A Gathering of Angels
an excerpt

"Mad say you?" Philippe said. "Think you that I am mad? Oh, but then you truly have not seen mad. For, one who truly was mad would claim to have the whole world laughing at him. Laughing at him incessantly. While, me, I simply laugh at the world for, you see, I know that it is not me the world is laughing at, it is merely itself. And if the whole world is laughing at itself, how can it be that it laughs at me, thus making me mad?"

Philippe Duvicieux was under arrest for crimes against the Crown and was being physically dragged from his laboratory. His torn lab coat dragged across the floor, becoming stained as he was pulled across the blood- and chemical-drenched tile floor. He was putting up no resistance to the men, having resigned himself to his fate. He allowed them to simply take him by the arms and drag him from his work, gangly legs trailing behind him on the floor. "Mad you call me, ha! After the advances in genetics I have made? It is I who call you mad, good sirs, in that none of you—you who call me mad—took as great strides in the field of biology as I!"

A harsh cry rang out through the building. The lights overhead flickered; sparks flew from machines. Experimental breeds of hybrid creatures quivered in their cages, shrinking to the back corners.

Philippe merely laughed again. "Oh, yes, my darling. Come to your master. Come, and show these madmen what it is to be sane!"

* * *

Two hundred years or so later....

The only sound echoing in the dark room was the soft shuffling and clicking of a great beast making its way through the chamber. With a hiss, a shower of sparks shot from a large machine that had not worked in decades. The creature’s craggy features arranged themselves into a frown; the equipment had been doing that quite often lately after years of lying dormant, but what could it mean? It reached up with a clawed hand and scratched at its elephantine trunk.

A soft sound, a groan, carried across the silent room. Slowly, the creature turned, and its gaze fell upon the sleeping forms of a man and a woman bathed in a dim light from a single bare light bulb. The woman, her face horribly marred, the spider web of scars standing out a deep azure against her pale skin, slept in peace. The man next to her, however, tossed his head back and forth as though struggling in a nightmare. The creature frowned and it approached him, laying a clawed hand gently on the plate of metal covering the left side of his face. “Sleep, Jeyu,” the creature said in a hoarse voice, “sleep….”

Presently, the man grew still, and seemed to be sleeping peacefully once more, his chest gently rising and falling. The creature’s brow furrowed; why should his sleep be troubled when the woman’s was peaceful? Their dreams were nearly always linked together. The creature knew this to be a bad omen, but shuffled away nonetheless, its toenails clicking on the cracked tiles beneath its feet.

It paused as it reached an aisle that was especially charred from the fire so many years before. Everything was as it had been for the past two centuries. Everything, except the bones of the creature’s creator, Philippe Duvicieux. The skeleton had vanished.

* * *

As the knife plunged repeatedly into the huge form, the creature that was once Philippe Duvicieux shrank back into the scientist’s lanky, thin form, and the puppet modeled after Antaei disintegrated into nothing more than dust. Tears streamed from Chaitae’s face as she drove the knife into his chest again and again, his crimson blood staining her hands, her clothes, and the floor all around them. At length, she stopped, driving the knife into his body a final time, finally collapsing from exhaustion and grief.

She rested her head on one side of his chest, slapping the other side with an open palm. “I hate you! I hate you!” She repeated the phrase over and over again, disregarding the warm, red liquid now covering her face, the red mask broken only by two twin tracks down her cheeks, cleared by her salty tears.

“Guys, I found—” Glaetchynn stopped short upon seeing the sight before her, Chaitae weeping over the broken body of Philippe.

Antaei’s breath caught in her throat and she wrenched her wrist from Glaetchynn’s grasp. A troubled look came to her eyes, as though she were unsure of the emotion she felt.

Arata ran to Chaitae, took her from the body, and held her in a close embrace, making an effort to quiet her shuddering sobs. He sang softly in her ear, and she eventually ceased shouting her hatred for the man who had once been her father, settling for silent weeping instead.

As if in a daze, Antaei crossed to where Philippe’s mangled corpse lay and knelt beside it. She reached out and lightly touched a place on his pale cheek that was still miraculously free from blood. His eyes, widened in alarm upon realizing his imminent death, were clouded over. She silently brushed away a few of his dark curls from his forehead, and a wave of sorrow passed over her. She leaned forward and gently kissed his forehead.

A breeze blew through the hall, seeming to softly sigh as it gently stirred through her hair.

“Good bye… Jarkk.”

The voice was distant, hardly above a whisper, and she knew only she had heard it. Jarkk. He had called her by his wife’s name. Such a small act touched her deeply, making her feel regretful the brilliant man was dead.

There was no other way, she told herself sternly. It was the only thing that could have been done. “Be at peace, Philippe,” she whispered, removing the knife and folding his arms across his chest. She closed his eyes, and could not help but ruefully think to herself how haughty he looked, even in death, even lying covered in his own blood.