World After

12

THAT NIGHT I have a bizarre dream.

I’m in a village made of clay huts with thatched roofs. There’s a huge bonfire that lights up the night and everyone is eating, drinking, and running around in costumes. Music shrieks and people gyrate around the fire, throwing things into it.

All the hallmarks of a festivity are here but the people are too alert. They steal glances behind themselves into the darkness, and there are only a few shrill laughs. The big bonfire throws long shadows against the hillside that shift and twist like sinister beings.

Maybe I’m getting spooked because people are in monster costumes that are a little too organic for my taste. There’s no rubber and plastic to remind me that it’s just a costume. These people are wearing pelts, animal heads, and claws that look too real for comfort.

Raffe is nearby in the shadows, standing tall with his snowy wings halfway open. It’s breathtaking to see his broad shoulders and muscular arms haloed by his own wings. It makes me sad to know that outside of this dream, he doesn’t have them anymore.

The villagers look at him, especially when they walk by, but their glances are not shocked and fearful like I’d expect. They act as if they’re used to seeing angels and don’t pay him much attention. At least the men don’t.

The women, on the other hand, are gathering around him. Somehow, I’m not too surprised.

The women wear dark dresses that look like stage curtains. Their faces are made up with black circles around their eyes and bloody red lips. One has devils’ horns. Some have claws attached to their hands. Others wear goatskins complete with hooves and horns, and makeup to match.

They look bizarrely barbaric, and the shifting light of the fire adds to their savage appearance. Despite his wings, Raffe is the only one who looks “normal.”

Weirdly, my dream mind picks up on some of Raffe’s thoughts. I see humans the way he sees them, alien and bestial. Compared to the perfection of angels, these Daughters of Men are ugly and smell like pigs. He tries to imagine what his Watchers could possibly have seen in them. He can’t see anything worth risking a minor reprimand for, much less the Pit.

Even if he could get past their looks and behavior, they’re wingless. How could his angels stomach that?

“Where are our husbands?” asks one of the women. She speaks a guttural language I wouldn’t normally understand except that, in my dream, I do.

“They’ve been condemned to the Pit for marrying Daughters of Men.” His voice is controlled but there’s an undertone of anger. They had been his best warriors and good friends.

The women begin crying. “For how long?”

“Until Judgment Day when they’ll finally get their trial. You won’t see them again.”

The women cry in each other’s arms.

“What about our children?”

Raffe stays silent. How does one tell a mother that he’s here to hunt and kill her babies? He came to earth to spare his Watchers the pain of having to hunt down their own children. Even if they were nephilim—monsters who eat human flesh—what kind of twisted punishment is that for a father? He couldn’t allow it, not for his soldiers.

“Are you here to punish us?”

“I’m here to protect you.” He wasn’t planning to protect the wives. But the Watchers begged him. Begged. He couldn’t fathom the idea of his fiercest warriors begging for anything, much less for Daughters of Men.

“From what?”

“The Watchers’ wives have been given to the hellions. They’ll be coming for you tonight. We need to get you someplace safe. Let’s go.”

I look around at all the costumes and the bonfire and realize that this must be some ancient version of Halloween when monsters and demons supposedly roamed the streets. They’ll be coming in force tonight.

The women clutch at each other in fright.

“I told you to stay out of the business of gods and angels,” says a gray-haired woman who holds a younger woman protectively. She’s dressed in a lamb’s skin, complete with the head that drapes over her forehead. It has fangs attached to it like some kind of saber-toothed beast.

Raffe begins walking away from the village. “Either come with me or stay. I can only help those who want to be helped.”

The older woman pushes her daughter toward Raffe. The others follow, huddling together and rushing to keep up like some weird menagerie.

Music builds near the bonfire as we walk away from it. The tempo speeds up and the beat throbs until the women’s breathing matches it.

Just as I think the crescendo will crest, the music stops.

A baby cries into the night.

Then it suddenly stops in the middle of a wail. It ends too abruptly to be natural, and the sharp silence makes the hair on my arms curl.

A woman cries out brokenheartedly. There’s no surprise to it, just pain and mourning.

It makes me want to both run to the fire to see if the baby is all right and to run away from these barbaric villagers. They seem mostly unsurprised and unaffected by whatever is happening near the fire, as if this is part of their normal ritual.

I want to tell Raffe that we’re not all like these people. That I’m not like these people. But I’m just a ghost in my own dream.

Raffe quietly pulls out his sword, on full alert.

They’re coming.

Just as the music begins again, this time accompanied by chanting, Raffe spins to look behind him.

The hillside slithers with shadows.