Once the most beautiful, talented, and favored of all the Angels, I wanted for nothing. Privilege was mine. I knew only a life of luxury, leisure, and song. His plans were of no consequence to me. That is, until the sixth day.
I watched in amazement. They were capable of so much, yet formed from but the dust of His Earth. Simple and alluring were their charms, and it was to be the beginning of my end.
Fascinated by humans, a name we soon bestowed upon them, we began to spend less time at our posts.
In those days, it was commonplace for Fallen to come upon us without invitation. The one who had Fallen spoke to me with the fervor of a meddling father. “If he would cast his most-adored son from here, what if you should displease him?”
When our brother appeared to a human female as one of them, He asked why he had done such a thing.
“I mean to marry her, to be bound to her on Earth.”
Our brother was not alone in his idiosyncrasies. So our father presented us with a choice: live amongst humans on Earth, or remain. If we remained, we’d be forgiven our indiscretions and restored to our former glory, powerful and alive with light. If we chose Earth, the more time spent around humans, the more like them we would become—for He had already forbidden the joining of Angels with humans.
I was among the first of twenty-three to leave.
As time passed, we became more like our beloved humans. Our powers faded, but were not completely lost. We began to crave their company, rather than simply appreciate it. I indulged in their many vices—even enjoyed them.
Heightened senses enhanced certain desires, making them more difficult to control. Lust, anger, fear, covetousness, and deceit enveloped me in a cloak of humanity. I learned to master most, even welcome them, while others longed for home.
The Divine One offered to take us back and gave us three days to decide. A great wrath awaited those who would dare refuse The Divine One not once, but twice. Still, twelve of us stayed, and expected judgment as night fell on the eve of the third day.
We retired to bed as humans do when the moon reigns supreme over their sky. I learned to sleep because it made my wife uneasy when she woke to find me sharpening knives. She knew not what I was, the truth of my origins. Instead, I embraced humanity and prayed she would never have to know.
That night I woke with a strange sensation in my throat. My body felt odd, weak in the loin. I might even say “human.” Heavy, stuffed with something other than the usual songs, color, and light, my head hung low. I heard a human heart, beating, moving blood in and out of it. The thought brought a smile to my face, hot from the flush that raced from my neck to my cheeks. Then, an unfamiliar, but welcome, desire consumed me.
PART ONE
You Found Me
In the Beginning
After everything I’d been through, I couldn’t believe this was how it was going to end. The training, the bloodshed, the kisses—oh my God, the kisses—and death, nullified by ten minutes in a police car.
It was hard to talk, let alone think, with the nonstop pounding in my head. It hurt to blink through swollen eyelids, and the dim overhead lights seemed brighter than they probably were. Incessant buzzing from a fly sitting defiantly atop the fluorescent beam threatened to make my eardrums explode. Who knew they could make so much noise without moving?
Everything was amplified, things seemed larger than life, and nothing made any sense at all.
I watched him, the fly, as he flitted back and forth, struggling to find freedom in the enclosed space of the interrogation room. I wondered if he knew he was going to die here.
The cop stared like I was a freak straight out of a science fiction movie, tentacles and all. I’d been mumbling incoherently since they’d found me and hadn’t volunteered much more since arriving at the station the night before. My mind was jumbled, scrambled as if it were trying to tune to the correct radio frequency, but couldn’t. Flashes, memories from my past, of what I was and what I had done, were returning, but they were all out of order. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to remain in my own skin much longer, and all I could do was shake.