she barreled through the frigid night at breakneck speed, tearing along the dark and deserted streets, her past and the man in hard pursuit, the first clear and terrifying memory crashed through. She, a small child, lay on a dusty road. Her mother, backlit by a red summer sun, towered over her. In Mamma’s raised hand a butcher knife glinted in the sunlight, about to descend, to strike her dead. And the words Mamma spoke, “Abomination...not suffered by God to live.”
Chapter 3
Nevada Desert, United States
Raziel sat cross-legged in the desert wasteland under a blistering sun, his eyes narrowed to slits in fierce concentration. A hot, arid wind rolled over him, and his hair lifted and settled in keeping with the movement of the dry desert air. A rattlesnake slithered noiselessly in his direction and glided over his legs as if it had encountered an inanimate object. The snake continued on its way, leaving behind a winding trail in the burning sand. In the cloudless sky overhead, a lone vulture circled.
Eventually the sun faded on the horizon, turning blood red. The wind snatched the last of the day’s heat and the air turned cool. Stars emerged, scattering like diamonds across a black velvet sky. A bloated yellow moon began its ascent.
The passage of time and his surroundings mattered not to Raziel. Time and place were lost to him in his intense state of concentration. He remained motionless in the white sand, fiercely focused on pinpointing the source of the dissonance.
Acutely attuned to the Symphony, Raziel could detect even the slightest disturbance. If a demon entered a mortal’s dreams, Raziel could hear it. If an unseen spirit caused a baby to cry, Raziel knew. Most celestials were unable to hear such subtle disturbances amid all the earthly noise, but a Watcher could, for that is what they had been created to do. They listened for disturbances to the Symphony, the universal flow of all living things in fulfillment of the Great Design.
The disturbance to the Symphony upon which he focused was painfully loud. He had not detected anything like it before, and was not at all pleased that such a gross disturbance had reached him now. For having heard it, Raziel knew he would be compelled to act.
His angelic heart sank at the thought of re-entering the mainstream of humanity, a prospect he found loathsome these days.
Of the original two hundred Watchers sent to Earth thousands upon thousands of years ago, only Raziel remained. Only he had not fallen. His kind was poorly suited to their task. Of the two hundred, Raziel alone had not succumbed to the temptation of beautiful women and earthly delights. For their transgressions, his brethren had been cast out, leaving only him to shoulder the burden of attending to the Symphony.
Loneliness and a sense of abandonment had long ago driven him to seek solitude in the most desolate regions of the world in the hope of freeing himself from the never-ending barrage of disturbances. He had witnessed the unfolding of millennia, and the passage of so much time had left him weary of his task, and of the angelic wars he’d been drawn into over and over again.
As the dissonance upon which he focused intensified, rising to a near-deafening level, it occurred to Raziel that his decision to isolate himself might have caused him to lose touch with humanity to a degree that was, perhaps, not prudent.
An invisible weight settled on his shoulders as he acknowledged he would be forced to find and deal with the source of this disturbingly loud dissonance. In this matter, he had no choice. It was forbidden for a Watcher not to respond in the face of a major disturbance.
By the time the distended moon sat high in the starry sky, Raziel had succeeded in pinpointing the location of the dissonance. The vibration emanated from the northeast, longitude seventy-nine point twenty-three, latitude forty-three point thirty-nine.
Stiff from sitting in the same position for so long, he rose from the now cold sand and stretched, his muscles rippling like snakes beneath his skin. A sense of urgency gripped him as the dissonance intensified yet again. In the dead of night, Raziel made hasty preparations for his departure, sensing it would be wise to leave immediately.
As a member of the Tenth Choir of angels, those most closely resembling humans, Raziel could move about on Earth, creating little or no disturbance to the Symphony at all, undetectable even by other celestials. For the same reason, however, Raziel would be forced to make his way to the source of the dissonance in the same manner as mortals, albeit at a speedier pace.
He stood perfectly still, closed his eyes and allowed his arcane instincts to point him in the direction of civilization. As began his journey, trudging through the silvery sand, he spotted a pack of coyotes gathered on a ridge in the distance, their muzzles lifted to the swollen moon. The sound of their mournful howling matched his mood as Raziel reluctantly made tracks for humanity once again.
* * * *
After traveling through the desert for a day and most of the following night, Raziel arrived at a rocky ridge, its ragged plateau etched against an indigo sky. From behind it, a glowing light pierced the darkness. He scaled a large rock formation effortlessly, like an ant climbing a tree. At the top, he gazed down upon the brilliant lights that rose from the desert, a beacon of civilization. From a barren wasteland, a glittering city had sprung, its towers, fountains and teeming population visible to him from his perch near the outskirts of a place called Las Vegas.
The world had moved on. Did humans no longer sleep? Night had nearly turned to day, yet throngs of mortals traveled the well-lit streets. A cacophony of human thoughts and emotions thrummed inside his head like the rumble of an approaching storm. He climbed down from his roost and made his way toward the shimmering lights.
Just before his arrival in the city proper, a rush of anxiety swept through him when he observed the mortals on the streets ahead of him. Raziel was barefoot, clad only in loose-fitting pants and nothing else. His appearance would surely attract undue attention. Although he had the ability to alter his appearance to conform to his environment, it was one he had not employed for hundreds of years. Quickly, he scanned his memory for the incantation that would invoke the desired result, but it eluded him. A woman dressed in what looked like an undergarment walked by and turned her head to stare at him. His anxiety ratcheted up a notch and he focused harder on remembering. A moment later, he breathed a sigh of relief. Within seconds, he was garbed in apparel similar to that of other men. Tapered black pants materialized on his legs, leather boots on his feet and a soft shirt on his torso. His hair pulled back of its own accord and secured itself with a leather band. Most of the men wore their hair closely cropped, although some of them had longer hair, mostly tied back as his was now.
Raziel had to marvel at the energy flowing through the place. After his lengthy seclusion in the desert, the crowd of pedestrians, their voices raised to hear each other over the general din, and their accompanying thoughts, assaulted his senses. Despite his discomfort, he immersed himself in his surroundings, picking up nuances of speech and expression as he went. After centuries of self-imposed solitude, he needed to educate himself in the ways of modern man.
As he wound his way through the growing throng of mortals, Raziel experienced the return of that strange mixture of empathy and disillusion he always felt in their presence. He soon discovered that, although the structures and means of transportation had altered, mortals themselves had not changed in the least. They were still ruled by the same emotions, still prone to the same temptations. The world had moved on, but humanity had not. When he had picked up what he needed to be able to communicate effectively, he blocked out as much of the din of mortal thought as he could.
Technology had advanced at a rapid rate. Motorized carriers whizzed by on the roads and, inside the buildings he passed, he spied machines around which most of the occupants hovered. They appeared
