by Debra Dunbar
He stepped in closer to me and I could feel the burn from the power he leaked. It trickled again, down through my arm, and the little balls of water became one, then shattered apart again into a thousand shards of ice, all hovering above the skink. They danced in a spiral before melting in a splash back into the basin.
“You must learn more quickly. You need to become more than a little cockroach if you’re to survive.” His voice was soft, and I felt the faint hint of blue. “Stop fighting me and let me help you.”
I fought off the blue, shielding myself as best as I could from his power running through me. He chuckled.
“Fine. See if you can do the ice yourself now.”
He pulled his power back to a light touch, keeping his hands firmly on mine. I stared at the water and took a breath. I could do this a lot easier if he wasn’t touching me. Ideally, he should be in the next room. At least twenty feet away with his back to me. Carefully, I pulled a globe of water together, raised it, and froze it from the center out, elongating the ends into a huge icicle. Pride surged through me.
“Faster,” he commanded, overriding my control and returning the melted ice to the sink.
I obeyed before I could feel irritated at his tone, and a rather sloppy blob of ice hung before us.
“No. Again.”
Pissed, I seized the water from the sink and transformed it straight to ice as I launched the tiny darts into my ceiling. Asshole.
He vaporized them with a poof. “Better. Again.”
I looked into the empty sink.
“Create the water.” Bossy angel had been replaced by the seductive one. I felt more comfortable with bossy angel.
I reached inside to grab from my store of raw energy, and was surprised when he blocked me.
“No. Pretend you’re empty, desperate. Convert what you have. Fast. Now.”
I reacted. Yanked the atoms from the air around me, converting them directly into a shard of ice. I spun it with a whoosh, separated it into a spiral of glittering pieces, then vaporized them one at a time with little cracks of noise, like fireworks.
“Ah, little cockroach. That was beautiful.”
His physical body hadn’t moved, but his personal energy reached out, rubbing along mine in a soft caress. Part of me wanted to freak. Part of me wanted to rub back. Maybe more than rub back. I needed to sit down. I needed to step away from him. It was too much, and I was confused by what I was feeling.
“Have you practiced withdrawing yourself from your physical form? So you can survive mortal damage?”
He was still holding my arms, rubbing himself along me. His power continued to pour through me, even though the water work was done. It was like being immersed in liquid fire. I struggled to remember his question.
“You mean like taking a gunshot to the head? No, I haven’t worked on that.”
Idiot. It’s not like I could practice getting shot in the head and surviving it. There’d be no practice. I’d live or I’d die, and odds were, I’d die. Demons were more committed to their physical forms than angels. We could survive a lot of damage, but if the body died, we did, too.
“You only need something of this world to shield you, little cockroach.” Gregory’s lips were practically touching my ear. “What houses you doesn’t have to be a living being. You can safely exist in the form of a dead corpse, a spark of fire, even a rock if you wished.”
“We’re not like angels,” I protested. Like I’d really want to live my life as a rock anyway. “We can’t do that sort of thing.
“You are angels.”
Are? I thought it was “were angels,” as in past tense.
“Angels who use only a tenth of their potential,” he continued. “You must learn this. The day is coming when you can no longer hide under a rock, little cockroach. I would be very upset if that day came and someone squashed you under their heel.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “There’s always a rock,” I assured him.
I felt his amusement. “No. There will be no more rocks.”
Before I could reply, I felt the stab of a thousand needles tracing the edge of my ear. He’d licked my ear? And he was still rubbing himself against me, in a way only beings of spirit could do. Too much. It was too much. I was going to fly apart into a million pieces, like the ice we played with. Everything blurred for a moment as I struggled to retain some kind of control.
“I’ll show you how to pull back, and you can practice by having that toy of yours shoot you in the head.”
He sounded like he was teasing, but I felt him reach down inside me and begin to distance me from my form. I didn’t like where this was going. I didn’t trust him to do this sort of thing to me. Especially not when I was so wide open and vulnerable like this. I yanked my energy away from his and frantically tried to think of something to distract him from this course of action.
“Maybe you should look at the brand and see if you fixed it or not,” I said, my mouth dry. I was grasping at straws here.
“Maybe I should,” he murmured against my ear in amusement.
I turned around to show him my arm, very aware that he was too close, trapping me against the sink and counter top.
“How does it look?” This was a bad idea having him this near.
“It’s better.” He frowned in disappointment. The distraction had worked. I felt seductive angel fade away, and analytical angel takes his place. I relaxed slightly in relief. Seductive angel scared me.
“The circle that created all the flesh sensation is more isolated and is weaker, but the brand that is supposed to bind you hasn’t improved. Two parts of it never took, and the one that did is abnormally strong. And it’s rooted to the wrong site, plus it. . . well, it’s just wrong.” He obviously didn’t want to tell me the exact wrong nature of the thing.
He shook his head, perplexed. “I’ve bound thousands of demons and never had this happen. True, I haven’t bound one in several millennia since we just kill you now, but it’s not a skill that requires constant practice. Why did this happen?” He ran his finger over the tattoo.
I made a rather embarrassing squeaking noise and plastered myself against his chest, feeling my energy again rush toward him. I’d managed to hold back up until now, but that one touch just sent me right over the edge. Damn, I had no control at all with this guy.
He looked down at me in surprise, black flooding his eyes. Evidently his control was equally poor, or maybe he’d just been waiting for me to respond. He inhaled sharply, then grabbed me, crushing me against him, and burying his face in my hair. Yep, we did it again. It was just as incredible without the lengthy tongue foreplay. Apparently “never do this again” was only about thirty minutes. Who knew?
This time, as I began to regain control over my physical self, I realized we had pretty much collapsed into a heap where we stood.
“We can’t keep doing this, little cockroach.” Gregory sounded amused. Seductive angel was back, but I was too overwhelmed by what had just happened to feel uneasy. “As enjoyable as it is, we have to exist in a corporeal form in this realm. There are not the right conditions here to support a pure spirit being. If we keep doing this, we run the risk of coming apart entirely.”
He had just been telling me I could exist in a rock or a spark of fire. Those seemed just as farfetched as existing completely outside of a physical form. I wondered if there was somewhere where that rule didn’t apply? Somewhere that allowed a pure spirit existence? In Hel, we needed to maintain physical forms as we did here. We were never without form, from birth to death.
“Could we ever be without physical form? Where would that be possible?”
I had this weird feeling like I wanted out of my skin. Like wanting to take an itchy sweater off and run naked. Must have been a side-effect of whatever the fuck it was we were doing.
“We could back home, in Aaru. But I can’t exactly bring you there, can I?”
Aaru. I’d not heard much about it other than the fantastic tale
s the humans had in their worship books. They claimed it was all fluffy clouds with singing and harp playing twenty-four seven. Same song, over and over again for all eternity. Yikes. Not my idea of heaven.
I wondered what it was really like. We were forbidden entry under the treaty. Only the Iblis, the Adversary, was allowed to enter for diplomatic conference. We’d not had one for over two million years. Neither an Iblis nor a diplomatic conference. We’d pretty much severed all communication with the angels. Or maybe they had with us. It was all so long ago that no one even bothered to remember.
Gregory scooped me up in his arms and stood. I briefly envisioned us looking like the cover of a romance novel when he ruined the image by slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I was amazed he could stand at all, let alone do it while holding me. I could barely move my limbs yet.
He lugged me up the stairs and into my bedroom. I wasn’t sure how he knew which one was mine. Then he plopped me on the bed and covered me up with a blanket. I was being tucked in by an angel. Never in my wildest imaginings had I thought of this one.
“Promise me you’ll work on separating yourself from your physical form.”
I looked at him blankly. Right. Like that was going to happen. Was he trying to turn me into an angel or something? Too late. About two and a half million years too late.
“Swear it.” The compulsion slammed into me, then bounced off.
“Nope,” I told him. “Still doesn’t work.”
He glared at me, his black eyes burning into mine with their intensity.
“Oh, okay. Fine. I swear on all the souls I Own that I’ll work on it. Eventually.”
He nodded, satisfied, then tucked the edges of the blanket around my sides as if I were a human baby.
“You must have more self control when you’re around me, cockroach.” I wasn’t sure if I was imagining the suggestive tone or not. The whole morning had become rather surreal and I didn’t really trust my senses right now.
“That’s a virtue, not a sin,” I told him. “So the ball is in your court with this one, baby. Of course, we both know how much you suck at that particular virtue.”
He smiled. He really needed to stop doing that.
“Yes, I do seem to suck at that virtue. After so many millennia in this form, I find I’m no longer as proficient in any of the virtues as I would like.”
“Good. That’s not a bad thing. You should work on some sins for a while, give yourself a break.”
“Take your nap, eat a sandwich,” he said, not rising to the bait. “You’ll be back to wrecking havoc in an hour or so.”
“Wait.” I was surprised when he came back and sat on the bed.
It wasn’t often I saw him like this, relaxed and open to conversation. I had questions I wanted to ask him before he slammed the doors down again and turned back into asshole-angel. Plus, I really enjoyed being around him when he was like this.
“How come you’re walking around like nothing happened and I’m exhausted?”
“Your form operates on a lower vibration than mine. Moving from spirit back to your physical form is a huge change in your vibration pattern. Changing that far, that fast, is tiring. I’m tired too, but I’m also a lot older than you. And I have great stamina.”
That last part made me nervous. I recognized human sexual innuendo, but I wasn’t sure if it was the same with angels. He reached out and slid a finger down my arm. I felt his spirit self reach inside to hover tentatively near my store of raw energy. He needed to cut this out or I’d never get my nap and sandwich.
“I want to hold this, have it surround me.” That unnerving, seductive note was back in his voice.
I looked at him in surprise. “But you said it would kill you.”
“It would, unless you kept your connection and your control of it. Raw energy is nothing and everything. It’s potential. It is that null space, on the verge of creation or destruction. Only your kind can hold it there. We angels can never experience it without you controlling it. Without your hold, it bursts into being and overwhelms us. A small amount we can handle. As much as you hold would kill the strongest among us. For me to experience it, I would need to have complete power and control over you, or trust that you would hold it in check. Trust you not to kill me.”
“I wouldn’t kill you,” I told him.
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
“Well, I wouldn’t kill you on purpose. Maybe by accident. Or possibly on purpose if I had to. But I wouldn’t be happy about it.”
He shook his head and pulled his hand away, dropping the shield back over himself and ending the short-lived intimacy.
“I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you.” His smile held bitterness. “Exile has made your kind crazy, made you evil. You’ve devolved into something base. What you all have become, what you are, isn’t something anyone can ever trust. No, if I really wanted to do this, I’d need to have absolute control over you.”
I felt chilled. Hopefully he didn’t really want that, because the prospect of being under his total control was terrifying.
Gregory finished tucking me in and, not surprisingly, I was asleep before he even left the room.
I woke up about an hour later feeling refreshed and made my way downstairs. He was gone, of course. I was kind of glad about that actually. Otherwise I’d have been sorely tempted to act like a one-night stand gone horribly wrong and chase him down my driveway trying to give him my phone number and imploring “Call me, call me.” I needed to get a grip here.
Still, I was sorry to see that my house looked like the morning’s events had never happened. Light jazz still played, furniture was in its usual place. He’d even fixed the upholstery on the bar stools, as well as my cabinets. I ran my hands over the fabric, admiring his work. I couldn’t tell if he’d recreated the whole thing or patched it. Even the wood grain in the cabinets was identical to before. It was as if I’d dreamed the whole thing.
I was supposed to meet Michelle for a late lunch and a look-see at a potential commercial property, but I was starving. I wondered if I could trust myself to have only one piece of the leftover cheesecake? I opened my fridge and stared in shock. There was a sandwich. On a plate. With a pickle artfully placed beside it. He’d made me a sandwich. An angel had tucked me in my bed and made me a sandwich.
I grabbed it off the plate, took a bite and choked, forcing myself to swallow. Definitely roast beef, but what the fuck had he put on it? Lifting off the huge slice of rye on top, I eyed the contents of my sandwich. Roast beef and cheese. That was normal. Shredded carrots, unusual, but I could go with that. Leftover tuna salad, oh my. A blob of artichoke hummus. And jelly. He’d spread a generous helping of grape jelly over the top and bottom pieces of bread.
I stared at the sandwich and wondered if this was some kind of prank, or if he really thought I’d enjoy this. I guess when a being that has never eaten food makes you a sandwich, this is what you get. It could have been worse. He could have added ketchup and ranch dressing to the mix. I ate the whole fucking thing. I somehow managed to keep it down the entire drive into the city, too.
Chapter 8
Michelle and I had the county map spread all over our table as we planned our world domination, one rental unit at a time. Her burger and fries were holding down one corner, threatening to drip ketchup on the line representing Sottbey Street. I wasn’t eating. Not after that sandwich. Typically I’d just remove it from my system, but I was allowing it to digest normally as a kind of penance. It’s good to suffer sometimes; gives you perspective.
“There’s where we’re going after lunch.” Michelle pointed at a huge square on the map. “This strip mall on the west end is for sale. It’s a bigger purchase than we’re used to, but I think it has potential.”
The west end had fallen on hard times and although there were some popular chain restaurants there, increasing crime and low-income rentals had hit the retail industry hard. In this particular strip mall, the major grocery s
tore had closed, leaving a big empty section surrounded by discount stores and ethnic eateries.
“What the fuck are we going to do with this big empty spot?” I pointed to the vacant grocery store building on the corner of the strip mall. It was over fifty thousand square feet. “There’s already one of those big discount clothing stores in the middle, and not many businesses want a space that huge.”
“Yeah, I thought about a gym, but it’s really too big, even for the chain ones, and there’s currently a gym over here. They have an exclusive purpose clause in their lease, too.”
I pondered a moment. “Can we convert it to office space? There’s enough parking. Or better yet, warehouse? There are loading docks in the rear from when it was a grocery store.”
“The strip mall across the street converted their vacant grocery space into office and is leasing to Conformance Healthcare. They’ve had issues, though, because that kind of business doesn’t enhance the volume of retail traffic needed by the smaller stores and they’ve had some of the stores fold with significant time on their leases. We need a retail anchor store or risk losing the other businesses, which are actually doing pretty well. Same problem with warehouse. Actually, even more of a problem, because the tractor-trailer truck volume in and out of the two entrances would deter consumer traffic.”
Michelle knew her shit.
“We’ve got the one anchor store here.” I pointed to the discount clothing chain. “How are their numbers? When is their lease up, and are they indicating whether they’d renew or not?” I wouldn’t want to have two huge vacant spaces to fill.
“They’ve got five more years. They seem to be doing ok. I think they’d like to move to the south end where there is more high-income shopping traffic and they’d have less shrink, but they are doing well with the low income residents and the shoppers waiting for a table at the steak house.”
“Do you think we could get in one of those big all-purpose outlet stores? Or a small home improvement chain? I’d suggest big office supply, but I don’t know how well they’d do in this section of town.”
