The Black Angel

“No food shall they eat, and they shall be thirsty; they shall be concealed, and shall rise up against the sons of men…”

He looked at Burke, his coworker. Burke was good. Stuckler had initially balked at paying him what he asked, but Murnos had insisted that Burke was worth it. The others, too, had all been approved by Murnos, even if they were not quite in Burke’s league.

And still Murnos believed that they were not enough.

A light began to flicker rhythmically on a panel on the wall, accompanied by an insistent beeping.

“The gate!” said Burke. “Someone’s opening the gate.”

It wasn’t possible. The gate could only be opened from within, or by one of the three control devices contained in the cars, and all of the vehicles were on the property. Murnos checked the monitors and thought for an instant he saw a figure beside the gate, and another leaving a copse of trees.

“…for they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction.”

And then the screens went dead.

Murnos was already on his feet when the window beside them was blown apart. Burke took the brunt of the first fusillade, shielding Murnos for valuable seconds and enabling him to get to the door. He scrambled through as bullets pinged off metal and pock-marked the plaster on the walls. Stuckler was upstairs in his room, but the noise had woken him from his sleep. Murnos could already hear him shouting as he entered the main hallway. Somewhere in the house, another window shattered. A small man with a gun appeared from the kitchen, barely more than a shadow in the gloom, and Murnos fired at him, forcing him back. He kept firing as he made for the stairs. There was a Gothic-style window on the landing, and Murnos saw a shape pass across it, ascending the outside wall toward the second floor. He tried to shout a warning as he heard more shots, but he stumbled on the stairs, and the words were lost in an instant of shock. Murnos gripped the banister to lift himself up, and his hands slid wetly upon the wood. There was blood on his fingers. He looked down at his shirt and saw the stain spreading across it, and with it came the pain. He raised his gun, seeking a target, and felt a second impact at his thigh. His back arched in agony, his head striking hard against the stairs and his eyes briefly squeezing shut as he tried to control the pain. When he opened them again there was a woman staring at him from above, the shape of her clearly visible beneath her dark clothing, her eyes blue and hateful. She had a gun in her hand.

Instinctively, Murnos closed his eyes again as death came.

Brightwell drove to the front of the house and entered the grounds. He followed Miss Zahn down to the cellar, through the racks of wine, and into the treasury that now lay open to him. Above him loomed the great black statue of bone. Stuckler was kneeling before it, dressed in blue silk pajamas. There was some blood in his hair, but he was otherwise unhurt.

Three pieces of vellum were handed to Brightwell, taken by his raiders from the shattered display case. He handed them over to Miss Zahn, but his gaze was fixed upon the statue. His head came almost to the level of its rib cage, the scapulae fused to the sternum at the front and to each other at the back, like an armored plate. He drew back his hand and punched hard against the mass of bone. The sternum cracked under the impact.

“No!” said Stuckler. “What are you doing?”

Brightwell struck again. Stuckler tried to stand, but Miss Zahn forced him to stay down.

“You’ll destroy it,” said Stuckler. “It’s beautiful. Stop!”

The sternum shattered under the force of Brightwell’s blows. The skin on his knuckles and the back of his hand had been torn by the sharp bone, but he did not seem to notice. Instead, he reached into the hollow that he had created and explored it, his arm buried within the statue almost to the elbow and his face tensed with the effort, until his features suddenly relaxed and he withdrew his hand. There was a small silver box clutched in his fist, this one entirely unadorned. He opened his hand and displayed the box to Stuckler, then carefully removed the lid. Inside was a single piece of vellum, perfectly preserved. He handed it to Miss Zahn to unfold.

“The numbers, the maps,” he said to Stuckler. “They were all incidental, in their way. What mattered was the bone statue, and what it contained.”

Stuckler was weeping. He reached for a shard of shattered black bone and held it in his hand.

“You did not understand your own acquisitions, Herr Stuckler,” said Brightwell. “ ‘Quantum in me est.’ The details lie in the fragments, but the truth lies here.”

He threw the empty box to Stuckler, who touched his fingers to the interior in disbelief.

“All this time,” he said. “The knowledge was within my grasp all this time.”

Brightwell took the final piece of fragment from Miss Zahn. He examined the drawing upon it and the writing above. The drawing was architectural in nature, showing a church and what appeared to be a network of tu

“It never left,” he said, almost in wonder.

“Tell me,” said Stuckler. “Please, allow me that much.”

Brightwell squatted, and showed Stuckler the illustration, then rose and nodded to Miss Zahn. Stuckler did not look up as the muzzle of the gun touched the back of his head, its caress almost tender.

“All this time,” he said “All this time.”

Then time, what was and what was yet to be, came to an end, and a new world was born for him.

Two hours later, Reid and Bartek were walking back to their car. They had stopped to eat at a bar just south of Hartford, their last meal together before they were due to leave the country, and Reid had indulged himself, as was sometimes his wont. He was now rubbing his belly and complaining that chili nachos always gave him gas.

“Nobody made you eat them,” said his companion.

“I can’t resist them,” said Reid. “They’re just so alien.”

Bartek’s Chevy was parked on the road, beneath one of a long line of bare trees that filigreed the cars beneath in shadow, part of a small forest that bordered green fields and a distant development of new condos.

“I mean,” Reid continued, “no decent society would even con-”

A shape moved against one of the trees, and in the fraction of a second between awareness and response, Reid could have sworn that it descended down the tree trunk headfirst, like a lizard clinging to the bark.

“Run!” he said. He pushed hard at Bartek, forcing him into the woods, then turned to face the approaching enemy. He heard Bartek call his name, and he shouted: “Run, I said. Run, you bastard!”

There was a man facing him, a small, pie-faced figure in a black jacket and faded denims. Reid recognized him from the bar, and wondered how long they had been watched by their enemies. The man did not have any weapon that Reid could see.

“Come on, then,” said Reid. “I’ll have you.”

He raised his fists and moved sideways, in case the man tried to get past him to follow Bartek, but he stopped short as he became aware of a stench close by.

“Priest,” said the soft voice, and Reid felt the energy drain from him. He turned around. Brightwell was inches from his face. Reid opened his mouth to speak, and the blade entered him so swiftly that all that emerged from his throat was a pained grunt. He heard the small man moving into the undergrowth, following Bartek. A second figure accompanied him: a woman with long dark hair.

“You failed,” said Brightwell.

He drew Reid to him, embracing him with his left arm even as the knife continued to force its way upward. His lips touched Reid’s. The priest tried to bite him, but Brightwell did not relinquish his hold, and he kissed Reid’s mouth as the priest shuddered and died against him.