The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [160]
A neon sign sizzled to life in the darkness. It shone across the street, above an arched doorway. The sign was beautiful: a winged dove rendered against the night in iridescent blue and hot pink. Beneath the dove, orange words pulsed on and off in a spastic rhythm. THE HOPE MISSION.
Travis wondered if he was hallucinating. He had never heard of a downtown mission by that name, and surely Jay and Marty would have told him about it. Jay knew every place in Denver that gave handouts to the homeless.
Dread punched him in the gut. Jay and Marty. He had completely forgotten about them.
You can catch up with them tomorrow, Travis. You know Jay—he'll have figured out someplace for them to stay for the night.
Travis looked both ways, but there were no cars coming in either direction. He stumbled across the street and pushed through the peeling door of the mission. The room beyond was cramped, shabby, and deliciously warm. After the brutal cold, the heat was so intense it knocked Travis silly for a moment, and he could neither think nor move.
“Close the door already,” said a gruff voice. “How do you think we heat this place? With magic?”
Shocked into motion, Travis shut the door, then turned around. The room was set up as a sort of reception area. There were several plastic chairs crammed alongside a battered green sofa, and dog-eared magazines strewed the top of a kidney-shaped coffee table. An antique color TV was mounted on the wall, and a potted ivy dominated one corner, tangling its way up a column, growing luxuriously in the near-tropical heat.
“So what are you looking for tonight?”
Travis's eyes focused on the man standing behind the counter. He was short and stocky—late twenties, maybe—clad in a Colorado Avalanche sweatshirt, a wool cap on his head. His eyebrows were thick and dark, and his chin was covered by the bleach blond tuft of a goatee. He looked at Travis with saturnine eyes.
Travis cleared his throat. “I need a place to sleep.” He braced himself, expecting to be told there was no more room. After all, it was late. He couldn't expect to find a bed at the shelter.
“I think we might have a bed left,” the man said. “I'll have to go check. Can you wait a minute?”
Travis was too astonished to do anything but nod. He hoped the other took his time. If nothing else, he could get warm while he was waiting.
“You can watch the TV while you wait.” The man pressed a button on a remote control, upping the volume, then headed down a hallway. Travis watched him as he went. He walked with an odd, swaying cadence; his legs were bowed inside his jeans, perhaps the result of a childhood disease or a congenital condition.
The other vanished from sight, and Travis sat on the couch. A musty smell rose from it, and he had to shift his rear a few times to find a place where no springs poked up through the cushion, but all the same the act of sitting felt positively decadent. Fear still registered in his chest, but the emotion felt dull and distant through the veil of his weariness. He was safe, if only for the moment.
“And should they come for you, do not fear,” said a voice that was thrilling and majestic despite its tinniness. “For know that you have been chosen to be part of God's own army.”
Travis craned his neck. On the TV, a man in a white suit strutted back and forth across a stage. His dark hair gleamed, and he moved hands covered with rings in bold gestures as he spoke.
“There's no need to be ashamed if your heart trembles when they appear to you,” Sage Carson said. Above him soared the crystalline walls of the Steel Cathedral. “You see, my heart did when they came to me. The Angels of Light are terrible to behold, but they're beautiful as well, so cast aside your fear. Open your arms to the Angels of Light, and know that you are blessed.”
Travis sucked in a breath and sat straight up, all thoughts of rest, of comfort, gone. On the