Father Briar and The Angel (27 page)

“
Her big, corn-fed
American breasts, with their pink bubblegum nipples, swing free as
she rides him, I am sure.”

“
She could be on top of
him?” Dale was astonished. Like a proper Christian, he only knew
the missionary position.

“
Not only could she be on
top of him, he could be behind her.”

Dale liked the sound of
that. This scary Polish mystic was giving him feelings he’d not had
since he was a teenager. But golly, Gosha, he was still a priest,
so there was a pressing issue to be addressed.

“
Do you think they use
birth control?”

That unique cackle came
again, filling the cab of the truck with its mischief and melody.
“Would a deer in the woods? Would a salmon in the stream? Would a
dog in the streets?”

“
So…no?

“
They fornicate without
care or control. Like beasts. No. Not like beasts. He does not fuck
her like a beast or a priest. He fucks her like a real
man.”

To emphasize her point, she
grabbed his dick. Astonished to find it as hard as the stick shift
controlling the truck’s transmission, she gave it a couple of tugs,
and then he moaned and passed out.

The wolf decided it was
time. He needed to eat.

The growling began in
earnest at 11pm on the second night of the storm. Cedric and
Julianna were nude under a hand-stitched quilt, a double stuffed
thing so thick it had gravity. Their bodies had been intertwined
for hours and she had no intention of letting him go.

They were in the
endorphin-enhanced state of post-coital bliss when wolf began his
threatening. Just low, gnarly noises from the back of his famished
but formidable throat. The wind was so loud and the snow had such a
muffling effect that they didn’t hear him at first, and when they
did, they weren’t sure what it was they were hearing.

“
I think it is just the
wind, whipping and whistling through the cracks,” he reassured her.
His foot was wrapped in blankets and he kept it near the stove at
all times. Otherwise their bodies were still locked together, as if
they intended to stay that way forever.

And they might’ve, if not
forever, at least for the foreseeable future, except for the wolf
had decided it was now or never: his belly needed
filling.

He circled the icehouse
once, then again. The door was obviously the weakest of spots and
the obviously entry way. He pawed at it, his icy claws leaving
deep, visible marks in the frozen wood.

“
That was clawing,”
Julianna said, panic rising in her voice.

“
Clawing?” Cedric asked,
confused.

“
Yes, clawing.”
Then he heard the sound again.

“
Yes,” he agreed,
astonished, “that is clawing.”

Cedric tried to stand up
but fell. There were pins and needles stabbing at his legs as the
blood returned to them. The tumble would’ve been comical under any
other circumstances. and even Julianna had to suppress a
laugh.

But she was still in
control. She’d been in control throughout the rescue and the
subsequent amazing sex, and she wasn’t yet ready to let him have it
back.

“
Cedric,” she said, calm
and cool (literally cool, shit, it was cold), “seeing as you can’t
walk, I need you to roll over to the door.”

She stood, still naked, and
loaded the flare gun.

“
When you open the door,
I’m going to blast whatever is out there. So stay low.”

Cedric was surprised, but
did what he was told. With the last of his remaining strength, he
pulled the door open by the bottom plank.

Nothing had surprised the
wolf in his weeks of running. Not the fury of the storm, not the
length of his journey, not coming upon poor Robbie Roggenbucker in
his truck. He didn’t have much experience with human beings, but
they didn’t usually appear in front of him, white in the darkness,
breasts swinging free, with a gun in their hands.

Hunger is a powerful
motivator, but self-preservation is even stronger. The wolf was
turning to flee even before the shot sizzled over his back, singing
his fur before briefly illuminating the night before disappearing
into the awful, gloaming snow.

God takes care of all
creatures great and small, so concerned souls, I’m sure the wolf
way okay.

Chapter Twenty
Eight:
Dum Spero, Spiro
is Latin for “As I breathe, I Hope.”

Beauty and the Beast
(although Gosha had already herself shortened its name to just the
more appropriate “Beast,” pushed the snow aside with ease, clearing
a path across the lake.

“That cow catcher works
wonders,” Bishop Mueller said, watching the steel wedge welded to
the front of the truck do its plowing work.

“I never understand when is
on a train they call it “cow catcher.” Looks more like “cow
vaporizer” to me.” The old Pole loved black humor, useful stuff for
her massive truck, and trains. Cows she was indifferent to. But the
sold steel grill, bought at auction for a bargain price, had fit
quite nicely, after some blowtorching, on the front of her ride.
Now, instead of clearing debris (most of it, despite the name, not
of a bovine nature) off the train tracks, it was serving as a
snowplow.

“I know where icehouse is,”
she declared. “teenagers like to have sex there. I must clear it
out of “humpers” regularly.”

Besides the winch, the cow
catcher and goodness knows what else, Gosha had mounted a 10,000
candlepower spotlight (bought at a military auction for, get this:
a bargain price!) and she hit the switch to turn it on.

The Army light cut through
the wildly flying snow and ice and inky black night like a
not-quite-invented-yet laser beam. After a few seconds of fiddling
with her in-cab controls, which consisted of chains and pulleys and
spinning plates on well greased ball bearings.

The light spilled in through
every crack in the little fishing shack.

I haven’t seen a light like
that since the war,” Cedric said.

Julianna peaked through the
cracks in the walls of the shack, then shocked and needing further
information, she opened the door just enough to get a clear
view.

“It is Gosha and Bishop
Muller in a tank,” she said, in surely the strangest sentence she’d
ever uttered.

“
I know what to do,”
Julianna said. “Don’t worry. Go out, stall them for a moment, and
then let them in.”

“
Where are your clothes?”
he panicked, pulling his flannel long johns on and his snow suit
over them.

“
Don’t worry,” she said.
“Where I’m going, I won’t need them.”

He was befuddled, but
didn’t press further. As dressed as possible, he slipped out the
doorway and back into the blizzard.

Julianna slipped down the
fishing hole she’d kept chipping the ice from all storm. It felt as
warm and soothing as bathwater.

“
Oh, Father Briar, thank
God you are safe and okay,” Bishop Muller gushed. He’d never really
taken Gosha’s complaints about Father Briar seriously, especially
after his breakfast and fancy dinner with the man. and after his
unexpected (and decades in the waiting) sexual release, he wasn’t
much in the mood for anything but a joyful reunion with his best
priest.

“
And your girlfriend?”
Gosha asked. Even she was surprised by the fury of the storm and
wanted to get back into the Beast and away from the cold. She also
wanted another shot at the manliness of the bishop. Gosha assumed
he’d be looking for more, too; and maybe to be able to enjoy it
this time for longer than fifteen seconds.

“
What girlfriend?” Father
Briar asked, the hostility frozen in his voice. “I’m here
alone.”

He couldn’t believe he was
saying this. Julianna most certainly was inside the icehouse, with
nowhere to go. The only things in there were their love nest of
blankets and a stove.

But he knew to follow his
instructions. He’d heard her still, small voice, heard it from
somewhere inside his soul, and he knew that now was the time to
follow her.

“
Would you and Bishop
Muller like to come in and see for yourselves?” he said with a
straight face.

“
Of course we would,
especially if you have a cup of coffee in there,” the Bishop
said.

“
I might have a nip of
something a bit stronger,” Cedric offered, and opened the door to
an empty icehouse.

Julianna knew she should be
dead by now but she wasn’t; quite to the contrary, she was
clear-headed and analytical and most surprising, warm. Kicking her
legs with power and grace, she flipped herself upside
down.

Julianna felt elemental,
essential, and utterly real. She felt close to God and His power
enveloped her.

“
Air,” she remembered,
“don’t humans need air?” It sure didn’t feel like it. She put her
hands to her breast to check her heart: its beat was still strong
and steady.

There were currents flowing
around her, but she did not move. These warmer and cooler parts of
the lake rose and fell and traveled around, moved by unseen
forces.

There was no pain.
“Remarkable,” she thought, “it’s like a bath.” She smiled and then
wondered how that was possible. “Shouldn’t my cheeks be numb?
Shouldn’t my muscles be stiff and useless? But they were not.
Julianna felt like an otter or a beaver. “A polar bear, even!” she
said to herself, in a clear and strong voice.

Another voice spoke, spoke
so close to her she’d know hearing it was real and not a tricky
hallucination caused by anoxia. The voice was still and small and
as real as the water around her.

“
This storm is not God’s
work,” the voice said, “for I have seen no wrath except on man's
side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a
perversity and an opposition to peace and to love. Do not worry
about what you perceive as sin, your sin of love for the Father.
Human souls mature so that evil and sin will no longer hinder
us.”

“
Well, this place is most
certainly empty,” Bishop Muller said.

Gosha was dumbfounded.
She’d been so certain that she’d caught them, she been so certain
that she was right and so certain of the rightness of her cause,
that proven wrong, she wanted to explode like an atom bomb. She’d
wanted to leave immediately but Bishop Muller had insisted they
stay for a coffee and a nip of brandy.

Cedric couldn’t imagine
where Julianna had gone, but he assumed it was outside somewhere.
“Could she have turned herself invisible?” he thought, hoping the
bishop would sip his drink swiftly. “Could she be like the Shadow?”
he thought, remembering the popular radio serial from his
youth.

He stated to worry. There
was no other practical explanation but her being outside, but there
was no way out, so how? In the absence of logic, the rigorous
Jesuit started to panic.

“
This is delightful
brandy,” Bishop Muller commented, his breathing relaxed, his pupils
dilated, and his blood-pressure mellow after his recent love
encounter.

“
Yes, and this little
icehouse is lovely,” Gosha added, already thinking of the romantic
encounters she could pull off in a secluded place like
this.

Julianna imagined it would
be dark and terrifying down under the ice, black and murky and full
of grime and grossness. That there would be no light. That there
would be dead, fallen trees covered and mossy mud, with fish with
beady red eyes and teeth engineered by Satan. That she would need
to breathe and open her mouth and take the foul and poisonous water
into her lungs and be pulled to the bottom and death.

None of that were true, at
least not from Julianna’s unusual vantage point. She couldn’t see
the bottom of the lake, nor anything to the sides. The varied hues
of blue were out of a Van Gogh masterpiece, whirling gentle and
soft in the distance, hypnotizing and peaceful. Every pint of water
seemed to be a different color of blue; aquamarines competed with
turquoises and navies competed with periwinkles, denims with
oxfords, and iris with teals. A whole universe, multiple universes,
even, were contained in a single color.

She wanted to stay down
there forever, and would’ve, until she remembered her lover,
dealing with their tormentors above. And then again, that lilting
voice spoke to her, the accent ancient but the words so very
modern.

“
Jesus said to me, he
said, “You shall not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed,
thou shalt not be diseased'; but he Jesus said, 'Thou shalt not be
overcome.”

Now clued in to the
incredible importance of listening (something she and so many woman
make the calling of their lives) she listened, the sound coming
through the water like waves. When Gosha’s truck rolled away, she
swam towards the fishing hole in the ice, which now looked like a
Heavenly beam, leading her home.

Cedric was astonished that
the ice could hold the Beast as it rumbled off into the night. The
machine was so bizarre and so terrifying and so, well, so Gosha,
that he wanted to watch it go, but he was terrified about the fate
of his Julianna.