Thief (7 page)

But mixed in among them he found occasional writings strikingly similar to the creature who had waylaid him. In particular he found one quote that floored him with its accuracy.

“The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson had stated that many lifetimes earlier, and it was as true now as it had been then. Her manner of communication he realised with awe, while never actually understood by anyone he had read of, must have actually been heard before. For while she didn’t speak any mortal tongue, surely the language she spoke was that of heaven. Emerson, or one of his sources, must actually have met and heard an angel. Mikel wasn’t alone.

He read on.

Angels he found were almost universally accepted as part of every major religion, though their roles differed more than a little. Most classed them as in some way the agents of God, doing His bidding and speaking His words, while a few others classed them either as other creations like man, or else as divine spirits left free to roam.

But they hadn’t always been the cute and fluffy creatures envisioned in the popular press. They were listed in the Old Testament as powerful creatures, often as warriors bearing flashing swords and fighting the lords battles. They destroyed cities, tore down walls, carried plagues and prevented man from returning to the Garden. Angels would also sound the trumpets at the end of the world. In one book he found a passage that seemed to sum up the traditional view:

"If the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us, our own heart, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death. Every angel is terrifying."

Was Sherial terrifying? He couldn’t answer that question. Certainly she scared him, but not necessarily in her own right. It was what she represented, what her presence meant to him that troubled him most.

Sherial herself ensorcelled him. Difficult as it was to admit, he knew he would crawl naked over broken glass should she but ask him. Of course she never would. On the other hand he had no doubt she was far more than the simple innocent beauty she looked. She was more dangerous than a tiger, and on an awful lot of different levels. If she chose to harm him, he was certain he couldn’t have stopped her no matter how well prepared. Nor he was sure, could he harm her. Even had he been able to bring himself to that point, he would be no match for her, on any level.

But for all that she didn’t terrify him. She made him feel safe and warm. She made him feel loved.

Reading on Mikel noted that in the Middle Ages theologians had mapped out a detailed hierarchy of the heavens, based on the writings of Dionysius. They divided the heavenly host into choirs, each with its own task. In their layers of heaven, the highest angels were the seraphim and cherubim, those closest to God who existed only to worship him. Then there were the thrones to bring justice to mankind, though what exactly they meant by justice, he wasn’t sure. The dominions regulated life in heaven, again something that defied his understanding, while the virtues were responsible for making miracles. The powers protected mankind from evil, presumably evil spirits, something that Mikel suddenly found he also had to accept might exist. It wasn’t something he particularly relished.

Archangels and angels were considered the lowest forms of angel, serving as guides and messengers to human beings. Looking out at her in the garden he had to disagree. Even if Sherial was only a basic grade angel, there was nothing lowly about her.

Reading on through what he found, Mikel couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief at some of it. These were the writings of the major churches, surely those who must know the most there was to know about angels, yet much of what they said couldn’t possibly be. Cherubs for example, couldn’t possibly be four faced, four armed, four winged angels riding around in chariots covered in eyes. Could they? Who knew? All he could say was that if they were, Sherial wasn’t one of them.

Then there was the question of her body. According to the scriptures, angels were creations of spirit. Though they might appear in the real world to carry out his works, they did not truly have bodies. Yet Sherial was solid. He had picked her up and carried her like a baby. He’d seen blood coursing through her veins. That could surely be no mere manifestation. She was flesh and blood as well as spirit.

Guardian angels were a much more recent concept of the churches, not found in any of the really early works. They, along with many of the other more modern beliefs, didn’t seem to square at all with the traditional view. However, they were found in a lot of religions. Some even believed that every human soul had an attendant guardian angel. Had Sherial come to protect him? Looking at her through the screen, Mikel couldn’t bring himself to believe she had come here just to protect him. She had much more than his well being on her mind. Besides, he could look after himself. Couldn’t he?

Mikel found no place in any of the established scriptures that said people became angels when they died, nor that angels were restricted to playing Mr. Nice Guy either. In fact if anything the older the writing, the more it seemed that angels were unpredictable at best. They could, disagree, argue, fight, kill and even fall. Sherial it seemed, whatever else she was, wasn’t the soul of a dead person, and neither did she necessarily have to remain absolutely pure and nice.

Worse still, in some of the earliest scriptures, angels had acted on behalf of God against mankind. Satan had begged for God to punish Job, on the pretence that he would no longer worship him were his life not so rosy. Angels at the Lord’s behest had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and brought the plagues for Moses. Angels with fiery swords had also guarded the garden against Adam and Eve’s return.

Looking out at her in the garden still sitting and giving all her attention to her adoring congregation, he couldn’t even bring himself to imagine her with a sword in battle. There was no way she could ever do any of those things. War, conflict, battle; they were not in her makeup. And yet the established scriptures said otherwise. Were the scriptures wrong? Or was he so far under her spell that he couldn’t see the truth? Was that the purpose of her allure? To blind him? There was no answer.

If anything he finally decided, angels seemed to be summed up as a more advanced form of life, one God had created before man, one created like him with free will, but one with a damn sight more power. Thus he had to accept that there could be fallen angels, and that raised the distinct possibility of an actual literal hell, somewhere he definitely didn’t want to go. On the other hand, would he have a choice? How bad did you have to be to be sent there? He drew his thoughts away from that dark and dismal place only with difficulty.

Mikel’s next questions then became that assuming Sherial was an angel; something he either had to accept or go mad trying to deny, which realm did she come from and what purpose did she serve? Logically she had to be a basic angel or archangel to be dealing in the realm of man, but being both a thief and paranoid recluse he had the horrible feeling she was from the thrones, here to deal out justice - to him. Again there was no answer.

Reading on he found that angels appeared most often in times of great fear and turmoil. They had been seen on countless battlefields, sometimes leading charges, and rallying morale, sometimes comforting the wounded. In World War One he suspected there had been more angels than soldiers on the fields, judging from the sightings. Doubtless the same held true for many other wars.

In fact he realized, the number of encounters recorded was staggeringly large. As a phenomena they rivalled UFO encounters. But there was a significant difference. Most UFO encounters seemed to involve only mysterious bright lights in the sky. Angels generally interacted with people, making it that much harder to discredit them in the minds of those who had seen them. After all you could never dismiss an angel as a ball of swamp gas.

Moreover, he strongly suspected most of those who had seen an angel would never tell. Certainly he knew he wouldn’t. For even if someone had the guts to admit in public he had seen an angel and face the ridicule, most still wouldn’t want to. Often their deeds seemed to be of an entirely personal nature, and absolutely not for public consumption.

All of which left him wondering, how big an issue were they? How often did angels intervene in the world of man? How could he find out? Again there were no answers. They were just a few more questions to add to an ever increasing list.

There were claims that every soul, by which he assumed every human being, had his or her own guardian angel. Six billion angels? Each looking out for their single human, keeping him or her from harm, guiding them? It couldn’t be, could it? Where did they all stay? What did they eat? Why didn’t you trip over an angel every fifteen seconds? Yet he still wouldn’t deny the suggestion either.

A sudden leap of illogic hit him then as he made the connection between his day thus far and his particular angel. Sherial might or might not be here to save him, might or might not be his guardian angel, but she was still an angel and she still would look out for him on the spiritual level. Which was exactly what she was doing.

Angels were apparently vegetarians, or at least his one was, therefore he had no meat left in the fridge, or anywhere else for that matter. Sherial was saving him from the terrible sin of meat eating. Which in turn meant he was unlikely to be able to eat any meat for all the time she was around. No doubt if he went to a restaurant and ordered a steak, she would spirit it away to feed more lions, before he could take a single bite.

Always judge people by their actions not what they say. It was one of the first lessons he’d been taught in psychology, and suddenly it was one of the most important. So far he knew the why, if not the how of what she had done. She was saving him from sin. That understanding led him neatly to the next question, what else did angels do? What other sins was she saving him from?

Angels were also good, which meant anything bad would also be gone. With that though he started hunting through his library, both the physical and the computerized, searching for some of the “inappropriate books” he’d collected over the years. Sure enough the few arcane books he had on demons and satanic rituals were gone. So was his copy of Dante’s Inferno, and the writings of the Marquis De Sade. He didn’t particularly miss them, most having been acquired as parts of bigger lots, or acquired as a result of idle curiosity, but it would have been nice to have a say in the matter. It would also be nice to know how she’d managed to find and remove them.

Stranger still was the internet, which when he searched along those lines gave him meaningless results. Not only didn’t he have those items, he couldn’t even access them from those who did. According to his computer, they didn’t exist. Another impossibility to add the ever growing list and a mildly annoying one. He didn’t mind their loss, but his lack of choice in the matter was something else again.

What else? What other changes had she made? Angels weren’t exactly known for their drunken ways, but his liquor cabinet didn’t seem to have been touched, he saw looking through the security cameras into the house. Then again he hardly ever drank anything anyway. Satanic music? And then he realized he didn’t have any too lose, not even AC/DC’s classic ‘Highway to Hell’.

Demons! Like a bolt from the blue he suddenly realised that if there was anything angels wouldn’t like it would surely have to be demons. He didn’t have any, for sure, but he did have two gargoyles, watch gargoyles, taken from the front yard of a condemned French Mansion just before the bulldozers had moved in. They were set out in the garden, supposedly keeping it safe from marauders. They’d never seemed particularly demonic to him, more cute in an ugly sort of way. But still, they were demons.

Quickly he found the security cameras for the area, zoomed in and groaned. Sure enough he no longer had them, but this time their absence wasn’t the only thing awry. They’d been replaced. Instead of his two gargoyles, standing motionless on the same marble slabs that had formed their base, he had two lions, a male and a female, clearly there to do the same job. But these two, they were so much more detailed, more real than any statue he’d ever seen. Marble they might be, but they were almost breathing as he stared at them.

Were they statues? He began to wonder. Something in them, in their eyes, in their posture said no, they were far more. They were alive! He felt it in his bones, though it was completely impossible. Stone surely can’t breath. Moreover, he had the horrible feeling that they too were there to guard the house, but unlike their predecessors, they took the job seriously.