Fade to Black (10 page)

Dismounting and turning the engine off, she kicked down the stand and walked quickly, swinging open her iron gate, still listening and watching. Unlocking the door, she heard a great whooshing of the wind behind her. She worried the worsening storm would cause the tree to fall against her apartment.

“Do I have to stay out in this rain much longer?”

The deep voice was close to her ear. She yelped and jumped. She instinctively spun low into her defensive stance, anticipating an attack. For the second time that night, she had prepared for non-existent violence. She stayed low in the crouch for a few seconds, then slowly straightened as she saw her would-be attacker standing across the street, arms folded, his broad smile visible even through the rain.

“Well?” he asked quietly. Yet she heard him as if he was right next to her.

She stared at him. He was very tall, hatless and with wet, dark hair swept back over his ears to his collar. He wore a long, unbuttoned black coat, which partially covered a light shirt and denims. He was the man from the Feathers Inn, alright.

“What’s my name, then?” she yelled, already questioning why she asked that. It was a lame attempt to convey her caution to him, she supposed. She was tired, after all.

“Alison St. Clair, daughter of David.” This was said matter-of-factly, no humor, no sarcasm.

“Alright,” Allie said. “Where were you in May 1991?”

“Which day?” He was mocking her now.

“The twenty-second.”

He put his finger to his lips, striking an exaggerated thinking pose.

“Let’s see,” he replied thoughtfully. “I went to a funny little village… Glastonbury, as I recall, and went to the local fair and bought a child’s book in the morning and in the afternoon, I went to a pub and then, let me think… I was invited to a birthday party. Yes, that’s right—
yours
.”

“What was the name of the book?” Allie felt a smile beginning, despite the horrors of the night.

“It was called,
If You Don’t Open Your Bloody Door and Let Me Out of the Rain, I’m Going to Break it Down
.” He spread his arms, palms up. “At least, I think that was it.”

“That’ll do,” she said crisply. “Come on then,
Michael
, let’s get this nonsense over with.”

Allie pushed open her door, kicking the unopened mail her downstairs neighbor refused to ever pick up, changed keys and opened the door to her upstairs apartment. She trudged up her ridiculously narrow flight of stairs, leaving him to follow, too tired now to be worried or alarmed. Her life had just turned completely crazy. She had seen things tonight she would never forget, and she was wet and her leathers smelled like a wet dog.

She heard him close the doors downstairs as she threw her helmet down on her sofa. The helmet shattered into a hundred pieces. She stared at it as realization struck. Its strength—its integrity—had been totally compromised by the impact with the road and the light pole. She wondered how it had remained intact for the journey home.

She checked herself in the living room mirror and recoiled. Her face was ok, nothing had fallen off, but her clothing was in ruins and covered in blood.
Blood from where?
She performed a little pirouette and checked herself out again, just in case she had been in shock back at Earl’s Court Road. But there were no cuts or abrasions, just the ragged holes in her leathers, including a huge one which revealed most of her left butt cheek.

“Fetching,” he said quietly.

She spun around to face him and the electric shock went through her again. She sat heavily on the sofa, crunching pieces of her helmet. She put her head between her hands and wept. Exhaustion, horror, shock and embarrassment— it was all too much.

After a minute or so, she heard clanking noises from her galley kitchen.
Christ
, she thought,
he’s putting the kettle on. I don’t believe this. Any of it.

“Milk with no sugar, right?”

“Right,” she heard herself say. She was too wrecked now to care how he knew.

She stared at her wrist, realizing she’d lost her watch in the accident. Robert had given it to her on her twentieth birthday. She asked what time it was.

“2011.”

“Funny. About three a.m.?”

She looked over and saw him check the clock on the microwave.

“Yep, ten past.”

“Jesus,” she said. “I have to get up in three hours.”

“You’re already up.”

He came back into the living room and sat a steaming cup of tea on her low table, directly on the wooden surface. She reached over and moved it to the circular Balinese coaster.

“Ah,” he said, stepping back into the shadows in a corner of the room. “So that’s what it’s for.”

“That’s what it’s for. You can sit if you like,” Allie said, gesturing to one of the lounge chairs. “You don’t have to stand.” Allie looked at him again. This time, the electric current was gentler. She coped without dropping anything. He was even taller than she’d first thought, maybe six-seven in the old measure, maybe taller. Even in shadow, enough light caught his angular face to suggest classic good looks. But his age was utterly indeterminable. He could be twenty-eight or forty, yet he must be much older. She just couldn’t pin it down.

“What are we doing here… Michael?
Do
I call you Michael?” she added, the bizarre aspect to all this still very much on her mind.

He smiled and she fumbled the teacup again. “You can, yes,” he said.

“Can what?”

He frowned. “You can call me Michael, if you wish.”

Allie shifted uncomfortably in her seat; somewhere in her consciousness there was an understanding that the conversation they were about to have was going to be life changing. She still could not fathom why she was allowing a complete stranger into her home—one who could well be a threat to her—and not feeling any sense of danger. She was sure she was safe and decided to push for answers.

“So what’s this all about—the text messages, the impressive knowing-all-things act, and…” She stopped the question in mid-stream and simply looked at him.
She knew this man.
A weakness flooded through her, like her batteries were suddenly drained. “Michael,” she said more gently, “help me out here, please. What’s going on?”

He was distracted by the clatter of the rain at the window and the shadows cast by the wildly swaying tree outside. Allie wondered if he was undecided about something or just being careful about his choice of words. He looked out the window, up and down the street, before answering.

“You’re right to be worried about what is about to be said.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “And about what now has to happen.”

She sat still, waiting for the explanation.

“I know you are wondering who I am and how it can be that I appear in that birthday party photo from all those years ago, among other things, of course.”

She nodded.

“You will have gathered that I know your father… yes?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. We had a chat about you earlier this evening. Well, kind of.”

He smiled. “Kind of, eh? He didn’t say too much, then?”

“No, he mentioned there being ‘rules.’”

He swiveled on his heels, looking out the window once more.

“Ah, yes, the rules. The
eternal
rules. He is correct, of course,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back like a prosecuting attorney.

“I have taken your plea for help, as in ‘Michael help me out here, please,’ as your genuine desire for me to help you. Am I correct?”

She screwed up her face. “Sure, yes, I guess.”

He held up his hand, cutting her off. “Ok, that’s fine. Weird isn’t it? But it’s part of the rules. You have to ask for my help before I can offer it, technically. Even though you’ve already had it, of course.”

“I have? When?”

“Tonight, or rather, this morning.”

Allie scoffed. “I could have done with it half an hour ago when my bike went out from under me!”

A trace of annoyance crossed his face. He pointed at the mirror.

“Take a look at yourself if you doubt me.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest I doubted you… I just—”

He pointed again at the large mirror. “Look.”

Allie’s jaw tightened. “I did when I arrived.”

“Did you just?” There was a definite edge to his voice now. “Have a look at what the accident
really
did to you.” He waived his hand toward the mirror in polite invitation—an usher at the cinema.

Sighing, she stood and moved toward the mirror. Her face gazed back at her, not unexpectedly. Everything was fine and she breathed a sigh of relief. She studied herself. She had dark smudges under her eyes and her hair was a wet nest, but apart from that… she stared as something began to change. The reflection twisted.

“Don’t take your eyes off the mirror,” he advised.

She would have given anything to do just that. She was transfixed as she saw her nose morph into a short piece of jagged, twisted grizzle and her left cheek fall away to reveal a semi-circle of shattered, grinning teeth. There was no left ear. Her mouth, from the right side up to the eye, looked like it had been sandblasted by a madman and her skull was flattened and bloodied across the top. She had been scalped and then melted by fire.

She was crying now, but unable to take her eyes off her destroyed self.

“Do you want to know about the back of your head and your left arm… or should I say,
the places where they used to be?”

Allie could not answer. She stood, tears distorting the mirror image. She could not move.

“Enough,” Michael announced. The horrors faded from view. She was whole again. She slowly turned to look at him.

“How could you do this to me?” Her voice was a frail whimper.

Michael waved a hand dismissively. “What you saw was what you did to yourself, Allie, until I repaired you.”

She nodded weakly and slumped back onto the sofa. She stared up at him. He was closer now. He looked profoundly sad and weary—a look that could only be worn by someone who is tired and had their heart ripped out by the roots.

She asked the inevitable question, the one to which her father had alluded. She could put it off no longer.

“What exactly are you, Michael?” Something stirred in her memory, images of her brother, feathers, no, w
ings
and… Glastonbury Tor.

Michael looked at her steadily before answering.

“You’re going to have the devil’s own job accepting the reality of this Allie, but here goes: I am in fact, the Archangel Mikal, Lord Protector of the Realms of Heaven and Earth—the Viceroy of Heaven, in a nutshell.”

Allie burst into laughter. “Oh, c’mon! The Archangel Michael? You? A good-looking magician or hypnotist maybe, but…
really?
”

Michael smiled and then chuckled. “Well, I told you you’d have trouble accepting me.”

Billy McBride’s words roared back to her. “Accept him!” he had said. The smile faded from her face. This was what Billy had been on about. She looked at Michael again and thought about her father, the strange things to which he had alluded, the photo from twenty years ago and the whole deal with the feathers and tonight’s horrific accident.

“Don’t forget the advertising hoarding from the Chelsea Hospital,” he reminded. “It only missed you by an inch, as I recall.”

For the second time that night, Allie started to tremble. She wondered why on earth she had laughed out loud. Exhaustion. But this
was
happening. It was no dream. This was real and he probably was who he said he was.

She sat again on the sofa, staring at the floor, not yet ready to engage in further conversation. She was limp, her grip on reality tenuous. Something from her childhood kept nagging at her, kept urging her to accept the incredible information he had revealed to her. Angels, a concept she had utterly rejected and about which she now recalled arguing with her father, many years ago, had come back to haunt her, perhaps literally. Now she understood the passion with which her father had defended his argument that they existed. Finally, she looked up at Michael. He stood over her, not smiling, not scowling.

“I suppose when I've rested and composed myself, I'll have a million questions. One of which will be,
‘You mean there actually is a Heaven and the whole God thing is real?'
And another biggie will be, ‘
Why are you here, now, with me?'
But if you don’t mind, I just need sleep. I’ve had a hell of a night and I just can’t think anymore.
”

“That’s exactly what you’ve had, Allie. A hell of a night, but you didn’t know it.”

“What do you mean?” she said, her face crumpled like that of an inquisitive child.

“You need sleep as you say, so I’ll not bother you too much more. But you need to know this: the murder that was committed tonight is much more than it seems. That is why I am here. If we do not find the murderer quickly, there will be consequences that do not bear thinking about, for you, me—every living soul.”

Allie was now dead tired and in no shape to assimilate any more information, especially on the universal scale to which he was now elevating the conversation.

“Ok, fine,” she said flatly. “You are welcome to sleep on the couch if you like.” She turned and walked towards her bedroom, then stopped and turned back to him.

“What do you mean ‘we’ have to find the murderer? That’s my job.”

Michael took two steps toward her, his face a mask. For the first time, she saw his eyes clearly; they were a color she had never seen before. Sort of green, sort of blue, sort of a lot of colors, perhaps all of them. He spoke as if was in charge of, well, everything.

“Without me or my representative to guide and protect you, you will never apprehend him. And you will die in the attempt, along with thousands of others. Do you understand that?”

She nodded, still in a daze.

“You are not dealing with human intellect on this one. This is not some psycho who just forgot to take his little blue pills this morning. This
thing
is chaos—the betrayer of all things—if you want me to get all biblical. If you prefer, it is elemental evil—the ‘yin’ to the ‘yang’ of Heaven and light, fundamental antimatter made
live
.”