The Wrong Enemy Read online

  Sariel said, “Maybe he wants to get what he deserved. It sounds like sabotage.”

  Rachmiel recoiled. “I don’t want that.”

  “As well you shouldn’t.” Sariel flinched. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that if you get him to open up, you’re going to feel his emotions as acutely as he does. That’s not going to be pleasant.”

  Rachmiel said, “And it had better be while Elizabeth is sleeping. I don’t know how she’d react to all that.” He reached out with his mind. “Speaking of which, she’s starting to wake up.”

  Sariel hugged him. “Thank you. Thank you for looking out for Tabris. There’s no way I could have done that.” She stepped back. “Just remember, when he does project his feelings, it’s powerful and precise. He could rip out your heart. You want to help him, but you’re going to need God helping you.”

  Eighteen

  After an entire day of enduring Rachmiel’s hunger to ask a thousand questions, Tabris answered only one question: Yes, I’m going out tonight. And five seconds later, he floated over the postcard skyline of New York City. He made his subtle body a little more solid, adjusted it a bit to compensate for the air composition, and then beat his wings once. Perfect.

  Vermont was too oxygen-rich for rapid flight. On the spectrum’s other end, New York’s pollution wouldn’t suspend a hovering angel who made himself semi-corporeal. Los Angeles had dense air but with less abundant oxygen, although not as oxygen-deprived as the air over Berlin and Moscow in the seventies and eighties. In the search for the perfectly polluted city, only Reykjavik and Denver had answered Tabris’s criteria: Denver because of its elevation and Reykjavik for its longitude.

  A crime for every streetlight. He spread his wings to hover with difficulty in the thin air. No better place to be alone. Within moments he felt himself coated in atmospheric grease that left him slippery in the sky and would boost his maximum velocity. He warmed up with some spirals to acclimate himself to the sky’s consistency. His eyes itched, but that was good: it meant he’d gotten the balance of substance to soul just right.

  Tabris sliced through the air and spun, no more than a green blur as he corkscrewed down the streets of midtown. He skimmed the heads of New Yorkers walking beneath the streetlamps, watching the pavement.

  He approached the Empire State Building and made a ninety degree turn to race straight up the side, skimming the silvery windows that reflected lights and traffic but not himself. He opened his wings as he passed the scalloped top floors and snagged the broadcast antenna, spiraling around and around until his momentum diminished and he slid down it like a fire pole.

  Almost as good as L.A., he thought out in God’s general direction.

  Leaping from the top, he cannon-balled to street level, breaking from a curled position just past the twentieth floor, then flexing his back and spreading his wings into gravitational forces that would have blown the feathers off a real bird. He pulled up before plummeting through the cement, twisting to redirect his momentum and blaze along at street level.

  All around him were other guardians, but them Tabris ignored while he streaked, a green-winged fury through the corridors left by the buildings, rows of dominos that made the perfect playground for someone who’d turned around to find he’d left childhood far behind, the games too real and the toys more serious than he’d anticipated.

  He circled the Citicorp building, knowing that if he slammed into it he could level the whole area of Manhattan—there was nowhere for a building of that size to fall—and then the resemblance to dominos didn’t seem as funny. Ten million souls. It was all so fragile.

  From there he rose above the city, soaring with his feathers spread, letting his own momentum carry him as far is it could before leveling off. Once he’d mounted the cloud cover, he angled eastward over the Atlantic. So silent. So alone. But beneath him, the song of a sea with her barely-chained chaos, the power of an appetite that never sated itself on just the shores, as though all the seaboard was an hors d’ouvre to sharpen her hunger for the Midwestern plains. The ocean grasped for the moon with its tide high, yearning for the orb with a famished patience.

  He used to pray at times like this, that afterglow following a rough flight. Wait for me, he thought toward God. Please wait for me.

  And then, I wish I knew if there were any point to all this. I wish I knew if I could be forgiven.

  No answer. God would have recorded his comments in His files as all self-reflections must be. Pushing down the ache, Tabris lowered his altitude into the clouds, allowing the mist to swallow him so he was at times visible and at times not.

  In a moment, he felt another presence.

  “Show yourself, Windswept.”

  The demon said from somewhere, “And do more than you’ve done?”

  Tabris didn’t join him, but when he ran out of cloud, he just kept going. The demon kept pace, flying with their wingtips nearly touching. He smiled, and it looked kind until Tabris forced himself to remember it was an act. The demon’s amber eyes radiated gladness, and he brushed the hair from his forehead. “What a lovely night. If by lovely you mean banal and lifeless.”

  Tabris said, “If you leave out the love then yes, that’s what it means.”

  The demon laughed. “My favorite verbalist is exercising his pun nature! You make me miss you so much when you do that.”

  “Whatever you want to believe.”

  The demon looked stung. “Please don’t lie. We were friends. Now that I’m in Hell, pretty much all I have to hold onto are the memories, since I know you won’t get close to me anymore.”

  Tabris pointed to the demon. “Speaking of which.”

  The demon had been drawing nearer while talking. Windswept retreated, but rolled over so he was flying on his back underneath Tabris, the pillows of cloud around him like a feather bed. “Please don’t fight with me. Not now. I just want to travel with you since they’ve cut that stupid tether. Let’s go wherever the wind takes us.”

  Tabris made no answer, but Windswept was gazing up at him, yearning. The demon stretched, then fixed his eyes on the moon. “Isn’t she beautiful?” the demon murmured. “So round and misty, so distant. It’s cold. And alone. No one’s there now. Let’s go.”

  Tabris shook his head.

  Windswept drew closer. “I missed you, and I still miss you, and now you’re here and you’re so close it’s driving me crazy.” He reached up his wings to touch him with the tips, and Tabris looked into eyes softened in the darkness. “You’re everything. You’re everything to me, and I would do anything for you. You have no idea how magnificent you are, how I used to plan my days around when I’d see you and then afterward I’d spend the rest of the day thinking about the time we spent together.”

  Tabris shook his head.

  “No one loves you like I do. Does Rachmiel love you? Does Sebastian? How about Sariel? Certainly not Miriael, who gave you and keeps giving you the most explicit warning I’ve ever seen.”

  Tabris looked into the demon’s eyes. So close now. The demon began projecting awe; projecting shock that no one else recognized Tabris’s beauty; projecting fascination. Fascination with him.

  “You could do anything.” His voice trembled. “You could change the moon’s orbit. Why are you watching a child? Why two angels to do that—when you alone could rule continents? An angel with your power...could build a universe.”

  He reached up a hand and touched Tabris’s, and he projected joy that they were close enough to do that. Projected disbelief that Tabris might actually like him. He whispered, “I hadn’t been happy in thousands of years. You’re making me happy.”

  He wrapped his hand around Tabris’s. “I love you.”

  Tabris flared his wings and yanked backward. The demon shot toward him, trying to entangle his wings in Tabris’s, but Tabris shoved him away.

  The demon’s eyes glittered with tears. “I don’t understand!”

  Tabris streamed humiliation and reluctance, but he couldn’t clam
p down on it. “Leave me alone! Just leave me alone! You’re damned and you want me damned too—and that’s love?”

  “And it’s love to murder a twelve year-old-boy?” The demon’s eyes smoldered. “And is it love for God to burn the souls He built with His own fingers? I’m being just like my dear old dad—I want to own you, and I’ll make you lose yourself to have you, just the way you’ll lose yourself if you stay His. Is that love? To love something so totally it ceases to exist?”

  Tabris wanted to cover himself, but the demon stared straight into him as if he knew, knew everything. “That’s all wrong! God isn’t like that!”

  Windswept opened his hands. “God is exactly like that. Otherwise, I’d still be in Heaven.”

  Tabris wrapped his arms around himself and turned away.

  “You love me, don’t you?” said the demon.

  “I don’t know. I don’t see how. I remember how you used to be. I loved that.”

  The demon said, “I’ll be that way again. For you I’d do anything. I’ll change my name to whatever it was, and I’ll be your darling, and I’ll follow wherever you want me to go.”

  Tabris looked over his shoulder. “Except it wouldn’t be you following me. If I did that, I’d be following you. And I’m not prepared to leave God.”

  The demon’s eyes flashed. “You’re preparing. You’ve been preparing. And I’m waiting.”

  “You’re not waiting. You’re pushing.”

  “And God isn’t. Which one of us loves you more?”

  Tabris flashed away, landing in a field where the heather and wildflowers slept in the starlight. For miles around were only more fields and one two-lane highway, a straight gash through the land.

  “Don’t run from me.” The demon reappeared behind him. “Once was enough to break my heart.”

  Sitting, Tabris tucked his wings around himself.

  The demon dropped beside him. “Within three days, God’s going to order you to visit Sebastian. That’s obvious to everyone. The angels at Elizabeth’s school are even placing bets whether you simulate a happy reunion or refuse outright. The pool is leaning toward you not wanting to see what you did to the poor little brat. His soul’s in shreds.”

  Tabris shuddered.

  “I have to admit, I’d never have been able to incite as much hate in his soul as you did.” The demon chuckled. “Has Rachmiel blown his secret yet?”

  Tabris closed his eyes.

  “I knew he couldn’t keep it. Which one—about going to Raguel, or about the kid hating you?”

  Tabris projected the latter.

  “Oh! You haven’t lost that!” The demon’s eyes illuminated the nearby flowers like a flashbulb. “Rachmiel said you’d lost your capacity for higher emotion.”

  That didn’t sound like Rachmiel at all. Rachmiel would twist himself into a pretzel rather than voice judgment on someone. Tabris tried to ground himself on that: the demon was lying. And he thought about Miriael leaning close and saying, Don’t play with them. Throw them out. What was he doing? Not playing. But—but what?

  “I thought you were finally growing a bit,” said the demon. “You know how they say suffering prompts growth? Well, you’ve seen what God’s really like, just a big kid smashing His toys together to see which ones survive.”

  The demon made an image over one hand of a die-cast yellow cab, and a green tractor-trailer over the other. He brought his hands together, and the images collided. “Yeah, loads of fun, huh?” He snapped, and the images disappeared.

  Tabris said, “We’re not toys.”

  “You might as well be. God took this magnificent angel who commanded one of the best units in Heaven’s army and stuck him in a dirty corner of North America like a potted plant, and He waited to see if you’d wither. Instead, you turned into a venus fly trap.” The demon sighed. “He set you up for failure. And you know it, which is why you won’t pray. Oh sweet and loving Father, thank you so much for kicking me in the head! I love it when you do that! Maybe next you can punch me in the gut! Hallelujah! The demon snorted. “Yeah, how could I have walked away from all that? Boggles the mind.”

  Tabris looked at the stars. “Is that how we sound to you?”

  “I’m toning it down so I don’t hurt your feelings.”

  Of course he was. “Then in that case, the prayer should sound more like this: Thank you, all-holy and loving Father, for giving me free will so I could choose to screw up enough that I deserve a kick to the head.” Tabris shrugged. “Hallelujah.”

  “It’s a farce of free will to put you in a place where you had no choice.”

  No choice. Interesting idea: if he’d been set up then it wasn’t his fault at all. No guilt. Just acceptance that this was what God wanted, and now he had to wait for the next thing God wanted. You might hate Richard III or Iago; you’d never hate the actor playing the role. God wrote His characters so much better than Shakespeare—so much better that after a while, the actor could hate himself. How could that be fair?

  Tabris sighed. Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t real, wasn’t true. It was a way out, but that didn’t mean it was the right way.

  The demon said, “I love it when you think so deep like that. Share it with me.”

  “I’m thinking you’re a liar.” He looked up. “Leave. Go. Don’t make me force you away.”

  The demon vanished, but not without saying, “I’m the only one who loves you. You need me.”

  Tabris huddled around himself. Grimy. Unwanted, unfit for contact with other angels, let alone contact with God. I can’t do it,” he thought to God.

  Inside he felt a touch, a turning of his mind toward an orange-winged angel with sunset-colored eyes. Although the push was gentle, Tabris shuddered.

  Tabris thought again, I can’t do it alone.

  Again the thought of Rachmiel.

  I can’t do it with him either. Tabris put his face down and covered himself with his wings. I won’t trust him again. All he needs is more ammo.

  Inside: a question of why God would place him with a co-guardian who would betray him.

  Tabris worked his fingers into his feathers. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  And inside a sense: go home. Elizabeth. Rachmiel.

  Shaken as he was, Tabris knew if he went home, Rachmiel could get any information out of him that he wanted. Anything at all.

  He returned anyway.

  Nineteen

  Tabris arrived in the middle of a battle—demons all over the house, the kids’ bedrooms Guarded off as strongholds. Miriael, Katra’il, Mithra and Josai’el were fighting a contingent of demons in the hallways, on the roof, and even in the basement.

  Tabris’s sword appeared in his hand, and he reported to Miriael. “Why didn’t you call me back? Don’t you trust me?”

  Miriael blew apart a demon. “We did call! Clear out the garage.”

  In the garage, he found a cluster of demons, and based on the feel, they were causing havoc, nothing more. Attacking in force at night—ridiculous. What were they going to tempt the people to do? Sleepwalk? At worst they’d cause nightmares, like the anti-angels they were: instead of Do not be afraid it was Boo!

  Tabris started driving them from the house. When he’d fumigated the garage, he swept the outside of the house, then set a Guard to prevent more from entering. Now it remained only to dispose of the dozen inside.

  Miriael had laced the interior walls with a Guard, and Tabris took half a second to admire the work before coursing through to flush out the intruders. Josai’el reported that one had gotten to Bridget, appearing in her dream. Tabris snagged that, and as he pulled it off, the demon said, “I made her dream you killed Elizabeth.”

  Tabris pushed it through his own Guard with enough force that it would land on the driveway unconscious, if still semicorporeal at all.

  It took half an hour to track down the final three demons, every one of them an unexploded bomb with a message for Tabris.

  He knew—he knew it in the back of his mind,
that this whole thing was a trap to ensure he’d come home and be unable to regroup. Push him and push him until he ended up divulging everything to Rachmiel, who then would carry the information back to Raguel, and Raguel would remove him. But knowing that, he still couldn’t get away, and he couldn’t unhear the things they said whenever he grabbed one from wherever it had ensconced itself—Sebastian hated him; Rachmiel feared him; Rachmiel had brought Sariel only to assess his fitness.

  Miriael stationed Tabris and Mithra to watch for more demons, then he and Katra’il conducted a final sweep. After that, he cleared Rachmiel, Hadriel and Voriah to open the rooms they’d Guarded from the inside.

  The guardians gathered in the hallway, Tabris struggling to stay put rather than run away. He garnered a precious minute alone by checking on Elizabeth. Rachmiel would think he doubted him—fine, but at least he’d stolen time to get himself together.

  When he returned, Josai’el was congratulating the household team on a good defense. Mithra conducted a debriefing on how their strategy could have improved. Out of patience with the rundown, Tabris interrupted with, “No one called me.”

  “I did,” said Rachmiel said, and Miriael added, “So did I.”

  Or so they said. Then they could tell Raguel he hadn’t come back.

  Miriael said, “If they put their own Guard over the house, they could have blocked our communications. This was clearly an orchestrated attack. But then why did you come back?”

  Tabris smoldered. “God told me to.”

  Voriah laughed. “Well, He would know!”

  The other angels discussed the early warning signs, the way they’d responded to the initial salvo, and how they could prevent a communications blackout in the future. The whole time, Tabris ignored how Rachmiel studied him. Not burning with curiosity. Just studying. Ten minutes later, Josai’el dismissed everyone, and Tabris went back to Elizabeth.

  Rachmiel restrained himself from drinking the thin ribbons of emotion trailing off Tabris’s heart. He entered Elizabeth’s room to find Tabris stroking her hair and looking at her with desperation.