Whistling Past the Graveyard (Nicki Styx) Read online

  “The revenants,” Nyx said.

  I swallowed, hard. An eerie wailing began, getting louder and louder, until I was tempted to cover my ears.

  “They know you’re here,” he said. “We shall have to go quickly.”

  I glanced around for a path, but saw nothing but stony ground. “Go where?”

  “Down, of course.”

  The shadows on the rock face leapt higher and higher, the wailing becoming more high-pitched and frantic. Before I realized what was happening, Nyx grabbed me around the waist with one big, hard arm, and launched himself from the cliff, taking me with him. My screeching joined that of the revenants, and the world became a blur of hellish sights and sounds as we flew down, down and down. To each side of me, the revenants danced and howled and capered like mad things, straining at me with their shadowy arms. The air was hot, hitting my face like a blast furnace as we passed over the fires at the base of the cliff, stinking of sulphur and heavy with ash. I found myself clutching at Nyx even though touching him was repellent, and squeezed my eyes shut as the rocks below got closer and closer and closer.

  Then, on a slight updraft that left me gasping, Nyx touched down, and let go of me so fast that I stumbled, falling to my hands and knees on the rocky ground.

  “Thanks for the warning!” I shouted, frightened out of my wits and absolutely furious at the same time.

  He regarded me impassively, looking about fifteen feet tall from my current vantage point, and shrugged. “Coddling you was never part of the bargain,” he said. He raised a hand and pointed at a spot behind me. “The woman and child are over there. Go and retrieve them.”

  “‘Retrieve them’? Do I look like a dog to you?” I got up, giving him the dirtiest look I could muster.

  “No.” He leaned down, giving me a mean, red-eyed glare in return. “You look like a scared, scrawny little chick who just had her feathers ruffled. Get over it, and do what my master wants you to do.”

  He was an ugly black demon from Hell, and I was just a puny human, but I was a pissed off puny human. “I’m not here because of what your master wants,” I yelled, saying the word ‘master’ as insultingly as I could. “I’m here to do what’s right.”

  “Bah.”

  “You sound just like your ‘master’.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t meant as a compliment.” I whirled, giving Nyx my back, and looked around for a woman and child.

  In front of me was a big iron gate, charred from flames and tipped with wicked-looking spikes. At its base sat a dark-haired woman, wearing what looked like a burlap sack, cradling a baby in her arms. She was pretty in a wild, primitive kind of way, smudged with ashes yet looking oddly at home amid the rocks and fires that surrounded her. Her eyes were a brilliant shade of blue, glowing bright against her skin, which was a lovely shade of caramel.

  I walked toward her, watching as she bent her head and cooed something soft to the child in her arms. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem the least bit interested in my arrival, or the ugly black gargoyle at my back.

  “Hi.” I stopped a few feet away, and squatted so we were facing each other. “I’m Nicki.”

  She looked at me, keeping a finger on the baby’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t help you.”

  I blinked, momentarily taken aback. Then it dawned on me—she thought I was dead, on my way through the gate.

  “I don’t need any help.” I gave her my friendliest smile, glancing at the baby. “I’m here to help you. Both of you.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do for us,” she said. “I’m just waiting for my husband.”

  Ah. That simple statement explained a lot.

  “What makes you so sure he’s coming?” I settled myself cross-legged on the stony ground. “Is he a bad man?”

  She frowned, shaking her head again. Her hair, long and dark, looked like silk. “Oh, no. Seth is an angel.”

  Realizing that I might be dealing with some major denial issues here, I bit my lip, thinking carefully about what to say next.

  “I mean, he was an angel,” she clarified. “But he fell.”

  I gave a little shrug, trying to empathize. “Hey, nobody’s perfect, right?”

  “But he is perfect,” she insisted. “He just made the mistake of falling in love with me.”

  Arguing would get me nowhere, so I turned my attention to the baby. It was wrapped in a blanket despite the heat, and I could see very little except a scrunched-up little face. No way of telling if it was a boy or a girl, but it was tiny, and didn’t look more than a few weeks old. “What’s your baby’s name?”

  The woman gazed down at the infant, face softening with love. “She has none,” she answered simply, “for she did not live to see her naming day.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I couldn’t imagine the pain of losing an infant, then reminded myself that this woman hadn’t lost an infant, not yet.

  “‘Naming day’?” The phrase was an odd one. It sounded archaic, and rather primitive, just like the woman herself, and it struck me suddenly that this mother and child might have been sitting at the gates of Sheol for a very long time.

  “A naming day takes place after one full turning of the moon,” she said, stroking the baby’s cheek with a finger. “Her father would’ve have named her Gili, for it means ‘joy’.”

  I didn’t really want to ask the next question, but sometimes a spirit needed to remember and accept their own death before they could move on. “What happened to you? Why are you here?”

  “My husband was in the high pasture, gathering the sheep,” she murmured, “when the warriors came. I took the babe and ran, but they—” She bit her lip and began rocking back and forth, holding the baby a little bit tighter.

  “It’s alright,” I whispered, for I didn’t really want to hear what they’d done to her.

  “Seth will come eventually.” She straightened, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. “Then we can be together again.”

  “I think you’re waiting in the wrong place,” I said. I glanced around, unsure whether the Light could penetrate this far into the depths of Darkness. “There’s a Light, a brilliant, white light, and all you have to do is look for it. Inside the Light is a place filled with love and mercy and forgiveness, a place of peace and joy. I swear to you, you and your baby would be so much happier there.”

  “I know,” she said softly, surprising me. “I’ve seen it.”

  “But… I don’t understand.” I honestly didn’t. Having seen the Light with my own eyes, having felt the indescribable incandescence surrounding me, I couldn’t imagine turning my back on it.

  She rocked the babe in her arms, gazing at me with her bright blue eyes. “I can’t go without Seth,” she said simply. “He gave it all up for me, don’t you see? The gates of Heaven are barred to him now, for defying his Creator and choosing a human existence with me, and our child. If and when he ever dies, this is where he will end up, and this is where I will be waiting.”

  The hair on my arms rose straight up. Having already met one fallen angel in Sammy Divine, I now understood that she was speaking literally, not figuratively, about her husband’s angelic status.

  “Holy crap,” I muttered, not feeling the least bit guilty about resorting, once again, to profanity.

  A dark shadow fell over us both. “What’s taking so long?” growled Nyx, behind me. “I have work to do elsewhere.”

  I turned my head to glare at him over my shoulder. “It’s complicated,” I said. “Leave us alone.”

  “It’s not the least bit complicated,” he retorted. “She doesn’t belong here, and she needs to go.”

  I looked back at the woman, who was regarding Nyx calmly, without an ounce of fear. “She doesn’t want to go. She’s waiting for someone.”

  “He knows why I’m here,” the woman stated.

  Intrigued, I stood up, brushing ashes from my jeans. Nyx was glowering fiercely at us, his eyes burni
ng red.

  “My master wants you gone,” he snarled at her, “so go you shall.”

  “Your master has no power over me, and he knows it,” she returned. “He owes Seth a debt, which he has sworn to honor.”

  My eyebrows shot sky high at this new bit of information, but Nyx had apparently reached the end of his patience. He stepped forward, grabbing me around the waist again.

  “Put me down,” I shouted, squirming and kicking, but it was like arguing with a stone statue.

  “Time for Plan B,” he stated, and flapped his wings. We shot up, up, up and up, moving so fast that I became dizzy. The world devolved into a blur of heat and noise, nothing solid or real except the iron-hard band of muscle around my waist. I must’ve passed out, because the next thing I knew I was lying on a park bench, under a streetlight, with Nyx looming over me.

  I sat up, very carefully, holding my head to keep it from spinning. “Do that again, and I swear I’ll throw up on you.”

  He stepped back, out of range, as though I might do it anyway.

  “Where the hell are we?” Nothing looked familiar; rundown buildings surrounded us, bits of trash littered the streets. It was full dark, and there were no people around.

  “Philadelphia,” he said.

  “Philadelphia?” I got to my feet, alarmed. “What are we doing in Philadelphia?”

  Nyx gave me the nasty equivalent of a gargoyle smile. “We agreed that I would bring you back unharmed, but we never agreed where I would bring you.”

  His wings rose and flapped, and with a spring, he bounded into the air.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “That’s not fair!”

  “Life’s not fair, Nicki Styx,” he shouted back. “Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  And then he was gone, and I was alone in a strange city, thousands of miles from home. I groped in my pocket for my cell phone, but it wasn’t there.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, and looked around for some lights, or traffic, or just some general signs of civilization, but wherever part of the city I was in, it was like being in a ghost town. “Now that’s a profanity.” I chose a direction and started walking, telling myself that everything was going to be okay.

  I was actually starting to believe it, until I heard footsteps behind me. I turned, and saw two men running toward me, fast.

  “Holy crap,” I breathed, and took off running myself.

  Chapter 2

  “Go tell the Watchers of Heaven, who have deserted the lofty sky, and their holy everlasting station, who have been polluted with women, and have done as the sons of men do, by taking to themselves wives, and who have been greatly corrupted on the Earth; that on the earth they shall never obtain peace.” – Book of Enoch, Ch. 12:5-7.

  ~~~~~~

  “It’s not right,” Seth muttered. “They’re not right.” An angry swipe of the brush obliterated the eyes of the portrait, leaving a smear of blue to mar the face of the woman who smiled up from the canvas, arms wrapped around a small bundle of cloth. Swaddled within the cloth was a newborn babe, eyes closed tightly in the sleep of the innocent, one tiny fist just touching the plump chin. “None of it’s right,” he said, louder, though there was no one to hear.

  A surge of emotion hit him, an all-too familiar rush of rage and frustration. He threw the brush to the ground and swept the canvas from its frame in one sudden, backhanded motion. The portrait hit the far wall of his studio with an unsatisfyingly small crack, which told him only that the wooden framework was broken. He fought the urge to throw himself on the canvas, to rip and rend it into small pieces until nothing remained but scraps.

  It would do no good.

  The memories would remain, as constant and unchanging as the emotions he’d felt when Mara first offered him the small bundle within her arms.

  His daughter, who hadn’t lived to see her naming day.

  Moving to the window, he opened it, letting the night air into the room, hoping the coolness of it would ease his temper. It wasn’t enough, however, so he ducked his head and climbed over the sill onto the fire escape. The ladder that led to the roof was rusty and crumbling, much like the rest of the building, but he climbed it steadily until he stood on the low wall that rimmed the rooftop, looking out over the city.

  Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. The irony of the motto never failed to amuse him, except that tonight his heart held no room for amusement.

  Lights. Everywhere he looked there were lights, their combined gleam shielding the stars from his view. At least up here he was away from most of the street noise, which is why he’d chosen this building as his home to begin with. The brick and brownstone construction muffled sound much better than the modern-day concrete block and glass monstrosities that filled so much of the city, and he preferred seedy neighborhoods like this one to the more upscale areas. People knew how to mind their own business, especially once he’d staked out his territory with a few midnight visits to those who thought themselves powerful. Bones broke, and flesh bled, and guns and knives were of no use against a creature like him. Their terror when he appeared, wings spread and expression forbidding, proved that fear was the great equalizer, no matter how much bravado men professed before other men.

  Far below, a woman’s scream carried to him on the night wind, but he ignored it, for it was none of his concern. A prostitute, perhaps, who’d shorted her pimp on her evening earnings. No decent woman would be roaming these streets at such an hour.

  It came again, louder this time, just below where he stood, and he glanced down to see a woman run through the alley between his building and the next. Two men followed, moving fast but with an ease that told him they knew what he did: they had her cornered, for the alley had but one way out.

  He turned away, leaving the woman to her fate.

  Oh, what fools ye mortals be.

  She screamed again, a desperate sound, and the men’s laughter carried faintly to him as they caught up with her.

  It was the laughter that caused his rage to flare anew: what right had they to laugh when his wife and daughter could not? Anger drove him, and without further thought, he spun, and threw himself off the roof.

  Three seconds later he landed, soundless, behind the men laughing lewdly at the woman they’d pinned in the alley. She was the only one to see him, and her eyes, already wide and glazed with fear, went wider still.

  The first man’s head hit the brick wall of the building with a dull thud as Seth shoved him from behind. The second one turned, still laughing, and Seth punched him, hard, feeling the crunch of a nose breaking beneath his knuckles. The thug’s eyes rolled up as his knees gave out, his body falling sideways to hit that of his already unconscious companion.

  The woman stared at him open-mouthed, never taking her eyes from him. The sudden quiet was broken by the wail of a siren, far away.

  Seth would’ve gone then, lifted himself aloft by the same winds which carried him down, except for the words the woman spoke.

  “You must be Seth.” She swallowed, her face pale. “Nice wings.”

  Stunned to hear his name on a stranger’s lips, he took a step closer. “Do I know you?”

  “No, but unless I miss my guess, your name is Seth, and you’re a fallen angel.” She put her hand to her head, wincing. “I can’t believe Nyx dumped me off to get mugged like that, when he could’ve just told me where you were.”

  Her words made little sense to him, but her knowledge of who he was made him wary. “I’m no angel,” he lied, hoping to intimidate her into forgetting his existence. “I’m a devil, and it would be better for you to forget you ever saw me.”

  To his very great surprise, she flashed him a weary grin. “Sorry, but I’ve met the Devil, plus a few of his friends, and not one of them would’ve helped me like you just did.” She lowered her hand. There was blood on her fingers, and she stared at them a moment before looking him in the eye. “I think I hit my head.”

  Then she crumpled in a heap at his feet.

  Set
h cursed, a long and heartfelt one that he never tired of, no matter how many times he’d said it over the centuries, and bent to pick her up.

  Chapter 3

  I woke feeling stiff, and opened my eyes to yet another nightmare. Several of them, in fact—a row of canvases leaned against the wall in front of me, each of them showing hellish images of fire and death and destruction in smears of red, black and gray. Screaming faces, outstretched arms, agony personified in expressions of terror and horror, viewed sideways in a way that made me dizzy.

  A man sat on a stool not ten feet away, ignoring me as he worked at another painting I couldn’t see. He was big, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. His face was in shadow, but I didn’t really need see his face to know who he was.

  “Seth.”

  His head jerked around fast at the sound of his name, confirming it. I sat up slowly, realizing that I’d been laying on a couch. My head hurt, but not unbearably so.

  He got up, too, tossing down his paintbrush. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Nicki Styx.”

  He stared at me, unmoving. I couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous he was—dark hair, chiseled jaw, an absolutely perfect physique—everything one might expect of an angel, except for the look of pain in his eyes.

  “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy,” I touched my hand to the spot where my head hurt the worst, and found a small bandage there. “I met your wife earlier tonight. That’s why I’m here.”

  His hands, which had been hanging loosely at his sides, clenched into fists. “My wife is dead,” he stated harshly, “and has been for a very long time.”

  “I know,” I replied gently. “I’m so sorry.”

  He frowned, eyeing me with suspicion, and I had to decide whether to be blunt, or try to ease him into believing me.

  I went with blunt.

  “You were in the hills gathering the sheep, when some warriors came. Your wife was killed, along with your baby daughter.”