by Amy Lane
And it seemed as though Adrian’s hobbies translated into the afterlife as well.
While Shepherd and Jefischa watched, passively at first, Adrian would disappear for a time. They knew where he went—to the lower levels, the place in heaven reserved for people who hadn’t quite come to peace, either with who they had been when alive or with the manners of their deaths. Shep and Jefi weren’t allowed there. It took a special sort of angel to work that section, and Lucifer and Gabriel pretty much had it locked. But Adrian would go (although he scornfully pronounced Lucifer “a git wank of the first order” and announced that Gabriel would be “a great bloke without the pretty blue stick up his arse”) and return, usually with a smuggled refugee on his arm.
It was Jefischa who pointed out that the cord anchoring the refugees to earth was often a mix of pale gold and rabid, angry vermillion.
It was Shepherd who first noticed that Adrian seemed to be having unlawful heavenly relations with the refugees as soon as he closed off his “room.”
And both noticed that the more time the souls spent in Adrian’s company, the less angry the red—until finally, all that was left was the gold.
“What do you suppose he’s doing in there?” Jefischa asked one day, after Adrian had given one of those insouciant, inviting grins and disappeared into his room with a very plain girl and her beautiful boyfriend on either arm.
Shepherd managed a droll look. “Playing cribbage.”
“Ha-ha—I see humans having sex, Shepherd. I have a pretty good idea of what he’s doing physically, or imaginary physically, or whatever. I just want to know what he’s—you know—doing with them, to make them so much less angry and so much more able to accept the love that will make them happy here.”
Shepherd had wondered that himself. In fact, he’d wondered enough to listen in to their hearts, and he’d been surprised. “He’s turned penance into an act of love,” he said at last, not wanting to explain any further. Fortunately, he was friends with Jefi for many reasons. One of the principal reasons was that Jefi sometimes got exactly what he meant and didn’t make him say any more. Jefi’s (pouty, round) mouth made a little O and he nodded. He got it, and the conversation was tabled for the moment.
But not forever.
“What I don’t understand,” Shep said later, while Adrian was there, “is why you don’t feel unfaithful. You have lovers. Even if you’re waiting—”
“A millennium or so,” Adrian supplied dryly.
“But still! Won’t it make them jealous?” Shepherd knew it would make him jealous. He’d be furious if Jefi was with anyone else. Jefi was Shepherd’s. It was a solid, irrevocable, permanent forever. Four millennia in each other’s company gave him dibs, dammit—he would never share nicely.
“Now, mate, you know as well as I do that the quickest way to lose a friend is to talk politics, right?”
Shepherd blinked and nodded. It was true. The Goddess’s children were often given permission not to adhere to absolute monogamy. It was almost written in their bylaws, if the Goddess had believed in order enough to have such a thing.
“I’m not talking politics,” Shep argued weakly. “I’m just… you know… asking. Will they forgive you?”
Adrian smiled—his bittersweet smile, they had learned. The one that let them see into his true heart. “Mate, they would rather I be here, doing some good and making some friends, than caught in some terrible limbo with no touch at all. Wasn’t it one of yours who said ‘True love is not jealous’? We just take that literally, that’s all.”
Shep’s face fell a little. What he felt for Jefi wasn’t true? He’d been sure it was. Did that mean he’d have to share him, if they did fall? Suddenly Adrian was up close, smiling into his face and winking at Jefi, who seemed lost in the conversation.
“I’m not saying you have to share, mate. It’s just what works for us. There’s no reason to break up a team that’s worked since time began just because the nature of the team has changed. You feel me?”
Shepherd was not sure what his expression was. He was trying to keep it neutral, because he didn’t want either of his companions to know the true nature of his thoughts. It didn’t matter, though; Adrian put a hand over his eyes, and Jefi looked at him in delighted shock.
“Shep, you’re not supposed to do that in front of anybody but angels! You know that!”
Shepherd immediately put a damper on his glory, but it didn’t stop a little voice from singing Mine, mine, Jefi’s all mine! Eventually, he learned that he didn’t want to.
Just like eventually they learned that mostly, Adrian was a hell of a nice guy. Vampire or not, he’d had the good fortune to love so deeply and to feel that love in return so assuredly that he really could wait a thousand years to see his beloveds and his beloved friend again. It was worth it.
They would watch as Adrian, in the middle of chess, in the middle of whatever he was doing in his room, was called away. The cord at his chest, the one that should be fading and becoming more a memory than a reality, would grow thick and fat, would begin to glow, would throb in time to a heart that hadn’t beat in a hundred and fifty years… and then would pull him toward the living who loved him.
No matter how tired he was when he returned to heaven after each visit, he always looked happy to go.
Jefi watched him go one night as Shep moved up to take his place at the board.
“What do you think that’s like?” Jefi asked softly. “That much mortal love. It’s so intense, you know?”
Shep nodded and tried to figure out where Adrian was on the board—and whether he’d been planning to let Jefi win or lose. Aha! That knight was about ready to be sacrificed, and then the whole house of cards would fall down. Jefi was going to win this one.
“Yes, I do know,” he answered, moving the knight and preparing to fall. Jefi ignored the offer and moved a pawn for no reason at all. Shepherd sighed and pretended to study the board again. “Mortals love very intensely. That’s why angels fall when they love like mortals.”
Jefi looked up, surprised, and Shep blushed. He’d been doing that lately, having human physical reactions to emotional stimuli. In this case, the emotional stimuli was the suggestion of what the other angels might have done to fall.
“Too much gravity in our skin?” Jefi asked with quietly dancing eyes.
Shepherd returned the look with his own gentle humor. “Too much gravity in our hearts.” He returned to the chessboard and once again put Jefi in position to win. This time Jefi took him up on it. They played in happy silence for a little, and then Jefi suddenly glared at Shep and conceded his queen.
“It’s no fun when you let me win, Shep.”
Shep stared at him, shocked. “Four millennia, and you haven’t said anything!” he protested, and Jefi’s scowl had nothing to do with the fourth hour of the night and everything to do with Shep.
“I didn’t notice until Adrian didn’t beat me. I mean, I could buy that maybe you’re not the best chess player, but I know I suck! Why do you do it? It can’t be any fun to always play a guy you have to lose to!” Jefi was offended but not outraged or seriously hurt, and Shep breathed a sigh of relief.
“It is fun,” Shep said, hating the new accident of energy and faux flesh that made him blush. “It’s fun because I get to talk to you and we can, you know, be Shep and Jefi.” Weak. How was it that an angel couldn’t find a better way to phrase something as commonplace as simply being with another angel?
“Well, then, why don’t you just play me and win?” Jefi’s voice rose, and Shepherd revised his opinion. He was hurt. Shep looked away. He’d never meant to hurt Jefi. In fact, quite the opposite.
“It’s no fun being left behind. I don’t ever want to do that to you. I figured, you know… I’d just stay equal with you. That’s all.” Shep smiled as appealingly as he could. He was used to scowling, to being the stern member of their duo, the saturnine bass to Jefi’s sweet alto—but he couldn’t stand that he’d hurt Jefischa’s feelings.
Jefischa regarded him levelly. “How long have you been ready to fall, Shepherd?”
It was Shepherd’s turn to cough on his spit. It had been a quiet thought, only in the deepest nights when he’d heard the ugliest secrets mankind had to offer. He’d never given voice to the idea that he didn’t want to hear penitence anymore. He’d never even hinted that he wanted to live on earth and see if he could live, eat, run, laugh, fornicate without ever repenting a damned thing.
“What makes you think I am?” he asked bleakly, putting off the inevitable. Angels couldn’t lie. It was in the contract. Jefi shrugged, looking down at the chess set. It was automatically resetting as he watched, all of the pieces shaping themselves into light clouds and dark clouds to look like marble, even if they didn’t feel cold and rigid to the touch.
“You blush all the time now. You… your appearance has changed. Your hair really is auburn, not the color of a watercolor picture, and it’s shaved close to your neck. Your eyes are deep dark brown, and you have wrinkles in the corner, like you scowl a lot. Your nose is a little big for your face, but it suits you, and your lips aren’t full—they’re lean, and they tilt up. And your face isn’t round or oval—it’s square, and so is your jaw. Saint Peter hasn’t said anything. I don’t think Adrian has noticed. But I have. You… you’re becoming closer to human. When were you going to tell me?”
Shepherd swallowed. Another human trait—one, in fact, he’d learned from Adrian, who, damn him, wasn’t supposed to be human at all. “I wasn’t,” he rasped. “You don’t want to fall. I don’t want you to fall. I don’t want to leave you behind. And I’m not. And in case you haven’t noticed, your eyes are round and gray, and your hair is the color of a sandy beach, and it’s long and wispy, like those boys who sing onstage. And your lips are full. And your face is narrow, with high cheekbones. And your jaw is square and your chin is pointed. And nobody here seems to notice. Nobody but me.”
They sat there in stark silence for a moment, staring at each other, recognizing that the other had changed, feeling the changes in themselves.
“I’d fall if you fell,” Jefi said quietly, staring into his eyes like he had not another thing in the world to do. He didn’t. Neither of them did.
“The world is an awful place, Jefi,” Shep said, and he wondered when angel’s tears started to burn in his eyes. “I don’t want you there.”
“Better there with you than here without you.” Jefi’s big gray eyes were as serious as Shep had ever seen them.
Shepherd nodded, as though resolved about something. “Well, then, the changes stop here. No more….” He was going to say No more talking to Adrian, but he couldn’t. Adrian had done nothing, and they were his companions. They were, in fact, becoming friends. They couldn’t go back to being Adrian’s guardians; it would be cruel.
“No more changing,” Shep finished weakly, and for once, Jefi was the sardonic one. He raised an eyebrow as though to say Yeah, that can happen, but Shepherd had no answer for him. It was the best he could do. For a heavenly being, it wasn’t much.
Adrian returned, and for a change of pace Shepherd suggested cribbage. It turned out Jefi could hold his own on a cribbage board, and they played cribbage or Hand and Foot pretty much from there on out. So it might have continued indefinitely, if not for two things.
The first was unexpected and frightening—because as often as people on earth report that it happens, the truth is that the closest they usually get to seeing the afterlife is a brief glimpse through a long tunnel. It wasn’t often that someone still alive just appeared in their midst.
They were playing cribbage, and Jefi was giving them a sampling of music. Adrian adored music—the two of them shared a passion for Linkin Park, and Shepherd had to admit the band was growing on him. Suddenly, in the middle of “What I’ve Done,” Adrian’s golden cord pulsed hard and turned scarlet.
Adrian shouted, “Fuck!” and he stood up, looking wildly around until she appeared.
It was his lover, the human sorceress, and she was mortally hurt. Blood was flowing down her throat, and Adrian took two anguished steps toward her before taking her hands in his own.
“You shouldn’t be here!” he told her, and she nodded and whispered something, nestling into his arms. They spoke then, important things, terribly important things, but Shepherd and Jefischa refused to listen. They put up a clear wall and stood, watching the two lovers touch when it was forbidden and talk face-to-face when they shouldn’t even have been occupying the same place.
They could both see when the girl was called back. Her face contorted in pain and she grasped Adrian’s hands tighter, and then she flickered in and out and was gone. Jefischa and Shepherd were there with Adrian before she’d even disappeared. The cord at his chest was no longer red, but it was still shiny, bright with need, and bigger than a man’s wrist. He raised a shaking hand, covered in the blood that had flowed from her wounds, and licked it off delicately, closing his eyes in pleasure and pain as he tasted his beloved in the most intimate of imaginary ways.
“I’ve got to go,” Adrian muttered, touching his tongue to the corner of his mouth between words. “She barely made it. Green needs me. He doesn’t know why she did it, and I’ve got to tell him… Christ!” he screamed, naked and angry and unapologetic about it. He turned a furious, blood-tear-stained face toward Shep and Jefi. “She takes such terrible risks! It would kill him, you understand? Kill him… kill us all if she died, and we wouldn’t even be together. Goddess… sweet Goddess… I’ve got to make Green understand.”
“Make him understand why she’d do that?” Shepherd asked, appalled. “I don’t understand why she’d do that!”
Adrian scowled, impatient and upset. “You of all people should understand why she’d do it. A friend was in danger, and she was trying to save him. She knows enough about grief by now to know you don’t let anyone fall alone if you can help it.”
He disappeared then, leaving Shep and Jefi alone and shaken. They sat numbly in a cloud bank and clutched hands. They’d been doing that a lot lately, and Shep took a moment to note that more and more, they were actually holding hands in his mind, and less and less touching energy. That was when he realized Jefi was stroking the back of his hand softly.
“Why does this upset you so much?” Jefischa asked quietly into the silence, and Shepherd shrugged. He should have been embarrassed to say this, but he wasn’t. And it was something Jefi needed to hear.
“Because even though she was just here, defying every law we have to shed blood in heaven, when I see her, I don’t see his girl, standing there, covered in blood and begging for forgiveness,” he said at last. “I see you. I think being mortal could hurt very, very much. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that much pain.”
Jefi’s hand began to shake in his. “Well, it’s a good thing we’ve decided not to fall,” he said, but there was something empty in his voice that made Shep look at him closely.
“Why is that?” Shepherd asked.
“It’s not like you’ve set high standards for the quality of your love, or anything,” he responded bitterly, and then he dropped Shep’s hand and disappeared.
“Jefi? Jefi?” But Jefi was gone, disappearing into the ether. He’d done this before when they’d quarreled, flounced off and sulked somewhere alone while he kept watch. Shep had learned that he’d return, usually pretending nothing had happened. It was just that this time, Shep couldn’t figure out what he’d done to provoke this fit of the sulks. Of course he set high standards for a proposed life in the human world. Would Jefischa deserve anything less?
Adrian returned, nearly transparent with energy depletion, and retreated into his little space by himself without a word. Shepherd brooded, alone and feeling stormy and gray, and wished that Jefischa would return.
“What did you say to him?” Adrian asked after he’d recouped a little of his strength. Shep looked up from where he was contemplating a brothel. If he wanted to work himself into a good
brood, a brothel was the place to do it. They repented everything: leaving their parents, giving children up for adoption, not listening to the people who loved them, their last trick. Settling his soul into a brothel and soaking up the regret and remorse and the terrible pain was guaranteed to make Shep feel worse—and make the brothel close down. Once he sat there and saturated the place with forgiveness and blessing, the women who had a place to go usually went back to the people they felt they’d wronged, and made their lives better. The women who had no haven except the brothel itself at least seemed to feel some peace about how it was they made their living, and developed a belief that survival was not a sin.
Shepherd was left with all of their regret, but he got to see them find their way in life, and it seemed to be a good trade. He watched now as the healing that was his trademark began to work and looked up at Adrian with bleak eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, and then he felt the tug of something painful. That was a lie. He did know, and now he was obligated to tell the truth. “I told him that I didn’t want us to fall because I was afraid I couldn’t protect him from the world.”
Adrian raised his eyebrows. “Well, no wonder,” he said shortly, and Shepherd frowned at him.
“Why? What’s he doing?”
There was a sardonic snort. “He’s attending every children’s choir practice for every religion known to man. I would too. What you said, that’s bloody insulting!”
