Saint And Sinners (31 page)

“My name is Armondo Martinez. This is my squad. We are much bigger than this, but
these are just the folks chillin’ here tonight.” He popped his coat collar, causing
the fur to fall slightly forward. “We are you, and you are us…and shit is out of control.
Been so for years. We can’t keep going on at this rate. We’re losing. The balance
is all fucked up!” He tossed the pool stick across the room; it broke into three pieces,
splintering, as if in slow motion, joining the cue ball he’d lobbed earlier.

Angry big ass mothafucka…

“Armondo.” A curvy woman with pale, snow white skin, a tight coral mini-dress and
long, lustrous black hair came forward, her body moving through the crowd as if she
were a snake being charmed. “Stop being rude, Papi! Offer the man a drink and a seat.”

“Yeah…yeah.” Armondo grinned. He grabbed a better chair and pointed to it for Saint
to sit down. Saint stood there for a spell, then made his way over to it. Instead
of sitting in the damn thing, though, he placed his foot on the shit, leaned forward,
and blew out copious circles of cigar smoke, his head cocked slightly to the side.

The woman was soon upon him. Parting full, glossy red lips, she blew on an unopened
bottle of beer. The damn thing chilled up in a millisecond. She handed it to him,
winked and walked away…

Saint took a swig of it and glared back at Armondo.

“Look, enough of the riddles ’nd shit, man. It’s not my fault I don’t understand you.”
He touched his chest, offering his best version of sincerity. “I go where my soul
leads me. I’m
here
now, so stop all this bullshit and tell me what you all need.”

“We need
you
, man!” a voice called out from the crowd.

“Be quiet, Palmer.” Armondo smirked and raised his hand in the air, beckoning for
complete silence. “Saint, as you already know, we are Angel Children. We’ve been crawling
around here, since forever. You were born to do this: to rule. Even your genetic make-up
was key. Get me a beer, Little Bit.” He snapped his fat fingers at the Puerto Rican
woman with the porcelain skin and pink dress, the same luscious number who could blow
a breeze like no other. She disappeared and returned with his request. He gripped
the neck like a vice and continued. “You’re half Egyptian.”

“Really?” Saint rolled his eyes. “What would I do without your keen insight?” Saint
snapped.

“Listen up, I’m tryna tell you what you asked me, okay? Egypt is the birthplace of
our people. Some shit went down, some shit we know you are personally responsible
for.”

“…And what’s that?” Saint took a sip of his drink, then a puff on his cigar before
setting the bottle down on the floor beside the leg of the chair.

“You killed Nizsm…you set
all
of us free.” He raised his hands in the air, as if cheering. “That, in turn though,
set up some bad shit here. We didn’t know that, hell, no one did, but it caused a
chain of events. Some people knew what was to come next.”

“Come
next
? Such as?” He took another toke on his cigar.

“The balance disruption. Whenever you free something, you remove it from its confines,”
the man explained rather articulately, contradicting his previous angry vernacular
wrapped tightly in New Yorker street dialect. “But, that spot still longs for something
to sit there…that energy, it still wants to hold something captive, you know? Egypt
is from whence we came, but it ain’t the only place that is a portal to our people.
There are a lot of places all over the world but New York is
yours
. So at this moment, man, welcome tha fuck home…but get ready, because now that you’re
here, it’s body rock time, son.”

Saint ran a hand against his cheek, feeling the prickliness of his jaw. He hadn’t
shaved in two days, and became suddenly aware of his unkempt appearance. The move,
everything, had taken its toll on him. He was now cast into an underworld that left
him both perplexed and warm-hearted. Being amongst his people, this man telling him
things, inexplicable things he understood but still couldn’t quite wrap his brain
completely around.

“…I think I better call Krishna,” Lawrence whispered as he dug in his pocket and removed
his cell phone, bringing Saint back into the here and now.

His gut grew heavy as it filled with anxiety, unanswered questions, and a fair amount
of annoyance. Had a damn bird flown above him as he lay in wait in his comfy nest,
promising nourishment to his starving soul only to spit out cement and force him to
swallow the shit? Saint glared at his friend until Lawrence stood clear across the
room, punching numbers into his cell phone. He turned back towards Armondo and flicked
ashes onto the floor.

“Continue…”

“Well, this is a battle. You see, some real fucked up shit is going on in the city.
There are us, and then…there are
them
…”

“Who is
them
?” Jagger asked, now shoulder-to-shoulder with Saint. The man’s breathing sounded
uneven, as if he was ready to fucking tear some flesh from the goddamn bone. Jagger
was always on the defensive and wouldn’t hesitate to attempt to murder every single
mothafucka in that room, if need be. It seemed he’d been aroused, wound up, invited
to play at a party he no longer enjoyed attending. The good times had expired, spoiled
like warm milk in the blazing desert sun.

“God made the angels. And Lucifer was his most prized. Well, Lucifer has Angel children
too, Saint…”

A chill ran down Saint’s spine as Armondo made his declarations.

“They are way worse than a wayward Angel Child, or one of our own that has lost his
or her way. They are allowed to stay and play because of man’s free will. There is
to be equilibrium.” The man held his hands out like scales. “When that balance is
disrupted, it causes concerns, gets us attention we don’t fuckin’ want. We couldn’t
ask your ass to come here; it’s against the rules. No one can summon a King Angel
Child! You have to come on your own.”

King Angel Chilld? Is he talking about me? He must be…

“So…we waited. So damn glad you are in tune with yourself, man.” He took another sip
of his beer, and then another. “It took you a minute, but you figured it out. We can’t
manage this anymore. They’re doing shit, ill shit, son, and they now outnumber us.
Back in our day, when we were kids, all the little Angel Children wanted to be like
us, you know?” He smirked, yet his tone held murky desolation. “People wanted to be
a ‘good guy’, but now, the world is leaning on the dark side. Everybody wants to do
for self, be bad, show how damn tough they are. All anyone cares about is what money
they can get, how many bitches they can fuck, all that shit that doesn’t even matter.
I’ll be the first to admit this man.”

Armondo gulped and looked down at the ground, as if he’d momentarily lost his train
of thought. “It was hard for me to admit I couldn’t handle this shit on my own anymore.
I run this shit, but…it’s over my damn head now, man! Over my head. I’m
not
a King Angel Child, never was, and never thought I was, either. I was just doing
the best I could until you got here, man! It’s you! I have to bow down, I humble myself
before you!”

Suddenly, the brown tinted beer bottle, slick with coolness in the man’s hand, shattered
to the ground as he fell to his shaking knees. Saint’s eyes grew wide as he witnessed
everyone in that damn room following suit, tumbling on the floor like loose fabric
falling from the sky and landing in a heap of mesmerizing colors. He was surrounded
by a slew of unbelievable Angel Children, their powers from low to moderate levels,
on their damn knees for him, as if praying to Mecca.

Armondo kept his head down, his body shaking under his threads.

Just then, Lawrence approached, shoved his phone into his pocket with his chin held
high. Saint witnessed the man’s eyes turn from sooty black to jade green as he fixed
his tongue to deliver some news. His heart pounding in his damn chest, he waited to
hear the message.

“What did Krishna say?”

“I didn’t get him directly, but I did speak to his assistant. Saint, this is major.
You are in the middle of
gang
warfare. Armondo is right.” Jagger, Saint, Raphael and Lawrence all cast their sights
to Armondo’s bowed head then looked at one another. “They’ve got a leader, too. He’s
a damn humanoid demon, Saint. Before you ask,” Lawrence raised his hand, “I’ll explain
what that is. He is human, like you and me, flesh and blood, but he was
created
by demons.”

“He’s possessed.”

Lawrence nodded. “Yes, but he was
born
into possession, Saint, which means he cannot be exorcised. The same as us—we will
always be Angel Children, no matter what we do. All the ones like him are possessed
with a demonic spirit from the time of birth. Just as you and the rest of us.” He
glanced around the room. “We are one and the same, but so different. Some of them
refer to themselves as Demon Children, even. D.C.s”

“Tell me more.” Saint wanted every damn detail, even the ones that may have seemed
unimportant. He was ready to go to class, despite the fact that it was a crash course;
he’d flunked two prior tests and was running habitually tardy. He prided himself on
being a quick learner, so he took mental notes like a scholarly motherfucker.

“We were kissed in our mother’s wombs from the Angel of Mercy and the Angel of Death.
The same was done with them, only it was the Arch Demon of Destruction and Henchman
of Despair. Like us, they tend to stay low-key. Saint…” Lawrence sighed as he stared
down at the floor for a spell. “When you killed Nizsm, panic ensued. They always felt
fairly comfortable because the head master in charge, your cousin, was a wayward Angel
Child. He made their job easier. He never enforced the rules of balance. Once you
wiped him out, Egypt was released from that affliction, but not New York, nor any
other place where an Angel Child hub is set up. As Armondo explained, New York is
a portal. There is a huge pocket of them here. It is one of the reasons why this city
attracts so many damn people from all over the globe. If you think about it, no other
place on this planet attracts people from all walks of life like New York. Do you
know why? Because it has the heartbeat of God and the soulless temptations of Lucifer
beating under the very Earth.

“People from all over the world flocked here, and still do. It is the land of immigrants,
the place that gives birth to you by throwing you out of a womb made of shattered
glass, then holds you close and nurses your wounds, the same ones it inflicted upon
you. I have no idea why I was surprised that you’d want to come back, and I apologize
for initially not understanding what you were saying, and what this was all about
when you first told me. It’s in your blood, and it was tired of you being away so
long. But more importantly, you are on a vital mission. Saint, the Demon Children
are tearing everything apart. Their influence has become stronger than ours. As Armondo
explained, the balance is royally screwed up.”

Saint rose to his feet and kicked the chair beside him so hard, it flew across the
damn place and disappeared into a cloud of darkness. He had no idea where it landed
and he didn’t care. His skull pounded as the stench of spilled blood filled his nostrils
with the spirit of things to come. He ran his fingers roughly through his hair, and
turned his attention towards Jagger and Raphael. They simply stood there, waiting,
wondering no doubt, warring within themselves, just as he was. There was no easy way
out of this. When those wrought with evil became afraid, they turned extremely dangerous.
The soulless cannot be reasoned with. There is no discussion that will set them free
from their afflictions. They were no doubt diseased from the inside out, and worst
of all, they
liked
it like that.

“So.” Saint took a quiet puff of his cigar, regaining his focus after his violent
explosion. “They know I’m here, I take it.”

“Yes,” Lawrence answered, standing a bit taller.

“I am here. I’ve been drawn back here, to help even out the balance. Okay. Got it.”

“Yes, Saint. There can be no evil without good. They define one another once sin entered
the world.”

Saint sneered and turned his back, facing a wall that had nothing but blackness. It
was the kind of blackness he wanted to step into, become absorbed in. The kind that
called to him, the kind he wanted to wrap himself up against and disappear into for
a moment or two. He tapped his chin with his fingertips, grinned and turned back to
the crowd.

“So… I disturbed the good and evil applecart, and they ran amuck in the city, around
the world, really, trying to destroy balance because, well, that’s what they do. I
scored a million points for the Angel Children, so they scrambled to keep things even.
Only, they are now winning, have a stronghold.”

“Yes. Their job is to present man with choice.”

“Choice…” Saint cackled as he looked listlessly at his watch, noting the time had
stopped. Time doesn’t fucking stop on a Rolex—but it apparently had once he’d entered
the hideout. “I’m not a Christian. Why would I be chosen for this?”

“I don’t know Saint, but I think you may be taking this too literally. Almost all
religions and spiritual belief systems present a scale of good and evil. Christianity
may have nothing to do with it. It could simply be a matter of right and wrong, the
golden rule. You’ve said it yourself; you believe most religions possess beauty and
truth.”

“Yes, though I believe they are all flawed, their basic premise is love.”

“You believe humankind makes choices in our lives. We choose to do the right thing,
and sometimes we choose to do the wrong thing. We don’t know what those rights and
wrongs are until they are presented to us. The influence is real and we struggle with
it. No one is exempt.”