Anyway, I thought I would tease you just a little today with the opening of 'Fallen'...
Chapter One: Storm… Shed…
Bang
This is a safe place, my safe
place. The house I grew up in, the house
I’d inherited, along with dodgy plumbing and imperfect draught-proofing. The
roof was sound, and the walls were thick and sturdy.
So there really wasn’t any reason
for me to feel scared, was there?
Besides, I don’t mind
thunderstorms. I have been known to sit
just inside the back doorway, and look out, enjoying the display and noisy fury
of the sky. I hadn’t been afraid of a
storm since I was a child.
Something about this was
different, though. Directly overhead,
lightning and thunder simultaneously cracking above my slate-tiled roof,
illuminating the windows even through my drawn curtains, it sounded personal.
Eventually I noticed the
beginnings of a time lag between flash and growl. Soon, all I could hear was rain, and I risked
a glance at the clock, hitting its top to make the little light pop on so I
could see. Two in the morning – I’d been
huddled under my duvet for well over an hour and I was starting to get
bored. Besides, safe place, right?
The storm sulked off and the rain
steadied. I turned the pillow over in
search of a cool patch and tried to pretend the rain was a lullaby… softly
pattering in rhythmic patterns…
I think I’d just drifted off when
I was startled by a sudden brightness outside, followed immediately by a boom
and crash that shook and rattled my windows in their frames. I shrieked in a
very unladylike fashion, cowering down again.
Some serious damage must have happened very close by and I repeated my
Safe Place litany several times before I began to calm down. I didn’t rush out to investigate – it was 3.25
a.m. and still raining. Tomorrow would
be quite soon enough to spring out of bed and go exploring. It wasn’t at all that I was afraid in any
way. Of course not.
Next morning, and the rain had
stopped. I stuffed my feet into the old
grey Crocs I kept for gardening and set out into the wilderness of the back
garden, the ground squishy beneath my feet.
After the coldest, wettest spring for years, my garden, just a little to
the east of the Pennines, was soaking up the rain like a gigantic, happy
sponge.
I love the way everything smells
after rain; the grass has a greener scent, the air cleanly fragrant. Today, that was spoiled by a rough, scorched
smell drifting across the garden. It
made me think, uneasily, of my fear of the thunderstorm in the night.
The brittle, acrid scent faded as
I climbed the steps to the top terrace and looked back down over the garden. To the right, screened off from the house by
a clematis-covered trellis, was my shed, a huge, metal monstrosity which had
promised so much and which instead had delivered so little. Had I known that it
would have its own internal climate – icicles dangling in frozen suspension in
the winter, cloying with damp the rest of the year – I would never have bought
the thing.
And the sudden acquisition of a
huge hole in its roof wasn’t adding at all to its charm…
Had that racket last night been
an actual lighting strike?
At least there were no signs of
fire – I knew the shed had a serious damp problem, but I hadn’t realised it was
enough to prevent a lighting strike combusting my lawnmower. Best see exactly what the damage was.
Unlocking and throwing back the
noisy double doors, I didn’t know what I was seeing at first. Illuminated by the new circular skylight in the
ceiling was a pair of oversized wings, swanlike, creamy white, with huge
pinions blackened and gilded with scorch marks, sprawled in a heap between the
wheelbarrow and the lawnmower.
What the…?
I closed and opened my eyes, just
in case I was having some kind of visual aberration, but no. The wings were still there, just as
improbable and just as massive.
Had some kind of enormous swan
crashed in the storm? Did swans even get
that big? Even folded and twisted, this
one looked to have a huge wingspan. More
to the point, from under the edge of the damaged plumage I could now see a
remarkably humanlike set of toes…
Okay, not a swan. What else could it be? An elaborate fancy
dress costume? But logically, that would mean whoever it was had entered
through the roof, causing the hole in the process… and it was a huge hole, must
have hurt like hell, crashing through like that…
Maybe I should shelve the
improbability of it and see if whoever – whatever – made the hole was okay?
‘Um… hello?’ I ventured. ‘Anyone in – under – there?’
The wings shivered and stirred,
then spread hugely – at least, one of them did, banging against the metal wall
with a clang; the other only went halfway, its leading edge scorched and bent
and somehow wrong. I realised this couldn’t possibly be a costume; these were
real wings, with real muscles and bones and real blood speckling the bent and
broken one.
A gasp of pain forced me to push
back my rising sense of panic.
‘Are you hurt?’
I inched forward towards the pool
of light as the owner of the impossible wings struggled to a seated position,
ankles crossed and knees drawn in. The
damaged wing hung forward over the right shoulder and the head was bowed. I could see short, dark chestnut hair and
pale skin – lots of pale skin with red, sore patches.
‘Can I help?’
Slowly, the mahogany head lifted
and a pair of the bluest eyes in the world looked at me. The face was heart-shaped, masculine,
sharply, intensely boned. The eyebrows
were dark, sweeping arches, the nose straight and proud and slightly
aquiline.
‘I don’t know,’ a rich, male
voice said. ‘Are you any good at splinting wings?’
‘I’ve never tried,’ I admitted,
my voice faltering. ‘What happened? Where did you come from?’
The blue eyes glanced
upwards.
‘Well, obviously, from up there,’
I acquiesced. ‘But, I mean, how?
And…’ I ran out of sensible things to
ask and shrugged. To cover my confusion, I drew nearer, pushing aside garden
tools and stacks of empty plant pots as I advanced.
‘Can I see your - um – injury?’ I
asked, not quite being able to bring myself to say the word ‘wing’ just yet.
He started to stretch out his
right wing, but winced and stopped, his mouth a grimace of pain.
‘Could you tell me what
happened?’ I asked as I tried to examine the damage.
‘They threw me out – me! Can you imagine? I was…’ I caught a glimpse of
a wry twist to his lips, ‘…cast down from on high, like a latter-day Lucifer!’
His breath hissed as my searching
fingers found a sore spot.
‘…and it’s not as if I deserved
it! I was but saying that secularisation could be used in a positive manner,
but the old guard…’
‘Like Lucifer?’ I echoed. ‘You’re trying to tell me you’re an angel? An
actual angel?’
He looked at me through the pain.
‘Well, of course I am! Isn’t it obvious?
Wings? Human features? Ability to
converse with – if I may say – a slightly dim-witted human female? What else would I be? A goose with delusions
of grandeur?’
His tone rankled and I forgot
about being scared.
‘Really?’ I asked, ‘I mean, as far
as looks go, you fit the current stereotype, but just where in the source
documents does it say angels have wings?
In fact, it’s probable that wings are just a later theological conceit,
and…’
‘Well, one of my theological
conceits is hurting quite a lot at the moment and anything you might be able to
do to help would be appreciated!’
‘Sorry, it’s just… you’re a bit
much to take on face value, you know…’
‘Well, the sooner I can get out
of here, the sooner I can be on my way and leave you to your pedantic
interpretation of your own belief system!’
‘It’s not my belief system. And
it’s not me that’s the problem here!’
I felt my face frowning as I
thought for a moment. He couldn’t go
anywhere until his wing was strapped up - he’d never fit through the
doorway. ‘I’ll fetch the first aid kit.’
In the house I phoned my friend Grace. She volunteers at a local nature reserve, so
if anyone would know about splinting wings, she would.
‘It’s not hard,’ she told me,
‘but it’s a two person job, really.
Getting the little chap to co-operate is usually the tricky bit. Wear gloves so you don’t get pecked… shall I
come over and give you a bit of a hand?’
‘No, it’s fine! I know you’re
busy. I’ve got someone here to help…
what do I do, exactly?’
She rattled off a string of
instructions about figure-of-eight bindings, and finished with a warning not to
let the injured chap peck at himself.
Finally, refusing again all
offers of assistance, I ended the call and went in search of bandages. I picked up a spare blanket, too, and went
back to my unexpected guest.
‘Let’s get the bones
immobilised.’ I tried to sound reassuring
and confident. ‘It should help with the pain.’
I passed him the blanket – I
didn’t know if angels were subject to shock or exposure or embarrassment, but he
had no obvious clothing – and carefully began to wind the bandages around his wing,
crossing them over so the main three bones of the wing structure were all bound
together. My subject winced from time to
time, but bore with my efforts silently.
I paused as I got near to where
the wing drooped drunkenly.
‘I’m worried about hurting you.
But we need to realign the bones.’
He took hold of the damaged wing
himself and, his breath hissing between his teeth, helping me to straighten and
bind the area around the break.
‘How is it?’
‘Not good,’ he said. ‘But we should be able to get it back in
place now.’
I looked at how the left wing
naturally folded at his back, and gently pushed the right wing, now bound
closed, into better alignment. I passed another bandage over it, under the
sound left wing, and across his body beneath his arms, having to lean in close
to reach. He smelled, bizarrely, of
cinnamon and vanilla, and I found myself smiling as I passed the bandage around
again, securing it neatly just under his ribs.
‘What’s so amusing?’
‘Well, I called a friend to ask
how to strap a wing. She said to mind
you didn’t peck me.’
‘Ha. Yes, I can see how that would amuse
you…’ He winced. ‘They’ll be looking for me soon.’
‘That’s good.’
‘No, it really isn’t. I don’t want to be found. Not by them.’
I raised an eyebrow at that but
decided I didn’t want to know.
‘At the risk of sounding
dim-witted again,’ I said, ‘can you stand? Are you hurt anywhere other than
your… um..?’
‘No, just a bit singed… there’s
not much headroom in here, is there?’ He struggled to his feet, stooping so he
didn’t fall foul of the steel support above him. He glanced up at the hole in the roof, just
to the right of the beam. ‘I suppose I
should be grateful I didn’t land more to the left.’
Outside, he paused to blink a few
times in the thin, early sunshine.
‘Well, goodbye,’ I said. ‘Mind how you go.’
He raised those improbable
eyebrows at me. ‘Pardon? ‘Mind how I go’? That’s it?’
‘You’re not expecting a lift of
any sort? You did say they’d be looking for you…’
‘Yes – the wrong ‘they’. Was that not clear?’
I shook my head. ‘I suppose you’d
better come inside, then.’
Getting him into the house wasn’t
straightforward. He had to duck and
enter sideways to avoid banging his wings on the door frame, and before he
crossed the threshold he stopped.
‘You need to invite me in,’ he
said.
‘I thought I just had,’ I said,
vague memories of vampire legend crossing my mind.
‘No; properly.’
‘All right. Come in, then.’
‘Thank you.’
He sounded as if he meant
it. I pulled a stool out from the
breakfast bar for him and he eased onto it carefully.
‘You’re a bit of a mess,’ I said,
eyeing the scrapes and bruises to his skin and trying not to be distracted by
his physique – he was a couple of workouts away from what Grace referred to as
‘ripped’, with firmly delineated muscles, little body hair, perfect bones and a
formidable scowl. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up a bit.
‘So, tell me,’ I began as I
dabbed and patted gently at his scrapes, ‘do angels need pain relief? Food? I’d
like to help, but until I know it’s not going to hurt you…’
‘Thank you!’ he said with some
relief. ‘I’m very hungry!’
While I was making a pot of tea
and a pile of toast, the phone rang. The answering machine in the office area
of my dining room clicked on; I heard my own voice, sounding oddly tinny.
‘Claws and Chores, please leave your
number and…’
‘Claws and Chores?’ my visitor
queried, helping himself to toast.
‘I provide a pet-sitting solution
to busy people,’ I told him. ‘And, I
have a client within the hour…’
His eyes grew guarded.
‘Do I need to wait in the shed
until you return?’ he asked.
I shook my head at him. In the familiar surroundings of my kitchen,
he looked lost and vulnerable. Angel, avian human or mutant hallucination,
whichever he was, I felt sorry for him.
‘I’m not that heartless. There’s a spare bed, if you need it.’
‘I don’t deserve your kindness,’
he said, which, considering he’d ruined my shed and called me ‘dim-witted’ was,
actually, quite true. ‘I heal quickly,
compared to you mortals, but even so, I’m grounded for a few days at least…’
A few days? I’d been thinking a
few hours at most!
‘…and there are things you need
to know,’ he went on. ‘We’re not meant
to involve humankind but, really, you’ve involved yourself. Still…
The… people, yes, let’s call them that… people who are looking for
me. There are rules. They can’t come into the house unless you
invite them…’
‘Like vampires...’
‘No, not much. And the chances are that if you did let one of
these… persons in, you wouldn’t be hurt…’
‘Hurt?’
‘Well, not on purpose…’
‘This sounds a bit sinister!’ I
protested.
‘For example,’ he pushed on,
ignoring me, ‘if one of your friends were at the door, and you said, come in,
and one of… them were listening, they’d claim it was an open invitation. So be careful.’
‘All right; I’m not fond of cold
callers anyway,’ I admitted. ‘But who
are these people? What should I look out for?’
He shook his head.
‘That’s not something you need to
worry about.’
‘Look, I do have to go out… that
client I mentioned? And you’re saying
there’s…’
‘You’ll be fine. Just don’t let any strangers in when you get
back. Spare bed, you said?’
After helping him up to the guest
room I collected my bag and coat and left for my first customer of the day –
Fluffykins McGarrett, a large, smoky blue Persian cat with a face like a
squashed bottom, a loud voice and a very sweet nature. The human of the house worked shifts, so I
was doing breakfasts this week.
Today Fluffykins was waiting for
me on the living room windowsill.
‘Sorry I’m a little late,’ I said,
bustling about with food and water.
‘It’s been a bit of a morning, really.’
Fluffykins fed, I took a seat on
the sofa and waited for him to join me; it was part of my remit to spend a few
minutes cuddling the cats in my care. It
wasn’t a chore; Fluffykins purred and snuggled and made a soft, warm patch on
my lap and provided some much-needed calm after the events of the morning, a
safe place to begin to process everything that had happened.
I’d never really given the
possibility of angels much thought. That
is, I’d read about them in the Bible and other places, and every now and then
I’d see something on the low-budget documentary channels about people being
rescued by ‘guardian angels’, but I’d never thought of myself as a believer.
Briefly I wondered if my house guest was anyone’s guardian angel, and if so, if
they were having a really bad day today… That’s if he even was an angel; he
might not be. There were any number of reasons why he might have wings… alien
visitor, mutant, escaped experiment... bizarrely, out of all the possibilities
I came up with, angel actually seemed the least unlikely, even if he was less
impressive than you’d expect from a supernatural messenger of God. There was, after all, an undeniable hole in
my shed roof. Besides, if that was what
my visitor believed, maybe it was best to humour him.
It all seemed rather surreal, in
retrospect. In fact, by the time I had
to move Fluffyfkins off my lap and head back, I’d almost convinced myself that
the hole in my shed roof had a perfectly normal origin. I picked up bread and milk and biscuits from
the local supermarket on my way, resisting the temptation to buy angel cake and
headed home.
There was a man in a dark suit
and unnecessary sunglasses loitering near my gate. The adjoining house was for sale, so a
slightly shabby estate agent wasn’t really unusual. I didn’t think anything of
it at first, not until he tried to follow me up my own path.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s about your insurance claim. And you are?’
Suspicious, that’s what I was,
suddenly. It didn’t seem likely that an insurance agent would turn up without
knowing who he was going to speak to.
Besides, although he didn’t look particularly threatening, he smelled of
damp, menace, and mushrooms. I wondered
if this was one of my guest’s mysterious ‘people’, and just what I was going to
do if it was.
‘I haven’t made an insurance
claim. Who are you from?’
‘I see,’ he said, ignoring my
question. ‘Well, we can make a start. What
did you say your name was?’
‘Really, it’s not convenient; I’m
rather busy today.’
‘I’ll need to let head office
know… May I use your phone?’
‘Don’t bother; I’ll contact them
myself. I’d like you to leave now.’
‘But I must just…’
I didn’t want to be rude, just in
case he really was what he claimed. It
annoyed me, though, that I was worried about offending a stranger who
repeatedly ignored my polite requests to get lost. Not knowing if he was a danger or not, I
pulled out my phone and waved it annoyingly in his annoying face.
‘If you don’t go away, I’ll call
my brother. He’s with the police. I’m sure he’ll be very interested in an insurance
man who won’t show any ID…’
He backed off and I hurried up
the path and into the house, locking and chaining the door behind me.
‘Is that you?’ the voice of my
unexpected guest called out.
‘Yes,’ I dumped the shopping in
the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the guest room. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ He was lying on his stomach on the bed, half
covered by the quilt, his wings on top of it.
‘I didn’t think to ask if you lived alone; I suddenly realised it could
have been anyone coming in.’
‘No. I’m a bit fussy who I give keys to.’ Not that it was any of his business.
‘Did you have any trouble outside?’
‘Well…’ Now that I was safely in
the house, I felt a bit silly. It was
probably just some poor, feckless chap who’d left his ID and my details in the
office. ‘There was an insurance agent
with no ID. Pushy. I was worried at the time – you’ve got me
really on edge, imagining danger everywhere. I didn’t see any of your ‘people’,
if that’s what you were wondering.’
He looked at me with a raised arc
of eyebrow. ‘Dear soul! Exactly what
were you expecting my opponents to look like?’
‘Opponents?’ I echoed.
He gave an uncomfortable
single-shouldered shrug.
‘Enemies,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry – you’re quite safe.’
I drew breath to protest when there
was a sharp knock at the door. From the
top of the stairs, I could see a dark-suited shape through the glass panels. Trying not to feel too alarmed, I ignored the
knocking and went back to my guest.
‘They won’t give up, you know,’
he said. ‘They know I’m nearby, even if
they don’t know the exact house yet.’
‘Well, anyone walking along the
road behind the house is bound to see that ruddy great hole in the shed roof,’
I said, feeling calmer now I was back in the room with him. ‘It wouldn’t take a genius to work it out.’
‘If another confronts you, ask
for their name. There’s a power in names, and they fear it. Once you can name
them, you may forbid them the threshold.’
‘On the subject of names,’ I
said, ‘Portia Williams.’
‘Portia?’ he queried. ‘Isn’t that a rather pretentious name for
someone as unprepossessing as yourself?’
I wanted to scowl, wondering what
he saw when he looked at me. A woman the wrong side of thirty-five, slightly
above average height, with hair too long to be short and too short to be
shoulder-length? A spinster with wary grey-blue eyes, living alone in a huge
house?
He tipped his head, waiting for
an answer, and I found myself explaining the reasons behind my rather grand
forename.
‘Well, my father’s a petrol-head. I was nearly called Minnie, only my mother
was heavily into Shakespeare.’ I sighed.
‘I think I had a lucky escape…’
‘I see. Well, Portia.
You can call me Yuri.’
‘Glad to meet you, Yuri,’ I said,
perhaps not entirely accurately. ‘So,
before I go out again, are you going to tell me who that was outside? What does
he want?’
He sighed.
‘I really can’t explain… think of
him – them as agents of chaos, if you like.’
‘But what about your own…
people. Won’t they be searching, too?’
‘Well, I hope so. If the ones I was with own up… but it’ll take
time. My people will have to meet, to
discuss who to send, how to protect them…’
‘Protect? You mean there’s real danger involved here?’
‘Not for you. Not specifically…’
‘What?’
‘Well, no-one is going to
deliberately try to hurt you. But
sometimes there are accidents… What do
they say? Collateral damage?’
I glanced out of the bedroom
window at the front garden. Below, I could
see two overdressed figures loitering just beyond the gate. And these chaps were going to back down if I
just asked their names?
‘Oh, great!’ I said. ‘Look, I have other clients. Anything you need before I leave?’
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