Metal Angel

by Nancy Springer

  His wing feathers had turned turgid brick-red again. His frightened eyes, Texas saw with a shock, were dark, hot brown, when only hours before, they had been cerulean blue—but if the wings changed colors, why not the eyes? What was more ominous was that the kid’s tawny face looked flushed. Texas set down his paper bag, strode over, and reached up to check his forehead. He said, “Cripes. Volos, you’re burning up with fever.”

  Suddenly Volos was calm, interested. “Is that what this shivery feeling is? Fever?”

  “Yes. We got to get it down. Dammit.” Texas mentally cursed himself for lingering over coffee, for staying away so long. Should have known somehow that Volos would need him. Wings had to be delicate things. That was what was causing the problem, infection in the wing. He didn’t have to take a look, because he could see the swelling from where he stood.

  “Out of those pants,” he ordered.

  He noted in passing that the kid wore no underwear. Have to get him some. Have to get a job at this rate, to pay for everything. He started the shower—no tub in this sorry excuse for a hotel, and the cracks in the bathroom tile were growing moss, but at least the damn shower worked. He adjusted the water temperature and hustled Volos in.

  “Cold!” Volos exclaimed.

  Actually it was tepid, almost warm. But the kid’s skin was as hot and dry as the Mojave. “Got to cool you down,” Texas explained, and he saw with a squeezing feeling in his heart that Volos took his word for it without question. For God’s sake, the—he could not yet bring himself to say or think, angel—the stranger had to feel like humans were trying to kill him, yet he could trust.

  Texas turned away and went to pester the desk clerk for more towels.

  “Volos,” he said later, after the kid was dried off and lying on the bed again, or rather in it, blanketed to the waist, with his wings drying atop the cover, “Volos, tell me something here. Seems like everything’s new to you. Did you just—” How the hell was he going to say this? “Did you just get here?”

  “I have been here several hours.” Volos sounded peevish. Perhaps the fever was making him irritable. “I came prepared for most things. It is just that I have not had occasion to be beaten, or to be sick.”

  “Don’t go making a habit of it.”

  Volos said more quietly, “I have been watching for a long time. This is very much the usual sort of thing, is it not? But I am finding that there is a large difference between watching and living. Being hurt does not seem usual now that I am within this body.”

  His voice softened on the last word, and Texas noticed how he moved a hand so that it touched his bruised lips and cheek, so that it lay where he could smell his own skin. Broken skin. The dirty old world sure knew how to welcome this one.

  Texas asked, “Why did you come?”

  Volos pushed himself up on his fists and scowled at Texas in sudden challenge. “Not to be anybody’s bloody savior, that is for certain! Not to help or guard or deliver or ransom or redeem. If you have any good-angel thoughts of me, give them up.”

  Texas tried not to let the A-word shake him. A longtime cop knows how to keep cool and say soothing things in a good-ol’-boy drawl. “Son, I gave up thinking about the prize in the Cracker Jack box a long time ago. Lie down.”

  Volos obeyed but asked, “Why do you call me son?”

  “Because you seem young.” Texas realized he was being a fool. “My mistake. Sorry.”

  “Do not be sorry. I like it.”

  “I guess—my guess is you’ve been around a lot longer than I have.”

  “Millennia.” Volos spoke into the bedclothes, his voice so low and muffled that McCardle could barely hear it. “But only to watch, to listen, to wait. I have never danced or been drunk or patted a dog or run on the beach or slept with a lover.”

  Texas felt a hunch that the last item on the list was foremost in Volos’s mind, but he said only, “You were not equipped for that sort of thing?”

  “Made of ether and worth no more than a stray breeze is in this world.” Anger strengthened Volos’s voice. “To be bodiless is to be less than a gnat. Those who swarm infinitely on the head of a pin, they are expendable.” Volos sighed and turned his head, speaking quietly again. “The Supreme Being has been known to destroy whole choirs if their chanting does not please him. Thousands immolated at a glance.”

  “But I—you mean you could be killed?”

  “Annihilated. Nullified. Snuffed out like candle flame, leaving nothing behind. Now I can be killed.” Volos shrugged, grimacing from the pain that small gesture caused him. “Being killed is better, I think.”

  Texas studied him, worried. Wyoma had always said he fussed like a mother hen whenever a kid was sick, but he felt like he really should get this one to a doctor. That infected wing needed penicillin—but how the hell was he going to get a doctor to treat Volos and keep his mouth shut? He had been around bureaucracy enough to know it ain’t paranoia if it’s true: a phone call, and they would take the kid away, the FBI or the CIA or Immigration or somebody. And then it would be a long time till Volos danced or got drunk or patted a dog or ran on a beach or, Lord help him, slept with a lover.

  The shower had done some good. Or maybe it was the most recent dose of aspirin, Texas thought. Anyway, it looked to him as if the kid’s temperature was down, because, among other things, Volos’s wings had turned fawn-colored, his eyes a quiet blue. The wing wound had opened and was oozing, thanks to hot compresses and maybe dumb luck. Texas had sprayed it with antiseptic, and felt relieved that he would not have to lance it. Wasn’t sure how in God’s name he would explain things to Volos if he had to lance it.

  “You hungry?” he asked after a while.

  “How would that feel?”

  McCardle blinked, steadied himself, tried to explain. “Sort of a pain in your gut.”

  “Everything hurts, Texas.”

  “I guess so. Well, you ought to eat. I’ll go get you something. Soup?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “Sandwich? Applesauce?”

  “I mean I am not sure whether—I did not imagine myself to eat as a regular thing.”

  Texas stared. It occurred to him that he had not noticed Volos using the bathroom.

  “I don’t suppose you know how to crap.”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Or—Cripes, I gave you water with those pills. You know how to pee?”

  “I would not mind trying.”

  Texas put his hands to his head for a moment. After he had contained his exploding brain, he said, “You know what your penis is for, besides women? Sooner or later that water we put in you is going to want to come out there. When you feel a pressure or a burning down there, let me know. Don’t wet the bed, you hear?”

  “Yes, of course I hear you. They did not hurt my ears.”

  “I feel like I ought to get you some soup. Stay in bed. Get some rest.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Just lie there!”

  Irritable. Okay, so he was tired, feeling his lack of sleep, and now he had to trek all the way to the goddamn drugstore again and fight the goddamn California crowds and stand in the goddamn lunch-hour line … for a thermometer. Texas did so, mentally grousing. Everything was so freaking far apart in L.A., and the blanket of smog made the streets feel closed in, ovenlike even in modest heat. God, he hated this city in the daytime. To the deli next, for chicken soup. Knowing furiously all the slogging while that Volos would hardly eat any, that it was mostly to make him, Texas, feel better.

  Back in the room, he found Volos not in bed but in the bathroom, mother naked, studying the fixtures. “I am a dunce,” Volos said. “All the eons I watched, and what was the good of it? I did not pay attention as to how to do this water thing. Every century it changed, anyway.”

  “My guess is you paid more attention to other things. Okay, you wanna use this one.” Texas flipped the john lid up, wishing he could get out of the habit of closing it now that he was on his own. Wyoma had t
rained him too well in—had it really been twenty-three years of marriage? God. He told Volos, “No big deal. Just aim and shoot.”

  “Pardon?”

  Texas unzipped and demonstrated. “And you really oughta wash your hands afterward.” Though he himself did not generally do so. This time, to set a good example, he did, then went to pull off his tight new boots, which were starting to hurt him after all the walking he had done. Then came back in and said, “Aaaa!”

  “I seem to slip.”

  “Bad aim, all right.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Texas started to kick a wet towel around. The hotel was going to love him. He remarked, “Place looks like I should’ve just stood you in the shower. Not as hard to hit that when you’re inside it.” He was so tired, his own weak joke sent him silly, making him hoot with laughter. Amusement bent him over and wet his cheeks. Volos laughed too. The kid did not know how to do it right at first, but he learned fast. He laughed hard, swayed on his feet and grabbed at a towel rack, which came off the wall in his hand. He nearly fell. Catching him with both arms, Texas stopped laughing within a breath—Christ, the kid’s skin was burning hot again.

  “No wonder you got bad aim!”

  Volos’s chest was heaving. “Laughing—hurts.”

  “Only because they bruised your ribs. Don’t be afraid of laughing, son. Sometimes laughing is the only thing that will keep you going.” Texas helped him to the bed. “Lie down before you fall down.”

  The day grew long. Volos broke the thermometer between his teeth, and Texas did not go for another one; he never did find out how high the kid’s fever was. Twice more he stood him in the shower to cool him down. In between times he kept busy putting ice and ice water on the kid’s wing, wrists, forehead. Most of the soup went to waste. Texas ate a little, but gave up trying to get any down Volos. The wound swelled tight and hard, and Texas switched treatment from cold towels to hot, worrying, never sure he was doing the right thing. Late in the day he opened the smallest blade of his penknife, held it in a match flame, explained to Volos as best he could what he had to do and why. Had the kid grab hold of something, wadded bed sheets around his mouth, then lanced the wound. The kid screamed once when Texas opened it, then lay shaking while he pressed out the pus and serum and sprayed on the stinging antiseptic. Afterward, he lay staring but unresponsive, and Texas did not know what to say to him.

  “Go to sleep,” he tried, and Volos closed his eyes with a quick obedience that wrenched at McCardle’s heart. But his breathing came fast and restless.

  The fever grew only worse. By evening Volos’s wings, except for the region of the injury, had gone pale. Belly down on the bed, he lay with eyes closed, but their lids fluttered, his hands twitched and stirred, his head flounced from side to side. He panted, and sometimes a breath sounded like a soft moan or sometimes a whimper. Moving in a stupor of fatigue, Texas felt his heart aching like his sore feet and his overtaxed back. Somehow he had become vulnerable to the angel’s wretchedness. Volos’s thrashings and weary noises made him remember how it had been when his daughters were infants, when they had fought sleep, how the babies, newcomers to a terrifying mortality, had seemed unable to manage the transition to oblivion, unable to give in to the helplessness of sleep and dreams. Sometimes for as much as an hour Wyoma would stand by a crib patting and stroking a small back until the little stranger slept.

  Volos’s eyelids trembled like moths beating at a lamp, then opened. His pupils had dilated, and his stare looked hard and distant.

  “So this is suffering,” he mumbled. “Well, I hate it. And I hate you.”

  Coming over with yet another hot towel for the hurt wing, Texas protested, “Kid, you think I wanted to hurt you? I told you, it was something I had to do! You want poison in you?”

  Volos did not respond. His gaze burned far past Texas. With vinegar in his voice he whispered, “Father. Up there on your throne. You call yourself a father? What father would do this to his children?”

  Volos was not speaking to him. This was delirium. Feeling spooked, Texas took a steadying breath and gentled his voice. “Hey.” Instead of applying the towel, he knelt down at the bedside, looked into eyes so wide and deep they seemed midnight black. “Volos. Just go to sleep, buddy.”

  Sky-dark eyes focused on him for a moment. “Texas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re a human.” It sounded like an accusation. “You don’t understand how it is. You have a father, all you bloody humans have a father—” His voice, though weak, was rising in hysteria.

  “Shhh.” Texas laid a hand on Volos’s shoulder to try to calm him. He could feel the kid quivering, thought wildly of calling an ambulance, knew suddenly that he could not do it, could not give up his adopted angel to public uproar and the care of strangers. Hell, he could manage, his mother and his Aunt Zora had pulled him through worse than this when he was a kid, back in those West Virginia days when everybody was stony broke, when nobody called a doctor; poor people didn’t trust them. Volos would be okay.

  Had to be.

  Volos drew back from his hand, pushed himself up on shaking arms to glare. “A doting father. He yearns over you humans, even the worst of you, no matter what you do he loves you all as he has never—loved—” It was an old song, and anger was the flip side of heartache. Volos’s voice broke. Texas reached over to toss the hot pillow aside, then sat on the bed where it had been and pulled the kid down into his arms. Volos yielded without seeming to be aware of him, once more looking past him, seeing someone else.

  “You tyrant. You scourge. We were gods, and you made messenger boys of us.”

  Volos’s wings had gone stormcloud black. They lifted from his back, the long, harsh feathers rustling as if fronting a high wind, and Texas stroked what he could reach of them, coaxing them down again. Tingling through his hand he felt the angel’s pain and rage—they felt familiar to him, very similar to his own. He felt them give way to sadness, as his own sometimes did, and he leaned back against the bed’s headboard, slipping down so that he cradled Volos’s chest in his lap, so that he pillowed the angel’s head on his belly, clear of his belt buckle. He steadied it there with one hand on the kid’s coarse, dark hair. With the other he rubbed the back of the kid’s neck. Kid, huh. Been around for millennia. But it didn’t matter. Tonight Volos was a baby who needed to sleep.

  “Father.” Volos spoke wearily to the air. “You joker, I claim you father. I have flesh now. I can sin. Bad as any of them. Try loving me, why don’t you?”

  “Hey,” said Texas softly, “you ain’t the only one got father problems. Shut up and go to sleep, for Chrissake.”

  He slid his hand down to pat Volos’s back. Between shoulder blades to which the wings attached with great bands of muscle was a hollow where tiny curled feathers grew, thinning to bare dun skin at the spine. For what might have been an hour Texas slumped and held Volos and hummed Willie Nelson to himself and stroked the feathers, the skin. He had become so tired that none of this seemed strange, and he watched with acceptance so deep it could only be called faith as the wings quieted and lightened, first to warm gray, later to sunset-pink, the color change starting at the base of the wings and flowing pinion by pinion to the tip, as if beginning at Volos’s heart. And he watched with patience so deep it could only be called love as Volos’s shoulders and wide chest quieted, breathing steadied, wings relaxed. Once folded over the angel’s back so tightly they quivered, now they slackened so that they sprawled to either side. Texas’s long legs, slanting off the bed and propped up on the shabby armchair, supported the injured one. The other lay open on the bed as Volos slept.

  Texas continued to hold the angel until he was sure-and-then-some that he was sleeping. No hurry. Not going anywhere soon. Only when he ached in every cramped and assaulted bone did he ease the injured wing onto the armchair, get himself gently out from under Volos and stand up. Volos turned his head once, settling himself on the bed, t
hen slept on. His face looked tawny but not flushed. The fever was down, and Texas felt so limp with relief and weariness that he stood gazing.

  Sleep did not change Volos much. Even awake, the kid had that same look, profound and rapt and innocent, that glow of beauty most people attained only when they were making love.

  Texas blinked at his own thoughts and got himself moving. Edged around the armchair to the foot of the bed and pulled the cover up to the kid’s shoulders, careful, very careful not to touch the hurt wing. He hobbled to the john. So tired he’d maybe better stand himself in the shower, huh? But he managed. Left his belt loose. Lay down next to Volos on the bed, a narrow share of it, on top of the blankets, too done in to cover himself or care about the customary nighttime shouting and screaming on the street below.

  He awoke late the next morning to find Volos’s wing, the uninjured one, blanketing him so that he lay warm as a chick by a nesting dove.

  chapter four

  My God, he’s a wet dream.

  Brett Decimo restrained herself from whispering the thought aloud. She liked power even more than she liked male tail, and she had not gotten where she was by showing a weakness for male beauty, however extravagant. It had taken toughness and risky timing to make her investment, Club Decimo, one of the Basin’s hottest night spots. That, and a good ear for new talent on audition night.

  He’s a walking turn-on.

  Guitar in hand, he was on his way to the stage, where like anyone else he would have just five minutes, no more, to impress her. No one ever had to know she was impressed already.

  There he stood. Tall. Cloaked from his shoulders to his booted feet in heavy folds of black. Bare-chested, and Brett noticed how smooth his tawny skin was over his nicely defined pecs. Like a weight lifter or a fashion model he had depilated his chest, she surmised. Broad shoulders. He had fastened the cloak at his throat with some sort of heavy brass brooch, barbaric-looking, wonderfully strange, like his face—which was strong-boned, hollow-cheeked, yet with something sweet and shy in the expression of the eyes. And with lips worth fainting over. Full, sensitive lips—focusing on them made Brett start to think in practical terms. She wanted to kiss this man, and possess him, and after that she wanted to cash in on him. On the basis of his looks alone she smelled money in him. He seemed made to be worshiped.