The band was particularly lively tonight, Amadeus noticed.
The rhythms were simple, the lyrics downright stupid, but there was an energy, a furious excitement that reminded him of happier times. The lead singer was a thin pale girl with a good voice and a sharp attitude. She tossed he head back, sending a thin spray of sweat towards the crowd. They shouted their appreciation. The two guitars and the percussion player behind her redoubled their efforts, and the music became an irresistible force, a sweep ing tidal wave, a tornado.
Unnoticed by the crowd, a tall man entered the club. Like Amadeus, the man wore a dark trenchcoat and had Iong
curly hair. There the similarities ended. While Amadeus we a short and slender man, the newcomer was well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, built like a Greek statue, he made straight for Amadeus, shouldering aside spectators often earning a curse and a dirty look but little more.
Amadeus grimaced. "Hello, Galael," he said with no warmth.
"It is time," Galael said in a harsh whisper that somehow carried through the noise of the band and the crowd. "You know the Taint is here."
Reluctantly, Amadeus nodded. He had sensed it from the moment the band had begun its first set. Underneath the sounds and the lyrics, he could feel - taste - the dark undertones, the rich, seductive voice that promised Power in return for Loyalty. The thin pale girl wore heavy makeup to cover it, but his eyes saw farther than the crow Prominent in the middle of hear forehead, glowing dark through the makeup, was the Mark of the Beast. She had talent and inner strength; Amadeus could also see that,as well as the inner demons that had made talent and strength worse than useless. She had been hurt young betrayed and broken, and the broken edges were jagged and sharp and they would cut others, if she was left alone
For two weeks, Amadeus had tried to reach her, to make her change her path. Three days ago, she had her first nightmare. Amadeus had hoped she might be one of the few who could resist the lure of Leviathan, who could deny
It and Its works despite the Gifts offered. Now Galael had arrived, and time had run out.
"It must be done tonight," Galael insisted. "Now. Orders you know."
"My father would have approved of you, I think" Amadeus said casually, his nonchalant manner a mask for the pain. "He was a pious, faithful man who never under stood that while the road to Hell is paved with good inten tions, the road to Heaven is paved with the corpses of a thousand holy wars. Orders," he spat, his mask slipping
"Have you ever thought about your orders, or are you like a good faithful dog, biting whomever the Master indi cates?"
Galael's beautiful features became terrible with rage "You refuse to obey orders, Kerubim?"
Amadeus smiled. "You would like that, wouldn't you That would give you a chance to earn some more brownie points." He giggled, a ghastly sound that he hated and the
set Galael's teeth on edge. The good humor vanished a sec ond later, replaced by a slow-burning, intense anger that matched the Seraphim's. "No, my Angelic superior. I will obey my orders. I was born an Austrian, but I will be a good German for you, nein?"
Galael nodded. "Good." He reached under his coat grabbed the handle of the sawed-off shotgun hidden underneath. "It must be done Mundanely. Use your gun."
Amadeus grabbed him by the wrist. "What about them?" He gestured to indicate the crowd. "They are just children, few are Tainted, but the rest just came to enjoy some music and some company."
"Drug fiends," Galael retorted. "Drug fiends and harlots andfornicators. And if a few are innocent, what of it? The Lord shall take them into His fold."
"Kill them all, let God sort 'em out, 'is that it?" Amadeus said sardonically. "No, Galael. You are good enough, shoot only the Tainted. So am I. And if an innocent is much as grazed by a straight pellet, I will kill you. Do you understand?"
The Seraphim was a full head and shoulders taller than Amadeus. He could wield the Celestial Fire, and had lived for thirty millennia to Amadeus' two and a half centuries
But it was him who cast his eyes downward. "No innocents, Only the Tainted. Those were the orders, anyway."
Amadeus nodded as his concentration focused on the band, the roadies, and the other Tainted. The same creativity he'd once used only frivolously, to entertain Emperors and, above all, himself now started working a symphony of battle, a death march. He took his own sawed-off shotgun from beneath his coat.
With a shout, Galael nimbly leaped over the bar. His first shot erased the face of the lead guitar. His instrument made a hideous screech as he convulsed and fell. Amadeus' eye
met the pale thin girl's. "God have mercy on your soul, "he whispered as he fired.
Then it was all chaos and pandemonium, as, side by side, the two angels strode forward, guns blazing, and made their own hideous kind of music.
The former messengers and enforcers of the Creator, the Angels are beings of tremendous power and influence. Most of them consider themselves to be humankind's guardians and caretakers. Some see this duty as an honor, and love and cherish humans as a parent does a child. A growing number tend to be more patronizing and even contemptuous toward their charges, and a large minority has grown an out- right dislike for humans. For millennia, most angels remained removed from the affairs of humankind, coming to Earth only in small numbers, and leaving the business of helping people in the hands of the lesser-ranking Kerubim, the angels who once were human themselves. The coming of the Dark Apostle and the War has forced angels to come to Earth in unprecedented numbers, to fight and to die in the name of the Creator.