Beastly Angels
an excerpt

[Can anyone come up with a better name than "Beastly Angels" from reading this, please?]

Officer Demain steadied Barret for what seemed like the dozenth time that day. Barret was extremely restive because he could sense trouble coming their way, but he couldn't see what kind of trouble. He could smell something unfamiliar that had an ugly, hot flavor to it that he couldn't identify. But it was faint, and he could not yet place where it was coming from.
"Hello, Officer Demain and Officer Oliver," Christina said, submitting herself and her things for inspection. Today she seemed to have a crowd of friends with her, one of whom was a very slow moving elderly woman on her arm. Christina seemed more relaxed than Officer Demain had ever yet seen her.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. Stay, Oliver. I think this is the most casually dressed I've ever seen you. Pleasure trip this time?" Officer Demain asked.
Christina smiled. "Oh, yes. We're headed east to our family reunion," she replied, "This is my mother, Helen," Christina said, indicating the woman and the five other people with them. "Mother, this is Officer Demain and his canine co worker, Oliver."
"How do you do," Helen said.
"A pleasure, Ma'am," Officer Demain said. Oliver wagged his tail, then looked around again, suspiciously. "Stay, Oliver," Officer Demain repeated. Officers Demain and Oliver inspected them and got them waved through in good time. The next person moved forward, an elderly gentleman who surprisingly, had yet another cat in another, very similar case.
Oliver and Bono suddenly became frantic. Oliver could see the man that the offensive smell was coming from, but the young man wasn't moving toward any particular gate to get himself inspected. Oliver could even smell the sweat of the man's anxiety. Oliver barked at him, but the man seemed not to hear him.
"Heal, Oliver!" Officer Demain demanded sharply, and tried unsuccessfully to force him to inspect the elderly gentleman's luggage. Barret could smell even from a distance that the luggage in question was completely innocuous though, and he ignored it. He barked at the distant man again, growling in anxiety. Then he attempted to lunge at him, but Officer Demain already had a firm grip on his sturdy harness. Barret was in the perfect position, location and profession to stop trouble, and yet he couldn't protect the people from his dangerous target! He struggled with Robert fruitlessly, trying to drag him over to the man, but he was just too light.
"The bomb, Barret! The bomb's on his heart, Barret! Kill him!" Apedemak screamed suddenly as Christina walked away with him, his voice echoing through the halls. All that the humans heard was a mild cat wail. Behind Officer Demain and Oliver, Christina was now having a similarly hard time with Bono as he skittered around frantically in his carrier, trying frantically to find a way out to help Barret. But he could not get to the zipper to escape, because Christina had put a little luggage lock on it to prevent just such a thing from happening -- but presumably from happening while Bono was ensconced inside the hold of a 747.
Finally, with a sigh of frustration, Apedemak let go of the hold on his form and took over the cat in the next carrier.
The elderly little black and white tuxedo cat was extremely surprised, though not upset, to find a second person inside of her mind. She immediately decided that she quite liked it.
"Hello, Buttons," Apedemak greeted her cordially, suppressing the urge to rush her as he looked around the interior of her carrier through her eyes, looking for a way out of it.
"Hi!" she replied, and then left a surprised pause. Apedemak waited, inwardly tapping his claws and swallowing his impatience. "This has never happened to me before!" Buttons said, and Apedemak nodded at her in her mind. "This is nice," she said as she crouched down, and began purring and kneading the soft blanket in her carrier.
"Listen, Buttons," Apedemak began.
"Hi!" Buttons perked up again, delighted to have a guest with herself.
"Hi, sweetie. Listen, we need to jump out of here for a bit. Can you show me how we would get out?"
"Ooh, I don't want to get out of this cave, it’s nice and safe in here and we're not at home right now where it is safe." Buttons said, cuddling back into her blanket.
Apedemak thumped his tail in his mind, swallowed his frustration and thought to himself very, very carefully. Possessing a mortal animal and then attempting to make it do one's bidding was difficult enough even when the animal was normally on his side, and he obviously didn't have much time. He sniffed the air again out of habit.
"Buttons, do you smell that bad smell?" he asked her.
"Oh, yes I do! I wish it would go away," she replied fretfully, wrinkling her nose slightly.
"Me too, Buttons. That bad smell is coming from something that could hurt all of us, including your human up there --"
"Hurt my Baby?" she asked in surprised, mounting terror.
Apedemak looked sympathetic. "Yes, Buttons, even your Baby. But we can stop the bad thing, if you help me get out of here quickly." he said softly.
"Will you stay with me?" she asked plaintively.
Apedemak was completely caught off guard. "What?" he asked, shocked.
"If I help you, will you stay with me here in my head when you're done getting rid of the bad thing? I like you." she said, sweet as a six week old kitten. Apedemak was charmed, but time was running out. "Its been lonely. Baby goes away to his veterinarian all day long and leaves me all alone in the house all day." Apedemak nodded. he could not help but understand.
"Buttons, whether you help me or whether you do not, someone will come to stay with you, forever," Apedemak told her solemnly. Buttons was immediately overjoyed. She nodded, then guided his eyes up to the zipper of the case. Apedemak was shocked, and couldn't believe he had missed this detail. The zipper was accidentally pushed inward into the case, where Buttons and Apedemak could easily reach it and pull on it with her teeth.
"There's the doorknob, but I'm not sure what to do with it." she said. Apedemak guided Button's mouth and pulled open the zipper, just enough for Buttons to slip through the new opening. Apedemak split from Buttons, resumed his own solid form and stalked away without even looking back as they hit the floor. A few minutes later, the spirit of a younger, female guardian cat joined Buttons in her mind, to stay with her for the rest of her little life.
Despite the time it had taken to convince Buttons to let them out, only a few seconds of linear time had actually transpired. Apedemak was so swift, that both Christina and the elderly gentleman felt both of the cat carriers lost weight at almost exactly the same time, and they gasped in surprise in unison.
The young man that Barret and Apedemak were trying to get to was named Ahmed Ziri, and he was an engineering student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was a third year exchange student from Saudi Arabia, who had been very lonely during his time in America, and had been very disturbed by America's seeming decadence. At the end of his second year he had suddenly made very close and insistent friends who he did not properly understand were religious extremists, who only wanted to use him for their own purposes. He was wearing a vest with some C4, a timer, and an actual nuclear device on it. The nuclear device was what the animals could smell, and were so afraid of.
Apedemak raced at Ahmed. Ahmed was quite surprised to see a beautiful cat running freely in the airport, and now running straight towards him, and he took it for a sign of blessing upon him and upon his mission. He reached out towards the cat with open arms and a trusting smile.
"I'm sorry," Apedemak whispered in a sad hiss as he leapt up into Ahmed's arms and then clawed his way to his neck.
Christina watched, utterly shocked, as her sweet, lazy cat Bono somehow escaped from his locked carrier and began running away from her down the terminal hallway. Everyone in the area including herself was too surprised to even try to chase him. She was startled at how he even seemed to run with such a serious sense of purpose.
Then, the room seemed to darken for her as their lives seemed to go horribly, horribly wrong. Bono leapt up into the welcoming arms of a handsome young man in his twenties, who was wearing a bulky vest, and Bono began slashing the poor young man's face apart viciously, and biting his neck ruthlessly, while loosing insane little snarls. Christina dropped everything and began sprinting towards them, but she felt as though she was moving in slow motion, running through cold molasses and stopped time. "Bono, no! Stop!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Officer Demain was so shocked at the heretofore cute little cat's sudden act of savagery that he lost his grip on Oliver's harness. Barret felt himself loose, and sprang forward like a wet bar of soap to assist not the young man, but Academic. Ahmed screamed in late dawning shock and pain, then fell on his back, blinded by deep scratches and his own blood, as he tried to drop and then push the cat away. Then something even more terrible began to happen. He could feel his airway rapidly begin to constrict as his neck and tongue began to swell. He had not known he was allergic to cats until just this moment. Barret arrived and locked his jaws around Ahmed's neck, pinning him down rather unnecessarily and hopefully distracting him from thinking about the detonator. Ahmed feebly tried to push Barret away, but he felt as though the dog was a fat grizzly bear on his swiftly constricting chest.
"I'm sorry Ahmed, Mohammet had sent me to you, but not as a blessing," Apedemak whispered into his ear in Egyptian accented Arabic. "he sent me to return you to him, to stop you from making this terrible mistake. I am sorry, my friend. You gave us no choice." Apedemak told him mournfully as he began to lose consciousness, and just before Christina skidded over to them and grabbed Bono, picked him up and clamped him to her chest tightly.
She shook the cat. "Bono, what have you done, baby?" she demanded, shaking him again tearfully. She grabbed Oliver's harness and succeeded in pulling him off of the dying man. "Oliver, no! Bad dog!" she shouted as Officer Demain ran up and took charge of him, then began checking the fallen man's vital signs. He shook his head pessimistically, and then radioed for a medic as quickly as he could. The medics arrived swiftly, and Christina knelt beside the young man as the medics began setting up. Christina's teen aged niece stood behind her, a hand supportively on her shoulder as a crowd began to form. Officer Demain began trying to shoo people back, but he was startled at how forcefully Oliver was trying to convince them all to get away. But his hair stood on end and he froze when Oliver suddenly huffed angrily, and sat on his rump with an audible thump; this was the signal that he had located a bomb.
The medic sliced open the dying man's coat with a pair of medical shears and laid open his coat. The crowd gasped in horror at the large, complicated bomb now revealed, that was strapped to the young man's chest. Christina had been looking at Bono, but she turned at everyone's look of astonishment and she gasped and froze in terror, unable to breathe, clutching Bono to her too hard. The crowd backed off, and then scattered. Christina slowly regained her heartbeat and her breath, and looked down into Bono's face as if in a trance. He looked up at her sorrowfully and yet innocently, his little pink mouth covered in dark red blood and his tail wagging slowly, incongruously peacefully. Suddenly Christina gasped again, dropped Bono and lunged to stop her niece, who had suddenly dived at the body. The medics froze in terror. "Becky, no! What in the hell are you doing!?"
"I have to disable the cell phone, Aunt Christy, it’s a remote trigger!" Becky shouted as she suited actions to words, struggling briefly to open the cell phone's battery case. Everyone had another terrorized moment as the phone indeed began ring as Becky finally managed to pop the battery case open. She yanked the battery out forcefully before the phone could complete even the first ring, and the phone died on the spot. Everyone still standing or kneeling around looked slowly, fearfully at the bomb, but nothing happened. Christina regained her senses again, picked Bono back up, grabbed Becky by the hand, got them both standing up and began hastily backing up and retreating towards their family, who was still on the other side of the gate.
"We have to get out of here right now!" Becky announced as they returned.
"Why, what's happened? Did your cat kill that--" Becky's mother Sandra began to ask Christina. They all looked up and then around as an alarm began to sound. A calm, recorded voice began to explain in many different languages that everyone needed to begin calmly evacuating. Officer Demain and Officer Oliver joined them in the act of returning to their post at the gate. Christina looked at Officer Demain fearfully for help, still clutching Bono. They were a long way from the exits.
"Officer, my mother, she can't walk that fast." she began tearfully.
"No problem," he replied tersely, and he immediately radioed for an airport electric car, who picked then up in short order and swiftly rushed them to their cars. Meanwhile, airport staff not only had to direct the evacuation of the entire airport, but they also had to capture one terrified little cat named Buttons who had mysteriously opened her own carrier when the pandemonium had first begun.
Later at home, after a large quantity of alcohol, Christina had time to inspect Bono's case, which was still securely locked and shut from the outside, and wonder.