A/N: Warning of references to child abuse and some violence.
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
James 2:19
Pastor John loved to talk about demons, and the devil, and hellfire. His sermons always threw in a few references to the eternal fires and servants of hell, but on certain days, such as this one, they contained nothing else. He was well into the speech by now, having set aside what he had written and let the spirit take him the rest of the way through the sermon. His hand gestures became more animated and his words more fervent with each sentence as he spoke of the sinners that surrounded his flock, of how they were threatened on all sides. The devil was breathing down their necks and if they didn't fight and spread the good word, he would catch them all.
In the eighth pew of the small church, on the left side, sat a ten year old boy who was neither looking at the pastor, nor listening all that well to him either. His name was Henry and he preferred not to think of demons at all. They frightened him. He'd seen pictures of them with goat legs and horns, terrible fangs, and sharp tails that looked like spears. So he tuned out whatever Pastor John was saying, only catching a stray word here and there, and he thought about angels instead. There was a little painting of an angel on the left side of the church that he liked to watch during the long sermons. His foster parents didn't mind him not paying attention, so long as he was quiet and still. So he spent the hours memorizing every detail of that painting. He knew the angel's pretty face better than his own, he knew how many feathers were on each wing, and he knew the exact pattern of her curly blonde hair. She was tall and strong, but looked very peaceful as she gazed upward. Though he never said it aloud, he often dreamed of her, swooping down on her massive wings, scooping him up, and flying away with him. She hadn't come yet outside of the dream, but he just told himself that she was running late. She would be there soon, to take him away from all of this.
Eventually, the sermon did end, which Henry didn't realize until his foster mother stood and snapped at him that they were leaving. He waved goodbye to the angel on the wall before following her out of the church. Outside, winter was truly setting in around them and a light layer of snow was covering the frozen ground. In the distance, high jagged mountains capped in permanent white snow rose upward, but where they stood was flat farmland.
That night was a bad one for Henry's foster father, Tom Laroy. The bad nights had been rare when the Laroys first took in Henry, but they were growing more frequent. They always started with Tom having a drink and Sharon calling him a useless waste of space and then a whole series of words that Henry had gotten into trouble for repeating at school. Son of a bitch was her favorite. Then the conversation would turn to Henry. Tom would say they should send him back and save themselves the trouble of him, and Sharon would say that they needed the money, especially with Tom not working. And finally Tom would scream for Henry to come to him and Henry would have to wear long sleeves to school the next day to hide the bruises. This night, they were still yelling about Tom's unemployment, not yet on the topic of Henry, so he still had time. He lay in his small bedroom upstairs until he could no longer listen. He got up, crept down the staircase, and out of the back door, avoiding the living room where Tom and Sharon were fighting. He was an expert at being quiet and they were far too involved in their fight to hear him, and so he made it safely outside. Once he stepped out into the yard, however, he realized that in his hurry to leave, he had forgotten his coat. He wore only a thin sweater, an old pair of pants, and tennis shoes. It was cold enough on its own, but with the wind rushing down from the mountains and cutting through him as he wore nothing at all, it was unbearable. Wrapping his arms around himself, he walked carefully through the yard, navigating the trash and scrap metal that were littered through it, around the empty barn, until he reached the small doghouse.
The droopy face of a coonhound peered out of the doghouse and in the shadows Henry could see his tail wagging. Hank was the best, and probably the only good, thing about living with the Laroys. He was a sweet natured dog, despite being chained to a peg in the yard all the time, and he loved Henry more than anyone. Henry got down on all fours and crawled into the doghouse, curling up beside Hank and petting his long soft ears. Hank licked his hands and wagged his tail some more. Even with the dog next to him, it was cold, but sleeping out in the doghouse was far more tolerable than going back now, so Henry shut his eyes. Sharon always made him pray before bed and he usually did so silently, with his hands crossed in front of him. But tonight he said them aloud.
"Dear God. Please send me an angel. The nicest angel you have."
There are certain songs that are just wildly inappropriate for a situation. Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose, for example, was a beautiful melody, perfect for drinking coffee in a cafe while it rained outside or having a romantic rooftop date with your fiance. It did not seem a good choice, however, for someone who was licking the blood of the man she had just killed off of her fingertips. If you had to choose an Edith Piaf song for that particular occasion, then Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien might work, but then again who was to say what song was the best to eat someone to.
As it were, the woman with the bloody hands was not particularly inclined to get up to change the music. The iphone, from which it was playing, was over by the dead body and she was not quite ready to face it at the moment. She could at least finish her meal first.
The body had once belonged to a middle aged and nicely dressed man, and now it lay in a horrible state on the tile floor beneath the sink of the motel. He had worn a business suit, which was now bloodstained and torn open in the chest, as was the man himself. There was a messy hole where his heart had once been, now only filled with blood and shards of broken ribs. His wrists were ripped open as well, but they were less of a mess, as most of the blood had been sucked out of them. Less spillage that way.
Still sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, the woman pulled a cigarette out of the carton with fingers that were still stained pink. She placed it in her mouth, lit it, and took a few slow puffs. She hated this part. She muttered a few words under her breath and then flicked the lit cigarette over so that it landed on the chest of the man. It flamed up, quickly setting the whole body on fire. Once fires burned through the skin and reached the fatty tissue inside, humans went up like candles. The smell of burning flesh was horrendous, so the woman grabbed her purse and left the motel, walking away into the night.
Henry awoke still and cold. His neck hurt from the angle that he had slept in. Nervously, he wiggled all his fingers and toes, and as much as they hurt to move, he figured it was good that at least he could still feel them. It was still dark outside, with the only light coming from the nearly full moon, and Hank was still snoring beside him. Henry stretched as best he could and moved closer to Hank for warmth, when Hank sat upright with a jerk. The dog sniffed the air intently and let out one loud bark. Henry squinted through the gloom to see what coyote or raccoon had caught his attention. With a fluttering sound, a vulture landed on the ground in front of them. It was a large bird with black feathers and a wrinkled black head, and should have been hard to make out in the darkness, but Henry found he could easily see the details of the bird from the sharp, hooked beak and to the dark, shiny eyes. He was also surprised that Hank did not bark more and scare the vulture away. The dog had gone oddly quiet. The vulture walked closer to them and Henry felt his own voice shrink down inside him from the fear. It did nothing however, except raise its large wings and use them to cover the entrance of the dog house, blocking the cold wind from entering. Henry watched it for several minutes, until at last he began to feel warm and could no longer fight off sleep.
The morning sun and a cold blast of air woke Henry. The vulture was gone, but Hank still lay by his side. He gave the dog a scratch behind the ears and crawled out of the doghouse. He wasn't sure what time it was, but he knew he didn't want to go back home just yet. The school bus came by at 7:00 am, so he decided to walk down the long driveway and wait for it there. He sat down with his back against a tree, still in his Sunday clothes and without his backpack. Across the street, on the branch of a pine tree sat the vulture. At least, Henry thought it was the same vulture. It was hard to tell one from the other. This one had a black head like the one from earlier.
Henry continued to see the vulture throughout the day until he was sure that it had to be the same one. He thought he must be dying, because it followed him around, watching him as if waiting for him to drop dead. It was outside of his classroom all day, on the same pine tree when he got off the bus, and it even sat right outside the window of the house as Tom and Sharon screamed at him for running off. When Tom lost his temper and knocked Henry to the ground, he could see it on the windowsill of the living room, watching them with a strange look in its black eyes. Later, he watched the vulture flying above the house, moving across the sky and then turning to cross its own path in an X shape.
Henry slept in his own bed that night, as Tom had used up all of his rage already and passed out on the couch. There was no need to sleep in the doghouse again, although he did miss the company of Hank. He was just drifting off when a crashing sound from downstairs yanked him out of slumber. It wasn't a particularly unusual sound, as Tom tended to be clumsy when he drank, but the raspy hissing that followed was like nothing Henry had heard before. Curiosity overcame common sense and he went downstairs.
It took him a moment to make sense of the scene in front of him. The lamp had been knocked over, causing the crashing sound, but that was far from the most disturbing thing happening in the living room. Sharon lay on the floor, with her eyes gazing blankly and without blinking up at the ceiling. Her throat was slashed open and there was a bloody hole in her chest. Still on the sofa, Tom had a similar neck wound, but his chest was still intact. He also appeared to still be slightly alive as his finger twitched a little and a faint gurgling sound came from his throat. In the center of the room stood a woman with her back to Henry, the source of the hissing sound. Long black hair hung down her back, but he could see nothing of her face. Her hands were bloody, with one clenched at her side and the other holding something red and dripping. The hissing sound stopped and she slowly turned around to face him. Her skin was light brown, her features sharp and angry-looking, and her teeth bright white when she spoke to him.
"Go wait upstairs," was all she said.
Henry looked once more before he turned and ran back to his bedroom. He sat on top of the quilted bed, not quite sure what to do now.
After a few minutes he heard footsteps, soon followed by the woman entering the bedroom. The blood was gone from her hands and her expression looked softer.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," she said. She sat next to him on the bed.
"You aren't what I was expecting," said Henry. That seemed to surprise her.
"You were expecting me?" she asked. Her voice was a little raspy, but there was something about it that Henry liked.
"You're my guardian angel," he said. She definitely looked nothing like the big blonde angel in the painting, but he still recognized her right away.
"I'm not an angel," she said. "Maybe the opposite."
Henry shrugged.
"Do you have any other family?" she asked.
Henry shook his head and said, "I'm an orphan. They're my foster parents."
"Well, I suppose you're coming with me then. Pack a bag with anything you want to bring with you and meet me downstairs. And no more of this angel talk, alright?"
"Alright," said Henry.
She reached out and patted him somewhat awkwardly on the knee before leaving the room. Henry grabbed his school backpack and dumped the contents out onto the bed. He grabbed a book of fairy tales that had been a hand me down from one the Laroys' previous foster kids, a stuffed velociraptor toy, a sketchbook and his colored pencils. The Laroys hadn't given him many things to begin with and he had nothing from his birth family, whoever they were, so that was all he wanted to take. He went downstairs to find that Tom and Sharon's bodies had both been covered with sheets, though the blood did soak through them. He looked away from them and instead turned to look at the woman. The room smelled strange though, like a gas station, and that he couldn't turn away from.
"Ready to go?" the woman asked, offering her hand. Henry nodded and slowly took it. She led him outside to Tom's Ford F150 truck, formerly his pride and joy. Hank was stretched across the backseat, panting a little, but he wagged his tail when he saw Henry
"What do you say we burn this whole place down?" the woman asked.
Again Henry nodded. He hadn't quite found his voice with the woman.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a metal lighter, clicking it so that a small flame lit up their faces with a soft orange glow. She said something in a language that Henry didn't understand and threw the lighter at the house. It went up in flames much faster than Henry expected. It seemed like less than a second and the place was an inferno. The warmth felt good rolling off of the flames, though it all smelled terrible. The woman reached down and picked Henry up. He was probably too old for such things, but he didn't mind and she was certainly strong enough to hold him. They watched the fire for a few minutes before getting in the truck and driving away. Henry could hear sirens in the distance, but the woman didn't seem worried at all.
"What's your name?" he finally asked her, once they had gotten onto the dark and empty highway.
"You can call me Regina. And yours?"
"I'm Henry."
"Well, it's nice to meet you Henry."
He watched her for a moment, trying to work up the courage to ask her the real question on his mind.
"Are you a fallen angel?" What he really wanted to say was 'What the heck are you?' but that seemed too rude.
"I'm not any sort of angel. Why do you think that?"
"The night you came. I was praying for a guardian angel to fly down and take me away. And then you did."
"Well, whatever god you were praying to must have quite the sense of humor."
They fell into silence again and Henry stared forward at the headlights illuminating the road. He felt warm and safe in the truck, an unusual feeling and made even more so by the fact that he was sitting next to a murderer. The hum of the truck was soothing, as well, and he soon felt his eyelids grow heavy. He let himself slump against the door of the truck and was soon asleep.
A/N: I had to throw in a little Lilo and Stitch reference.
Also the story of Henry sleeping in the doghouse is based on a true story of Buck Brannaman. He's a famous horse trainer who had a really rough childhood.
