Angel of Death

SEVEN

This is a cardinal sin. Angels are forbidden to fall in love with humans. Angels are to love God only. Whenever an angel finds love elsewhere, he is cast out of Heaven and plunges toward Hell.

Think of Satan, whose self-love brought eternal damnation. Think of Harut and Marut, who loved a woman and so were tricked into telling her the secret name of God. They too were thrown down. Think of Semjaza and two hundred others angels who made love to humans and spawned the race of Nephilim – giants who terrorized the world in antediluvian times. All fell.

But I am not like them. I am like Chamuel, the Dark Angel, who wrestled with Jacob beside the River Jabbok. I am to dwell among humans and wrestle with them throughout the long, dark night and cripple them if I must to win free. I am not meant to love them. But perhaps there are special cases. What of Michael, Zagazel, and Gabriel, who disobeyed God’s command that they kill Moses? Their love for the mortal caused them to sin, but they did not fall.

Perhaps there will be a special case for me. I am a fool to think these things. No, I cannot let my heart wander from my ribs. I am to live among humans and strive with them – but to do it all chastely. I am to serve, to guide, to kill – but not to love. No wonder angels and cops are so lonely. I will not kill her now. In three weeks; we will see what three weeks brings.

They are new. Their skin. Their hair. Their eyes. Especially their eyes. They stand in a thicket. That is how new they are. They stand in a thicket instead of a meadow. They fear the wild beasts with their fangs and stingers and claws and instincts. The animals they fear are the very ones they named.

Adam means “mudman.” Eve means “living.”

If it weren’t for the animal skins that God gave them, they would be naked.

No instincts? Do you suppose they don’t know about…? Are they too stupid even to watch the rutting bulls and tangled spiders? They stand there, side by side and petrified. No, they cannot know. They do not know.

I will take a human form, a man form with that magnificent penis of his and those ribs like war stripes. Azrael, you take a woman form, huge and round and all-powerful. Yes, beautiful.

They see us. How can they not? They thought they were the only ones here. We stand in the meadow, leafshadows taking little nips out of our bright flesh. The wind is cool off the gray Euphrates.

“Come over here, Adam,” I call. “I have something to show you. Bring your woman.”

They approach. That is how new they are. Brawny and brown and beautiful, Adam says, “Who are you? Are you sent to us by the serpent?”

I tilt my head. The black bristle of hair glints oily in the sunlight. “I am an angel of Yahweh, if that is what you mean, though what I want to reveal to you is the sort of knowledge he tends to overlook.”

“Why aren’t you covered?” asks Eve. She is hugely fecund, and my body desires her. “Your rod should be covered.” She points.

“That is what I wanted to show you. It is called a penis.”

Suspicion beetles Adam’s brow. “Who are you?”

“I am Samael, the Angel of Death.”

His eyes grow wide. “You have come to slay us?”

“No,” I reply, firm but gentle. “Not today. To be sure, your soul is mine for the taking when your time has come. You bartered away your immortality for the power to know good from evil. Now you know good from evil, but nothing else. This is something else.” I gesture toward my erection. “Adam, this is called a penis.”

“Apenis.”

“Penis. Just plain penis.”

“Just plain penis.”

“Except that it is anything but plain. Do you see how all creatures multiply upon the earth, birds and beasts and creeping things? This is how they multiply. It produces seed for more humans to grow.”

“I have seen this seed. It is very warm and soft,” he says. “I planted some in the river.”

“Good for you, Adam. But the river is not a good place to grow humans. Not the river or the field or the mountaintop. The only ground that will grow humans is Eve.”

She looks frustrated by this turn in the conversation.

“Why must I grow humans?”

“Because Yahweh has cursed you. You will grow humans out of your body, and the man will use his penis to put seed inside of you. Beneath that triangle of black hair is a vagina, and it leads to a womb. That is where the humans will grow. See the vagina on Azrael? Lie down, Azrael. Spread your legs. See, Adam, how I put my penis in the vagina?”

Adam nods very seriously, pushes an unsuspecting Eve onto the ground, and forces his way into her. “It hurts nicely.”

“It is not nice,” says Eve. “It hurts not nicely at all.”

“That is because you are cursed. Adam will use his penis not only to plant new humans inside you, but also to rule over you. His penis makes him angry and strong, and he will beat you and subjugate you because of it.”

“Something is happening,” Adam says, beginning to twitch.

“Very good, Adam. You are planting your seed.”

“Are you planting your seed, Samael?”

“I am, but it will dissolve into air when Azrael and I do.”

“It hurts nicely.”

“Yes, Adam. It hurts nicely. Do this every day until Eve’s belly swells.”

“I will do this every hour until her belly swells!”

“You will not,” Eve reproved.

“He rules over you, woman,” I say. “Yahweh has made it so. He will do this whenever he wishes. If you do not wish it, you call it rape, but Yahweh does not punish rape. Not yet, he doesn’t. He has some learning to do, too.”

“Will the new humans grow out of my womb?”

“They will grow in your womb, but will come out of your vagina.”

“They must be very small new humans.”

“Not small enough. You will have terrible pains when they come out. You may even die. One in three of your kind will die when they try to push their babies out.”

“Why must we die?”

“You are cursed.”

“I do not want to have these new humans come out of me.”

“It is not your choice. You are cursed. And if humans do not come out of you, all humans will die forever.”

Adam pulled away from Eve. “Perhaps I will not do this every hour. It was interesting at first, but now it seems like nothing.”

“Will this make my mate even more changeable and stupid than before?” Eve asked. “For if it does, I want no part in it.”

“It is not your choice. You are cursed.”

“I will go take a nap,” Adam said.

“You go, Adam. You have learned to plant humans and to enjoy the plowing of the field. You even know the pleasure of planting your seed where it will not grow.”

“I will go take a nap.”

“You go, Adam. Eve, remain with us. We have things to show you about how to find some small enjoyment in this. And, though Yahweh will forbid it, we will show you even how to be rid of the new humans if you do not want them.”

“I thank you, angel Samael. There must be some way to lessen the weight of this curse.”

Already it begins.

In Barrington, a drive-by shooting kills a couple of drunken businessmen; they were supposed to die by getting behind the wheel, hitting a tree, and going through the windshield.

On the south side, a black boy drowns, swimming in an industrial area of Lake Michigan.

A Latino gang leader has a heart attack at twentythree and dies, watching television. None of it makes any sense, but I’m having trouble keeping up with all of the deaths. I’ve signed off on seventy-two that were mediocre, and I’ll go back to redo the other thirteen.

How could I be having trouble? Time is nothing to me. Or, once it was. Once I could move through it without effort. Now, it is a struggle to tear my mind away from the Burlington station house where she works on her stacks and stacks of papers, or the unmarked squad car that she drives to scene after murder scene, reviewing the details in her head. The seat next to hers, whether in the car or in the station, is empty. I should be in it.

How about I take Keith down to Griffith for another slaying? That would bring her down to Sergeant Michaels’s territory again. Or maybe I can stage an aborted copycat killing. Once she arrives, we could discover it was someone else, and then have time to talk. But there aren’t supposed to be any deaths in Griffith until Friday, and none that could use a serial killing until after Keith would be gone.

Keith and Donna, both.

We’ll see what these seven days bring…

Serri was enormous. She had been pregnant now for twenty-nine months. She could barely breathe. She could not lie down, nor sit, nor stand, but only lean on that seven-hundred-pound bulk. Lean and eat. All the food went to the enormity within her. It had broken her spine at the pelvis, and her skin and muscles had distended around the huge blob. Her legs had shriveled to twin nothings, thinner than her arms and hanging limp over the stranded pelvic bone. It was a wonder she could defecate and pass urine, but it all oozed continually forth, pushed more by the pressure of the giant baby than by her musculature. Ephraim had wanted to kill the monstrosity when he discovered it could not be his. He had wanted to kill the baby and the wife, both. But when ten months became fifteen, and the pelvis broke free, he knew she bore the child of a fallen angel. He would not dare incur the wrath of the angels, nor of the Nephilim, who knew then of the pregnancy.

It would have been more humane to slay the woman at nine months. Perhaps, though, this was better punishment.

“Kill me, Ephraim,” Serri pleaded, not for the first time. “If ever you loved me, kill me.”

He did not respond. He had given up responding to that moan. Besides, the two Nephilim that crouched above the mud and rubble walls of their hut, holding the thatch roof aloft in their monstrous hands, would crush them all to pieces if he did.

Thirty months. That’s what they had said was typical for Nephilim births. Thirty months. Still, they had been willing to work some of their dark magic to speed things along.

The red snake of blood on the ground beneath Serri was the first sign. Shortly after came the long, shuddering tear of flesh stretched past its limit. Her dying, thrashing screams mingled with the deep bellow of the gigantic baby. It was the size of an ox, and its cry was a fitting bray.

“Hello, Sergeant,” you say.

Even in the dark of the moonless midnight, I can see you are tired. I shouldn’t have brought you down here like this.

“Hello, Donna,” I reply. I’m not wearing a uniform, but just casual clothes, a little rumpled, like I was pulled out of bed, too. That’s a little silly since it would take you two hours to get down here. I hope you won’t be angry when you see the scene. “The body’s through here.” I point to the light-streaming door of the trailer home. The thing glows like a lantern. Even the hole in the roof is sending out a patch of light to splash against the brown-leafed boughs of an oak, along the ditch behind the trailer park. The plastic police line moans in the wind. The neighbors seem afraid to approach it. They cluster in black knots, like flies preening just beyond a carcass. In a way, that is what they are.

“Same MO?” you ask.

I wince away from that. “Take a look. I don’t want to poison the well.”

You press past me and enter. I follow. Our flesh touches in the corridor of wood-grain laminates and aluminum flashing. I step back. A snarl of power cords fills the hallway. You tread lightly. I watch you move. Your boots fit carefully in the clear spaces, your canvas pant legs gathering around your ankles. Your hands are held, curved and idle, near your face, like the hands of a surgeon who has washed but not yet gloved. Your hair is braided back. It sways between the shoulders of your jacket.

The smell of soiled trousers comes to you. You stop. You’ve seen it now. I move up behind you. The initial sight is familiar and disturbing enough. The body sits in the dining room, on a red vinyl bench seat removed from some junked truck. Its feet are flat on the floor, its wrist stumps rest on its lap, and its neck stump juts up beneath a wide, red-rimmed hole in the wall and ceiling of the trailer. The cold night air pours through the hole, bringing with it the rustle of brown leaves. All around the headless, handless torso, investigators and technicians swarm.

“A shotgun blast?” you say immediately. “He was decapitated by a shotgun blast?” You speak loudly enough that those working in the room turn toward you. I flush. I am glad you aren’t turning around. “I – you said there had been a gun used on the priest.”

“A pistol. You’ve been following this closely enough to know that,” you respond.

“Well,” I reply, scrambling, “I didn’t know whether he might have changed his weapon of choice.”

You are angry. I see that. “Where is ‘Samael 5:2:356’?

Anywhere?”

Why are you so angry? “The teams haven’t found anything yet, but I didn’t want to wait until-”

“And why do I smell marijuana so strongly in here?

I’ll bet there was a closet full of the stuff before the perp came in.”

“We did find some leaf fragments under a bed.”

“This is a drug hit, staged to look like our guy, and you know it. The head is a critical trophy for this killer. He wouldn’t blast it away. He wouldn’t change his MO now, after some fifty hits.” You turn, not looking at me, and try to push past, but the passage is too narrow.

I retreat before you. My feet are sloppy among the cables.

“Mother of God.” You push me back with one small hand. “I can’t believe you got me out of bed for this.”

I whisper back. “I wanted to see you. I thought you wouldn’t come down except on business.” I’ve backed into the living room now.

“Wouldn’t come down?” you ask, exasperated. You pass me and turn for the open door. “Why didn’t you come up to see me?”

I follow, out into the cold night. “I should have. Yes. But, well, I hadn’t made any progress and didn’t want to go up there without some new evidence, and then this came up and I thought-”

We are halfway to the police line when you whirl on me and halt. I run into you, and we both stagger a step back. Your voice drops to a whisper so that none of the neighbors can hear. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”

“What calls? You mean you -?”

“How many messages did I leave for you at the station house? Four? I left four messages on your voice mail, ‘This is Donna. If you want to talk, call back.’ Did you call? Maybe some other Donna…”

So that’s part of the problem. I’d not checked in at the station house. I’d let them think I was in Indianapolis for a conference. “I’m sorry. That was a foul-up. I swear, I never got your messages.” I look at the crowd, which has quieted to watch us. “Could we go get a cup of coffee?”

“I’m going home,” you say.

I watch your eyes, dark brown and resentful. “I’ll follow you.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Wisconsin still has snow on the ground. I see it out the window as I peel back your blouse. The snow is white beneath the waxing quarter moon, just now rising above the dead trees. The ground is smooth-hipped and silent beyond the glass and the curtain of heat that surrounds us. You direct me to lie down on your bed. It is still unmade from the morning. I let your hands lead me and, soon, as smooth and pure as the snow, you settle atop me.

I tremble.

Always the union between angel and human gives birth to something monstrous.