by Tad Williams
I’ve always found hanging out for long stretches in a hotel room a strangely mixed experience. The sense of otherness never goes away, the knowledge that you’re not in your own place, although the anonymity of the situation is appealing. It’s like being the last undiscovered guy in a game of hide and seek. You just settle into being on your own, and if it lasts long enough you even stop thinking about anyone looking for you. That is, until someone finds you.
I had been mindlessly flipping channels for so long that the sky beyond the room’s flimsy muslin curtains had gone from pale blue to black, and the baseball games and prime-time dramas were winding down. In fact, I was winding down too after my long night and early start, my eyes starting to droop, when someone knocked on the door.
I’d called Sam an hour earlier and he’d said he was taking Advil and staying in bed, so the chances were good my late visitor was someone I didn’t want to see. In this situation, that meant “someone I might have to shoot.” My dwindling supplies of adrenaline were enough to get me off the bed quickly and over to my coat and shoulder holster. I still had the extended magazine on the Five-Seven automatic. I wanted it loose and in my hand from the start so it wouldn’t snag on anything, so I hid it behind my back as I cracked the door, stepping back in case somebody strong was planning to kick it hard enough to break the chain. My heart was beating fast, and I was ready for anything Hell might send through the door.
Well, almost anything.
“Let me in,” Caz said in a cold, flat voice. “This hotel is crawling with busybodies and spies. You can call me a whore when I’m inside and the door’s locked.”
She came in with her head up, looking defiant, ready to be slapped or cursed. I closed and locked the door and put the chain on, wondering just for a moment if I might have dozed off, if this could all be some kind of dream. She stared at me, waiting for me to do whatever I was going to do next, and to be honest, at that exact moment I didn’t really know. The less angelic parts of me ended that confusion by grabbing her shoulders and pulling her toward me, then I used my mouth to silence the question she started to ask and dragged her down onto the bed. At first she seemed to be struggling, but it was only to get her clothes off. I didn’t even bother with most of mine. We rolled, grabbed, scratched at each other. She was weeping and cursing as I entered her. I might have been doing the same.
thirty-four
breathing together
It wasn’t love, and it wasn’t just lust-it was hunger. I don’t know what I wanted at that moment, but I wanted it so badly I couldn’t think. I finished quickly and collapsed gasping on top of her, and only then felt the sweat that was gluing our bodies together and dripping from my forehead into her hair. I couldn’t speak. Words were the last thing on my mind. She lay panting, her face turned away from me, her clothes half-on, half-off except for what was scattered around us on the bed and the floor. For long moments we just lay there, breathing into each other’s ears as if everything else didn’t exist. Did you know that was the real meaning of the word “conspire”? To breathe together. But what kind of conspiracy was this?
“Caz.” I said. “Just…I don’t understand any…”
Her hand shot up, pushing my chin back, forcing me up and away from her. For half a moment I thought she might go for my unprotected throat. Then, as she wriggled out from beneath me, skin sliding on damp skin, I was terrified that she was going to leave me. She got a knee into my gut and pushed me farther up and to the side until I had to roll off her, my naked belly and groin exposed, helpless as an animal ready for slaughter. But instead of killing me she clambered on top of me and reached down to yank and squeeze me until I was hard again, then she gripped my ribs with her knees and sank down on my cock, a look of such obsessive concentration on her face that for a moment I wondered if I was in her mind at all.
She rode me like a Valkyrie swooping down through the lightning to the last battle, late for the Twilight of the Gods. When I reached up for her pale breasts bobbing and shuddering just above me she clamped my wrists with her hands instead and forced my arms back down, pinning me with the fierceness of her need, rubbing and grinding on me until we both came together in a moment that seemed more heart attack than heart’s desire. But that wasn’t enough for Caz. She stayed on me, squeezing me inside her, and continued to ride me, until I felt another shudder build up inside her, a tremor that seemed to run up and down her spine until she quivered and then went rigid, then shook again for some seconds before sliding off to lie beside me, arms above her head, still twitching like the victim of an electrical shock.
“Oh, God,” she said in a ragged whisper.
“…But how can the Robo-Chop do all these things?” somebody squealed on the television, which was still on. “Don’t the blades get dull?”
“If they do,” answered some shouting Australian, “then we’ll replace ’em! Absolutely free!”
A great gust of cheers and applause greeted this announcement. I rolled onto my side and reached for Caz, who was facing away from me, slender back and buttocks as vulnerable as a child’s, but when I touched her she pushed my hand away.
“Don’t.”
“Just…Caz, talk to me.”
She shuddered a little. “Don’t. I’m serious. You know you’re going to wind up telling me what a whore I am and how I broke your little heart. Let’s just skip the preliminaries.”
This time I grabbed her arm hard enough that she couldn’t throw me off, and before she could really start struggling, I pulled her around to face me. For a moment she still kept her face turned away, the face that had haunted me for days, but then she gave up. Drops of sweat clung to her forehead and cheeks but her eyes were dry as they met mine.
“Don’t ask the questions because there are no answers,” she said. “You and I, we had a moment, okay, but we can never be together in a million years. Just forget about it. I only came here to tell you something.”
“The hell with that.” I sat up. She stayed on her back, delicate and damaged, putting me even farther in the wrong. She was lying right there in front of me, telling me I couldn’t have her. I fought against a cloud of red fury that could deliver nothing but disaster. “No! I don’t believe this is nothing. I know nothing, and this isn’t it.”
“Okay, so call it lust.” She slid farther up the bed so she could lay her damp, white-gold head against a pillow. The ivory length of her from navel to feet stretched beside me, distracting me, especially the abbreviated triangle between her thighs that gleamed like straw spun into gold. “We have that on my side, too. It’s nothing unusual.”
“Damn it, Caz, what do you want from me? If you’re going to dump me, what are you doing here?”
“Dump you?” She pushed herself back against the bumpy headboard but didn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable it was. “You have an inflated sense of yourself as a lover if you think a one-night stand means happily ever after, Dollar. Especially between you and me.”
“Are you telling me you don’t feel the same way?” I wanted to hit something. I wanted to rip the covers off the bed, spilling her and everything we’d done like a magician’s tablecloth trick gone embarrassingly wrong. “Go ahead, then. Tell me. Let me hear you say it.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me for the first time since she’d come through the door, eyes somber and serious. “I don’t feel the same way you do, Bobby.”
It was like being knifed in the gut. I’ve had that happen, so I know. The air pushed out of the belly, the cold, hard ache of something that shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t ever be there-it was almost exactly the same. “You’re lying.”
“Lying is what I do,” she said quietly. “It’s my job. But I’m trying to do you a favor and tell the truth for once.”
I got up and walked to the minibar, but taking a drink, especially out of one of those puny little bottles seemed like such a weak thing to do, such a human thing, that I turned around again and walked back to the bed. My entire life, the
Highest’s grand plan for Doloriel, had shrunk to the dimensions of this little hotel room…or even smaller. To the size of a mattress covered with damp sheets. I have never wanted so badly to hit someone, to hurt someone the way I was hurting but I have also never wanted so badly to grab that same person and carry her away, to flee the wicked, wearisome world and spend the rest of whatever life I had trying to make her happy. “Torn” is not the word. “Confused” is not the word. I don’t think there is a word. “So, why did you come here?” I managed at last. “Why, Caz?”
“To warn you,” she said. “To try to save your life.”
I laughed, I’m sure rather bitterly. The life in question didn’t seem like an important commodity at that moment. “Some demon you are.”
“I didn’t say I don’t care about you at all.” For a moment she had to look away, and I had a stupid hope that I had broken through somehow, that she was going to tell me that all the rest of what she’d said had been another lie. But when she turned back to me her face was horribly, horribly composed again. “Of course I do, in my own way. And I don’t want anything to happen to you-at least, not because of me.” She sat up and gathered her clothes, then slid off the bed and began to pick up her shoes and the rest of what had fallen, rewinding the spool of our sex, making it as though it had never happened. She was still half-naked, and despite my guts roiling and my head pounding, the sight of her bending over to get her coat was too much for me. I tried to put my arms around her but she violently yanked herself away from me.
“No! Don’t! I can’t! I can’t do that again.” She backed away, then after staring me down for a moment, stepped into her panties and began slowly putting herself back together. Every glimpse of flesh made my chest ache, especially when she buttoned up her shirt and the main expanse of her pale skin disappeared like the sun going behind clouds.
“Now,” she said when she was dressed, “we can argue some more or you can listen to me.” She looked at her watch. “We don’t have much time before I have to go.”
“With him?”
“Argue or listen?”
I closed my mouth.
“Eligor’s ending the conference early,” she said. “I heard him talking to one of his subordinates. Tonight, at midnight.”
“What are you talking about? He doesn’t have the power to do that even if it is his hotel This is a goddamn summit conference! He’s outranked by a bunch of guys on his own side, let alone what my side would think about it. You’re wrong, Caz. It’s not going to happen.”
“I heard what I heard,” she said, cool as a marble fountain. “And if he’s doing it, it’s probably to catch you by surprise, Bobby. He told me he wouldn’t…he said he wasn’t interested in you anymore, but we all know what his word’s worth.”
“Hold on. He told you he wouldn’t go after me anymore? Is that what you were going to say? Why would he say that? What did you tell him? Or what did you give him…?”
“Now you’re arguing,” she said.
“Fuck it, that’s not fair…” I began.
“But there’s more!” shouted the audience along with the Australian television huckster. He continued on, whipping them into a frenzy. “That’s right! For this one low price you can get two Robo-Chops, plus two shredder blades, two deli slicers, and this beautiful serving plate!” The informercial audience sounded like they were nearing the climax of a particularly noisy orgy, or else, perhaps, watching the Christians being delivered to the arena sand to meet the maneaters. I stalked to the television to turn it off, then began looking around on the floor next to the bed for the remote.
The door thumped closed.
I ran after her, snagging myself on some trailing bedclothes. When I had untangled my legs and got the door open, Caz had already vanished around the corner of the corridor, no doubt heading for the elevator. I could hear other voices in the hall and hesitated, balancing my need to catch her with my desire not to be running around Eligor’s hotel with my dick dangling and no gun. Caution won out, but only barely. I threw on my pants and pulled my jacket on over my bare chest, shoved the automatic into my pocket, and pushed my feet into my shoes without untying them before I hurried down the hall.
Three minor angels were having a rare old time trying to open the door to their room. They had clearly been tasting the unfamiliar freedoms of mortal bodies, especially the sort that came from fermented grain, but I still didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself chasing down the corridor after a female demon who had probably just passed them-something that might pierce the haze enough to be remembered tomorrow. I manufactured a little you-ought-to-know-better smile as I walked by, sending them into gusts of embarrassed laughter, then I moved briskly toward the elevator.
Could she be right somehow? Did Eligor, maybe with Caym’s help, have the clout to shut down the conference? And would he really do it just to get a crack at me?
He thinks I tricked him, I realized. He thinks I tricked him about the feather, not to mention he obviously knows there’s something between me and Caz, whether she told him about us or not. A grand duke of Hell might or might not have ordinary kinds of sexual jealousy, but they all had a very keen sense of possession, and I’m not talking about The Exorcist variety. Yeah, he might just be that unhappy with me.
But whatever Caz thought, there was no way Eligor could manage to end the summit in the middle of the night as far as I could see. It was past eleven. What was he going to do, call up Karael and suggest sending everybody home and postponing the rest of the joint powers’ little circle jerk? The higher angels hate putting on human form in the first place, hate leaving Heaven; I could just imagine how that proposal would go over with Karael.
When I reached the elevators I could see that the one Caz must be in had already reached the second floor. I jumped into one of the others, gambling that she was going all the way down, figuring that if she didn’t I could come back up from the lobby and search the lower floors. When the door pinged open, I pushed out past a group of snickering, drunken demons and hurried across the lobby but saw no sign of her anywhere, so I headed for the main entrance. I almost smashed through the nearest glass door when it didn’t open fast enough because I’d spotted her long legs walking away from valet parking along the front of the hotel, toward the parking lot. None of the valets or visitors seemed to be paying much attention, so I sprinted after her.
I caught her just at the edge of the building where she had stopped as if to wait for someone. I was pretty sure that someone wasn’t me. The smell of the bay was strong, and I could hear seagulls keening. I hadn’t been outside since I’d checked in. I’d almost forgotten we were out at Sand Point.
When she saw it was me, her whole body slumped like she’d been shot, but she straightened up again and stepped away from me as I approached. My coat was half-buttoned over my shirtless chest, my shoes only barely on my feet. I must have looked like a lovesick hobo.
“Now what?” There was enough chill in her words to make goose bumps.
“I don’t believe you’re doing what you want to do,” I said.
“You don’t know anything about what I want, Bobby. You only think you know. I’m not who you think I am.” She said it with the patience of a weary parent dealing with her spoiled child. “I’m a million times worse than you can imagine. I’ve been in Hell for centuries.” She laughed. It was painful to hear. “They broke me a long time ago. I’m a lifer.”
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t have-”
“Wouldn’t have what? Fucked you? Do you think that makes you unique? Grow up, Dollar!” She looked over her shoulder as a big, black car came sliding up from the front of the hotel. “Oh, shit.”
She grabbed me then and pushed me back into the shadows of the building, but the car just eased up and settled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk less than ten yards away. I could see a pale-haired silhouette in the front seat that had to be Eligor.
“You’re going away with him, huh?” I was beginning to wonder how
much of her visit had been her idea, and how much might have been Eligor setting her on me just to soften me up for the killing blow. At the moment, though, I didn’t care if he shot me through the heart. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Wouldn’t even have been the first time tonight. It never even occurred to me that I was carrying a gun too.
“Yes, of course I’m going away with him. Don’t you understand? I don’t have any other choice.”
“Does he have the feather?”
She shook her head, but she still had me pinned back against the concrete wall. “Wake up, Bobby! This isn’t a detective novel. No, he doesn’t have it. I don’t have it either, and I don’t know where it is. I told you what happened.”
“Then why did he take you back?”
She stepped back again so that half of her was bathed in the light from the hotel’s grand front entrance. Behind her I saw Eligor lean forward a little as if he was watching. For just a moment his eyes gleamed red in the darkness of the front seat, as if he was his own anti-theft system.
Fucking show-off, I thought.
“He let me come back…because he wanted to know about you. All about you. And I told him everything. There? Are you happy? I sold you out, Bobby, just like any good demon. Just like you should have expected.”
“But everything else-”
“Everything else was a lie!” She lowered her head for a moment. When she lifted it she wore an expression of rage and misery like I’d never seen. “I thought we might have something, sure. I like students. I told you that. I thought we might study things together. I thought we might even learn from each other. But I was wrong. You’ve been wearing a body too long, Dollar. You’re just like any other angel or demon who’s gone native. You’re letting your human disguise convince you of things that aren’t so-that can’t be so.” She stepped all the way out into the light. “Goodbye, Bobby.”
