A Demon Bound

  Part of my thoughts went to a constant scan for Althean. That was a boring activity though, so I drank my beer, eyed the patrons and wondered what I could do to entertain myself until I could kill something. The four guys at the bar were riveted to the game on TV. There were a couple of guys playing darts. The guitarist started up again bellowing some ballad about love and tulips. One of the guys at the bar glanced at him in irritation and turned the captioning on the TV. I didn't realize they close captioned football games. Huh.

  "What's the guitarist's name?" I asked the bartender.

  "Bob Burrows," he told me, glancing over at the singer. "He annoys everyone, but the owner's sister knows him so we have to let him play."

  I took a swig of beer and looked over at the guy. He was skinny, with a short beard and longish brown hair. Mid-twenties. His hands on the guitar were rough and calloused with a wedding ring on his left hand. He had that far away look in his eyes of a man whose dreams have been derailed by reality. The guitar was second hand, but in decent shape. The case battered with some band stickers that clearly were not placed there by the current owner. His sheet music was propped up in the lid.

  "How often does he play here?" I asked.

  The bartender shrugged. "A couple times per week if we're lucky. He works construction. Went to Shepherdstown College across the river for a year for music, but got married and dropped out. His wife gets irritated if he's out here too many evenings."

  I got up and walked over to the guy. "Are you Bob Burrows?" I asked.

  He looked at me, clearly noting I was not one of the regulars, or even a local in this small town. "Yes."

  "I'm a private investigator out of Hagerstown," I told him. "I'm doing surveillance in a divorce case. I just wanted to let you know that your wife is fucking the propane delivery guy. His wife hired me to get proof after she found some naked pictures of your wife on his phone. You seem like a nice guy, and I just thought you ought to know."

  I never saw a man scramble up his guitar and case so fast in his life. He raced out the door and a few moments later a truck roared out of the parking lot. His wife probably was cheating on him. Loser was so hung up on what could have been that he can't have been very present in their relationship.

  I turned around to see the patrons staring at me. Even the four football watching guys had torn their gazes from the television to look at me with their mouths open.

  "You wanna play darts?" a short wiry guy asked me.

  Althean was still nowhere nearby so I played some darts and ordered the hot wings that were on special.

  The hot wings were good, but they didn't improve my dart game. I finally gave up and started tossing darts into the various decorations on the wall holding the dart board. My favorite was in the nose of the mounted deer head. It was very amusing to see a lovely cluster imbedded in the deer's left nostril. The patrons and bartender started to look at me warily. They probably were beginning to think they had been better off with the guitarist. Much to everyone's relief, the bar finally announced last call. I'd filled the deer head and a painting of some military guy with dart holes, and was trying to convince one of the drunken guys to put a stalk of celery in his mouth in a William Tell-style feat of accuracy. The bartender managed to shoo us out the door before I impaled the guy.

  Still no Althean. It was two in the morning and I was getting bored with walking the one street town. I could go to the all night Waffle House up the road, but I was worried it would be too far to get an accurate fix on my target if he arrived. Everything was closed in this town. Crossing the street, I made my way again to Burnside Bridge Road, where a small gas station occupied a corner.

  The gas station had closed hours before, but there was a soda machine humming away outside the garage building. I only had change enough for one soda, so I used a small trickle of energy to dislodge the rest out of the machine and wasted some time shaking them up and pitching them against the gas pumps. The minimum wage attendant would get quite a shock when he opened in the morning and found the pumps sticky with dented soda cans strewn about.

  Finally, I couldn't take any more boredom. I texted Wyatt letting him know that I had decided not to leave anyway, and that I was in Sharpsburg vandalizing a gas station. I told him that he should come down and bring some beer so he could drink with me. Then we could pitch the bottles into the road.

  Maybe I should just pick up Wyatt and go back to our houses. If I wasn't allowed to kill Althean, then the whole thing was going to be pretty snoozeville. Although, I did want to watch and see what Gregory was going to do to him. I could learn a lot from that guy. Wyatt called back immediately.

  "Sam? You're really still here?" he asked in a hushed tone.

  "Yeah. Why are you whispering? Where are you? What's going on?" I asked, whispering back.

  "Gregory wanted us both to leave, to go home and let him handle it, but Candy insisted she needed to stay. I think she wants to make sure it's truly resolved before she goes back. I'm still here because I have the computer models, and I don't have my truck so I don't have a way back. We're holed up at one of the werewolf houses off Burnside Bridge so Candy doesn't get attacked separately again. Gregory has been gone for hours. He's in a horrible mood. Seriously horrible mood.

  "Sam, why didn't you leave? What are you doing still here? You're not safe, here. I don't know what he'll do if he knows you're still here. He's a sanctimonious jerk; I don t think he's going to tolerate you living over here now that he knows about you. Plus, the mood he's been in this evening, he's liable to just kill you on sight. You really need to make yourself scarce."

  Sanctimonious was a good word. I had no idea Wyatt had that kind of vocabulary.

  I didn't know what I was doing, either. What was I trying to gain from this? Why didn't I just scoop up Wyatt and go back to the house? Because I was a stupid idiot and couldn't keep away from this damned angel. I needed to see him, needed to know who he really was inside. Candy wasn't the only one who needed to see this through. I had to see if Gregory would deliver justice or just cover it up. I shouldn't really give a shit, but I needed to know if the angel was a hypocrite, to know what his moral framework was, to know if he lived by the inflexible code which fractured our races so long ago.

  "Where are you?" I asked Wyatt. "I just want to make sure you and Candy are safe. Don't worry about me; I know what I'm doing." Lie, lie, lie.

  Wyatt told me the address, somewhere off Burnside Bridge Road. I told him to stay tight, and that I'd call him in a bit.

  I went out again, casting around for Althean without success. Dreading what I was about to do, I drove to the outer portion of town, as far away from where Wyatt and Candy were as I could get and converted every cell of my being in a huge pop of noise. I hoped it was far enough away to not scare Althean, but close enough to jar Gregory's exterminate instinct and bring him running.

  It was barely a second later before something large and rock like flashed an inch from me and knocked me to the dirt.

  I slid across the ground for about three feet. "Damnit, I just took a shower and put on clean clothes."

  "You!" the angel said. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, as if I were an illusion that would disappear. "The guardian saw you cross. She told me she saw you go through the gate with her own eyes. How did you get back here?"

  I wasn't about to narc on the guardian. "I have mad skills," I told him.

  He looked at me blankly.

  "I am a being with many diverse talents," I explained. The guy really needed to work on his modern slang.

  "I know, what 'mad skills' means, I just don't see what that has to do with anything," he said. "Why? Why did you come back? I go against the council decree that I should kill you on sight, then actually allow you to freely return home and you not only come back to this realm, but you come here and bring yourself to my notice less than twenty four hours from when I let you go."

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. "When I want you to s
tay, you practically kill yourself trying to get away, and when I want you to go away, I can't get rid of you. You, cockroach, are truly my worst nightmare manifested. What was my sin that I am punished by having you constantly around, messing things up, thwarting my plans?"

  Thwarting his plans. It sounded like some bad guy in an old western. All he needed to do was twirl a long handlebar mustache and chuckle deviously.

  "Yes, well dastardly villains like you deserve thwarting," I joked.

  "How do you think I'm a villain?" he looked confused. "Do you still think I won't punish Althean? Or is it because I killed that human law enforcement officer? That was unfortunate, but I was not about to allow you to escape me."

  "It was a joke. You know, because you used the word 'thwart' and it's such a clich? word. Oh, never mind." He had to have a sense of humor somewhere in that thick head of his. Or maybe not. "I came back because I need to see this to the finish. I owe Candy a blood price for killing one of her pack mates and my taking out Althean was the price. I don't want it said I go back on my contracts, on my word."

  "You know I will not allow you to kill Althean. So your contact is void. You are simply unable to fulfill it. Candy will have to renegotiate another blood price with you. Why are you really here?"

  I could hardly tell him I was obsessed with him and that he better get used to me stalking him like a creeper in a white van.

  "I have OCD," I told him desperately. I don't know how my mind made the jump to that. Maybe because I'd been thinking of Candy and I was fairly certain she had all the symptoms in the diagnostic manual.

  He sighed dramatically. "Okay, please enlighten me as to what this OCD is."

  "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's a mental condition some humans have where they do repetitious behavior, or actions that are driven by compulsion and not the logic of the situation. So you see, I have OCD and cannot quit in the middle of this. I just need to see the hunt through. If I can't kill him, then fine, but I need to see it through to the end before I can move on. Or I'll go crazy and wind up in an institution somewhere."

  That was the stupidest excuse ever, but maybe he'd believe it.

  He scowled. "You are the worst liar in all of creation. I have no time for any more of your ridiculous falsehoods. You've drawn me away and even now Althean may be at the house attempting to kill while I stand here bantering with you"

  I'd been scanning constantly since I had arrived. "No, he's not there. I can sense him and track him if he's within a couple miles radius. That's how I knew he was at the cabin in Waynesboro. Will that help you? Maybe you can use that skill of mine?"

  The angel paused thoughtfully. "I can't sense him until he uses some energy, so your skill would possibly help save a life. If you try to kill him or hinder me in any way, though, I will not spare you. Don't think that because I let you go once that you have special privileges. You are a cockroach and I won't tolerate your interference."

  I nodded. "If you're not with me, let me know how I can contact you. You don't have a cell phone number I can text you on, do you?" Damned angels were so backward about human technology I wasn't even sure he could use a walkie-talkie.

  "No, I don't. You're energy use is how I sense you. If you convert something or use your energy to call me when he's near, Althean will be tipped off and flee. You've nearly killed him twice. I doubt he'll risk fighting you again."

  It was really wicked, I know, but I ran my finger over the tattoo. "I can call you this way," I teased.

  He ground his teeth. "Will you stop doing that? Stop messing with it until I can find some way to disable that unfortunate feature?"

  "Is it always this strong? Does it fade with distance or time? If I'd crossed the gate, could we still feel it? Would it even remain?"

  He rubbed his face and ran his hands through his chestnut curls. It was a very human gesture. "It will always remain and time won't do anything but maybe make us more used to it. I don't know what effect distance will have on it. Perhaps it will be weaker. Perhaps I won't sense you at all if you're far enough away or across the gate. The original binding that it's based on, that it was supposed to be, is meant to summon you no matter what realm you're in or how far away you are; to know your location when I want to find you and be able to gate to you; and to compel you to do as I command."

  There was that compel thing again. He must have fucked that part up too because I didn't feel particularly compelled to obey him.

  "So, you mean you didn't intend to put a two way erogenous zone on my arm?" I asked, running my finger over it slowly. It felt amazing and I found myself wondering again if angels had genitals. He'd probably kill me, though. I got the feeling angels didn't do sex.

  "No," he ground out. "And if you don't stop that, I'll remove your hands from your body."

  "Then I'd be forced to use my tongue," I said, rather breathlessly. That sounded like an even better idea.

  "I'll remove your tongue, then. Repeatedly. Until you get tired of growing it back."

  He seemed very serious, so I reluctantly stopped. Besides, it was difficult teasing him when I myself was getting turned on twenty times what he was.

  "You will remain near me and tell me when he's close." Gregory said, in a voice that sounded suspiciously commanding. I was okay with what he was proposing, but the whole compel thing had me a bit on edge, so I decided to pester him a bit more just so he wouldn't get any ideas that I was compelled to do stuff.

  "We'll be joined at the hip," I told him, wiggling my eyebrows suggestively. "Or maybe joined at other parts of our bodies."

  "Not going to happen," he said. "Although I may be tempted to drag you by your hair."

  "I might like that."

  He shook his head in exasperation. "Are you sure you're not a Succubus? You seem really obsessed with the sin of lust."

  "It's a good sin. I like gluttony an awful lot, too. Sloth has its moments, but I just don't understand acedia at all. I mean, what the fuck is that anyway? Oh, and greed is good, to quote Gordon Gekko. Anger, envy and pride," I ticked them off on my fingers. "I don't often have much use for them. It's a shortcoming that I'm hoping to correct in the next millennium or two. I'm not very old; I can't be expected to have mastered them all yet."

  "I think you've worked too hard on some of those," he said dryly. "Maybe you should switch over to virtues instead. Give yourself a much needed break."

  Virtues? Yeah, right.

  "Virtues are too difficult," I told him, shaking my head. "Look how old you are and you've hardly made a dent in them. I'll admit, you seem to have zeal nailed, as well as faith and temperance. Self control? I've got my doubts based on your recent actions. I'm not seeing the kindness, love or generosity, either. That humility thing seems to be pretty far beyond your reach, too. Really, really far. I'm sorry to tell you this, but from what I can see, the sin of pride is a major component of your character. Dude, you're fucking old. You should have these things pretty well ticked off your shopping list by now. I'm seriously disappointed. Seriously."

  He stared at me, his face unreadable. I wondered for a brief moment if I'd pushed him too far, but he didn't seem angry. Crickets chirped in the background, like an old clich?, but I just met his gaze and refused to break the silence.

  "I can hardly wait until this is over," he finally said. "Then I never have to spend another moment with you for the rest of eternity."

  He turned and walked away, and I followed him, feeling rather relieved.

  We gated back to the target werewolf house. Gregory stood there, patiently holding me upright while I got my bearings. It didn't seem to take quite as long this time, but we did gate a fairly short distance. Less than five miles.

  The house was a beautiful single story log cabin nestled in the woods. The driveway actually had a small bridge to cross over the creek to get to the road. Pines flanked the driveway and formed little oases among the hardwoods, with their tall dense canopy. Underneath, their orange needles cushioned the ground like a soft m
attress. I knew I'd get sap all over my jeans, but I couldn't resist sinking to sit on them and breathing in their fragrance.

  Gregory sat beside me in silence while I continued to cast around for Althean. It was early morning, and I could see a faint lightening of the sky to the east. It would remain dark in these woods for quite a while, though. Sunday wouldn't bring any early sounds of workday traffic, and we'd have hours before even the earliest church goers headed out.

  "I know you think Althean is capable of redemption, so you're probably not likely to kill him. Are you going to punish him yourself, or lock him away in some jail?" I asked him the question that had been on my mind for days.

  Would he change his mind and kill Althean? Would he banish him? Was there some kind of rehab for angels who went crazy? Electroshock therapy or something?

  "Why didn't you just let me kill him the other times?" I continued. "You've got to admit, your actions make it look like you really want to take it easy on him."

  Gregory sighed in exasperation. "You just won't let this go will you, annoying little cockroach? No, I don't want to kill Althean. I'm hoping I can save him, that we can rehabilitate him. I know why he is doing these things, and there are others among us who feel the same way. I don't want him to become a martyr to his cause. If that happens, the council will have a whole faction to wipe out instead of just a few random extremists. Looking at things with a long term perspective, it would be best to keep Althean alive and convince him to change his mind on these matters."

  I shivered in the warmth of the summer air. I had no doubt about this angel's methods of changing someone's mind. I think I'd rather be dead.

  "This is bigger than just a few dead werewolves," he told me, rather heartlessly. "There are subversive groups in Aaru who wait to pounce on any opportunity for political gain and possible overthrow. We keep a very tight leash on these groups, but a martyr would benefit their cause. The issue with the werewolves has been going on without resolution for a long time, and people feel strongly on both sides of the issue. Opposing factions would love to seize on this as their banner."

  He looked over at me, and then quickly looked away. "I won't allow you to kill him, little cockroach. I know you desperately want to, and I'm sure you have the skill and power to do so. If you did, you'd be signing your own death sentence. The council would never allow your continued existence if you killed an angel."

  I sat for a moment in silence. "You're going to kill me, anyway, why do you care if the council decrees my death or not?" Not that I even knew what this council was.

  "I'll kill you when I'm ready to," he assured me. "That is the directive, and you will eventually die. I have discretion on when and how I dispatch demons that enter this realm in violation of the treaty. I usually kill them on sight, but I've bound you to me and you are under my authority and control. The council won't interfere with my decision in this matter. But if you were to kill an angel, I doubt I could protect you."

  He looked grim and I got the feeling he would fight tooth and nail to protect me. I had no idea why. What use could I be to him beyond tonight? Did he really feel it was worth it to keep me around and tolerate my annoying behavior? Was there something else he had planned for me that would make this all worthwhile?

  The lights came on in the cabin. Wyatt and Candy were probably up. I wondered if the other werewolves, the ones who actually lived there had managed to go to sleep. I wondered how much they knew about what was going on, what danger they were in. I glanced at Gregory, sitting like a brooding statue beside me. It didn't take much of my attention to continuously cast for Althean, so my mind wandered. At least Gregory didn't intend to kill me right away. That was a huge relief. Maybe we could actually hang out together sometime. Perhaps hang out for a few decades. At least until my usefulness was over. I knew that was a ridiculous fantasy, but I still indulged myself in it.

  To keep my hands busy I grabbed a nearby pinecone, and stuck some sticks and needles into it creating a bizarre prickly and sap covered animal while I daydreamed about playing with lightning beside this angel, or possibly fire. Maybe he'd teach me to manipulate water and make that cool globe. I eyed my needle covered pinecone animal. Great. In my boredom, I'd been reduced to creating children's campfire crafts. My hands were covered with sap, and the stuff just didn't come off. I ended up coating them with dirt so at least they were no longer sticky. If this stupid crazy angel didn't show up soon, I was going to go out of my mind.

  Finally, as the morning sun had fully risen, I sensed him. Good thing, since I'd stacked my loose change into little piles, had a whole stable full of pinecone animals, and was now making little pine needle haystacks for them to eat. I was covered in sap and dirt.

  I tugged Gregory's sleeve and indicated with my hands that our target was at two o'clock, about fifty feet away and moving slowly in. He frowned at me uncomprehendingly and looked with astonishment at my pinecone menagerie. I guess he didn't watch too many spy movies, or experiment with nature crafts. I pointed and went through the motions again, carefully whispering this time.

  He nodded. "Stay here. Don't move. Don't do anything. Don't say anything. Nothing. I want your posterior rooted to this spot."

  I nodded in agreement. I lie and I don't follow directions well, so as soon as he left the little pine tree shelter, I got up and followed him. I had to stay a good distance back so he wouldn't hear me. He edged up closer to the house, and waited a moment before walking into the tiny yard of cleared trees in front of the house. It had to have been only fifteen feet from tree line to tree line.

  I edged up behind him, staying behind a pin oak, hopefully out of sight.

  Althean appeared at the edge of the tree line directly across from Gregory. It was like the scene from High Noon without guns or tumbleweeds.

  "Have you finally leashed your dog?" Althean said derisively. The nervous glances he was casting around gave his bravado less credibility. "I thought you were neutral in this, but I now wonder after you had your demon practically tear me apart."

  "She is not easy to control," Gregory confessed. "I am neutral in this. The council has not given its decision though and you cannot run around like a vigilante delivering your own personal brand of justice. We are sympathetic to your views and understand why you've acted the way you have, but you must cease and return to Aaru."

  Althean paled. "So you can imprison me? So you can bring me back to 'sanity' and obedience? I am not the only one who feels this way. The council is taking too long in their decision and the time to act is now. You can bend me to your will, rip my mind apart, but others will be right there to take my place. They are Nephilim. You know that."

  "We do not know that for a fact," Gregory said. "The council will not exterminate a species - will not commit genocide - until we are certain they are Nephilim."

  "The council is committing genocide through attrition," Althean countered passionately. "The existence contract is so restrictive that the werewolves are slowly dying out. In a few millennia they will no longer exist and the council can walk away with clean hands and claim innocence. Cowardice. Have they become so weak they are afraid to shed blood? Afraid of delivering justice and hard mercy? There are still angel renegades that escape them, Nephilim still walk the earth. It is clear to many of us that the council is incompetent and unfit to rule."

  Gregory barely restrained his anger. "You are not privy to the workings of the council, and are not in any position to pass judgment on their fitness to rule! Would you lead a war against them? Attempt a revolution? It would be over very quickly, I assure you. And the result would not be to your satisfaction."

  He paused to calm himself and continued. "I will offer you the chance to live, exiled among the fallen ones whose path you have mimicked. Or you may choose to return to Aaru for redemption," Gregory said.

  Fallen ones? Did he mean us? He'd banish Althean to our realm? We'd eat the guy for lunch within ten seconds of crossing the gate. Dude would be better off choosing to fall
on his sword, instead. It would be a far more pleasurable way to die.

  "You would send me to the demons?" Althean asked in horror. "Clearly, your vicious reputation is deserved if you would consign me to that eternal torture. I will return with you to Aaru, but be aware that my 'rehabilitation' will not even put a bandage on the seeping wound of this division within us."

  Gregory walked toward Althean, who had bowed his head in submission. I felt something within me pinch with alarm and knew what was coming long before Althean even began to formulate the blast. It seems Althean decided to go out like a man. Impossibly fast, he threw a stream of that white energy right at Gregory.

  Before it even left his body, I had darted out in front of the pin oak and shot my own bolt of raw energy at him, curving it to loop around Gregory and leave him untouched. It was a tricky piece of work, especially since I was doing it on the fly. It hit Althean just as his bolt of energy left, cutting his blast short and knocking him solidly to the ground. Gregory jerked to the side, either in anticipation of Althean's blast or in reaction to my looping energy. The white stuff the angel had shot missed him by inches and unfortunately smacked me right in the chest, throwing me backwards into the pin oak where I slid to the ground.

  Fuck, this stuff hurt. This was the same shit that took my hand completely off back in Gettysburg, so I was a little alarmed. I pulled my personal energy safely inside and started to regenerate. It must have been a smaller blast than the one before because it hadn't blown through me. It did leave a nice hole in my right lung, destroying the ribs and tissue and leaking blood all over the place. I sealed off the blood vessels, and explored the damage. I'd had worse.

  Gregory looked over at me in surprise. He took in my injury and exploded in anger. His vaguely human looking form disappeared in a wash of bright light and power. He shone so bright in his fury that they had to have seen him all the way to the road. "Oh fuck," I thought in panic. "I've disobeyed him and he's gone insane with rage. He's going to come over here and finish me off."

  Instead he strode over to Althean who was trying frantically to get upright. I must have hit him pretty hard, I thought smugly.

  "She's just a demon!" Althean said in panic. "You can't kill me over a stupid, worthless demon!"

  Gregory picked him up by the throat and held him, his feet dangling from the ground. "She's mine," he hissed. The word sang with power and ripped through the air in a wave, trembling the earth and raining pine needles to the ground. The morning bird sounds stopped abruptly and the silence was eerie.

  Althean began to shake. "No," he choked out. "You cannot. She's a nasty stupid cockroach. She's not worth it."

  Gregory tightened his grip and Althean's words ended in a gurgle. "Mine," he hissed and began to shake the smaller angel.

  I covered my ears as a high pitched screeching sound, like nails on glass filled the air. Althean convulsed and he tore at Gregory's arms frantically with his hands. I saw what appeared to be dirt falling from him, then realized that it was sand. Slowly, Althean was dissolving into a pile of white sand from the feet upward as I watched. The process was agonizingly slow; Althean kicked and shook while Gregory continued to hiss and stare at him with those merciless black eyes. In minutes, only his torso and head remained and the sand rained down upon the ground. Gregory kept at it until there was nothing left but a pile of the white grains. He stared at it, grim-faced, and then proceeded to wipe his hands casually on his jeans.

  As I watched all this with interest, part of me was getting worried. The white energy was having the same kind of slippery effect on my raw energy that Gregory had when he touched me. I was able to regenerate small portions of myself with the bits I could grab, but the white stuff was eating in deeper and quicker than I could fix. Giving up on regeneration, I concentrated my efforts on getting the white stuff converted and cleared out of my system. It was persistent and multiplying fast. If it destroyed too much of me, it might reach my personal energy. Or I'd be too dissolved to hold in the massive amount of raw energy I had stored within me. Releasing all that energy would be like a bomb going off.

  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 sword 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.