Thief of Heaven - Chapter 1

Chicago -- One week since arrival


"They do not despise the thief, When he stealeth to fill his soul when he is hungry" --   Proverbs 6:30


Jack the Daw, now with identification showing his name as Jack Dawson, sits on the fabric upholstered window-box at the front of his rented flat looking out at the sunset falling on south Chicago. The flat is the second floor of a red brick building etched with signs of age and distress, above a Rexall Drug store; a business which has been closed for years. Marks on the bricks of the building from fire, bullets, and gashes (from something blunt and heavy) give a braille history of the neighborhood.

During the two days since his arrival in Chicago, Jack has read this history with interest, as well as other chapters he has discovered etched into nearby walls. The coarse bricks have black tears from rain run off and mold; they are the walls and shells of tired souls who have lived too long and witnessed too much.

Neighborhoods in Pilsen are not all dark bricks and weathered stories of violence. Many of the larger buildings display massive murals of Chicano history; stories of violence and pride in vivid colors, with no need for braille.

Behind double pane glass, Jack bites into his apple, allowing the delicate spray of fine juice to linger on his pallet, and then enjoys the hard texture of the fruit against his teeth. The lower window section is raised a few inches to let the tumult and sounds of Pilsen's nightlife and exotic scents into the room. They are musky scents of exhaust, sweat, aromatic drugs, urine, sun spoiled beer, and heavy perfume, mixing with the underlying and pervasive scent of fear so common in the cities. From fear there is little escape; it is the ever-present dark room where humans create all of their poisons and disease.

The wind off the Great Lake tumbles news-pages into traffic, and flutters the short skirts of young Hispanic girls. Most of the commercial buildings in the area are brick or stone. Most of these roofs are flat with bulky AC and heating units. Dark pipes and black electric cables cut across gray-white tar-cap roofing. Some homes have sharp peak roof lines with brown tar shingles, walls of heavy brick, and tall windows in white frames. Most of these homes are narrow and long, with two floors, and low chain-link fences at the sidewalks.

For the family homes, long driveways serve for utility access. For buildings and apartments there are alleyways; black iron fire escapes, dark-green trash dumpsters, discarded clothing, damaged shopping carts, and small piles of weathered cigarette filters. Above all of this is a webbing of black wires, circling pigeons, and calling crows.

Prostitutes walk the sidewalks and scan the traffic as soon as the sun touches the horizon, and the street lights threaten dark alleys. The whore's cheeks are scabrous with meth-pox, filled with foundation creams and smeared with bruising rouge. Young women and teen-agers are the first to appear. The older women, with their thinning, papery eyelids, and sallow, ashen skin; the outlines of d-cup breasts flattened, pressed to bas-relief by tight yellow tank-tops; come out after the night is full, and the men quit looking so closely.

Always there are the homeless, and the drunks. In the great cities these men and women exist unseen, transparent, unnoted; rag-pickers who move through unnamed alleyways. A population engulfed by doctrine, over-killed by evangelism and erased by subtle propaganda.

Wearing orange wool caps, casino T-shirts, and surplus coats, the rag-pickers move without physical grace. They bend and mumble. They pick up bits of string, cans, pennies and lost earrings. Ceramic cups with broken handles are wrapped protectively inside yesterday's news; a treasure saved in their wobbling wire carts. These, and the others of Christ's favorites, still exist between the light of the everlasting and the darkness of eternity; shuffling through time, like Jack himself.

It is this city, these streets and people, which now hosts the remains of Saint Jude, brother of James. A man who ate supper with God, and gave his life to love and tolerance. The Saint of Lost Causes. The Forever Jack, loves the place. It is perfect. Smiling he takes a bite from his apple, and feels the last ray sunset warm his body with the joy of life.

With the sun beyond the horizon, darkness cat-paws through narrow alleyways alarming streetlights to life. The heat of the city's interior is swept away by chill winds off the massive black of Lake Michigan. Window lights flicker to life. Distant roads and highways become streams of white and red. Occasionally a flashing point of blue moves through the currents of traffic like a shark.  

Jack studies the clips of music blasting from car trunks and the cadence of street talk. He gathers phrases and body gestures into his mental dictionary, like a rag-picker of nonverbal etymology.

Scanning the sidewalks and street corners, he identifies predators and prey. Some move in small packs, some move like wraiths. He memorizes tattoos, bandannas, T-shirts, and plaid over-shirts. The walks of members, and the walks of lookers, the fast eyes of the crack-looker, and the far away stare of heroin death-heads.

Night alleys are gravitation wells for lost souls and addictions. Lookers, pimps, connections and hookers, pull up sleeves, empty pockets, and lift skirts to satisfy the need and urge in constant demand. If you are looking, It is down there. Everything else on the street is trappings, distractions, signs, leading to the dark doors.

Amazed at how little the world has changed, Jack leans back against the window frame, closes his eyes, and tosses the core of his apple into the waste basket across the room. Clearing his mind he listens, identifies and filters everyday life in south Chicago.

Every city, like every desert, has its own music. To move, as he needs to move, to walk, as he needs to walk, the normal noises have to be memorized. Once the sounds are memorized in their variations, they can be filtered from the ear, so only the new sounds, the different sounds, the sounds which are most dangerous to him, will draw his attention. Jack soaks it in; bits of rap music, the bouncing of cars, the angry shouts of hookers, grown men begging for a rock on credit until morning.

After three hours he achieves silence. He opens his eyes. The beer clock in the window of the liquor store across the street marks the hour at nine. The activity of the street below has increased, but the music hasn't changed. It's all repeats and forever loops. Nothing new. Nothing threatening.

Jack closes the window and uncurls from the narrow bench.

Shadows stretch out from curtains, and chairs, moving across the floor and ceiling to cover the windows and the skylight above the dining table. One shadow exists on its own, the shadow of a cat. It crawls out from under the flower print sofa and strolls to the front door. Sitting on the hardwood entry way, the cat cleans itself, occasionally flicking its tail. Jack walks past the windows, past the guarded portals, to the bathroom and the promise of a hot shower. There is work to be done this night.

Once showered, he dresses in a black T-shirt, black cargo pants, and a Chicago Cubs jacket. The cross-trainer shoes are black and gray, but otherwise nondescript. He used Gorilla glue to add small patches of soft leather to the soles, to keep them from squeaking on polished floors.

His tools and cloak are already stowed in a small dark blue backpack. Once all is in order, he checks the clock, and nods his head at the expected advancement of a single hour.

Saint Jude's is nine blocks east of his flat. His Direction Glyph, conjured in the desert after his summons, suggested a relic of Saint Jude will be required to steal the soul he is after. Since the soul's allotted time is fourteen days away acquiring the relic is not a problem, but remains a question.

Never before has he required a relic of any sort to steal a soul. Stealing is what he does, and at first the idea was even appealing. However, he cannot think of a single reason such an object would be necessary, or even helpful, and has been angling the puzzle for five days. He has also failed come up with a single reason not to follow the advice of his Direction Glyph. So with some time on his hands, and more curious than ever, Jack hefts his small backpack to his shoulder, checks the flat's status with a quick scan, and leaps from the floor to the table, the table to the skylight, and vaults through the protecting shadow to the roof and into the new night of Chicago.

On the sandy grit of the tar-cap, Jack pauses to listen for any sound, or any movement above the silenced din of the neighborhood. Chicago's Pilsen churns below, above, and out to the horizons, but only the expected mortal fray and afflictions vibrate the night air. No unique sound creeps, or crawls, or flies.

Taller buildings surround three sides of the drug store and flat. To the right and behind are apartments, to the left a three-story business office structure, built on that ground ten years before the great Chicago fire. Out across the world in front of him, is a sea of homes and a few late night office buildings; all with shades drawn, lights on, and shadow theaters displaying the dramas inside. The silent screens draw Jack's attention for a moment, as shadows unfold human tales of violence, passion, love, and suicide. Couples share the bliss of flesh, friends fight over fractured trust. Everywhere the Living World hums, and performs its shadow dance for the Soul Thief.

Jack pulls himself away from the spectrum of humanity, and suppresses the chaos of personal memories and experiences which rush onto his mental stage while watching silent screens. "Being human is hard." He whispers to the world at large, and steps deftly to the north alley edge of the building, and jumps off.

Trajectory lands his right foot on a brick window sill of the five-story apartment building across the alleyway, where inside an older Hispanic woman takes a shower after working fourteen hours, while her son rifles through her purse for drug money in the living-room.  Jack lets his foot smoothly slide off the scabrous brick sill as his weight comes down, and then catches the sill again with his right hand as he falls past. Then he lets go, landing in the dark shadows of the alley path.

A gray tabby cat startles from its investigation of a green dumpster, and goes prone. Its golden eyes watch the larger predator move down the alley to the street. The tabby has no interest, if the predator has no interest in him, but the tabby's shadow follows the man to the alley mouth, then runs back when the gray tabby resumes its scavenging deeper into the alley.

Jack enters the fray of humanity on the sidewalks. Small crowds stand outside of taverns and beer bars. Plumes of blue-white smoke exhale into the night above. Lake Michigan’s wind is chill and damp. No rain has fallen for weeks, yet the air feels muddy, heavy. The auras of street lights are bloated with moisture. The bricks always feel wet.

On each block, as Jack moves east, crossing streets and passing through packs of people, there is some type of tavern, beer bar, or tattoo shop always in view. Check-cashing and liquor sales are often combined. Pawn shop window displays are over packed with items; tide-pools gathering the salvage debris of life erosion. 

Base beats from passing cars vibrate store windows, and the back of Jack's jaw. Wild yells in chorus with car horns celebrate fleeting twitches conjured by hookers on the corner. The celebrations could seem pointless, even pathetic, but to Jack they are just more. From High Tower to Street Curb, nothing has really changed.

He enjoys existence in cities like this, and streets like these. No matter the language, the country, the religion, or the God, humans have to subdue the flesh; and it has never been easy. The battles on this social plane are hard won, and few survive the trails, but survival is not victory, nor death defeat.

He cannot say the people he passes are losing the battles, because for many of them there is no battle. Fear parallelizes their lives; fear of losing what they have, or not getting what they want. A majority of these incredible and powerful creations, never really face any battle. Their own fears simply herd them through the day, driving them like cattle to the market, and mutilation.

Saint Jude's is three blocks away when he hears a new sound. This sound cleaves through his filtered din of Pilsen. The resonance is not human, nor from the Living World. It is the shearing sound of silver airfoils and blue flame, severing the fabric of Light and Shadow. An Other has arrived, and it is near by.

From the tone and texture of its entry, Jack guesses it to be a celestrial. He takes two quick steps up to the mouth of the next alley and ducks into the dark; once inside the passage, he begins to run.

Ahead of him a drunk sits on the abrasive black tar-pack; his back against the wall, his legs sprawled. One leg straight, the other bent, like the Hanged Man of the Tarot deck. A street lamp attached to the building on the right, spills a puddle of amber light behind him. The bottle in the drunk's hand still holds two fingers of vodka. He snores from deep in his chest as Jack glides past. The grip on the bottle neck never loosens.

Jack reaches an accessible fire escape attached to the building on the left. The black iron rattles as his feet touch the steel grid of the first landing. He quickly adjusts his weight to dampen the sound of his climb, but still takes the stairs in sets of three. At the third floor landing he leaps over the rusted rail to a brick window sill and scales the wall in silence up the next floor, continuing to the roof, moving now in diagonal direction from the fire escape ladder.

On the roof a crow waits, shifting on its feet, one to the other, its head turning from side to side, eye to eye, watching Jack climb with black eyes; not black as a color, more like black as a hole. Once over the side of the wall, Jack takes the crow's shadow without pause, sending the phantom bird to circle the building. The wraith raptor glides away on a single pulse of silent wings, tips one wing down over the edge of the building, and disappears into the north alleyway. The flesh and feather crow remains on the wall, blinks its black eyes, and says nothing.

In fluid motion, without flicker he shadow skips across the roof top, while escaping the nap-pack and jacket; donning cloak and cowl. Shadows stretch on their own, to better hide his presence. Moonlight dims across the tar-cap, no longer reflecting off every sandy grain of a gray-white surface. The Other is close, and Jack has a strong suspicion of where it has perched.

Five shadow skip steps across the length of the roof, places him behind the front street façade of the building, allowing him to confirm his suspicion. It takes no skill or concentration to discover his suspicions were correct, with annoying accuracy.

Three hundred feet away, and two hundred feet in the air, the Forever Jack spots the angelic Other, a Grigori, a Watcher, sitting on the steeple spike of Saint Jude's Church.

The Watcher's narrow four wings half furled in the night air, glisten in the moonlight like silver switch blades against the blackness and stars. Each wing separately adjusting to the gusty winds pushing in from the dark waters, maintaining its stoic balance. Its body, a flawless surface of living steel, crouches, arms folded above bent knees, as unmovable as stone inside a mountain on that tip of delicate aviary. Blazing indigo eyes scan the world below, waiting. Alert as an eagle watching a brace of rabbits; Heaven's raptor.

The Grigori, the Fallen, the Watchers. One of the two hundred son's of God now bound to earth, until time is not time, and earth is not earth. Until the world is without form once more, and the face of God flutters across the deep.

They are not the Damned, but they no longer stand in the host of Heaven. Cut off, they wander the earth, watching, waiting. Some of them seek repentance, some of them seek other goals. It is dangerous to put human thoughts in their minds, to assume human motivations. The Grigori are not human, and never were. Even those who take human form are not human; though their fall was caused by human failings.

Jack watches the Grigori; its scythe like wings, its perfect unblemished body; doubting its choice of landing has anything to do with his own plans or choice of target. The steeple of St. Jude's church is simply the highest point in this area.

Perhaps it perches there every night, taking in some vicarious connection to the Father.

For now, Jack decides, to assume that much; that the Grigori would not be leaving soon, and will be an obstacle every night; until time is not time.

Being a Grigori, a random value and one Jack doesn't recognize from the many he has encountered in the past, it is impossible for him to guess its reaction to the theft of a Saint's relic, especially the bones of a Saint.

As a group, the Grigori would have motivation for stopping him, and for helping him, and motivation for the countless points in between. There was no guessing exactly how many points in between might exist for an Other.

How many can dance on the point of that pin?

Assume him hostile then. Assume him an obstacle. Assume him dangerous. Add him to the game; a piece on the board. Jack nods his head as these thoughts emerge in his mind.

Visual flashes, from the eyes of the crow's shadow, have not discovered any other Fallen ones in the area, which is Jack's first concern. He has learned over time that some travel in groups, while others seek solitude. If others are around it is best to spot them first.

Throughout the ages, the Fallen have been noted by many; they are called Air Spirits in some lands, Earth Spirits in others. Some are recorded as teachers, and spiritual guides, others recorded as demons and agents of chaos. All of the descriptions of course, are correct, to some degree because of the various personalities of the creatures themselves.

It is tempting to call one of his crows, and even a few cats to stalk the area, but it is risky enough to have the shadow crow flying through the streets, and crossing the roof lines within the Grigori's view. The Watchers are well aware of his companions, and his shadows. The shadows of living creatures are difficult for them to see, even in daylight, so for now, he will do with the sketchy information.

Jack prefers to move without restraint, when the hunt is this young. His true weapon is information, from which he can glean options. Being identified by a Grigori this early, could limit his options in drastic, and fatal measure. Jack waits, and continues to wait for a full fifteen minutes. The Grigori sits and stares at the traffic below, as unmoving as a gargoyle.

After a few more minutes, Jack's body relaxes under the cloak, and he mentally shrugs his acceptance of being able to go no further tonight. Pleased however that the Grigori is definitely not after him, and from its actions, unaware he is on this roof.

Sitting further down, allowing the façade to fully block his view, he assesses the acquisition of the relic from this point, and is pleased with the summation he comes to.

The area would require a more thorough stalking. Places of harbor and flight needed to be discovered and prepared. If he could find the purpose of this Grigori, and possibly its name it would certainly present more opportunities for distraction.

On the whole, however, his assessment leads him to believe the Grigori is not a huge challenge, not here in Southwest Chicago, with the fear of the desperate pulsing despair from the streets below.

He cannot ignore the Grigori, not if he wishes to remain unnoticed; which he does. However, in such a perfect layered cloud of dark human emotion, Jack knows he can work around the creature. In the iniquity of the streets at night he will be little more than another smug mark on God's earth.

Once the relic is in his hands, and wrapped deep in his cloak, he could make his way back to his flat without worry of notice. He just needs remain unnoticed by the Grigori until he is fully prepared. But no real problems are presented by its presence on the church steeple.

"It's here for my mother, isn't it." A small voice says behind Jack.

He doesn't jump, or turn. It is a novice thief who believes he has seen everything, or reacts to surprise with guilt or evasion. Jack turns his head slightly to the origin of the voice, spying a small head peaking out from behind an AC unit halfway across the roof. The head belongs to a small boy.

This, Jack decides, is a problem.

Jack checks the Grigori, which is, at the moment, looking out across the city toward the downtown area. In the distance Jack picks up an awareness of approaching sirens, and spots echo flashes of blue light touching the tops of buildings.  It's here for my mother, the boy had asked. Is it possible he can see the Grigori on the church steeple?

Normally human eyes could not see the Grigori in their angelic form. A quick viewing of traditional artwork which supposedly renders their form was proof enough of this fact.

Customarily these images portray the Grigori as hideous, and twisted, some of them are amazingly absurd. Eyes in their breasts, mouths in their asses, goat feet and the like. Jack always feels a strong if irrational affront to the Father when looking at these portrayals of his creatures. No, humans do not see the angelic forms of the Grigori; normally.

There are, however, moments when human eyes see clearly into the spiritual world of the Living Earth. Innocent eyes at the moment of innocence lost, is a common enough example. Often the cause of madness as well. Jack looks back at the boy. The death of a mother is not a moment of innocence lost, it is a natural occurrence.

A shock, to be sure. A deep loss, undeniably. But Innocence is not so fragile. For the young, it usually fractured under the weight of an unnatural betrayal. However, the boy certainly looks like he can see the Grigori.

Sirens are coming closer, the Doppler blue light pulses echo with more focus, bringing tragedy hounds to gather in the streets below, and perhaps at this building. Sirens, screams, and madness are all normal sounds in this area, sounds he has been purposefully ignoring. However, the human world interjecting itself into his plans he has been forced to lift some of these filters.

Jack checks the Grigori once more, seeing its calm, immovable attention rapt on the onrushing emergency vehicles. Holding to the shadow paths on the roof, Jack shadow-skips back from the front edge-wall to the AC unit hiding the boy. The boy's eyes widen when Jack appears beside him, gently pulling him away from the Grigori's view, hiding him completely behind the AC unit. 

"Talk in whispers, okay?" Jack says to the boy, who is perhaps ten, or eleven.

The boy nods his head. There is fear in his harrowed eyes, but not fear of Jack.

"That's good. You are safe for now, but the creature you see on the church is not what you might think it is." Jack says, keeping his voice even, and soft.

"I think it is an angel of death." The boy whispers.

In that, Jack decides in a sigh, the boy may not be far from wrong.