An Occupation of Angels Part 10

And that was what I was counting on.

As it fell, it fell towards the centre, and I prayed it would hold, prayed Eldershott would keep up the contact for just a little while longer.

And it did. And he did.

The heavy structure of the gate came crashing down on Raphael and on the thing that was once Sophie Stockard and was now more, or less, G.o.d.

And when the circle pa.s.sed over them, it swallowed them, and they disappeared.

Then, with a gun I had picked up from a dead soldier, I put a bullet through Eldershott's head.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

I was running through the corridor pursued by confusion.

The ice was melting.

Behind me, swearing and screaming; German words mingling with angelic screeching.

They would die.

I ran until I reached the ladder I had first come through.

I climbed it.

Behind me, faint explosions. I had set the remainder of the grenades well.

I came out into glaring sunlight and the brightness of ice.

And ran.

No-one tried to stop me. No sniper-shot cut through my brain as through pliant water. I ran.

When I stopped and turned, I was far away and breathing hard. Behind me the research facility, that icy, enchanted castle, was beginning, slowly, to collapse.

Mengele would die in this way. A bullet would have been too merciful for him.

I watched the place fall down. Cracks in the ice, blocks falling down. Somewhere, the snow would be stained red.

The ice was settling. The earth shook. After a while, when I looked at it, all I could see was one more natural hill covered in snow.

It could almost have been peaceful.

The target had been reached and eliminated.

He was dead. Eldershott, Sophie...I couldn't save you. I am sorry. Men and women die when they involve themselves in the games of angels. It was a lesson learnt well.

There would be no war with the angels.

Not yet.

I turned and looked ahead. It would be a long walk to the pickup point.

The game we play is war, and it is cold, as cold as the ice around me as I walk. It is a strange world we live in, in which human and angel co-exist; there are more powers at play in the shadows than just us, the Bureau, the Fourth Directorate, Mossad.... There are other shadows, other boards, other puppets and puppeteers. Others walk in the shadow world we tread.

I had averted a war. But for how long?

The sound of a solitary bird startled me, crying far away. Strange, that I had noticed no living creature here until now. Perhaps their instincts were better than mine.

Target reached and eliminated. Or something like that.

Every part of my body ached. For all that, the silence and the cold round me were comforting. The air had a fresh, clean smell mixed with earth, mixed with humanity and life. And the sun shone.

I was alive. I had come through.

I am alive.

Shadows lengthened. In the distance, I could see the plane waiting like a nesting bird on the ice.

I would go somewhere warm, I decided. Somewhere tropical, lush, sweaty. Somewhere far away from ice and angels.

I opened the door and climbed up into the seat, settling back with a sigh.

"Get us out of here," I said.

Without a word, Seago started the engines and then we were flying, flying high on the cold, clean winds.

Flying high as angels.

AUTHOR BIO.

LAVIE TIDHAR is the author of linked-story collection HebrewPunk (2007), novellas An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), Gorel The Pot-Bellied G.o.d (forthcoming), and, with Nir Yaniv, The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009). He's lived on three continents and one island nation and currently lives in Southeast Asia. His first novel, The Bookman, will be published by HarperCollins' new Angry Robot imprint in 2010.

ARTIST BIO.

VITALY S. ALEXIUS is a Russian-born digital artist currently working as a freelance ill.u.s.trator/photographer. His work has adorned posters, CDs, book, comic covers, and more. Stop by svitart.n-tek.ca to see more of Vitaly's work.

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