01 - Defending Angels by Mary Stanton

Author:Mary Stanton [Stanton, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2012-11-09T12:20:26+00:00

Twelve

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

—Hamlet, Shakespeare

The wind whipped up as Bree closed the office door behind her and stepped into Angelus Street. There was weather blowing in from somewhere—October was the peak of hurricane season, and they’d lucked out this year, at least so far. There had been one tropical storm in mid-September, and then all was quiet.

Bree looked up. The sun was westering, and the horizon was shot through with orange and red. A spray of white, feathery clouds hugged the southeast corner of the sky.

“What do you think, Sasha? Are we in for a mighty rain?”

The dog looked up at her anxiously and whined. He didn’t need to be carried to the car any longer—he was hopping along remarkably well on his cast—so it must be something else.

“You can’t be hungry,” she said. “Lavinia’s stuffed you full of chicken and rice.”

Sasha snarled at the graves in the cemetery, his eyes closed to mere yellow slits. Then he threw back his head and howled. Bree’s skin prickled at the sound.

Come by here.

Bree whirled. The voice, if voice it was, came from under the live oak.

Ahhh, Bree. Come by here.

She squinted into the dying light. A tall, dark pillar of shadow moved among the strands of Spanish moss. The form spun, shifted, turned, like smoke from a smoldering fire.

It moved against the wind, as smoke never could. The darkness was a sullen riot of bruised purple, fetid green, and oily black. Bree knew whose grave lay beneath the tree. Josiah Pendergast. She took a step forward and nearly stumbled over Sasha. He pressed against her knees, lips drawn over his eyeteeth in a silent snarl.

Two fiery eyes appeared in the upper part of the column—as suddenly as if something wakened. The dreadful, smutty colors compressed. Then a thin cylinder of the stuff raised itself from the columnar mass and beckoned to her.

Bree. Come by here.

Bree pushed Sasha aside. She took another step forward, and another.

And she saw herself at the top of a mountain. A glory of clouds rolled beneath her feet. And she knew, knew with every fiber of her spirit, that what she wanted most in the world was just beyond her reach. If she leaned farther, farther, she would leave the peak and leap into space, to be caught up in the rush of the cormorant’s wings. Into absolute, utter belief. No questions. Ever again.

The wind rose and whipped the treetops with a sudden roar. With a rumbling crack, the door to the little frame house crashed open, and Ron stepped into the dying light. The wind eddied around him in a vast rush of sound and for a brief, world-tilting moment, Bree thought the wind came from his outstretched palms. “You still here, Bree?”

The wind rushed, calmed, and died away. The column under the oak trembled, shivered, and drifted into nothing.

Bree took a huge gulp of air. Ron bounced down the steps to the fence and unlocked his bicycle.

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