Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

Nothing about this was remarkable, but his face and hands were remarkable. And the expression was inviting and forgiving.

Forgiving.

Why would someone, anyone, look that way at me? Yet I had the feeling that he knew me, knew me better than I knew myself. It was as if he knew all about me, and only now did it penetrate that he had three times called me by my name.

Surely that was because The Right Man had sent him. Surely that was because I had been double- crossed. This was the last job for me with The Right Man, and here was the superior assassin who could put an end to an old assassin who was now more of a mystery than he was worth.

Then cheat them, and do it now.

"I do know you," said the stranger. "I've known you all your life. And I'm not from The Right Man." At this he softly laughed. "Well, not The Right Man you hold in such regard, Lucky, but from another whois The Right Man, I should say."

"What do you want?"

"For you to come with me out of here. For you to turn a deaf ear to the voice that's plaguing you. You've listened to that voice long enough."

I calculated. What could explain all this? Not merely the stress of being in my room at the Mission Inn, no, that wasn't sufficient. It must have been the poison, that I'd absorbed some of it when preparing it, that in spite of the double gloves, I hadn't done things exactly right.

"You're too clever for that," said the stranger.

And so you devolve into madness? When you have the power to turn your back on them all?

I looked about me. I looked at the tester bed; I looked at the familiar dark brown draperies. I looked at the huge fireplace, now directly behind the stranger. I looked at all the common furnishings and objects of the room that I so well knew. How could madness project itself so sharply? How could it create such a specific illusion? But surely this figure wasn't there, and I wasn't talking to him, and the warm, inviting look on his face was some device of my own wretched mind.

He laughed again very softly. But the other voice was working.

Don't give him a chance to get that syringe away from you. If you won't die in this room, damn you, then step outside. Find some corner of this hotel, and you know all of them, and there put an end to yourself once and for all.

For one precious second, I was certain this figure would vanish if I moved towards him. I did it. He was as solid and palpable as before. He stepped back for me, and gestured that I might go out before him.

And suddenly I found myself standing on the veranda, in the sunlight, and the colors around me were wondrously vivid and lulling and I felt no urgency whatsoever, no ticking of any clock.

I heard him close the door of the suite and then I looked at him as he stood beside me.

"Don't talk to me," I said crossly. "I don't know who you are or what you want or where you came from."

"You called me," he said in his even and agreeable voice. "You've called me in the past, but never so desperately as you called me now."

Again I had that sensation of love flowing from him, of an infinite knowledge and an unaccountable acceptance of who and what I was.

"Called you?"

"You prayed, Lucky. You prayed to your guardian angel, and your guardian angel relayed the prayer to me."

There was simply no way in the world that I could accept this. But what struck me with full force was that The Right Man couldn't possibly know about my praying, couldn't possibly know what went on in my mind. "I know what goes on in your mind," said the stranger. His face was as appealing and trusting as before. That was it, trusting, as if he had nothing whatsoever to fear from me, or any weapon I carried, or any desperate thing I might do.

"Wrong," he said gently, drawing closer to me. "There are desperate things that I don't want you to do."

Don't you know the Devil when you see him? Don't you know he's the Father of Lies? Maybe there are special devils for people like you, Lucky, did you ever think of that?

My hand went into my pocket for the syringe again, but instantly I pulled it back.

"Special devils, that's likely," said the stranger, "and special angels as well. You know that from your old studies. Special men have special angels, and I'm your angel, Lucky. I've come to offer you a way out of this, and you must not, you absolutely must not, reach for that syringe."

I was about to speak, when that despair came over me as surely as if someone had wrapped me in a shroud, though I've never seen a shroud. It was simply the image that came to me.

This is how you want to die? Crazy in some little cell with people torturing you to get information out of you? Get out of here. Go. Go where you can put the gun to your chin and pull the trigger. You knew when you came here to this place and this room that you would do that. This was always meant to be your last killing. That's why you brought the extra syringe.

The stranger laughed as if he couldn't help himself. "He's pulling all the stops out," he said quietly. "Don't listen. He wouldn't have raised his voice so stridently if I weren't here."

"I don't want you to talk to me!" I stammered.

A young couple was drifting towards us down the veranda. I wondered what they saw. They avoided us, their eyes scanning the brickwork and the heavy doors. I think they marveled at the flowers.

"It's the lavender geraniums," said the stranger as he looked at them in the pots that surrounded us. "And they want to sit down at this table, so why don't you and I move on?"

"I'm moving on," I said angrily, "but not because you say so. I don't know who you are. But I'll tell you this. If The Right Man sent you, you better be prepared for a little battle, because I'm going to take you down before I go."

I walked off to the right and started down the winding staircase of the huge rotunda. I moved fast, silencing the voice in my head deliberately and certainly, as I crossed one landing after another and came at last to the bottom floor. I found him standing there.

"Angel of God, my guardian dear," he whispered. He had been leaning against the wall, with his arms folded, a collected figure, but now he stood up straight and fell in beside me as I continued to walk on just about as briskly as I could. "Be straight with me," I said under my breath. "Who are you?"

"I don't think you're ready to believe me," he said, his manner as gentle and solicitous as ever. "I'd rather that we were on the road back to Los Angeles, but if you insist ..."

I felt the sweat breaking out all over me. I ripped the bite plate out of my mouth, and tore off the plastic gloves too. I shoved them in my pockets.