by Anna Windsor
I screamed, dropped, and rolled away from it.
Smoke choked me.
I couldn’t see.
I used the hallway wall to pull myself up again and raised my arms in defensive posture.
No way out of the back door. If I ran the other way, there was only an elevator, and I might lead the thing to the patient floors.
That thought spiked some anger into my terror.
Not happening.
I’d die first.
The fire-thing hesitated, maybe confused - or amused - by my fighting stance.
My breathing and pulse picked up again. Like I was ready to fight. “Screw you!” I yelled at the creature.
I’m insane.
I’m going to die right here.
But I had to try.
And I had to protect the patients if I could.
It squared off with me and bellowed.
The sound rattled through my insides, ripping my courage to shreds. Somehow I kept my arms bent, fists raised, mind madly reeling through possible weaknesses I could exploit.
If I hit the fucking thing, I’ll combust.
Silvery light flashed, and John Doe was suddenly standing between me and the creature.
Oh, thank God. Not dead. Barefoot and wearing only jeans — but he had a sword now. And wings.
Wings?
The feathers were singed. His shoulders were singed. His green eyes were wide, filled with fury, and he bared his teeth at the fire-thing. I wished I could build a wall around him, around us, to keep us safe from the flames, but John Doe never slowed as he swung his giant sword. The massive golden grip flashed, and the long, double-sharp blade whistled as it tore through the air.
The fire-thing lurched and banged against the firmly secured back door, barely keeping its big ugly head. Its black eyes literally spit sparks as it snarled. Fire blasted towards us, all around us, but something repelled it, as if we were standing inside a giant fireproof bubble.
Or behind a wall . . .
I gasped once, twice, finally getting enough air to still the spinning in my brain. My energy felt even more drained, like half my blood had just dumped onto the soot-streaked hospital floor.
“Run,” John Doe told me again, but I felt melded to my spot against the wall, and to him.
“Can’t,” I said, and took a limping step backwards to prove it. The pain in my knee told me I’d never make it, and I absolutely couldn’t leave him here to face this creature alone. I might not be much help, but even injured, I could fight.
John Doe swore and took another swing at the fire-monster. It jumped sideways, giving ground. Fire shot from its massive clawed hands, again streaming around us - but the air shimmered, seemed to bow inwards.
I felt so weak I could have collapsed, would have if I hadn’t had my hand pressed against the wall.
A jet of flame broke through whatever had been protecting us and blasted into John Doe’s bare chest.
“Damn it!” I shouted as he fell backwards and hit the tiles hard, feathery wings splaying outwards. The sword skittered out of his hand, spinning in my direction.
I jumped towards it.
Pain flared through my injured leg, and I crashed to the tiles as a blast of fire singed more of my long hair. No stopping. Couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d be dead. John Doe would be dead - if he wasn’t already.
Teeth clenched, I crawled forwards and snatched up the sword with both hands.
Fire-thing gave me another blast, but I rolled away from it and staggered to my feet - well, foot - lugging the sword, tip down. It would blast me. I’d be burned to ashes, just a lump of teeth for the Medical Examiner to identify.
“Come on!” I screamed at the thing, hoisting the sword. “What are you waiting for?”
It seemed to blink.
What was it waiting for?
Fuck it.
I roared at the thing, then managed to balance the sword’s considerable weight with my shoulders and elbows. When I touched my right foot to the floor, I sucked in a breath. Rage powered my muscles as they strained from the effort, but the pain centred me. Freed me.
The world narrowed to just the hallway, and the freak-ass creature blocking the door.
It bellowed and lunged towards me.
I bellowed and lunged towards it.
Let myself fall, screaming as my knee gave.
I rolled under the horrible claws and arcs of fire, then came up on my ass, swinging the sword.
“Low man wins!” I shrieked as the blade made contact with the creature’s blazing left ankle.
The impact made my teeth clamp together, but I kept hold of the sword, and sliced straight through the thing’s big, thick leg. My butt seemed to drive itself deeper into the floor as I made the cut, then I slid sideways as fire-beast howled and pitched towards the opposite wall.
Then the fucking monster blew up like a barrel of dynamite.
I felt the shock before I heard it, if I ever really heard it. Hot air slammed into me like a speeding train, shoving me hard and fast across the hall. My ears throbbed, then buzzed. My shoulder and head crushed against cinder block and the sword ripped free of my fingers. My vision dimmed, flickered. Darkness swept towards me, but powerful arms grabbed me and seemed to jerk me out of the abyss.
Moments later, I was cradled against a perfectly carved chest.
Smoke thinned, then swirled to nothing, and warmth — healing, not burning - poured through me. The mass of aches and pains in my body lessened, my knee straightened itself out and stopped throbbing, and the pressure on my ears eased. I could hear my own jerking breaths as I found myself looking into the liquid emerald eyes of John Doe.
Silver light outlined his dark curls, and the feathery arc of his wings rose above his well-defined shoulders.
Wings.
He really did have wings.
They were flapping slowly, almost gently, clearing River-view’s hallway of the smoke and stink from . . . from whatever that fire-thing had been.
A shocked, almost dumbfounded expression had claimed John Doe’s beyond-handsome face.
“You defeated a Raah,” he said, his voice deep and smooth, but without the terrible, mountainous resonance I had heard before we fought the monster.
Raah.
That word stirred something in my memory, but I couldn’t quite grasp the definition, or any image beyond the fiery beast that had invaded Riverview. I reached for my full awareness, the complete measure of my intelligence as a physician, philosopher, and devout practitioner of Sayokan - and the response I came up with was, “I defeated a what?”
From somewhere in the distance came the eerie moan of sirens, and I thought I heard voices and footsteps getting closer. Probably rushing towards us from upstairs, and from the front street entrance of the hospital.
John Doe held me tighter against him as he started walking, so close I could feel his heart beating with mine. That strange power I thought I had imagined earlier hummed between his skin and mine, everywhere we made contact. It made me tingle in ways I couldn’t begin to describe. He carried me out of the back door into the alley behind Riverview, but I didn’t feel the bite of the cold air, or even the wet kiss of the night’s light snow. I also didn’t feel threatened, or that I should try to escape his firm but tender grip. The terror I had felt when I met him had been replaced by a feverish blend of curiosity and wonder.
Did this man, this being, hold the key to that door I had locked on my past?
Do I want to open it?
Nothing ever changed. Nothing. No way.
Because I won’t let it? Because change scares me so badly I can’t even stand to consider it?
John Doe was staring at me so intently I wondered if he could see the blood pumping faster and faster through my veins.
He spread his wings.
I knew I should have been terrified, but there was no fear in me at all. At that moment, I felt safer than I’d ever felt in my life - and I couldn’t stop looking at him.
After a moment, I lifted my arms and wrapped them around his neck.
He took off, not in a brutal rush of speed, but in a quiet, weightless whisper.
My heart gave a flip, like when I rode roller coasters or tried to spar blindfolded in the gym. When I caught my breath, it seemed easy, almost natural to be lifted so high, to be above ground and flying.
We floated together towards the winter stars as moonlight blended with his faint silver glow. All the while, he kept his eyes on mine, like he was searching every inch of my soul. That strange power he had, something almost magical, warmed me so much I knew my cheeks had to be flushed. I wished I could see into his essence, the depths of his being, so I could understand him, and maybe understand myself.
As we drifted over the snow-capped roof of the hospital and the skyline of New York City spread beneath us, we spoke at the same time, and we asked the same question.
“What are you?”
Four
“I’m just Dutch Brennan.” Lame answer, but the truth, which seemed like my only option, given that I was high above New York City, in the arms of a winged man who helped me fight some kind of ravening fire-monster. “I’m nothing. I’m nobody. I only killed that thing because I work out.”
John Doe’s jaw flexed. I wasn’t certain, but he looked like he might be impressed. “With . . . weapons.”
“Sayokan.” I leaned into him, enjoying his warmth, his body, his unusual smell. “Martial arts, Turkish-style.”
Another jaw flex.
His silence drove me to keep talking. “My father taught me, then found me other masters after he moved us to New York City. I live in SoHo now.”
I rattled off the address, and John Doe made a slight course correction.
“Now it’s your turn,” I said as he descended slowly towards what I recognized as my neighbourhood, then my building.
A moment later, he rumbled, “I’m Shaddai.”
The word gave me that sensation again, of things I should be remembering, but the meaning didn’t come to me. I waited, assuming he would explain, but he didn’t.
“What’s your name?” I asked him as he touched down on my balcony and set me on my feet. “Can I at least know that much?”
I tested my knee and found I could walk with no pain at all, which only increased my wonder and confusion. I unlocked and opened the balcony doors of my third-floor apartment before I turned back to him. The ever-present glow of the city illuminated his look of contemplation, then decision. “Shant,” he said, still using the deep, rich bass of a very big, very sexy man. “I come from Mount Aragats, and I have been on Earth three hundred and six of your years.”
That made me freeze in the doorway, trapping him outside in the snowy night. Tiny white flakes brushed against his bare shoulders and wings, then melted to sparkling droplets. He didn’t move or challenge me. He simply stood, wings folded against his muscled shoulders, and gazed at me with those green eyes, waiting.
For what?
My approval?
My belief?
Shant.
The name meant, roughly, “thunderbolt” in Armenian.
Fitting.
My insides shivered with my outsides. “Three hundred and six. OK.” I managed to move enough to fold my arms. “We’ll leave that alone for now. But Aragats? As in the mountain in Armenia?”
He nodded, his expression calm but solemn, as if he understood this might have meaning to me. Which, of course, it did. Mount Aragats was the only trip I remembered taking with my mother before she died. There was a special structure on those slopes - ruins of great stone towers joined together.
“Amberd,” I said aloud, recalling the name of that place even as my mind translated its meaning: “fortress in the clouds”.
I felt like my brain was creaking - or maybe it was just the hinges of that inner door I had slammed on my childhood.
My mother, standing beside me, dark hair billowing as she pointed to those rounded towers . . .
With a pained gulp of air, I shoved that image away from me, but I couldn’t escape the vision taking up most of my little balcony. Shant filled the entire space except for where I was standing, and he moved even closer, so near I imagined the heat of his body forming a shield around me. “You have deeper injuries, older injuries that still need healing,” he murmured. “Let me help you. Let me soothe your heart as I soothed your body.”
I couldn’t respond directly to that statement, or to him. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the thready racing of my heart as I stared past Shant at SoHo. At the real world. At my present, not my strange, shrouded past. “Will that . . . fire-thing . . . show up again?”
“The Raah’s essence returned to its maker.” Shant’s downwards gesture was unmistakable. “But there will be others.”
My brain really was starting to spin in my skull. I was sure of it. “You’re trying to tell me that I sent whatever that thing was to Hell.”
“Yes.” Shant put his hands on my shoulders and moved me backwards. Carefully. Measuring out his strength so he didn’t overpower me. In a smooth, balanced motion, he swept my balcony doors shut with his leg, cutting off the steady flow of snow and wind.
My cheekbones ached in the sudden warmth of my small, dark and sparsely furnished apartment. The main room was lit only by the city itself - and a slight but definite silver glow from Shant’s skin. As for my skin, it seemed to hum where he was touching me. My body began to override my intellect, wanting more contact with him, leaning towards him even as I fought to force myself to step back.
“So, if that fire-thing - the Raah - if it was from Hell, then am I supposed to believe you’re from Heaven?” I stared into Shant’s eyes, his handsome face barely illuminated in the softer-than-soft light. “Does Shaddai mean some sort of angel?”
Shant’s wings rustled, then slowly eased from view, as if he might be pulling them into his flesh. When he smiled, the curl of his lips made me want to stand on my toes and kiss him.
“I’m no angel,” he assured me as he pulled me against him, then lifted one hand to brush my hair from my eyes.
I wrapped my arms around him, my palms pressing against his taut back, then the ridges of flesh where his wings had been.
His fingers lingered on my forehead, spreading tingly waves of heat through my temples, down the sides of my neck, and lower, through my whole body, especially the spot where his hard belly pressed into my ribs. I wanted to lean my head against the warm firmness of his chest, and I wondered if he was making me dizzy somehow, stealing my ability to reason, to be afraid, to even be cautious.
His face was lowering towards mine, his green eyes sizzling with light and life. I could almost taste his lips. His breath tickled against my chin and nose, and I realized he was doing it again, reading me somehow, and my heartbeat rushed, then slowed, rushed then slowed -
And he stopped.
Pulled back.
Let me go.
My chest tightened from the shock of the sudden abandonment. It felt wrong, being more than an arm’s length away from Shant, and I wondered if I really had left my sanity back at Riverview.
His beautiful eyes had gone wide, and for a moment I worried that he’d turn, blast through my balcony doors, and vanish into the dark winter night.
Instead, the silver glow from his body increased, falling across me like a search beam. “It makes more sense now,” he murmured. “It was you - the danger to you — that brought me here.”
I saw him touch his chest, trace the spot where his phoenix wounds had been before they healed, but I didn’t understand. I was still aching from wanting to kiss him, and my arms screamed to be around him again.
When I stepped towards him, he stepped back, and this time, he did bump into the balcony doors. He raised both hands as if to ward me off, then bowed his head.
“My apologies for my boldness,” he said, his voice rough with shame. “Why didn’t you tell me? If I had known, I would have never . . . Forgive me
. Please. But how did you conceal yourself so perfectly?”
I rubbed one of my eyes to relieve the pressure building anew in my brain. “Shant, what are you talking about?”
And I just want to be kissing you, not figuring this out.
“I’m Shaddai,” he said, as if that explained everything, then seemed to realize I truly didn’t know what he meant - about himself, or about me.
“Shaddai,” he said again, his voice rough with surprise and disbelief. “A protector, nothing more.”
When I still looked clueless, he came towards me once more, but stopped well shy of grabbing me again, of pulling me against him like I so wanted him to do.
Shant’s green eyes focused on me, and he folded his heavy arms across his chest. “I’m no angel, Dutch Brennan. But you are.”
Five
God, but I liked hearing Shant use my name and call me an angel.
Then I processed what he meant.
“An angel. An actual angel. That’s funny.” I glared at him. And a heartbeat later . . . “You’re serious.”
I closed my eyes. Opened them. “And you’re insane. Damn it. Look, today’s my thirtieth birthday. If I was an angel, don’t you think I’d ... um, well, have figured that out by now?” I wiggled my fingers at him. “Look. No beautiful golden lights or heavenly music.” I shrugged my shoulders. “And no wings. Wings are kind of standard issue for angels, wouldn’t you say?”
Shant kept looking at me, as if puzzling through everything I was saying. I’d seen delusional people do this before, try to fit all the facts into their warped perception of the universe. I’d just never seen a delusional winged man do it before. A winged man who looked like a god and called me an angel.
“You’re a half-blood. It’s the only answer.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And today, when you came of age, the Raah became aware of you.”
This was getting worse.
What would it take to get a supernatural winged being back to Riverview’s admission office? I rubbed the sides of my head with my fingers. Except, Riverview’s first floor had been blasted to bits, I’d gone soppy over said supernatural winged being and let him fly me back to my apartment.
