Metal Angel (32 page)

They circled, clockwise, from the prisoner to the fire, throwing his music on the flames. There had been stars before, but now the night went black with the smoke and fetor of burning vinyl.

Volos began to sing.

You want to fly

But you have walked by my side

You taught me to live

But now I have to die
.

His voice—the voice that Ennis heard sometimes, despite everything, in his dreams—it defied darkness, it rose to the stars, quavering only a little.

I'm not afraid

I've seen the sunrise in your eyes

So what's a night ride
.

It's just another road
.

I feel your arms around me

For the night ride
.

Walking in the black-hooded circle, Ennis felt himself slowing to listen. Of all Volos's songs, this was his favorite, this tender love ballad, and Volos was singing it with all his heart to Angela, Angela—unrepentant sinner though he was, he truly loved her, he was willing to die to save her—

There was an eerie power in the prisoner's singing. Several men had lagged or even stopped, listening. “Keep moving!” Reverend Crawshaw barked, and Ennis hastened his steps in quick obedience.

You are so very beautiful

Half angel

Half goddess

Your heart is a flying dove

Your thoughts are fire in the wind

And I am weak with love of you

I turn to you like a child

Please be with me
.

Volos stopped, but without faltering. He had said Amen, that was all. The song had been his prayer, albeit to the wrong deity.

“Pagan,” Reverend Crawshaw accused, and rightly so. A pagan was anyone who worshiped something other than what Jesus had called God; Ennis could not argue. Yet he felt—but it was not his job to feel. Feelings always hurt him. It was far better simply to obey.

He stood with the others at his leader's back. The Reverend faced Volos, only inches away, eye challenging eye, hefting the ax in his strong, long hands. Ennis shuddered, then made himself stop it, ashamed.

“Heathen,” Reverend Crawshaw said venomously to Volos. “Worldling. No, it will not soon be over, O ye self-proclaimed rock idol. You have offended God, and you must suffer. Your hands will go, and maybe that sexual organ you are so fond of flaunting, before I am done with you.”

Ennis saw Volos reach the limits of his courage, saw his eyes go wild, watched him start to tremble and strain against the ropes that bound him helpless to the posts.

“But first to go,” Daniel Ephraim Crawshaw said, “will be those mockeries with which you blaspheme the holy hosts of Heaven.” He turned to his troops. “Son.”

Ennis nodded and moved to take his place. As the Crusade leader's second-in-command it was his privilege to immobilize the condemned enemy's left wing. The assignment was coveted, and at one time he had felt honored by it. Now he just felt numb.

He placed himself behind Volos. A stocky man in a black hood, chosen to deal with the other wing, took position beside him. Reverend Crawshaw stood with raised ax behind Volos's shaking, straining right arm.

“Scream, Satan-lover,” he said to Volos. “Now!” he told his assistants.

Ennis grabbed. He had expected that his task would be harder, that the prisoner would thrash and struggle, but Volos had more defiance in him than he would have thought possible. Defiance, or innate dignity, or mistaken faith—for whatever reason, the blasphemer did not fight. Ennis got hold of the wing easily—

And with a jolt as if the world had stopped turning, he found himself holding his own soul in his fingers. White feathers tingled in his grip, they were everything warm, kind, gentle, good that he had ever known in his life; they were his mother's hug, his father's last words before he died, his children's first steps, they were Angela—dear God have mercy, how could he ever have forgotten how he loved Angie? She meant more to him than—than anything. There was nothing he could not forgive her. Yesterday was not soon enough for him to be with her again. He felt his leathery armor of obedience split like a swollen wound. He cried out, feeling all the pain he had ever suppressed, all the anger, all the ardor.

Volos screamed.

Sweet Jesus suffering on the cross, no! It was all wrong, wrong, wrong, Ennis knew that to the fundament of his heart, and Crawshaw was a demon, and Volos was staggering and screaming out his agony as blood spurted and the ax lifted to strike again—

“No!”

Ennis lunged for the weapon. But the black-hooded man holding the severed wing stood in his way, he could not get to Crawshaw quickly enough, and he saw the flash of the heavy metal axhead, heard the sounds he would never be able to forget: the impact, and the snap of shattering bone, and the scream again.

Then he had hold of the ax, wrenching it away. His charge had surprised Crawshaw enough to let him do that.

“Ennis!”

“Shut up!” he shouted. “You are horrible!” He wanted to use the ax on the terrible old man, but he knew himself now, knew that he could not kill anyone. He swung, but not at Crawshaw, aiming instead at the rope snaking around the nearest post. It was a cramped, one-handed blow, but God must have been with him. The rope parted with one whack, and Volos did not fall, for Ennis had caught hold of his arm.

“Stay on your feet!” he yelled in the angel's ear, aiming the ax at the other rope. And Volos had more guts than anybody had a right to expect of anyone. Ennis could feel him responding, bracing himself, pulling the rope taut so that the ax could sever it.

The cruel thing gave way. Ennis had his left arm around Volos, felt angel blood soaking his sleeve, hot, felt Volos's hand clinging to his shoulder. And the night was full of blows and shouting and horror, there were two wings lying like dying swans on the ground and far too many men rushing him—he swung the ax at random to hold them off. Guided Volos toward his car. Wished fervidly that he had not parked so far away. The Yugo squatted well beyond the bonfire, that blaze of hatred which he was just now nearing—

Someone cuffed him hard on the side of the head. A voice he knew all too well roared, “Ennis Bradley! Heed me now, or hellfire awaits you!”

Ennis had no more time for murderous fanatics. With the flat of the ax he knocked Crawshaw out of his way and plunged onward, supporting the angel who staggered at his side. Behind him he heard a hoarse, barking scream. The air smelled of cloth burning, then of charring flesh—in his panic Ennis noted these things only vaguely. There was no time for them either.

For some reason people let him alone as he reached the car. He leaned Volos and the ax against it, then tore off his shirt and tied it around the singer's wounded torso as tightly as he could.

Volos said faintly, “Angie …”

“She'll be all right. I'll see to that. I promise you.” Ennis got him into the front seat, leaving the ax on the ground. Started the Yugo, roared out of the dark and bloodied field, and already Volos slumped against the window, unconscious. Frightened for his passenger and frightened for himself, Ennis drove as he had never done in his life, taking the road down the mountain at a speed that several times had him airborne. He checked his rearview mirror often, but nothing except his own fear pursued him.

Angie awoke with a groan to find herself lying on cold concrete and looking up at darkness. Groggily she struggled to her feet. Alarm bells were ringing in her mind, yet she could not at first think what had happened or where she was—

God help her. That small, dim window overhead, she knew it, and the shape and damp smell of the room, and the glint of glass jars along the walls. She was in the basement of her parents' house, in the small stronghold where they kept the home-canned green beans and rhubarb. They had shut her in here sometimes as a punishment when she was a child.

I
am not a child anymore
, she told her terror. It helped just enough to keep her from blubbering.

She tried the door, already knowing what she would find. Locked. She tried the light switch. Nothing. They had taken out the fuse. She looked at the window, finding it barred and chicken-wired against hooliganism, as always. And as dark outside as in. Nighttime. She wondered how late.

Anger would help. In a hospital one night she had found that anger is a powerful ally. But how to use it? Summon Mashhit or some other spirit? She felt too weak and wretched, too much the Lady of the Basement, to risk dealing with such power. Not yet. Later, maybe, when things got even worse. She felt sure that things would, in fact, get worse.

She paced, knowing from childhood experience that no one would come if she shouted and slammed things around, that all the noise she could make would scarcely disturb the sleepers in the bedrooms two stories above. She thought of smashing jars against a wall anyway, as a gesture, then decided against it. Why ruin all her mother's work when nothing was her mother's fault, really? Her father was to blame, he and that snake Mercedes. Angie remembered the touch of his soft, ladylike hands as he had forced the drug into her, and she shuddered.

She wondered if Volos had seen them take her. He might not even know where she was.

“Volos,” she called softly to the night.

Why did she hesitate to call again? He would be overjoyed to hear from her, frantic with worrying about her. Surely he would not mind her summoning him. Yet something felt different than ever before.

“Volos. I'm sorry, but I need you.”

He had read her mind across a continent once, yet now she could feel no sense that he heard. For a black moment she wondered if he was alive, then pushed the thought out of her mind.

Cold, she hugged herself. “Volos. Please. Who will help me if not you?”

Because it would make him smile in that sweet way he had, she wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she knew it was not true.

“Volos?”

Then she froze, listening. Loud, hurried footsteps thumped down the wooden basement stairs, heading toward her. Without speaking she waited where she was as the old lock rattled. Winced as the door swung open and light stabbed in. For a moment the man in the doorway was only a dark shape to her. Then she knew him.

“Ennis,” she whispered, and she stepped back.

“Ange. Please.” He did not move toward her, but she could hear his voice shake with something close to panic. “I know I don't deserve it, but you've got to trust me. We have to get you out of here. Your father could get back any minute.”

There he stood, the way he had always been before: earnest, awkward, very attractive in his shy way. Yet there he stood utterly different: shirtless, and unaware of it. Something had happened. Something huge had changed.

In three long strides she was out the door. “The boys,” she said.

“Upstairs.”

Because Ennis, a family male, had told her to, Angie's mother had brought Gabe and Mikey down from their beds. Obedient and unspeaking, she presented them. Angie said, “Mother,” and hugged her, but her mother did not hug back.

“Ange,” Ennis urged gently.

They ran to the car. Ennis carried the boys bobbing in his arms, which made them giggle. Once in the back seat they lumped together like puppies and went to sleep. Ennis headed toward the expressway, driving hard.

Angie waited until he was on the four-lane before asking him, “What has happened?”

He told her. Ennis was a man of few words and short sentences; he told her the story starkly, without flowers or excuses. His voice did not break until he had to explain how they had tied Volos to the posts. Then Angela looked over at him and saw tears running down his face.

“Ennis?”

“It was—when I held his wing—it turned me inside out.”

She did not yet understand what had happened to Volos, did not yet want to know, but she began to understand what had happened to Ennis. She watched him steadily. Asked, “What did you feel?”

“I felt—I love you. I don't care what you did, I love you forever. And I knew—everything I was thinking and doing, everything I thought was right, it was all wrong. I knew I didn't want to hurt anybody.”

After a moment she reached over and touched his hand. She said, “What happened then?”

He told her.

When she could speak she asked, “Is he—is he …”

“I don't know. I got him to the hospital and then I had to leave him there and come get you.”

He drove fast, with the tears drying on his face. She could see them in the light of headlamps, illumination that sped by like happiness. In that same fleeting light she watched him, seeing as if for the first time the warm farm-boy planes of his face and the muscles moving in his bare shoulders. His body was very beautiful, as she had felt sure it must be. She felt two songs forming in her, one of Volos and terrible sadness, one of Ennis and hope.

Several miles farther down the highway, she asked, “Ennis, where are we going?”

“I don't know. Some motel someplace.” She saw a blush start below his neck and flood his face as he heard his own words hang in the air. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just mean I've got to get you and the boys someplace your father won't find you.”

“Yes, I see. Let me think.”

Her head ached almost as badly as her heart. From whatever poison Mercedes had given her, maybe. God burn Mercedes. Sitting with her chilly fingers pressed against her hot, lidded eyes, trying to sort things through, she asked, “Can you give me change for a phone call?”

He felt at his trousers pocket. “Yes. Sure.”

At the next exit, without her having to request it, he pulled off and found a red-and-white booth at a gas station. Gave her money. Coins in hand, she got out, then looked back and saw how he sat bent over the steering wheel, hiding his face in his arms.

“Ennis?”