A Hideous Beauty (40 page)

I lingered on each of the angels who stood with Abdiel, wondering if I might recognize any of them by their appearance. Was Michael here, who led the battle against Lucifer and who later disputed with him over the body of Moses? Was Gabriel here, the angel who announced the birth of John to his father, Zechariah, and the birth of Jesus to Mary? I found myself looking at their lips to see if any of them looked like a trumpet player.

And the rebel side . . . the obvious question was, Why? What was their strategy? Having stood in the throne room of God Almighty, did they really think they could win? Did they have regrets? If they had to do it all over again, would they?

From the expressions on their faces, the sense of wonder was mine alone. They glared at me with disdain. All of them. Even Abdiel.

Semyaza indicated I should stand in the middle of the circle. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes as I walked. That's when I noticed I was the only one on the roof whose feet were touching the ground.

“The mush-pot,” I said, having reached the center.

“What?”

It just slipped out. Until Semyaza challenged me, I wasn't even aware I'd said it out loud.

“Um . . . mush-pot,” I explained. “That's what we called the center of the circle in kindergarten. The mush-pot.”

Cold, stony silence encircled me.

“Which, I guess, makes me the cheese, doesn't it? You know . . . the farmer in the dell?”

They didn't know. Or if they did, they weren't admitting it.

To help them remember I spoke the lyrics for them. “The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-ho, the derry-o, the farmer in the dell.”

I was nervous and I was babbling and it was making them angry.

“I'm ready to announce my decision,” I said.

“SILENCE, you insolent worm!”

The voice was like thunder, shaking the tower beneath my feet. It echoed to the horizon.

The command came from the angel standing next to Semyaza. His face was granite, his eyes flashed fire. “Do you have no concept of what is holy?” he said, sneering.

The circle, both sides, agreed with him. There was not a friendly face among them.

“I meant no disre—”

Semyaza cut me off. “The accused will speak only when instructed.” To the others, he said, “The tribunal will now convene.”

Preliminaries. Semyaza might have told me there would be preliminaries. I was intrigued. But then I welcomed anything that delayed the moment of decision.

Curious. How do angels start a meeting? By taking attendance? Reading the minutes? Drinking coffee and eating doughnuts; no, not doughnuts . . . angel food cake.

I pursed my lips to keep the irreverent thoughts inside my head.

Solemnity surrounded me. Without exception, the angels closed their eyes and tilted their heads toward heaven. Maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed to stretch, to grow taller and even more imposing.

A low rumble agitated the gravel. The vibrations traveled up my legs and into my chest and jaw.

Because they were facing me I couldn't see exactly what was happening behind them, but from somewhere around their shoulders heavy smoke poured forth, cascading down their backs like robes, hitting the ground and curling, the lengthening trains spreading until they filled the rooftop.

Reaching the ledge, instead of pouring onto the street below, the smoke stretched upward to an impressive height, then inward, peaking directly over my head like cathedral arches with the stars beyond providing a heavenly canopy.

My neck began to ache from staring upward at the incredible, smoky, transparent structure.

The rumbling kicked into a higher gear, bringing my attention back to the circle.

Beginning with Abdiel (I don't know why it began with him, maybe they flipped a coin), with his eyes still closed, his face a meditative calm, an explosion of emerald light illuminated him from within, then was repeated in the angel to his right and proceeded that way around the circle of twenty-four. When it reached Abdiel, it repeated, each time with greater speed, like cylinders firing in a rotary engine, faster and faster until the separate firings blended into an unbroken ring of brilliant emerald green.

Everything, including me, within the interior of the smoky cathedral was bathed in a soft green light. Very nice. Very soothing.

Until I looked up.

Populating the dome, also bathed in green and staring hungrily down at me, were a thousand hideous demon faces. A shiver chilled me when I realized that to them this was an induction ceremony and I was the inductee.

The emerald light ring appeared to be some sort of communion
among the angels, the sharing of a common source of energy. They seemed to feed off it and were strengthened by it.

I, too, felt it. A penetrating thrum vibrating every inch of me. Even with the demons present I felt warm and comforted and assured and accepted. And I wondered if maybe despite all my misgivings, somehow I was going to survive the night.

Then the emerald ring of light began to pulse with greater and greater frequency. As it did the angels grew in stature . . . eight feet . . . ten . . . twelve feet tall, looking like human pillars.

The ring grew ever brighter until it was dazzling white. The pulsing increased in pitch. It began vibrating in my head, hurting me, resonating with greater and greater intensity. I placed my hands against my skull to keep it from exploding, but the force kept building. I screamed, but it didn't help. The pressure was becoming too much for me to bear.

I felt my knees buckling and would have dropped to the ground, but a blast of light beat me to it. It hit me with force, knocking me to my knees. As with the emerald light, it began with Abdiel—a powerful, concentrated shaft of light—then continued around the circle, twenty-four angels, twenty-four shafts of the purest white light I'd ever seen. The beams focused on the center of the circle, where they met a short distance above my head and formed a single pillar of light that shot skyward as far as the eye could see and beyond.

I could take it no more. On the gravel, my eyes clamped shut, clutching my head, curled into a ball, I screamed for it to stop. The pain was so intense, I would have given anything to make it stop. I would have welcomed death.

I couldn't hear my own screams. Then, that was all I heard. The thrum was gone. The pain was gone. I risked opening my eyes. The shafts of light were gone too.

Twenty-four angels now clothed in dazzling white looked down at me lying in a fetal position in the mush-pot.

I struggled to my feet, brushing gravel from my pants, and noticed that my clothing, too, had been bleached white.

The angel with granite features spoke. “Until tonight no human has ever witnessed a convocation of angels.”

He wanted me to be impressed, humbled. Maybe it was the headache and the ringing in my ears, maybe it was the ceiling full of demons licking their chops, and the renewed realization that at the pleasure of this august body I would soon be joining them, but whatever the reason, I couldn't help myself. I said, “I'm all aglow.”

Granite angel's response was swift. An invisible fist reached past my lapel and into my upper chest, fastening onto my windpipe, cutting off my breath, forcing me to my knees.

“ENOUGH!”

A second invisible hand broke granite angel's grip. It was Abdiel. I could breathe again. But another threat quickly surfaced as a scuffle broke out with me in the middle.

“I SAID ENOUGH!”

The tower trembled with the force of the voice.

Both sides backed away.

“I will not tolerate this human's insolence,” granite angel boomed. “It disrespects the lives of the warriors we lost today.”

“Both sides lost friends today,” Abdiel replied.

“And why? Because of him!” Granite angel's finger singled me out in case anyone had any doubt. “He isn't worth it.”

“I agree. He isn't worth it,” Abdiel said, a little too quickly for my taste. “But if we fight we will lose only more friends and deepen our sorrow.”

“Let's be done with it, then,” granite angel said.

Semyaza took that as his cue. He stepped forward. “Grant Austin, do you understand the purpose of this tribunal?”

I was rubbing my throat, though it did little to massage the pain, which was much deeper. My voice was raspy when I spoke. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I am here to declare my allegiance,” I said. “But before I do, I have a request.”

The circle crackled with dissension.

Before anyone could deny the request, I stated it. “I would like to ask if my grandfather, Azazel, is present. If he is, I'd like to meet him.”

“He is.”

The voice came from near the middle of the rogue-angel side. To my relief, it wasn't granite angel.

Azazel resumed normal size and stepped forward. I turned to meet him, not knowing what I would do or say. I hadn't planned this. The thought had just occurred to me and I acted on it.

The being standing before me was attractive by any standards, with sparkling eyes, a strong jaw, and confident presence. He reminded me of Douglas Fairbanks, or any number of dashing leading men of the black-and-white film era.

I wondered what he thought when he looked at me, his grandson. Was he proud? Ashamed? Indifferent? I couldn't tell from looking at him.

How did I feel when I looked at him? It was hard to say. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be alive. But then, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be condemned to live for eternity as a tormented demon.

Looking him in the eye, I said, “A few moments ago, I was blamed for what happened today, for the loss of life, both angel and human. But it's not my fault, is it? It's yours. Everything that happened today happened because you couldn't control your lust.”

Within seconds of Lieutenant Noonan's rockets hitting the bridge, a tsunami of phone calls hit the San Diego Police Department. Now, after midnight, things were finally beginning to calm down. Marie Klesko, an attractive, single woman in her twenties, slumped in her chair, having survived a month's worth of activity in one shift, coordinating police units with fire and federal agencies as the city stepped to the brink of panic and threatened to jump.

With the activity on her computer screens looking almost normal again, she anticipated the end of her shift and driving home to her apartment, where she would make herself a bowl of nachos, play with her dog Beelzebub, and watch old episodes of
Friends.

With only ten minutes remaining on her shift, the weird calls started coming in. She dismissed the first calls as pranks. But the calls kept coming. Unhooking her headset, she walked to the window. The fourth floor provided her with a panoramic view of the city.

“What's up?” Her supervisor came up behind her.

“I'm getting crazy calls about the Emerald Plaza.”

“What kind of crazy?”

“That there's some sort of green thunderstorm on the top of one of the towers.”

“Thunderstorm? It's a clear night.”

“Yeah . . . so how do you explain that?”

In the distance they could see the Emerald Plaza. The top of the tallest tower was capped with smoke that pulsed with a green light.

“Should I send someone to investigate?” Marie asked.

“That's really weird,” the supervisor said. “I've never seen anything like it.”

“I hate sending someone after everything that's happened today. Besides, what do I tell them? Investigate a possible atmospheric disturbance atop the Emerald Plaza?”

The supervisor cracked her gum. “Send Sharki,” she said. “He's into weird.”

Once again I found myself kissing gravel for my insolence. Once again a scuffle of heavyweights threatened to steamroll over me.

There had been a time in my life when I thought that if I ever found angels to the left of me and angels to the right of me I'd be in heaven. But that was before I learned heaven's gate was locked to me and nobody had a key.