Chapter 21 #3
Joana’s fingers twitched, craving a cigarette, as she thought, ‘I asked my dad to teach me how to use a gun. He didn’t want to at first — I was a girl, he said — but he gave in, one day.
He brought me to the outskirts, he handed me a pistol.
We shot at bottles. In the distance, I saw a bird plunge, and I wondered if I’d just killed for the first time or if that was my angel sending me a message.
I didn’t care. If Michael wouldn’t save me again, then I’d have to do it myself.
’ “I thought I could just kill the right people.”
Tadeo crouched by the strangers, realizing the injured man was only quiet because the light was fading from his eyes. Quick, he told Dina to get some of their water and asked if the angel could heal the man, but the angel frowned and said, “We finished the last of the water earlier, Tadeo.”
“There should be some up ahead at a store,” Tadeo tried to say, putting his palm over the gashes, then turning to see the woman who was eyeing the angel with wide, frozen eyes. “Please don’t worry. With God’s blessing, he will be okay.”
“It was the criminals,” she was stammering. “He was trying to post online about what’s happening here? I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Joana was quiet for a moment. “My plan was to use him like a weapon. I would get Tadeo to kill the criminals, the ones at the top. I thought we could all free the town that way. We. I thought the soldiers wanted us safe from crime and so did the politicians. I believed what they said. I used to think it was simple. Good people versus bad people.”
‘I went out hunting for Tadeo. It’s not difficult to find him if you know what you’re looking for — a teen boy without an eye.
In an alleyway, I found him. Like how I’d seen my dad do, I covered my face — though all I had was an old luchador mask — and crept in behind a boy hurrying through with bandages over half his face, and I called out, “Tadeo!” He stopped immediately, tensed, didn’t turn.
Quietly, I approached, pulling a pistol out of my jacket, and I said, “Your hands are already bloody. You think that no one can see it, but I can. You killed soldiers in cold blood. You died, and you came back from the dead.” He demanded my name.
I didn’t answer. Finally, he growled, and he turned around, and I watched as his body morphed into something enormous, something horrible.
’ Intangibly many-eyed, many-winged. ‘But I kept my gun pointed at you, Tadeo. I will not be afraid, I told myself. Michael told me not to be afraid, even if he chose to be.’
Just as Dina was about to fly off for water, Tadeo drew in a breath harshly.
“Wait,” he told the angel, and he heard the woman before him gasp louder than he had.
With a swipe of his thumb over the wound, the blood smeared along what was, suddenly, perfectly healed skin.
“Lord,” Tadeo whispered. “Lord, my God.”
“Tadeo,” Dina breathed, fingers rising to go over his mouth. He’d never seen this, not even from angels, not even Raphael.
“You healed him,” said the woman. “Like Christ— Like Christ!”
Joana thought about smoking again. ‘Tadeo and I — in a stand-off. He asked how I knew all of this. I said an angel sent me. Then, I told him that he had a duty. Duty? Yes, duty. You can kill like no one else. You can turn into a beast, but you can do good. Don’t let the power blind you, stupid.
What killed you was the evil that’s destroying us all.
Stupid, you can save this place. You can save us.
You have a responsibility. A loyalty to your own people. ’
Tadeo grappled his healing hand with the other, and he saw as the man twitched, blinking his eyes, returning from half-dead.
Immediately after, he shot up, and he clutched the woman’s shirt and wrist, shaking, as she embraced him.
The woman called, “Thank you, thank you, boy. You’re a saint!
You’re a saint!” He stood, stepped back, and whispered some words in thanks, but his heart was beginning to pound against his ribs and lungs.
One of Dina’s hands came over Tadeo’s arm, squeezing in perhaps the same amount of confusion as the anti-Christ. “Tadeo,” the angel whispered, “how have you done this?”
“I don’t know,” Tadeo replied, hushed and hasty. “I didn’t even try.” He felt his cellphone vibrate in his pocket, and he wanted to reach into it, hoping it was Joana. His friend. Joana. “Come, come. Let’s go.”
The angel frowned at the young man’s twitching, fearful face. “What’s wrong, Tadeo?”
Joana told Michael quietly, “I needed help figuring out where to find the bad guys to kill, and I asked my dad. He told me, but he only told me some of them, the traffickers he and his boss were competing with. I was stupid. My dad manipulated me. I wanted to save the town, but maybe it can’t be saved.
There are no good guys.” She wished she was still laying on Michael, that he was still holding her.
‘Most saints are martyrs; God wants you to die for Him, for His love. He wants you to fail.’ “All I wanted was to use Tadeo to free us, then you could come and kill him. I didn’t care if you did if I just got to use him first. I would even kill him myself if I could. But I’ve fucked it all up.”
Michael leaned back into his seat.
And Joana stared at him gravely. “I set it into motion, didn’t I?
I set him on the path to become the false messiah.
” The prince didn’t reply. “Have I doomed it all?” She laughed, though it devolved soon into a wheeze that rattled her shoulders.
“But I’m not evil, Miguelito. I wish I were.
” ‘Is it the devil that makes us evil or is it circumstance?’ “I wish there were good people, and… I wish there were evil people.”
Tadeo didn’t bother getting on the horse, taking her reins and leading her away quickly as the woman held her man and continued to shout adoringly after the anti-Christ and his angel.
‘Joana,’ he thought. ‘Where are you? What’s happening in this town?
It’s all so confusing. I have to tell you about Hell.
Where are you?’ He hadn’t checked his phone yet.
‘You told me to save the town. You’re behind all of this. ’
Dina, again, grabbed Tadeo, and he abruptly stopped. “Tadeo—”
Tadeo, shakily, lifted his gaze. ‘You saved me, Joana.’
‘I doomed you, Tadeo.’
At the end of the street, standing in the middle of it, there was a beautiful priest with a wide, monstrous smile, his hair blonde and fluttered by the wind. “Tadeo,” he greeted. “We’ve met, but you didn’t recognize me when we did. Allow me to introduce myself again to you. I’m the devil.”