Broken Wings (An Angel Eyes Novel)(19)

Instead, the nightmare changes.

It's the girl again, her face emerging from the colors. But I'm closer and I get a better look this time. She has large, dark eyes and raven hair that frames her face. She's young, younger than she was the last time I saw her. I ponder the impossibility of that as my ears prick at a sound.

She's talking to me. "Are you sick?"

I blink, looking around. It's bright here. Much brighter than the marble hallway. We're in a waiting room. At a hospital, I think.

"You look sick."

"Do I?"

She nods, scribbling away at the coloring book in her lap. I feel my face stretch as I offer her a smile.

"Daddy looked like you before he died."

My smile falls away. I feel that too. My stomach is sick, but I don't know if it's the child's words that have done that or if it's part of my illness.

"The doctors think the medicine will make me better," I say.

"I hope so."

"Me too." My voice is weak and crackles with phlegm. I want to clear my throat, but I don't seem to have any control over my body. "Are you here to see the doctor too?"

She shakes her head and points her red crayon at the woman in scrubs manning the reception counter. "Mama has to work. She helps people."

"That's nice. Maybe she'll help me."

"Maybe."

I watch her coloring the picture of a unicorn. A red unicorn. "I have a little girl," I say.

Her eyes light up. "Is she here?"

"No, she's home with a friend. Sleeping, I hope."

"Will you bring her next time?" she asks. "It'd be nice to have someone to play with."

"Maybe," I say, trying and failing to produce a smile. "She's younger than you. Would that be okay?"

"Sure," she tells me, coloring the unicorn's tail blue. "I can be her babysitter. Like Amy. That would be okay."

I'm tired. My arms are heavy and my neck is weak. "Do you always come to work with your mom?"

"Not always. Just when Amy can't watch me. She's pretty. She has a boyfriend with a motorcycle."

I let my head fall sideways on my shoulder. "My husband has a motorcycle."

Her large eyes get even bigger. "Does he let you ride it?"

"Sometimes." My eyelids are heavy. The girl's face swims before me. Her eyes. Her necklace, so pretty with the beaded rope and the charm. Is it . . . is it a flower?

I'm going to be sick. I'm going to be sick and it's so very, very dark.

"Mama! Mama! The lady's dying. She's dying like daddy."

Her voice bounces around the darkness, tugging at my consciousness. It's not me, not my body that's dying. I know that, but the fear of death is suffocating.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die!

"You're not dying, Brielle. Sit up. You're not dying. You're dreaming."

I blink my room into view. It's still dark. The clock on my side table says it's three a.m. Helene stands next to me, her hair braided back, her face tense.

"I'm sorry," I tell her. "I had another nightmare."

She runs her hand under my pillow. "And with the halo too."

"I don't understand why it keeps happening."

"That's not why I'm here," she tells me. "Are you presentable?"

"Yes, of course."

Without another word, she lifts me from my bed and pulls me into the Celestial, the fear of death melting within her wings.                       
       
           



       18



Brielle





Helene's wings push against the air, pulling us through the roof and over the old Miller place toward the outskirts of town.

Something's wrong. I see fear crawling down the street. A sludge of blackness, a mist fogging the air above it, makes its way down the highway. It moves quickly, speeding over the pavement toward us. I see fear daily, but this . . . this is a lot.

Helene dips low, and my stomach lurches. We're just inches off the road now, Helene's thin arms extended. We approach the fear with the crazed speed of a drag racer, but as soon as Helene's fingers make contact with the gloppy stuff, it hisses and dissolves, leaving behind only a foggy residue. Her hands have a different effect than Jake's prayers, but at her touch the fear glubs and glops to a stop. It actually retreats. Or tries to.

We're flying too fast for it to succeed, and Helene doesn't seem to be keen on letting a single gurgle of the stuff escape. I'm mesmerized.

"Where is the fear coming from?" I ask.

I hear Helene's voice in my head. "From the crowd."

The crowd?

I lift my eyes from the highway and look ahead, but the scenery's flying by so fast and it's all so bright.

"There," she says.

My eyes stream tears, but I force myself to focus. Just ahead, lining the gate to the Stratus Cemetery, are nearly a dozen people, their focus arrested by whatever's going on inside.

And there is something going on.

Strange flashes of light split the night. They're not yellow streaks, or orange, or even red like I've seen in the celestial sky, but silver, electric flashes. Not unlike lightning, but less chaotic, more focused.

Both of Stratus's patrol cars are parked haphazardly at the entrance to the graveyard. Deputy Wimby stands guard at the gate, though by the fear pooling from the onlookers, I don't imagine a single one of them is too eager to enter.

"What's going on?"

Helene doesn't answer, but her wings pick up speed, lifting us off the highway and over the crowd. Over Wimby. We fly over headstones and statues, over placards and grass wilting in the summer heat. I can't help but notice how calm it's gotten in the past few seconds, and then I realize we're approaching the eastern boundary of the cemetery, near my mother's grave.

My heart couldn't beat any faster-not after that nightmare and Helene's unexpected visit-but it's trying its hardest.

And then I hear it. High pitched and eerie, like the sound of a missile falling. Every half second brings it closer and closer. I see nothing, but I sense it, hear it, the sound of something large dropping from above.

"Here it comes again!"

The cry comes from below us, where the sheriff squats behind a crumbling gravestone. His hat is askew, his orange hair almost neon in the celestial light. His walkie-talkie is pressed to his mouth.

"Everybody down!"

There's authority in his voice, and even within the safety of Helene's wings, I flinch.

And then destruction. A crash like I've never heard or imagined. The world shudders as that strange silver lightning explodes everywhere. So bright it cows the buttery yellows of the celestial sky.

Helene doesn't slow, doesn't wince. She moves forward, faster, if anything, and I see the willow tree come into view. Like the spattering of a strobe, the umbrella-like canopy of its branches spits shades of silver light into the sky.

Whatever's happening is happening beneath that tree.

Where my mother's been laid to rest.

Helene rises above it, giving us a bird's-eye view. I look down in awe-terrible, horrible awe.

Mounds of dirt encircle my mother's grave. Upturned soil and grass mingle in violated bedlam. Tree roots protrude like skeletal fingers from the soil, and the cement bench I've sat on so many times is nothing but a pile of concrete crumbles.

Nothing about this image makes sense. It's like a sick kaleidoscope-the original image twisted and twisted beyond recognition.

And then I see the stone angel. The one who's been weeping over my mother for a decade and a half. I watch as she is shattered by a shard of silver light ricocheting from within my mother's grave.

Helene darts sideways to avoid the shard, and I suddenly understand that my mother's grave has been desecrated.

That it's being desecrated.

That I'm watching it happen.

The stone angel falls sideways from her rectangular platform. With a heavy thud she hits the ground, her head and shoulders, the top of her wings, separated from the rest of her sculpted figure. They topple away several feet and sink inches deep into the upturned mud.

"Why?" The word forms in my mind. I've no idea if I actually say it, but it's the only thing I can think. Over and over it hums in my chest. Why? Why? Why?

Dirt flies from the grave en masse, and then a face appears, rising from the mud.

Glowing. Radiant.

Angelic.

He rises from the gaping hole, wings of blade lifting and then holding him in place before us. I can do nothing but stare.

Helene speaks to him, leaving her mind open, allowing me to hear the conversation.

"Virtue," she says.

Her mind is quiet but sure.

"Helene," he says, giving me the same courtesy. "I am sorry to arrive with the sound of destruction."

"If it's necessary . . ."

"It is, and I am not yet finished."

Helene pushes back with her wings, deferring to him, giving him room, but the angel doesn't move. The tilt of his head makes me think he's looking at me, and indeed his words seem to be for me alone.

"I am sorry for your pain," he says, pressing closer to us.

Which pain? Which one?

"But you've chosen truth. It is best that you have it all."

And then he opens his mouth, worship pouring forth as he rises into the sky again and plummets to the earth, his dagger-like wings tearing through the gigantic hole he's created and into my mother's casket. It's a violent, forceful thing that pulls my stomach into my mouth. It's sick. Whatever this is, this is a desecration of something . . . sacred?