by J. R. Ward
"What exactly happened to him," she demanded.
Ad turned around toward the desk. "Ah, here it is. Let's see..." Thumbing through the laminated booklet, he eyed the entrees. "Nice selection."
As he debated between a New York strip and the roast beef, there was some conversation in the background--Matthias telling his girlie to chill out and that they'd get the answers when Jim woke up.
Maybe, maybe not, Ad thought.
After passing the thing over to them, Ad hit the phone and ordered the crap out of dinner. Hanging up, he glanced at the couple. "We're ruining your date night, aren't we."
Cue the foot shuffle on both sides--nice touch, as neither of them were standing up.
"I really can go," Jim said, pushing himself off the pillows.
"Will you quit it?" Adrian snapped, abruptly feeling caged. "Fuck it, I'm going out in the hall to wait for the grub."
The truth was, his brain was humming, and everything in that room was in danger of getting on his nerves: that woman, Matthias, Jim with his barfing. He suddenly wanted to scream at all of them, at himself, at fucking Eddie for dying, at Devina--
Always at Devina.
Out in the corridor, he shut the door and leaned against it, closing his eyes.
"Mommy, it's the angel again!"
Oh, for fuck's sake.
And he'd forgotten to go invisi.
Lifting his lids, he stared down at that little girl with the big eyes. Tonight, her hair was pulled back in a ribbon that matched her blue dress, and her smile was so open and honest, it made him feel a million years old.
"You're a angel!" The skinny thing seemed capable of speaking only with exclamations--like maybe the height differential required greater volume. "Can I see your wings?"
The mother hightailed it down the hall and arrived with that same cloud of exhaustion, the weight of whatever world she was living in clearly wearing her out. "I'm sorry. Come on--"
"Please? I want to see your wings."
Ad shook his head. "I don't have any. Sorry."
"You do--all angels have wings."
"I'm not an angel."
The mother put an arm around her daughter's shoulder--and was no doubt ready to pull a fireman's hold on the kid if things didn't get moving. "Come on. We've got to go."
Mom refused to make eye contact--then again, the child was doing enough of that for the pair of them.
"Come on."
The whining started, but the little girl allowed herself to be pulled away. "I want to see your wings...."
Adrian focused on his combat boots, locking his eyeballs on the steel toes, letting the mother steer that precious cargo over to the elevators and off the floor.
"Rather harsh on the wee one, don't you think?"
Adrian exhaled a curse at the familiar aristocratic inflection.
Fantastic, a visit from upstairs. Just what he needed. "Hello, Nigel."
The archangel stayed quiet until Ad glanced up. Another nice outfit, go fig: The dandy was kitted out in a fitted linen suit with a matching waistcoat in a white so bright it made Ad want to Ray-Ban it up like Matthias. Cravat was candy-striped pink and white. So was the pocket square.
SOB looked like an ad for Orbit gum.
"I thought I'd come and check on you," Nigel said, hauteur turning the kindness into condescension. Or maybe that was just Ad's mood.
"Not Jim?"
"Him as well."
"We're great. Havin' a ball, and you?" As those shimmering eyes of the Capo di tutti capi narrowed into slits, Ad cocked his head. "Tell me something--if you're so concerned about your team down here, why don't you bring Eddie back."
"That is the Maker's purview, not mine."
"So talk to Him. Make yourself useful."
"Your tone leaves a lot to be desired."
"So sue me." As Nigel just stared at him, Ad refocused on his goddamn boots. "Now's not a good time to expect anything much from me."
"Which is the tragedy, is it not. Because this is precisely the moment when you are needed the most."
Adrian threw up his hands. "Nigel, buddy, boss, whatever the fuck you want me to call you. Give me a break, will you--"
"Your statement to that child is correct. You are not an angel--not with this attitude."
Ad banged his skull against the door. "Fuck you. Fuck all this."
There was a long silence--to the point where he wondered if the big man hadn't poofed it back up to Heaven.
Except then Nigel said softly, "We are depending on you."
"I thought it was Jim's job to be the golden-boy savior."
"He is ill. And now--now is the turning point."
Adrian looked over at the Englishman. "I thought you weren't supposed to influence things."
"I am allowed to advise."
"So what the hell do you want me to do?"
Nigel just shook his head slowly, as if Adrian had disappointed him so thoroughly, he had lost the ability to speak.
Then the archangel disappeared.
Which, if you considered the takeoff literally, meant he didn't want Adrian to do shit.
Down at the far end of the hall, the employees-only door opened and a room service guy came out with a stainless-steel cart. He was moving fast, like this was something he did a lot.
"That for six forty-two?" Adrian said as the uniform got closer.
"Yup."
"That's me." He jammed a hand into his ass pocket and took out his billfold. Peeling off a twenty, he handed it over. "Where do I sign."
"Hey, thanks, man." The kid took a white slip out. "And right here."
Ad scribbled something, and knocked so that Matthias would open up. When the guy did, the waiter went to roll things into the room, but Ad stepped in between the doorjambs.
"We've got this."
"Okay, just set it out here when you're done. Have a good evening."
Fat chance of that.
Matthias held the way open as Ad pushed dinner into the room, and, man, the whistle of the cart's wheels seemed way too loud. So did the closing of the door. So did the soft voices that sprang up as the reporter and Matthias arranged stuff on the desk and asked Jim if he could stomach any food.
Ad backed away, that hum in his head making him feel as if the barometric pressure in the room had exploded. Pulling at the low collar of his muscle shirt--like that was going to help?--he backed into something.
Ah, yes, the door again.
Perfect timing. He had to get out of here.
The sad truth was that he was better at anger than responsibility. More competent at fighting than logic. And that bastard Nigel hadn't given him anything to rail against.
Yet being pissed off wasn't bringing Eddie back, and it wasn't going to change the game or the fact that all of them, even that bitch Devina, were locked on this path, the rules of the conflict defining the landscape and trapping them in the game.
The whole goddamn thing made him want to scream--and left him missing Eddie so bad it hurt. With his buddy around, he'd always had a check and balance...had relied on Eddie to make decisions and provide that all-important pull-back-from-the-ledge when it was appropriate.
Except he was a grown-ass man--angel, whatever.
Maybe it was time to do that shit for himself.
Abruptly, he stared at the pair across the room.
As Mels started popping the covers off of plates, Matthias was hanging back, his eyes all but eating her up.
From out of nowhere, Jim's voice banged around Ad's head. He's the soul, but she's the key to all this.
Eddie would not have wasted time stamping his boots and getting frustrated, wouldn't have allowed himself diversions into the land of cocktail waitresses and grungy service corridors, would have stayed sharp even when shit didn't seem fair.
Adrian dragged in a deep breath, and on the exhale, the path became clear to him.
Applying Eddie logic, he knew what he could do to help.
Little bit of a game chang
er, but...what are you going to do. Nigel wanted him to get involved? Roger that.
Besides, it was what Eddie would have done.
As Matthias sat back down in the wing chair with his food, the weight blessedly off his tired, aching legs, he watched Mels as she ate at the desk.
French fries again. With a hamburger, done medium. And a Coke.
The subtle glow from the craned lamp was kind to her face, downplaying the circles under her eyes and the lingering bruise next to her temple. But he noted it all--along with the tension that ran down into her shoulders. Two near misses? In twenty-four hours? He was able to write off the construction guy falling from heaven--but down at that boathouse?
He had this awful suspicion that someone had tried to hurt her. Or worse.
And yet here she was, as pulled together as anyone else.
He thought about what she'd said about her father and was pretty sure that if the guy had been alive, he'd be stalking the streets for whoever had pushed her into that cold water.
Guess that was up to Matthias now--and he was prepared to meet the challenge.
As if she knew he was looking at her, her eyes shifted over and she smiled. "Aren't you going to eat?"
He wasn't hungry for food at this moment. Not in the slightest. Something about the almost-tragedy made him want to be with her skin on skin, like that was the only way he could be sure that she had survived for real.
Matter of fact, in his mind, he crossed the distance between them, pulled her up against him, and undressed her as he kissed the ever-loving shit out of her.
Not a bad plan, except the bed was full--and somehow he doubted that nearly drowning was an aphrodisiac to women.
"Matthias?"
He nodded and picked up his fork, putting food into his mouth and chewing like a robot. The silence that followed was all about waiting: Adrian waiting for Jim to feel well enough to get up; Jim waiting to recover; Matthias waiting for a moment alone with Mels, followed by some one-on-one with Jim to find out exactly what had gone down.
"Can I talk to you for a minute," Adrian said abruptly.
Matthias glanced up. The guy was looming by the bed, a huge, dark figure who was grim as a graveyard.
How had this friend of Jim's not been recruited into XOps, Matthias wondered. "Ah, yeah. Sure."
"In private."
Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he dropped the white square onto the arm of the chair and got to his feet. "Where to."
Adrian looked around, and then nodded at the bathroom door.
"I'll be right back," Matthias told Mels.
The little room was cramped enough with the toilet, the counter, and the cut-in for the shower/tub combo. With Adrian in it, the thing assumed matchbox proportions.
"What's up?" Matthias asked.
"Take the sunglasses off, wouldja?"
"Afraid you can't read me?" When there was no answer, he removed the Ray-Bans and stared at the other man with his good eye.
"You're very important in all this," Adrian said in a low, even voice. "So we've got to do everything to help you."
"You and Jim?"
"That's right."
"Who are you, exactly? Because I don't remember you from the good ol' days." He narrowed his eyes. "And not because of the memory-loss bullshit. I don't know you at all."
"No, you don't. But you're never going to forget me."
"What the hell are you talk--"
The man's hands shot out and clamped on both sides of Matthias's head, locking on as the eyes boring into his seemed to change--into a color he'd never seen before.
Matthias tried to jerk back, shove away, dodge out of the hold, but there was no going anywhere. He was stuck where he was, sure as if someone had bolted his feet to the floor--
In a warped voice, the other man started speaking in a language Matthias had never heard. The words were deep and rhythmic, almost a song--except no, they were so much more than sound, the syllables becoming solid in the air, forming strands of rainbow-colored light that encircled his body, one upon another upon another upon an infinite number, as threads would be woven to form a binding.
He fought against it all, thrashing, pushing, the memories of being trapped in that dark Hell giving him strength--
He got nowhere...and still the gossamer spooling from that voice, those words, that cadence wound 'round him, covering him from head to foot, forming an interlocking prison that tightened, tightened...and somehow removed him from the bathroom he'd walked into.
Matthias started to yell, but he had the sense that sound wasn't traveling, that whatever was going on with him was on a different plane--
The suction came next, the great pull making him feel like his internal organs were being drawn through his skin, his body somehow getting turned inside out. The pain was a stunner, a moan of agony rippling up his throat and breaking through his lips as he continued to fight within the cocoon--
Everything started to move.
The vibration began as a barely noticeable hum, but it soon reverberated within its bandwidth, multiplying until he was rattling within the physical sheath of the words, banging from side to side at a million miles an hour...until he was sure he was going to shatter.
And then came the rotating. Slowly at first, and then with gathering momentum, everything turning until the cage of light spun hard and fast around him. As the rotation took on impossible speed, pressure built to a bursting point, his ears popping, his lungs barely able to draw breath, his body taken to the limit of physical endurance.
He was going to get blown apart, every molecule he had straining--
The maelstrom started to lift, the whole construct rising from his feet, lifting...lifting...up his ankles, his calves, his hips...over his shoulders...and then finally off the top of his head, sailing free of him.
In its wake, he fell as if boneless, going down to the hard floor in a clatter of body parts.
But it was not over.
From the vantage point of his cheek on the tile, he stared up at an impossible sight. The spinning, shimmering chaos hovered above the other man; then began a descent, overtaking Adrian, covering first his head, and his pecs, followed by his whole torso...until he was subsumed by the maelstrom.
Behind the filaments, the man struggled as if being invaded, his body jerking and spasming, the grimace of agony suggesting he was where Matthias had just been.
Snap!
With a sharp sonic note, whatever it was dispersed in the same way it appeared, thread by thread coming loose and dissipating into the air like smoke, the cocoon peeling itself off strand after strand...until Adrian fell to the floor.
Matthias lifted his head and looked down his body. Then measured the other's.
Ironically, the pair of them had landed in exactly the same position, one hand up, the opposite down, one leg stretched out, the other curled up.
They were precise mirrors of each other.
Matthias reached out to touch the roommate--
He blinked. Blinked again. Jerked off the floor.
Holding his hand in front of his face, he moved it forward and back, the distance changing.
With a shout, he surged for the counter and yanked himself up toward his reflection over the sink.
What he saw was impossible.
His cloudy eye, the one that had been ruined by his actions two years ago, was the same blue as the other.
Jumping to his feet, he leaned all the way into the glass, going nose-to-nose with himself--as if that would tell him the truth or something...and he supposed it did, just not in a way he would ever have thought possible: Proximity simply proved that the scars on his temple had, in fact, faded.
To the point where if he hadn't been looking for them, he wouldn't have noticed them.
Matthias stepped back and stared down at his body. Same height. Same weight. But the aches were gone, and so were the numbness and the random sharp shooters that had been racking his bones with such consistency that he notic
ed them now only in their absence.
He lifted up his pant leg. Scars lingered in the skin of his calf, but like the ones on his face, they were nothing as they had been. And a deep knee bend that should have left him gasping for breath didn't faze him.
He looked at the man on the floor. "What the fuck have you done to me?"
Adrian grunted as he sat up, and then struggled to haul his way off the tile. When he finally straightened, a wince buried his eyes in low brows. "Nothing."
"Then what the hell was that?"
The other guy turned away. "I'm going to check on Jim."
Matthias reached out and snagged the man's arm, a spike of fear hitting home. "What did you do to me?"
Except he knew. Even before Adrian looked over that thick shoulder, he knew.
He had been healed. By some miracle, Adrian, the roommate, whoever the hell he was, had done what two years of doctors, surgeries, drugs, and rehab had not.
His body was whole...once again.
Because Adrian had taken on all the damage.
Staring into the man's now milky eye, Matthias didn't dwell on the metaphysical stuff, the holy shits, the amens, or even the thank-you's.
All he could think of was, How the hell was he going to explain this to Mels?
"Hi, Mom, how are you?"
As the reply came over the connection, Mels put another French fry in her mouth. "I'm still at work, yeah. But I wanted to call to let you know I'm okay."
Man, those simple words had connotations above and beyond the hour of the day and the reference to "work."
Closing her eyes, she forced her voice to be level. "Oh, you know how the CCJ is. There's always something going on....Hey, how did bridge go?"
For once, instead of feeling weighed down by the mundane, everyday conversation, she embraced it. Normal was good. Normal was safe. Normal was totally far from cold water and an invisible hold and the specter of death.
She was alive. So was her mother.
This was...really good.
And it was interesting how much the response mattered. As well as the follow-up she asked--about how Ruth, their next-door neighbor, had played. And also the laugh about the trump that hadn't gone well. She truly listened, actually cared, and that gave her a sense of how much she had been going through the motions lately.
Guess the shock of that chilly water had further woken her up.
Opening her lids, she focused on Jim Heron, lying so still under the covers.
What had really happened down at that boathouse?
"Mels? You there?"
She gripped her phone a little tighter, even though she was in no danger of dropping the thing. "Yeah, Mom, I am."
