Angel's Messiah (29 page)

I hate them. I hate them all! First me, now my baby. All that was good in the world has died with her. Immortals have nothing on mortals. They’re the cruellest of them all. They don’t deserve to live.

I’m not sure how long I cried, waiting for Danny to return with news. Eventually I fell into a troubled sleep, exhausted from my efforts at trying to revive Gina. In my dreams I saw Gina standing before me, smiling. She was slowly being pulled away from me, against both our wills, until she was gone.

When I woke a few hours later Gina’s body was gone and Danny was nowhere to be found. I panicked, thinking that Danny would not return either — that he was only on short-term loan to me and the payment date had come due. To lose both people who mattered most to me was unbearable to think of, and yet it was
all
I could think about.

I’m going crazy. I don’t care about my soul anymore. I just want to make them all suffer the way I’m suffering. I want them to feel my pain.

Danny knew I was in a bad way the moment he returned and saw the blood on my face, and the colour of my eyes. I was out of my mind, not even really aware he was there. He knelt down in front of me and placed the heel of one hand on my forehead and the other hand over my heart. I laughed maniacally and rocked back and forth, rejecting him and his
gift
.

“Your angel witchcraft, it won’t work anymore,” I laughed. “You need a
soul
for it to work.”

Danny pulled back, shocked by what I’d said and wondering what I’d done while he’d been gone.

“Fuck off!” I yelled, clawing madly at his face. “Go peddle your
God
somewhere else.”

I wasn’t entirely sure who I was talking to, who it was in front of me. Was it Danny, Satan in Danny’s guise, or a figment of my imagination? It certainly smelled like an angel to me, but in my deranged state I couldn’t trust my judgement. Had I finally been pushed past the brink, so broken I could no longer be repaired?

“At least Satan is
honest,
” I spat. “He doesn’t offer any false hope.”

My mouth kept saying things I had no control over. It was like being there, but not being there, and I was watching helplessly from the sidelines.

Maybe this is what possession is like,
I thought to myself.

Danny did something he’d never done before, never dreamt of doing before. He slapped my face so hard he spilt my lip and caused my nose to bleed. I blinked several times, stunned. I could feel my eyes were still a fiery red, yet I could also feel the flicker of recognition I’d been grasping for, but couldn’t quite reach. I’d been called from the sidelines of my mind to take over again for a while. I touched my lip and looked at the blood on my fingers.

My name is Helena Malakh and he is Danny Malakh,
I told myself.
Our daughter Gina has been murdered.

“Danny?” I whispered. He clasped me to him and cried.

“I thought I’d lost you too,” he whispered in my ear.

“Then she’s really gone? There’s no hope?” I sobbed.

“No. All hope for our daughter is gone.”

We hugged each other and cried, grieving for our only child. I clung to Danny as if he were driftwood, allowing him to take me wherever the tide of his emotions, new and raw — the first heavenly angel ever to experience such things — took us.

Danny seemed to find comfort just being with me, to have someone to share the grief with. He would now have some understanding of how it was for mortal parents when they lost a child. For a brief moment he’d feel we all shared something in common.

I couldn’t bear it when the sun began to rise, revealing Gina’s parting gift to us, the rainbow, was truly gone. Our world had fallen apart. Together we rose from the ground and retired to the cottage. Danny disappeared to the library to lose himself in his books and I sat alone in front of the television, flicking from channel to channel. I needed to gather as much information about what had happened to Gina and who was responsible. I needed to understand.

Every channel had a story to tell or a slant on what was going on.

“The world is stunned tonight at the tragic fatal shooting of Gina Malakh.”

Flick.

“At this stage it’s not clear if the intended victim was Gina or Natalie. It is clear, however, that somehow Natalie was offstage when the shooting began.”

Flick.

“Later in the day, Natalie was quoted as having said that Gina told her
your time has not yet come
.”

Flick.

“It’s believed the terrorists had inside help, as the weapons they were found with could not have been smuggled in by the audience, due to the tight security measures surrounding the interview.”

Flick.

“Duct tape was found behind six seats in the back row, suggesting the weapons had been planted in advance.”

Danny came into the living area and sat on the couch. He was mourning the loss of our little girl in his own way, but he could see now I was having a far more difficult time coming to terms with Gina’s death, even though grief was nothing new to me. Would Danny wonder if it had been this hard for me when he’d died? It was the same, but different. He brushed his fingers against my cheek, but my eyes remained fixed on the television screen.

“You shouldn’t watch this anymore, Helena.
Please
stop,” Danny said.

Flick.

“No. I
need
to know.”

“Helena, you
need
to stop,” Danny insisted.

“Go away,” I said, “before I
send
you away.”

Danny hesitated for a moment, then leaned closer and kissed my cheek before retreating to the sanctuary of his library and books — books that wouldn’t die and couldn’t hurt him. Perhaps there was something simple about books that I was missing.

“Natalie has said that Gina actually shoved her chair offstage as if she knew something was going to happen, and suggests she may have been psychic. The outburst from the man in the back row may have triggered some sort of prophetic vision that led Gina to save her. Natalie would most certainly have been hit if she’d remained onstage.”

Flick.

“Witnesses have said that when the shooting ended Gina remained upright and was enveloped in white light.”

Flick.

“The mysterious disappearance of Gina’s body has led many to believe the whole thing was a hoax.”

Yeah, her mother was the perpetrator of the hoax.

Flick.

“Natalie herself claims to have seen the light surrounding Gina. According to her, the light ascended just before Gina’s body fell to the studio floor.”

Flick.

“It’s claimed that video evidence has revealed the strange light was the result of a lighting technician moving spotlights directly after the shooting.”

Spotlights! My arse. That was Gina. That was my baby.

Flick.

“In Natalie’s first live television interview in almost five years, an extraordinary woman and a number of people from the audience died today, in what has been described as an act of terrorism. A group calling themselves the Believers of the Second Coming of the Son of God has claimed responsibility, saying Regina Malakh was a false messiah sent by the devil to poison us.”

Flick.

“Natalie has stated there was no deception on her show, and advises she will be taking legal action against any who slanderously suggest otherwise.”

Flick.

“Thousands of people have flocked to the gates of the studio to leave floral tributes, messages and lit candles in an outpouring of sorrow not seen since the death of Princess Diana.”

I paused on this channel. I remembered the death of Princess Diana, young as I was, and the impact it had on millions of people. There was row upon row of flowers stretching for hundreds of metres in either direction of the studio. Gina had touched the lives of all these people and they
were
mourning her passing. She would have been moved by the display, to know she had made some kind of difference. I knew I was. Perhaps not all of them deserved to die.

Flick.

“Natalie sends her condolences to Gina’s parents, Helena and Danizriel Malakh, wherever they may be.”

Flick.

“All around the country, at hospitals and churches, people are leaving tributes to Gina Malakh. Any place reputedly visited by Gina has become a shrine.”

Flick.

“There has been a move to brand what has happened as an act of terrorism, and for
all
members of the Believers of the Second Coming of the Son of God to be rounded up for questioning.”

“Danny,” I yelled out. “Do you know anything about the Believers of the Second Coming of the Son of God? I’ve never heard of them before, but then why should I? I’m not exactly the religious type.”

Flick.

“Many people are beginning to think this was an elaborate message to remind people about what happened on nine-one-one.”

I focused on the television screen and the glass shattered with an explosive bang. Danny came down the hallway just as the tiny fragments of glass landed on the floor. He sat next to me and took hold of my hand.

Oh god, why that date? What did I do — what did Gina do — to deserve this?

“I don’t know anything about the Believers of the Second Coming of the Son of God,” Danny said. “Should I?”

I kissed his hand. He was trying to get by as best he could in a bad situation. I wasn’t making it any easier. I knew we should be together, yet I felt I was being pulled in a different direction.

“They’ve been implicated in Gina’s murder,” I said.

“Didn’t all those involved commit suicide?”

“Only those
directly
involved in the shooting. They were the hitmen, not the brains behind it all. It’s the ones that got away I’m interested in.”

Danny continued to sit beside me as I turned my attention to the Net. The first thing we saw was our child being murdered, cut down in cold blood, and the light surrounding her body. I knew then my attempt to revive Gina had been futile. I continued to trawl the Web for information. There were lots of messages of grief, far too many for me to read, but I tried.

Gina saved my family. I wish we could have repaid the debt. We will miss her.

The world is a dark place without the brightness of Gina.

I’d trade places if only she could come back.

She fed us when we were starving, and gave us hope.

As a parent whose children are alive and well, I cannot imagine the grief Gina’s parents must be going through.

I want to be just like Gina, she’s my hero.

Her smile could light up a room.

A balloon and a touch of her hand was all it took to heal me. I’m eternally grateful to her.

We love you, Gina.

Heaven has a new angel today.

There will be a mass for Gina. All are welcome to come and celebrate her everlasting life.

We have lost a living treasure.

My heart goes out to Gina’s parents.

Danny wept as he read the messages with me. He had no idea of how much of an impact Gina had made on the mortal world in the short time she was there. She’d obviously worked very hard at getting her message across, and apart from the one small niggling detail — her death — she would have considered herself reasonably successful.

“One of us needs to go to Drake,” I said. “He’ll probably have heard, but he was family in Gina’s eyes. We owe him that much at least.”

“I won’t go,” Danny said. “He hasn’t forgiven me for letting her go in the first place. He’s just as likely to try to kill me if he’s already heard.”

“You’re the one who keeps telling me she would have gone regardless,” I said.

“Even though he
knows
I speak the truth he doesn’t have to like it,” Danny replied. “Drake would find it more comforting to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.

“Then don’t go,” Danny said. “It’s as simple as that.”

I was torn between doing what Gina would have wanted me to do, and what I wanted to do — run far away from everyone and everything, to drown if I could.

I closed the lid of the laptop, kissed Danny on the cheek and pressed my forehead against his. These small gestures meant so much, and yet so little. Neither of us could find the solace we so desperately needed. I wondered if the answer was somehow tied to something that came so naturally to us now, the sharing of our bodies, rather than our mutual grief. I didn’t want to think about it for the moment. It seemed perverted to think solace could be found that way.

“I’ll go,” I whispered. “We owe him a debt that can
never
be repaid.”

I brushed my fingers down Danny’s cheek, removed my hand from his, and disappeared.

Drake was sitting on what was left of his leather couch in the sitting room at Gorema. He looked so lost and awful. Everything in the room was in tatters. No item was left without some mark. He’d heard all right. I knew that if he could have come to Eden he surely would have tried to tear Danny to shreds. Their delicate truce would probably not survive this, unless I could work some miracle. The only miracle I wanted to work was the one that I couldn’t have — to bring back Gina.