Chasing Sunrise

Twenty-One

"Why would you risk death for me?" I demanded.

"To see what would happen," Corban said before cramming the rest of the burger into his mouth. The color was returning to his cheeks, which indicated to me that he was feeding on more than just that hamburger.

"Are you insane?"

He finished chewing, drank some more soda, and sat back. "Look, once you get past a certain age, you come to terms with the fact that you'll probably die at some point, and a good death is better than a meaningless life."

"Your life isn't meaningless. You're responsible for Taos and... wherever else you..." I gestured vaguely. "You know... patrol. And if it's so hard to make more of your kind, you can't just throw your life away."

He looked right at me and, for several heartbeats, said nothing, then he leaned forward and rested his hands on the table. "So, let me explain how this works. My kind, we communicate with God the same way your kind does. We pray. We try to find signs. We follow our own hearts about what's right and what's wrong and we think every day about the big questions of good and evil."

I let that sink in. "I guess I thought you'd have a more direct line to the guy upstairs."

"You really think that you, a child of God, would be given a second-rate way to communicate with Him?"

"It... doesn't always feel like a great way to communicate," I said. "I thought there might be better. And I thought you guys were supposed to be visitors from heaven."

"I'm not that kind of angel. Members of my order are probably pretty low ranking in the grand scheme of things. Read the Bible and you'll know there are a whole lotta types of celestial beings. And no, I haven't seen any of the others. As far as a better form of communication? Maybe in the afterlife, but not here. It's a fallen world. Being just out of God's reach is kind of the whole point of this place and my role, as best as I can tell, is to be right here with you." His gaze was downright intense.

I forced myself to return it, wondering what his point was.

He leaned in closer. "Now, when I see something that I've always been told is a demon looking back at me, able to see me when no demon should, that's a sign of something. Not necessarily a good something, but when I find that supposed demon hasn't won yet, but is still locked in a war with a human soul for its body, and when that human is pure enough in heart for me to endure her touch, then that's a whole lot of signs. I can't say for sure what your purpose is in all this. I'm not even sure the rest of my kind would agree with me about helping you, but I'm the one in this position, not them. You were put in my path, not theirs. You're fighting a war no mortal has ever won, and you probably won't win it either, but if I can help you, I will. Or else I've got a long, long time to spend agonizing over what if." His blue eyes were steady and his gaze piercing.

It became more than I could endure, so I looked down, then drank some more hot chocolate. "And if I go around telling people that you can be killed with a touch?" Now the way he'd reacted when we first met, ducking away from my hands, made sense.

"Some of my kind might blame me for telling you our secret, but I'm a big believer in the power of free will. I'd blame you." He winked, like he found this funny.

I certainly did not, but I hid my confusion by drinking more hot chocolate.

"You sure you don't want any more fries?" he asked.

"I believe fries are a temptation of the devil," I said. "Worst thing I could put in my body."

He laughed. "Oh, I dunno. I take it you've never tried arsenic." But despite his amusement, he gathered up the rest of his fries and got to work eating them.