by Debra Dunbar
Gregory turned from the pile of sand to look at me, his expression becoming alarmed.
“Fix yourself!” he commanded, an edge of desperation in his voice.
“I’m trying, you asshole,” I replied.
I felt hands on my side and realized that Wyatt and Candy were there. Candy looked worried and Wyatt was trying to apply pressure to the wound. I looked down at Wyatt’s hands and saw that the blood oozing between his fingers was becoming streaked with an opalescent white. Crap, the raw energy was leaking out and causing me to lose form. I didn’t want that to happen with this stuff eating its way through my flesh.
“Hold on, Sam,” Wyatt said, applying more pressure. He needed to stop or the raw energy would burn his skin like acid. “Is there anything human doctors can do? Should we call an ambulance?”
I shook my head at him and kept trying to convert bits of the white stuff into nice neutral carbon based molecules. If I could just grab enough raw energy, I could dispel the whole lot of it, but the slippery coating was only allowing me access to a tiny bit at a time. I had to fight for every little bit. Meanwhile, the remaining white stuff expanded faster than I could negate it and was dissolving several important organs. The body I was in was on the verge of failure.
Fuck. I put my hands to the ground and started to slowly trickle raw energy out into the earth. If I could release some of this, then maybe I wouldn’t blow half the county up when I went.
“You need to get out of here,” I told Wyatt, bubbling blood up from my ruined lungs. “You and Candy. Fast and far. As fast as you can.”
“I won’t leave you, Sam,” Wyatt insisted.
“I’m not joking. You need to leave right now,” I told him, enunciating as best as I could.
Wyatt continued to protest and I looked at Candy.
“You promised to protect him, to keep him safe. Get him out of here.” I told her and she nodded grimly.
I didn’t have time to argue with Wyatt any longer. I turned to him and put every last ounce of strength into pulling out my mean. “Get the fuck out of here right now,” I snarled at him.
He jumped back and looked hurt. Candy seized the moment and grabbing him by the arm dragged him as fast as she could toward her car.
I gave up trying to stop the white stuff and began concentrating on dumping as much raw energy as I could. The ground around me was beginning to smoke. The whole thing was an exercise in futility. It would take me nearly two months at this rate to dump my stash of energy. I looked up at Gregory, who just looked back at me.
“Now would be a really good time to get that damned sword of yours out.” I told him, trying to speak the words as clearly as I could with all the blood I was spitting. I needed to say this before my lungs totally gave out. “I’m assuming it collects our energy as you kill us so you don’t blast half the planet apart. How much capacity does it have?”
He told me, pulling the sword out of thin air. It wasn’t enough. The sword would hold about half my energy. If I could dump another two percent before I croaked, then maybe it would be enough to limit the destruction a bit. He’d probably die, so I wasn’t about to reveal the limitations of his sword to him. I didn’t want him changing his mind and gating out of here to save himself, leaving me to blow a huge chunk out of the ground. I wondered if the sword would survive the blast. If not, then we were back to square one. Not that we had any other options.
“Do it.” I told him.
He paused. “How much raw energy are you packing?”
I rounded down. Way down. Like ten percent of what I really had down. He raised his sword and began chanting something. I closed my eyes. I don’t have any problem facing my own death, but I simply could not look this angel in the eyes as he killed me. The chanting stopped and I held my breath; then it started again.
“Would you hurry the fuck up? I don’t have all day here,” I told him, keeping my eyes closed just in case.
The chanting stopped again and I heard him whisper something under his breath. I tensed, waiting, but instead of my head rolling on the ground I felt myself pushed onto my back in the blood wet grass. I risked opening my eyes and saw Gregory kneeling above me, shining white with his black–filled eyes and sharp teeth. What the hell was he doing? If he killed me this way, then everything would most likely be blown to bits. His eyes met mine.
“I’ll surely burn for this, but I seem to be heading down that path anyway,” he said as he leaned down into me, shoving his hand into the hole in my chest, and placing his lips on mine.
I thought it was a pretty inappropriate time for him to be getting his freak on, even by my standards, but who was I to judge? I opened my mouth to kiss him back and winced as his hand dug deep within my ruined flesh. Just like sex back home, I thought. I felt a vibration humming through me and realized that Gregory was slowly dragging the white energy out of my body and into his hand. It hurt terribly as the stuff burned and ripped its way out through my flesh. Another sound, like bells with his red–purple energy tinged in gold, was spreading out from his mouth across my flesh in a wave of regeneration. He was trying to heal me. I appreciated the effort, but I was really far gone and the hold on my raw energy was severely compromised. Desperate, I tried to shove some into him to hold.
He accepted a good sized chunk, so I proceeded to transfer the entire lot to him. Ridiculous, I know, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly at this point. I heard his quick intake of breath, as he realized the volume of energy and attempted to block the transfer. Things were getting fuzzy around the edges of my consciousness, and I was frantic to unload this energy before I croaked. I shoved it back at him more firmly, and he again blocked it. We continued this game of hot potato, with my slipping through additional chunks here and there as he was distracted trying to resist the largest portion. I knew it was too much for him, but I couldn’t help it. I could taste his blood filling my mouth as I continued to overload him with raw energy. Finally, with a massive effort, he crammed the largest portion back, shoving it deep within me and yanked with all his might on the remaining white stuff. The pain was intense and everything narrowed in to black . . .
When I came to, I realized that I was breathing with both my lungs. Gregory lay on top of me, with his weight thankfully on his elbows and knees. His face was turned away from me, but I could hear his ragged breath. Everything seemed to be in the right place. Personal and raw energy, flesh, bone, most of my blood. I reached up a hand and twirled one of his chestnut curls around my finger, tucking it back behind his blood crusted ear. His human form really sucked, but the hair was awesome. Soft and shiny, dark coppery red with a hint of brown. The curl sprang free from behind his ear and back onto my hand. So pretty.
He turned his head to look over at me, yanking the lock of hair free from my fingers. His eyes were still dark and his teeth pointy. He was covered in blood, both mine and his. “You lied to me,” he hissed.
He was really pissed. He had a reason to be since I’d nearly cooked him from the inside out. That said, this whole “save me, then want to kill me” pattern seemed to be an ongoing theme in our association.
Gregory grabbed me by the shoulders and thumped me gently against the ground. Very gently. With great restraint. I was starting to rethink my assessment of his lack of self control.
“You lied! You have fifty, a hundred times the energy you said you have. My sword couldn’t even have absorbed it all, and it was created to take out the most powerful demons with room to spare. There is no way you can hold that much energy and be stable. No way you can carry that around long term. Nothing can do that.”
I just looked at him. What was I supposed to say? We don’t need to carry around energy back home, it’s plentiful around us. I had been surprised at the amount I’d been able to hold over here. I was actually a bit depleted with all the conversions I’d done this week. I didn’t think telling him that would reassure him though.
He smacked me on the ground again. “Angels cannot hold raw energy. The sw
ord can absorb it, but it needs to change, to become something before I can attempt to hold it within me. You were killing me by shoving that much into me. Couldn’t pass up on an opportunity to be free of me at last, could you? You attempted to kill me while I was trying to save your life.”
“I didn’t intend to kill you,” I told him. It was kind of the truth. “If I had died, there would have been a huge explosion from the release of all that raw energy. I was trying to find a safe place for it. How am I supposed to know you can’t hold it? I don’t know anything about angels.”
He stared in disbelief at me, his face so close to mine. “I should have killed you the first moment I saw you. I should have let you die just now. You will never be anything but a worthless disgusting cockroach. But no, against council decree, against all common sense I healed you. I’ve let you go free, I’ve saved you from death, and I’ve healed you.”
“Are you not listening?” I shouted. He was inches from me, but I was pissed. “What fucking alternative did I have? Let’s review the options here: One — I die from Goldilocks’ blast and release my raw energy, killing you and a whole stinking bunch of humans. Two — you absorb some of my energy with the sword and kill me. I release less raw energy and kill a smaller bunch of humans and hopefully your sword doesn’t blow up, too. You may or may not die. I don’t fucking know. Three — you heal me, but I lose control and release enough raw energy to still kill a bunch of humans and possibly you, too. Or four — you heal me and help hold the energy so it doesn’t blow anything up. Wow, four sounds good to me. How the fuck am I supposed to know you can’t hold it? Fuck you.”
He glared down at me. I kind of wished he’d get up. Having an argument this close was really disconcerting.
“And why does a little cockroach like you care one bit about human death? Why would you care at all if an angel lived or died?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted. “I don’t fucking know. Now get off me, you asshole.”
Abruptly he stood up and continued to frown at me while I scrambled to a seated position.
“You need to go home. I’ll take you to the gate myself and see you through it. Stay there and don’t come back.” His voice sounded flat and hard. This was clearly not negotiable.
“No,” I told him. “I want to stay here. I have a life here and I’m not leaving. You can shove me through the gate, but I’ll be back. You can’t watch them all, and I’m very good at sneaking through.”
Gregory sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
“Fine. In the interest of my sanity, I’ll agree to let you stay as a bound demon. But there are rules. No Owning. No killing humans. No breeding. I see any plagues, asteroid strikes, or another ice age and I’m going to rip your head clean off your neck. Got it?”
Sheesh, like I could do any of those last things. I was just an imp, after all.
“Scouts honor,” I said. “Totally. Absolutely got it.”
He frowned. I was lying, and he knew it.
“Cockroach, do not push me on this. If you’re too much trouble, I can always take you back to Aaru and drag you around on a leash for the other angels to pet.”
Yikes. The idea of being a demon slave in Aaru was truly frightening. I nodded and tried to look sincere.
“Hey, can you gate me back to my car before you go?” I asked in what I hoped was a friendly tone. “I left it, like, five miles from here.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “What am I, your taxi?”
“It will just take you a second. I mean, I was helping you tonight. I did save your life after all. It’s the least you could do, you know.”
He shook his head and with an exasperated noise, gated away. Asshole.
Figuring I’d have a better chance hitchhiking if I cleaned up a bit, I walked down to the creek and tried to wash off as much blood as I could from my shirt. My bra was hysterical. One whole side was missing and it had been hanging in tatters under my destroyed shirt. Taking it off, I hung it on a tree limb and left it. I looked rather scruffy, braless with a backward torn shirt, but hopefully some hung–over local would give me a ride.
As I walked down to the main road, I saw Wyatt coming toward me. We walked casually toward each other as if we’d had a chance encounter while out on a walk.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you,” he said, smiling as we met.
“What did you do, leap out of Candy’s car? Smack her on the head with a box of wet wipes?”
“I threatened to shoot her if she didn’t let me out,” Wyatt said. “I would have done it, too. She told me she hadn’t promised to protect me from my own stupidity and let me out.”
Candy and I were going to have words.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m okay and feel me up for flesh wounds?” I was hopeful he’d get the hint on the feeling–me–up part.
He grinned. “You’re up and walking around. You don’t have a huge angel sword sticking out your back. I’ve learned that means you’re okay.”
“I get to stay, Wyatt,” I told him. “If I can manage to behave myself, then I get to stay.”
Wyatt nodded, his eyes warm on mine.
“Well then, let’s go find your car, go home, put some steaks on the grill, and get you a shower. Naked. With a Loofa,” he teased.
“I’m very injured and will need you to help scrub my back,” I told him.
“I was planning on it,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders as we walked side by side down the road.
I was going to go home. My earthly home. The one here in Maryland. Where I intended to stay as long as I could. With Wyatt. Hey, I’d be able to catch the Monday Zumba class tomorrow morning. Cool.
Epilogue
The sun was at its highest point, offering no relief for any creature foolish enough to be out midday. Iguanas, normally basking on rocks, were nowhere to be seen. The goats that climbed along the seaside cliffs were hidden away in caves.
The angel stretched his wings over the red dust, watching it cling to the taupe colored flight feathers. The feel of the heat, the dry, red, sandy dirt reminded him of somewhere else. Of course, he could never be in this form there. The blasting winds would tear apart this soft flesh even before the radiation cooked through skin and bone.
This place was enjoyable. Even though he never fully committed himself to a corporeal form, he could still feel the bake of the sun on skin, the scrape of rock on his wings, the bright light causing his dark eyes to water slightly. He frowned, wondering for a moment how the demons could stand it. How could they endure the constant onslaught of sensation that a deep physical form brought? He could barely endure this.
He looked up to see a man approaching him. It was another angel with dark spiked hair and wings of pure white. He looked down at his own wings with their swirling colors of cream and taupe. The scars were barely visible after all this time. He could feel them though, aching deep beyond the muscle and bone to the spirit part of him. It had been so long ago, but the scars still felt like fresh wounds.
“Brother,” the dark haired angel acknowledged as he walked up to the seated figure.
Gregory rose. “Brother.”
The dark haired angel shuddered slightly as he took the offered hand and clasped it. Shimmering, he shifted into a female form, although still with the short dark spikes of hair.
“Female?” Gregory asked.
The woman grimaced. “You’re very much to the right at the moment, and it is uncomfortable not to have balance between us.”
Gregory frowned. Was he? He was often accused of being too far to the right, but not so much that he caused such discomfort that others to feel the need to change. It was her. She was so very far to the left, and he’d just gotten used to balancing in her presence.
“Brother, what are you doing?” the woman asked, sitting down on a large rock. Gregory sat too, in a silent agreement that this would be an informal family meeting and not a confrontation.
“What kind of horrific binding d
id you do with that demon? Why didn’t you kill her? And now you’ve killed Althean. Brother, you are creating enemies left and right. You’re lucky everyone is too scared of you to take action.”
Gregory smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. He was well aware that his three remaining brothers were happy to stir the pot and spread doubts about his competency, about his sanity.
“I’m also lucky that I have such loyal brothers to watch my back,” he said
“Seriously,” the woman urged. “Why didn’t you kill her?”
Gregory shrugged. “I thought she’d be useful in hunting Althean. They have skills. I think I may use her in some other projects before I kill her. I might as well since I took the time to bind her.”
At least he lied better than that irritating cockroach of a demon. She’d surprised him, acted very un–demonic in protecting her human toy by jumping on him and smacking his head on the ground. It made him curious about her. No, it made him wonder with a fleeting hope if maybe there was some spark in them, something left of the angels they used to be. It was a whim he’d indulged in, with horrible consequences.
“Brother, there are rumors about the binding. Rumors that it is too in the flesh, tied to sensation, that it binds you as much as it binds the demon,” the woman said.
“She was not easy to bind,” Gregory interrupted. He paused, realizing that he sounded defensive. “I haven’t bound a demon in ages, and I was very angry at that moment. Yes, the binding is flawed. I will fix it as soon as I have the time.”
