“Jefischa is perfectly capable of maintaining the integrity of his own soul,” Peter said mildly, and Shepherd glared at him.
“Jefischa,” he said fiercely, “is an innocent—”
“So whatever unholy wiles the vampire is working on him should not have any effect at all.” Peter’s voice was firm and growing firmer, and Shepherd usually would have stood down, but… Jefischa! Sweet, mercurial, melancholy, playful Jefischa. He needed to be protected, even from himself.
“So he’s more easily led astray!” Shepherd countermanded, and Peter glowered at him until Shepherd finally did stand down.
“Have a little faith in your partner, Shep,” Peter told him, gentleness in his voice. “Lord knows, being his partner is something you’ve not once had to repent.”
Peter disappeared, and Shep glared at the white fuzzy halo where the archangel used to be. “Ha-ha,” he grumbled, but then Jefischa appeared at his side. It was serene, “retiring for bed” Jefischa, and he smiled at Shepherd and asked him what was wrong.
“We’re guarding the vampire,” Shep said, keeping it short. Maybe if he didn’t give Jefi the details, he wouldn’t find out anything that could make him fall.
“Ohhh….” Jefi was suddenly all big eyes and child-at-a-bedtime-story. The fourth hour after dark, indeed. “We get to guard him? Wow! Do you think we’ll find out why all those people fell? Why do you think they fell, Shep? I mean, I knew Anpiel—she was the sweetest thing. And she and Zerachiel—they were always fighting! I have no idea how they ended up down on earth together.” Jefi gave a mock shudder. “Weird.”
Shepherd raised a sour eyebrow. “Yeah. Weird. Look, Jefi. You’ve got to promise to follow me on this one. No….” If Shepherd hadn’t been a vague form of personified energy, his hands would have waved in the air. “You know how you get. No acting human, okay?”
Jefi bobbed his head and then stopped, puzzled. “Do I act human, Shepherd?”
Shepherd looked at him, feeling helpless. “You act… compassionate, Jefi. Empathetic. You… you forget, sometimes, that our job is to be a beacon of guidance for them. You seem to want to be their friend.”
Jefi’s energy—his “wings”—turned an unbearable color. It was a murky sort of brown-orange-green, and Shepherd hated it. He suddenly found that he would say anything,
do
anything, to make that color go away.
“You… you don’t like me when I do that, Shep?”
“No! No… no, I like you fine. It’s one of the things that makes you—well, um, you, Jefi! No. Don’t change that. Just, I don’t know… keep it in check this time, okay? There’s something about this guy. We’re falling like mortals around him, Jefi. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Jefi’s wings brightened up a little, but they were still a troubled brown-green. “Okay, I guess. You’d… you’d let me fall alone, Shep?” There was a moment of absolute shock, and then Jefi covered his eyes. “Ouch, Shep… that color
hurts.
Make it stop—whatever you’re thinking, make it stop!”
Shep was thinking of Jefischa alone on the cruel, barbaric surface of the planet below. He was thinking of him being abused and suckered into the worst of what humanity had to offer—the drug hells, the brothels, the places where humans routinely threw away their lives, their souls, their humanity. He had no idea what his
wings
looked like, but the painful terror of Jefi left alone was enough to paralyze his very being for a moment.
“No,” he said roughly, after a moment of getting himself under control. “I’d never let you fall alone, Jefi. No worries. That’s why we need to be careful on this one. We like it up here, right?”
Jefi smiled, his wings going bright and iridescent, and Shepherd knew his own appearance brightened up considerably. “Absolutely, Shep. Anything you say. Besides, what do we have to worry about? He’s not a human. He’s a vampire. I’m sure he’ll be
very
different.”
The two of them appeared over the entryway to the anteroom and paused. It was, after all, the gateway from a soul’s seat on earth to its destination in heaven.
“Shep, what’re the ropes for?” Jefi asked. He was naturally curious; the fourth hour of darkness was often a time for digging into secrets or children pattering down a darkened hallway.
Shepherd stared at the golden cords and frowned. “I have no idea.” The cords seemed to be attached to all of the souls drifting about. They were brighter on the side near heaven and growing dimmer by the moment on the side near earth, and neither of the angels had any information on what those cords were supposed to be.
Their puzzlement was greeted with soft laughter from a person coming
out
of the anteroom. There were plenty of people drifting
in
to the anteroom, and usually there was someone to greet them. That was the purpose of the anteroom: it was like an airport greeting area. Most of the people going through were in transit, and most of them had people waiting for them. Those that didn’t, well, they had angels to help them through the transition—Yahudia and Zaranpuryu being the main two, but they often recruited help. Either way, the anteroom was mostly an exclusively one-way proposition. Except for the young human with the white-blond hair and the sky-spangled eyes, weaving his way gracefully between oblivious souls.
He was so solid in appearance, so full of flesh and vibrancy, that he was nearly blinding.
“Hey there… wait a minute!” Jefi said. His energy vibrated; his wax-perfect human shape all but bounced on its pale bare toes. “You’re not supposed to be coming out of there!”
The young man laughed. “Yeah, mate, I am. I was a little out of it, but I swear even
I
heard the row that got me my weekend-pass privileges set in stone. Check with your boss, duckies, but do it on your own time. I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to be.”
Shepherd didn’t really have a mouth, but he knew that what looked like his jaw was swinging on its hinges. The young man faded out of the walkway to the anteroom, leaving Shep and Jefi staring at his narrow, retreating back.
“Was he wearing a black motorcycle jacket?” Jefi asked out of the dark of the night.
“Yes, Jefi. Yes, he was.” And ripped jeans and a white T-shirt. He’d looked like James Dean—only better. The pale hair was in a layered, curly halo around his face, and the blue eyes had been open and guileless, inviting people in as opposed to smoldering and warning people way.
“He was very beautiful,” Jefi said in an admiring way. “By human standards, he would have been very coveted.”
Shepherd blinked his eyes, feeling very stupid. “Oh, for the sake of heaven….” His angel form washed the color of softest rose. They weren’t supposed to swear. “That was Adrian, Jefi. Who else could it be? Weekend pass, inhuman beauty… dammit. We just let the vampire escape.”
Jefi was silent for a moment, considering. “Well, technically he’s got a pass. We didn’t really let him escape.”
Shep looked at him. Just looked at him. Jefi smiled charmingly, and Shepherd blew out a great chuff of air and threw his ass on a cloud with enough force to dislodge that sucker so it could float free. Jefi put his angelic “hands” on the cloud—it was about chest high—and instead of levitating or sweeping his mighty wings to and fro, he heaved himself up and clambered into a sitting position next to Shepherd like a toddler getting into bed with his big brother. Shepherd watched him silently, and when Jefi smiled that great, open grin into his face, Shep had no choice but to return it with a little smile of his own. You couldn’t stay mad at Jefi. This quality wasn’t one of his gifts as an angel. It wasn’t in his realm of power—it was just Jefischa. He was probably the only reason the fourth hour of darkness had so much possibility—because the fifth hour of darkness was dark, brooding, and violent. Drunks got mean in the fifth hour of darkness, when they were happy and sloppy in hour number four. Shep was pretty sure that was because Patrozhin was a dour, unsympathetic bastard who should have been made the angel of misers with pancreatitis.
“You’re right,” Shepherd said, just to reassure Jefi that all his goodwill wasn’t for naught. “He’s got carte blanche. I don’t know why, but it’s out of our hands.”
“Mmm….” Jefi sounded distracted. “I still don’t know what those ropes are for.” Jefischa put out his hands and made stroking motions. “They look… soft… and warm… and sweet to touch. I want to touch one….”
“No,” Shepherd said uncertainly. “I…. Jefi, there’s something very… mortal about those. Look. They’re a direct link to earth. And did you see the size and the thickness of the vampire’s? It was….” He flailed for a comparison.
“As big around as the vampire’s wrist!” Jefi said excitedly. “Yes! And the cord leading to heaven, it was much finer than those of these people here. You’re right, those
are
mortal things.” Jefi turned a look of pure adoration toward Shepherd. “It’s a good thing you spotted that! I would have just run right in!”
Shepherd ducked his head and looked away. “Just looking out for us, that’s all.” And then, irritably, “You know, I really wish Peter had given us more of a heads-up about this place. It’s really complex!”
“That’s because you’re not filtering out the white noise!” Peter tutted from behind them. Shepherd rolled his eyes. Saint Peter liked to just pop in unannounced when someone was on assignment. The humans had a word for it, but one did not call the right hand to the Lord of Heaven an “officious asshole.”
Still, Shepherd and Jefi took Peter’s advice. They filtered out everyone who did
not
have access to the planet below. There was still the occasional soul—serene and filled with purpose—being drawn back to earth with those thick, almost pulsing cords of gold, but once the influx of souls was filtered out, it was an okay place. Shepherd heard a change of music—there’d been Mozart permeating the air earlier—and he raised his eyes toward Jefi with a wince.
“Isn’t that a little contemporary?”
“I like Death Cab for Cutie.”
Shepherd felt more than saw Peter’s rolled eyes, so he grinned and said, “You know, I think it’s a good choice myself!”
“Very cute,” Peter said through clenched teeth. “Look, he’s down on the planet, so I know you’ve already met. And he’ll seem very nice and very personable. Just don’t get personal with him, okay? That’s where the others slipped up. Don’t make that mistake.”
“We hear you!” Jefi turned that open smile to Peter, whose jaw relaxed in spite of what Shep assumed were the man’s best intentions. “Are you going to tell us what the gold things are?”
“Just don’t touch them!” Peter called, fading from their vicinity rapidly. Well, he was the head honcho here, off to do big important things.
Jefi stuck his tongue out at the empty place where Peter had been, and Shep choked back a laugh. “Very mature, Jefi.”
An actual circle of gold appeared over Jefi’s figurative head. “I
am
an angel, you know.”
Shep let the laugh escape, and Jefi preened.
After Peter left, though, the gig was pretty tame. Shepherd called up a great work of literature to read between calls of penitence, and Jefi lay on his stomach, peering at the world below, scanning for more music as the fourth hour of dark swept the globe. They could (and had been known to) spend months at a time sitting doing just that, but they hadn’t been settled for more than a few hours when their boy showed up.
“Hullo. Glad to see you’re still here!”
Jefi looked up, grinning. “Did you have a nice time?” he asked politely, and Shepherd glared at him. “I was only asking. I mean,
we
don’t get day passes out of here. I thought it would be nice to go somewhere and visit friends.”
“Yeah, mate. It was positively smashing. Here, I’ll go and get out of your hair.” There was something about Adrian’s tone that told them both that a great deal of pain was involved in his “smashing time.”
Shepherd and Jefischa met unhappy glances. They were angels. Part of their job description was to alleviate pain.
“I’m sorry, Adrian,” Jefi said, sympathy written in angelic lines across his form. “Why do you go if it hurts you?”
Adrian shrugged, and something about his face told them that he’d rather not talk about it. “They need me. I’d go if it was torture, because they need me. It’s not torture—makes the afterlife bearable, if you must know the truth. I’ve got to tell you two, it hurts them the same as it hurts me. But we need it.”
Shepherd and Jefischa watched, at a loss as Adrian moved slowly back to the anteroom. The thick living cord of gold that seemed to bind him to the surface of the world was faded now and not quite as thick as it had been when he’d left earlier, but still it seemed to slow him down, make his footsteps sluggish as he disappeared through the veil of mists that marked the entrance.
“Well,” Shepherd said fitfully, “that was disappointing. He doesn’t even look like a vampire, really.”
“I saw a little fang,” Jefi added helpfully, and Shep smiled at him to let him know it was appreciated. “Shep, your wings are gray.”
“Yeah.” Shepherd sighed. “Well, the sky feels like a sad ocean after that, doesn’t it?”
Jefi closed in behind him. It wasn’t a physical touch, not the way humans did it, but Jefischa managed to comfort Shepherd in his glow. “Why do you suppose he gets visiting privileges if they don’t make anyone happy?”
“Maybe sadness is as sweet as it gets if you’re a vampire’s ghost, Jefi. Sometimes not even heaven gives happy ever after, right?”
“Shep, that’s blasphemy!”
Shepherd sighed. “You don’t hear them down there. Everybody begging forgiveness, and the ones who really need it won’t acknowledge they’ve done anything wrong. It seems like penitence is… it’s like a novelty you can buy, a pretty bauble. You say something mean, you blurt out an ‘I’m sorry’ and think penitence is served. But that thing you say… it’s around forever, long after your penitence has been discarded and the next awful thing comes out of your mouth.” Shepherd cast a covert glance in the direction where Adrian had disappeared. “But not that one. Now that we’ve spoken again, I remember him. That one, penitence was deep and it was real. Maybe sadness is really a treat for that one. Maybe that’s why he gets to visit.”