A Hideous Beauty (42 page)

Shuffling my feet in the gravel, I did a three-sixty. I was standing on the roof of the Emerald Plaza tower in downtown San Diego. Not so much as a scrap of supernatural had been left behind.

I made my way toward the stairwell.

“It's not over.”

I turned. It was Semyaza.

“At best, a temporary reprieve,” he said.

“I'll take it.”

The understatement of the year, considering without the reprieve I'd be clinging to someone's ceiling.

Semyaza didn't stick around. The thought crossed my mind that given the turn of events, he might have some explaining to do. I hoped so anyway.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I jumped.

“Abdiel! Don't do that!”

“You have been given a special gift,” he said.

“I know.”

“Don't mess it up.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. “Oh yeah, and a little while ago when I was fighting for my life? Thanks for helping. Maybe I can return the favor someday.”

“But I didn't help.” He thought a moment. “Oh. Sarcasm. I get it.”

He stood there and we stared at each other.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“You wielded your weapons well tonight, like a warrior,” he said.

“My weapons . . .”

“Courage. Strength of will. Steadfastness. Spiritual weapons. You fought a good fight.”

“Thank you.”

“I may even come to like you.”

“Let's take it a day at a time, shall we?”

I started to leave.

“One other thing,” he said. “A couple of the angels in the circle tonight . . . on the other side . . . until tonight I haven't had communion with them since before time began. They were friends then. It meant something to me. Thank you.”

“Was Semyaza one of them?”

Abdiel nodded. “And Azazel. And it's been a couple of eons since I've seen Lucifer. He's looking good, don't you think?”

“Good night, Abdiel,” I said.

Again I started to leave, then turned back. “Abdiel . . .”

“Yes?”

“The mark that is on me. Is it visible?”

He nodded. “It's on your forehead.”

“My forehead!” My hand flew to my forehead, half expecting to feel some kind of scar. I could feel nothing. “What does it look like?”

He studied my forehead a moment. “Three digits. 666.”

My mouth fell open.

Seeing my expression, Abdiel let loose with a huge guffaw. “You're not the only one with a sense of humor, Grant Austin,” he said. “Wait until I tell the professor!”

CHAPTER
32

I
started shivering in the elevator, a delayed reaction to the night's events. Nobody was going to believe me when I told them what had happened up there.

The doors dinged and whooshed open to the Emerald Plaza lobby. I found myself staring at a police officer. From the cock of his head he'd monitored the elevator's descent from floor to floor on the lighted panel.

Blocking my exit, he looked me over. He noticed the shivering. I smiled and rubbed my arms as though I was cold. When he finished sizing me up, he stepped back and motioned me out of the elevator. “Have you been anywhere near the roof tonight?” he asked, hooking his thumbs in his utility belt.

“I just came from there,” I said.

He glanced at my pants. I looked too. The knees were soiled and still had bits of gravel embedded in them.

“What were you doing up there?”

“Looking around. Contemplating my future.”

“Anyone with you?”

I chuckled. “That close to heaven . . . just me and the angels.”

He asked to see identification and wrote down my name and contact information.

“Washington, D.C.,” he noted. “Are you here because of the president?”

I told him I was.

“Staff? You weren't on the bridge, were you?”

“Freelance writer. I knew people on the bridge.”

“Still can't believe what happened,” he said, shaking his head. “Plenty to write about though.”

“You don't know the half of it.”

He let me go. As I crossed the lobby to the front doors I heard him reporting in. “This is Sharki,” he said. “I'm going onto the roof to check it out.”

I pushed through the lobby doors and emerged on Broadway. A distant din of rescue and salvage equipment could be heard coming from the bay. The streets were deserted except for the occasional car or homeless person pushing a grocery cart.

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I started toward Horton Plaza. My legs were tired, but I felt the need to walk. I figured I could make it as far as the shopping center, where I could call a cab.

I didn't think or ponder as I walked. My brain was mush. There would be time to take stock of everything that had happened after I'd slept for two or three days. I might not make it that long, but I was going to give it a good ol' college effort.

As I stepped from the curb the squeal of brakes and the blast of a horn startled me. In my mindless state I thought I'd ignored the signals and crossed against the light. But I hadn't. The light was green.

Car doors flew open. Women shouted my name. And the next thing I knew I was being squeezed to death by three exuberant beautiful ladies. It was paradise.

A passing convertible carrying four sailors honked. The sailors whistled and howled and hooted.

When I am old and gray and think back on this day—the day I witnessed a president assassinated, the day I met Lucifer face-to-face, the day God rescued me from a host of demons—it is this moment, this hug, I'll remember first. I'm not sure I'll ever understand all that happened on the rooftop. Hugs I understand.

Having found an all-night fast-food restaurant, we sat in a circle in the professor's living room with empty wrappers and cartons strewn about like so many discarded bones. We'd pushed the couch against a bookcase and rearranged some chairs to accommodate us.

Christina and Jana shared the couch. Sue Ling sat in a kitchen chair next to the professor. I slumped, my belly full, in an overstuffed blue chair.

I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I got a first whiff of French fries in the drive-through. While scarfing down a couple of burgers and supersized fries, I described the battle of the bay bridge, the battle neither camera nor human eye could see.

Jana described the incident on the bus. Christina thrilled us with her description of what it was like to dangle out a helicopter door over the bay. Everyone on the helicopter was convinced they were going to die. Tears filled her eyes when I described how angels came to her rescue and sacrificed themselves to save her.

Not a sound was made, not even a breath, as I related the scene on the rooftop of the Emerald Plaza. A couple of times I had to pause as my emotions threatened to get out of control. I blamed it on being tired.

“I can't believe you met Lucifer,” the professor said, his voice hoarse from shouting. “We need to talk more about this later.”

“I can't believe I dated Satan's lieutenant,” Jana said of Myles Shepherd. “Are all the good-looking men devils?”

“I can't believe I dated someone who's half man, half angel,” Christina said, staring at me in wonder. “When am I going to see the angel side?”

“I've been a perfect angel around you!” I protested.

She scoffed. To Jana and Sue Ling, Christina said suggestively, “I could tell you stories!”

Sue Ling took that moment to play host by collecting and bagging the trash. She ignored the professor's protests that it could wait until morning.

For several minutes the professor had been staring at me. Finally, I called him on it.

Focusing hard on my forehead, he said, “It's clearest when you get angry. Six . . . six . . . six.”

I shot him a look of chagrin. “Abdiel said he couldn't wait to tell you.”

The professor told the girls of Abdiel's joke, and despite my arguing that nobody said the mark was on my forehead, everyone stared at it to see if they could see something.

“Ever since I met Abdiel,” Sue Ling said quietly, “I can't walk down the street without wondering if there are angels watching me. How can we tell?”

“They're here in large numbers,” the professor affirmed. “Like it or not, we're in the middle of a war. But then, isn't that the nature of warfare? When armies sweep through a town or a nation, they don't ask the residents if they want to be involved. If we're wise, we'll take the necessary precautions and arm ourselves in defense. As we saw on the bridge today, there are human casualties in this war.”

The professor glanced at the top of the bureau at a picture of his wife and daughters. His pain was a knife to my heart. But also, a warning. While I had been granted a measure of protection,
that protection did not extend to the others in this room. Semyaza had already proved he would not hesitate to strike at an enemy through his loved ones.

“Grant, I'm going to start sending you additional installments of Abdiel's narrative of angel history. It puts a whole new perspective on things. The way he describes the events of the Nativity, for example. He makes it sound like D-day.”

“Christmas? D-day?” Jana said.

“From an angelic view, it was. It was the day the Son took the offensive and invaded Lucifer's territory, setting up a series of direct confrontations between the two.”

“Abdiel is now posting guards when he dictates to the professor,” Sue Ling said. From the way her eyes widened, I could tell it frightened her.

“It's a precautionary measure,” the professor explained. “Abdiel isn't certain what Semyaza will do if he finds out about it.”

“This isn't over,” I said, relaying Semyaza's warning.

I had reached a saturation point. As the morning sun lit the front curtains, the professor, Jana, Christina, and Sue Ling continued talking. Language was lost to me. All I saw were the faces and gestures of those who had become dear to me.

I warmed myself in their presence. It felt good to be alive. It felt good to be human.

Those who have read Jack Cavanaugh's fiction before will recognize that the Kingdom Wars series is a significant departure from the historical fiction Jack is best known for. An award-winning, full-time author, Jack has published more than twenty books to date. His eight-volume American Family Portrait series spans the history of our nation from the arrival of the Puritans to the Vietnam War. He has also written novels about South Africa, the English versions of the Bible, and German Christians who resisted Hitler. He has published with Victor/Chariot-Victor, Moody, Zondervan, Bethany House, Howard Books, and Fleming H. Revell. His books have been translated into six languages.

The Puritans
was a Gold Medallion finalist in 1995. It received the San Diego Book Award for Best Historical in 1994, and the Best Book of the Year Award in 1995 by the San Diego Christian Writers' Guild.

The Patriots
won the San Diego Christian Writers' Guild Best Fiction award in 1996.

Glimpses of Truth
was a Christy Award finalist in International Fiction in 2000.

While Mortals Sleep
won the Christy Award for International Fiction in 2002; the Gold Medal in
ForeWord
magazine's Book
of the Year contest in 2001; and the Excellence in Media's Silver Angel Award in 2002.

His
Watchful Eye
was a Christy Award winner in International Fiction in 2003.

Beyond the Sacred Page
was a Christy Award finalist in Historical Fiction in 2004.

Jack has been writing full-time since 1993. A student of the novel for nearly a quarter of a century, he takes his craft seriously, continuing to study and teach at Christian writers' conferences. He is the former pastor of three Southern Baptist churches in San Diego County. He draws upon his theological background for the spiritual elements of his books. Jack has three grown children. He and his wife live in Southern California.

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