Thief by Greg Curtis Page A

answer, but one that was completely useless to him. He didn’t have the geographical coordinates for heaven, nor the ability to make any use of them should he find them. He wasn’t alone in that. Long ago Voltaire had found the same answer.
     
    “It is not known precisely where angels dwell—whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode”.
     
    Three centuries later, with an angel in front of him and with every technological advance known at his fingertips, he found he was unable to add a single thing to that simple statement. It was more than a little depressing.
     
    However, he did glean two facts during his research. Firstly, nowhere in the bible, not in any of the five versions he held, nor in any of the other holy books he held, was the name Sherial written. He quickly checked all the other versions of her name, Latin and Greek especially. Not a thing. Was she new, or had she simply been overlooked by history? On a hunch he ran a query on the internet, searching for her name, and again found nothing that related to the angel. Yet such was its size he could have found thousands of articles about the history of even an unknown street urchin. Was he her first assignment?
     
    The other thing he discovered was not a fact but rather an omission. Nowhere in any of the references was there a description of an angel as being sexy. They were; glorious, wondrous, beautiful, spiritual, radiant, marvellous, miraculous, stupendous, admirable, and exquisite. They were also overwhelming, awesome, awe-inspiring, and breathtaking, fearsome, terrifying and frightening.
     
    Reading between the lines, he guessed some of the authors would have classed them on the same order of magnitude as a nuclear mushroom cloud, every bit as glorious and twice as scary. But nowhere were they ever described as sexy. It was a trap, said his paranoia, and it was usually right.
     
    He became discouraged early on his reading, unwilling to believe that anybody really knew much about angels at all. They had just dreamed it up as they went along. How else could he explain how vague were the things that were written, and how often they contradicted each other? If it wasn’t for the fact that he had an angel sitting outside his house at that very moment, he would have described many of the authors as irrational naval gazers.
     
    But mixed in among them he found occasional writings strikingly similar to the creature who had waylaid him. In particular he found one quote that floored him with its accuracy.
     
    “The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
     
    Ralph Waldo Emerson had stated that many lifetimes earlier, and it was as true now as it had been then. Her manner of communication he realised with awe, while never actually understood by anyone he had read of, must have actually been heard before. For while she didn’t speak any mortal tongue, surely the language she spoke was that of heaven. Emerson, or one of his sources, must actually have met and heard an angel. Mikel wasn’t alone.
     
    He read on.
     
    Angels he found were almost universally accepted as part of every major religion, though their roles differed more than a little. Most classed them as in some way the agents of God, doing His bidding and speaking His words, while a few others classed them either as other creations like man, or else as divine spirits left free to roam.
     
    But they hadn’t always been the cute and fluffy creatures envisioned in the popular press. They were listed in the Old Testament as powerful creatures, often as warriors bearing flashing swords and fighting the lords battles. They destroyed cities, tore down walls, carried plagues and prevented man from returning to the Garden. Angels would also sound