Angels of War (Angels of War Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

Unlike the archangel, golden greaves etched with the same lotus design upon the helmet covered her forearms and shins. Upon her feet, she wore hobnailed caligae, brown Roman leather sandals.
 

Joan placed her left hand on her sword hilt sheathed at her left hip. Her fingers played along the smooth jewels embedded within its solid gold metal. “This is taking some time, my past is floating towards me in pieces.”

“Grab them,” the archangel said. He reached out with his right hand to grasp at the cool damp air. “You’re missing one thing.”

Joan’s body took on a soft glow. Large white wings expanded out from behind her, dove’s wings. The muscles in her back bulged and worked as she flapped her wings. The large feathers played against the air with a hypnotic rhythm. A delightful smile graced her face along with shivers and tiny pleasure bumps down her body.
 

Michael raised a finger. “Now, without my help, get down to your office. I’ll be waiting.” Michael dropped through the roof like a vapor.
 

Joan remained on the rooftop alone with her thoughts. Above, oatmeal colored skies sprinkled rain upon her armored body in a gentle spray. A sudden loneliness filled her. Joan remembered this same loneliness before she met her husband Charles. Always an outsider and never able fit into the regular world, the otherness she once experienced returned to her as she beheld Atlanta’s early morning sky.
 

Her armor pulsed with a subdued golden light. She stirred her wings and ambled up to the parapet. Her steady gaze from beneath her helmet passed out over the city not yet awake. Her eyes took in the skyline, jagged with new spires, and outlined with flat green country blanketed in bad weather and semi darkness.

Joan contemplated the dark empty streets beneath her sandaled feet. The streetlights cast the area in dreary yellow light, as if no one would ever enter the city again. Rain fell past her, down the one hundred stories to turn into a gray mist below. Each tear shaped drop fell into the mist to create oil-smeared rainbows on the macadam.
 

She stepped upon the delicate parapet. Her balance improved a thousand percent. Joan’s wings outstretched, the feathers fluttered against the cool wind. She pushed her toes off the parapet and leaped.
 

The angel, reborn through the imminent chaos caught the wind as her wings held the air. Her leap off the Roaner Building confirmed the reality she struggled to face.

Joan glided downwards. Windows blurred as she passed them. Wind and rain buffeted her armor and face. She plunged to the thirtieth floor and stopped. She floated and her weightlessness startled her, as if she buoyed underwater.
 

Beyond her office window, the archangel Michael stood in the office dressed in civilian clothes.
 

Joan floated forward and eased through the thick shatterproof glass. She settled her feet upon the soft carpet and changed from her battle armor into blue jeans and a green blouse. She expected the archangel to cheer, yet his face remained stern and inquisitive, a pure poker player’s appearance. He gazed with half-mast eyes at the brown-skinned woman.
 

“They are coming. Be ready in three weeks,” he said.

“I’m hoping to stop them sooner.”

“Yes, three weeks. They are coming, Joan. Their curses and shouts fill my ears.” Again, the archangel’s eyes fell away from the present world.

Joan shut her eyes and used her new angelic powers. A lump, heavy and black, moved deep underneath the earth, an almost distant and angry buzz and hiss joined the blackness, as if hornets and snakes fought their way upwards from Hell. Red heat prickled her brown skin joined by a sweet rotten stench conjured from dead flesh.
 

Sweat broke across Joan’s forehead. Her eyes snapped open. She coughed and gagged. “My good God, thousands are headed this way. A black thing is following them, like a tumor the earth is reluctant to expel.”
 

She forced her fright down like an unsavory meal. “I’ll deal with them, Michael,” she said.
 

The archangel gave her a silent nod. “Time for me to go, Joan. Do what you must.”
 

He turned and headed for the office door. “Much suffering will occur, but even more if you fail.” He stopped. Grim faced he stared back at her.
 

“Many will die. The rich and poor alike, young and old, privilege or poverty does not matter,” Michael said. “You must be strong. Above all things keep your faith and love intact. Do not display the foolishness I found you doing earlier.”

“I’ll stand firm.”

“You better. We need to keep this at this level, Joan. This goes no higher. Your faith will be tested.”

Joan lifted her chin. “I understand.”

Michael stopped at the office door, hooked his thumbs into his pockets and parted his lips to reveal his white teeth. He glanced down at the floor and the Glock hidden in the corner shadows. He outstretched his right boot.
 

From heel to toe, he stepped on the gun as if to crush a large unsavory spider. The crack and crunch underneath his worn out cowboy boot added a perfect finality to the gun on the floor.

Michael appraised Joan again. He opened the front door, stepped over the threshold, and closed the door behind him.

6

The archangel Michael walked out her office like a regular person. Joan assumed Michael vanished once he stepped outside her office. He did not take the elevator down, jump into his Lexus, and drive off to Heaven. Neither did he fly from the window. His message rang clear. Stay normal until otherwise.
 

Joan found her old persona both fresh and frightful. The new power packed into her five-foot tall body captivated her. How old and new combined in her and sent her mind into more awe than when she birthed William. She became woozy and decided to pop a high blood pressure pill until she realized she no longer needed one.
 

Joan sat down on the desktop. She missed her son and husband. She loved them, but she wanted them to be her last family relationships. Her loneliness came again, fresh and strong after her husband and son died in the plane crash and threw her into depression’s cold arms. Now as an angel, she no longer wallowed in emptiness, but by apartness based on the new responsibility thrown at her.
 

The same apartness haunted her at five years old and followed her into adulthood. She sensed a larger reality outside her mundane life. Empirical knowledge told her a more powerful existence waited beyond the earth. A mystery hidden beneath the everyday world, a secret God hid for her to work at and discover.
 

The rain slacked off to intermittent splatters against the office window. Joan turned to face the empty seat Michael sat in. If the man who sat on her couch came from Heaven, Charles and William must be in Heaven also. Her hatred towards God would not save her family from the doom launched from Hell’s dark depths. Joan needed to defeat the enemy
 

“Three weeks,” she said to the warm air.
 

Joan slid off the desk and faced the window. The rain stopped and the dark clouds continued to bunch over the city like frightened sheep. Lightening flashed and lined the clouds in a silver-blue glow as she gazed off into the distant west.
 

She expected insanity once General Temeculus arrived in the City of Angels. Over a million people fleeing in terror, and a few joining the enemy out of fear.
 

Joan’s thick grogginess prior to Michael’s visit stepped away from her. Nevertheless, depression’s gloom skulked around her heart’s periphery like a Hyena ready to close in once the campfire died. She relied on hope and faith to keep the campfire stoked and the Hyena at bay.
 

Fresh excitement made her giddy, yet she measured her fragile faith, and committed to grow her faith strong to accomplish the worthy goal placed upon her.
 

Her mission required her to find the other four angels and raise an army. An apocalyptic battle loomed. To those who might consider her story a fairytale. Woe to them.
 

“Wake up people, angels and demons are coming to the world in flesh,” she said to the empty office. Her words made her shiver. Difficult words filled with fear, and more to boost her courage, than to speak to the unprepared.
 

Joan opened her right palm. Her beautiful sword, blessed by God, shown bright in her grasp. The gladius became a beacon and filled the room with its silver light to declare her presence to a world far from ready for such a war.

7

L.A.P.D. Officer Daisy Lane sat in her patrol car in the downtown Los Angeles business district. With impatience, she glanced at her digital Casio. The electronic numbers read four in the morning. Time crawled for her.

Daisy changed uniforms in the past two hours, and switched cruisers due to the same awful funk stuck inside her nostrils. Irritated, the six-foot tall, corn-haired woman stepped from the black and white police cruiser, closed her eyes, and inhaled deep. The stench strengthened. Anger mixed with annoyance filled her.
 

She opened her eyes and spotted the doughnut shop across the street, its bright lights glared against the fresh morning darkness. Strong black coffee and fried dough played in her mind.
 

Daisy Lane tried to place the bothersome odor. She arrested one homeless man earlier in the evening. He stole cheap beer to get out from the cold and spend a night in jail. The foul stink overpowered the stench his unwashed body gave off.
 

Daisy locked her cruiser and hurried across the street. A short round man stood behind the counter dressed in greasy cook whites. He glanced up from his work and gave her a broad gap toothed smile. Morning traffic hissed over the 110 freeway. Soon the traffic would drag to a stop.
 

She stepped inside the shop and took a seat on a black swivel chair at the counter. Her booted toes pressed against the footrest.

“Morning,” the old red-faced man said. “Same as usual, Lane?”

“Morning, Pete, the same. Black coffee and an apple fritter.”
 

She swiped a napkin from a loose stack, gave her nose a delicate blow, and opened the tissue to check what she blew out against the white paper. Surprised, she stared at the clean napkin. She balled the napkin and tossed the used paper in the trash behind her.
 

For the past three hours, the foul odor hung in her nostrils. The repugnant stench started innocent enough when she changed her two-month-old nephew’s diapers. The stink stayed after the diaper change and followed her like an old stray dog.

Throughout her shift the stench grew stronger by tiny increments. Next she assumed a rookie forgot to clean the sweat, piss, and slobber from a drunk off the cruiser’s rear seat. Earlier in her shift, she took the cruiser down to the pit and cleaned out the back seat. She sprayed down the thick plastic rear seat with Simple Green. Once she sat back in, eager to experience the forest pine scent, the horrible odor remained. She checked her breath, sniffed her armpits, went to the locker room and took a shower, and changed uniforms. Still the noisome odor spooked her.
 

Daisy managed to smile as Pete poured the black coffee into a red mug. He slid the hot apple fritter on a white plate next to the coffee. A sudden new aroma emerged. Rotten eggs. Her heart leaped. She leaned forward to breathe in the fritter’s succulent scent.

“Sumthin’ wrong, Lane?”

Daisy lifted her eyes from the apple fritter. The heat warmed her face, her eyes watered and her nose tingled. “No, Pete, I love your fritters.” Pete nodded and walked back to the kitchen. Daisy followed him with her huge green eyes.
 

She coughed and a sour bitterness tickled her throat. She gagged and slapped a hand over her mouth and bolted to the bathroom.
 

Once inside the bathroom she doubled over the toilet and vomited her tri-tip and potatoes dinner. Her stomach heaved again, and for a second, an otherness came over her. Her vision doubled. A random thought popped into her mind, she must be pregnant.
 

Daisy stood and turned away from the cold toilet bowl, snatched a rough paper towel from the dispenser and cleaned her mouth. With shaky hands, she turned on the water spigot and splashed cold water over her face, scooped some into her mouth and gargled. She spat and assessed herself in the mirror, straightened her dark blue uniform, checked her face, white from worry, and decided to act calm until she visit a Walgreen’s to purchase a pregnancy test.

8

Anna Marie Sanchez carried her green milk crate under her arm and hummed a tune. She toted her crate almost everywhere. She found a spot on West 6
th
Street and South Bixel Street, a good Los Angeles street corner. The corner provided Anna with heavy foot traffic and cars, a big enough audience to spread the word from the Good Book.
 

She adjusted her box and stood on her portable pulpit like an ordained minister. This started at seven-thirty in the morning.
 

Anna began her corner sermon with a hymn. Somewhat off key as traffic built up momentum and snarled at the corner. People crowded the street in a mad thoughtless rush to reach their destinations.

After she sang Go Tell It on the Mountain, her words flowed from her full lips. She spoke to anyone who listened to her sermon. People tossed money into her father’s old hat and continued up the street. Others walked by as her words hit the air like golden dust.
 

Daisy Lane remained in a funk with hands wrapped around her cruiser’s steering wheel. She teetered close to shock due to the negative pregnancy test on the front passenger seat.
 

Her eyes reddened as tears streamed down her high cheekbones. Sulfur’s terrible stench stung and burned her nostrils. She tossed the pregnancy test out the car window, her last connective string to sanity. Screams and groans rose up around her as if the dead fought their way from the blackness.