Angel Dust (11 page)

I was just going to have to hurry. Now what should I wear? All my raiments looked so – well, frankly, angelish. I wanted to be more funky, more trendy, more girly, more human, more like someone Marcus would go for.

I remembered the girls at the nightclub. Yes, I'd wear leggings and a tight top and a tiny skirt. Of course I didn't have any, so I decided to raid the new arrivals' wardrobe.

But it seemed like the new arrivals didn't arrive in nightclub outfits. There were a lot of night
dresses
, pyjamas, a few denim jeans and loads of hospital scrubs. In the end I chose a sweet white cotton bodice with spaghetti straps (quite accommodating for the wings) and a long floaty floral skirt.

Even though I say it myself. I did look nice. Very human, but still angelly. I wanted to impress Marcus with my celestial status yet still look very approachable – you know.

Oh, how I wanted to see Marcus
. It made me burn up like fire. At the very thought my mind was a whirl. And he'd be so much better today, a full twenty-four hours after the Healing Hands Blessing. I'd be able to talk to him. I got the flutters in my stomach and went all dizzy and breathless.

If I hurried, if I got down through the twelve Gates quickly and into the hospital, I could Collect the girl; find her somewhere to rest – so she could gently accustom herself to the Transition – give the old man a little longer on his life support machine, let the baby and her mother have a last sad farewell and squeeze half an hour free to meet Marcus.

I'd stay with him long enough to tell him everything; to impress upon him the very urgent need to repent. To repent in word and deed. I'd try to give him a few hints on how he could put that into action (Please God, let Raquel stay on double shifts). What could I suggest? Something while he was recovering? A donation to charity? If he could build up a bit of a portfolio of good deeds over the next week, at least we'd be in with a chance. If all else failed, it'd be grounds to appeal on. Get his soul weighed in the Halls of the Dead.

Why is it that when you're in a hurry everything goes wrong? I'd borrowed a hairbrush from the new arrivals' wardrobe and was busy trying to use it. I was only having a little practice at being human. (We angels don't need them.) But it was one of those circular types, and it'd got itself all tangled up in my hair.

Ouch.

Never mind. I tossed my tresses back. I was still more beautiful than a thousand stars.

This was it.

No more mistakes for me.

Today was a fresh start.

Today everything would be OK.

Today I'd save Marcus.

No wonder Raquel was stressed. Getting across town was horrendous. For a start nobody was allowed to fly. I suppose the thinking behind that was that if Saints and the Saved had to walk, then angels should too. (Of course, apart from Archangel Jehudiel, God's Army was all made up of the Saved. So they could hardly set up checkpoints in the sky, could they?) Anyway suddenly there were a zillion tanks everywhere with their flame-throwers pointing ominously upwards, just to make sure no angel broke the rules, I guess. We had to trudge on foot. God, was it slow.

And scary.

I joined in with a line of workers heading back to the Suburbs-of-the-Saved after their shifts in the City. It was actually kind of good I was in human attire. I put my cloak over my wings and mingled in better. As we walked I wondered about Vincent. What had happened to him? There was nothing on the front page of either the
Trumpet
or the
Herald
. That was weird. Was there a news blackout too? Overnight it seemed the war had moved from the far north by the Abyss to the centre of the Kingdom – and we were more under attack from God's Army than Satan. But I didn't say so, obviously.

I met Raquel as planned by the South Gate. She gave me the pass and told the guards I was just seeing her off. As we went through my throat completely dried up, but I put on my most angelic smile and thank the Holy Star of Bethlehem I passed unchallenged.

After she'd gone I raced. Every minute counted. The more time I had, the longer I could spend it with Marcus. But my God, did it take
for-ev-er
to get down the Staircase. I tried floating, waltzing, Cossack dancing (you never know), sprinting, jumping two at a time, I even tried sliding down the banisters. It still took forever. By the time I stepped out through the Twelfth Gate I felt a million years older. I didn't know if my halo was straight and my feathers looked really soft and floaty or whether I looked like a dead parrot.

But I was through.

In the beat of a wing I was beside Marcus. I
know
I should have gone to check out the venue for the girl's Collection first. I should have made sure about the demons, decided on my exact position, chosen music, all that stuff, but I didn't. I just didn't. OK? I wanted to see Marcus, so I just didn't.

And there he was. His mother had gone home. There were cards by his bed (I noticed one was from Candy) and flowers (which I hoped weren't from her too). And he was still asleep. (She needn't have put quite so many kisses on it.) But oh, how beautiful he looked! His gorgeous mouth curled into the tiniest smile. His long eyelashes resting so perfectly on his dark cheek.

I crept up close. I could feel the heat of his skin and smell the tang of his scent. I reached out and held my hand under his nose. Imagine. Here I was standing in the room right beside him. Just the two of us. Just for a moment, no God's Army, no stupid rules separating us. Just Marcus and me. I felt his breath warm and tickly on my fingers.

Oh Marcus! Why couldn't it have lasted?

I breathed. He stirred as if he could hear me. I held my breath. Best to let him sleep on, while I got the girl. (OK, I
was
feeling guilty about her.) I needed to go and sort her out like a quarter of an hour ago. But I wanted to be there when he woke up, to find me standing beside him.

I waved my hand over his brow, ‘Sweet dreams, my prince,' I murmured and sent him visions of fantastical waterfalls, of ethereal clouds being chased across deep blue skies by the winds of paradise. I blew him an angel's soft kiss.

He sighed in his sleep.

I left.

I'd get back to him as fast as possible.

The girl was lying in a room all on her own. She was very ordinary in a thin way, and she was in a coma. Her face was twisted up, as if she'd tried at the very last to vomit up her decision and expel the pills she'd taken, as if life itself was distasteful to her and death not much more appealing. I stood there a little shocked. What tragedy was this?

The Superiors at the Cloisters would say: suicide is sinful. It's one of the most wicked trespasses, such a soul should go straight to Hell. But as I looked down at the girl, I couldn't find it in my heart to blame her. And why was it so wicked? Was one's self not one's own, to live in or escape from? And what about Free Will? Were some acts less free than others?

I felt so sorry for her. What was it to be human and to hate mortality? What was it to inhabit one flesh for eighteen years only to hate the life it brought you, to cast it off in despair? I wondered what despair was like. And again I felt that sudden confusion about being immortal. The unfairness of it. How estranged I felt. How could I ever be alive (even in the same way as this tired, forlorn creature) if I could never die? How would I ever understand despair? How could I understand
any
emotion if I were not truly alive? And suddenly I saw death in a new light: not as the end of life but as its whetstone, how it must sharpen each second of living.

I gazed into the girl's face, as if I could read all the answers to the puzzle of life written there, as if I could understand what drove a person to such depths. But I couldn't really understand. You see, I longed for a chance to have a live body. Just for one hour.

I felt so sorry for her. Her thin pale hand, her pinched red lips. This girl had not known love – for it's love that redeems and keeps the spirit going, isn't it? How sad she looked. How I wished she could have been loved just once in her short sad life.

Quickly I closed the doors to her little side room. Nobody had come to sit by her. She'd had a mother, I remembered from the summary on the Manifest. A mother who must now suffer the horrors of her only child committing suicide. That was very wicked. But a mother who wasn't bothered enough to come and visit her, even though she lay dying? Yes, she was dying after all – wasn't that why I was here?

Demons were already peeking in at the window. They'd made an oily web that was seeping in through the casement joints. I flashed my eyes at them. Pure amethyst. That sorted them out. I really
should
have come straight here. What was happening to me? I was normally so reliable. I'd always been there for every duty, never broken any rules, done my best to be perfect. But since I'd met Marcus, I'd become so wayward.

I reminded myself today was a fresh start. I would do everything right. So I chose a haunting lullaby, to help the girl's Passing Over. She looked like she needed something gentle. I wondered if anyone had sat beside her when she was a child, held her hand, soothed her brow, played for her, sung to her. I'd sing to her. I'd sing her to sleep. I started straight away.

‘Won't you wake up, dear one, and repent?' I whispered.

But she did not stir. Only a slow tiredness fell over her thin face as if she would sooner die than wake.

I stroked her cheek. I sent her dreams of skies unlimited, of golden sands by turquoise seas. I took her hand and pressed it to my lips. I felt her spirit stir, felt it rise to my touch, drift towards me. I crooned on until it rose from her inert form and sought around itself, and seeing me gave one piteous cry and came into my arms.

‘Good girl,' I murmured. ‘There, there, was that so terrible?'

And her life ebbed away.

I watched the monitor zoom into one flat line. I heard the alarm sound in the charge nurses' office.

The girl whimpered, clung to me. Her form stirred now as if it were loath to be parted from its animated spirit. So after all she would have hung on to life, despised as she saw it? I marvelled. Felt jealous. Oh to know that unknowable thing. Mortality.

Her soul seemed to rise off the bed, then sink reluctantly down. I was used to this: the attachment that the body has for its soul, so I let the memory of it follow us as I guided her out of the little room.

Nurses came racing down the corridor. I held her close as they passed. I held the shade that used to be her body close too. It wasn't her real corporeal body, just a memory, a sad imprint of flesh and bone. I let them seek the comfort of each other, her soul and her shadow self, and then I took her by the hand. I said, ‘You will have to stay with me, my dear one.'

‘I'm Robyn,' she said. She looked like a robin, her small, bird-fragile form, her thin nose, her light brown hair.

‘Come then, Robyn,' I said gently. ‘Stay with me. I'll be your guide today and deliver you to your final home by nightfall.' She tucked her thin bird-like hand in mine, and we walked quietly back together to Marcus's room.

Robyn was very quiet. She was disorientated, of course. But I think she'd probably always been a quiet soul. I felt a twinge of guilt, even though I'd really given her a very gentle Passing Over. I should have taken her straight to Hell, of course, and come back on cue to Collect the old chap and the baby. I could probably have even slipped back early to spend an extra five minutes with Marcus too. But I wanted more. Five minutes was no longer good enough. Neither was five hours, nor five days, nor five millennia.

How huge and hungry was my greed for him. How terrible my desire. How deadly my sin. If I had known then what it would lead me to, would I have done things differently?

Marcus was still asleep, still in his private room, in the private wing of the hospital. I crossed through the space by the side of his heart monitors and opened the French windows on to the sunniest, sweetest patio. Light glanced in through the room, spearing Marcus on his bed. From the edge of the patio, gardens swept away like Elysian Fields. The verges of them were graced by cedars and pines. Quickly I scanned their reaches. Then I bent my gaze back to the patio. I sighted a bench. I took Robyn by the hand and led her through the open glass doors.

‘Here,' I said, indicating the bench. On its back was a brass plaque on which was written:
I lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help,
and a dedication to Mrs Spenser, late of this parish.

‘Lie down,' I told Robyn. ‘I'll cover you. The sunshine will warm your spirit; you can breathe the fresh scent of roses from here.' I created a bed of gossamer and silk and conjured a choir of doves to coo to her.

She lay down without a word and closed her eyes. I covered her with the gossamer. I didn't need to, but her phantom body was still unused to its new self and was shivering; strange really, as if it could actually feel the chilly breeze that swept down from the pines.

Then I returned to wake Marcus.

Once inside his room I checked myself in the mirror. I straightened my top and swished the floaty skirt. How did teenage girls stand? I tried a hand on my hip. I tried lifting up my chin with my eyes downcast. I tried a twirl. I knew how to do a twirl, but it wasn't very humany.

What else? Make-up! I didn't have any, but nevertheless I managed to effect a dark smudging around my eyes.

What sort of things did girls say? They commented on each other's shoes. They said ‘Oh My God' in lovely perky tones. I tried it out beneath my breath. They said ‘awesome' and ‘totally' and ‘so' and ‘like' and ‘yuk' and ‘ta-da'. Well, I thought they did. I'd have a go.