A Ghost of a Chance (17 page)

The pain was brief and the bag deflated quickly. Something hot and liquid poured out of his nose. Keenan could taste salty copper in his mouth. The buzzing in his ears mingled with the siren whining behind him. Blue and red lights pulsated in a fuzzy confusion. Black then orange shimmered in front of him; he smelled burning rubber. Everything else spun wildly. He wanted to throw up. It took him several seconds to realize someone was shouting at him.

His door burst open and a pair of hands reached passed him to grab the seatbelt. When it opened, Keenan slumped forward, unable to keep his body upright. The same hands caught him under the armpits and dragged him from the wrangler.

What seemed like a mile of being drug through gravel went by and a kind of warmth spread from Keenan’s head to the bottom of his feet. When the motion stopped, he heard a massive explosion and someone folded him into the ground.

Tiny pieces of gravel imbedded themselves into his forehead and right cheek. Smoke made his eyes water. It was irritating as hell. The smell of electricity and gas filled the air.

There was that shout again. He thought it was saying his name. He wished it would just go away.

Reality rushed back into him all at once. It brought with it agony, confusion, and the rugged face of Sergeant Thompson suspended above his head. He had never been happier to see a cop before.

“Swanson,” Thompson was saying. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

Keenan groaned and tried to sit up. A big mistake. His head caved in. He put his forearm over his eyes and tried to stay still so his brains wouldn’t fall on the ground and his insides wouldn’t explode.

“I’m ok,” he said. “You?”

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Thompson growled pressing something against Keenan’s nose. “You could have killed both of us. I…”

There was a terrible sound…an otherworldly shriek. Thompson suddenly disappeared from Keenan’s side.

Adrenalin pumped expediency into Keenan’s unprepared body. He sat up and scrambled as best he could to his feet. His legs weren’t very cooperative and he fell to his knees.

Suspended in front of him was the entity. Lightning now covered the roiling mass of fury, sending tendrils into the night in every direction. It looked pissed.

Keenan scanned the scene to get his bearings, trying to figure his best route of escape. Flames completely engulfed his Jeep. A pang of loss hit him as he watched his baby burn. The smoke traveled down the highway away from them. The cruiser sat parked and still running close by. Spinning lights reflected off the gray mass eerily, but the sirens were now silent.

On the ground next to the cruiser lay Thompson. He wasn’t moving.

“You son of a bitch!” Keenan tried to get up, but his surroundings were full of angry rain cloud. He couldn’t move. Several wisps of electricity snaked out of the mass and wrapped around his body. The jolt contorted it and took the breath right out of him. His vision blinked out and shut down.

Chapter Fourteen
Angels and Demons and Ghosts…Oh, My

Keenan must have been a baby. The image of his dad, long gone by the time he was born, loomed above him. Shadows of the bars on his crib tattooed across his baby chest like restraints. The rotating plastic fish above his head moved softly in his father’s cold breath as he leaned into the bed. Keenan knew so little about Sam Swanson. An auto accident had claimed him before Keenan was even born. Yet here he was, staring down at him, a wispy smile playing against his pale face. Keenan cooed and lifted tiny fists to touch it, but they fell through like mist and instant pain forced howls out of Keenan’s tiny body. The freezing touch hurt like hell. When the lights flicked on, the pale man faded. Keenan’s mom put a bottle into his mouth and he fell asleep, the deep brown eyes of his father burned into his memory.

Keenan woke up from the dream. He couldn’t move, but for some reason he was still aware of his surroundings, even if everything had gone black.

The pain was gone. It had disappeared with the light. He was standing… no, he was floating above a glowing floor of clouds. Wherever he was started to lighten. He realized with a jolt that he had to be inside the entity.

He wasn’t scared. If anything, it was all slowing down. His heart didn’t hammer anymore; his chest was rising and falling evenly. Even his hands were still.

At the base of his skull a single vibration started. It was as if someone had put a tuning fork on his neck. The buzz faded into subtle music. It reminded him of the night the succubus had embraced him. But this tune was different.

The sound did not make him calm and peaceful. On the contrary, it sharpened his senses making everything glaringly clear. Something forced his eyes closed so that all he was aware of was the music as it throbbed between his ears. Not singing exactly, but not instrumental either.

Someone spread a blanket of black in front of his mind and stretched it tight. At the center of the fabric stood four tiny people. He couldn’t make out their features at first, but as the melody swelled they grew in size until he could almost reach out and touch them. They were frozen in place and looked faded and unreal, as if they were cut out of fifties cardboard. 3D fifties cardboard. There were three men and one woman. One by one, they clarified.

The first man was old and bent, but with a divine twinkle to his eyes. There was a kind of contentment in his face that Keenan immediately trusted. The man was wearing a simple long blue robe and sash, but instead of a shadow, he cast a glow. It was soothing to look at him.

Next to him was a young man dressed in a short green intricate tunic with a golden sash around his hips and long black stockings. He had a short cape over his shoulders and a flattened hat on top of his head. Otherwise disheveled, his chin sported a trim beard. There was a humorous twinkle in his blue eyes. Keenan had only his artist’s eyes to confirm it, but he was pretty sure this was the most handsome man he had ever seen. He looked so familiar Keenan was amazed he couldn’t figure out where they had met. Over the man’s shoulder was strapped a bag with rolled parchments, brushes, and other primitive artists’ implements. Keenan knew his history; from the clothes, this man had to be from the fifteenth century, around the time of the Renaissance.

On the other side of the old man was a vision. She was tall and lithe, nearly as tall as the young man. But the comparison stopped there. She was an exotic dark to his earthly light. Raven black hair, opalescent brown/black eyes, and skin the color of an Italian bronze goddess. Her ample breasts, lifted by a high tight waistband, rounded into dark cleavage. A braided golden sash tied her hair away from her porcelain face, which made her dark eyes gleam. The blue gown she wore accentuated her coloring until it was almost painful to look at. Keenan’s breath caught in his throat.

The woman also looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. The sorrow in her eyes reached into Keenan’s chest and pulled out his heart. It was obvious she wanted to be with the young artist, but a third man standing next to her held her arm.

This fellow was tall and lanky, handsome, confident, self-assured down to his fingernails. There was the look of mischief in his eyes that stimulated Keenan’s baser instincts immediately. He was trouble, the kind of trouble that thrilled the male soul and left him begging for more; a creature that preyed on vulnerable spirits and made them enjoy taboo pleasures, despite their convictions, commitments, or promises. This was a man who made bad men out of good, introducing them to every sin a man craved…and forcing him to enjoy it to excess. He had coaxed self-destruction into an art form. The pusher, the pirate, the vagabond, the rascal men gravitated to because they lacked a similar courage. The tempter. He was the thrill of men and the secret desire of women. Keenan recognized him immediately; after all, he had been under his influence for decades.

The steely eyes staring back at him from the frozen apparition made him swallow hard and hate cloud his vision. His appearance had changed a lot, but those eyes were exactly the same; there was no mistake.

Reggie had never looked so good.

He didn’t know what he was looking at, but when he tried to open his eyes they were stuck.

“Hello, young fellow.”

Keenan about jumped out of his skin when the old man moved. The fellow leaned on a stick and crossed to stand in front of him.

“I’m here to tell you a story.”

“Who the hell are you?” Keenan asked, but his mouth didn’t seem to be moving.

“My name is Amos. I am an angel.”

Something bumped into Keenan’s memory and he had to shake his head to get it out. “Wait a minute. Amos. The succubus’s Amos?”

When a grin curled the warm old face, Keenan fought not to return it. He had decided to hang onto his annoyance; afraid if he didn’t he’d lose himself.

“Well, I am a friend to Dabria, if that is what you mean.”

“Whatever,” Keenan replied irritably. “What’s going on? Is Thompson ok? Where’s the entity? Where did you come from? What’s Reggie doing here? How come…”

Amos lifted his hand and Keenan couldn’t go on. The last words wedged in his throat.

“You ask a lot of questions, young man. If you will allow me a smattering of patience, I think I can appease your curiosity. That would make this much easier. I need you to understand quickly. He sent me to bring you back. There isn’t much time…”

Keenan revved up his nerve and blurted out, “Who sent you? That… cloud thing?”

Amos’s laughter filled the air. “I
am
that cloud thing, Keenan. He turned me into that when he captured me.”

“You? Then why did you threaten me? What are you going to do to them?”

The angel shook his head and touched Keenan’s arm. A flash flood of comfort soaked Keenan’s senses and he went quiet. “Not me, son, him,” he said nodding to the figure of Reggie in the tabloid.

Putting a finger to his lips, Amos closed his eyes and the scene around them changed completely.

Keenan suddenly found himself in Florence…fifteenth century Florence. He was walking down a dirty cobbled street, the woman and Amos in front of him. It was like watching a movie, only from the inside of one of the character’s heads. Keenan’s disbelief dissolved under the heat of the sunshine, and he felt like one of his ghosts looking out at the world. Settling back, he decided to let it play out… as if he had a choice.

Chapter Fifteen
The Ghost of Dabria’s Past

Amos breathed deeply. The smell of baking meat pies and heady herbs poured from the villas as they passed, preparations for a noble man’s lunch, most likely. The streets were crowded with the masses; from peasant to the elite, humanity merged their experience, their existence, and their scent like spice markets in the East. Amos pulled the smells into his lungs until they were full. He loved the humans more than what was probably healthy, but he didn’t mind. They had entertained him for centuries.

“So who is this young fellow? Why have we been sent…”

“Quiet, child.” Amos scowled at the charming creature walking beside him.

“Forgive me, master,” she said, folding her hands and bowing her head. “This is my first divine request…I wish to please Him.”

“As do we all, my dear.” Amos adjusted his heavenly glow and winked out a cloud that had formed above their heads. “The young man is an artist…”

“Oh, I love artists. When I was a Muse, I used to visit…”

“Please, Dabria,” he said lifting his hands.

A hot red flush of heat colored her cheeks making her even more beautiful. Her aura shimmered yellow, then gold, and Amos smiled at her impudence.

He toyed with the idea of calming her, but thought better of it; he did not want to rob her of the thrill of her first divine request.

Amos had selected Dabria specifically for this mission because she had been a Muse. She had just arrived from her final duties and was very inexperienced in anything else. Training her to be a guardian would take time, but Amos was very patient. After this one stop, he would return her to heaven so she could study her new craft. Amos loved mentoring and, as a rule, he had little opportunity for it.

“Suffice it to say we are being sent to guide the young man,” he said. “He is painting frescos in the grand cathedral but it pleases Him to make certain he inspires another.”

“Who will he inspire, master?” Her voice took on a demure obedience Amos appreciated but knew was a strain for her. Dabria had always been a wild spirit. It was what made her an excellent Muse. It had also made it impossible for her to reach her angel status for centuries; free will, over enthusiasm, and creative thinking were not always desired traits in an angel. They were there to obey.

“A young boy named Michelangelo. He will be a great artist one day.”

“But what of our charge, master. Forgive me, but I wish to learn as much as I can. Knowledge will aid me in guiding him, will it not?”

Amos snorted an acknowledgement and motioned to a half-built cathedral. “We will see, little one. This way.”