LIFE NEAR THE BONE (10 page)

He sat now reading over her careful work, making sure she did not misquote him. A fragrant breeze saturated with the scent of wildflowers wafted through the tall window over his desk. He could hear outside the tumble and crash of building going on to the east where the city was still under construction. Lucky for him that he had proven a better cleric than soldier or he would be out there right now in the hot sun, hauling stones, mixing mortar, and building sturdy structures along with the others.

He put aside the scrolls and lifted a glass of coconut milk spiked with lime juice to his lips. Sweetened with honey, this was his favorite island drink, chilled to perfection in a nearby stream behind the church. Angelique always had it brought to his study just before she left, her duties finished for the day. He sipped, smiling at the swaying palms just outside his window. Shadows crisscrossed his face and turned the top of his desk into a lovely puzzle work of light and dark.

She was a dear child, a treasure, his Angelique. It was such a sad thought for him that she was so alone and so dependent on his good graces. What would happen to the little orphan when he left? He shuddered to think of it.

#

Angelique sat bent over a scroll, translating the Spanish priest’s nearly indecipherable notes into beautiful script that one day he would hand to his Queen. Because she was concentrating so hard on being precise, some long seconds passed before she noticed the light in the study had dimmed and the temperature of the room had dropped.

She looked up with a frown. Her gaze darted from corner to corner, adjusting to the sudden gloom.

There he was. Draped languidly on the blood red sofa against the far wall, his smile wicked, his black wings sweeping the floor. Nisroc.

Angelique put down the pen and pushed aside the scroll. She rose and crossed the room to him. Nisroc, the most brilliant and at the same time the most pesky of all the fallen angels she had once ruled in the outer darkness. Before her descent into the human child’s body, it was Nisroc who took all of her attention just to keep him from wreaking havoc.

She stood over him noticing the rippling effect of the air and how he wavered in and out of her vision like a nightmare. He could not really come into this world as his angel being. He was projecting it to her. But even to do that, he was expending huge amounts of energy and willpower.

“What do you want here?” She knew the answer, but had to ask anyway.

“You know and yet you ask anyway.” He had been reclining and now he sat up slowly, spreading his great wings behind him as props against the wall. He read her thoughts as well as she read his.

“I’ll not help you today. Or tomorrow. Or the next.”

He sneered, ruining the beauty of his splendid visage. “Why are you so desperately vengeful?” He asked. “Can’t we all just get along?”

“You’re wasting your time.” She turned her back on him and marched to the desk once more, taking her place on the chair with the books stacked in the seat so that she could reach the desktop. “Why didn’t you show up before in the two hundred years I’ve been stuck and bored on this primitive island?”

He ignored her question. “Look at you.” He came after her, crossing the room in two large strides, his great wings filling the space and ruffling the air into a mild wind. “Stuck in the body of a child. What does that say about your powers, Angelique? Just how great do you think they are, that you end up this way?”

She shrugged, ignoring his jibes. It was his way to be scornful. “For a few seconds I was blinded before I entered this…this wee body. We all make mistakes. This one is not as great as the one you made.”

He now stood in front of her, hovering just inches off the floor. “Who would have seen Brutus coming? He was my
friend
.”

Angelique looked upon him with a fierceness that would have shriveled a lesser angel. “You took the body of the man who ruled the world. I sent you into that body, believing in you, trusting you. I should have taken it myself! You enjoyed the greatest power over men than any of us had ever been able to gain. But what did you do as Julius Caesar, Nisroc? What did you do but whore and shave your groin and write eloquently about your great campaigns so that your human doll would be remembered?”

It was Nisroc’s turn to shrug and when he did the wings lifted and the air stirred. He repeated, “Who would have seen the traitor, Brutus, and his cowardly cohorts, coming to dispatch me?”

“Caesar would have!” Angelique did not mean to shout, but the thought of that lost opportunity to keep control of the greatest power in the world was a disappointment she had never gotten over. Not once since that time had the Angels of Darkness been in a position to influence the outcome of human destiny. After his failure, she had sent Nisroc to the far reaches to live alone, and refused him entry to the world of man for thousands of years. His time was not up. How dare he come from banishment to this place just to needle her. It had taken great mental effort for him to materialize. And so solidly! But she knew his will was great and hardly nothing could deter him.

“Caesar was a man riddled with seizures. Caesar would not have lived to even cross the Rubicon and seize Rome.” Nisroc said this as if he knew it was a poor excuse for his inattention to his true role as the human.

Angelique’s gaze softened for she knew this was true. Caesar had died during one of his seizures and had not she sent Nisroc to enter his poor dead earthly form, history would have been written differently. It was Nisroc who rose up from the tent floor, Nisroc who advanced on Rome, Nisroc who took the dictatorship. And wouldn't Caesar have done the same? Had that not been his intentions all along?

But still, Nisroc had been overcome by his lusts for the pleasures of life on earth and he had not been alert to danger. He had ruined everything. With his position of power he could have thwarted all that God had created, but with his failure, the followers of the prophet Jesus had proliferated and filled the nations with hope and belief. It had been the worst disaster in the annals of time.

Angelique wearied of Nisroc’s continual pestering of her, asking that she rescind her decision. He wanted back, back into the world, another chance to rule. Given the chance, he would even rule her. Along with her, he had been one of the few who had stood up to the Creator and overstepped the boundaries. She must never forget that he was almost as powerful as she. But not quite.

“Go,” she said, waving him away. “Leave me alone. Go back into the darkness where you belong.”

Refusing her command, he began to move carefully around the large study. He touched the sill at the window and stared out at the rising city facing the shining dark blue sea. He returned to the sofa and ran his hand over the expertly carved arms. He turned to face her once more.

“Please.” One word. One he had not spoken before. Ever.

It caused Angelique to pause in the translation she had returned to and lift her head. He meant it. This was no trick. “You beg me?”

He was a mystery, this angel--old, full of pride, brimming with intelligence. And now he was contrite? Perhaps he had learned these things while living as a man. It was sure he did not know them when merely angelic spirit. If he had known how to apologize, he would have knelt before his god and begged forgiveness before ever being banished from God‘s presence. Therefore this ability was new; it was something he had learned since and it struck Angelique as the strangest thing about Nisroc. It was too
human
. None of The Fallen possessed conscience or empathy or remorse. It is what made them Angel and above man. Yet here was an angel who displayed human emotion. She could not decide if this was a horror or a blessing. She suspected it was the former.

“I beg you,” he replied, standing perfectly still before her. Behind his blazing eyes she could detect sincerity. And hope.

“You have changed,” she said at last. “You confuse me.”

She expected him to smile and when he didn’t, she felt a thrill of worry pass through her. What manner of thing was this? It was a new thing. What had occurred in the Outer Darkness where he had remained alone so much of eternity that he could bend his pride to ask her forgiveness?

“I only want a chance,” he said.

She nodded, examining him closely. “I think that could be true. Then I say this…” She paused, still considering her decision. “I say that when I find the right body, I’ll summon you forth. That’s the best I can do. I don’t know when it will be. I will have to have great need of you. But when the time is ripe, I’ll call you down.”

Nisroc, who had no need to blink, blinked. This too caught Angelique off-guard and the worry she had felt earlier encapsulated her brain like a snake furling into a striking pose.

“Thank you, Angelique. I can wait.” His wings folded, narrowing his form to one of a column of smoky blackness. Still he did not smile. There was no indication that he was making a fool of her.

When he vanished from the room, returning to the Outer Reaches and beyond her knowledge of him, Angelique sank back against the chair and stared into the empty room.

It was she who held the power over all The Fallen; she who allowed each of them to take a human form. They were forbidden unless she gave permission. Yet it seemed that just now it was Nisroc who had been in command.

Maybe she would keep him in limbo. Maybe she would continue to deny him. She did not like being confused and surprised. Surprise was a terrible thing and something that seldom happened to an angel.

“I am thinking of you, Nisroc,” she muttered as she took up the quill and bent over the scroll. “I am thinking hard. I don’t yet know your game.”

CHAPTER 10

IN THE NETHERWORLD

In that frigid dark void, the angel calling himself Nisroc settled his wings against the broad span of his back. He hovered motionless, nothing but the flicker of his pale gray eyes moving. He first stared into the great beyond before him. Then his eyes rolled left then right, taking in all of the nothingness that surrounded him. Who would not go mad being in this unholy place, alone, so terribly, irrevocably alone?

He was really neither male nor female, but decided after his fall to be recognized as male. His name was not Nisroc, this too being something he claimed for himself. The angels Michael and Gabriel, curse them!, had names uttered by the creator of those devoted creatures. But when Nisroc, Angelique, and the hordes of other lost servants had rebelled, they were not only stripped of their given Forever names, but even the memory of those names had been erased.

Nisroc sighed and stared ahead of him into impenetrable darkness. He wondered idly what his real God-given name had been. Was it Daniel? Was it Jebidiah?

He also wondered what kept him warm in this blasted frozen wasteland of nothing unless it was hatred, pure and simple. Vitriol flooded his veins and swelled his heart. He hated Angelique. She was no more female than he was male, but she had taken the reins of power in the NetherPlace, proclaiming herself Queen of the Damned. And she had said to them, the horde of cast out angels, “I am woman. I am your queen.”

His lips curled into a smile so brutal and sarcastic that it could have turned a neutron star to dust sifting through the galaxies. How quaint a title she gave herself. She should have called herself Angelique, Whore Dog of the Universe. Or Angelique, Foul Monster of All Creation. Something more appropriate to her real character. How dare she call herself a queen.

When Nisroc thought of Angelique, as he often did because she was the most powerful among them and because he had centuries of time in which to think, he felt a curious fury churning in the deep cauldron of his chest. She held the power of Earth life over him. She gave it and she took it away. She had only gifted him with that beautiful life twice and the second time she had sorely found him wanting.

For that one mistake--though he agreed it was a large one--she made him suffer. Alone, cut off even from his brethren, the other Fallen Ones. He lived in solitary while the stars died and birthed, while galaxies spun into extinction, while the Earth filled with more and more humans, some of whom still had hope and faith and goodness and souls that strived toward perfection.

“You ruined it all,” she had said.

As if he didn’t know. As if he was stupid as an animal or a human. He knew at what cost he’d lost the life of Caesar. He knew they might have been able to take full control of the entire world. He knew he was…

A failure.

He looked left and right, as if expecting a blast of light to penetrate the unfathomable dark that embraced him. A light that would remark on his truthfulness and then ask him questions he could never begin to answer.

He said it aloud, just to hear himself speak.
I am a failure, a miserable failure.
His voice was mellifluous and captivating, the voice of an angel.

Yes, he’d failed, but hadn’t he suffered enough? Didn’t Angelique make drastic mistakes herself, like taking over the dead body of a child? Yet she went without chastisement. Only he was punished, forced into spending eternities in the void.

Alone.

He didn’t expect justice. That was one thing that would always be denied him. But he did yearn with every fiber of his being to be flesh again, to feel the wind on his skin, to savor the chill of water cascading over his face, to walk in the sun and lie naked beneath the moon. He wanted flavor on his tongue like he remembered from before. Cherries, red and juicy, figs brown and meaty, the mouth-watering taste of goat roasted with garlic cloves and the heady scent of wine sweet with honey. He wanted all of it, everything, Every Thing, that could only be experienced on Earth. On the perfect planet.

Men. Oh the men and women who had been given the Earth as their home, never once realizing how precious it was! His envy was so large it was like a boulder on his wide shoulders. Men were stunted, powerless, and without a shred of worthiness; they lived short and ridiculous lives. Why had all of it been given to them? He, on the other hand, once incarnated, could conceivably live for hundreds of years, thousands! He’d never make the mistake again of turning his back on friend or foe; he would never be tricked again. As human, an angel was frail and could lose the body he possessed. But if he had another chance, he would be powerful, worthy, and drink in every atom of pleasure the planet extended to a living being. He would
know
paradise and worship it.