Ange du Mal Read online

  “Damn it, I hate it when people cry.” He gathered me up in his arms and carried me across the stream.

  “Who are you?” I murmured, brain fried.

  “Just Sam.”

  He pressed two fingers to my forehead, whispered in a strange language, and before I could say any more, sleep flooded my mind.

  Chapter 3:

  I woke with a start in my dorm. Morning light slipped through the blinds. “Huh?” I murmured, groggy.

  Rosanna snored in the bed near the door.

  I glanced at my alarm: 7:00 AM? “What the what...?”

  I fired up my laptop, then opened a search engine, spooked by my drunk dreams. I typed in “hellhound,” drawing up video game websites and a folklore article. Clicking on the latter, I drew back. There was a depiction of a hellhound that exactly matched what I'd seen – dreamed of? - last night.

  I typed in “Sam hell,” resulting in nothing but pop culture references, mostly to that really trite TV show Supernatural. Maybe the guy from my dream had been a celebrity impersonator. Thinking, I typed in “Samuel hell” and clicked the search button. The first result was for slang, “Sam Hill,” which was a euphemism for the devil personified. I hazily remembered a bit character from It’s a Wonderful Life yelling “What the Sam Hell?” when that guy fell in the river, or something.

  Sam Hill, huh? Sam itself was a pretty dumb moniker, like seriously, what a generic name. Not that Shannon was much better. At least Sam wasn’t named after a freaking river.

  I recalled the demonic looking Sam from my nightmare. I scanned the last few lines of the Wikipedia article, catching a sentence that theorized Sam Hill was a reference to Samael, the angel of death.

  Samael and his stupid scythe thing. Death? Like, coffins and worms? He’d called me maggot. What a freak. I hadn’t watched any horror movies lately, so I had no idea where my drunken mind had summoned that undead SOB from.

  Cautiously clicking on the Wikipedia link, I arrived at the entry for “Samael,” scanned the page and saw that, not only was this Samael the angel of death, he was also basically Satan.

  I screamed.

  Rosanna shot up, hair a tangle on her head. “What's wrong?” she said.

  “I – I saw a spider.”

  Rosanna yelped. “God, where?”

  “Um, I squashed it.”

  “Phew.” Rosanna wiped her brow in relief. “Hey, Baxter said you ditched him last night and I got some weird text from you. What happened?”

  “Er, I got lost,” I said, slamming my laptop closed.

  “Oh, okay. Because I came back from the party and you were asleep. Like you'd been tucked in.”

  I must have blacked out off the vodka, come back, and had a trip of a dream. Maybe I’d watched a craptastic horror flick on Netflix before passing out? “I think I drank too much,” I said. My head throbbed. “Yep, that’s definitely a hangover.”

  “I got so wasted.” Rosanna laughed. “Hey, do you think Ratter is cute?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy I was dancing with. You know, blue mohawk?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  Rosanna brushed her hair. “Me too. Hey, you look pretty tired. I can make you some Goya soup with Tabasco sauce. Instant hangover cure.”

  “I just had a really bad dream.” I swung my legs over my desk chair and stood up.

  “Um, is that blood?” Rosanna asked, pointing to my leg. “I have tampons if you need one.”

  “No way, I had my period last week.” I looked down at my calf, seeing dried blood from where the hellhound's head had nearly landed on me in my dream.

  My throat clenched. “Um, it must be my period, somehow? Maybe I screwed up my birth control.”

  I rushed to the hall bathroom and checked. No period. “Holy shiitake mushrooms!” I said.

  I sucked in air. Whatever had happened last night at the church, with Sam – Samael – the weirdly hot hobo, had been real. After wetting some paper towels and wiping off the blood, I walked back to my room as if a death sentence awaited me. I sank into bed, refusing to contemplate his actual existence. Maybe I could dream him away?

  When I woke again, it was 8:30, breakfast time. We made our way to the dining hall. Divya looked immaculate in pink pumps and a white sundress, while Rosanna wore a flowing black skirt and skimpy leather vest. We were joined by Seth Yoon, Divya’s dancing partner. Jokes and references to last night flew around me as I chewed my watery scrambled eggs in a daze. I heard someone call my name and turned to see Baxter, his smile deflated, approaching me.

  “Hey,” I said halfheartedly. “Sorry... sorry about last night. I got lost.”

  “Oh,” he said in relief. “Hey, I was worried. Can't have the prettiest freshman missing.”

  “I was pretty drunk,” I said. “And prettiest? I think that was your beer goggles talking.”

  He laughed. Mo called for Baxter, slamming the seat beside him at a table across the cafeteria. Baxter waved at him. “So I guess neither of us won. But about that beer...”

  “You’re 21, you’re buying. Get some IPAs. We can enjoy those on the roof of the astronomy building.” I grinned, momentarily forgetting the horror of last night.

  “Cool.” Baxter flashed his white Chiclets, and walked over to Mo.

  Rosanna quirked her brow. “He seems nice. Didn’t know you liked IPAs.”

  I laughed. “I hate beer. But isn’t that what college kids do? As long as it’s not Budweiser.”

  I eased into the table’s conversation, determined to forget last night's fluke reality fluke.

  The next three days passed in a blur, full of adviser meetings and orientation. Divya went to a Meet the Greeks event to scope out sororities while Rosanna and I visited the activities fair. I signed up for art club while Rosanna chatted with the creative writing group. Soon our inboxes were flooded with the clubs' respective emails, meetings slated for the beginning of next week.

  Baxter and I got tipsy as promised, a fun time that involved more physical contact than actual talking, and all seemed normal except my late nights scouring the annals of the internet for information on ‘Samael.’ I felt like a walking encyclopedia of demonology, confused by some rabbi’s identification of Samael as an archangel, while others said he was the Grim Reaper, or the serpent that tempted Eve. Did he have multiple personality disorder? How could someone be an angel and a demon and a snake and a skeleton, all at once? I mean, wasn’t that total overkill? He sounded like the Mary Sues Rosanna made up in middle school during her fanfiction phase.

  “What are you doing?” Rosanna asked one night, glancing up from a journal she was scribbling in.

  “Blogging,” I said, quickly closing the browser of a virus-laden Satanic website. The blood-red text against a sparkly black background was a sin against human vision.

  “Cool, can I see it?”

  “Um, it's private. Like a diary.”

  Rosanna smiled. “You're not writing about Baxter, are you?”

  I blushed. “Most definitely not.”

  Rosanna's eyes sparked. “So how did the drinking go?”

  “He talks a lot about football and cars. Then again, we didn’t talk that much, mostly got plastered and well, you know.”

  Rosanna chuckled. “He likes you. I can tell. I have a sixth sense with guys.”

  “Not this psychic crap again.”

  “But it’s true. I dreamt a while ago that I was a rat-tamer, like the Dog Whisperer, but more metal. Now look at me. I met a dude named Ratter who’s all over me, just like the rats were. Spooky, huh?”

  I flopped back in my chair. “I dreamt I ate a BLT last weekend then I ate one today. Does that make me psychic too?”

  “That’s like saying Mo dreamt he slept with half the cheerleading team. It’s something you do all the time. You’re a BLT monster. Real psychics have symbolic dreams, not literal ones.” Rosanna glanced at my closed computer screen, probably hoping she could see my private ‘blog.’

  I pushed
my computer away to prove a point. “It was a really good BLT. The bacon was so crispy.”

  Rosanna got up and went to her nightstand. “I think I need to pull out my Tarot cards. We need to know if Baxter sees you as fresh meat or if he’s serious.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not Goth enough for Tarot, Rosanna.”

  “Oh, c'mon, it'll be fun. I'll do the soul mate spread. I have a Cure Tarot deck. You can’t say no to Robert Smith”

  “I don't believe in that stuff!”

  “That's what makes it fun.” She pulled out a deck of cards from her nightstand and set them up on the carpet. I sat down with her, reluctant. She shuffled the deck and fanned the cards out. “Okay, choose three cards. Just pick whatever you feel drawn too.”

  I did, handing them to her face down.

  Her eyes widened. “Huh, this is a really powerful hand,” she said. She laid down the first one. “This is the Queen of Cups. It's who you are. Someone like water, creative yet grounded, with a good heart. You're in touch with your emotions.” I nodded, and she showed me the next card, smirking.

  “What is it?” The question died in my throat.

  It was a picture of a half-naked Robert Smith as the Devil.

  “Oh god,” I said. “All those stupid websites have cursed me.”

  Rosanna laughed. “This is your soul mate. Handsome, isn't he, with his cloven feet?”

  “No.” I stiffened. “He's not.”

  “Don't worry. The Devil can mean a lot of things. Like sexuality. Maybe your soul mate is hung. You inspected Baxter’s-”

  “It was too dark.”

  “Never mind. The last card...” Rosanna said, laying it down, “is Death. It's what stands in the way of your relationship.”

  “You're kidding me. Am I going to die? Is my soul mate going to kill me?”

  Rosanna laughed. “No, no. The Death card means change. Transformation. Your soul mate, and you, both have to change before you can be together.”

  “I think my soul mate needs a body wax,” I said, eyeing the hairy Devil/Robert Smith abomination.

  Rosanna nodded. “He also needs his horns trimmed. They could put an eye out.”

  We laughed. Rosanna collected the cards. “It's just a little trick,” she said, putting the deck away. “Listen to enough music and you get into this stuff. But it kind of runs in my family. My grandmother was a bruja.”

  “Like a brewery?”

  “No! A folk healer, back in Mexico. She was into Santeria.”

  “Isn't that Voodoo?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” Rosanna said. “Haven’t I told you this before?”

  “Maybe. I kind of ignore you when you talk about the occult.”

  She pulled me up off the ground. It was late, the day before classes started, but Rosanna had a glimmer in her eye. “We should do something to celebrate the night before school starts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let's go to the lake and make offerings, then make a wish.”

  “What?” I asked. “Are you high?”

  Rosanna laughed. “It's a tradition the women in my family do. We give something to Ochún, the Orisha of water, and she grants us a wish. It's a little nonsense my abuela started. C'mon, it'll be fun.”

  “That's kinda out there.”

  Rosanna shrugged. “I know, but it works. Let's go.”

  We decided to offer Ochún dollar store squirt guns. I found myself on the same dirt path Baxter and I had taken to the lake. The moon glowed above in a clear glass sky. We faced the lake and Rosanna squirted water into it, whispering her wish. I did the same, then tossed in a Lifesaver, figuring any water spirit’s breath probably smelled like fish.

  The Lifesaver splashed and I heard a low wolf-whistle. I drew back, glancing around.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  Rosanna looked at me in confusion. “What? I didn't hear anything. What was it?”

  “Someone whistling?”

  “That’s weird. Maybe Ochún has some admirers.”

  We walked away from the lakeside, laughing. Laughing, that is, until I walked straight into our voyeur.

  “Was that candy for me?” Sam asked, smirking.

  “No,” I said, pushing him away. He grabbed my wrists, steadying me. I looked to Rosanna for help, only to see her slumped on the ground, snoring.

  “I slipped her a little death. Didn't want her interfering.” He let me go, then helped Rosanna up. She stirred.

  “Who are you?” she murmured.

  “No one,” Sam – Samael? - said, pressing two fingers to her brow and whispering into her ear. “Now be a good girl and go back to your dorm.”

  Rosanna smiled dreamily and did just that.

  I gawked. “You just mind-controlled her. That should be illegal.”

  “No, I suggested something.”

  “Liar.”

  “I've been called worse.”

  “I know who you are.” I pointed at him, accusing.

  He chuckled.

  “You're Samael, the angel of death, aka Satan, aka a demon, aka not a hobo.”

  His amused expression disappeared. “How did you figure that out, maggot?”

  “You're not denying it?”

  He shrugged. “No use lying. Why are you so excited? Shouldn't you be voiding your bowels in terror?”

  “Why do you want me to have a bathroom accident so much? First it was pissing myself, now this,” I said, hands on my hips. “I don't care what you are. I looked up the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. Ha!”

  “Where's the pentagram?”

  I faltered. “I – I could draw one?”

  “With what chalk?”

  “Never mind.” I noticed he was dressed in khaki shorts, boat shoes, and a black polo. “Where's your death robe?”

  “Oh, it's in the wash.” He wiped his shoulder of dust. “I've been meaning to speak with you. Our conversation was cut short the other night.”

  “Like hell you have. I'm not booking a possession, and I don't want to call an exorcist. So why don't you leave me alone?”

  He sighed. “If only it was that easy. You pose a serious threat – to others and yourself. You have abilities beyond mortal ken.”

  “Like Ken the Barbie doll?”

  He grunted. It was a very manly grunt. I kind of liked it. God, why?

  “You can wield the scythe of the angel of death, for one, and you waltz across hellmouths unescorted. Things that should be impossible come easily to you, and I am determined to figure out why.”

  “Maybe I'm naturally gifted?” I said. I took a step back, examining him in the moonlight. Paper-white. But muscular. How could someone so pasty be hot? Shouldn’t those things exclude each other?

  “Or maybe Hell has need of you.”

  “The day Hell needs me is the day I sign myself into the funny farm,” I said, pulling a loose thread from the hem of my dress.

  “Hell is in chaos at the moment,” Samael said. He took a step closer.

  “Isn't that its definition?”

  “It’s more chaotic than usual. Something is stirring.”

  “Sounds a lot like your problem and nothing like my business,” I said, grinding the heel of my shoe into the dirt.

  “Sometimes fate is strange. It threads together in ways that even I can't quite see. I think that you have a role to play in the theater of the cosmos.” Samael brushed a lock of ebon hair behind his ear. God his haircut was emo.

  I took what I hoped was my final step back. “Melodramatic, huh? But what else to expect from Satan.”

  Samael grunted again. Why did I find that attractive? Was it like a sex sound or something?

  “Do you know what Satan is?” he said.

  “You.”

  “It's a title. I’m the accuser, seducer, and destroyer. Look it up, it's in the lore. I destroy the lies humans build around themselves and unlock their potential. I can do that for you, if you'll allow me.”

  “The only thin
g I’ll let you to do is leave,” I said, backing away. “Stop stalking me.”

  “I didn't stalk you here. I was trying to figure out how you entered the hellmouth the other night-”

  “You changed my clothes!” I said. My cheeks flushed.