Shadow of an Angel

Few were about on a night such as this.

It had stopped snowing, and even the clouds had receded somewhat, letting the full moon shine through as they hurried across the sky, ragged little tendrils that were visible only because they blocked out the stars. The snow, though no longer falling, already lay thick upon the ground and the trees. It had been plowed away from the roads and tenacious paths struggled through the drifts wherever people had to walk, showing almost as clearly as the garish artificial lights that humans dwelled here. By the same token, it showed where they did not.

On one old lot, unmolested by the bright new dwellings that had sprung up around it, there were no paths and no tracks. Snow covered the rolling ground, evergreen bushes, corpses of winter trees looking stark and gnarled without their green robes, low stone walls that staggered brokenly across the grounds, and the old manor. The house itself was blessed by the snow, for it blotted out its grim decay. What clearly had once been a paragon of gothic splendor was now a ruined shadow of itself, windows boarded, masonry fallen and cracked, and the leers of gargoyles made all the more grotesque by chipped faces and missing talons.

Of the few who would brave winter's bite, almost none chose to do so here.

But through the petulant whine of the wind, there was music. The thin tone of a flute danced with the winter breeze, seeming to join rather than overwhelm or be stifled by its native noise. The source of these notes was hidden from immediate view, but had anyone been there to investigate, he would have come upon the musician leaning against one of the cracked columns that supported the old mansion's front porch. There, where the white of the snow gave way to the shadows of man made stone, he was hidden.

His black cloak flirted playfully with the gusts, whipping around his heavy boots, or opening briefly to display his stark, black garments and the silver-hilted rapier sheathed at his waist. He played on, a melody that meandered over itself and back with no real direction, only an accompaniment for the wind. Black-gloved fingers darted over the holes on the flute, which vanished into the shadows of his hood, as concealed as his face.

And so the night wore on. It had no plot and no purpose except simply to be, as God intended; it was just a night, and he was part of it. Nothing else was needed.

But mankind has a way of imposing himself on Nature, and insisting that everything have a story, that it move and develop. The human heart cannot rest easy, it seems, so it sees no reason to allow Nature to do so.

The sound of the flute broke off as a truck pulled into the drive of the old mansion, struggling through the deep drifts between the crumbling stone gateposts. It was an old and rusted specimen, in need of a muffler and a left headlight. But even the racket caused by the truck's straining engine was drowned by the drunken howls of its occupants.

The shadowed figure flattened himself against the column, watching the new arrivals. There was neither fear nor interest in the action; he simply watched.

There were four of them, all young men with the build of football players or wrestlers, and all heavily under the influence. The stomped about and yelled with the sheer exuberence that only idiots can feel for their own idiocy. A soft sound that might have been a snort of disgust reverberated deep within the shadow's hood.

After they had shouted for a few minutes and two had taken deep draughts from a whiskey bottle as the other two held an impromptu wrestling match in the snow, they busied themselves about the bed of the truck, and soon had pulled out the figure of a human, which they then tossed unceremoniously into a snowdrift.

The shadow straightened slightly.

She was shivering violently from the cold, dressed only in a thin shirt, her sweater having been torn into strips which were used to bind her wrists behind her back and her ankles and knees together. Hunched into a fetal position, eyes half-dimmed, the deep brown of her skin contrasting with the white snow, she was a thoroughly pathetic figure.

Once she was out and on the ground, the noise of the four youths took on a different character; they began making crude jests to each other and leering thickly at the bound woman. She curled up more tightly.

A shriek was torn from her lips as one of the young men siezed her by the hair and hauled her upright, grabbing roughly at her chest with his other hand. The remaining three began cheering with renewed vigor.

"Fine night, isn't it? Perfect for a bit of raping and pillaging."

She was dumped back in the snow as her captors whirled drunkenly about to confront the speaker. The shadow stood before them, his cloaked form a black hole in the snowy landscape. The cloak was flung back off his shoulders so that it streamed behind him in the wind like a black banner, the hood lifted from his face. His skin was as pale as the snow, raven hair tugged by the wind and eyes of a murky, hazel color glinting oddly in the intermittent moonlight. One hand came to rest on the graceful sliver hilt of the rapier.

"Let's organize, shall we? You rape and I'll pillage."

The rapier hissed as it sprang free of its sheath like a striking serpent. Before any of the toughs could react, he had whipped the tip through the throat of one would-be molester, severing windpipe and jugular veins alike, and buried it up to half its length between the ribs of a second just where his heart was, all in one motion as rapid and smooth as the pounce of a cat. Both crumpled where they stood, too drowned in alcohol and the sudden realization of their own mortality even to scream.

Of the remaining two, one stood rooted in his tracks, an expression of stupid horror on his face, but the other, who had considerably more presence of mind, gave a roar of Neanderthal fury and hurled himself at the shadow. The rapier darted forward twice, piercing the sciatic nerves in both his thighs, and the thug collapsed to his hands and knees, his shout of rage turned to one of pain. The shadow stepped forward smoothly, and brought the rapier's heavy pommel down on the crown of the thug's head with a sickening crunch. He collapsed the rest of the way to the snow, adding to the scarlet pool already spreading across its purity.

The last of the posse of modern cavemen now gained enough of his composure to dissolve in terror. He stumbled backward, miraculously not falling into the snow, his hands raised before him in a gesture of peace, gibbering desperate platitudes which were too garbled by his own fear to take on the form of words. Only when the shadow stepped grimly forward, the dripping scarlet rapier blade held before him, did the fourth youth find his tongue.

"Hey, man, c'mon, didn' mean nuthin'...I don' wan' no trouble-"

"You're in trouble nonetheless."

He had the mercy of not having time for his terror to increase before the rapier was plunged into his gut, then just as rapidly withdrawn and whipped through his neck as it had taken his first friend.

His business attended to, the shadow turned and was walking away before his final foe had hit the ground. He flicked the sword out almost casually, snagging the cap of one of the fallen men with its tip and bringing it to his free hand. With a brisk, practiced motion, he wiped the blood from the sword with the captured piece of fabric and, dropping it upon the cooling body from whence it had come, slid the rapier home into its sheath.

The bound woman had just enough life left in her to shrink back when he approached, a movement which he ignored. Whipping the cloak from his shoulders, he wrapped it about her shivering form and lifted her effortlessly. He carried her over to the truck, whose doors still stood open, and set her in the seat. Producing a silver-hilted dagger from a sheath at the back of his belt, he briskly cut away her bonds and paused to rub some warmth back into her hands and feet. After a few minutes, when she began to stir feebly, he turned the key which was still in the ignition, and flipped the truck's heater on to its hightest setting. A quick rummage through the spaces behind and under the seats produced a moth-eaten old blanket and an unopened bottle of whiskey. He tucked the blanket about her. At that, the woman's eyes opened fully and focused on him. They held a glint of wariness, but not fear, and she did not try to move away again.

He wordlessly offered her the bottle. She spared it a distasteful look. "It isn't chardonnay," he told her in his soft voice, "but it will warm you. Drink."

She took it and forced down a few mouthfuls. Satisfied, the shadow turned to go.

"You killed them."

He paused, looking back over his shoulder at her. "They'd have done much worse than that to you."

"And that gives you the right?"

"'Right' is a more difficult concept than you realize," he said cryptically.

"But you shouldn't have..." she tried to lean forward, and had to pause to untangle the blanket and push it away. "It's not your place to pass judgement!"

"You're welcome." He smiled slightly at the look of frustration that crossed her face, and went on before she could reply. "We all have certain rights, as you call them, to live our lives as we see fit. When we choose to violate the rights of others, we give up our own. They chose their own fate." He gave a soft sigh. "Some things are not right or wrong. They simply are."

When she did not reply, he nodded slightly and turned. A soft snow began to fall as he walked away, quickly gathering strength so that it obscured his diminishing form.

By the time the truck had struggled back out of the manor's grounds, the falling snow had obliterated the red stains and the fallen forms of the four men, as well as their footprints, and was making good progress on the tracks left by the truck. Where the shadow had stood, there were no prints to be erased. The snow went about its cleansing work, accompanied by the soft strains of a flute.