Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  After a moment of doubt, Rick apparently saw something that put him at ease. He shrugged, nodded, bent over the table with his back to us. Remi arrived—I heard someone else singing in the background. He paused briefly after giving the surrogate a hard look, then walked right on by and out the back door so it wouldn’t look suspicious with two of us escorting the kid out. I clamped down a little harder on his arm and guided him toward the door. If he tried anything at all, I’d dump the holy water over his head, get him outside, and let Remi turn him into really ugly bugs.

  The kid had stopped coughing, maybe because Remi wasn’t singing the rite anymore. He’d have to start it over once we were outside, though probably without the ’Ave Maria’ performance.

  As we stepped out the back door, I pressed the glass firmly against the surrogate’s back. A little water slopped out as we navigated the big step down, splashed the back of his shirt and soaked through. He hissed in pain, and the fabric began smoking.

  Yup, we had the right guy.

  Remi was standing beneath the big overhead bug light, which painted him slightly jaundiced. His face was tense, eyes very serious. “You took this host without permission. Now it’s time to leave.”

  And he opened his mouth and began the Latin.

  Nothing happened. The kid didn’t cough, didn’t choke. He just stood there in the spill of illumination, and smiled at Remi. “I hate to break it to you rookies, but I’m not a surrogate. I faked it.”

  Didn’t believe him for a minute. “Uh-huh. And when the holy water hit you, it hurt,” I pointed out, “and your shirt smoked and now has a hole in it.” I stuck a finger through that hole, poked the surrogate’s back. “See there?”

  And out of the darkness came the blonde girl. “Angels can manipulate such things when it’s needful. And we judged it was.”

  I stared at her. Shit. “So, not college kids, or a girl too young to be drinking.”

  Remi took an assessing look at her. “Well, aren’t you half as big as a minute.”

  “I’m Candy,” she continued; perhaps she didn’t speak Texan, “and I’m older than dirt.” She indicated the sandy-haired kid. “That’s Dick, and that—” she gestured with her chin, “—is Rick.” The red-head opened the screen door and exited.

  My brows shot up. “Rick, Dick, and Candy?” I snickered. “What, you double as porn stars?”

  “Well, our angelic names are difficult to pronounce.” Red-headed Rick was matter-of-fact. “So we’d be explaining all the time to humans how we came by them, which is inconvenient. Easier this way.”

  Remi and I stared at one another, trying to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do now. I raised my brows in a question, and he shrugged back. Dick—the sandy-haired guy—removed his arm from my loosened grip. He smiled at Remi. “Singing the rite was genius. I admit, we weren’t expecting that.”

  “This was a test,” McCue said, sounding tense.

  Candy replied, “We cleared the domicile earlier, but you still should have sensed something. Surrogates leave an essence for a while after they die.”

  Now Rick. None of them sounded like kids anymore. “Remiel, you were intended to find us by sensing our presence, to recognize all of us as angels, not surrogates, the way you did up on the mountain with the old man. You didn’t.”

  Dick said, “And you, Gabriel, should have been able to sense that the roadhouse had been cleared, was no longer a domicile. You didn’t.”

  It pinched; in fact, it reminded me of when Grandaddy was disappointed in me, but I didn’t let it show. Just looked at Remi. “Guess we flunked.”

  He was frowning a little, attention distant, clearly thinking something over. Finally he refocused and said, “Prove you’re angels. Isn’t Lucifer the Great Deceiver? You could well be surrogates just playing us. Or playing with us.”

  I remember what Grandaddy had done up on the mountain. His wings had never been corporeal, nor did they exactly look feathered. All we’d seen was an impression in the air, a pale, pixelated image rising from his shoulder blades.

  “Show us your wings,” I challenged. “All three of you.”

  “No.” Candy looked straight at Remi. “What do you sense?”

  I heard the frustration in his tone. “You already said I failed in there. I don’t sense anything yet, other than occasional hunches. And none of them have ever been about surrogates or angels. I don’t have visions, I can’t get any kind of read on people other than the normal kind of stuff, like expressions, tone, body language. Just like everyone else.”

  She tilted her head a little. “Try again. Try now.”

  Apparently he did, and apparently this time he truly did sense something. I saw the stunned expression in his eyes, on his face as his mouth opened. He took two steps backward, then stopped himself. “Holy crap . . .”

  Rick was amused. “Holy, yes, but not even remotely connected to crap, thank you very much.”

  “What did you feel?” I asked McCue sharply, because he looked like he might pass out.

  He tried to speak, failed, closed his mouth, then tried again. “It’s—impossible to explain. There just aren’t any words.”

  “Not in human language, no,” Candy agreed. “But in ours, yes. And it will become yours, too.” She paused, engaged Remi’s eyes. “In which language was the Bible written?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t a single language. Plus there’s a difference between Old and New Testaments. Old Testament was primarily archaic Hebrew, though Ezra and Daniel wrote parts in old Aramaic. New Testament was Koine Greek.”

  Yup, handy to have a Biblical scholar on the team.

  “Do you speak it?” she asked.

  Remi made the maybe/maybe just a little gesture with one flattened hand, tipping it back and forth. “I looked up some translations for my doctorate.”

  “Eno no qyomto w hayo.”

  He smiled faintly. “Gave me an easy one, huh? ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”

  Rick said, “Learn it.” He looked at me. “And you need to learn Latin. Aramaic can come later. In the meantime, Remiel will be able to translate for you. You’ll have dictionaries and phrase books.”

  I quirked a brow at him. “What’s wrong with English?”

  “There are texts and concepts that can’t be encompassed by English,” he explained. “Surrogates read and understand English, plus their own language. They don’t know Aramaic.”

  I was skeptical. “Wouldn’t Lucifer? I mean, he was an archangel.”

  Rick shook his head. “Archangels speak an older form. No surrogate can possibly understand it.”

  “No grade school for demons?” I asked.

  “Their brains are not wired to understand or to learn it.”

  I remained skeptical. “But humans are?”

  Simultaneously, all three declared with impatient vehemence, “You’re not human.”

  Oh yeah. Forgot about that part. “Okay, Latin’s first on my to-do list. I’ll learn Aramaic from Remi.”

  His tone was dry. “I have to learn it first.”

  I looked at the angels. “Can’t you—I don’t know—download Aramaic into his brain, or something?”

  “We could,” Candy replied, “but it would kill him.”

  “Pass,” Remi said, predictably.

  I sighed. “Now what?”

  Dick said, “You will go back inside. Remiel will choose a person and try to pick up something of his or her feelings, while you, Gabriel, should concentrate on getting a sense of what was the domicile. You will need to know it.”

  I frowned. “I thought you said you cleared it out.”

  “You need to see it,” he said. “Go behind the facade. You need to feel it, bone-deep. Every time you go someplace new, Remi will try to track surrogates, while you will sort out whether it’s a domicile, or simply a pl
ace.”

  Candy said, with deadpan humor, “There is much for you to learn, but learn it you will.”

  I was incredulous. “A Yoda joke from an angel?”

  “Of course,” she replied brightly. “We get every first-run movie in heaven before anyone else does. Perks of the job.”

  “Huh.” I thought about it. “That would be cool.”

  “Too,” she elaborated, “it’s a good way for angels intended to take a human host to learn something about humans first.”

  Remi and I looked at one another, brows raised. McCue said, “Ya’ll do know movies aren’t real, right?”

  “But they provide insights nonetheless,” she explained. “Now, go inside. Do your thing.”

  “Wait,” I said sharply. “You’re possessing the hosts, right? Yet Grandaddy said you didn’t.”

  Rick said, “We borrow, from time to time. But where demons eat out the brain over time, we leave the hosts intact—and healthier than before—when we depart.”

  Eat out the brain? Holy Jesus.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As commanded, Remi and I went back inside. Our table in the meantime had been appropriated by a couple helping themselves to what was left of our pitcher of beer.

  Rude, dude. But I had a mission, and it didn’t include arguing over booze and a table. At least, not this time.

  McCue gave me a pointed sidelong look and a slight tilt of his hat—well, head—which I took to mean he was going to park himself close by and try to get a read on either the guy or the girl.

  I went to the bar and planted my ass on a stool. Ordered a beer, hunched over it slightly upon its arrival, registered that the bartender was black and big, but didn’t pay more attention than that. Mirrors along the bar back provided a view of the room behind me.

  Unfortunately, Open Mic Night continued. As I sat in silence nursing my beer, on the verge of trying to go behind the façade, whatever the hell that meant, I heard portions of various songs, all country. Some singers butchered them, which made me wince and want to plug my ears, but I figured that was not a good idea in a place full of locals and regulars; others were passable, despite their poor choice of genre; and a couple were actually pretty good. One chick sang about a chick named Jolene begging someone not to take her man, a guy performed a raucous number about friends in low places, and two rough-voiced men sang a duet about mama not letting her babies grow up to be cowboys.

  I wondered if Remi knew about that one. Probably he wouldn’t like it. His mama had let him grow up to be a cowboy.

  Okay. Time to try my thing.

  It had been easy on the mountain to reach out, to let a sense of the place come to me. As then, I saw brief flashes of color around the edges of my vision, but this time red, which symbolizes passion, blood, and war. Not happy about that, though it didn’t surprise me.

  The red was superseded by something that felt—well . . . green. I sensed a flow of health, renewal, vigor, which made sense for a place cleared by angels. But the feelings were fleeting, leaving me trying harder to get a sense of the bar. Before, alone in the building, I had “remembered” feelings I’d never experienced. It was the place that exuded memories, but only in snatches. There was nothing I could latch onto, because the moment I tried, blankness washed over any sense of color, of place, of memory. The roadhouse felt weirdly empty despite the customers.

  That is, until someone started caterwauling the high-pitched chorus of The Police’s “Roxanne,” which was considerably better than a country song, but the screech that came out of the guy’s mouth was ear-shattering.

  I winced in involuntary reaction, noticed the bartender was smiling as he came toward me. Now I paid attention. Big black guy, really big, probably six-four and maybe two hundred forty, fifty pounds. His head was clean-shaven, his voice deep. A black t-shirt was stretched over the bulk of muscular chest, shoulders, and arms. Looked like he could be a former NFL player.

  “Yes, he is not one of our better singers, but he enjoys it and is a good man, so he is forgiven.” The bartender had an accent, one with which I was not familiar. But he didn’t sound disapproving, nor did his expression show any kind of hostility. “May I present another beer?”

  Several nights before, a demon in the guise of a hot chick had tried to kill me. A Grigori showed up to warn me the war might relegate humans to collateral damage. A surrogate inhabited a cop. And tonight angels had actually chastised us. All four experiences made me wary of people in general, especially in the roadhouse. The back of my neck twitched again.

  And asked if he could present another beer. Not normal phraseology for a bar. I shot him a searching appraisal. Angel? Demon? Grigori? Nephilim? A god? Just a human pouring booze?

  He noted my assessment. “It was only a question,” he said mildly. “There is no need for you to be biker threatening.”

  Biker threatening? Me? To him?

  But if anyone else took it that way . . . well, I was in a bar full of locals and cowboys. “No,” I said hastily, “no, man, sorry. Just—thinking about something. Bad memory.” I placed a ten on the bar as tip, hoping to soothe him, slipped off the stool and headed over to where Remi ought to be.

  He saw me coming, walked to meet me just off the dance floor. “You get anything?”

  “Green.” His brows inched up. “I think it means this is a safe place, now. Cleared of threat, or surrogate presence. But it wasn’t clear, wasn’t like the sense of a place I usually get.” I checked his expression then smiled benignly. “Too much country music.”

  He eyed me. “You gotta get over that prejudice, son.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just not a healthy thing.”

  I ignored that. “You get anything?”

  “Yup.” He was solemn. “The guy is thinking about bed sports later, and the girl is thinking about a favorite TV show she’s missing.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  I gave him the side-eye. “Seriously, did you sense anything?”

  “Caught traces here and there, but not anything like the angels want. I think what we’re doing is boot camp.”

  Interesting. “So none of this counts?”

  “Oh, I reckon all of it counts. And I also expect we could be killed if we take a major misstep; there’s no urgency, no incentive otherwise. I caught a good lick when that ghost threw me into a table.”

  I was visited by the image of Remi being actually, actively licked, which left me grossed out, and I attempted to mentally bleach my brain immediately. “So Grandaddy basically started grooming us for this job back when we were little kids. Now we’re being challenged to show what we know.”

  Remi nodded. “To show what we know and whether we can do the job without getting ourselves killed. It’s a GRE test for grad school. We get in, or we don’t.”

  It was a startling concept. “You think they’ll kill us if we don’t pass?”

  Remi shook his head. “I reckon they won’t have to. I reckon a surrogate will take care of that for them. At any rate, how ’bout we go back to Lily’s rig? We could—”

  And he stopped dead, looked startled, a little tense; but a moment later it was like his hackles went down. He smiled, eyes going warm, as he looked beyond me. I turned, and there was Grandaddy.

  I was a little uneasy about having him at my back. The last time we’d been together, he’d announced that it was his doing I’d gone to prison.

  Remi said, damn near breathless, “So that’s what it is!” At my frown of incomprehension, he explained. “I felt him. Almost like a vibration in the air. But—it’s not like it was outside. It’s—” he groped for words, “—just bigger.” He looked at Grandaddy. “I never felt it before, when you came a’visiting.”

  Grandaddy nodded. “We angels can shield ourselves. I dropped my shield just now so that nothing blocked you.”
<
br />   I stared at him. “What, like a Romulan cloaking device?”

  He ignored me. “Remi, did you sense anything of the angels here earlier?”

  “No, sir. At least, not until the girl did the shield thing.”

  Grandaddy nodded. “At some point it won’t matter; you’ll be able to tell when an angel is in the building.”

  Said I, “Well, I thought Dick—or Rick?—was a surrogate. But I didn’t feel anything. I was just—suspicious.”

  Grandaddy declared, “Suspicion, when your gifts are yet too young to function properly, is healthy, and a sound safeguard.”

  “When will our gifts start functioning?”

  “When they do.”

  Well, that was helpful.

  Grandaddy smiled at my annoyance. “Now, you boys come with me. There is someone you should meet.”

  Remi and I followed him across the main room, threading our way through tables, and the someone turned out to be the big bartender. He saw us coming and I caught a glimpse of teeth as he presented Grandaddy with a smile.

  “Is it time?” he asked.

  “It’s time.”

  He nodded. “Drinks?”

  “Oh, I think it best,” Grandaddy agreed. “Your best single malt, and best tequila; I’ll have a Guinness.”

  I studied the bartender. “That was a joke, then, wasn’t it? The crack about me being ‘biker threatening.’”

  He smiled again as he poured two fingers’ worth of single malt, slid the tumbler across the bar toward me. “Not precisely so. I imagine others would indeed find you ‘biker threatening,’ on occasion. But you are no threat to me.”

  His accent was fascinating, and the clarity of his speech in a resonant voice. “I imagine not,” I agreed. “I don’t imagine anyone is a threat to you.”

  He poured tequila for Remi, then the dark beer for Grandaddy. “That is true.”