A Hideous Beauty Kingdom Wars I Part 11

Pluto the dog was torn between two opinions, with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder.

Click.

I pushed the OFF b.u.t.ton repeatedly.

Angel Nicholas Cage stood on a beach with a whole city of angels wearing trench coats and listening to the sun rise.

Click.

Feminine hands displayed a ceramic angel figurine on the shopping channel.

I dropped the remote. Reaching behind the set, I pulled the plug. The screen blinked out.

My hands were shaking.

"Now that was weird," I said.

I paced the room.

"Coincidence. Malfunction. Had to be."

I stared at the television's electrical plug.

I ordered room service. Feeling the unmistakable need to distance myself from anything even remotely related to heaven, I ordered a burger and fries . . . and a dessert, Chocolate Sin.

Ten p.m. Jana obviously wasn't going to call.

"Why am I still here? I should be thirty thousand feet over Kansas by now, halfway home."

I kept telling myself I'd stayed because of Jana, that I wasn't staying because I'd been invited to meet an angel. "I'd be a fool to go out there in the morning."

Big joke on Grant. I knew what would happen. I'd show up and the professor would give me some lame excuse about the angel being called away suddenly to deliver an emergency scroll, or administer a plague in Kazakhstan, or transport a holy man in Tibet to heaven on a fiery prayer rug.

"It would have to be a Tibetan holy man," I said. "Who'd believe an angel could even find a holy man in Washington, D.C.?"

I chuckled at my own humor and crammed a cold fry into my mouth.

"Now if the angel looked like Roma Downey, that would be a meeting worth going to," I said.

Ten-thirty p.m. I climbed into bed and turned out the lights. I was tired, but not sleepy. My eyes were closed, my mind active.

Why Semyaza? I asked myself.

It had to be a code name. The other partic.i.p.ants in the a.s.sa.s.sination plot no doubt had similar names.

The thing that disturbed me about the name Semyaza was that historically it was the name of a subordinate, an angel lieutenant. Semyaza answered to Lucifer and Myles Shepherd wasn't the kind of person who answered to anyone. It was a matter of ego.

But, as unlikely as it seemed, I had to allow for the fact that given the scope of the plot, Myles might be someone's subordinate. Did that mean the code name of the top guy was Lucifer? Or better yet, Satan?

"This is ridiculous. What am I doing here?" I said to the darkness.

Throwing off the bedcovers and chastising myself for letting a small-college professor pull me into his religious fantasy about supernatural beings, I got dressed, threw my stuff into my travel bag, and ordered a cab to take me to the airport.

I booked a flight that would get me to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., by 9:40 the next morning.

At thirty thousand feet over Omaha, Nebraska, my eyes were too tired to read but not tired enough to sleep. I've never been able to sleep on planes. My legs are too long and the headrest hits me in the back of the neck. The best I can do is doze.

The cabin was dark. I had an aisle seat four rows from the back galley. Flight attendants floated up and down the aisles like night fairies. A dozen or so reading lights were on, but mostly people slept. Some wore earplugs or headphones.

My back hurt and my right leg had fallen asleep. I shifted position for the hundredth time. My eyes were closed and I was dozing when I heard a skittering sound in the overhead luggage bin across the aisle.

Awake now, I focused on the bin and listened. Nothing. Just the constant drone of the engines.

A man with heavy jowls, seated next to the window across the aisle, squirmed, folded his arms, laid his head against the window, his eyes closed. His cheek twitched nervously as he slept.

I tried folding my arms to see if it would help. My eyes drooped closed.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

There it was again! Something was in that overhead bin. Something alive.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

It sounded like some kind of rodent.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

I pushed the call b.u.t.ton. A flight attendant responded immediately. She turned off the call light. "Can I get you something?" she asked.

Thick was the best way to describe her-thick middle, thick legs, thick neck. She appeared to be Scandinavian, with a slight accent and a motherly demeanor.

"I think there's something in that bin," I said, keeping my voice low. "Something alive."

She turned and looked at the bin. "Alive?"

"An animal. Maybe a rodent. I heard scratching."

We both listened.

Nothing.

"I don't hear anything," she said.

To my chagrin, neither did I.

"I'm sure I heard something," I said.

She a.s.sessed me and apparently concluded I wasn't drunk or the practical-joker type. She pushed the call b.u.t.ton.

Another flight attendant appeared. Younger. Black hair. No-nonsense eyes. Before inquiring, she sized me up, the man with the problem that required a consultation of attendants.

"He says he heard a rat in the luggage bin," the first attendant reported.

"A rat?"

"I didn't say a rat," I protested. "I said I heard something. Something scratching."

People three rows in front and behind me were awake and looking at us. The word rat skittered from row to row.

"What do you think we should do?" the first attendant asked.

"Open the bin," the second attendant replied.

"What if there's a rat in there like he says?"

The first attendant took another a.s.sessment of me. "You're certain you heard it?"

"I'm sure I heard something."

She put her hand on the bin, not to open it, but to keep it from opening. Then she put her ear close to it.

"I don't hear anything," she said.

"Neither did I," the first attendant said.

Without taking her hand off the bin, the black-haired flight attendant asked if anybody else had heard scratching noises. If they had, n.o.body admitted it.

She thought a moment. "All right. Here's what we'll do."

She sent the first attendant to get a large trash bag. Then, she had everyone sitting within three rows of the bin get out of their seats and move a safe distance away. To protests the length of the plane, she had the lights turned on. Then she informed the pilot they might have a rat in a luggage bin. Within minutes the copilot was present to oversee the plan.

"Ready?" the second attendant asked.

With the first attendant holding the trash bag, the plan was to open the bin and brush anything that moved into the bag. Taking a linebacker stance, the copilot stood at one end of the bin. The second attendant would open the bin and man the opposite side.

"On three."

The pilot and bag-holding attendant indicated they were ready.

"One . . . two . . . three!"

The door to the bin flew open.

A gray streak fairly flew out of the bin and into the trash bag. People jumped. Gasped. m.u.f.fled screams.

"I got it!" the first attendant shouted, closing the bag with a stranglehold.

Something definitely was in the bag. But it wasn't moving. The attendant held up the bag to get a better look at it.

"Let me see," the copilot said.

She handed him the bag.

The copilot instructed people to step back. He looked inside the bag. His face registered disgust. He reached into the bag. A woman pa.s.senger squealed in protest. Ignoring her, the copilot pulled the rat out of the bag by its tail.

A gray, plush toy rat with big eyes and a silly grin.

"It appears we do indeed have a rat on board," he said. "Only it's a pa.s.senger."

He tossed the toy at me. I caught it.

For the next hour I stood in a corner of the back galley and endured the scorn of pa.s.sengers, flight attendants, the copilot, and the pilot, who left the c.o.c.kpit to lecture me on why there was no place for practical jokes on commercial flights.

I heard most of it. When I wasn't listening I was thinking about what else was in the overhead bin with the plush toy rat-a Los Angeles Angels sports bag and ball cap, and a child's backpack decorated with angel wings.

When I was finally allowed to return to my seat, I avoided eye contact with the other pa.s.sengers, buckled into my seat, folded my arms, and closed my eyes, though sleep was the farthest thing from my mind.

It wasn't five minutes later that I heard it again.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

Same sound coming from the same bin.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

I ignored it. I didn't care if the whole plane was crawling with rats.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

Through half-opened eyes I saw a demon fall out of the bottom of the bin and plop onto the back of a seat. It was the same kind of creature I'd seen in Myles Shepherd's office, a three-dimensional spirit resembling a gargoyle.

It looked at me, then jumped onto the chest of the man next to the window with heavy jowls. He appeared to be asleep. The demon clung to the man's shirt, looked at me again, then clawed its way into the man's chest.

I looked around me, hoping that someone else had seen what I'd just seen. No one had. Those who weren't sleeping were glaring at me and shaking their heads with disgust.

The man next to the window moaned and squirmed with a pained expression, but he didn't wake up.

In the front of the plane a man was excusing himself as he stepped over the other pa.s.sengers in his row, making his way to the aisle.

It was Myles Shepherd.

He looked at me. Nodded. Smiled.

Turning his back, he made his way to the front lavatory.

I bolted from my seat, but was held in place by the seat belt. Clutching frantically at the latch, I freed myself and charged up the aisle.

A few rows in front of me a woman got up, blocking the aisle. She just stood there.