I, Angel

by JC Andrijeski

  There was a silence.

  In it, they just looked at each other.

  Dags was still gripping the towel at his hip, gripping it too tightly in one hand. He gripped the edge of the tile wall with his other hand. He wondered now if he was holding on to both things to keep his hands off her.

  “That guy,” he said, abrupt. “Karver. You’re with him?”

  As soon as Dags said it, he regretted it.

  Something changed.

  He felt it tangibly, without being able to see a damned thing on her.

  It felt like watching a door close, being powerless to stop it.

  Hesitating on his skin, her fingers and hand pulled back, making him flinch. He felt their absence so keenly, he clenched his jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business.”

  She just stood there, frowning down at her bare feet, or maybe his.

  He didn’t think she was going to answer him, when she suddenly looked up.

  “Yes,” she said, reluctant. “I suppose I am. With him.”

  Dags nodded.

  There was another silence.

  Then he stepped forward. He nearly held his breath as he did it, not sure what he would do if she didn’t move out of his way.

  She did move, though.

  She slid sideways gracefully, again causing him to stare.

  He walked past her anyway, gripping the towel tighter now, even as he used his free hand to comb his long, straight black hair out of his eyes. He made his way to his clothes on the counter by the sink. Only once he’d reached them did he turn, facing her.

  “You’d better leave,” he said.

  She blinked.

  A frown touched her lips.

  Strangely, inexplicably, he saw a flicker of real anger there.

  Seeing the confusion in her eyes, the anger, what might have been frustration, or even some more intense, less-directed emotion, he clenched his jaw, not trusting himself to speak. He found himself trying to understand everything he saw on her instead, from the frown on her full lips down to the tightening of her fingers.

  Watching her hands curl into near-fists, he blurted,

  “I need you to go,” he said, his voice harder. “Now. Please.”

  Her jaw hardened more.

  For a long-feeling silence, she stared at him.

  He didn’t see anything he could pin down on her face, even apart from the complete absence of an aura. Despite knowing nothing about her, or what she was thinking, he struggled irrationally not to shout at her. He wanted to close the distance between them again, get in her face, grab her and shove her out the door.

  Or, he admitted to himself, maybe he really wanted to grab her and lock the damned door with her inside, with him.

  Realizing a part of him was nearly fixated on that last image, he forced his eyes off her face and body altogether.

  Remembering what she’d said about Karver, he scowled.

  Go away, he willed at her. Go the fuck away. Please, goddamn it. Please.

  Before he could find a better, more civil way to communicate with her, Phoenix seemed to come to her own conclusions.

  She turned away, taking two strides to the bathroom door.

  Without a word, she gripped the door’s handle and jerked it sideways, yanking the door inward.

  She walked out.

  She didn’t look back.

  Chapter 15

  Kills Many

  “No! No way! You can’t LEAVE! You can’t! You absolutely, positively can’t!”

  The twenty-something actress actually looked alarmed.

  Her lips, which looked strangely large with their neon-pink lipstick that matched her tiny, neon-pink bikini, pushed out in a pouting kind of frown, making them look even larger.

  “No!” Asia said. “No! I thought you would stay here tonight! I thought you knew that’s what I wanted… I thought it was understood. We have the guest room set up for you and everything!”

  “Stay here?” Dags stared at her. “Why the fuck would I stay here?”

  From the couch behind him, Karver chuckled.

  Asia glared at Karver, then aimed her consternation back at Dags.

  “I told you why! We got another letter!”

  “I thought Phoenix got the letter. Not ‘we,’ whatever the hell that means,” Dags said, not looking at the person he was referencing, even though the frown on his lips now felt mostly aimed at her. “And I don’t see how I can help you by spending the night. I’ll take the materials home. I’ll study them there, do some research. Tomorrow morning, I’ll make some calls⏤”

  “But what if something happens tonight?” she wailed.

  Dags felt his jaw harden.

  It didn’t help that he could feel Phoenix’s eyes on him.

  It didn’t help that Karver had his arm around her where the two of them sat on the round white sofa behind where Dags stood.

  It didn’t help.

  None of it helped.

  “You have security⏤” he began, frustrated.

  “None of them can fight like you did last night,” Asia shot back. “PLEASE stay. I’ll feel safe if you’re here. Just for tonight.”

  Dags’ back molars ground together.

  He glanced at Karver and Phoenix on the couch, seemingly outside his control.

  His eyes jerked back to Asia.

  He didn’t really think about how strange it was, that he was yelling at a client, someone he barely knew. Someone famous. The very fact of his familiarity with all of them unnerved him. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like in part because he didn’t understand it.

  He liked it even less because he suspected he knew where it came from.

  He couldn’t get comfortable in Phoenix’s life.

  Not in any part of it.

  “Give me the letter you got today,” he growled finally, holding out a hand to Asia. “Let me read that one first. Before I go⏤”

  “I’ll pay you double,” she offered. “Triple your usual rates.” The fear in her eyes and voice remained tangible. “Please. It’s too late to get anyone else here tonight. Something bad is going to happen if you’re not here. I swear I can feel it⏤”

  “Just give me the letter, Asia.”

  He had every intention of leaving.

  No way was he spending the night here.

  No way was he going to be in the same house while Karver and Phoenix were fucking in some other room⏤whether he could hear it or not.

  The thought was there and gone, but once the image got stuck in his head, it ratcheted his anger up even more. It angered him partly for how little he understood his own anger.

  He. Didn’t. Know. These. People.

  Why did some part of him insist on acting like it did? Worse, why did some part of him seem to be staking out some kind of neurotically possessive claim in their lives? It was like that part of him already decided it deserved a place here, with these people.

  With her, a voice whispered. Her life. Her world. Her family.

  Dags didn’t sleep at other people’s houses.

  Ever.

  He had very specific reasons for not sleeping at other people’s houses. A house like this, that was basically one giant window, was his idea of a nightmare.

  He stood there, unmoving, while Asia went through the pile of letters.

  She flipped through the first few at the top of the stack, her neon-pink lips pinched in a denser frown. A few seconds later, her expression relaxed. Triumphant, she yanked out the letter she wanted, walking it around the bar to Dags and thrusting it into his hands.

  “Here. Read it.”

  Dags opened the folded piece of paper.

  He held it under his eyes, scanning the lines of text.

  One by one, we will come for you.

  The Phoenix will burn.

  The doors will open.

  Join us. Join us, and be reborn.

  Join us. Join us, or die.

  Behold the glorious Change.<
br />
  Burn and be reborn.

  Kills Many cannot save you.

  Kills Many is one of us.

  Kills Many belongs to us.

  Dags stared down at the sheet of paper, his throat closing on the last line.

  “Kills Many,” he muttered.

  That was supposedly the literal translation of his Algonquin name.

  Megedagik.

  Kills Many.

  There’s no way Jason Tig could have known that.

  There’s no way Asia or Phoenix could know that, either.

  Thinking about the fear he’d seen in Asia’s eyes, the nerves in Phoenix’s when she’d asked him about Jason Tig, he realized there was no way in hell he was about to tell them this note referenced him by name, especially given what the note said.

  Phoenix seemed to pick up on something anyway.

  “What?” she said from the couch. “Does it mean something to you?”

  Dags frowned.

  Still staring down at the note, he turned it over, staring at a symbol someone had burned into the thick paper.

  The symbol looked like a bird in flight.

  “I’ll stay,” he said, gruff, not fully realizing he meant to say the words until they were out of his mouth. “I’ll stay the night.”

  “Yay!” Asia said, clapping her hands.

  Despite the way the twenty-something woman expressed it, Dags could see in her aura and her eyes that her relief was real.

  She really wanted him here.

  He was just glad he’d crashed for part of that afternoon.

  He clearly wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.

  Dags set up a desk/workspace for himself on the bar in the main living room.

  He was offered other rooms, of course.

  Veronica was spending the night, too, and she offered him an office on the first floor, one on the second floor, and a much larger workspace in the kitchen.

  After he’d familiarized himself with the basic layout of the house, Dags turned them all down. He wanted to be someplace central, where he would have access to most parts of the house in a relatively minimal amount of time. The security station was just to the right of the main garage, outside, so being close to the front door was convenient. Being close to the main staircase meant he had relatively easy access to the upper floors.

  Then there was Asia.

  Asia made it pretty clear she wanted him in visual range, which was another reason for staking out a space for himself on the bar. Being on the opposite end of the massive front room, with a wall to his back and a partition on one side gave him a perfect view of the three of them on the couch where they stretched out to drink cocktails and watch movies.

  Dags himself, after talking to the security guys, hunkered down on a stool behind the black-stone bar, and began going through the stalker keepsakes.

  Even after he’d reached the end of the pile, he didn’t feel like he’d learned much.

  Or rather, he didn’t feel like he’d learned any more than he’d known after reading the first note, the one that had apparently shown up on a wooden chopping block in the kitchen that evening, with no postal stamp or any indication of how it got there.

  Dags went to talk to the security guards mainly to check out their auras.

  He had to eliminate them as suspects first, especially given the prevalence of notes and other “objects” showing up inside and outside the house.

  He didn’t get any kind of vibe off either of them.

  One of them, Cal, owned the small security company contracted to protect the house. Dags had heard of them before; the company had a good rep, but he’d make a few calls tomorrow, make sure that rep was earned.

  Cal himself seemed all right. Asian. Surfer dude. Buffed and probably a black belt in one martial art or another, given his build and the way he moved.

  Dave felt okay, too.

  Built like a tank, a giant white guy with an auburn ponytail, he didn’t strike Dags as a nuclear physicist type, but he came across as competent, and pleasant enough. Dags got a definite ex-military vibe off him.

  Overall, he liked both of them.

  He also got zero red flags off either aura.

  In Dags’ experience, things always showed up there, in one form or another, at least if there was anything to be found.

  Well, with one exception, anyway.

  He frowned, his eyes flickering towards Phoenix, on the couch.

  Karver’s dirty-blond head and muscular body had sunk into the white couch-cushions a few feet away from her. His mouth was partly open, his eyes closed. He looked like he was out cold. Asia curled up inside a different curve of the couch a few feet down from him, her face mashed into a lavender pillow. She was mostly covered in a white, faux-fur blanket that made her look like some kind of fluffy, abominable snow-creature.

  Phoenix was the only one who appeared to be awake.

  Dags found himself studying her profile.

  She sat alone, erect, on the opposite side of the couch as the other two, presumably so she could move around without waking them. Her face remained utterly still as she watched the images on the giant, wall-mounted television.

  A horror movie was playing.

  Dags found that an… interesting choice.

  They’d been playing horror movies all night. Dags was pretty sure Asia put this one on before she passed out. Given why and how Asia asked him to stay, and how genuinely freaked out she’d seemed earlier, he found it a little odd she’d want to immerse herself in gore and jump-scares.

  Even before she passed out, Asia announced she planned on sleeping down here, on the couch, with Dags in the same room.

  She seemed dead serious about the whole not wanting to be out of Dags’s visual range for the duration of the night. Once he said he’d probably be up all night, she announced her intention of sleeping down here.

  Dags was starting to wonder if she’d been more affected by the attack in the alley than he’d thought. She’d acted like it was no big deal at the police station that morning, but something had changed. She definitely seemed to see Dags as some kind of security blanket now.

  Karver and Phoenix hadn’t made any move to leave the living room, either.

  Now that Karver had fallen asleep, Dags suspected all three of them were just going to camp out for the night, which made his job both easier and harder.

  He was still staring in that general direction when Phoenix turned her head.

  Her green and gold eyes reflected the light off the television monitor, along with the flickering light in the massive driftwood candle-holder in the middle of the room.

  “Is any of that helpful?” she said.

  Dags hesitated.

  Briefly, he considered telling her about the references to his name. He’d counted eight, out of the twenty or so notes, and even saw a reference to “Kills Many” in a few of the emails, and on a card that came with a box of roses.

  That one just read: Does Kills Many bring you flowers, too?

  He didn’t tell her, though.

  He didn’t want to freak her out.

  “No,” he said. “I mean, I have some thoughts. But not much different from the first note I read. I still don’t know what any of it means.”

  “Did you watch the videos?” she pressed. “Of the burning sculptures?”

  He nodded, combing his fingers through his hair.

  “It’s wood,” he said, shrugging. “Wood and wire. It looked like it was mostly made out of broken slabs from wooden packing crates, bound together with some kind of fencing wire. None of those materials are really specific enough to trace, most likely.”

  Thinking about her question, he stared to his left, out the massive window leading to the ocean.

  “He had a dog with him last night,” he mused. “Jason Tig. The dog was with him tonight too, when he showed up at my place. It looked like a husky-shepherd mix. I asked my tenant to take care of it for me, while I was gone.”

  Phoenix didn’t answ
er.

  When Dags glanced back at the couch, she was frowning.

  “A dog?” she said, as if clarifying.

  “Yes.”

  “He brought a dog with him? To an attack on a girl in an alley?”

  “He tried to sic the dog on me,” Dags added. “But yes. It was weird.”

  “Did the dog bite you?”

  Dags shook his head.

  “No. It wouldn’t obey him.”

  “Who brings a dog with them to attack someone?” she said, seemingly still stuck on that point. “And it wouldn’t even obey him? So it’s not even a well-trained dog?” Pausing, she continued to frown at him. “What kind of dog was it? A husky, you said?”

  “Some kind of husky mix,” Dags affirmed. “Blue eyes. Thick fur. Black head, gray and brown body. It’s big. That and the coloring makes me think it’s a husky-shepherd.”

  “And it wouldn’t bite you?” she said. “Why?”

  Dags lifted his hands from the bar in a shrug. “No idea.”

  That wasn’t entirely true.

  But he wasn’t about to explain his weird dog thing to her.

  “And you’re just going to keep it now?” she said, as if that part just struck her. “The dog? After that guy tried to get it to bite you?”

  Dags frowned. “That’s not the dog’s fault.”

  Still, he hadn’t really thought about whether he would keep it for real.

  He hadn’t had time to think about the dog much at all.

  If pressed, he might have said he’d see if he could find it a good home.

  No way would he bring it to one of the shelters. The shelters in Los Angeles did their best, but they flat-out didn’t have the capacity for all the dogs they ended up with, given the size of the city, and the fact that a lot of people were assholes.

  There were private groups, of course. Some of those were marginally better-funded.

  Dags preferred to look for a new owner on his own.

  He wanted to check out the aura of any potential owner before handing a dog over into their care.

  “You are going to keep it,” Phoenix said, watching his eyes.

  She didn’t voice it like a question.

  When Dags looked up, raising an eyebrow, she was smiling at him, shaking her head.