HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (34 page)

Angelique knew the
little midget man was nearby Nick and...she felt someone else, but
she couldn't tell who or what. Something little, she thought. Little
and dim, of no consequence. A dog maybe. A goat.

She sent out pain,
holding out one hand before her, as a conduit toward the little man.
She had warned him. She had told him, by God, to stay out of her way.
Her face scrunched inward, pulling in her lips over her little white
teeth, narrowing her eyes to slips. She kept her arm extended,
sending the thought and the real matter that changed even as it flew
from her fingertips toward the small being that hung over his belly
on the side of a ridge top.

They were almost to
the spot. She and Henry had come from a different direction so she
knew she wouldn't happen up on the midget. They were to the north of
where Nick waited along the shoreline. They topped a hill, and below
them stood her least favorite angel. Her lips raised in a snarl at
how he was displaying himself, just as if he thought he was one of
the golden ones, one of the righteous, when in reality he was no more
than the outraged, the same as she.

A series of memories
inundated her. Nisroc rising up for the first time in the dead man's
body, so happy, so grateful to be earth-locked.

Nisroc on the ship
sailing out of England for the New World, his spirits high, almost
giddy with expectancy.

Nisroc guiding her
through the backwater rush and flush of New York City, lifting her
and her petticoats across mud bogs to land her safely on wooden
walkways.

Nisroc in Charlotte,
stand-offish, less a companion than a nuisance in her house. She had
him fed, clothed, she provided for his every need. She gave him a
beautiful home, warmth, and comfort.

Then...Nisroc after
he had met his Mary. Nisroc the Betrayer. Nisroc the Fool, in love
and moving farther and farther from Angelique, relegating her to the
stormy past while he believed he had arrived on the unblemished
shores of another world where angels could mingle with man without
repercussion, where angels could break all the bonds with heaven in
order to tie themselves to the Earth.

“
Well? I guess
that's the one,” Henry said at her side.

Angelique stood
mesmerized by her thoughts of her past with Nick and her future,
which looked so bleak, without him. There was nothing to be done for
it. He had to go. He had to.

She began to gather
her powers. She called them from deep and beyond space, into the
universe she called, as her black wings unfurled to blot out the
sunlight...

Nick heard her
brazen call to the netherworld, but he also heard Jody's call at his
back. Confused, pulled as if by tethers to each arm raised in the
sky, he turned toward his friend's voice.

“
She's over
there!”

It was Jody all
right, standing high on the ridge, his hands cupped around his mouth
to sound the warning. Next to him stood a male child even shorter
than Jody, his face wiped clean of every single emotion save fear for
his life. He looked to be a butterfly caught in the amber light from
the sky, unmoving, frozen, even his mind shut down to barely a spark
of thought since thought had brought him to this terrible place where
fear might peel him like a boiled egg, where fear might gouge out his
innards and leave him a sprawling mess on the ridge.

“
Jody, no,”
Nick whispered in sadness.

Jody did not call
again, but Nick read all this thoughts just as if they were his own.
Nick had, for this day, given up all that made him human save heart,
and relied on his angel inheritance. He could read the human mind
even more easily than ever before.

Jody was thinking I
couldn't help it. I tried and I couldn't leave you. I'm tied to you
some way I can't explain but I know God is there and as long as I
know that I know it doesn't matter what I do as long as I do right.
This is right. I'm with you, Nick. I got this.

Had he the time Nick
would have probed his friend's mind to find out about the boy and
what he was doing here in the middle of what might be a cataclysm.
But he didn't have time. He didn't have time to...

...save them.

Angelique knew what
her partner angel was thinking and sent a blast of wind so strong
that even a hurricane couldn't match it toward the small people
standing on the ridge to her right.

Jody and Kurt were
blown over and backwards as if they'd been bowling pins. They
vanished from sight over the ridge top and she pushed harder,
tumbling them down the ridge to the bottom. Then she turned her wrath
toward Nick, having no more time or thought for his little friends.

She rose from the
ground, a black and white figure, a white child's dress, the massive
black wings. She was wild-eyed. She lost all grace given her by the
child's body she'd stolen for herself and, like Nick, she was wholly
dependent on her angel self. It was not a beautiful angel, but a
startling one. One that blazed so fiercely she might as well have
been an imploding star.

SHE.

SHE WAS THE QUEEN OF
ALL THE FALLEN.

She felt this in her
bones and flesh, in her blood, in the roots of her hair, in the
expansion of her wings, and in her deepest soul.

Nick, too, has risen
into the sky, no longer fretting about human observers or reporters
from The Post. He knew his little friends, so terribly bashed about
and now lying scraped and half-broken at the bottom of the ridge,
would not die, not yet, not just yet.

His sole intent and
concentration was on surviving one more hour--one more
minute!--within the burning hell of Angelique's furnace. He knew
instinctively she had not come to forgive him, or to beg him to
return to her. She had only come to destroy the one thing she hated
most of all—another angel who had tasted completely of the
earth, even the degradation and meanness and pettiness and still
found it God's greatest achievement.

She envied him his
love. She hated his compassion. She despised his empathy. And she
longed for his conscience. For she knew, just as he did, even at this
moment before their clash, that he was greater in so many ways than
she would ever be. He was the grandest angel she might have ever
known and all she wanted to do was extinguish his flame, send him
back to the purgatory of the stars where he could never love or
empathize or care again.

Nick flew forward,
his wings beating rhythmically, lifting him easily into her space.

From Angelique
nothing so pedestrian as beating wings was good enough for her rage.
She looked like a black, monstrous hummingbird, her wings blurred
they worked so fast and hard. Coming together brought more force from
her than it did from him and they crashed into one another like
trucks colliding at full speed.

Together they fell
toward the water, her hands talons on his shoulders to hold him fast.
He was shouting into her small furious face. “We don't have to
do this! Angelique, stop, we don't have to do it!”

If the coming
together of angels in flight created a sonic boom, their rapid
descent into the water created a tsunami. The ruffled waters parted
and sucked them down into the deeps. Water closed over their heads
cold and final.

It was then that
Nick's hands found her neck. He was still shouting to her, but now
wordlessly, straight into her wicked little mind. Stop it, stop it
now before it's too late, stop it, Angelique, let it go, let me go,
let us go!!!

He squeezed,
tightening his grip, and her small neck was like a soft ball between
his fingers. He felt her hands clawing at his face, but it didn't
matter. He must make her listen. He must make her understand. He kept
telling her the truth and how it would free her if only she would
listen to him.

Let it go! You don't
need me and you don't need to punish me! Only God punishes and it's
not in your realm, Angelique, are you listening, in God's sweet name,
are you listening to me?

But then he knew she
wouldn't. He had to do it, he had to stop her or she would stop him.
God grant him the strength, he prayed, and squeezed down on her neck
even as they drifted deeper and deeper into the water, the murk
darkening, the light blotted out from above, the world nothing but a
ball of swirling waters before God sent the light out of the
darkness.

She struggled no
longer. He couldn't even see her face in the dark underworld of
Poseidon.

He let her go,
afraid.

She began to drift
up now, rather than down, buoyed by her wings. He struggled against
the water to follow, reaching out for the surface, for the sun, for
the sky. He folded his wings close to his side and aimed for the
vault of heaven above.

Angelique bobbed on
the water, her face turned into the sky. She drifted with the current
toward the sea.

Nick lay on his back
watching her go, tears wetting the already wet skin of his face,
making new tracks.

He turned onto his
belly and swam toward shore. He had to see about his friends and felt
they needed his help badly.

He saw a creature on
the hill from where Angelique had descended and he stopped treading
water to stare. It was a hunch-backed thing, hoary and unholy,
creeping over the hill away from him. He saw the thing's back,
leather-skinned, covered with pustules and sores, weeping like bloody
Jesus in the now lowering sun.

The beast
disappeared over the hill as if winking out and Nick resumed making
his way to shore, to his friends.

Nick was just a man
again, a bedraggled, dripping wet man with deep scratches on his face
and a look of terror in his eyes. He turned Jody over and called his
name. The small man opened his eyes slowly, wincing as he did. “Think
I might have broke a leg,” he said.

“
You'll be all
right now.”

“
The boy?”

Nick lay Jody back
down where he'd been holding his shoulders in his lap and rushed over
to the kid. The boy had blood coming out of his nose and his arms
were scraped up as if he'd been dragged over the ground by a team of
horses. Nick lifted him into his arms, looking down into his face. He
saw he was breathing. He carried him over to Jody and said, “He's
alive. Who is this?”

“
A kid from
the hotel who followed me here. I couldn't stop the little
pipsqueak,” Jody said and then he began to laugh, laughing like
a maniac, laughing and crying, holding his broken leg.

Nick picked them up,
one small person in each arm, cradling them like his sons, and went
down the ridge slowly, careful not to stumble and fall.

“
Is she gone?”
Jody asked. He shivered even speaking of her.

“
Yes. She's
gone.” Nick said it with such great sadness that the small man
didn't know what to say back to him.

Clouds obscured the
sky, and rays from the sun spun out from the sides like spikes from a
halo.

“
I know just
the doctor you need to take us to,” Jody said.

“
Gotcha.”

“
His office
smells like cat pee, I want to warn you beforehand. But he sews a
mean stitch.”

“
Right.”

Kurt woke to find
himself being carried down the hillside by the big blond stranger
with wings, but now he saw no wings at all. His arms hurt and his
head. His nose and his hip. He began to moan and cry.

Looking up at his
guardian angel through his tears he said, “I your friend.”

Jody laughed. Nick
smiled. “You're going to be okay, little buddy. I'm taking you
to a doctor.”

Nick thought the
world was right again even if clouds curdled and drowned the sun,
even if there was rain or wind, sleet or snow, good times or bad.
Because the world was all there was, Nick realized, holding hard to
the charges in his arms. Heaven was for God. The outer reaches where
he had wandered for so much time was for the Fallen.

And this place, this
little blue planet, this spinning ball of mankind was really all
there was.

Angelique floated
like a small patch of debris toward the open sea. She retched
horribly, feeling her very stomach coming up through her throat.
Water spewed forth like a foaming fountain. She blinked hard at the
blue sky.

She had been gone a
while. Gone into the dark. She had railed against it. Cursed it.
Fought it with every fiber of her being and every tendril of her
strength. She had forgotten how cold it was and how empty. She had
been in the world so long that this place where she was heading was
alien and disturbing enough to rattle her wits. She could hardly
think.