Malakh

CHAPTER THREE

  "I feel like I haven't eaten in days." I stretched and yawned, making a production of it to cover my embarrassment at having awakened with my face pressed firmly against his abdomen, my mouth precarious inches from an indecent position.

  "You've done a lot of walking," Russ replied, oblivious to my discomfiture.

  The sand was warm beneath me, the sky grey, but the air pleasant. I blinked, clearing my bleary eyes, and looked around. The beach looked different by the light of day; there was less driftwood scattered about than I remembered stumbling over the previous night. The tide was out, giving more depth to the strip of sand between the road and the water's edge. A flock of gulls huddled at the edge of the surf, rushing in as the waves rolled out in search of crab and sand dollars and other morsels left behind.

  "Is this the same beach?" I blurted, glaring at him suspiciously.

  He shrugged. "It looks different in the daylight," he echoed my earlier thought. "I burned some of the driftwood to keep you warm while I went to find you food."

  "You left me here alone, asleep? Are you insane?"

  He frowned. "Suzanne, you were perfectly safe. I have you shielded; no one would ever have found you. Here—you'll feel better once you eat."

  He had already opened the package he handed me. Peppered beef jerky—not my normal fare for breakfast, but I wasn't going to complain. While I chewed on a thick strip, he rummaged in a plastic grocery sack and brought out a bottle of cran-raspberry juice, which he uncapped and set in the sand next to me.

  "Where are we going today? Do you have any idea where Raum is hiding?"

  He didn't answer; he fiddled with the remaining contents of the grocery bag, then stared out at the surf crashing and rolling up on the beach.

  I asked more urgently, "Russ, do you know where he is?"

  His eyes moved to my face, and their color shifted from blue to a rich, earthy brown. "No. But … there was another murder last night. Same characteristics."

  My mind went utterly blank. The two bites of jerky I'd consumed churned in my stomach. And then my panicked heart denied the truth of his words. It couldn't be—Raum couldn't have sunk so far into depravity in three short years—well, short for him. Time dragged out for me, being human, but three years was but a blip in the stream of time to his kind. I was positive that while I had been with him, there had been no indication of a capacity for such evil.

  "I'm sorry, Suzanne. I know how hard this will be for you, but I'd like to head to the scene of the last murder."

  "Oh, Russ, I don't see the point—"

  "Eat up," he interrupted, but gently. His expression was kind. "We have a long walk ahead of us." And he said no more.

  We skirted Elliot Bay Marina and followed the trail to Myrtle Edwards Park. He led the way to a patch of grass near the water, where it would be harder for anyone to hear our conversation over the surf—not that anyone approached us. There were a surprising number of people wandering the park, considering the grey day—well, perhaps not so surprising for Seattle; if you waited for a clear day to engage in outdoor activities, you would never go out. No one paid attention to us even when they passed by so close I could feel the breath of air in their wake.

  "Sit, eat," he commanded. He let go of my arm as my backside touched ground, and exhaustion flooded through me. We had only walked a couple of miles, but I knew it wasn't physical activity that dragged at my limbs. Despair and depression, held at bay only when Russ loaned me his energy, dragged me down and encouraged me to stay there forever.

  We didn't speak while I finished the bag of peppered jerky and washed it down with juice. Russ held on to the grocery bag, obviously intending to dole out my sustenance throughout the day. I wondered what else he'd bought; angels weren't known for keeping up on the necessities of human nutrition, although I couldn't deny that the jerky gave me protein and the juice some necessary vitamins.

  When I crumpled the jerky package, he turned to sit cross-legged in front of me. "We must discuss Raum. I know it's going to be difficult for you, but if you can remember all the places he favored, we may stand a chance of finding him before he hurts someone else."

  "I can't remember everywhere he liked to go. It was a long time ago. Unlike your species, I don't have an infallible memory."

  "Just the places you can remember will do, Suzanne," he assured me, glancing around to check the proximity of the other park dwellers and whether they had overheard him.

  I frowned, thinking backward in time. There were favorite restaurants—angels can process food with no trouble, and Raum certainly had enjoyed Italian cuisine. But his favorite place was an exclusive Hungarian étterem.

  "Where is this restaurant?" Russ asked when I mentioned it.

  "Down near Pike's Place Market." I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, trying to quiet a stress headache. Or perhaps it was a hunger headache. "Is there more to eat in that bag? More protein?"

  He reached in without looking and handed me a huge plastic jar of cashews. "What else do you remember?"

  "He knew the proprietor." I wrested off the lid and scooped up a handful of nuts. They crunched satisfyingly between my teeth. "But while he was at ease with the man, the man didn't appear to quite trust Raum. He always gave the impression that he'd rather Raum not come in."

  "Does he know that Raum is an angel?"

  "No clue. We never spoke about him. I don't know if Raum ever had any contact with the man outside of our dining experiences. He frequented the aquarium as well. He said he liked to watch the fish swim but wished they were in the sea."

  I smiled wistfully and felt the smile pull into a grimace of sorrow. If Russ noticed, he didn't mention it.

  "Keep going," he encouraged.

  "Aahh … some coffee shop a few blocks from Waterfront Park. I can't remember the name; something Spanish, I think."

  "Oh yes, he went there often," Russ said, nodding.

  "How did you know that?"

  "Raum and I met there occasionally."

  My narrow-eyed gaze took in his bland expression but found no trace of deceit. "He never mentioned you."

  He offered a slight shrug, another human affectation. "No reason why he would. They were not pleasant meetings."

  I let the silence spin out between us, laden with my unspoken question, until he relented.

  "Very well. I was sent to convince him to come back into obedience."

  The cashews suddenly felt like sawdust in my mouth. I swallowed with difficulty. "Convince him to leave me, you mean. Well, you succeeded. Congratulations."

  "I didn't succeed, Suzanne," he said with a trace of anger. "He stayed with you until he could no longer overcome his compulsion to murder. I'm just grateful he didn't choose you as his first victim."

  "Often, serial murderers don't harm a significant other," I pointed out. "Look at Robert Yates in Spokane. Never harmed his family."

  "And often, family are a serial killer's first victims," he countered. "Ronald Gene Simmons in Arkansas and Mark Barton in Georgia."

  Conceding his point with a wave of my hand, I munched more cashews, mulling over the events of the last eighteen hours. Too many things didn't add up, but that was only my heart talking. I didn't want Raum to be a murderer; that I hadn't known the depravity of which he was capable after the unparalleled intimacy we'd shared meant I was a lousy judge of character. And yes, it also meant that there would be no reconciliation with my otherworldly lover, no reparation to my heart unless Russ could heal my emotions like he could strengthen my body.

  "Why am I so tired? I thought you could feed me strength without touching me since the shielding, but when you let go of me … "

  "I'm trying not to let you rely too much on my abilities. You'll become addicted—as you did with Raum—and it will be harder when I leave."

  For some reason, the thought of Russ leaving stung. He was my only connection to the angelic world, the only chance to experience wonders and abilities beyond my human re
ality. And then, for an instant, I imagined how my life might be had I not seen Raum as he came in for a landing on the roof of my building; had he not been startled by my exclamation and crashed, wounding his wing; had I not obliged him as nursemaid while he healed, and then as lover.

  Might I have married the man I'd been dating when I met Raum, the man whom I had found perfectly delightful until he had been eclipsed by an angel? Might I be holding the children I'd always wanted—the children I would never have now that I was marked with the marriage bond of a malakh?

  "Who else can you remember with whom Raum might have had more than a casual acquaintance?"

  "Before I recite his earthly phonebook, perhaps you can give me some information first."

  "Such as?" Although he was unperturbed, tension shifted his posture until he strongly resembled one of his marble brethren.

  "The marriage bond. First, I don't understand how you were able to do it. Second, I don't understand why you did it when you know what it means for me, for my future."

  Russ tied the plastic grocery bag closed and tucked it into the space between his folded legs. He leaned toward me, and his eyes turned the depthless blue of a cloudless summer sky. His expression was grave.

  "What do you know about the marriage bond?"

  I offered a half-shrug. "Only what Raum told me. He refused to mark me with it"—I sent him a reproachful look—"not only because it's forbidden but because he said he didn't want me to never be able to go on if something happened to him. He said things like that a lot: 'If something happens to me, Suzanne.' Sometimes he acted like he was being hunted. He was never fully at ease."

  "He wasn't being hunted, but he was being hounded—by me," Russ reminded me. "If someone else was after him, I don't know about it."

  "Maybe he only left me to keep me safe."

  "Suzanne," he said patiently, "he left you, period. Not only did he leave, he left you unprotected. Thank God that He sent me or who knows what might have gotten to you first."

  I scowled, not pleased that he had deflated my bubble of hope so easily. "Anyway, he told me about the different kinds of bonds. The kind he had with me—"

  "A sexual bond," he broke in.

  My scowl turned into a full-fledged glower. "Yes," I agreed sharply. A faint smile touched his mouth. "As I was saying, the kind of bond he had with me was the most common. It marked me as his, provided me with a means to call for help if I desperately needed it, and was least intrusive on my humanity."

  "And yet you can't move on."

  "And then there's the marriage bond," I plowed on with cold contempt. "The most binding of all, that links me to the otherworld for the remainder of my life, that will repel all human males, that will render me barren to human seed. You should not have been able to do it. It's prohibited."

  "It was allowed in this instance."

  "Why?"

  "So I could more fully protect you. You will never move on; you've already shown that. Three years—human years—is time enough for heartache to ease and your attention to move on to human men. And yet you haven't. So I was told to do as I must, and the marriage bond was not only permitted but encouraged. I must protect you."

  "Why? I'm only one human."

  The twist of Russ's mouth was less of a smile than it was a grimace of sorrow. "Do you think God cares only for the collective? He would leave the flock to seek out one lamb. You're that lamb, Suzanne. Now please, tell me about anyone else you remember with whom Raum may have had more than casual contact. Anyone for whom he might have harbored affection."

  Glad to abandon the subject of irrevocable bonds to the heavenly realm, I racked my brain to think of people whom Raum might've mentioned, and he never mentioned anyone unless he held them in higher than average esteem.

  "There was the clerk at the grocery store—what was her name? Andrea, I think. That librarian he liked—oh, her name's Debbie. Annoying woman. A gas station attendant he said was brilliant; that was Jordan. He's not there anymore, just quit coming in to work."

  "Jordan is more than likely dead," Russ said bluntly. "I suspect he's been murdered and hidden to cover the scope of Raum's activity."

  "Oh." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

  "Let's go through your list so far. The restaurant's proprietor is still living, but Raum's favorite server, a young man named Emil, was the fourth victim found. An attendant at the aquarium, a middle-aged grandmother-to-be, was the fifth victim. The clerk at the grocery store Raum frequented was victim number six. Debbie, the annoying librarian—victim number seven. A barista from the espresso shop, a beautiful young woman—victim number eight. Three others—the first three—you might or might not have known, but Raum almost certainly did."

  "He's killing people he knew," I murmured, shocked by this more than anything else. "Why would he do that? They trusted him, liked him."

  "That was his plan. Make them comfortable with him, and it's easier to lure them to a private location where he can kill them."

  The cashews threatened to bolt back up my esophagus. I screwed the cap back onto the jar and shoved them at Russ, who put them back in the bag without comment. I stared out at the surf crashing against the breakfront. A few intrepid kayakers skimmed along the surface of Elliot Bay, safely clad in wetsuits against the chill of the choppy water.

  "There's more, Suzanne," he said after a moment, his voice quiet. "The murder last night … "

  "It was someone Raum knew. Someone I knew, too?"

  "I'm sorry," he whispered and took my hands, gently holding them between us. "Zanna is dead."

  It took a moment for his words to make sense. The words "Zanna who?" hovered on the tip of my tongue and then died there as at last I comprehended. Zanna, my best friend in high school and college, with whom I had parted ways over the man I had left for Raum. How had he known about her? I'd never mentioned her. Of that I was sure, because mentioning her would have meant telling him why our friendship had fallen apart, and that was something I would never have done.

  And then what Russ wasn't saying slowly gelled in my mind. The progression of victims was a story in itself: from people only he knew to people we both knew—and now to people only I knew. Although I silently willed him not to, he said the words I dreaded to hear spoken aloud.

  "He's coming after you, Suzanne."