“Oh yeah?” Baxter looked back at the veranda and saw several trestle tables had been set up. He noticed that Samael had sat down with Israfel and Tabbris, Ahijah sitting beside him, and the four of them were talking and smiling. Shateiel and his wife Agrat arrived then, the angels Asaf and Vel with them, and as Baxter watched, Hiwa ambled over to talk to Declan and Liam and peer at the Roadrunner. “Why does everyone get moony-eyed over those damn cars?” he wondered aloud.
Danny burst out laughing. “Beats me.”
“It’s a reminder of happier times, of childhood,” Riley said in his soft voice. “I think that their father drove a car and a truck like that. But not at the same time, of course.”
Baxter looked at Riley in surprise. “Really?”
“I overheard Declan speaking to Angelique about it.” Riley shrugged. “Though I think she just likes fast British bikes.”
“So does my wife,” Danny said.
Riley smiled slightly. “They like to go riding together on it. I think Lily feels a sense of freedom, and Angelique rides that thing as if she’s in some sort of long-distance road bike race.”
“You might have a point there,” Danny said. “I do get amazing sex when she gets home from a ride with Jelly.”
“La la la, can’t hear you,” Baxter said, holding up his free hand. “I don’t want to know about your sex life, dude.”
Danny laughed and laughed. “Prude.”
“If it isn’t Liam and me having amazing sex, I don’t want to know,”
Baxter said.
“Fair point.” Danny took a swig of his beer. “They sound good, don’t they?” He pointed toward the four beings who were now singing along to Israfel’s guitaring, a song Baxter didn’t recognize, sung in a language he didn’t understand. It was upbeat, though, a happy, cheerful song, and he found himself tapping his foot in time to the music as Ahijah clapped a rhythm.
“They really do.” Baxter smiled suddenly. “This is like a family dinner party. It’s awesome.”
“Family?” Riley looked confused. He looked around the yard, taking in the Venatores, the children, the angels and Archangels, the trackers and hunters, and then he smiled. “You’re right. It is a family. A big, noisy family.”
“It’s fucking awesome is what it is,” Danny said.
“Damn right.” Baxter took a drink of his beer. “I fucking love it. I never thought I’d feel like this again—happy, relaxed, comfortable, safe.
Fuck, safe wasn’t even in my vocabulary for a while. But it is now. And that’s… well, it’s awesome, that’s what it is.”
Danny leaned over and clinked his beer bottle against Baxter’s.
“Agreed.”
Lily came over to join them then, wiping her hands on an old threadbare towel. “I’m just going to take a quick shower,” she said. “Can you grab me a beer, babe?”
“Sure thing, love of my life,” Danny said.
She smiled at him, a smile that Baxter recognized as being very similar to the smiles Liam gave him: full of love and happiness.
“Thanks. I’ll be back in a bit, mateys.” She jogged off and went into the large house, heading toward the apartment she and Danny lived in.
“To a good night,” Baxter said, holding up his beer.
“And to many more like it,” Danny agreed, holding up his own.
Baxter clinked his bottle against his friend’s. “Amen to that.”
IT WAS late, nearly midnight, and all the children and some of their Venatores parents had gone to bed. The Archangels sat in little groups with the other angels, and the Venatores still awake were clustered together in their packs. Israfel was strumming his guitar, singing softly in a clear tenor, Raphael singing with him, his rich baritone perfectly contrasting with Israfel’s voice. Baxter sat beside Liam, holding his hand, their fingers entwined. Liam was humming softly, and Baxter shifted, leaning closer so he could hear Liam better.
Michael and Gabriel were a little apart from the rest of their Brotherhood. Gabriel’s hands were on Michael’s hips, and Michael’s rested on Gabriel’s shoulders. They swayed gently, moving to the music Israfel and Raphael were making, and their foreheads were touching.
Michael’s expression was one Baxter couldn’t remember seeing before: soft, tender, loving. He was gazing into Gabriel’s eyes, and he was smiling. Baxter couldn’t remember ever seeing Michael smile, at least not like that, not so full of adoration and devotion. It was such a naked display of emotion, so clearly directed at Gabriel, that Baxter felt a little embarrassed to be watching. He turned away as Gabriel pulled Michael a little closer and slid his arms around Michael’s waist.
“They’re cute, don’t you think?”
Baxter smiled at Liam. “Cute, but I feel like a dirty voyeur watching them.”
Liam quirked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“They’re so obviously in love, and Mike’s never been good at showing his emotions—except for frustration. He’s never shy about showing that. But seeing him look at Gabriel the way he is right now, with others around to see him do it, it’s a damn miracle he hasn’t turned crimson and dragged Gabriel somewhere private. But he hasn’t, and he’s being so open about how he feels when he never, ever is otherwise, that it feels like looking at the two of them like this is intruding a bit.”
Liam was silent for a moment. He gazed over at the pair of Archangels, and Baxter gave them a quick glance just as Gabriel pressed a kiss to Michael’s cheek.
“I see what you mean,” Liam said. “They’re not really doing anything, but they’re so intimate together.”
“Yeah. So it feels a bit rude to watch them.”
Liam regarded Baxter with that expression that showed he was working through clues on a hunt. “This is genuine discomfort at seeing such intimacy, right? Not that you’ve stil got a bit of a crush on Michael?”
Of all the things he’d expected to hear, that wasn’t on the list. Baxter gaped at Liam, rendered speechless by the question. He spluttered indignantly for a moment, and Liam let out a quiet sigh and rubbed his face with his free hand.
“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “I didn’t mean to blindside you with that.
It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“Only you totally don’t trust me, dude,” Baxter shot back, astonished.
“I don’t trust anyone completely,” Liam said. His voice was very quiet. “I haven’t since I was thirteen. Only the ghosts, and even not all of them. But I trust you more than I have anyone that isn’t family since I was… well, a kid. This isn’t really about you, though.”
“Really? Because it feels like it’s a bit about me,” Baxter said.
“I know, and I’m sorry. Just… shit. The last relationship I was in did not end well.” Liam laughed, but it sounded brittle.
Baxter frowned, not wanting to feel pity for Liam, at least not now.
He was still indignant that he’d been asked about his old crush.
“We al have our demons,” Liam went on. “And we either live with them and move on or let them eat us whole. My last boyfriend was a demon.”
All the anger and indignation drained out of Baxter like water poured out of a bucket. “What? A demon? What the hell?”
“I didn’t know he was a demon,” Liam said. He closed his eyes, and Baxter saw great pain pass over his handsome face. It was a fleeting thing, gone in the blink of an eye. Liam opened his eyes and shrugged. “I met him in a dive bar in Utah. He said he was a demon kil er, that he could track them and he was on the trail of an Archdemon. Dec and me, we were between jobs, so we offered to help him out. For the next three months, we traveled all over the United States, tracking this al eged Archdemon. And then we ended up in Idaho in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and my boyfriend, the man I thought I was fal ing in love with, revealed that he was a demon himself and summoned half a legion of his demon buddies and started a fight.”
“Oh shit,” Baxter breathed.
“Yeah.” Liam slouched a little in
his seat. “We fought ’em—we’re not exactly helpless, after all. Declan started yelling a prayer, the homily of Saint Gabriel the Archangel, and the demons really didn’t like that; the one that had been pretending to be my boyfriend punched him repeatedly in the mouth, broke seven of his teeth and cracked his jaw, but it was enough. Gabe appeared, and he yelled at us to get down, cover our faces, and then all we heard was screaming. When Gabe told us we could look around, the demons were dead and the warehouse stank like rotting meat.
Gabe ’ported us to his house at Deep Bay, called Raph, and we got patched up, but….” Liam shrugged again and fell silent.
“But you couldn’t stop feeling like a fool because you got taken in by a demon and it’s fucked your trust up,” Baxter finished for him. “Shit, babe. I totally get it. And I’m not going to yell at you for asking the question about Mikey. I’ll answer you honestly, okay?”
Liam nodded.
“No. I don’t have any sort of crushy-type feelings for him. Once upon a time I did, I’m not going to lie. And I know, thanks to some pretty hardcore therapy with Raph, that a lot of it was due to gratitude to Mike for saving my miserable ass. Stockholm Syndrome or something, he called it. But Mike and Gabe are just…. You don’t see love like that often. So all power to ’em. I don’t want Mike as a lover or anything. I seem to be pretty damn in love with this really tall guy with shaggy hair who talks to dead people and has this weird obsession with antique cars named after cartoon characters that you always refer to as ‘Baby.’”
Liam burst out laughing. He pulled Baxter into his arms and hugged him, then kissed him hard. “I fucking love you, Bax.”
“Right back atcha, babe.” Baxter kissed Liam’s cheek. “You’re not going to ask me about Mike again, though, are you?”
“No. No, we’re good. I’m sorry I asked in the first place.”
“It’s cool. Your explanation is… well, fucked-up, and I’m sorry you went through that, but I can’t promise I’ll be as understanding if I get asked again.”
“I understand. One free pass for stupid paranoia, right?”
“Right.” Baxter ruffled Liam’s hair. “My shaggy boyfriend.”
“Got that right.” Liam kissed the tip of Baxter’s nose. “And my car is awesome.”
Baxter rolled his eyes. “It’s a car, Liam. Okay, so a lot of the cars around today aren’t that great, thanks to resources being used up in the war and people dying and shit like that, but still. It’s not a baby. It’s not a puppy. It’s a car. Made out of metal.”
Liam sighed. “She’s more than that.”
“She? Oh good grief, you’ve made it human. Tell me, have you read Christine by Stephen King? It’d be right up your alley. It’s about a demon-possessed car who thinks it’s people.”
Liam grinned. “It’s a good book, but Baby isn’t like that.”
“You named it Baby?”
Liam began to laugh. Baxter gaped at him, and then he rolled his eyes again.
“I’m dating a car-crazy giant.”
“Yeah, but you love me.”
“I do, and I think it’s only fair that you go surfing with me so I don’t get jealous of the car.”
“Uh-uh, no way. I’m not going surfing. You can’t get me on one of your boards of death.”
Baxter grinned. “We’ll see. I bet you ten dollars that I’ll get you on a surfboard by the end of 2086. Also, they’re not boards of death.”
“It is if I have to ride it, but you’re on. Ten bucks it is.”
They shook hands, and then Baxter shook his head and laughed, pulling Liam into a hug. “You’re such a dork.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Takes one to love one.”
“Get a room,” Angelique said then, walking past them. “Jesus, you two are so sappy, you could be a rom-com.”
“We have a room,” Baxter said. He looked over the gathering, noting that, apart from them, the angels were the only ones still awake. “And we’re going there now.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Liam agreed.
“Don’t go to your place,” Angelique said. “Dec and I are there.”
“Right! Baxter’s place it is,” Liam said hastily.
“No arguing there.” Baxter shuddered. “You two are loud, Jelly. I’m seriously thinking of getting Mike to soundproof Declan’s room.”
Angelique pulled a face. “Don’t do that. He’ll give me a long lecture about being sexually responsible, then decide I need to do a six-year mission in Italy, in a convent in the Vatican.”
Baxter burst out laughing. “He probably would at that.”
“We won’t tell him if you and Dec turn your volumes down a notch,” Liam said.
Angelique sighed heavily. “Fine. You drive a hard bargain. Good thing you’re cute. Now take Sugar-puff to bed, Liam.”
“Don’t call me that,” Baxter said automatically at the same time Liam said, “Roger that, ma’am.”
Angelique made a shooing motion with her hands. “Git.”
Baxter got to his feet, Liam a breath behind him. Angelique turned and walked toward the large house that was the apartment block, and Baxter watched her go. Then he felt Liam gently tugging at his hand and he turned to his lover and smiled. “Okay, I get the hint. Bed?”
“Bed,” Liam agreed.
Baxter moved to wrap an arm around Liam’s waist as Liam slung one around Baxter’s shoulders. They made their way to the back door that led into the building, and Baxter realized that he felt pretty happy. Even with the question about his past crush, he felt good. Liam’s explanation made sense, and Baxter understood quite a bit about paranoia. He decided that he wouldn’t hold Liam’s own fears against him; it wouldn’t be fair.
He’d rather that Liam held himself against Baxter instead.
Inside, they walked down the long hallway, past the six closed doors that led to the six apartments, then made their way quietly up the first flight of stairs to the landing. Baxter’s apartment was one door down, and he opened it, gesturing for Liam to enter before him. Once they were both inside, Baxter locked the front door, making sure they wouldn’t be interrupted.
He turned to face Liam, who was already shucking his clothes.
Baxter licked his lips, eyeing Liam up and down as his body was revealed.
“Fuck, you are so gorgeous.”
Now naked, Liam crooked a finger, and Baxter went willingly, eagerly to him. As Liam pulled him into his arms and kissed him, a hungry, passionate kiss, Baxter’s last coherent thought was that perhaps a bit of paranoia would be okay. Especially when it led to kisses like that.
IT WAS late, nearly dawn, and Baxter padded barefoot into the living room. He was tired, but he wasn’t able to sleep. It had been with great reluctance that he had disentangled himself from Liam’s embrace, moving slowly and carefully so as not to wake him. Just because Baxter was awake didn’t mean Liam should be too.
Baxter went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. Before the Venatores, he’d never liked tea, but after living here and being in and out of the apartments of Lily, Danny, and Angelique, he’d developed a taste for it. He placed the blame squarely on Lily. She seemed to have a tea for every occasion, and Baxter had discovered that lemon green tea was delicious.
He leaned against the sink as he waited for the kettle to boil, yawning hugely. He was tired, but his mind was active, unable to settle down. He grumbled to himself—he didn’t want to spend the whole of the new day shuffling around, yawning his head off because he hadn’t been able to sleep.
The kettle clicked off when the water boiled, and Baxter picked it up, pouring hot water into his coffee mug with a tea bag and two lumps of sugar. Once the mug was full, he set the kettle back on its base. Then he picked up his mug and went back into the living room to the comfortable armchair by the window. He sat down and stretched out his legs, blowing onto the steaming tea as he let his mind wander.
To his annoyance, his mind seemed to want to go back ove
r memories of the war. Baxter did not want to think about that. He wanted to focus on the good things in his life, not the eighteen months he’d spent fighting the forces of Hell with his platoon, hopelessly outgunned and outmaneuvered. He didn’t want to think about all the death he’d seen, and he particularly did not want to think about all the despair and misery he’d been through.
It began to rain, droplets splattering against the window, and the sound triggered an old memory, one he tried very hard not to think about.
In his mind’s eye, as clearly as if he were back there again, he could see the battlefield at Turquoise Ridge. He could see nothing but bodies for miles all around him, the rain falling soundlessly on the carcasses and turning the dirt and earth into mud and slush. Blood, along with other things he didn’t want to think about, was mixed with the mud, and the stench was awful, making him gag, a smell so strong and so foul that he could almost taste death.
He stumbled along, panting, half-blinded by tears and the rain and get ing covered in detritus and sludge. Every so often, he’d fal onto the body of one of his mates, a fel ow Marine who had been cut down by a demon or a demon al y. To this day, Baxter wasn’t sure who was worse—the demons or their human al ies. Some of the dead had been partial y eaten, and that made his gorge rise, so that soon he was throwing up stomach acid and feeling dizzy from all the horror around him that never seemed to end.
In the distance, he could hear the pitiful cries of someone begging for help, a thin, reedy wail that made him shake uncontrollably. He stumbled again, falling onto another corpse, and came face to face with his lover, the first man he had felt comfortable with, the first man he had trusted and loved and planned a future with.
In the present, Baxter’s hands were shaking now, and he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deeply through his nose and out through his mouth. He set down the mug of tea and buried his face in his hands, wishing with all his might for someone to take away these memories so they would torment him no longer.
And then Liam was there, his arms around Baxter’s shoulders, his voice in Baxter’s ear, soothing, comforting, and so very alive. With a soft, despairing wail, Baxter turned and buried his face in Liam’s chest and wept. How long they stayed like that, Baxter had no idea, but finally, when he had no more tears left, he pulled back enough to wipe his face and blow his nose. He looked at Liam’s handsome face, afraid of what he would see. Baxter had always thought that such displays of emotion were a weakness, something to be pitied and scorned, but he saw none of that in Liam’s hazel-green eyes. Instead he saw compassion, love, and, peculiarly, understanding.
Archangel Chronicles 7 - Shot In the Dark Page 3
