Angel's Kiss (2 page)

I shook my head. There was no way I was going to look at a dead body.

“Satan, Beelzebub, Belial, the devil … a hundred other names I care not to mention — call him what you like.”

Danny stood and walked to the body. He grabbed an arm, careful not to touch any exposed skin, and dragged it over to me.

“
Look!
” he commanded, and I struggled against the authority his voice held.

He tried a different tack and lowered the level of his voice.

“
Please
.”

I responded then, by looking at the body. His face was a frozen mask of contorted pain, my blood still on his lips. It was obvious he’d suffered in his final moments.

“Do you know whose blood can kill one of these?”

I shook my head.

“Do you even
know
what it is?”

I shook my head again.

“The answer to the first is the blood of an angel. The answer to the second is …
a vampire
.”

I laughed. It was a sound I wasn’t used to hearing and it surprised me.

“You don’t believe me, and in truth I find some of it hard to believe as well. You see, an angel fully drained of its blood by a vampire will die, but so will the vampire. Call it an eye for an eye. But you,” he waved a finger at me, “you are somewhat of an enigma. If you were indeed an earth-bound angel you should have died, yet your heart continues to beat. You’ve been changed, yet you are not a vampire, angel or mortal. How
did
you manage to drain his blood, as he drained the last of yours? What
are
you and what am
I
to do?”

“Listen,
Danny,
” I stabbed my finger at him. “I think
you
need help. That guy probably died of a heart attack, freak that he was.”

Before I could stand up Danny was on me, pinning me to the floor. His hands grasped my wrists and I felt that same euphoric feeling — like cocaine — filling my body.

“Can a mortal do that!” he yelled at me. “Can a mortal give you that feeling I know you’re experiencing?”

“Get off me,” I yelled, struggling to free myself.

I’d heard that in times of trouble, when there was no option but to fight, an adrenaline rush can give you superhuman strength for a short period of time. I’d never expected to experience it first-hand. I rolled and found myself on top of Danny, pinning
his
arms to the ground.

“How do you explain that?” Danny referred to our changed positions. He was smiling and seemed to be enjoying himself. Typical male!

“Adrenaline rush,” I replied.

“Yet your heart isn’t beating any faster.”

“No,” I conceded.

This was all too confusing. There was a ring of truth to what he was saying. I needed him to back up and start again, from the very beginning. I rolled to the side and sat next to him, resting my head in my hands.

“Danny is a rather unusual name for an angel isn’t it?”

“Danny is the name I use when I travel amongst mortals,” he confessed. “My real name is Danizriel.”

“Hmm, I think I prefer Danny.”

“So do I, Helena.”

“I never mentioned my
name
. How do you know it? Have you been following me?”

I was instantly suspicious. I’d been followed by stalker types before. It was nothing new to me. There was always a certain amount of danger when fanatical people were involved, especially when there was a contract on your head.

Danny laughed and gave me a sly grin. “What sort of an angel would I be if I didn’t know something that simple? The first time I touched you I knew all there was to know about you.”

“Everything?” Surely this wasn’t possible.

“Yes,
everything
. From the time you charged Simon a dollar in primary school to kiss you, to your first taste of cocaine.”

I gulped. Anyone might have been able to find out about my dalliance with cocaine two years ago, but I’d never told anyone about Simon — he’d died a year later from leukaemia — and I doubted he’d said anything either. This was way too freaky. If it was true, it was also one-sided and unfair. I had no secrets from him, yet everything about Danny was a mystery to me.

Danny misunderstood my look of concern and consternation for something else. “You needn’t fear, you’ll be forgiven for everything up until now.”

“Up until now?” I said in disbelief. “You think I’m a monster now, don’t you? Monsters don’t get admitted to heaven do they?”

“I don’t know. I think you can still be saved. You’ve done nothing yet.” Danny sighed. “In all my time I haven’t encountered one such as you. I’ll need to make some enquiries through channels I wouldn’t usually attempt to contact. There is some risk involved. If my superior finds out about this, about you … well, let’s just say we would be taken care of.”

“This is so confusing, so unbelievable.” I rubbed my temples. The pain was finally receding, but the hunger was increasing. “Tell me everything, from the start. I need to make sense of it all.”

“How far back do you want me to go … to the story of creation?” Danny asked seriously.

“Don’t be stupid,” I snorted. “I don’t want to know what everyone else knows. I want to know about you — about angels and why you’re here. I want to know about that
thing
…” I pointed to the body on the floor, “how monsters of myth can be real, and what their part in this is. I want to know what all this has to do with me. Was I randomly chosen or is this part of some grander plan and I’m just a pawn?”

“I can’t answer all of your questions, but I’ll explain as best I can.”

3.
Of Angels, Demons and Monsters

“Let me first explain that there are gaps, omissions and errors in the Bible. Some are small, and others not so small. After all, the Bible was written by
man
. If an angel had been charged with the task there would probably be a dozen volumes, and much of it too difficult for a mortal mind to grasp or understand. Don’t get me wrong, the Bible is a good attempt at relaying the events of our history up to a certain point … and it serves its purpose.” Danny paused to look at me, presumably to check if I was paying attention.

“Okay, so what you’re basically saying is don’t believe everything you read,” I said, to show I had been listening.

He smiled. “Something like that. There are nine choirs of angels, otherwise known as the hierarchy of the nine, or simply the nine. Whilst this is a well-known fact amongst mortals, not
everyone
knows it. Each tier in the hierarchy has a specific task — a function to perform — and within the tiers the order of the angels hasn’t changed since the fallen were cast out.”

“The fallen?” I asked. “You mean Satan?”

Danny nodded. “Satan was amongst the seraphim, those angels closest to Him. Their main function, aside from praising Him for all to hear, is the administration of our heaven.”

Danny could see the look of surprise in my eyes. If heaven was perfect, why did they need pencil pushers there?

“Oh yes, even a place as wonderful as heaven needs to be monitored and regulated to ensure it runs smoothly. We — the angels — aren’t all-knowing, so occasionally problems occur. In the beginning, this was mostly due to miscommunication. There were so many angels passing on instructions that it was very much like what mortals refer to as Chinese whispers, changing ever so slightly with each angel that passed it on. This led to some rather unfortunate incidents on the first earth —”

“Wait a second.
First earth?
You mean this,” I pointed to the floor, “isn’t the original?” It was getting harder and harder to believe what I was hearing.

“Mistakes happen,” Danny replied matter-of-factly, “though all of the mistakes were of the angels’ doing.
He
does not make mistakes. Have you ever heard the saying
third time lucky?
Well, you’re living on it, the third earth.

“Back to what I was saying. We made mistakes. Some of them were quite costly, yet He always forgave us. This is when He introduced the nine, so each would know exactly what was expected of them. We could, from then on, be held accountable. This is the system that’s been in place for more aeons than I care to remember. We
were
content, until Satan poisoned many of our numbers with his lies and deceit — promises of power to lesser angels. The battle with Satan and his followers had been waging for centuries when finally one of the archangels overpowered him and cast him down, out of heaven. Satan had so absolutely corrupted his followers that the threads of their life force were bound to him wholly and solely. As he fell, so did they. No longer angels, they became demons.”

I shook my head — a colossal battle between angels, resulting in a split that saw the creation of demons. Who would’ve believed it? It made our wars — even the Hundred Years’ War, if history was accurate — seem insignificant in comparison. Sure, our wars killed staggering numbers of people, however, no demons were ever created as a result of our bickering. The angels had a lot to answer for.

“How many angels fell? I mean, how many demons are there?”

Danny waved his hand through the air and images of hundreds of angels falling from the heavens appeared. He rattled off some numbers, counting the tiers of the nine with his fingers.

“Two hundred and thirty-eight seraphim, ninety cherubim, three hundred and eight thrones, four hundred and twenty-seven dominions, one hundred and seven virtues, eighty-two powers, seventy-nine principalities, one archangel and six hundred and sixty-six ordinary angels — thrice times the number of the beast. Even mortals know to associate the number six hundred and sixty-six with Satan, though the significance is lost on them.

“The names of the angels that are lost to us are not spoken of anymore. To allow us to identify them they were given new names to represent their demonic selves — Abaedian, Beliam and Cimhejres amongst others.”

“Never heard of them.”

“There’s no reason you would have. Not
all
of the names of the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight are known to mortals, just as not all of the angels’ names are known. In truth, mortals only know a small number of names for both. They don’t even know the exact numbers on both sides.”

“Why didn’t, you know, the
Big Guy,
kill Satan and his defectors?”

I was curious as to why an omnipotent being couldn’t just click His fingers and be done with it.

Danny smiled at my hesitation to use His name. “
He
is all merciful.
He
does not kill any of His creations. And neither did we … until
after
Satan’s downfall. Everything changed after that. The archangels — now numbering nine and seeking redemption — took it upon themselves to rid the earth of demons. The
irony
that the archangels numbers were reduced, by the one fallen, to the same number of choirs, was not lost on many.

“In order to seek redemption an army was formed from those angels in the lowest tier of the hierarchy. The army was divided into a number of units, with each of the archangels assuming command of a unit. My primary function, within that army, is
surveillance
.”

The way he said
surveillance
made me think there was more to it than he was letting on. He was probably only telling me the
nice
part of his job, the one that didn’t involve killing.

“I am forever on the lookout for demonic activity, and to a lesser degree any significant gathering of Satan-created monsters. Once activity or a gathering can be verified I report to my superior and, depending on the threat, the army — or part of it — is marshalled to deal with the problem.”

“Which archangel is your superior?”

I only knew the names of three archangels — Michael, Raphael, Gabriel — so that left six I didn’t know.

“If I say his name out loud I will draw attention to myself. Given the circumstances, that would not be wise. Look,” Danny scribbled in the air with one finger and letters formed in a brilliant white light, “but do not speak it,” he cautioned me.

“But so many men are known by that name. How would he know I was talking about him?” I’d known many men by that name. It was one of the most common names around. How could saying it out loud cause such a fuss?

“Given the context of our conversation, it would be heard. His name, along with certain words that relate to angels, heaven or demons, acts as a trigger, on
both
sides.”

I pointed a finger at him accusingly. “What it boils down to is that you’re a spy.”

“That’s a mortal term. There is nothing covert about what I do. All immortals know that surveillance is constantly taking place. I like to think of myself as an early warning system. If there is little danger to myself, I’ll tackle the problem head on. Otherwise I wait for reinforcements.”