Bad Angel

by JC Andrijeski

  Dags stared at him.

  Something about that snapped him out of that feeling of despair.

  Maybe it was disbelief. Maybe it was just anger.

  His voice came out as a growl.

  “Higher realm?” Dags stared at him. “You have demon minions… brother.”

  Uri smiled.

  Something about that smile infuriated Dags even more.

  “You stole those bodies,” Dags said. “They don’t belong to you. Jade doesn’t belong to you. You can call yourself ‘higher realm’ all you like. It doesn’t change anything.”

  Uri exhaled, that smile still toying at his lips.

  More than anything, he looked sad, though.

  “We will revisit this, brother.” He patted Dags’ leg a last time, rising smoothly and gracefully to his feet. “When you’ve awakened to your true self, we will talk long about this. Then you will understand.”

  He glanced at Phoenix, meeting her gaze.

  “Both of you.”

  Looking back at Dags, Uri went on in a slightly harder voice.

  “Until then, brother, make no mistake. I expect your obedience. I expect you to defer to me, as your elder.” Glancing over Dags’ body, Uri added, “I do not wish to force the issue, but you simply do not understand enough yet to be anything but a liability to my work here. Do not put me in a position where I may have to discipline you.”

  Dags frowned. Before he could open his mouth to answer, Phoenix did, speaking up from behind him.

  “For someone who claims to mean us no harm, you sure threaten him a lot,” she snapped, her hand wrapping around Dags’ shoulder. “That’s pretty much all you do, from what I can tell. That, and hurt him. All your condescending, fake-brother bullshit aside…”

  Her voice shook slightly.

  Dags didn’t know if Uri heard it, but he did.

  Uri looked at her, his expression dismissive.

  “Tonight was not me disciplining your mate, sister,” he said calmly. “It was pure, utilitarian necessity. But if it helps…” He shrugged with one hand. “…think of it also as a demonstration. Perhaps you will find it useful to remember this. In the event any conflict between us may cross either of your minds again.”

  Phoenix gripped Dags’ shoulder even tighter.

  Uri smiled, glancing down at where she held Dags. He noted her hand there like he found it cute, endearing even. Then he slowly, liquidly and as smoothly as before, stepped back, moving in the direction of the opening between the branches.

  He walked through that opening while Dags watched, then stood just outside the tree, watching them through the opening.

  “Good night, brother,” Uri called out. “I hope our next meeting is more pleasant. I look forward to a real reunion with you soon. When you are awakened, everything will be different. I promise.”

  Turning, Uri winked at Phoenix.

  “Take good care of him, sister.”

  Uri’s black and red wings erupted from his back.

  He stretched them out slowly, as if still growing accustomed to them.

  Glancing at Dags, Uri smiled at him a final time.

  “Oh, and in the meantime, we don’t need to be strangers! Let’s grab a coffee sometime, brother. Maybe in a few weeks? After I’ve had a chance to catch up on a few things?”

  Dags felt his jaw loosen.

  Before he could decide how to reply to that little nugget of insanity, Uri smiled at him again, stretching his wings out to their full span.

  “Be seeing you around, Megedagik,” he said.

  Uri beat those great, black, muscular wings.

  Before Dags could utter a sound, or even flip him off, his oldest friend streaked upwards, vanishing past the opening between the branches of the old oak tree, and into the cold night skies of Los Angeles.

  Chapter 31

  New Era

  Dags needed help getting down the hill.

  Riding his motorcycle back to his place was definitely out of the question.

  When they first walked out from under the canopy of the oak tree, it felt like entering a different world. Or maybe the same world, only Dags now realized it had been nothing like what he thought. His entire relationship to this place had changed. Tangibly, nearly physically.

  Worse, it felt like a permanent change.

  On the plus side, for the first time since the Change, as in Dags’ own change, he felt motivated in a way he never thought possible.

  He needed to figure out what the hell he was.

  He needed to know what he was capable of.

  If he had other abilities, he needed to figure out what those were.

  More to the point, he needed to know exactly what and who he’d just helped unleash on the world. He needed to know what he, Dags, was, because he needed to know what the hell Uri was. He needed to know what Uri was capable of.

  “Hey.” Phoenix shook his arm. They’d just reached the trail below the fence around the Hollywood sign. “You awake?”

  Dags turned his head.

  After a bare pause, he nodded.

  He’d been so far lost in his own head, he’d more or less lost track of the people with him, or what they’d been talking about on their own. He’d heard Kara speaking to Phoenix, and Ty speaking to both of them. He’d heard Ruby once or twice.

  Now he found himself actively trying to listen to them, versus spending all his time beating up on himself for what felt like his soul-crushing failure at the tree.

  “Did you actually see them disappear?” Kara was asking Ty, right before she turned to Phoenix. “Those other people, I mean. The ones who were with Uri Kominsky. His bodyguards, or Russian mafia, or whatever the hell they were.”

  “I keep forgetting,” Phoenix muttered, shaking her head from where she gripped Dags’ hand and arm. She looked at Kara. “You knew him, too. You went to high school with him.”

  “It’s not exactly the same,” Kara said, glancing at Dags and frowning. “We weren’t exactly friends.”

  Dags answered Kara’s grim look with one of his own.

  He’d forgotten how weird this must be for her.

  Really, all things considered, she was surprisingly chill about it.

  Ty spoke up, his voice a touch louder.

  “Are we just going to skip over the fact that fucker had wings?” he said. “Or that he flew away at the end, after asking his ‘bro’ here for a coffee date?” Ty hooked a thumb towards Dags. “I mean, I didn’t just hallucinate all that, did I? Y’all saw that shit, too?”

  “We saw it,” Phoenix murmured.

  Dags realized Ty and Phoenix were on either side of him, more or less holding him up between them and helping him down the packed-dirt trail.

  He could see the road up ahead.

  “And how has this dude not passed out?” Ty said next. “Guy weighs a ton. If I didn’t know better, I’d think his bones were made of cement. Maybe iron. And did you see all that blood? He lost a lot of blood. Like, too much.”

  Kara, who was walking in front of them with Ruby, glanced back over her shoulder at Ty. She looked at Dags next, her eyes measuring him, as if she was trying to decide if he was alive or not, or maybe for how long.

  “He lost too much,” she agreed. “I didn’t want to mention that while we were up there, since there wasn’t much we could do about it, but honestly… I thought he was dead at the end of that. I strongly suspect he lost more than most humans could survive.”

  Hearing her imply he wasn’t human made Dags’ jaw clench.

  “That guy, Uri, seemed pretty confident he’d be okay,” Ty said.

  Kara nodded, turning back to face forward as she walked down the trail.

  “I might have been wrong about exactly how much blood he lost,” she admitted. “It’s not easy to calculate pints when it’s flying through the air in a cloud.” She grimaced, glancing at Dags’ face. “I swear though, towards the end, I could see the color draining out of him. I was afraid his veins might collapse… or that
his heart would seize.”

  “How do we know neither of those things occurred?” Ty said, looking at Dags nervously. “I mean, maybe they did.”

  Kara shook her head, and for once, Dags could have kissed her for her cold, practical indifference to the fact that he was listening to this.

  “No,” she said, matter-of-fact. “He definitely would have lost consciousness if that was the case. In fact, by now, he’d likely be dead.”

  Kara looked at Phoenix.

  “Can we take him to a hospital?” she said, blunt.

  When Phoenix didn’t answer right away, Ty stared between them, incredulous.

  “Why wouldn’t we take him to a hospital?” the actor said. “Is that even a debate right now? I figured that’s why we were half-running down the hill, to save this crazy bastard’s life.”

  Kara’s eyes never left Phoenix.

  “She knows what I mean,” Kara said grimly, nodding towards Phoenix. “Is he human enough to go to the hospital? Or will he end up in a government lab somewhere? Because it’s pretty clear we might need him. As in, overall humankind might need him. So I’d rather if he didn’t wind up vivisected on a metal table.”

  There was a silence.

  Phoenix looked around at the rest of them, her mouth pinched.

  “How the hell would I know?” she snapped. “You’re all looking at me like⏤”

  “Like you’re the same thing he is?” Ruby retorted. “Well, yeah. The Great Satan dude pretty much said that, right?”

  Ty let out a disbelieving but distinctly uncomfortable laugh.

  “Satan,” he said. “Are we really having this conversation?”

  Dags wondered the same thing.

  “We need to know what to do with him. With Dags,” Kara said, giving Phoenix a pointed look. “Or are we just going to dump him on the trailhead? Hope we don’t need him to stop whatever the hell it is we just unleashed on the world tonight?”

  Phoenix’s voice grew cold as ice.

  “We’re not dumping him anywhere.”

  “How are we even getting down from here?” Ruby complained. “I don’t remember how I got up there, but I doubt I drove. What about the rest of you? Any of you think you have cars waiting for you on Mullholland? Because, knowing Dags, he brought the Indian up here.”

  At the blank look she got from the others, Ruby rolled her eyes.

  “His motorcycle, for crying out loud. His motorcycle. What the hell did you think I meant? He was riding around on the back of some guy from New Delhi?”

  “It just sounds weird⏤” Ty muttered.

  “We’re going to have to call a ride share,” Phoenix cut in, annoyed. “One of the ones that has a van, or an SUV or whatever. I’d call my security team, but I don’t have my phone on me, and I don’t know the number by heart.”

  Kara let out a disbelieving laugh.

  Then everyone fell silent.

  Dags guessed they were realizing it probably was their only option.

  “Does anyone have a phone?” Phoenix said next. “One that works?”

  Dags watched as they felt over themselves, looking for phones in their pockets and anywhere else on their persons. Then Phoenix was feeling over Dags’ own jacket, then the front and back of his pants. He felt a part of himself starting to get turned on, then she found his phone in his back pocket, and tugged it out triumphantly with her fingers.

  “Got one,” she said. “Dags has his.”

  “What’s his password?” Kara asked Ruby.

  Ruby shrugged, holding up her hands. “Like he’d tell me that.”

  Phoenix turned to Dags. She tightened her arm around his waist where he walked clumsily between her and Ty, leaning her face closer to him.

  “Hey, baby.” She smiled at him when she saw his eyes open, kissing his cheek, confusing him all over again. “We need to use your phone.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you remember the password?”

  He fought to think, still distracted by the kiss, by what she’d called him.

  “Bird,” he said, frowning. “No. Wait. Firebird46.”

  She blinked.

  Then she smiled, kissing him again, that time on the mouth.

  “Why the 46?” she murmured in his ear.

  Realizing what his password meant, he felt his jaw harden.

  “Day we met,” he admitted.

  Smiling wider, she kissed him again. He felt that one down to his feet. He had to force himself to end it, to let her pull away.

  He watched her raise the phone to her eyes, the blueish screen illuminating her face. She tapped in his password deftly with her fingers, then pulled up the ride-share app on his phone, squinting at it to see it through the broken screen.

  He hoped like hell it worked well enough to get them out of here.

  After tapping and swiping through a few more things, she looked at him again.

  “Hospital?” she said. “Final vote.”

  Dags hesitated, noting the worry in her eyes.

  “It’s not a great idea,” he admitted. “But yes. We probably should.”

  “Would they know something was up with you?”

  She asked it so seriously, so matter-of-fact, he felt a coil of reaction in his gut. He realized some part of him was beyond relieved. He was relieved he didn’t have to hide this from her, maybe not from any of the people with him right now.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted after a pause.

  “Have you gone to a doctor since… you know… the Change?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I have a friend. Sadie. She’s done things for me. Stitches. Prescriptions. That kind of thing.” Thinking about that, Dags frowned. “She’ll come to my place. She’s never said no to me before.”

  There was a silence.

  Dags grew conscious the others were all staring at the two of them, listening.

  Now Kara scowled. Ruby looked worried.

  Ty stared between all four of them.

  “This is ridiculous,” the tall actor burst out. He pointed at Dags. “He doesn’t get a vote. As for us, we can’t risk his life because we’re worried they might figure out he’s an angel. I mean, do you hear yourselves? That’s not going to be their ‘go-to’ explanation for whatever weird thing they might find in his blood.”

  Frowning, he added,

  “Can’t we just tell them he has some kind of blood disease?”

  Ruby giggled. “Until he starts glowing like he’s radioactive.”

  “He won’t glow,” Kara grumbled. She glared pointedly at Dags. “Don’t glow, all right? You must be able to control it a little. After all, you’ve managed to hide it from me all these years.”

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Phoenix said, worried.

  Ty looked at her accusingly.

  “You’re going to risk your boyfriend’s life? Really? We’ve got two celebrities here. Plus a homicide cop. As far as I can tell, the only thing we need to worry about is getting our stories straight before we show up at the ER.” He glared at Dags. “And this asshole not glowing.”

  Dags figured it probably wasn’t the right time to bring up his wings.

  Or the fact he couldn’t control those at all.

  Phoenix seemed to think about Ty’s words.

  Slowly, she nodded.

  “He’s right.” She glanced at Dags apologetically. “We’ll take him to the hospital first. We can come up with a story while we wait for the car.” She looked around at the others. “You don’t have to come. You can grab cars of your own… or taxis from the hospital, if that’s easier.”

  “Grab cars of our own?” Kara said, sounding annoyed. “Really? Is that what we’ll do?”

  “Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?” Ruby said, frowning.

  Phoenix blinked at them.

  Ty gave her an equally annoyed look. “Dude saved my life. Just because I don’t know how he saved my life doesn’t mean I don’t know what he did. Besides, clearly he needs help. Guy�
��s too crazy to keep himself alive on his own.” Still frowning, Ty nodded towards the phone in her hands. “Did you order that damned car yet?”

  Phoenix smiled, glancing at Dags.

  He was listening to all of this, once more in disbelief.

  Part of him wanted to protest, to tell them all to go home. Part of him was confused as to why they’d want to come along in the first place.

  Even Phoenix.

  Phoenix more than any of them.

  She must have seen some of that in his expression.

  Smiling at him with her large green and gold-flecked eyes, she answered Ty without looking away from Dags’ face.

  “Car’s on its way. I ordered one of the big ones.”

  Something in the smile there, or maybe that faint glint in her eyes, made Dags wonder if she knew exactly what he’d been thinking just then.

  Maybe it didn’t matter.

  Maybe instead of an angel, she was some kind of mind-reading witch.

  Either way, looking around at all of them, Dags had a feeling his days of working alone, and more or less anonymously, might be coming to an end.

  WANT MORE DAGS & PHOENIX?

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  FURY OF ANGELS

  Angels in L.A. #3

  Link: https://bit.ly/ALA03

  My oldest friend might just be Lucifer, Angel of Darkness. That definitely wasn’t something I had on my trying-to-do-good-for-humanity bingo card.

  It’s not just demons I have to deal with now. The demons have a new master, and he just happens to be one of my best friends.

  I might have to kill him. Then again, I might not be able to kill him, due to some arcane rule about angels not being able to kill other angels. In the meantime, he’s gone underground, I’ve been looking for him, and I’ve been training, knowing the day will come soon when I have to face him.