Betrayed Page 4

  Chapter 4 - Present Day

  Roy was going to die.

  Liam leaned against the wall, taking in the scene in front of him. Roy Masterson lay on the bed dying from cancer. His wife, two daughters, and hospice members surrounded his bedside, and his time on Earth was soon coming to an end.

  Liam had arrived a little early in Flint, Michigan, to do his job of escorting Roy’s soul to the Fringe, and he was becoming impatient, which he knew he shouldn’t be. He checked the device at his wrist, a black onyx square about four inches long and three inches wide. With a tap, its black face turned white, and he went over his schedule for the night.

  As an Angel of Tolerance, he was in for another busy evening.

  Roy was number one on his list. Why Liam had shown up prematurely, he didn’t know. There wasn’t a chance of the guy passing away early. Everyone’s life had a basic plan that twisted and turned in destiny depending on decisions made. Death never happened early.

  Liam studied the room where Roy would die. The white walls were covered with pictures of family. There was a plush, dark-blue rug under his feet, and a dark-blue comforter with pink-and-white flowers on Roy’s bed.

  As he entered the bathroom area, he gazed in the mirror but saw nothing. The reflection should have been of a twenty-seven-year-old man with brown wavy hair falling to his collar and light green eyes the color of grass. He stood at six foot two, and his thick body was clad in black leather: pants, vest, and boots, which was standard wear for his tier of Angels of Death.

  He ran his hand through his hair and turned around to explore the closet.

  As he whistled softly, his fingers traced over the fabrics of Roy’s shirts. Shoes, Christmas wrapping paper, and odds and ends covered the shelves. On the last shelf, he found a small wooden box that looked interesting. With a flick of his finger it opened, and he smiled at its contents.

  “Sweet,” he said, not concerned about anyone hearing him. Even after five years as an Angel of Tolerance, it still bothered him that he didn’t exist to everyone on Earth. They couldn’t see him, touch him, or hear him. He was an invisible entity unless they were dead.

  The box contained Cuban cigars, and his mouth salivated at the thought of puffing on one. One thing that really sucked about being an Angel of Death was that he couldn’t enjoy the things of the living. Humans, of course, didn’t fully appreciate the offerings they had, such as the taste of a really good steak, a bottle of old scotch, or the scent and taste of a Cuban cigar. Sighing as he took one out of the box, and stood there knowing he had been guilty of underappreciating all that life had to offer when he was breathing, when his heart was beating, and it irritated him to no end that he didn’t live larger and stronger. He’d done a pretty good job of living fast and hard, but he always thought there would be a tomorrow to do the things he wanted to do, and he hated that his tomorrow had been taken from him by a goddamned fire.

  Liam tapped the device at his wrist and the white screen glowed, revealing that it would soon be time for him to take Roy. He had lost track of time with his snooping.

  Walking back to the bedroom, he took his place against the wall across from Roy’s bed. He held the cigar up to his nose and inhaled deeply, wishing he could smell it.

  At ten seconds, Roy’s milky blue eyes opened and his gaze landed on Liam. Liam stepped away from the wall and unfurled his wings. Roy’s eyes widened, and he whispered, “Are you an angel?”

  Liam gave him a small smile and nodded.

  “Do you see him, Martha? My God, angels do exist.”

  Three . . . two . . . and one.

  Roy shut his eyes, took one last ragged breath, then his spirit floated from his body and over to Liam. Before Liam stood a transparent ghost of a good-looking young man with a square jaw and twinkling eyes, which was such a contradiction to the cancer-riddled, wrinkled body lying on the bed. When a person died, they were always taken to Heaven or Hell in their favorite period of life. Looked like Roy liked his mid-twenties the best.

  Roy and Liam watched as the hospice worker called his death, and Martha and their two daughters cried harder.

  “You ready, mate?” Liam asked, checking his device again as he walked toward the wall while calculating flight time to his next death. He had never been late for an assignment, and he didn’t plan on starting now. They needed to move along.

  Roy nodded, but hesitated before following him. “I hate that they’re so upset at my death. I suffered with that cancer for a long time. I would hope they’d be happy I’m free of it now.”

  Liam nodded and strode over to the bedside table. He picked up a watch and said, “Martha gave you this, right?”

  Roy nodded, his sad gaze not leaving the scene in front of him. Liam glanced over at Martha, who was holding Roy’s hand and sobbing, her daughters standing on each side with their hands on her shoulders.

  Liam walked back over to Roy, handed him the watch, and held up the cigar. “You still like these?”

  Roy nodded and smiled. “Love them. Martha hated them and would only let me smoke them outside.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” Liam said. “Put that in your mouth and I’ll fire it up.”

  Roy did as he was told, and Liam waved his hand in front of the cigar, the tip turning a fiery red. “I have to say I’m a little jealous, Roy.”

  “You can’t smoke?”

  “Nope. Can’t do much as an Angel of Death except deliver dead people to their final resting place.”

  “Where am I going?” Roy asked, as Liam turned.

  “You’re heading upstairs.”

  He didn’t know anything about Roy’s life or how he had lived it. He just knew that he needed to get Roy’s soul to the Fringe at the allotted time so he wasn’t late for his next appointment.

  Liam didn’t bother with doors. He led Roy toward the wall that would put them on the front lawn.

  Just as they were going through the wall, he heard, “Mom, do you smell that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do! Your father must have taken a cigar with him to Heaven!”

  “Mom! His watch . . . it was here just a second ago . . .”

  It was twenty-seven degrees out, but neither Liam nor Roy could feel it.

  “Nice touch on the cigar,” Roy commented. “And the watch.”

  Liam nodded. Another Angel of Death he’d met at the Fringe told him that little tricks like that helped those left behind cope with a loved one’s death and reaffirmed their belief in the afterlife. It also seemed to move the soul along a little faster when those he or she was leaving were comforted.

  He checked the device at his wrist again; he was due in Chicago in a few minutes and hoped it wasn’t going to be another gang fight. He’d had just about enough of those little peckers.

  Waving his hand, the portal appeared, revealing an almost-blinding white light. “Good news, Roy, you’ve been a good boy and you’re on your way to Heaven. Step inside, and maybe I’ll see you around up there.”

  Thankfully, Roy did as he was told, and Liam gave him a quick wave as the portal spun shut.

  Once again alone, he sighed and checked his watch for the exact coordinates of his next soul.

  Liam closed his eyes and allowed his wings and the wind to lift him upward into the night air. Roy seemed like a nice guy, and he hoped the rest of his charges this evening were as easy as Roy had been. There were always those few who fought Liam to get back into their bodies, like they could foil the Creator’s plans. When you were dead, you were dead, and there wasn’t any changing that. As long as an Angel of Death was there, you were either going to Heaven or Hell.

  Liam was happy he didn’t have to deliver people to Hell. Those people were usually rude, ignorant, vile pieces of trash, just as they had been in life. If they didn’t fall into that category, they were crybabies, asking for sympathy for the horrible lives they had lived and the terrible things they had done. It took a special kind of angel—a really hardened angel—to deal with the Hell deliveries. T
o be any tier of an Angel of Death, you needed a thick skin, but to make deliveries to Hell, you had to check your soul at the door.

  Moments later, Liam landed in the exact coordinates of his next death and sighed heavily. He stood in the middle of the street in a neighborhood he had been in before, one that was notorious for gang activity.

  The small houses were bunched together along the tree-lined street, each the exact replica of the one before, just a different color. Most of them had small yards, some overgrown with weeds, while others had little rugs of grass littered with bikes and toys. Some of the streetlights above weren’t in working order, and the moon hid behind the trees in the park, casting faint shadows along the quiet street.

  One by one, more Angels of Death appeared. An Angel of Innocence dressed in a pink robe materialized in front of a white house with green trim that sat across from the park. Liam noted the discarded pink bike in the overgrown front yard and hoped that if the little girl was being taken to Heaven, her death would be instant and free of suffering.

  It had once bothered him to see an angel ready to take an innocent, especially the death of children, but now he felt very little. He had become calloused in his job as an Angel of Death. Death was just something that happened every day, something he had witnessed thousands upon thousands of times.

  Another angel, an Angel of Sin, appeared across the street and stood next to a tree. The angel was dressed in a black-hooded robe, his face invisible. He was waiting to take his death to Hell. Liam gave him a wave, and the angel nodded. Another Angel of Sin appeared about ten yards away. Those guys weren’t exactly friendly or the life of the party, but what Angel of Death was?

  Two more Angels of Tolerance, angels from his tier, materialized ten feet in front of Liam. One of the angels headed to the left, his wings folding onto his back. The other angel folded her black wings as well, the crystals glinting under the streetlight. Liam couldn’t help but admire her physique. He might be dead, but he was still a man.

  Long blonde hair fell in waves to the middle of her small waist, and her legs were long and strong. He knew that when she turned around, deep brown eyes would greet him, and if he was lucky, he might get a smile.

  “We have to stop meeting like this or people are going to start to gossip,” he said, and she turned and glared at him.

  “I doubt that,” she scoffed and turned away.

  It was Adela, the first Angel of Death he had met when he’d landed in the Fringe, and she was the prettiest thing he had ever laid eyes on. It pissed him off that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it either. The rules were pretty strict on angel interaction: it had to be all business. Plus, even if he decided to break the rule, which he would happily do if there was a good-enough payout for it, he couldn’t enjoy the pleasures of the flesh anyway.

  Rumor had it that she been hung in 1692 accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. She had been an Angel of Death for over three hundred years and had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, not to mention an attitude worse than his. But that didn’t stop him from messing with her.

  “How many souls are on your list tonight?” he asked. She wasn’t the chatty type, and he knew it irritated her when he spoke to her. He had seen her interact with other Angels of Death just fine, but something about him really got under her skin.

  “Too many.”

  “Me too.”

  Liam sighed and looked around. It definitely looked like this was going to be a gang fight with an innocent being taken in the melee, and he wondered what the idiots would be fighting over this time.

  He checked the device at his wrist—about a minute before it all went down. His death was named Jermaine Knox.

  A car slowly swung around the corner and headed their way, and he heard voices from the park, but he couldn’t see anyone yet. Counting the other angels and himself, there would be seven deaths tonight.

  Liam focused on the car, then turned to the park. “Looks like another gang fight.”

  Adela nodded.

  “I’m so sick of this shit,” Liam said. “It’s all so senseless. I wonder what they’re fighting over this time.”

  Adela shrugged and turned to him.

  “Another innocent is going to go as well,” he said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder to the white house with the green trim. “An Angel of Innocence just went in.”

  Adela said nothing as she turned toward the car that was almost upon them.

  “Well, here we go. Let the carnage begin,” Liam muttered.

  The car came to a stop and turned off its lights. The voices from the park were clearer now, but Liam still wasn’t able to make out what they were saying. However, he was able to see some human forms in the moonlight.

  Five men slid out of the car and fanned out over the neighborhood, hiding behind trees and other vehicles.

  “A bloody ambush,” Liam said.

  He counted six men coming out of the park. Just as one passed the Angel of Death in a black-hooded robe, a shot rang out and the man went down. Yelling and screams erupted from the men in the park and the shootout began.

  Liam remembered his first gunfight—it had scared the shit out of him. It had been a party gone bad in East L.A. He didn’t know all the particulars, but there was a lot of screaming and yelling when a man knocked on the front door and began firing when the occupants of the house opened it. Liam’s death had been the guy who’d opened the door. Liam had stepped backward when the gun was raised, and his instinct told him to run. The blast of the gun had been louder than the rap music playing in the house.

  Now the sound of gunfire didn’t faze him, and he watched the drama unfold before him with detachment, as if he were watching a horror movie he had seen a few times and nothing on the screen surprised him.

  As round after round of bullets flew through the air, he didn’t move. Lights in the houses came on, and he could hear the screams of fear from inside. One man stepped out from behind a car and took aim at the men near the park. His body flew backward as a bullet pierced his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, Liam saw the Angel of Innocence emerge from the white house with the soul of a little girl no more than four or five years old wrapped protectively in her arms. The angel spread her wings and disappeared into the night sky.

  At the feet of the black-hooded Angel of Sin, a spirit of a boy in his early teens rose. The angel waved his hand and the portal appeared. The glow from inside was not the white that Liam was accustomed to seeing, but a fiery red. The angel motioned for the soul to enter, but the soul wasn’t going to go willingly. From the folds of the robe, a long bony finger hooked under the chin of the teen’s soul, then lifted the soul and set him inside the portal. It swirled shut, and the Angel of Sin disappeared.

  The gunfight raged on, and Liam heard sirens in the distance. He hoped that this would all come to an end before the police arrived and one of them ended up dying.

  Five of the seven souls to die had been claimed and the angels had left. A young black man in his early twenties, dressed in baggy jeans, an oversized white T-shirt, and a Coach jacket came running toward Liam and Adela, fright clearly written on his face. His eyes bulged when a bullet hit him in the back and came out the front of his chest. He staggered a few steps, then fell at Adela’s feet, his face thudding on the asphalt.

  He took his last breath and his soul rose.

  “Hello, Tyrone,” Adela said. Liam noted that she didn’t sound happy about meeting Tyrone. Instead, her voice was laced with irritation and a whole lot of “let’s-get-this-shit-over-with-quickly.”

  Tyrone stood up and looked at his chest, almost as if he was expecting to see a bloody bullet wound, but there was nothing as people didn’t get sent to Heaven with holes in their chests. Tyrone’s black hair was cut short, and he stared at her. “Who are you?” he asked, his dark eyes wide.

  “I’m the Angel of Death who is going to deliver you to your final resting place,” she said, waving her hand. The portal appeared.

/>   “I’m not getting in there.” Tyrone shook his head and took a step back.

  “You don’t have a choice,” she snapped.

  “Fuck yes, I do. I can run.”

  “No, you can’t, you stupid shit,” Liam growled, stepping up behind Adela. “You’re dead. Only one place to go, and that’s toward the light.”

  “I ain’t getting in there.”

  “Get. In. The. Portal,” Liam demanded.

  The kid looked around again, as if he were going to run.

  “There’s nowhere to run, Tyrone,” Adela said, crossing her arms over her chest. “No one can see you. You would be stuck here for the rest of your days, completely alone. No one to talk to, nothing to do. Remember those movies of ghosts walking the Earth alone, trying to get someone to see them, to pay attention to them? That’s going to be you. However, if you follow my directions and step into the portal, you will go to Heaven. Trust me: it’s a nice place.”

  Liam could tell the kid was weighing her words.

  “You can have an eternity of nothing here or an eternity of Heaven. Your choice,” Adela said.

  Liam snickered at her ultimatum. There weren’t many who refused to get into the portal. The fact of the matter was that Tyrone didn’t have a choice. He had to go where he was supposed to go, and that was the end of the final chapter that made up his life.

  Adela was feeding him a long line of B.S., making it seem like getting into the portal was as tempting as chocolate ice cream with sprinkles and whipped cream. Really, who could resist?

  “I’m seriously going to Heaven?”

  “Surprisingly, yes,” Adela said with a sigh. Liam wondered if she was about to lose it and give Tyrone a tongue-lashing he wouldn’t forget.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. And get in. I’ve got places to go, and I will leave your dead ass here to walk among the living alone for eternity. I’ve done it before.”

  “Jesus, you stupid punk,” Liam yelled. “Just get in the fucking portal already!”

  Tyrone reluctantly stepped into the portal, and Adela waved her hand, shutting the gateway that would send the kid to his eternity.

  Adela turned and gave Liam a glare that elevated the saying, “if looks could kill” to a whole new level. “I can take care of my own deaths,” she growled.

  Liam walked back to his original coordinates, a chill running down his spine. Man, that woman could hang icicles in Hell.

  “Looks like mine’s last,” he said, ignoring her scowl. He watched the cop car pull around the corner. “I love that threat, by the way—rotting alone on Earth for all eternity.”

  “It’s very effective.”

  He would remember to use that with his most difficult deliveries in the future.

  Focusing back to the bloodbath at hand, all who could run were long gone, and those who were dead had been taken. There was one body about fifteen feet in front of him. As if the guy knew he was being watched, he lifted his head in Liam’s direction and squinted. Liam checked his device and saw that the guy had twenty seconds until death.

  The guy, probably in his late teens or early twenties, stood up and tried to run while holding his stomach, but he fell at Liam’s feet.

  The soul rose, and a pre-teen boy stared up at Liam. “G’day,” Liam said. “Here’s where you get off this ride called Life.” He waved his hand, revealing the portal. The kid looked at it hesitantly.

  “Go on now. Get in.”

  “I wish I never joined a gang,” the kid mumbled.

  Liam shrugged. “Well, that’s the thing about life, mate. You have choices to make. You make the wrong ones and you end up dead in the middle of the street over some stupid turf war, or whatever you guys were fighting about.”

  The kid nodded.

  “Hurry up and get in there. I haven’t got all night.”

  The boy did as he was told. Liam waved his hand and the portal closed. “I get irritated at the chatty ones,” Liam said. “So, Adela, did you hang around because you think you can learn something from me? Or perhaps you were thinking of seducing me?”

  Adela shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Considering I’ve been doing this over three hundred years, I don’t think you can teach me a damn thing. And as for the seduction, even if it could happen, it wouldn’t.”

  Liam laughed. “Ah, but I can be very persuasive, love.”

  “Don’t call me ‘love.’”

  “Okay, honey.”

  Liam watched with a twinge of satisfaction as anger crossed her face. Why he liked to get this angel riled up, he didn’t know. Maybe it was because she looked so damn hot when she was mad.

  “Piss off,” she sneered.

  “Oh, come on now, Adela. Such awful language from such a pretty mouth! You know that’s a total turn-on for me, right?”

  She glared at him, then looked at the black device on her wrist.

  Liam’s device beeped. “There’s my next one. I’ve got to run, love.”

  “As do I,” Adela said.

  “Would you care to travel together for a bit?”

  Adela shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Ah, come on, woman. Even an old, cold witch like you can’t resist my charming ways.”

  Adela gave him a small smile. Not the one he was looking for, but he’d take it.

  “Actually, if you call that charm, you have a lot to learn. And you’re extremely easy to resist, Liam.”

  Liam threw his head back and laughed. It was the first time she had ever used his name. “I can tell I’m breaking you down, Adela,” he said, unfurling his wings as she did the same.

  Liam had taken to flying like he had been doing it his whole life. When he had first trained with Evangeline, she had been surprised by how well he adjusted to his wings. As far as he was concerned, flying was the best part of his job as an Angel of Death. He loved traveling through the stars, the winds of time and space blowing against his face.

  As they lifted up in the air and went their separate ways, Liam smiled, hoping he would see Adela again soon.