She had the face of an angel.

Carefully folded in the right rear pocket of her jeans, she'd cut it from the Seraph Anadial the night he came for her youngest son.

She was not surprised when it was an angel who came for the boy. She knew something would eventually. It was why she kept such careful watch over him, why she had the long were-bone knife in the first place, despite the small fortune it had cost.

Her family had a long history with the malakhim, tracing back even before her ancestors had joined their fragmented community of Ethiopian Jews. For as long as she could remember one of the highest holy days of the year for her family was the celebration of child slaughter at angelic hands: it wasn't the passing over of their own which bought the Israelites their freedom, but the spilled blood of Egypt's first born. It made a certain sense they would be the first to come after hers.

Lambs blood was one of many tools she used to try and keep her son safe against a poisoned fate, luckily it wasn't the only one.

She had the angel's wings as well, but they didn't travel as well.