“I knew you would.” Taylor wasn’t trying to hide her tears. “He loved you so much. I can’t believe he would just leave you.”
Kelsey stifled an inappropriate snicker that caught her off guard. “He didn’t have a lot of choice.”
“I don’t mean his body. I just…I know it’s hard for you to think about this stuff, after what went on with your mama, but…there’s something else, Kelsey. I know there is. Jake didn’t just stop or just go away. There’s something else, and I think sometimes that wall between gets thin, if we really need it to.” Kelsey didn’t answer. She could barely breathe. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Taylor said with a nervous laugh.
“No, I don’t,” Kelsey promised. “I guess I think you’re right.” She closed her eyes, remembering the ghost, feeling his arms around her. “I love you, little sister,” she said, just the way Jake always had when he and Taylor had talked. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Taylor took a ragged breath. “I love you, too.”
“Okay. You study.” She suddenly felt restless. “Tell your mama when you talk to her that I’ll call her soon.”
“Please do,” Taylor said. “She’ll love it. And we’ll see you soon, right?”
Kelsey smiled. “I’ll see you.”
She hung up and drew her knees up to her chin, curling into a ball. She had been on her feet all day; she should have been tired. She took a few deep breaths, trying to relax. The wind was blowing through the narrow window opening now, reaching out for her, and she shivered. Her heart was beating fast, she realized; she was afraid. She could hear cars passing on the street below, hear someone crying out, angry, an obscenity. The light from the studio barely touched the dark outside, turning the sleet into tiny flashes as it hit the glass. “I’m scared,” she said aloud. “I don’t know what to do.” She thought about the weird priest that morning and about Asher, the stranger who had shown up from nowhere just when she needed him most. She shivered again, trembling steadily now. “Help me,” she whispered, a desperate prayer. Her tremors subsided; she could breathe. She got up from the floor and left the studio, turning off the light. Scared or not, she needed to go say good night to Jake.
Across town, Asher stepped out on the sidewalk with the other two seraphim, turning up his collar against the sleet. But suddenly he could feel Kelsey; he could see her light go out. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he could feel her desperation. “Help her,” he prayed as he prepared to cross over with the others to travel between worlds. “I don’t know what to do.” He looked up at the dark, empty sky and trusted that Someone there heard.
The Half-Demon
Asher and his two companions emerged from the space between worlds inside a tiny, dimly-lit parlor. The smell of an oil furnace was thick in the air, but the room was still cold. The furniture was worn but clean and polished, and every table and chair back was draped with a doily of handmade lace. The walls were hung with framed photographs and holy icons, including a crucifix hung in place of prominence over the bricked-up fireplace. An old woman was sitting near the door to the hall, close beside the furnace. She was weeping and chanting steadily in Russian, a wooden rosary twisted in her gnarled, blue and white hands. She didn’t react when they came in; in their pure angel form, she couldn’t see them.
“The child isn’t here,” the male seraph, Anthony, said.
The other seraph, the female, Rachel, went over to the woman and revealed herself slowly before touching her gently on the shoulder. “Peace, Mother,” she said in Russian. “Where is your little one?”
The woman barely seemed to notice her. “Gone,” she moaned, still rocking in her chair. “All gone…taken…all of them.” More screams and wails of grief could be heard from outside, and the old woman sobbed, pressing the fist that held the rosary to her forehead. “All the little ones….”
“The creature,” Anthony said. “Come on.”
Outside they found a tiny village, a dozen or so shabby houses and half that many shops hunkered in the waist-deep snow around an open square. People, mostly women, were gathered in small, tense groups around the perimeter, many screaming or crying, all held back from the center by other groups of blank-faced men armed with automatic rifles.
A long flatbed truck was parked at the center of the square. A cross had been erected on the flatbed and set aflame. Beside the cross was a long, low cage designed for small livestock, and more thugs with guns were driving, tossing, and shoving children inside.
“Drug dealers,” Anthony explained as he fell into step beside Asher. “They’ve used this village as a trafficking hub for years. Most of the men who still live here are part of the organization.”
Two thugs were dragging a third man up onto the back of the truck—a priest in his cassock and bare feet with no hat or coat against the bitter cold. He was shouting the Our Father in Latin in a clear, powerful voice, defiant and unafraid. Another man was sitting on top of the cab of the truck to survey the scene, his feet dangling toward the bed. At the sound of the priest’s prayer, he suddenly hopped down as if the drop were nothing. He walked up to the priest and punched him three times in the face.
“That’s the one we want,” Rachel said.
“He took over this branch of the heroin trade six months ago,” Anthony said. “No human has any record of him before that. His father was a demon.”
Asher watched as the last child was bundled into the cage, and the door was chained shut. He felt desperate, helpless, completely enraged. But he would put it right.
“Tell me, Father,” the half-demon shouted, his voice bringing silence from the crowd. “Who has brought angels to torment me?” He took up a wooden torch and lit it from the flaming cross. “Whose prayers are so pure Heaven sends Its soldiers to respond?” He picked up a gas can with his free hand. “Is it you?” He poured gasoline over the priest to hoots from his soldiers and wails of horror from the villagers. “Where are your angels now?”
Rachel started forw
ard, but both Anthony and Asher caught her and stopped her. “He’s in human form,” Asher said. “If you destroy him on this plane in this form, his mortal soul will pass on and be damned. And you will be, too.”
“I don’t care,” Rachel said. “I can’t just stand here.”
“What do you think happened to Malachi?” Anthony cut her off. “He couldn’t just stand here, either, but he couldn’t kill him.” His face was pale with fury. “He let the creature hack his heart out before he abandoned his post, but he couldn’t strike him down.”
“What does it want?” Rachel said.
“Will none of you come forward?” the half-demon shouted. “Have the seraphim no valor?”