John Connolly - The Black Angel

Louis was carefully wiping his fingers and face.

“You got sauce on your tie,” I said.

He froze, then lifted the silk in his fingers.

“Motherf-” he began, before turning on Angel. “That’s your damn fault. You wanted to eat, so you made me want to eat. Damn.”

“I think you should shoot him,” I said, helpfully.

“I got some spare napkins, you want them,” said Angel.

Louis snatched some from Angel’s lap, sprinkled water on them, and tried to work on the stain, swearing all the time.

“If his enemies found out about his Achilles’ heel, we could be in real trouble,” I said to Angel.

“Yeah, they wouldn’t even need guns, just soy sauce. Maybe satay if they were really playing rough.”

Louis continued to swear at both of us and at the stain, all at once. It was quite a trick. It was also good to see a flash of his old self.

“It sold,” I said, getting down to business. “Two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“What’s the house’s cut?” asked Angel.

“Phil reckoned fifteen percent of the purchase price.”

Angel looked impressed. “Not bad. Did she tell you who the buyer was?”

“She wouldn’t even tell me the identity of the seller. Reid figures the box was stolen from Sedlec just hours after the discovery of the damage to the church, then made its way to the auction house through a series of intermediaries. It’s possible that the House of Stern itself was the final purchaser, in which case Ms. Stern made quite a killing today. As for the buyer, Stuckler wanted it badly. He’s obsessed, and he almost certainly had the money to fund his obsession. He told me that he was prepared to pay whatever it took. Under the circumstances, he probably regarded it as a bargain.”

“So now what happens?”

“Stuckler gets his fragment delivered to him and tries to combine it with whatever material he already has, in an effort to locate the Angel. I don’t think he’s one of the Believers, so they’ll make a move on him once he reveals himself as the purchaser. Maybe they’ll offer to buy the information, in which case they’ll be rebuffed, or he’ll try to strike a deal with them. It could be that they’ll simply take the direct approach. Stuckler’s house is pretty secure, though, and he has men with him. Murnos is probably good at his job, but I still think they’re underestimating the people with whom they’re dealing.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it works out,” said Louis.

“Probably badly for Stuckler,” I said.

Louis looked pained.

“I was talking about my tie…”

Brightwell sat in an easy chair, his eyes closed, his fingers rhythmically extending and relaxing as though from the force of the blood being pumped through his body. He rarely slept, but he found that such moments of quiet served to replenish his energies. He even dreamed, in a sense, replaying moments from his long life, reliving old history, ancient enmities. Lately, he had been remembering Sedlec, and the death of the Captain. A party of Hussite stragglers had intercepted them as they made their way toward Prague, and a stray arrow had found its mark in the Captain. While the others killed the attackers, Brightwell, himself injured, had clawed his way across the ground, the grass already damp from the Captain’s wound. He had brushed the hair away from his leader’s eyes, exposing the white mote that seemed always to be changing its form at the periphery while the core remained ever constant, so that looking at it was like peering at the sun through a glass. There were those who hated to see it, this reminder of all that had been lost, but Brightwell did not hesitate to look upon it when the opportunity arose. It fueled his own resentment, and gave him an added impetus to act against the Divine.

The Captain was struggling to breathe. When he tried to speak, blood bubbled up from his throat. Already, Brightwell could sense the separation beginning, spirit disengaging itself from host as it prepared to wander in the darkness between worlds.

“I will remember,” whispered Brightwell. “I will never stop searching. I will keep myself alive. When the time comes for us to be reunited, with one touch I will impart all that I have learned, and remind you of all that you will have forgotten, and of what you are.”

The Captain shuddered. Brightwell clasped the Captain’s right hand and lowered his face to that of his beloved, and amid the stink of blood and bile he felt the body give up its struggle. Brightwell rose and released the Captain’s hand. The statue was gone, but he had learned of the abbot’s map from a young monk named Karel Brabe before he died. Somewhere, the boxes were already being stored in secret places, and Karel Brabe’s soul now dwelt in the prison of Brightwell’s form.

But Brabe had told Brightwell something else before he died, in the hope of ending the pain that Brightwell was inflicting upon him.

“You make a poor martyr,” Brightwell had whispered to the young man. Brabe was still only a boy, and Brightwell knew great lore about the body’s capacities. His fingers had torn deep wounds in the young novice, and his nails were tearing at secret red places. As they snipped at veins and punctured organs, blood and words spilled from the boy in twin torrents: the flawed nature of the fragments; and a statue of bone, itself concealing a secret, a twin for the obscene relic they were seeking.

The search had taken so long, so long…

Brightwell opened his eyes. The Black Angel stood before him.

“It is nearly over,” said the angel.

“We don’t know for certain that he has it.”

“He has given himself away.”

“And Parker?”

“After we have found my twin.”

Brightwell lowered his eyes.

“It is him,” he said.

“I am inclined to agree,” said the Black Angel.

“If he is killed, I will lose him again.”

“And you will find him again. After all, you found me.”

Some of the strength seemed to leave Brightwell. His shoulders sagged, and for a moment he looked old and worn.

“This body is betraying me,” he said. “I do not have the strength for another search.”

The Black Angel touched his face with the tenderness of a lover. It stroked his pitted skin, the swollen flesh at his neck, his soft, dry lips.

“If you must pass from this world, then it will be my duty in turn to seek you out,” it said. “And remember, I will not be alone. This time, there will be two of us to search for you.”

That night, I spoke to Rachel for the first time since she’d left. Frank and Joan were at a local charity fund-raiser, and Rachel and Sam were alone in the house. I could hear music playing in the background: “Overcome by Happiness” by the Pernice Brothers, kings of the deceptively titled song.

Rachel sounded frantically upbeat, in the demented way common to those who are on heavy medication or who are trying desperately to keep themselves together in the face of imminent collapse. She didn’t ask me about the case, but chose instead to tell me what Sam had done that day, and talk of how Frank and Joan were spoiling her. She inquired about the dog, then held the receiver to Sam’s ear, and I thought I heard the child respond to my voice. I told her that I loved her, and that I missed her. I told her that I wanted her always to be safe and happy, and I was sorry for the things that I had done to make her feel otherwise. I told her that even if I wasn’t around, even if we couldn’t be together, I was thinking of her, and I would never, ever forget how important she was to me.

And I knew Rachel was listening too, and in this way I told her all the things that I could not say to her.