Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

seared and radiated, like magma surging in his vertebrae, more intense than any pain he had felt in his life. A burst that could only be a bullet.
    He fell, the structure of his body ruptured, the sturdy architecture of flesh and bones shattered in a single instant.
    Heard the footsteps nearing.
    A pause.
    He was dying. He knew it. Sprawled on his side, he could almost feel the life seeping out of him through the hole blown in his back. He shoved his hand in his pocket. Pulled out the old silver pocket watch he had carried every day of his job, ran his fingers over the raised engraving of Saint Michael on the back.
    To the patron saint of cops and warriors, Brandon whispered a request for help.
    “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil…”
    He held the old watch against his heart, felt the wetness soaking his shirt. Realized it was because the bullet had blown clean through his body. He was bleeding out, left to die here on the filthy pavement of this alley.
    Heard the scrape of a shoe near his ear, so close now.
    A second explosion as another shot slammed into the back of Brandon’s skull.
    Death came instantly. But the last sliver of his human existence, less than a fraction of a breath, stretched into an eternity that seemed to encompass his entire life span.
    The last thing he saw through his human eyes was his watch, its second hand clicking its last tick.
    All of time seemed to hover in a single instant, packed into the space between those two black lines that demarcated one second from another.
    And in that second, the summary of his human experience poured forth in his mind.
    Every image he had ever experienced, all flooding into his memory in a simultaneous rush. Emerging out of his mother’s body, into the cold light of a hospital room…his infancy and childhood in a run-down suburb of Detroit…roughhousing with his brothers…front yards full of rusted-out cars and tall weeds…his high school sweetheart, Tammy…the police academy…his wedding…their first home…lovemaking in the afternoons…
    All rushing through him and past him, as if he were being sucked backward through a tunnel.
    And now, this.
    The moments of his death were literally the worst moments of his life. In them, he felt loss, sorrow, regret, fear. Swirling together like a black hole in the cosmos. Nothing that words could ever describe, the feeling was so much more intense than language, which failed utterly to scratch the surface of that experience.
    The experience of intense suffering.
    Enough for a lifetime, compacted into the last fleeting scrap of consciousness.
    What a shitty way to die, he thought.
    Those were the last words that ran through his human mind.
    He spiraled upward, flying out of his human body.
    Looking down, he saw his mortal form sprawled on the ground, bleeding out onto the dirty pavement in the dark of night. Over his now-lifeless body, the killer leaned.
    Brandon could only see the killer’s back as the man bent down to remove the object enclosed in the curled hand of the corpse. The final impression of Brandon’s human experience was one of absolute injustice. Not only had the killer taken Brandon’s life, but he had also stolen Brandon’s goddamned watch.
    Fortunately, Brandon no longer cared. Detached from his human body, he spun upward.
    Into light, he had been born. And now in death, he returned to light again. But not the light of the human world. Not a cold light this time, but reaching toward the warmest and most joyful light he had ever known.
    Reaching, reaching, upward, upward…
    To hang in the cosmos for a single, shining, glorious instant. An instant as long as eternity and shorter than the blink of an eye. But he knew he could not stay there forever.
    Not yet. There were things to be done.
    And then falling, plunging downward at a dizzying velocity, traveling faster than matter.
    Because he, Brandon, was constructed of pure light.
    He landed with a jolt, the light of his soul crashing back into his physical body.
    Lying in bed. Howling a keening cry of mourning for the life he had just lost.
    Just as he did every time he woke from this nightmare.
    Every single fucking night for the past ten years, he awoke shivering in terror.
    Thanking God that it was only a dream.
    Because the first time it happened, it hadn’t been a dream.
    That time, it had been real.
    Three o’clock in the morning.
    That’s what time