I stalked a few paces forward, keeping Brent's blechth cornered. "That's got it on the run, Father Brent. Great work. I'll just stand here and keep it honest, and you should have a clear mind to think about devil-ology, or whatever." I could see the hate raging in the diminished blechth's bloodshot eyes, but I could also see it shrinking back from me in fear. I was an unarmed teenager, and it looked bigger and stronger than me, by a lot. And it had claws, too. But I cowed it, somehow. Maybe it knew something I didn't.

Father Brent rubbed at his face with his knuckles. "I've gone angel-crazy. Let's see if I can focus after all that confessin'."

"Are you all right?" Trixie said.

"Fine, fine. Just an old fool feeling regretful. Tell you what, I do have a picture in my mind. A leukemia patient I visited in the hospital. That kid was so sure heaven existed that he convinced me of it, too."

"Interesting," I said. "What about hell?"

"We didn't discuss it. Dante's Inferno had a few beasts, but it didn't have demons or devils." Father Brent cracked his knuckles. I managed not to wince.

"What are angels supposed to be able to do?" Trixie said.

Brent struggled out of his chair, then flashed a tight smile. "Everything, unfortunately. If you read widely, you can find examples of anything. In the bible, I'd say, angels are mostly messengers. But swords are mentioned in a couple of places. One angel killed one hundred eighty-five thousand Assyrians in one night."

"Eh?" Trixie said. "That's crazy. And also mass murder."

"Hush, child. I'm brainstorming. Angels can disguise themselves as human and do secret missions or whatever. Healing. Flaming swords. Closing the mouths of lions. In Paradiso, the angel Beatrice grew more beautiful the closer she got to God. Beauty. Grace. Devotion. Honor. Virtue. Light. Oh, sure, light could be important."

Father Brent stopped talking and stared at Trixie for a moment. Then he looked at me.

I made a wry face. "No clue?"

"Not much of one." Brent glanced at the rack of swords on the wall. "A couple of those are real, not props, but I'm not sure a flaming sword is gonna happen."

"I can't make a sword burst into flames." I omitted the obvious fact that I also had no training in swordsmanship.

Trixie mused, "An angel's flaming sword wouldn't be physical. It would be spiritual."

Father Brent snapped his fingers. "I got it." His blechth shuddered as if suddenly wounded.

He frowned, his jowls sagging. "Or maybe I don't."

I inclined my head toward the misshaped creature that huddled in the corner of the room. "Your blechth thinks you got it. What've you got?"

Father Brent spread his hands. "It's not a forgotten sage, it's just regular spiritual practice. Christians are relatively bad at it. I'm talking about meditation. Monks can regulate their body temperature, blood pressure, and breathing. They can stay calm even in stressful situations. Some monks learn martial arts as an outgrowth of their spiritual journey."

Trixie and I looked at each other. Her skeptical expression could chill a hot kettle and I bet I looked downright disbelieving. Father Brent harrumphed. "Don't judge me until I've finished. Seems to me, if you two really do have a connection to the spiritual, then some mind-over-matter should come natural." He hitched up the right side of his trousers and plunged a hand around the rolls of fat around his middle to dig into his pants pocket. "Let's see if you can bend a coin." He came up empty. "Proust's Balzac. I don't have any change. Let me get some forks. You can bend me some forks."

His ponderous steps crushed the rug as he turned his back on us and swayed toward the kitchen. His blechth tried to follow, but I upticked an eyebrow at it and clucked, "Uh-uh, blobby. Stay."

Trixie sensed the aura before I did. She tensed and darted glances around the room. Then I picked up on it, too: a presence approached, darkening the air with gloom and dread. We didn't have long to wait for more clues. The next second Brent's front door opened with a crash and a breeze of freezing air.

A trim man in a navy blue business suit stood on the threshold, bland face expressionless, heavy-lidded eyes scanning between Trixie and I. His voice droned and a slight lisp colored his pronunciation. "Agent Kezzias. Missing persons' bureau."

"Yeah, right," Trixie muttered.

Apparently, she could feel what I could feel. With whatever senses the angel virus had awoken inside us, "Agent Kezzias" felt ten kinds of wrong.

With a bravado that sounded unconvincing in my own ears, I said, "Hold it right there, mister. You can't just walk in here."

As if to prove me wrong, the blank-faced man stepped a pace forward. His lisp had certain snakelike characteristics that made my skin crawl. "I am within my rights. There was a certain violent incident earlier today. I seek information."

I felt the earth shake as Father Brent pounded his way back into the front room. His mass and his slightly gargley voice comforted me. "What in the five Platonic solids is this?"

"Got an entity named Kezzias, here," I said, keeping my eyes glued to the bland invader. As I stared, an additional shadowy outline began to form around the human figure, indistinct at first.

"But he's no FBI agent." Trixie said. I doubted my own resolve, but Trixie sounded like an iron anvil welded to a supertanker: immovable.

"Your resistance interests me. Perhaps I have found what I seek." The flat delivery and lack of facial expression sent ripples of cold dread through my gut. The shadowy outline continued to solidify for me, showing hints of hulking shoulders and overlong arms. My senses strained in a new direction. Instead of peering into the gleaming realm of the ineffable, now I strained to see the hyper-mundane.

"Buzz off, buddy. This is my house." Father Brent growled. I felt the warmth of his bulk at my shoulder, between Trix and myself.

For me, Kezzias's bland, heavy-lidded human eyes transformed into bulging orbs slashed by a vertical pupil and colored a diseased yellow. Most disturbingly, they focused on me with alien intelligence. Whatever decisions the mind behind those optics calculated, I knew I wouldn't like the bottom line. "Go back to your couch, human," Kezzias lisped. "I'll just take this one away for questioning."

Quick as a snake strike, Kezzias's hand shot out. Claws sank into my shoulder and pierced my skin in a ring of cuts. The half-seen monstrosity turned toward the door. With horrid strength, it dragged me along.

"Rik!" Trixie screamed.

My shoulder burned and throbbed, and my feet stumbled, off-balance. But I was well and truly panicked. I planted my feet on the sweep of the door frame and swung both arms up. My clasped fists impacted scaly hide stretched over corded muscles at Kezzias's elbow. In a flash of agony, its claws ripped from my shoulder. I fell over backwards, free for the moment, but off my feet.

"Back, Trix," Father Brent mumbled.

After my head bounced off the floor, I caught a glimpse of Father Brent. His left arm was stiff out to one side; a bar to stop Trixie from leaping forward. His right arm extended toward Kezzias.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

With a steady tempo, a lump of metal at the end of his arm flashed. Kezzias emitted a deep-throated squeal more like an injured wild boar than a human.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Father Brent had a handgun, and he emptied it into the monster at the door. Kezzias threw its arms over its head and hunched over.

Click. Click.

The little gun fired no more bullets, but Kezzias was in full retreat. Its black bulk stumbled out and up the concrete stairs. It wailed like a distorted steam engine whistle, and the unnerving cry trailed away into silence.

Trix pushed past Father Brent and pursued the creature out the door. She shone with light, and I don't think it was my spirit vision. I think she really beamed a blue-white light, about a thousand watts' worth.

I peeled myself off the floor. I panted, and blood roared in my ears. My hands had developed a palsy. "Whoa. That was ... Father Brent? Jeepers creepers, you were a complete hero!"

"Heh. Gotta admit, I'm feeling clever." His little gun lay in the palm of his hand and he stared at with high eyebrows and a look of wonder.

Trixie returned, unshiny. "It's gone. Bro? You okay?"

Agony laced my shoulder. With trepidation, I stole a peek. Maybe my jacket covered the worst, but besides the lacerated fabric, I only saw flecks of blood. "Uh, mostly just shook."

Father Brent grunted. He was staring at the floor. I followed his line of sight. Speckles of purplish ooze dotted the entryway. The bilious droplets smoked, and they ate into the floorboards like acid. Six empty shell cartridges littered the floor, too, among cast-off food wrappers. The bullets themselves presumably lodged inside the creature that called itself Kezzias, who at this moment scuttled away to some unknown den, possibly to communicate with equally appalling brethren entities. I chewed on my lower lip. A shredded shoulder might soon be the least of my worries.

Excited conversational noises drifted through the open door. Curious nearby residents were gathering.

Father Brent grinned. By far the sunniest expression I had yet seen on his face. "All this is gonna be hard to explain to the neighbors."