Seraphim (36 page)

Gamble’s answer to a coyote trap.

That was okay. She could chew off her leg and instantly grow a million in its place. But she wasn’t going to let it come to that. She didn’t have to let it come to that, as illustrated by the two-winged creatures beside her, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, skewered upon her sword, both frozen in mid-leap, teeth bared, talons protracted, eyes blazing a hateful vermillion.

Katherine’s would-be kidnappers weren’t dead, just arrested in place.

An unsavory shish-kabob.

But it would make a great swizzle stick,
she thought
. Another Christmas gift idea.

Then she smiled at herself. She really did have Duncan’s warped sense of humor. And, with all due respect, some of his spirit. His gall.

Unlike a few of her predecessors, Amy could, to a much greater extent, fight back.

She regarded the window with droll concern. To convince Eli that she was Katherine Bently would be easy enough, and it might keep Gamble from becoming alerted to her presence just long enough to cleanse Melanie. But that meant she would have to allow Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum to resume their questing duties and take her to the fallen priest.

Yuck!

She sighed, the sound knelling across the gourds like wind through fluted cymbals. Then she changed her form back into that of her ten-year-old self.

“Okay,” she ordered, repossessing her sword then hurling it to a safe, distant place. “Sic me.”

15.

Eli had taken his mother’s phone off the hook, as it had been chirping incessantly since the six o’clock news. Most of the callers had been her fellow fussbudgets wanting to get the scoop on the fire. He’d also instructed his mother not to answer the door for anyone, that going double for the media.

Just as he was ready to break ground with the trowel, his mother hollered from the window. “Package just arrived for you, your highness. I think it’s that one you sent away for with all them Count Chocula box-tops.”

Eli looked up at the kitchen window, his mother’s withered face ghostly behind the screen. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just get your ass in here and sign for it?” she yelled. “Christ, do I have to do everything?”

Cursing under his breath, he threw down the shovel and headed for the house.

As he opened the sliding back door, his mother said, “It’s down in the basement, choir boy.”

It took him a moment to realize what his mother was saying. Then, a jubilant smile sprang across his face.

As Eli descended the stairs, he could faintly hear their voices; impetuous whispers, actually.

He sneaked to the edge of the doorway and listened. The words were still too hushed to understand, but the voices were definitely planning something.

It was time to take a peek.

Standing now in the dimly lit doorway, he saw both couriers, seemingly free of injuries, squatting just inside and to his right, grooming one another. Beyond them, sitting beside Melanie Sands, was his second angel.

Both girls looked up, shocked.

“Well, well, well,” Eli said, his voice euphoric. “If it isn’t Katherine Bently.”

Then Eli discovered the most criminal, most unconscionable thing he could imagine. Melanie’s wings had been removed from her back and tossed into the corner like a pair of old shoes.

“
What have you done?”
he roared at Katherine. He looked over at the couriers, horrified.
“How could you let this happen?”

Disconcerted, the couriers stared up at him.

“Melanie won’t be flying today,” Katherine said.

Currents of rage began to steadily build until they were rippling through his body. Teeth gnashing, fists clenched, he started for Katherine. “You little bitch! I’ll gut you like a—” Then he stopped, suddenly struck with a wonderful idea. A smile returned to his lips; more sinister than the one he’d worn just moments ago, but stretching just as wide.

The more he thought about it, the more relaxed he became. It would save him the two hours of traveling time and another hour of preparation. And that meant he could be into his own wings a hell of a lot sooner.

He clasped his hands together. “Are either of you familiar with the expression, ‘To kill two birds with one stone?’”

Neither girl answered.

“No? Hmmm. Then tell me this—do either of you have an aversion to slimy things?”

16.

Eli resumed his digging with renewed purpose.

He tossed a shovelful of dirt over his shoulder, then went for another. He didn’t plan on striking any fortune cookies this evening; was just going deep enough to favor two small bodies, and a box of very hungry worms.

“Evening, Father,” Jack Singletary warbled over the fence—a flimsy, truncated old thing not nearly high enough. The fence, not Jack.

Eli moaned. Living alongside the Singletarys was like getting free cable television. One of Eli’s inconsistent parishioners of some years, Jack looked remarkably like Roy Thinnes, the actor from the old TV series,
The Invaders
. As the quintessential guy next door, it was unclear whether Jack was being harassed by bug-eyed extraterrestrials, but one thing was certain: if he wasn’t, it was no doubt the fault of his unbearably sweet wife Janet, whose enduring impersonation of Donna Reed could keep even the most determined Martians, favorite or not, at arm’s length.

But Eli knew better.

According to Janet Singletary’s most recent visit to the confessional, she was continuing to bang her husband’s best friend with whom she shared an expensive cocaine habit. She was also suspecting that her husband Jack was dancing the infidelity hustle himself, most likely with someone at his work, but she couldn’t be sure. And at last check didn’t really care.

Then there was Jack. Jack, who had indeed been tripping the light fantastic with a female coworker, among others, had once bragged during confession that he’d notched the proverbial bedpost more times than Wilt Chamberlain. Which still wouldn’t come close, numbers wise, to matching the thousands upon thousands he’d embezzled from his employer of fifteen years. But Eli did not think less of Jack. He hated everyone equally. He learned long ago that abstention did not exist; everyone was a criminal, a drug addict, a fornicator.

For Eli, the confessional offered about as much surprise as finding the Indigo Girls in a new age coffee shop. Of course, that all went to the wind when he shared it with Gamble.

“Jack,” Eli replied stiffly. He took a moment to retrieve the handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his forehead. Jack had obviously not heard about the firestorm once known as St. Patrick’s Church or that topic would have already been broached with delirious remorse. “And how’s Mrs. Singletary?”

“Ah, Janet’s busy in the kitchen whipping up some kind of soufflé or casserole,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “What’cha digging?”

“A grave,” Eli confessed.

Jack folded his arms atop the fence, then laughed. “Did you finally go and snuff ol’ Deacon Flannery, Father?”

It came as no surprise that Jack knew of Eli’s contempt for Samuel Flannery, as did most of the congregation, he suspected. After all, he’d never tried keeping it a secret.

“No,” Eli said, “Samuel’s demise was accomplished by someone else.” Taking a breather, he leaned against his shovel. “As I understand it, Samuel died a horrible death this afternoon and was cremated immediately.”

Jack was now tittering like an infatuated schoolgirl. It had been Eli’s vocational experience that people like Jack were impelled to giddy states while in the self-conscious presence of a priest, as if their sins stuck out like mortified thumbs in the pious glow of the cloth. They made small talk while keeping a safe distance, and avoided religious topics at all costs.

Then there were those who nuzzled up to the holy man like a warm fire and blathered on endlessly about the church, the state of religion, and themselves, their sad and only motive to sponge absolution, as if that were possible.

Atonement by proximity. But then, wasn’t that the intention of the church? It was all so obsolete. Amnesty, Eli was sure, did not exist in this or any other world. And that was the cold hard truth of it all.

From the raised cedar deck came two loud knocks. “Here’s that batch of tea you ordered, your highness,” yelled Josephine, pitcher in one hand, cane in the other. “We’re all out of those decorative mint leaves and fancy lemon slices, so if that insults your sense of etiquette then you and Ms. Manners can both kiss my ass.”

“Cantankerous old bitch,” Eli mumbled, slicing through the soil with renewed vigor.

Josephine sat the pitcher on the table, leaned herself against the railing, then began fanning her face with a round pink Tupperware lid she’d pulled from her smock pocket. “Hotter’n hellfire.”

“Step Two would be a glass with lots of ice,” Eli prodded her.

Without looking his way, she nonchalantly flipped him the bird.

With only his eyes and upper head visible above the fence, Jack lifted a hand and waved to Josephine. “Howdy-doody, neighbor.”

Josephine glanced in Jack’s direction, her middle finger extended once again.

Jack straightened himself and, with a more serious approach, said to Eli, “I think we’re in for an earthquake, Father. Real soon. And I mean a big one.”

“And what’s drawn you to that conclusion, pray tell?”

Jack shook his head. “Sasha, you know, our dog, has been acting very strange lately. She won’t eat and refuses to come out from under our bed. She just shakes and whimpers.” He tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “And the Petersons’ two Shih Tzus went at it last night like you wouldn’t believe. Tore each other up so bad that they had to have them both put to sleep at that twenty-four hour vet clinic over on Lakeview.”

“And this means buildings are going to topple?”

“Well, they say animals start behaving funny right before an earthquake. I understand some people at the San Diego Zoo are experts at knowing just what to look for.”

“If I see any Mountain Gorillas or hippopotami acting suspiciously, I’ll let them know.”

“Good one, Father.” Jack laughed, then rubbed his chin pensively. “Anyhow, something’s going to hit the fan. I kinda have that, you know, weird feeling myself that something terrible is about to happen.”

“It is,” Eli said, finally exhausted with Jack Singletary. He turned to Josephine. “Excuse me, Mother, but would you please bring Jacob out here. I would like you to introduce him to our paranoid neighbor, Jack. Oh, and Mother,” he added, “don’t bother with the leash.”

Enthralled, a smile pushed back the creased satchels of her face. “Why, I’d be delighted to!” she declared, then disappeared into the house.

Jack chuckled slyly. “Did your mother finally break down and buy herself a pooch? I mean, that’s great, Father. I understand a pet can extend the life of its elderly owner.”

Eli returned the chuckle. “Shit, Jack, if I had known that, I would have killed her parakeet years ago.”

Jack smiled, nodded. “Seriously, though, what’s the hole for?” he said, plucking splinters from his right forearm, courtesy of the frayed lumber.

“Nefarious as it may sound, I’m going to bury two little girls alive, along with some very nasty night crawlers.”

A quizzical expression scrunched Jack’s smile. “What was that, Father?”

Just then, Josephine and Jacob appeared on the cedar deck. “Jack, meet Jacob; Jacob, Jack.” She reached down and patted Jacob’s head. “Now go crap in his tulips!”

Jack was mesmerized. “Good God Almighty! What kind of animal is that?”

Eli laughed. “The kind, I imagine, whose scent is turning the neighborhood dogs crazy.”

The creature took to the air, then careened downward, using its barbed tail to slice through Jack’s throat.

“Atta boy!” cheered Josephine.

Jack’s screams, only wet hisses, bubbled below his chin. He stumbled backward, then collapsed behind the fence.

Now gaping from the Singletarys’ kitchen window was Janet. Her face suggested that she was watching a particularly violent clip from
America’s Funniest Home Videos
. She appeared seconds later on the tiny outcrop of cement porch, just below the back door. Hands busily wringing the doily apron tied around her thin waist, she laughed. “Jack, what’s going on?”

Jacob circled low over the Singletary’s roof, then plunged like an osprey into their backyard, from where rending, tearing sounds immediately followed.

“Rip him up!” Eli commanded. “And when you’re through with Jack, give his wife a big howdy-doody, the adulterous cunt!”

Janet Singletary was still smiling, still fussing with her apron as urine began to stream down both legs, splotching her white polyester slacks, then puddling at the soles of her blue Donna Reed slip-ons.

Josephine cupped her hands to the sides of her mouth. “And while you’re over there,” she bellowed, “fetch back that gravy ladle they borrowed from me last Thanksgiving.”

17.

The light from the hallway bathroom eked into the otherwise dark living and dining rooms, making them negotiable.

Despite the use of some old cop techniques for stealthy prowling, Duncan’s footfalls still managed to provoke chirps and creaks from the occasionally loose flooring. When one was six-foot-three and two-hundred-and-forty pounds, sneaking was a lousy option. However, once he reached the stairs, his covert intentions would be muffled by thick carpeting.

Finally there, he tightened his grip on the hammer as he climbed.

Stopping in front of the window, he stared at the sleeping face. He felt like Dorothy confronting the Wizard. “Just follow the Yellow Brick Road,” Amy had told him yesterday, as if she’d known then that he would soon entertain such a comparison. At any other time Duncan would have considered it a fluke. But now it bore deific relevance, as if she’d spoken those words to him not from the environs of a hospital, but from a burning bush atop Mount Sinai.

The dim, orange glow from a neighbor’s porch light was leaving rich whorls as it stirred the stained glass, tincturing the reds and blues and yellow-oranges into darker, smoldering versions of themselves. These effects also gave the resident face more amplitude, more character, than had the afternoon or even the setting sun.