Angel Slayer

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“You did invite the touch.”

“Yes, I did. Something about you. Anyway!”

Dismissing the intimate interlude, Six opened the door and strode into a vast room done in white marble. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced the far side of the blindingly white room.

“This is my workroom,” she explained, setting the coffee on a clear Lucite desk and pushing a button on the Macintosh computer.

“It’s different from the rest of the place,” he said. “It’s as if another person’s living in here.”

“Kind of. My artistic self is opposite from my chumming-around-with-friends self. I don’t want any distractions when I’m painting so I made it as neutral in here as possible. No music, either.”

He tilted his head, wondering.

“It’s an artist thing. Sort of like you explained the angels hearing in colors is an angel thing.”

“So what is all this stuff? I don’t see any canvas or paints.”

“CG painting is my method of choice to create. I use a spatial operating environment.”

He only understood half of what she’d said. But he wasn’t about to let on to that fact. He touched the smooth white exterior of the computer.

“Don’t touch,” she admonished sweetly. “No taking apart my computer, big boy.”

Ashur offered her a surrendering shrug, then strolled about the room, thumbs shoved in his front pockets, taking it all in.

A huge plasma screen flickered awake on one wall and he approached it, waiting to see what would appear.

Behind him, Six sat before the desk clicking away at the keyboard. Twisting at the waist, his eyes lingered where he had touched her between the curves of her breasts. Softness bound up and waiting release, or a dash of his tongue. If only the angelkiss had been placed there, and he would have had to lick it to grant her temporary relief.

Nice. Thinking about the carnal pleasures was almost as good as doing them. And when his erection tightened against his pants, he grinned. The old demon still had it. Some things were never forgotten, no matter how much torture.

Six typed rapidly. The sleeve bulged on her forearm. “Did you bandage the angelkiss?” he asked.

“I put some aloe on it again this morning, and tied a scarf around it. Seems to do the trick. You ever hear of CG art?”

“Sure.”

“You like it?”

He spread out his arms and swaggered toward her. “Doesn’t everyone?”

She sighed. “You have no idea what it is.”

He approached the desk and caught his palms on the edge. “Very well, what is CG?”

“You didn’t assimilate that last night?”

“I feel it somewhere in my knowledge, but it’s difficult to understand. It is to do with technology and much as I hate to admit it, that is beyond my comprehension.”

“It’s beyond every normal person’s comprehension, believe me.”

Yes, but he wasn’t normal. And how easy would it be to take this computer apart? It appeared to have a removable back—

“CG is computer-generated art,” she said. “I paint with pixels. The screen is my canvas. I’ll show you my latest. Look.”

Ashur turned around. The screen, which was as high as he and three feet wide, filled with grays and silver and shades of black and blue. Spreading his hands over it, he marveled at the screen’s give. It wasn’t glass but some soft surface that gave with his touch. Marvelous.

“Put your hands down,” Six said. “I’m turning on the spatial controls.”

He stepped back to take in the image that appeared on the screen. It startled him. He hissed lowly.

“My friend Todd had the same reaction when he built it,” Six said as she joined his side. She raised her hand and tapped her fingers in the air before her. The screen zoomed out to display the whole painting. “Spatial operation,” she said. “It’s all done by recognizing my hand movements. Pretty cool, huh? The technology is so new it’s still in beta form for home use.”

The technology did not concern him; it was the image she had constructed on the screen.

“It’s my latest angel. I only paint angels. I call this one my indigo savior.”

The figure on the screen was forged of blue metal and gears that glistened with white. Bulging steel muscles rippled down its arms and thighs. At its back a spread of wings stretched straight out five times as long as the body, and the wing tips curled, thanks to moving gears on each of the mercurylike appendages.

“How do you have this knowledge?” Ashur asked fiercely. “How can you know?”

“Zaqiel said the same thing to me in the same accusing tone. Of course, you’ve seen angels. And me? I have, too.” She tapped her head. “In my dreams.”

Coaxing his breathing to a steady pace, Ashur exhaled. “In your dreams? Are you a seer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I once thought I might be an angel because of this.” She tapped the sigil on her forearm. “But it never quite matched any of the sigils I’ve seen in books on angels. I’ve had dreams about angels since after my mother died. I’ve tried to tell people about them, but they always think I’m a nut. My father threatened to put me in a psych ward when I was eighteen.”

“The place where they put those out of their minds? “ He looked her over again. She seemed quite sane. But then madness often cloaked itself in beauty.

“It was a stupid threat, but it brought me down from a weird place,” she said. “I was just so tired of people not believing me that I flipped out. And well, you know how teenagers can be.” She sighed. “Probably you don’t. So now here you are, a man who actually slays angels. You believe me, right?”

“That you’ve seen them in your dreams?” He glanced at the painting. She’d seen something, that was for sure. Parts of the figure were not exactly right, but other parts were right on. “Where did you learn this? “ He pointed to the sigil she had painted on the angel’s shoulder, a wavy line with one dot beneath the middle wave. “In your dreams, as well?”

“Sort of. Not really. That’s the last thing I put on a project before I call it finished. It’s not like I see what the symbol looks like, but more that I touch my fingers before the screen and just follow my heart. I know it sounds weird. Delusional. But heck, maybe I am a little crazy. I mean, how many girls actually have an angel chasing after them to get them pregnant? You ask me, a person would have to be insane to accept something like that.”

He didn’t know what to say. Six had somehow created this image by drawing from a greater collective consciousness. Yet she was unaware how close her depiction was, or that the sigils were dead-on.

Was it possible an angel had visited her previously?

“You going to recommend a nice quiet place with straitjackets now?” she wondered.

“No, I want to know more.”

Chapter 6

Eden liked to study the reaction on people’s faces when they viewed her work. She especially liked the extremes of joy or disgust. Ashur had looked at the painting and hissed.

Had she actually created an angel he recognized? It was self-indulgent to think she could depict an angel accurately. But she had painted exactly what she’d seen in her dreams. The angels she painted were like her friends; she felt comforted by them.

Angels who didn’t want to have sex with her, that is.

Ashur’s gaze soared out the window and across Central Park. She’d touched some part of him, and that surprised him more than it did her, she sus pected.

“Just dreams?” he asked.

“As I said, they started after my mother’s death.” She joined his side and said, “At first, I thought they were a message from her. But there were so many. I’d see a new one every night, it seemed. If I painted a different angel every day, I don’t think I’d ever put them all to canvas. They are innate to me, and yet, I can’t tell others about it if I want them to think I’m sane.”

“Mortals have a difficult time with the supernatural.”

“Yep. I started sketching in my teens, but I really became passionate about recreating my dreams after I found my first halo.”

Ashur’s eyes flashed. They were so colorful, fathomtess, with pinpoints of light centered in each. It was as if a piece of a Maxfield Parrish painting abided on his face.

“You found a halo?”

“Yes, an angel’s halo. You must be familiar with them.”

“I am,” he said cautiously, “but mortals are not. The only time the halo is separated from an angel is when they fall to earth. It falls away and is lost to the angel ever after. If they should ever find their original halo, it can be wielded as a weapon no man or demon can defeat.”

“Cool. I was never sure how the halo ended up here on earth.”

“It also holds their earthbound soul,” he said. “If an angel reunites with its halo it can take the soul and become human, but I can’t imagine a Fallen choosing to do so, to become merely human.”

“What about you? Would you take a soul?”

“You know nothing about me, mortal. Do not pretend you do.”

Duly chastised, Eden strode across the room to the freestanding coatrack that held three circular disks on its curved hooks. “I found the first one at a flea market my father took me to when I was twelve—that was two years after my mother’s death. Dug it out of a box full of scrap tin. I knew immediately what it was. It didn’t bother me the seller thought it was nothing. I knew.”

“More dreams?”

“No, just an innate knowing,” she offered casually.

She removed the first find from one of the coat hooks. It was dented and yes, it did look like tin, but she couldn’t bend it, nor had her father been able to. She displayed it to Ashur. “See?”

He took the circle. It was exactly a foot in diameter and the metal was two inches wide all around. It was thin as a CD and the center was an eight-inch void. Ashur inspected it briefly. “It is what you say it is.”

Given confirmation, Eden clutched her hands to her chest. She’d always known, but somehow it was more real when someone in the know confirmed it. All the years she had lived inside her head, fighting to keep her secrets. She was not crazy.

And who else would know such a thing but an—She wouldn’t say it out loud after he’d chastised her. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to reveal his origins to humans.

“And the others?” he asked.

“I have four,” she said proudly. “But I should be getting another in the mail any day now. I found one on a trip to Egypt with my father, and another in Spain. The one on its way, I won on eBay. Some sellers actually know what they are selling. The most I’ve ever paid is a couple hundred thousand for one.”