Felon sneered at the idea that romance had survived the Change. At the conclusion of the last Millennium, Valentine’s Day had degenerated into another commercial undertaking at a time when the true fabric of human relationships had frayed to a thin veil of separation, confusion and suspicion. He growled at the thought of it.
The assassin pulled up to the curb in his stolen car. The Davedi Club was located in a narrow three-story building. It had been spared the indignity of being used as a support column for Level Four that formed a heavy darkness overhead. The Club’s front entrance was of antique design. Its large rectangular window was painted black, with a clear circle framing a neon sign that spoke the club’s name. Beside it was a heavy steel door.
The assassin paused to light a cigarette, rolled the smoke around his tongue, and then spat it out. Felon had a fully automatic M-16 to do the job. He would carry it into the building slung across his back concealed under his black overcoat. The weapon had a heavy smell of oil and old gunpowder. It was an antique by military standards, but Felon found the new M-99’s to be slower to load, and prone to jamming. When you throw ninety bullets in a volley, the chances for a misfire were many and like most things created after the Change, the M-99 was flawed. Felon disdained such overkill anyway. It encouraged sloppiness and waste.
His M-16 was built somewhere overseas, a knockoff produced by the Kalashnikov people using the original pre-Change designs. He’d bought it on the black market twenty years before and maintained it with rebuilt and salvaged parts. It could be set for semi or full automatic. The choice allowed the assassin an option that might save his life-and it gave him adaptability. He thrust four full magazines into the pockets of his ammo vest and hauled himself from the car. Polka music filtered out of the building as he pulled his coat over his weapons. He snarled convulsively, glaring at the building. The Davedi Club was holding their annual Valentine’s Day Dance.
Felon could sense the people inside. Their crowded presence was like a pressure in the air. He snatched the cigarette from his lips, flicked it to the ground and pulverized it with a twist of his foot. The assassin climbed the single stair and pulled the door open. The close atmosphere of the room enveloped him immediately-stillness filled the space. A crowd of people faced away from him; their focus on a stage and an ancient-looking man with an accordion who stood there. He stood smiling between a black guitarist and an older Asian woman with a clarinet. Applause flew up into the dusty air. The ceiling was two stories above their heads. Most of the second floor had been cut away to form a walkway and balcony over the dance floor. Cheers rang out, laughter followed, and the crowd closed to form many tight circles of revelers. The principle color of the decor was red, and the clothing was a dazzling array of scarlet silk. Faces in the crowd were twisted into mad humor and inebriated joy. The air stank of perfume and alcohol.
“Thank you,” chortled the old man with the accordion. “I thank you, and the Beer Barrel Trio thanks you.” Again, applause. Felon made his way along the right side of the room past a man of middle-aged appearance snoring uncomfortably in a wooden chair.
“We have always enjoyed playing at the Davedi Club. And we would never miss the Valentine’s Dance. The air is full of love. The people are full of love. I am full of love!” The crowd responded with a profusion of kissing and laughter. “We make this annual dance the cornerstone of our performing year. I am not getting any younger, as my wife can tell you.” Chuckles echoed through the audience. “But I am made young by this wondrous occasion. The love is what makes us young forever. And we know at least that Love will not change! As always we would like to perform the music that moves us all along the current of life, the dance that inspires romance in us all. We give you now the melody that commands the passion in our hearts and the sky above us.” He turned, nodded to his companions, the lights faded to twilight blue and the small band moved into a cramped rendition of “Moon River.” The old man croaked the words out.
Felon studied a huge cloud of purple helium balloons that crowded over the stage and dance floor. If the Cherubs were feeding, the assassin knew that would be the perfect blind for them. Raw human emotion would be radiating upward like heat. It was natural that their kind would be attracted to a Valentine’s Day dance. They flocked to them like fat flies to shit, feeding off the veiled lust of the dancers; but even Cherubs had rules and followed the covenant of Angels and so could not directly intervene in human affairs, or be in close visual proximity. Among Angels, they went most often in their true physical forms, primarily because of their connection with sensuality, lust and love. Cherubs were historically and mythically thought to be responsible for love, love at first sight, and rekindled love. Felon thought of them as parasites, feeding off an emotion they could not produce themselves.
Felon hated Cherubs the most. He found their rotund little forms and their predilection for romantic love and mischief a perversion. They were the naughty children of some two thousand years. He hated the way they looked, their disproportionate wings flickering obscenely over raw dough buttocks. Felon knew their sweet cinnamon smell, and their idle, eternal child voices-caricatures, really. They were the least impressive Angels, gaining their powers from idle sentimentality and romanticism. He was disgusted by the ugly ambiguity they formed, feeding on the irrational human desire to justify lust. And these sexually barren, golden locked, flying Cupie dolls were nothing more than a pedophile’s dream-they had little to do with love, or the sexuality it thinly disguised.
He slid the M-16 on its strap until it hung under his arm and then gave it a reassuring pat through his coat. Felon squinted into the darkness watching the balloons. There was a steady column of heat rising from the dancers that caused the mass of rubber to undulate, so Felon waited for any telling motion. A man reeking of scotch brushed into him. Felon’s arm did not yield and his stance did not sway. The man, a pre-Change fifty, scowled beneath iron gray eyebrows.
“Damn it…” He rubbed his chest where Felon’s elbow had scraped a furrow in it. “Watch your…”
Felon tore his gaze momentarily from the balloons. He glared into the stranger’s bleary eyes. Something in the look penetrated the man’s drunken haze. His lips trembled and held still. He turned to stagger away.
Then Felon caught a motion out of his right eye. It was a wing, a small, down-covered wing with round-tipped feathers. He whipped open his coat and pulled the M-16 up with both hands, firing into the cloud of balloons. They started breaking with the burping roar of his gun. He fired until the gun was empty, then pulled the magazine out, and jammed another home. The assassin opened up again-the blue tongue of death licked upward.
The crowd moved in a screaming wave away from the sound and flame of violence. He raked the cloud of balloons. They vanished in violent banging echoes, revealing a pair of fat but amazingly fast forms. Two Cherubs flew free of the flying debris. The leader wore a white silk robe and the other flew naked. The Angel in the rear showed streaks of blood on his dimpled skin, and his wings beat more slowly than the other’s.
Felon let up on the trigger, and concentrated his fire at the first Angel that was fast approaching a second story window. Five bullets punched holes in the soft chest, and it hurtled downward with a flutter of wings and robe. He watched it fall as he swung the barrel of the gun on the second Cherub. Its wings flapped hysterically-its golden head clicked from side to side looking for escape, but Felon severed its left wing with a burst of lead. Screaming musically, it landed hard in the center of the dance floor.
The assassin spun to where the other Cherub had dropped. The white robed creature had staggered to its feet, and was limping quickly toward the rear of the hall. Felon miscued his fire and line of sight-bullets removed the back of its head, and the front of the sleeping man’s. He spun again. A pair of men had frozen at the door like terrified rabbits. Everyone else was gone. A motion of his gun barrel broke them from their paralysis and sent them running.
Felon pulled out the second magazine, and jammed a third into the body of the M-16 as he approached the Cherub on the dance floor. A pool of blood had formed around it-dark red like human blood but with the peculiar property of evaporating slowly at room temperature. Keeping his weapon trained on the dying Angel, Felon drew a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He looked down on the Cherub, thrilled by the risk he was taking.
Its chubby buttocks jiggled against its attempt to rise; its fat belly was slick with blood. The stump of its wing pumped a hot red jet.
“You’re dying today,” Felon said, watching the Angel as adrenaline thrilled along his nerves. These creatures had Powers. Still, he had the trigger pulled three-quarters back, and he could quickly terminate any spell the Angel tried to utter. Besides, this was part of the contract-earned him a big bonus. At the sound of his voice, the Cherub ceased struggling. With enormous effort, it flipped itself over, and then lay still-its fat chest smeared with crimson rising tortuously. The short arms and legs were splayed at all angles.
“Why?” it asked in a voice of bells and chimes.
“Cleerfindel?” Felon hissed a cloud of gray smoke. He remembered the image his client had shown him.
“I am.” Its dazzling blue eyes met Felon’s dark orbs. Fear crossed its features. “I cannot see you…”
“A Demon hired me to kill you. You caused the woman he loved to love another-a human. He killed them both and has hated you ever since.” Felon took another drag from his cigarette and threw it away. He lowered the mouth of the gun to Cleerfindel’s head.
“I do not remember…who? I do not control love… that is the heart.” Cleerfindel tried to raise himself on an elbow. Felon pushed him back with the gun. “The Demon lies!”
“ You lie. Azokal is his name. He wanted you to know that as you died.”
“Azokal…” Cleerfindel’s voice was fading. “Ah, Azokal.”
Felon felt the killing power rising up in him again.
“How human… I cannot see you?” Blood trickled from the corner of its mouth.
“Azokal spits on you.” Felon raised the gun, the sentence fulfilling his contract.
“Human, no.” A ragged gasp shook the Cherub-its eyes went wide with terror. “ Yahweh!”
Felon fired at the Cherub’s body until the gun smoked and burned in his hands. He left Cleerfindel in a dissolving pile of gore and checked the greasy smear that was all that remained of the other Angel. Felon walked out of the building and traveled three blocks before taking a public stairway down to Level Two where he caught a cab on the Skyway.