Urban Mythic: Thirteen Novels of Adventure and Romance, featuring Norse and Greek Gods, Demons and Djinn, Angels, Fairies, Vampires, and Werewolves in the Modern World

by C. Gockel

He looked at me quizzically, but backed a few steps out of the alley and looked down the street. “Yeah, I see one.”

  I freaked. “Where? Is he coming this way? Is he glowing? Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”

  I was making my new friend nervous. “No, it’s that painting on the side of the building. You know, the one that looks like an old guy leaning out a window, but he has shadowed wings behind him. I thought that’s what you meant.”

  “This is not I Spy,” I shouted at him. “I need to know if a real angel is anywhere on the street, if you can see one. I really don’t want him to kill me.”

  “I’ll walk down here a bit and check,” the guy said in a placating voice as he backed slowly out of the alley. “Just stay right here. I’ll look for killer angels and be right back.”

  I knew better. The guy walked quickly toward a more populated area of downtown while I snuck around the block to my car to make my escape. He’d either sic the cops on me or send the angel my way.

  I thought about my situation as I drove toward home. If I was going to die tonight, I was going to do it in my own house, surrounded by the things I loved. My mind whirled, and I had to finally set the cruise control as my speed was fluctuating wildly between the legal fifty five and well over a hundred miles per hour.

  The angel hadn’t locked right in on me at the bar, so my energy usage must not have been strong enough for him to have an absolute fix on me. He hadn’t come running when I’d opened the fire door or, more importantly, when I pulled a bunch of energy to the surface for defense. Maybe I would be Okay. If I could just keep things absolutely minimal, fly even more under the radar, maybe he would give up and go kill some other, more careless, demon.

  I was so distracted with my thoughts that I was three miles past my road before I even noticed. I pulled into a little local bar to turn around and stopped. I needed to calm down and focus. And I was suddenly afraid to go home and be there alone waiting for death to possibly find me. At least here I had a chance of blending into the crowd.

  The Eastside Tavern was a local’s hangout. The narrow front parking lot was packed with trucks and bikes. People milled about the fenced deck beside the front door, smoking cigarettes in the cooler evening air. I edged my way between the carelessly parked cars and around the back, searching without success for a parking spot. The place was packed. I finally found a parking spot way out at the rear lot, past the dumpster, by a little wooded area. The Corvette might not have fit in with the motorcycles and trucks, but I did with my jeans and boots. I got out and set the car security. There were a few people around back here too, smoking or talking.

  “Nice car,” a bearded man said waving his smoke at it. “I have a Corvette too, but it’s not as nice as yours.”

  I smiled at him in acknowledgement. There were wooden steps leading up to a back entrance that appeared to open to a dining area or perhaps some kind of banquet room. I walked around to the front of the building and headed up the wooden stairs past the smokers’ deck. The front door was a slab of heavy glass, reinforced with metal bars. I wrestled it open and paused to take the place in.

  Everything in the Eastside Tavern was cheap and fake. I don’t know if this was so it would be inexpensive to replace when patrons trashed it, or if the owners didn’t give a shit about even pretending to run a classy joint. Probably both. The floors were fiber board with a photo of wood grain laminated on top. The long u–shaped bar had the same wincingly artificial wood as the floor. The tables were cheap metal and Formica topped with metal rims. Torn vinyl–covered metal chairs were scattered around each table. The owners had dispensed with any kind of ceiling and instead had hung old license plates and plastic light fixtures resembling deer antlers from the exposed floor joists of the second story.

  The tables were full of people gleefully smashing crabs and picking out meat with knives and fingers. Dismembered carcasses piled high on the brown paper protecting the Formica, or spilled onto the floor in a mess of broken shells and Old Bay Seasoning. Observing all of this with placid faces were the only non–fake things in the bar: a plethora of mounted deer heads; pheasants, foxes and boars decorated the walls side by side with aluminum sports signs and neon beer advertisements. I loved humans’ affection for taxidermy. Killing something, and then displaying its dead body in a prominent place to show everyone what a successful and powerful killer you were was near and dear to my heart. I envisioned humans eyeballing each other’s kills and suffering from antler envy. We weren’t so different.

  I headed around next to the pool table so I could look out across the expanse of the bar and the people eating their crabs. I wouldn’t have a clear exit if an angel stormed the front door, but at least I’d see him first and have a brief moment to hide. The pool balls crashed behind me and I heard the cheers and smacking palms of a good break. The guy beside me flicked his eyes to me, and then turned his gaze back to the TV screen above the bar. He had dried mud on his work boots that extended almost a foot up his jeans. There wasn’t a navy suit in the place.

  Two women worked behind the bar, hustling primarily beer for the customers. I really wanted a drink, and thought about draping myself across the bar as I did at the Wine Room. I reconsidered when I realized I’d only piss off the women on the other side. Instead, I flagged a bartender down with some help from the guy next to me. I didn’t rate any attention, since I was clearly not a regular, but the guy next to me certainly did and she came promptly over when he bellowed for her.

  “Do you have any vodka in the freezer?” I asked.

  She looked at me, as if she were waiting for the punch line of the joke. I wasn’t about to drink warm generic vodka, so I ordered a bottle of Bud Light.

  Another guy had joined the muddy dude on my side of the bar, flanking me between them. Muddy guy had a plate of food covered in gravy plopped in front of him, and proceeded to ignore everything but his meal. Nobody was paying any attention to me at all. I looked around behind me at the men and women engrossed in their pool game and realized no one seemed uncomfortable with my presence. Relaxing, I took a swig from the cold beer bottle and looked around.

  There was a group of bearded guys by the smokers’ door trying to pick up a shapely girl with legs a mile long; an overweight couple stealing fries off each other’s plates and laughing; several rowdy groups gleefully smashing crabs and clinking beer mugs; a Latino guy in a construction logo hat who looked like he’d been up since before the sun; a really hot blond guy with some blond girl rubbing her boobs on his arm. Hey. Our eyes met across the room. Pleasant warmth spread down my body as I smiled into Wyatt’s beautiful baby blues.

  He made a beeline for me, practically dragging the curvy blond hanging onto his arm.

  “Sammy,” he said, clearly delighted to see me. “I didn’t know you ever came here.”

  “I haven’t been here before. I was on my way home and thought I’d stop in.” I looked around. “I like it here,” I said honestly.

  There was a sense of calm I got from the place. Not that it appeared to be a mellow, chilled out kind of bar. It was just familiar. I felt I could relax and maybe be a little bit myself without getting thrown out every time I came in. Or at least I’d get thrown out with others hitting the dirt beside me.

  “You. . . you look really nice,” Wyatt said, his eyes traveling down me, as if he hadn’t seen me almost naked this afternoon.

  I caught my breath and stared at him in amazement. Could this day have any more wild swings between shit and great? Where had this come from? Had someone slipped something into his drink? Had I transformed from his older, scary, moderately attractive, neighbor buddy into a potential friends–with–benefits candidate?

  “Thanks,” I replied. “I need to do the make–up and hair thing more often. Maybe then I’d have sex more than once a decade.”

  “The gravity defying boobs are pretty eye–catching, too.” Wyatt grinned. “Honestly, Sam, if you’d at least pretend to be normal you might get laid more. You scare all the girls and bo
ys away.”

  I knew he was teasing, but I think he meant it, too. Hopefully he meant the boob part.

  “If I get horny enough I’ll just whack someone over the head with a pool cue, duct tape them in place and have my way with them.” I was only partially kidding.

  Wyatt laughed. The woman on his arm tugged slightly, clearly wanting to move Wyatt away from me and my duct taping ways.

  “Are you scared of me?” I asked him suddenly. I hoped not. I’d hate to have to eventually resort to duct tape with Wyatt. He’d be a whole lot more fun with his hands free.

  “Absolutely terrified,” he said.

  I wondered if both Wyatt and I had been waiting for the other to make a move, like in those sappy movies on Lifetime. I appraised the woman hanging on his arm. Wyatt hadn’t introduced me. In fact, Wyatt was rudely ignoring her existence. Not that I had a problem with that. She was pretty. Nice figure. She looked like a boring fuck to me. I was going for it, and blondie wasn’t going to get in my way.

  “The waitress just brought our beers out,” Wyatt said, disengaging with great difficulty from his blond albatross. “I’ll go get them and be right back.”

  The second he turned his back I snapped my eyes to the girl and glared at her. She shook a little, and then raised her chin in defiance. Ooo, putting up a fight, was she? Well, I didn’t have time for this nonsense since Wyatt would be back in a short moment.

  “Get out right now,” I snarled at her, throwing every bit of mean I had into it.

  Her eyes widened in terror and, without delay, she took off out the door.

  “Woman, you really are scary,” the muddy guy next to me said in admiration before turning back to his chicken fried steak. Yep, I liked this place.

  I chugged down my beer as I saw Wyatt approach, shoving the empty on the bar.

  “Your friend left.” I snagged the second beer out of his hand and took a swig. “She won’t be coming back.”

  Wyatt raised an eyebrow and I was relieved to see he looked amused.

  “I like this one better anyway, Wyatt,” said the guy next to me.

  Thumbs up from Mr. Chicken Fried Steak. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  Wyatt’s smile reached his eyes and we talked in that comfortable, easy way we always did. He’d nixed his original dance club plans for the night pretty soon after he turned out my horses for the evening. Instead, he had popped in here for a few beers, intending to go straight back home to kill the zombies.

  I told him about my Wine Room experience, leaving out the angel, of course. Wyatt made sympathetic noises when I described my outrage at the vodka abuse Candy had perpetrated. I told him I’d left early and never really got to discuss those canal properties with her. We chatted comfortably as the evening drew late and I felt myself relax fully. After we finished several beers, I reluctantly told him I needed to head back home. I intended to hide all night under my bed from the angel. Maybe he’d keep me company.

  “I’ll walk you to your car”, he said.

  The summer bugs were making a deafening racket in the wooded area behind the bar. The smokers had migrated closer to the door, and a few said goodbye to Wyatt, addressing him by name. I beeped the alarm off the Corvette and turned my back to the driver’s door. After two years of flirting and friendship, Wyatt suddenly became a guy of action as far as I was concerned. He swooped down for a kiss, wrapping one arm around my back to curl me up against him and reaching the other up to brush his hand along my neck and up to gently hold the base of my skull. Smooth. Unexpected. Dreamed about many days and nights for a very long time.

  I love kissing in human form. Their lips are so full and soft. You can bite down on them with your dull human teeth, or run your tongue across them, or suck on them. So many nerve endings and so many senses at play. You can be a little rough, too, without worry of slicing anything off with razor sharp teeth, or asphyxiating someone with a two foot tongue down their throat. Humans don’t get off on that sort of thing. At least, not the ones I’d met to date.

  Wyatt was feather–light to the point of frustration. Lips, tongue, teeth, even his thumb rubbing along my jaw line were just barely at the point of contact. Every nerve ending in me quivered as if they were trying to reach out and complete the connection. I’m not good at the whole delayed gratification thing. I grabbed his shirt on either side of his waist with both hands and spun him around so I was pressing his back into the car.

  Wyatt gave a muffled laugh and kissed more firmly. Just to make sure he knew where this was going, I straddled one of his legs, and rubbed my thigh up against his crotch. He returned the favor, easing his hand from my waist to cup my ass and hold my hips in an optimal tilted position. Heat scorched through me, and my breathing turned ragged. Nothing existed outside him at this moment. I could no longer hear the million bugs singing in the night, or cat–calls from any smokers who might be watching. I could no longer smell the mix of cigarette smoke, fried foods, and dumpster garbage that was the parking lot. I didn’t think about Wyatt’s belt potentially scratching my beloved car. And I most definitely did not think about the angel.

  I stretched all my human senses as far as they could go and filled them with Wyatt as my hands yanked his shirt up and roved up his bare sides. It was so much, but it wasn’t enough. I’d had purely human sex with hundreds of men and women throughout the centuries, but this particular human pulled forth very conflicting desires. I wanted so much more, but if I Owned him, our relationship would change forever. I’d still have him with me, but not in this physical way, and definitely not the warm friendship I’d grown to enjoy so much. No, no Owning. Not with an angel so close, and especially not Wyatt. Not Wyatt.

  Unable to resist exploring beyond human limitations, I carefully sent tiny gentle feathers of my personal energy into him, touching, seeking, and gathering knowledge of him without taking. No Owning, just checking things out. No Owning. Wyatt pulled his mouth from mine and gasped, his pupils huge in his blue eyes.

  “Oh my. What are you doing?”

  He didn’t sound fearful, or in pain. Actually he sounded turned on beyond belief, which ratcheted up the desire on my end as well. I added more feathers of my personal energy, and focused them on his neural pathways. Wyatt shuddered in obvious pleasure, and bent to kiss me again, running his lips over my jaw and down my neck. I’m ashamed to admit it, but at this point I just lost it. It’s hard enough to maintain control when your flesh in this form is so stimulated. It had taken lots of practice and the guidance of my foster brother, Dar before I could have human sex without killing my partner. And here I was, wanting that human orgasm so bad, and at the same time right on the edge of Owning him completely. I tightened the feathers within him, and I pulled.

  “Mine,” that familiar voice deep within me announced in silence. It was a word that carried power, that announced claim. It was my way of marking my territory and enveloping what I would soon Own.

  Wyatt went rigid and with a sharp breath pulled back. We began an escalating tug of war deep inside him that would have been funny had it not been so deadly. Want, want,want. I was firmly attached and nothing he could do could shake me off. His tugs started to take on a feel of desperation. I pulled steadily, making slow progress only to be halted as he dug in with all his might.

  We were at an impasse. I could take him against his will, but I would need to rip him free of his body. It would be even more bloody and messy, and a clear act of violence to anyone who would be watching. It also would result in my head being lopped off by that angel before I could complete the act.

  The sexual stimulation had ended with Wyatt’s insistence on not becoming dead. His unwillingness to proceed and give his whole self over was like a splash of sanity on my desire and I relaxed slightly in my grip. What the fuck was I doing? No Owning. And no Owning Wyatt. How could this have gone so wrong?

  “Wait,” I told him in what I hoped was a reassuring voice. “I’m pulling free, but I need to do it slowly so
you don’t rebound and go into convulsions or start hemorrhaging”. Okay, maybe that wasn’t so reassuring.

  “Don’t pull back hard. Just hold your ground and gently ease back. Don’t panic.”

  I’d never done this before. I’d never had an unsuccessful Own, or stopped part way like this and backed out. I was a little worried that I’d screw it up and end with Wyatt dead. I took a calming breath and began disengaging the feathers one at a time, with great care. When they were barely touching, I gently drew them back through Wyatt a few at a time. It was taking forever, but Wyatt held very still. I’m surprised he trusted me, but I guess he really didn’t have any other option. His breath hitched as I pulled my energy back within me and I paused worried he was going to panic and injure himself.

  Slowly I continued, pulling the last of my energy out of him and stepped back. It felt almost cold after all the heat our closeness had generated. Wyatt stared at me but I couldn’t read him in the darkness of the parking lot.

  “What on earth were you trying to do? What are you?” he said, his voice firm now that he wasn’t fighting for his life.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice a pitiful whine. I wasn’t sure what to say. “I lost control. I’m so very sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “What are you?” he repeated, careful not to touch me. “Normal people don’t do whatever it was that you were doing. I’ve always thought there was something weird about you, but you’ve been my friend so long that I just ignored it.”

  I squirmed. I really didn’t want to tell him. Either way this was probably the end of any potential sex with Wyatt. This was probably the end of anything with Wyatt.

  “Wyatt, you’ve known me for two years,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Please forgive me. I promise it will never happen again. Never.”

  “Are you some kind of alien? A witch? Are you the devil, like that Jehovah’s Witness guy said this spring? You need to tell me what you are right now or this friendship is definitely over.”