HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (31 page)

“
I must have
been around fourteen before I knew what I was,” he said,
reminiscing. “And how I could change. What my true nature was.
I don't remember having a family. I grew up in an orphanage in a
little Texas border town. They told me I was dropped off in a basket
on the steps as a baby, but who can trust what people say? There were
only twenty-three of us boys, half of them Mexican. I don't know
where they kept the girls. When I was fourteen I was planning to run
away. One of the boys, a diehard snitch—he told on
everybody--found out about it and said he was going to tell Goldman.
That's who ran the orphanage. Goldman was a scrawny old man who loved
to use the rod on us for any small reason.

“
So when
Rachett, that was the boy's name, said he was going to tell Goldman,
I lost it. I plain and simple lost it. I was so angry that I seemed
to feel the top of my head steaming open, like my skull was cracking
open under pressure and heat. What was really happening was I was
changing. Rachett and I were alone out behind the school building and
he was standing quite a ways from me because he was scared of me and
what I'd do when he said he'd tell. He was sort of bobbing around on
his toes, getting ready to run.

“
But when he
saw what I was becoming, he went flat-footed and his mouth fell open.
My whole body changed, and the real me emerged. I was next to Rachett
before he could move one inch. I reached up and caught him by the
hair and dragged him down to my level, so I could look him in the
eyes. I saw my own hand and arm—the leathery skin, the
pustules, the scabs—and I knew my face must be just as ugly. I
said to Rachett, 'You tell and I will kill you.'

“
Even my voice
was different. Deeper, more manly. Rachett almost fainted. He swayed
on his feet. Then he whispered that he wouldn't tell, he wouldn't
tell no one nothing.

“
I let him go
and took off across the grounds. I made it to the fence and clambered
over. I couldn't run as well as I did as a boy-human, but I sure
could climb like a long-armed monkey. Before long I was over and
heading out, leaving the orphanage behind. When I was out of sight of
it and of Rachett, who was probably still standing where I'd left
him, I changed back. I didn't think about it, I didn't will it, it
just happened. I was just a kid again. A skinny kid who had a secret.
But now I was free. No more rod on my backside.

“
So to the
question of where I came from—I don't know. To the question how
I can shape-change. I don't know. To what or who made me? I don't
know. To how I can steal the souls of innocents? I don't know. I just
know that's what I'm meant to do. That's my mission. That's all that
matters.

“
Now you tell
me what you're doing here, girl. Or is it mysterious like my
situation--where your Maker won't talk to you?”

Angelique weighed
Henry's story in her mind. She wasn't sure if he was telling the
truth. How does a boy just suddenly turn into a golem-thing one day
when he gets mad? And if it was true, why hadn't she run into them
before now? Or maybe he was one of a kind. That would be the most
miraculous of all.

Though she'd met no
one like him, it was true over the hundreds of years of her existence
in this body she had felt strange feelings about some humans and
those people she avoided. She had also seen apparitions from the
corners of her eyes or in the shadows and wondered if there was
really anything there. It was possible, she supposed, that beings
like Henry had been there before but had never let themselves be
known. Still...

“
Well?”
Henry asked. “Does your Maker talk to you? I haven't read the
Bible or paid any attention to church services in the orphanage so I
have no background in religious matters. Only thing I know about
angels are they have wings. Like you.”

“
My Maker
doesn't speak either. I'm on my own, the same as you are. We're both
outside the pale, outside the perimeter of what is thought of as good
and clean and redemptive.”

“
We're
creatures,” he said. “Without masters.”

“
Yes.”

“
But this
other angel, the one you want to catch up with, you're his master?”

“
In a way.
Where I come from, I reign. He's an inferior.”

Henry laughed.
“Inferior angels! Does that make you the queen?”

“
It does.”
He noted she was completely serious and he believed her.

He lost his gleeful
expression and looked at her face. “Why are you a child if you
are the queen of angels?”

Angelique frowned.
“I made a dreadful mistake. I had to take a dead body and it
had been so long since I'd been on Earth, I couldn't make it all out
clearly. In the world between life and death, between the plane of
angel existence and that of the Earth, I almost lost my way. I
slipped into this girl the second she gave up the body...I was in a
sort of panic. Once I'd done it, there was no leaving it
without...the body dying again. I was here. I was in the flesh. I
didn't want to try again. I didn't want to die.”

“
I see. I
think.”

“
We're just
creatures,” she said. “We're not gods. We're not perfect.
Neither of us can do everything in a god-like way.”

“
And is your
God perfect then?”

“
Not by a long
measure.”

Henry guffawed and
almost ran into the ditch. He straightened the wheel to get the car
back on the road and tried to snuffle his laughter. Of course she
would call her Maker imperfect. She had been thrown out and cut off
from him. Was her Maker his Maker? Was he too some thrown out thing,
some trash-canned being, some lost creature on an evil mission that
was probably destined to fail?

He kept these
questions to himself as he drove. Angelique fell asleep after a
while, her head against the window. Sunlight flowed over her child's
face like honey over a sculpture. She was as beautiful as he was
grotesque. Her skin looked so soft it made him want to run his hands
over it. Her long, dark lashes lay against her cheek;, her lips were
red as pomegranate. And her hair, like long ribbons of night, shone
with blue glints it was so black.

He thought he loved
that awful, godforsaken creature. If only he knew what love was.
Which he didn't.

A sudden, crippling
voracious need filled him. He wanted to pull over to the side of the
road and drink her soul, drink it to the dregs, make her part of him,
part of his grand legion. His face twisted in an agony of hunger and
his cells began to dance and circle readying to turn him into the
reaper who would snatch the girl from where she dozed and clamp his
mouth over hers to suck the golden grist from her human body.

Her eyes opened and
she was staring at him hard. “No, Henry,” she said
quietly. “No.”

He shook himself,
clutched the wheel, and wiped the wide lustful grin from his lips.

No. He couldn't do
that. He might never be able to do that.

Yet he thought he
could almost taste her as she rolled over his tongue and teeth, as
she slid down his throat, as she lodged in the center of him making
him more, making him more than what he was.

Her eyes were closed
again. Unafraid. Fearless.

An angel.

With Jody gone, a
terrible silence descended on the room. The gnawing concern that had
overcome him earlier deepened. He could almost picture Angelique
hurrying towards him.

He reached for the
soup and began to eat. The steam went up his nose. It tasted
delicious, so good in fact he could hardly wait to get every spoonful
to his mouth.

He felt he was
already healing faster than expected. The pain he'd experienced
earlier was off at a distance now and dwindling. In a day or so he
should be able to remove the bandage and find himself whole again.
Angelique had explained to him how their angelic beings inside the
human body worked. The cells were replaced by supernatural cells that
regenerated at an accelerated pace. All the organs worked much
better, growing younger and more vibrant. They might not come back
from total death to the body, but anything less they had the ability
to overcome, given a little time.

He still felt Jody
near by and wondered why. He should have been all the way down to the
wharves by now. He just couldn't be around when Angelique arrived. He
had seen what she could do to people she didn't want in her way.

With the ridiculous,
superstitious voodoo she had gotten into in Charlotte, he had seen
her move from animal sacrifices to human. He hadn't participated, of
course. He had spent all his time with Mary or handling the varied
business enterprises. But he wasn't ignorant about what Angelique was
doing. She said the Cubans and local mixed breeds were all into
voodoo, so she used it to create a strong bond between her and them.
Also, she kept looking for a body to use to bring down more of the
Fallen, but so far nothing had worked for her. When she wondered why,
Nick wanted to tell her that she was up against a force so great in
their Creator that she might as well be a tumbleweed blown back by
hurricane winds. That she'd been able to bring him down might only be
because she'd done it before, and he'd lived on Earth before. But to
bring more reinforcements something was blocking her powers,
thwarting her. Now he felt grateful for that. She was entirely enough
to contend with. What if she had a dozen fallen angels at her side,
able to send them out to extract revenge on him? My God.

He finished the bowl
of soup and grabbed an apple. The juice of it ran down his chin as he
bit into it. He chewed thoughtfully, relishing the sharp, tangy
taste. The day was moving toward dusk and lights from the street
glowed beyond the window. He could hear cars puttering by and exhaust
backfires, the sound of people laughing, the tinkling of faint music
in the distance—a ragtime piano drumming a bawdy tune.

He smelled the
sweetness of the apple and it was separate from the taste. He smelled
the room, a conduit for all the people who had stayed in it—their
sweat, their sex, their cheap perfumes. He could catch the little
lost echoes of their lowered voices—some desperate, some full
of love, most of them anguished and in despair. The room was a
repository of life lived inside it. The pink cabbage rose wallpaper
was dingy and torn in places. There were water marks on the ceiling,
yellowed with age. Dust motes floated in the air, twirling like stars
in a dark system.

Even this—this
rundown hotel and this shabby room were jewels of reality. There was
not much on Earth that could disgust him because all of it was so
real and full of reverberations from the living. To feel something
was preferable to feeling nothing in any existence, even if it was in
a room on a side-street hotel where the clerk never looked you in the
eye. This was the world; it was the world he had come to love.

He couldn't let
Angelique take it from him.

Jody was
daydreaming, relaxing with his back against the wall, his legs
dangling from the stacked boxes. It was dark in the closet, which put
him in a mood for a nap.

Suddenly the door
opened, light from the stairwell sluiced through the closet like a
silver sword, and a small child stood in silhouette.

Jody's heart raced
and he almost leaped from his perch. Had he locked the door or hadn't
he? Was this the terrible girl angel from his nightmares? He was
doomed!

“
What'chu
doin' in my place?” a boy asked.

Jody let out his
held breath. It was a boy, probably around seven or eight years old.
He was slightly built with brown hair cut so short there were white
marks above his ears. Before Jody could respond the boy stepped into
the closet and closed the door behind him. He turned on a small
flashlight and spun it around in the dark indiscriminately. Light
beams danced like stars flitting through a dark sky.

“
Hello there,
what's your name?” Jody asked. It seemed the boy was so nervous
he couldn't keep the flashlight steady.

“
Kurt. I'm
Kurt.”

He didn't seem like
other kids Jody had been around. This boy was reluctant to speak at
all and what was he doing in this closet?

“
What are you
doing here?”

There was a little
silence. Then the boy said, “It's quiet and dark here. Nobody
yells.”

Ah, Jody thought,
his parents argue and it disturbs him. He could understand a boy
trying to hide away from that. He'd even done it himself, but he hid
beneath his bed while his family argued, drank hard and argued,
argued and drank.