Chapter One
There
were angel feathers in the dead woman’s bed. They looked like huge
white swan feathers, impossibly large, but then they were supposed to
propel something the size of a tall man skyward. I didn’t have to see
the angel to know that he’d be tall; they were all tall, some close to
eight feet, but average was between six feet and seven feet. I was six
feet, three inches, a big guy by most standards, but angels always made
me feel small, even when they were close to my own height. It wasn’t
about physical inches when you were in the presence of angels.
I
stared down at the feathers scattered across the tangled bedclothes
like soft ivory, lacy cream curling with their edges moving as the
window air conditioner blew directly across from the bed. The bed was
shoved up against one wall, with most of the small off-campus apartment
taken up by the desk and enough floor space for the yoga mat that was
leaning in the other corner.
The
forensics team had finished in the bedroom, though I could hear them in
the bathroom that this apartment shared with the one next door. I
clenched my hands in the plastic gloves, booties over my shoes so I
wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. My detective shield was around my
neck on its lanyard. My FN 509 nine-millimeter was in a side holster
under my jacket. I had its little brother, the 503, at home. Some of the
other cops had given me a hard time about not carrying a Glock, until I
invited them down to the shooting range to try an FN. Then they asked
price. There were other cops around, lots of them; there always were at a
murder scene, because that’s how it was called in first. A murder scene
with angel evidence on-site, and they bumped the call up to us. The
Metaphysical Coordination Unit was our official title, but the other
cops and most of the media called us the Heaven and Hell Unit, because
we didn’t just solve crime on one side of the spiritual divide, we
worked both sides of the street-someone had to keep the peace between
beings that could tear the world apart if they ever went to war again.
If
the angel feathers hadn’t been here it would have been listed as a rape
homicide and been given to Sex Crimes. I stared down at the feathers;
they’d started to gleam as the light faded outside the small window. I
wasn’t certain if they glowed with holy fire or I was seeing the light
inside my head where I saw spirits and visions. The largest feather was
so white it looked ghostly in the dying light. The others were less pure
in color, more off-white, and they had flecks and edges of faint color
to some of them. Not all angels had snow-white wings, but that was the
color that most people expected, so that was the color the angels had
chosen for the largest feather that they left behind. They had wanted to
make certain the human police officers first on the scene would call in
the Metaphysical Coordination Unit and send for me, because I was the
angel expert.
I
stared at the largest feather as if I was trying to read it, but it
just lay there whiter than the sheets it was lying on. It was as long as
the bed, carefully placed on the edge, a huge primary flight feather.
There was no way for anyone to have gotten out of the bed without
disturbing that feather, yet it lay ruler straight. The other feathers
weren’t anything that would cripple a wing, but this one would if angels
flew like birds. The feathers were all on top of the sheets, not under
them, not on the floor, not scattered like they’d be if the rapist had
been an angel as the feathers seemed to imply. I knew angels didn’t lose
feathers when they had sex, not even if it was rough, because for most
of them the wings weren’t that solid. For those whose wings were solid,
no human being was strong enough to tear them apart, not barehanded.
Either the angels did it themselves, or something powerful enough to
injure them did it, which meant it wasn’t the victim. I’d have bet any
amount of money that they’d been placed on the bed after the crime had
been committed, but why? Why did the angels care enough about this one
undergrad college student to incriminate themselves? God might know when
every sparrow fell, but the angels didn’t show up to catch the bird
before it hit the ground. Of course, they hadn’t saved the woman. She’d
been found nude, beaten to death, and with enough dried bodily fluid on
her body that rape was almost a certainty. Until forensics confirmed it,
it wouldn’t be rape, but it was a sexually motivated crime; we were
only waiting on the medical examiner to give us a list of exactly what
had happened to Megan Borowski. Thinking her name made it almost
impossible not to picture her body, the beating her face had taken, her
body left on the floor of the room like the murderer had just gotten up
and walked out after he was done with her. There were no signs of
remorse, no attempt to cover what he’d done to her face, or her nudity.
It made it more likely to be a stranger, or someone who didn’t feel
regretful about what he’d done. We were all assuming the attacker was
male, because of the bodily fluids on the body and the strength needed
for the beating.
I
had to try to think of Megan Borowski as just the victim, a body
savaged by attacker or attackers unknown, because it could have been two
men. That might explain why she hadn’t screamed for help. Had one
threatened her in some way during the rape-I won’t kill you if you just
do what I want-and then they’d killed her anyway? Evil, it was evil,
even if it was just men who did it, but was it Evil with a capital E?
Was that why the angels had been ordered to leave their feathers at the
crime scene, so we’d know it wasn’t just a human-on-human crime?
I
had one of the few quiet moments I’d ever had at a scene like this,
where some trick of duty or assignment had sent everyone somewhere else,
so I had a moment to stare down at the dead woman’s bed all by my
lonesome. I didn’t believe it was an accident that I was alone. The
crime might not have been planned, but when every other person working a
suspicious death leaves the prime crime scene to just me, well, I was
waiting for whatever the Big Guy wanted me to see, or hear, or
experience. Maybe there’d be a clue that only I would find, or needed to
find. God worked in mysterious ways, and so did all His messengers,
that much I knew. I heard one of the crime scene techs curse, as if
something wasn’t going to plan in the hallway. Celestial beings were
involved; nothing would go according to human planning, I knew that
much. In all the years I’d worked angel detail I’d never seen a single
feather left behind unless the angel was fighting for their own safety.
If
there’d only been one smaller feather, I might have thought the victim
had an angelic lover, maybe. Angels were funny things and could affect
people in ways that neither the human lover nor the angel could see
coming. Because we were the wild cards, we humans, once angels got a
taste for us, they could screw up both their eternity and our
lives-screw it up all to Hell. Of course, one small feather might have
been overlooked in the initial investigation. Realistic evidence of an
angelic lover wouldn’t have been spotted right away. It wouldn’t have
made anyone call us yet. I wouldn’t be standing here if the angels
hadn’t gone all-out to grab my attention.
The
silence got that weighted quality to it, and I knew that even if one of
the techs came back into this room in the next few minutes, they might
not see a damn thing except me. If they were one of the gifted and could
see the unseen, they were about to be in for a Heaven of a show.
The
angel manifested just in front of me, between the foot of the bed and
the window. The hair on my arms stood to attention, but the skin on my
neck stayed calm, so I knew it was an angel, but not one of the angels
that had left the feathers. They wouldn’t be able to manifest like this
anymore. Once the spiritual got solid enough to leave DNA behind, they
couldn’t just conjure themselves out of thin air. The figure hovering
before me wasn’t even solid enough to stand on the carpet, because “it”
was made mostly of light.
The
angel glowed before me, all white and gold-yellow light; even its eyes
were full of yellow fire, but there was no heat. Angels don’t give off
heat, no matter how fiery they look; if you ever see a glowing angel and
feel heat come off it, it’s not an angel, exactly. One of the first
things you need to understand if you work angel detail is that fallen
angels are still angels, and demons, well, that’s another problem
altogether, but the rule is, if it gives off heat, run; if you can’t
run, pray.
The
angel’s wings were barely hinted at; “he,” or “she,” was mostly just
light with a humanoid figure in the middle of it, and a shimmering hint
of wings, and flowing robes, but mostly just that full-bodied halo, the
aurora.
The
voice sounded male, but honestly angels this shining are sexless, they
just are. “We are pleased that we do not have to manifest fully for you,
Detective Zaniel Havelock.”
It
wasn’t the opening I’d expected; if angels seek you out personally then
it’s with an extremely specific message like in the Bible: You are
pregnant with the Son of God, or Flee now, enemies are coming. The
personal conversational style was how they spoke to Angel Speakers,
Angelus Dictum, which means “the angel said” to make it clear that the
person sharing the message from the angel is not an angel but only their
mouthpiece. Angels did not speak like this to people on the outside,
but once I’d been inside and I fell back into the same rhythm, an old
habit come back to haunt me. “You can lose the humanoid stuff altogether
if you want. I do appreciate you trying not to drive me insane by
manifesting in your pure energy form, but it’s okay, I don’t need the
baby steps.”
“Very
well,” it said, and the human pretense went away. I was left staring at
light, or flame, or something in between the two. It filled nearly all
of that half of the room, but it gave off neither heat nor formed
shadows. Again, if something says it’s an angel, and glows at you, but
it causes shadows around it, it’s not the good kind of angel, or maybe
it’s not an angel at all.
The
light turned its “head,” and I could read the body language of that
glow; most people wouldn’t have been able to. “You asked for me to drop
the physical away, not for my comfort, but because you wished to see if I
cast a shadow.”
I
shrugged and fought not to let my shoulders tighten. You couldn’t
wrestle an angel in this form; it wasn’t “real” enough, but the body
tenses, preparing for fight or flight, even though neither will help
you. You can’t hit pure spirit, and you sure as Heaven can’t run from
it, because spirit-level angels can just appear anywhere, in multiple
places, at multiple times, and it’s all real, all them, because when
they’re this pure, time doesn’t mean to them what it means to most of
us. They can simultaneously be in several places at once, at the same
time for us humans, but different points of time for the angel itself.
Time is way more flexible than the human mind can comprehend. It was a
good thing that the pure spirit didn’t commit crimes, because we would
be beyond fucked trying to prove it, solve it, or catch them. When this
guy was finished glowing at me, he’d go back to God, maybe even be
absorbed back into that ultimate light. Witness protection had nothing
on the pure spirit angelic. They could literally be reabsorbed and made
pure and new again when they made their next earthly appearance.
“I know you are one who has walked through the flame and survived, but I did not understand what it might mean.”
I
remembered standing in the middle of flames that did not burn, and cast
no shadow, and surrounded me on every side. If my faith had not been
pure enough, I would have been consumed by holy fire. I blinked the
memory away and faced the much fainter light of the angel before me.
“And what does it mean?” I asked.
“That
you do not think as others do or see as other flesh sees. You are the
only Angelus Dictum to ever finish your training and then turn your back
on it.”
“I am not an Angel Speaker, I’m a cop.”
“You are a police officer, but that does not mean you are not also an Angel Speaker; otherwise how could I be here?”
I
couldn’t argue with the angel and I very much wanted to, so I let it
go. The conversation was getting too weird, and off topic. I was here to
solve a crime, not dissect my past. “Maybe I was meant to be a police
officer, and work with the angelic like this.”
“Perhaps.”
Again, it did that “head” turn, but this time it was listening. The
fact that it had to listen to hear God’s voice meant it wasn’t pure
spirit anymore, or it wasn’t going to be for long. This one was at the
beginning of a path that might lead it to be as solid as the angel we
were seeking. They sent down pure spirit, but every time they talked to
anything of flesh, they stopped being quite so much spirit, and a little
more…flesh. This one had come down to talk to humans before, several
times before. The next time I saw “him” he’d probably be male, or closer
to it. The voice is the first clue, the first move in choosing a
“gender.”
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