DARK ANGEL
by
R. R. Mallory
The dark angel awoke, spitted on his fiery bed. Black flames licked at his heels and hair, tormenting him, flaying at his skin like newly honed knives, but doing no harm to his body. He groaned in ceaseless agony. Lifting his heavy, unwilling body, he spread his dark wings and rose from his bed of pain.
As he soared higher toward the mountain from which the call had come, he rubbed his face and neck, and stretched his cramped muscles. It was Gabriel. Hadrian could tell by the echoes inside his head. He swallowed a bitter disappointment along with the futile pride he brought with him each time he was forced to respond.
How he wished Michael would meet him, as he had done once or twice. Michael would share with him a few moments of idle conversation about what miracles or catastrophes had occurred since last Hadrian awoke. But neither Michael nor Hadrian’s father troubled themselves with him very often.
Hadrian’s wakening ritual continued as he surveyed the land over which he flew. Idly, he cursed his father, as he always did, for offering him up as sacrifice for his own ends.
’Tis better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Oh how well he knew his father’s favorite phrase. Lucifer did rule in Hell, but it was Hadrian who paid the price, again and again, and would until eternity’s end.
Hadrian folded his wings and dropped lightly down on the peak of the mountain, settling in to wait for that prick Gabriel, with his holier-than-thou attitude. His lip to curled slightly at the wry thought of Gabriel being holier-than-thou.
His amusement lasted but a fraction of a second though. He rubbed his eyes. He was so tired. How many millennia had he served, how many had he yet to serve to pay off the endless debt left by his father when he abandoned Heaven? It did no good to think of such things, just as it served no purpose to remember the short happy time he’d spent with his mother before Lucifer claimed him.
His mother, who now served in Hell, served the evil master who had sired him. His beautiful mother, suffering for nothing more than Lucifer’s lust. He longed for just a few hundred years alone with his father. His fingers curled as if to claw the skin from that beautiful face Hadrian had inherited.
"Ah, boy, you look tired. Not sleeping well?" Gabriel settled quietly down on a rock just higher than the one Hadrian occupied. He folded his iridescent wings, tossed his head just enough to settle his pale hair about his shoulders, and smiled at Hadrian.
Hadrian kept his gaze lowered, as was appropriate in the presence of an archangel. "It wears on one, to sleep among the damned."
He regretted his words as soon as he’d said them, knowing Gabriel delighted in any chance to taunt and belittle him. "The damned among the damned, eh boy? So how’s your father?"
Hadrian lifted his head and looked Gabriel straight in the eye. "I never see Lucifer, as you well know."
Turquoise fire arced from Gabriel’s eyes and Hadrian blinked and ducked his head again, not fool enough to risk Gabriel’s wrath. There was not much else that could be done to him, but whatever might come to mind would come to Gabriel’s mind. And from Gabriel’s mind to God’s ear.
He waited, head bowed, for instructions.
"You’re to deliver a soul to hell."
Hadrian looked up, shocked. "A soul? Just one?"
Gabriel glared at him.
"I’m not to escort a full legion of the damned to Hell . . . or Heaven?" he asked innocently.
Gabriel flicked a strand of hair back over his shoulder and fluttered a couple of wing feathers restlessly. "This is a particularly sensitive mission. Correction of a mistake."
"A mistake?"
"You do not need to know the particulars. You will just deliver her."
Something in Gabriel’s voice brought chills to Hadrian’s spine. His chest tightened with something he could not name, but which he knew was going to stay with him throughout this mission.
"Begone now, Hadrian. Your countenance irritates me. You are too like your father for my taste." He waved a pale, long-fingered hand and musty darkness swirled around Hadrian’s head.
Hadrian folded his wings around him and concentrated on whirling with the cyclone, so as not to be beaten to death by the punishing winds. Then as suddenly as it had begun, the dark storm stopped, and Hadrian put out a hand to steady himself. He touched a wall.
Opening his eyes, he blinked in the harsh artificial light. As his vision cleared, he saw a door marked . . . "research" he mouthed. Glancing around, then down at himself, he saw that he was clothed in some sort of tightly woven garment that encased his legs and a looser, cooler tunic over his upper body, with a short coat over all. His feet were cramped inside tight, hot slippers.
He flexed his shoulders and pushed his hair back from his face. No wings. He vaguely recalled that occasionally the messengers who existed in the abyss were disguised as humans for certain missions. He arched his neck. Wings that were not there ached to be exercised in any case. With a slight trepidation, and a further tightening of his chest, he manipulated the knob on the door in front of him and stepped into a white, cold room.
He barely registered the woman sitting at the table before she spoke.
"Are you the new guy?" she asked, glancing up through her hair before thrusting a piece of paper toward him.
Hadrian licked his lips. "Yes," he said. His voice rang stridently in his ears. A harsh language.
"See what you make of this. I know your field is parapsychology but you’ve had some basic biology I trust."
Hadrian stepped over and took the paper, hardly looking at it. He instead studied the young woman. Her hair was pale blonde, and waved around her face like bits of clouds. He had not seen her face, obscured as it was by her unruly hair, but her shoulders were slender and her back was straight, even as she bent over the materials with which she worked. She was delicate, her hands long-fingered, her skin fair.
He looked down at his hand which clutched the paper, tossing his head when his hair fell over his shoulder. In contrast to her hand, his was sturdy, brown, fingers long and blunt, his wrist muscled and hard where it disappeared into the sleeve of the coat he wore.
"Well?" The young woman turned in her chair and looked at him.
She was lovely, in an ethereal, even angelic way. Her hair framed a perfectly formed heart-shaped face, from the bow-shaped mouth to the wide, bright eyes. The tightness in Hadrian’s chest became a vise, choking him.
Her bright blue eyes paralyzed him, struck a primal fear in him deeper than the constant fear of the Abyss, sharper than the terror he suffered each time he was consigned again to that Hell that was not even Hell.
"You’re not Doctor Samuels," she said accusingly.
Hadrian could not move. Her eyes were turquoise, and just moments before he had looked into eyes just like them.
Gabriel, you prick. You bred with a mortal.
A blind panic suffused him. Anger, terror, horror, vied within him for first chance at his breath. Gabriel had begat a half-angel, like Hadrian himself, and he’d sent Hadrian to clean up his mess.
"Who are you?" She stood. "Is something the matter?"
He shook his head, unable to speak for a moment as visions of his mission and her fate whirled about him like the dark cyclone. He swallowed and his shoulders began to throb with pain.
"Well? Who are you?"
"Ha-Hadrian." He said without thinking, then tried to regain control of his brain. "Doctor Hadrian . . . Morning Star."
"Morningstar," she repeated, her brow furrowing in thought. "Morningstar. I don’t remember that name on the list of candidates." A rather disgusted look crossed her face. "They did it again. Didn’t even consult me about . . . ." She glanced at him. "Look, it’s probably not your fault." She sighed. "Are you a parapsychologist at least?"
He nodded, wondering what a parapsychologist was.
She looked him up and down, and as her gaze traveled over him, an odd look crossed her face and her cheeks turned pink. "Morningstar? You’re Native American then? I hope that’s the current correct terminology. That explains your hair and eyes. You have the blackest eyes I’ve ever seen." Her cheeks burned brighter. "I’m sorry. I tend to speak my mind. I work pretty much alone, and I live alone, so my social graces are practically nil. Welcome to the Institute."
She smiled and stepped forward, holding her hand out toward him and Hadrian shrugged, fully expecting his wings to lift him away from the certain danger she risked by stepping close to him. Immediately, he remembered he was wingless, human. Not knowing what else to do, he held out his own hand and she took it.
Hadrian felt as if one of his father’s deadly lightning bolts had pierced him. The soft firmness of her hand sent shards of anguish stabbing into his heart. Her hand was cool, comforting, she seemed fashioned from light, as different from everything in his existence as Heaven from Hell.
He wished himself back on his fiery bed, back in the oblivion of the Abyss, rather than here to escort this small fragment of light into the eternal dark. He tried to smile. "Thank you," he said hoarsely.
She stared at him for a moment, then licked her lips and pulled her hand away. "I’m not sure you’re going to pass the dress code in jeans and a tee shirt, even with the sport coat," she remarked, backing away from him quickly.
He knew how she felt. Standing too close to her was torment. Her light burned him, even though her touch was cool. He was dreadfully sure his darkness pained her. It’s probably what brought the color to her pale cheeks.
"I’m Alena Gabor," she continued. "You’ll be working with me. This is my project." She waved her hand in a gesture that was so like her Gabriel’s it stunned Hadrian.
He wiped his palms down the front of his thighs. "What is your project?" he asked.
She shook her head wearily. "Didn’t they even tell you that?" She gave him a curious glance. "I hope I don’t scare you away. I mean your degree is in parapsychology, right?"
He nodded carefully.
"I have a grant to prove the existence of angels. Please don’t laugh."
Hadrian regarded her in mild shock. "I will not laugh, I assure you." Did he even remember how to laugh? "How did you become interested in angels?"
She shrugged and her turquoise eyes sparkled, but far from burning his eyes with blue fire like her father’s did, her gaze eased the burning in his eyes. Where it touched him, he felt as if a cool river had brushed against his skin.
"I don’t really know. I’ve always been fascinated with them. The idea is intriguing, don’t you think?"
Hadrian just stared at her. A vague memory of his life before he was whisked away to serve as Lucifer’s scapegoat brushed across his mind. His mother, telling him of the dark angel who had come to her in the night and beguiled her and left her with a beautiful son. He’d always been afraid she was insane. But he had not known fear until he’d discovered the truth of her tale. She had been cast into the fire and he into the Abyss. Neither the lovers nor the spawn of angels were allowed to remain on Earth.
"Uh oh," she muttered, watching his face. She sat down resignedly. "You can find the administrator’s office on the second floor. I’m sure they’ll pay you for your time so far. I’m sorry they didn’t tell you what the job entailed."
"Alena?"
She looked up at him and he saw dampness shimmering in the turquoise pools of her eyes.
"It’s just been a very long time since I considered whether angels exist."
She blinked and assessed him. "Do you really have a Ph.D.? You hardly look old enough to have graduated college."
"I’m older than I look, I assure you."
She chuckled. "You’d have to be."
"So tell me how you got started believing in angels." He propped one hip on the edge of her desk.
When he did, she glanced up at him and scooted her chair slightly backward.
Suddenly feeling devilish, Hadrian refused to budge. He propped a hand on the desk over her papers, very near her own hand.
She moved her hand. "I . . . didn’t say I believed," she said.
"But you do." When he looked down at her, his hair slipped over his shoulders. He tossed his head impatiently.
Alena stared at him. "Your hair is incredible. It is as black as your eyes, as black as the depths of Hell."
He stiffened.
"I’m sorry, I suppose that was rude. I’ve just never seen hair so black. It is incredible."
"No more incredible than yours. As bright as Heaven."
Alena touched a wayward tendril. "And as flyaway as a cherub, my mother used to say." She laughed, then sobered.
"You were going to tell me why you believe in angels."
"You probably wouldn’t be interested."
Hadrian reached out and touched her hair. "Oh but I am. Tell me."
Her face shone with shy eagerness. "Have you ever really thought about them? Angels I mean? What must they be like? Can you even imagine meeting an angel?"
Hadrian searched her face. "What would you do if you met an angel?"
Alena laughed, and the sound was like stardust scattering. She shook her head. "I think I would be scared to death. How awful, how beautiful they must be."
Hadrian’s fist clenched around the strands of her hair. "Did your mother tell you your father was an angel?"
Alena jerked as if he’d hit her. She threw herself out of the chair and stepped past him, almost knocking some books off a shelf in her haste. She whirled around. "Who are you?" she whispered. "You’re not the new researcher, are you?"
Hadrian stood in front of her. "She did, didn’t she? Your mother told you your father came to her as if in a dream and bedded her and begat you."
Alena moved to turn away but Hadrian wrapped his fingers around her upper arms, holding her in place. "She told you he was the archangel Gabriel. That his hair was as pale as the sun, that his face was beautiful, that his loving arms were better than any mortal’s could ever be?"
She turned deathly pale, and Hadrian knew he was right.
"Why are you saying these things to me? Who are you? How did you know?" Alena struggled against his grip, but Hadrian held her fast, not hurting her, but not allowing her to escape.
"Your hands are burning my arms," she cried.
He released her and she almost fell backward. He turned away. He had not meant to touch her. He certainly had not meant for his burning pain to hurt her. Those few seconds while he’d held her, his hands had felt like they were dipped in a cool mountain stream. He’d felt almost human, almost alive.
Please do not make me do this! he cried to an unresponsive God.
"Hadrian? Tell me." Alena’s hand touched his shoulder and he cried out, in pain and shock.
"Oh, who has hurt you? Your back feels covered with scars." She ran her cool hand over his throbbing shoulder blades, spreading comfort like a balm to his tortured stubs of wings.
He turned around, aware of hot tears searing his cheeks.
"Who are you?" Alena whispered.
"We must go now," he said brokenly. "We have no choice."
Then his raiment was gone and his wings cast dark shadows over her pale, lovely face as he wrapped her in them and whirled back into the vortex.
##
He blinked, and found himself standing in the presence of his father and Gabriel. The contrast between them hurt his eyes. His father, dark and powerful and more beautiful than any other angel in Heaven or Hell. And Gabriel, beautiful as well, but pale and delicate next to the mighty Lucifer. They turned as one to look at him, both faces clouded with fury.
"Hadrian."
"Father." Hadrian forced himself to hold the black gaze of the Son of the Morning Star.
"Have you completed your mission?"
Hadrian shrugged his shoulders, easing his wings down. "I assume so, since I am here and empty-armed." A brief regret flashed through him. "What will happen to your mistake, My Lord Gabriel?" he asked, shifting his gaze to the burning turquoise one.
"That is none of your concern, half-demon."
Lucifer shot a dark glance at Gabriel. "May I speak to my son?"
Gabriel shrugged and lifted his iridescent wings and soared away.
Hadrian closed his eyes. He felt like crying. He had escorted scores of the damned, had released souls from bodies so mangled they were not recognizable except by the existence of the soul, had dragged self-righteous mortals screaming out of their corporeal bodies, but nothing had ever hurt him like the sadness in Alena’s eyes. Nothing had ever affected him like the pain she felt on his behalf when she touched his mangled human shoulders.
"How fare thee?"
"Fine, Lucifer, just fine. When did such fatherly concern erupt in your dark breast?" Hadrian wiped his face and pushed his hair off his hot neck.
"The halfling stirred something in you?"
Hadrian peered at his father sidelong. "What will happen to her? She was good. Will she go to Heaven?"
Lucifer’s black wings ruffled. "The issue of angels cannot remain on Earth nor enter Heaven. You should know that better than anyone."
"Then what?" Hadrian shuddered. "Will you take her?"
"It is usual."
"Must you?"
"What would you have me do?"
Hadrian shook his head. "I do not know. I am weary. Even my bed of pain will be a comfort after this day."
"Son?"
"Don’t call me that."
Lucifer’s wings flared in anger. "I am Lucifer, and still your father."
"Thank you so much for that reminder."
Lucifer was silent. After a moment Hadrian glanced up, half-expecting to find himself alone. But his father sat silent, staring at him.
"What?" Hadrian challenged.
It was Lucifer’s turn to shake his head. He looked away, out over the mountains. "Perhaps I remember how it feels to be abandoned."
"Abandoned? You who would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven?"
Lucifer’s wings flared again. "Goodbye son."
"Goodbye, father."
The dark vortex whirled about Hadrian again, and he was swept into the heated cyclone. He wrapped his wings protectively around himself and clenched his jaw, preparing for the shocking plunge into the Abyss.
He came to rest as always, spitted on the fiery bed of flame. Writhing in agony, working to find a measure of ease in the river of fire, he prepared for the darkness to take him. He folded his wings, feeling the fingers of fire licking at his head and heels, and closed his eyes, hoping to ease their burning.
Something was different. Some different thing had invaded his private corner of the Abyss. Dreading an unnamed further torment, he waited.
Cool comfort touched the curve of his jaw and spread to his heated brow. His eyes felt washed by a cool blue stream, and his loins grew heavy with an unfamiliar but not unwelcome yearning.
"Alena," he whispered into the dark Abyss.
He felt her smile.