“Amazing Grace,” she said.

“Oh? How amazing are you, baby?” the man asked with a leer, his eyes glued to her pale breasts, barely covered by her black cotton top, her nipples obvious through the thin material.

She leaned forward for his benefit, a hand lightly twirling the silver crucifix hanging between her breasts as she bent low enough to look into his car through the open window. A finger moved suggestively across the forearm resting upon the car’s door, and she replied in her clear whisper, “Fifty dollars amazing, sweetheart.”

His eyes tore themselves reluctantly away from her twin globes to look up at her face, her eyes were gazing at his crotch with a gleam, her tongue ran lightly across her lips, leaving them lusciously glistening in the light. He swallowed, “Fifty is a little… steep–”

She straightened and turned around, lithely walking out of the dim circle of light grudgingly offered by the street lamp he had parked under.

“Fifty is fine, baby. I’ve always wanted to do a goth girl…” She did not so much as reward him with a sign of having heard.

“Hey, I’ll give you a hundred, huh? How’s that?” She turned back, biting her lower lip and cocking her head to a side as if trying to answer a difficult question, then she deftly stepped around to the passenger side and opened the door, “Two hundred, sweetheart, and I’ll give you a night you’ll never forget, and that’s a promise.”

He merely swallowed, nodded once and started the car, then drove out of the circle of light.

He did not realise that it was totally against his nature to pay that much money for sex.

She did not realise that she was being watched.

As her head disappeared beneath the dashboard, and the car moved out into the darkness, the figure that was watching her drew its curtains closed.

He remembers…

Things were not always this way. He choose to avoid the others, he knew, but he felt so alone right now…

And so he remembers…

“I want to see Father.”

“You may not.”

“It is my right.”

“It is your right to pray. He hears our prayers, He hears our hymns.”

“I do not want Him to hear me. I want to hear Him.”

“You may not.”

“Why?”

“The Council of Seraphim has agreed that none may see Our Father but them.”

“Move aside.”

“I cannot. I have my orders. Speak to the Council, if you must.”

“I went looking for Him, you know,” he poured the sugar carefully into his cup, stirring it as he looked out the window at the empty car park, moonlight shining dimly upon the asphalt.

“He’s gone,” she replied. She did not add anything to her coffee, as she would not drink it, but she absently fidgeted with her cup as she followed his gaze.

“He’s gone from the Silver City, that’s for sure,” he looked at her, and their gaze met. She was dressed in black leather, her black wings folded behind her. She smiled a small smile, “Enough about Him, please. How have you been? Performed any miracles lately?”

He returned her smile. He had hoped she would volunteer some information about the missing Christ – the merest rumour, anything at all – but his disappointment faded fast beneath his gratitude and his simple happiness at seeing her again. If at all possible, she was more cynical than he was.

“Miracles, yeah, why, just yesterday, I helped a kitten come down off a tree.”

She laughed, as he knew she would, and played with a strand of her hair as she replied, “nobody calls them miracles anymore, anyway. Coincidence or luck. Bah, the bastards wouldn’t admit a miracle if one hit them on the head with the True Cross. Cured from an incurable disease, a miraculous recovery, courtesy of new advances in medical science.”

“A manifestation and they call it special effects and start looking for the candid camera crew.”

“Or they run away before someone starts preaching and asking for donations.”

He laughed, then took a sip of his coffee. He thought of Grace, but he always thought of her. Always. “I saw Grace,” he said, the words slipping out.

“How is the girl? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“She wears black now, just like you. In for the gothic look, the fashion victim.”

“What’s wrong with black? Lots of us wear black. Our sister wears black. We look good in black, goes with the pale skin,” she looked up critically, “with those eyes of yours, I’d say you were into goth as well.”

“Ah,” he smiled, then covered his eyes with his palms. When he took them away, the bags beneath his eyes were gone, “Better?” He held her gaze, and reached out to take her hand in both of his, then broached the subject that has been on his mind, constantly lingering at the edge or the centre of his thought, it seems, for forever now, “What happens to us, when we die?”

“We cannot, you know that.”

“You… you used to hunt us.” She looked deep into his questing eyes, and when she realised that he really wanted to know, that he meant no guile in the asking, she answered, “Yes, yes I did. I hunted In the Name of the Father. But the hunted do not die, they Fall.” She does not say that she knew of one angel who no longer lives and had not Fallen, the Mandari before her. She does not know if he had died, truly died, or what happened to him if he did. But though she is not the first of the Mandari, she is the last, and the way of God’s Assassins are for their knowledge alone.

“There is no way out, is there?”

“What do you want? My friend, what do you want? Oblivion? Reincarnation? The Silver City is yours to roam, as are all the lands of Hell. You can walk in dreams, and the dominions of the old gods are open to you, in their fashion.”

But he was no longer listening, his eyes were staring, again, out the glass window, and when he turned at last to rejoin her, they spoke no longer of the matter.

He remembers…

“Lots of us wear black. Our sister wears black.”

And so he remembers…

“Don’t say a word then, but you will listen, won’t you? Your pride stops you from running away. What makes us different, do you think? You angels and us, the Unforgiven?

“Love? I love Our Father more than anyone, more than anyone loves Him, more than anyone can.

“Religion, maybe? Faith? But no, you fought for what you believed in, and so did we.

“How about politics? But your Silver City is no better nor worse than my Dis. Different, but no better nor worse.”

“Alright, Sammael, alright. You have made your point.”

“What is my point?”

“We are no different at all.”

“You’re delusional,” she had said, a long time ago.

“Hope is a delusion,” he had replied.

And Hope makes us believe in something that can never happen. Like faith, it makes us believe in something we cannot sense, cannot experience.

And each time Hope is denied, another pain enters our soul.

We cannot perform miracles, can we, us lowly angels? We comfort the dying, and we soothe the dreams of children. We help lovers find each other and help people remember things they shouldn’t have forgotten, through a scent, or a wisp of a tune, or a figure half-glimpsed in the crowd.

Are these miracles? Did I ever think they were?

We cannot perform miracles. We cannot die. Like Hope, we cannot die.

He remembers the Fall, for most angels, the greatest event in their eternal memories. He remembers the broken bodies, the red blood in the streets of gold. But angels cannot die. In time, the wounds will heal, the bodies repair themselves, as functional as when life came in with the first breath. We cannot die. No, but we can feel the pain.

“Grace. My sweetest Grace, I miss you.”

He imagines going to her, speaking with her. He imagines her moving away when he moves too close, turning her face if he tired to kiss her, where once she would come into his arms.

And his words fade into the night, like a plea, like a prayer.

Leaning against a wall, softly sobbing, the Angel of Hope weeps.