On Black Wings (16 page)

Becks narrows his eyes. “You’re asking me questions now? Why don’t you-”

“The Four Horsemen? The Angel of Death?” I point my finger at him. “The government knows a lot more than they are telling us, they always do. For you to walk in here looking for a man with black wings and my horse tells me you are a lot further down the road to figuring this all out than I am.”

“How do you know about the Four?” Becks’ men close in, but he waves them back. He pulls a cigarette out and lights it. “And who are you, Azrael’s daughter, the blackbird?”

“Just someone who got lost on my way to Heaven.” I lower my wings. “And I need your help.”

God, please let them believe me. I’m focusing in case I need to get the hell out of Dodge and disappear, but I feel these men have things I need to know. I’m not even sure they will believe me, and all of a sudden I feel so stupid for coming back here. I push aside my fears, and believe in myself. If he knows anything, please God, let him tell me what I need to know.

He’s staring into my eyes, looking me over, cigarette hanging from his lips, rifle in his hands. He gives my wings a look, and then focuses back on my eyes. He opens his mouth and watches for my reaction. “Stand down. I repeat, stand down.”

“Thank God that ended without a fight,” Velma says.

The colonel offers me his hand and helps me over the counter. He picks up my rifle and points to the door. “I will need you to come with us.”

“I promise to go with you and answer whatever you want.”

“We need to ask you some questions, and bring you to a safe facility.” He nods, and his men start filing out of the diner. “Get these people some supplies, and an evacuation route.”

I look over at Velma, Jeff, and Vijay and smile at them. Vijay waves goodbye, and Jeff has a pained smile on his face. Velma drops her head. I whisper the words “thank you” to them.

“There’s nowhere safe,” I say, stepping towards the door, “if I can be anywhere I imagine at any point in time, and the four horsemen can too, do you think there’s any safe place in this world they can get to?”

I turn to him, and he stops putting his hood on. “Miss, please, we are still trying to figure out just what you entities are and how these things can be stopped.”

“I’m a human being.” I hold my hand over my heart. “Not an entity. I’m an angel and a housewife and a mother who lost her children so show me a little compassion. I’m trapped in this body with wings and I’ve been going through hell for I don’t know how long because I’ve lost all track of time.”

I have three days. It comes back to me like a lightning bolt. I still don’t know what for and when it starts or ends. My whole sense of urgency floats like a piece of ice on a river.

“If you promise to help me, I’ll help you.”

He stops, tossing his cigarette into an ashtray by the door. “What are you asking me for?”

“Before I come with you, I need you to believe me.”

CHAPTER XXIV:

Darkness Surrounds Me

I am in a dark cell, kneeling in the darkness.

I unwrap my wings and slide them on my back.

The knights outside the door bang, shout something in Latin, and I hear the sound of keys jangling. I hear others with them, men with swords, clubs, and crossbows.

They open the door and file in, spears pointing towards me, carrying ropes, long poles with giant hooks, nets, and the last one with a torch steps inside.

A flurry of shadows meets them from the sides, and men run from behind me lying in wait.

Colonel Becks and nine other soldiers ambush the medieval knights, taking them down with bayonets, knives, rifle butts, and choking the last two to death with sections of parachute cord. For most of the knights, it’s a two on one fight, with some soldiers holding the knights’ mouths closed while they are ruthlessly killed.

It’s a bloody, fast take down without firing a shot, and the torch rolls to the ground at my feet, illuminating the cell with its eerie firelight.

I don’t even realize the flame is burning my exposed knee before Becks kicks it away from me and helps me to my feet. He points to the squad’s medic. “Check her knee.”

The medic looks up. “Her skin isn’t burnt, her jeans are though. Nothing.”

I look down. Not even the cut from the bullet I got in the car. Why didn’t that hurt? Is this what the king meant when he said I could face the burning man? I have no idea. I shake my head and look around.

Becks and his two team leaders are by the cell’s door, peering into the hall. The rest of the seven men are around me, carrying M-16 rifles, a pair of machine guns, and two under-rifle grenade launchers. They move the bodies of the five knights inside the room, and cover the door.

I walk over to the colonel, and he looks back at me with a smile. “You weren’t kidding about that teleportation thing, Blackbird. That must come in pretty handy.”

“It’s like my checkbook.” I lean around him and look in the hallway. “When I can control it, it’s a good thing. Did you have to kill them?”

“We don’t carry silencers, and they probably don’t know what these are,” he says, snapping a bullet into his short rifle’s chamber, “so it was the the easy way or the hard way. We chose for them, unfortunately.”

One of the soldiers behind us remarks, “Easy for us, hard for them.”

I look away from the death, and I’m vaguely aware of a presence floating away from each one of them. I turn, and walk towards a blackened ghost floating away from one of the knight’s bodies. The medic blinks, looking at me, and then looking around like he can’t see what I see.

I step towards the black ghostly form, reach out, and touch the darkened smoke. It’s cold, full of hatred and vile, wicked thoughts. The decision comes to me without me thinking about it.

Up or down?

I can’t control it. I walk from ghost to ghost, reaching out and thinking, down. Down, down, down. They flit away, one by one to my touch, each one’s thoughts more hateful and vile than that of the others. I touch them out of revulsion more than thought, like swatting a fly away, and then swatting another. I can’t think about it, I just do.

“Secure the bodies,” Becks says, ordering his men in a whisper, “cover them with tarps. Team lead two, take point. Jess? Jessica?”

I’m shaking so badly he has to hold me. He turns me around, and slaps my cheek softly. Hey, Blackbird, snap out of it. What is wrong?”

“Evil.” I blink. “All of them, evil and wicked to the core.” I look up into his eyes, my hand numb, tears streaming down my face. “I think I just sent them all to Hell.”

“That’s our job.” He wipes the tears from my eyes. “I need you here, now, without you, nobody is getting home.” He pauses as something clicks in his head. “You tell us where to go, and we’ll find Azrael together. Understand?”

I nod, and he helps me to the door. I don’t look back.

We creep into the hall, the soldiers covering our backs crouch walking backwards, rifles at the ready and pointing into darkness. The colonel and his sergeant walk point with their knives and pistols drawn, ready to ambush anyone in front of us silently. I’m in the middle of them all, taking cover behind men in heavy armored vests like some sort of VIP.

If only they knew what I have been through.

What I am going through.

Where we are going.

CHAPTER XXV:

We Move Like Death Itself

We approach a door at the end of the hall, and Becks and his sergeant slip inside. A short whistle, and the soldiers and I move in. A dead jailer lies to the side, and Becks cleans his knife while handing the sergeant a keyring. Two men creep up to a circular stairwell and aim up it, pointing their rifles high.

I’m aware of another ghost, calling to me, begging me for deliverance. No one else seems to notice. I’m afraid to touch it, so I just stare and back away. It hums and howls in some imperceptible sound, its wails growing more plaintive as I back away.

The sound of a whip cracks through the stairwell, and a man screams in agony. I feel the pain of his haunting wail in my teeth it hurts so bad. Everyone in the squad looks at the stairs.

“He’s up there.” I say.

Becks nods, and moves his men towards the stairs, keeping with me as we ascend. Every step is an agony in silence, every man is cursing any noise they make. We move as a group of silent killers, each of us on edge, extreme violence ready to erupt in a heartbeat.

Becks keeps a hand on my shoulder, instructing me where to move inside the group. His sergeant, Harris, crouch-walks ahead of me, and I can count about six rifles pointing past me, safeties off, a storm of death ready to fly on the pull of a trigger.

We enter an upstairs hall built entirely out of gray stone, with a high arched ceiling. The hall is lit by large candles sitting on eons of dripping wax. The hallway goes off in both directions, one down to a set of doors, and the other way to a corner about ten yards away.

Another crack of the whip and a blood curdling howl direct our attention towards the pair of doors. Becks points towards them and the group nods.

We see them and they see us. A group of three men in plate armor turn the corner, one carrying a tray of food. The tray drops and clatters, the men pull their swords, and two of our soldiers open up on them with their automatic rifles.

The bullets pass through the plate armor like tin cans on a fence. My ears explode from the noise, they hurt from the reverberation of the sound around us as a third soldier opens up into them, bullet after bullet tearing through the men. Blood explodes out the back of the knights as they jerk and fall in lifeless piles of shattered bone and torn flesh.

“Go time!” Becks shouts, and we’re running towards the doors. “Sergeant, lead the men to the door! Weapons free!”

Behind me, the dead men’s ghosts call to me, the evil twisting forms begging to be released from the bonds of this world, and their cries grow desperate to not let them wander forever in the throes of limbo. Becks pushes me along as I stare back at them, the three ghosts begging release and freedom from this earthly bondage.

Even Hell would be better one of them says to me.

Becks keeps a hand on my shoulder, and we’re running away from them as a group, the men around me on alert, rifles readied, and I can feel the dead men’s cries grow more urgent.

Release us.

Please send us to Hell.

Don’t leave us.

I reach back, open my hand, and comply. Gone, gone, and gone.

In their wake is a peaceful eddy, almost serene and thankful.

The fire team ahead of us opens the doors, and two men enter the room beyond like trained professionals, closely followed by two others.

It’s a mess hall, and about thirty knights are eating, their heads turned in the direction of the racket. Several are standing, and obviously they never have had heard the deadly sound of a gun before.

They learn soon enough.

The four entering soldiers blast the men with their rifles, rapid automatic fire sending bullets sailing through the flesh of knights at close range. The star-like flashes on the rifle’s muzzles erupt around us, brass casings flying off into the air, the chaotic symphony of slaughter sending knights to the ground so fast it’s impossible to see it all happen.

Only I’m aware of every one of them.

Knights sitting for dinner are gunned down, others pulling swords fall with massive holes blown in their chests, a knight falls over with half a head, blood sprays the walls, arms are detached from bodies, and death visits each and every one of these men trying to fight back against a machine of soldiers trained to kill, and kill well.

We are halfway across the room, the lead soldiers are reloading rifles while the ones behind them take up the lead, and the volley of fire continues unabated. We are stepping over bodies and pools of blood as we slice our way into the room like a force of nature, violent and uncaring, each soldier mechanical in precision, reactions to turn, point weapons, and unleash hell clicking and snapping into place like a Swiss watch.

A crossbow bolt wounds one of our men, and the medic pulls the wounded man to the center of the group, the medic’s rifle cutting the crossbowman to pieces in a half-second.

We’re across the room, death in our wake, and I can feel the cries of the dead and dying. With every life taken, it’s another for me to send, a cutting of the cord, a life judged in the blink of an eye, souls dying or wishing they were, slowly bleeding out and slipping away.

It’s overwhelming, there’s so many dead, there are so many screams, it’s mass murder and I’m in the center of it, looking and feeling but not being able to stop it. In fact, I brought all of this upon them.

What have I done?

More screams, more judgments, and more souls begging for release. Even those left alive are in so much pain they were wishing they were dead, and in their half-dazed state they are reaching to me, the Angel of Death, to cut the cord and set them free from the pain.

Set us free from the pain.

Judge me next. Please.

I have lived a life of wickedness and sin, send me to the peace of Hell. I am ready to be judged.

Let me die.

Make my pain stop, I beg of you.

Please let me die.

What have I done?

Becks opens the doors on the other side of the room, and we are looking outside at a gray and rainy day. It’s a castle courtyard, wet with rain with high towers surrounding the walls. A black man is hung on a cross, nude except for a small loincloth. His back facing a group of men, one a torturer with a whip.

A hundred lashes from the whip cross his back.

Two giant scars where his wings used to be seep blood down his shoulder blades.

Azrael.

A group of knights standing around the torture are drawing their swords, running at us, screaming at the top of their lungs in battle cries, and preparing for war.

They don’t get war, they get Hell.

Men with longbows fire at us from the wall, and arrows sail down at our squad. Our group takes positions on the stairs leading into the courtyard, arrows flying around us with deadly accuracy, shafts sticking out of soldier’s backpacks, one hitting one of our men in the face but the soldier keeps firing, and our squad moves into position to fire back.