat is always crushing, because it is always the first.

“Try, if you can, to imagine what Joth is undergoing: the last time you were in such a position you were a tiny baby—and it was so frustrating, so traumatic, your memory has mercifully erased nearly all of it from your mind. If a baby had the recall capabilities of an adult, they’d never learn to walk or talk! Why bother to get up, if all you’re going to do is fall back down again? Why attempt to communicate if all that comes out of your mouth is gibberish? You must be patient with Joth, although it will be exceptionally trying at times. As a true stranger in a strange land, the elohim will need your help, as there is nothing to guide its course except whatever instructions you might provide.”

“I still don’t understand—how did Joth end up on my roof?”

“While the Clockwork exists in a dimension removed from this one, it can be easily accessed, provided one knows the proper rituals. Indeed, there are spots where the barrier between worlds is exceptionally fragile—and occasionally elohim that have lost their way from the body of the Host plummet through these portals and into the mortal plane, streaking across the sky like falling stars. I was one such sojourner—as is Joth.”

“So, the Cowardly Lion that showed up in my living room was a truant officer?”

“Roughly speaking, yes. Although perhaps a better analogy would be that of a park ranger sent to retrieve an animal that’s wandered off its preserve. Since the Beginning, whenever an angel has fallen into the mortal world, Nisroc has been assigned to retrieve it before it is corrupted. Most of the sojourners return as soon as they are located.”

“Corrupted—? Are they afraid I’ll teach Joth to smoke, play cards and swear?”

Ezrael shook his head. “It’s not
that
sort of corruption that concerns them. You’ve already had a brush with one such agent.”

“That devil Meresin, or whatever he called himself?”

“He’s a daemon, actually. He’s a get of the Infernal Machine, just as Nisroc is a spawn of the Clockwork.”

“So—these Machinists that Nisroc mentioned, they’re daemons?”

“Yes. However, the Horde, much like the Host, are not what you might think they are.”

“Nisroc also said something about me having a halo—what was that about?”

Ezrael grunted and rubbed his brow with the ball of his thumb. “The Clockwork is geared to one thing and one thing only: Creation. It is a generative force. It does nothing but eat positive energy and excrete galaxies. All living things are part of Creation—be they daffodils, jellyfish or orangutans. By reproducing and continuing their genetic structure, they feed the Clockwork.

“Yet all living things serve the Infernal Machine as well, for in order to survive, all things must consume other things, and, in the end, all things must die. War, disease, misery—these things feed the Machine.”The creation of
anything
, whether it is a bird’s nest, a pointed stick or a thatched hut, serves to feed the Clockwork. Science and the discovery of new things feed the Clockwork, as does the service of justice and the healing of the sick. But it is not as simple as it might first sound. When a disease is conquered, the Clockwork is enriched. Yet when plague is rampant on the land, the Clockwork still thrives, for diseases are living things as well— things that breed and live and die, in their tiny, destructive way. So to destroy a disease is also to strike a blow against the Clockwork.

“The Clockwork cannot operate without the Machine, nor can the Machine exist without the Clockwork. This is the First and Oldest Truth, as reflected in Ouroboros: the Great World Serpent, the Everlasting Circle and the I-Ching. The Clockwork and the Machine are the Consumer and the Consumed, the Dual Natures That Never Meet—except in one place, and one place only.”

“Where is that?” Lucy asked.

“In the heart of Man,” Ezrael said with a wise, sad smile. “Humankind is the fruit of the union of the Undivided Twin. In your way, you are demigods. You hold within you the seeds of Heaven and Hell. Every child born into Creation is a potential Merlin, Buddha, Jesus, or Athena—although most end up as accountants, mothers and farmers.

“You’ve no doubt noticed the physical differences between Joth and the average human. The lack of genitals and fingerprints is nothing compared to what they lack within.”

“You mean angels don’t have souls?”

Ezrael shrugged. “Souls are no big thing. Many mortals live their lives without them. No, what the Celestials and Infernals lack is free will. Celestials are the spawn of the Clockwork, Infernals the get of the Machine. Yet your breed was born of the Machine and the Clockwork’s convergence. The results are as different as those of masturbation and copulation.

“You see, the richest source of positive energy resides in those things created by mortal hands, for they are imbued with a tiny spark identical to that which fires the Clockwork at its heart. A thing of True Beauty awakens something of the divine in all who behold it, be it a painting, sculpture, pottery or a poem. These icons have the power to inspire those who look upon them throughout the ages and are loci of immense energy, providing, the Clockwork with its most potent food source. The best I can compare it to is the royal jelly that turns a drone into a queen bee.