Winds of Change (11 page)

It’s difficult to say what actually went on
inside the store after that because the building caved in at that
point. We could still hear Alastor speaking in tongues and what
sounded like screaming, but that could have been the sound that the
steel beams made as they were twisted and bent out of shape by the
weight of the collapsing building. I wanted to believe that. I
didn’t want to imagine those sounds coming out of Ashley’s
mouth.

We all stood there, staring at the destroyed
store, wondering if it was possible that anyone, even angels, could
have survived. Yet, neither Alastor nor Ashley crawled out of the
wreckage. I don’t think we really expected them to.

The dust fell around us like rain, coating
our heads, shoulders, arms, chests, legs. It was like standing in a
blizzard. It felt like someone was tapping their cigarette out over
our heads.

“Do you think it’s possible that Ashley
wasn’t what Leland said she was?” Chuck asked.

“She never changed,” Jesse reminded all of
us. “And what about Wayne? How do you explain him in all of this?
If Ashley was a fallen angel, then Wayne would have surely known
about it.”

“You can’t explain it,” I said. “Out of those
of us left, Leland was the only one who was completely and totally
by himself. Jesse had his family, Wayne and Ashley had each other,
Pete and his buddy came in together. Steven, Chuck, and I had
worked together for long enough to know that none of us were
angels. That left only Leland. I don’t think there’s any question
about what he really was. The only question that remains is which
side he was truly on. Was he the one who saved us from certain
death or was he the one who brought death with him?”

“So you think he was the bad angel?” Jesse
asked.

In my mind, there was only one way to find
out. I started walking toward the restaurant. Soon after, I could
hear the footfalls of the others behind me.

I knew the answer to the question long before
we ever went inside. The buzzing of flies was oppressive. And
loud.

These bodies hadn’t been reduced to dust.
They had been massacred, mutilated, defiled. I gagged at the sight
and moved aside so the others could see.

None of them got more than a five second look
before turning away.

“I would say that Leland was most definitely
the bad angel,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my
hand.

“Alastor, the executioner,” Steven reminded
us. “There was a good reason for his name.”

Yet I realized something else once we walked
back to the store. I thought back to the feather that Ashley had
been holding. It had been white. Leland, or Alastor, or whatever
his name had been had been covered in maroon plumage, which meant
that there really had been another angel lurking somewhere nearby.
The fact that Ashley had found the feather made me suspect it had
been hers all along.

The dust had settled when we finally made it
back to the danger zone. I think I was the first to spot the hand
sticking out from the rubble like a flower sprouting up out of
graveyard dirt.

“I see a hand!” I shouted, running toward the
rubble pile. One of the fingers twitched slightly. It was
Ashley.

“Help me!” I screamed, but the rest of the
group was already hard at work clearing away broken sections of
mortar and steel. Ashley wasn’t buried very deeply, but she was
seriously hurt. I knew she wouldn’t last long.

She smiled at me as I cleared the debris away
from her face. “He’s gone now,” she whispered through bloody lips.
Her face was covered in a mask of sheetrock dust. She looked like a
ghost.

“Alastor?” I asked. Ashley nodded
slightly.

“Wayne and I were sent to kill him. He’s been
a source of curses and death for as long as I can remember. He was
the orchestrator of the Egyptian plagues, and that was still when
he was loyal. Things have changed since then. Before, he killed for
God. After he turned his back on The Father, he killed for
enjoyment. That’s all this was to him - a game.”

“But Wayne went willingly to his death.”

“He didn’t die. Nobody ever saw him change,
did they? We weren’t sure what disguise Alastor would take, and the
only way Wayne could be sure was to scout. We knew our plan would
work better if it appeared that he was dead.”

“So where is he now? Where was he when you
and Alastor were fighting?”

Ashley smiled. Her red lips were now coated
with dust. It looked like she had been eating powdered donuts while
wearing lipstick. It was the look in her eyes, however, that ruined
that impression.

“Who do you think brought the building down?”
she asked. “Who do you think held Alastor while the ceiling caved
in on top of us? I know Wayne seemed like a jerk, but everything
you saw between the two of us was an act. It had to be that way
until we figured out what sort of face Alastor was wearing. Wayne
and I are immortal; Alastor is immortal too. We can, however, pass
from one existence to another. You might call it death, but to us,
it’s just a way of getting closer to God. Because we’re angels,
we’ll all return to the throne when we pass on. God will handle
things from that point on. He’ll punish Alastor for the things he’s
done.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but there
wasn’t time. I reached for Ashley’s hand. The moment I touched it,
she exploded into thousands of pure, white feathers. It resembled
the transformation that many of our customers had undergone as they
stepped outside the building and turned into nice, tidy hillocks of
sand. But I knew that Ashley’s metamorphosis had purpose, had
meaning. Hers wasn’t the result of some rogue angel’s games. She
was going to God. Given the number of people who had died, I’ll bet
she had to wait in line to see the creator.

As it turned out later, the damage had been
confined to a very limited area. Astronomers tracked the shooting
star that fell that night to a remote section of the highway not
far from our store. It was simple enough to make the necessary
jumps in logic: that’s where Alastor had come from. That’s how he
made his appearance.

Of course, the astronomers didn’t know
anything about angels. Wisely, we didn’t mention it either. Nobody
would have believed us. As it was, we had to spend three days in an
Army quarantine. The stay would have been lengthened by talks of
cherubim and seraphim. Instead, we stuck to Chuck’s initial theory
of a chemical attack by terrorists, and that seemed to do the
trick. It was an explanation people were ready to accept.

The military unit didn’t actually arrive,
however, until the next afternoon.

Not knowing what else to do, we spent the
rest of that day sweeping the asphalt, shoveling as much of the
dead as we could into trash bags, and pondering the nature of God.
Our brief encounter with angels had transformed lives, affected
families, and completely reshaped beliefs. And while the winds of
change hadn’t turned any of us into hillocks of sand, we were new
creatures nonetheless.