Fallen by Thomas E Sniegoski

Author:Thomas E Sniegoski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, General
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-12-11T03:26:14+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Within the unused bell tower of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Verchiel stared into the familiar face of human mortality. Since the Powers’ return from the poisonous wasteland that was Chernobyl, their human tracker had fallen terribly ill. The poor creature lay upon a plastic tarp in a darkened area of the tower where once a bell had hung. It shivered, moaning softly as it slowly died from the radioactive poisons it had been exposed to on their last hunt.

“Is there nothing more you can do for it?” Verchiel asked the human healer who was administering to the wounded Cassiel.

The healer, called Kraus, turned his blind, cataract-covered eyes toward the sound of Verchiel’s voice.

“I’ve done all I can, my master,” he said as he nimbly plucked a golden needle from inside a worn leather satchel and deftly placed a thick thread through its eye. His lack of vision had not affected his skill with a needle. “It won’t be long before he succumbs to—”

“Its skill served me well,” the Powers’ leader interrupted, taking his eyes from the dying boy covered in black oozing sores. “It will be bothersome to find another.”

Verchiel moved across the cluttered tower, its space now used for storage, to loom over the healer and his current patient, the boy almost completely forgotten. “And you, Cassiel,” he asked smoothly, “have you served me as well?”

“Yes, my lord,” Cassiel answered breathlessly as he lay upon the dusty floor while the blind old man sewed closed his wound.

“You say that Camael was there before you?” Verchiel asked as he watched the old man, whose job it was to care for the angels’ physical forms, pull shut the wound in his soldier’s chest with skillful stitches. Though primitive by angelic standards, the human apes did occasionally surprise even him with their usefulness.

Verchiel squatted beside the healer as he completed the task. “He will heal?” Verchiel asked. “The wound will not kill him?”

Kraus flinched from the power of Verchiel’s voice. “It…it will not,” the man stammered as he turned his blind gaze toward his master. “The injury will need time to mend, but it will heal.”

What is it about the defective ones, the blind, the mentally challenged, that makes them such superior servants? Verchiel wondered, thinking of the nonimpaired humans often driven to madness just by being in the angels’ presence.

“You are done here,” Verchiel proclaimed, and gently brushed the top of the older man’s head with the tips of his fingers. “See to the tracker; ease him into death if need be.’

The man gasped aloud, his body trembling as if in rapture, as if touched by God—or the next best thing. Kraus folded shut his satchel of healing instruments and scurried away to the darkened corner to help a dying member of his own breed.

Perhaps their imperfections make them more receptive to the extraordinary. It was a hypothesis Verchiel hoped to explore further someday, when their mission was finally complete. He roused himself from his contemplation. There was still much to do.

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