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euphoria faded, it was replaced by a dull, throbbing pain. I could see strangely colored shadows dart and flit through the debris, into and out of sight. A faint glow surrounded my body out of the corner of my eye. I felt sick and started to sweat, despite the late autumn chill blowing in through the cracked plastiglass window. It would be much colder soon enough, but the coming of winter was the least of my worries at the time.
    A creak echoed through the squat. Someone was coming up the stairs. My hands fumbled for the rust-spotted switchblade in my pocket, but I couldn’t seem to make them function because of the lingering euphoric high of the drug. It was most likely another squatter, looking for a place to sleep out of the wind, but it could be some chipped-out nutcase or worse. I’d heard, too, that ghouls sometimes came out of the Catacombs at night to hunt and scavenge in the squats and mostly deserted areas of the Rox.
    The sound came closer, and I tried vainly to crawl over to the nearest heap of refuse and hide myself. It was all I could do to raise my head and try to look defiant. The door creaked open and a pair of figures entered, silhouetted by the faint light from the hall. I was going to say something to make them back off, but the after-effects of the bliss made my throat so dry that all I could manage was a croaking cough. It elicited a low grunt from one of the figures, like a chuckle.
    The figures shuffled closer, and I could just see them through the faint neon and moonlight coming through the cracked and dirty windows. They were both hairless, dressed in rags, with scabrous, rough gray skin. Their crooked hands were tipped with dark claws and their mouths lined with sharp, pointed teeth. Their eyes were dead-white and looked out onto nothing, but they moved toward me with unerring accuracy, sniffing the air slightly. Around each of them was a dark glow that sent waves of emotion battering into me: caution, excitement, eagerness and, above it all, hunger, terrible gnawing hunger. Ghouls. I was a dead man for sure.
    They started to close in, splitting up to circle around either side of me. I couldn’t move. I just stared in horror at them. The force of their feelings pinned me to the floor like a mouse facing a snake. A dark tongue emerged from the mouth of one and he licked his lips.
    The figures approached and I tensed, waiting for a ghoulish set of claws at my throat. Instead, I heard a voice that rang out in the silence of the squat.
    "STOP!” it shouted. “Leave him alone!”
    I looked up and saw something that made me sure the bliss was making me hallucinate ... or that I’d finally gone totally wacked. A glowing figure, robed in garments of light and carrying a long wooden staff, stepped through the wall of the room like it wasn’t even there. His presence seemed to light up the room in a cascade of golden light. The ghouls shrank back from the glow and hissed.
    “He is under my protection.” the shining man said in a forceful voice. His features were like a marble statue, pure, refined, chiseled, and pale. Even his flesh seemed to glow from within and his eyes were like pits of green fire. He was beautiful. For a moment I recalled everything I’d been taught about angels by the Catholic Family Mission where I’d grown up. Right then and there, staring up at that shining figure, I was ready to believe they existed.
    The ghouls were startled by the shining man’s initial appearance, but they quickly recovered. They didn’t intend to be cheated of their dinner, and they started moving toward the intruder. He calmly held his staff in front of him in both hands. I noticed that his feet didn’t even touch the floor. He hovered about five or six centimeters above it.
    With a strangled cry, one of the ghouls rushed him and the staff flashed out. The ghoul fell back, screaming in pain. The staff swung again, and again, tracing faint arcs of light in the air where it passed. With each swing the