Rescues . . . A person who'd been caught in a flood. When she couldn't hold on to a tree branch another moment, she'd felt hands, strong hands, helping her hold on to the tree and to her toddler a little longer. Just long enough.
Seductions . . . Those who felt it was possible, despite the lore that angels were sexless, they'd been sensually awakened, lifted to a plane of spiritual ecstasy and physical fulfillment that would never be matched again by a mortal lover. Jonah raised a cryptic brow at Randall's quizzical look.
Then came a call by a man who claimed he was attacked by an angel when he tried to mug a woman in New York. He bore the burn scars of the angel's fingerprints on his chest, but considered it the most fortunate thing in his life, for he'd turned his back on crime, struggled through his hardship by honest means and come out the better for it, realizing there were consequences to his actions beyond this life.
Subtle details told Jonah which stories had probably involved his brethren and which ones were rationalizations of extraordinary luck or resources the person involved hadn't known he or she possessed. There was the usual cadre of attention seekers with no real knowledge or belief. Impressed, Jonah noticed Randall weeded almost all of them out of the panel he put on the air. The radio talk show host knew his business well, had learned to judge people by voice quality, intonation, what they did or didn't say. And he did it with quiet ease.
That impression was further reinforced by how Randall looked toward him after each story. Not to seek a confirmation, just studying Jonah's face, his body language. Though Jonah made no indication one way or another, a slight smile appeared on the commentator's face at different times, as if he'd received a response. Jonah found himself wondering if his expression was as unreadable as he'd always assumed it was. Or perhaps Randall Myers was just that good.
But there was also a fragility to his unflappable demeanor. Jonah narrowed his eyes, remembering the articles. The mention of a wife. A wife struggling with cancer, perhaps explaining the cancer metaphor, though he suspected it was the last thing Randall wanted to think about. But he loved her enough that it pervaded everything. Her suffering, her impending loss. They'd likely hoped the proximity of the Schism would slow it down, and it probably had, for a while.
"Rescues, attacks, seductions . . ." Randall repeated, bringing the show to a close. "Maybe they are what so many think they are. But sometimes, folks, I wonder if angels are another level of life, like ourselves. Maybe they're searching for meaning, too, as they interact with us in their mysterious ways we don't understand. Is the Great Beyond any more forthcoming with them than It is with us?
"Again, I go back to it. What if the birth, life and death of hope and meaning are inside ourselves? That whether God lives or dies is up to us and our actions?" Randall took a drag on a new cigarette, seemingly unconcerned with the moment of radio dead air as he pondered. "Gives a whole new meaning to taking responsibility for your own deeds, doesn't it?" His rich voice paused for a chuckle, and as if he knew Jonah's attention had lifted and fixed on him, he glanced toward him and nodded. "This is Randall Myers, and I'm going to call it a night. I'll be back tomorrow, same dead-of-night time. Good night."
Laying down the headphones, he switched the station to a classical program, shutting down the microphone before he turned. "Despite my earlier comments, it's obvious you're very protective of that young woman," he noted, his gaze passing over Anna's sleeping form.
"She's risked her life for me. Several times. Despite that utter foolishness, she's worth protecting."
Randall's eyes glinted and Jonah bent over her. "Little one . . . Anna. Wake up. It's getting near daylight. We need to go."
"They say radio frequencies can carry the energy of spirits," Randall observed. "There was a good energy to the calls tonight, as though they could all feel it, sense it."
The idea at first struck harmlessly off Jonah's mind, but then abruptly he was standing, lifting Anna on her feet though she was only half awake. "Wh-what?"
"We need to go." He could be wrong, but he hadn't thought . . . Fifteen miles to go, and an unpopulated desert, where they'd stick out like a sore thumb.
"Wait." Randall rose, pulled out two more bottles of water. "I'd drive you, but I can't leave the station until . . ."
"That's fine. We'll get where we need to be."
"All right then." With obvious reluctance, Randall cleared his throat and led them to the station door, held it open.
When she stumbled, Jonah bent and lifted Anna in his arms, despite her sleepy protest. Now he turned to look at the man and the small building, antennae thrust into the sky like reaching, yearning fingers. "Thank you."
Randall nodded, then paused. "Can you . . ." His voice got thick, which he immediately covered with an embarrassed shrug. "Ah, hell. I don't know who you are. But sometimes your gut tells you things. I don't need to know exactly what comes after. I just need to know . . . Well, death just seems too damn ugly for there to be anything merciful afterward . . . Will she . . ." He swallowed. "Damn it, I can't bear thinking there won't be an end to her suffering, a place where she can be happy and well."
Anna, waking to the broken tone of a man she'd sensed was otherwise as stalwart as the silent rocks of this desert, wondered if there was anything more heartbreaking than a man who refused to cry when the thing he loved most was being taken away from him, one torturous inch at a time.
Though Jonah hadn't yet answered, she stretched out a hand from her position in his arms and Randall, still looking self-conscious but determined, tentatively closed his fingers on it. She squeezed, making him meet her eyes.
"I've always thought that death is so ugly so that we don't give the gifts of mortal life short shrift. If getting to Heaven and a life of no cares was as easy as wishing it to be so, no one would value what we have here." Glancing up at Jonah, she put a pleading desire in her expression. Say something. Be compassionate.
Her angel bit back a sigh. "If your wife has lived a good life, then her soul will be reborn. She will not come to harm in the afterlife. Of all the species in all the universe, you are most protected by the Lady. That in itself should bring hope."
Anna could tell it was an effort, but he kept the derision from his tone, so he didn't sound as if he were delivering a message of doom. Randall's expression eased at the same time hers did.
"He's very cynical," she said quietly, summoning the shadow of a smile. "But he's not himself lately. There is hope. There always is." She got Jonah to let her slide down and stand on her own feet. As she reached out a hand to Randall again, she noted that Jonah grudgingly softened when the radio man enclosed it gently in both of his this time. "Good-bye, and thank you for letting us spend the evening with you."
"Wait a minute." Randall brightened. "I just thought of something."
Retaining her hand, he pulled her toward a storage shed next to the station, Jonah following them both. Randall opened the door, gestured to two bikes with thick tread wheels. "The sand is packed enough in places they'll save you some time, and there's a basket on this one for the pack. If nothing else, it will give you something to lean on. I'd give you the four-wheeler, I swear, but my wife, she's undergoing chemo treatments and I have to have emergency transport for her if she has a seizure. We don't have any close neighbors, and--"
"This is fine," Anna said, laying her hand on his forearm. "We wouldn't want to endanger your wife. We're not far from where we need to go." Eyeing the bikes, she wondered if Jonah knew how to ride one. "This is the way it's meant to be. Don't worry."
As the ray of morning sunlight speared down into the valley where Randall's station rested, Jonah's wings began to dissolve and disappear, the feathers sizzling into ash in the air.
She heard Randall's breath draw in and turned to see the handful of feathers blow past his legs. A couple caught on his pants leg, compelling the dogs to dance behind him to avoid contact.
"See, you were right," she said with tired amusement. "Just paste and glue."
Eighteen
"WHY did his question bother you?"
"It didn't." Jonah imitated Anna, putting his leg over the bike when they were out of sight of the station.
"It's like the dancing," she encouraged. "Just find your center balance. And now you're lying to me."
He gave her a warning glance, but sighed. "When angels die, we experience a form of oblivion, out of reach of the memories of those we loved and lived with. We become part of the cosmos, of the Lady's energy, adding to Her strength. Humans have the choice of being reborn. While they have no conscious memory when they're reborn, they tend to reconnect with the souls that meant the most to them, again and again. And then those that reach enlightenment are able to at last reunite with their loved ones, with full knowledge of who they are. It . . . pisses me off."
She bit back a smile. "You're becoming somewhat more human yourself, my lord."
Jonah narrowed his gaze at her, but fitted his foot to the petal. While he wobbled, in a relatively quick time he steadied.
The sun hit the horizon as they made the crest of the first hill, and Anna paused, taking a deep breath. "We'll make it there today," she said.
Jonah put a hand on her arm. "Anna, why are you getting weaker? It's time for you to stop lying to me as well."
She glanced up at him, the shadows under her eyes making them look more sunken. "I'll be all right, my lord, once I get you there. It's the ocean. The salt water. I just get a little bit weak when I'm a certain distance from it. What I have left in the pack should get me the rest of the way."
Of course. It was as simple as the glare of sunlight on the sand that would soon become blinding. He'd taken a creature of the sea farther and farther from her home. From the first he'd known Anna's truest form was the mermaid. He was a self-centered idiot.