Malakh

  ~*~*~*~

  I woke to birds chirping outside the bedroom window and the glorious sensation of having spent an indecent number of hours in blissful, dreamless slumber. I rolled over, my aching body delighting in the cushion of a real bed, and found Ian sprawled beside me on top of the covers. He'd slept in his clothes, but they were different clothes than he'd been wearing when I'd arrived.

  I tugged my pillow into a more comfortable position and caught a whiff of shampoo. Fragments of yesterday—was it yesterday?—swirled in my memory: a much-needed shower; a change of clothes (nothing fancier than one of Ian's tee-shirts and a pair of sweat shorts cinched in at the waist so they billowed around my hips like clown pants); a bowl of oatmeal—suitably bland for one who'd not had a real meal in days (weeks—had it really been weeks?)—and a couple wedges of wheat toast.

  Then Ian had bundled me onto the sofa, but how I had made it to his bedroom upstairs was anyone's guess. More missing pieces of time. I was starting to think my days spent with Russ had left Swiss cheese holes in my memory.

  Ian's face bore its own marks from my ordeal. Sleepless nights had left discolored shadows under his eyes, and stress had carved deep lines around his eyes and mouth. An unruly lock of hair lay over his forehead, touching his lashes and making him frown in his sleep. I reached out and brushed it away. His forehead was creased even in slumber, as though he worried while unconscious.

  My heart broke at that thought. I stroked his face, smoothing away the lines, and he stirred, his eyes opening. Relief skimmed across his face, and I wondered what he'd been dreaming. The misery I'd put this man through since the day I'd met him… It was a wonder he hadn't thrown me out of his house.

  But he smiled as he murmured, "Hey, Suze."

  "Ian." I smiled back, my face crumpling almost instantly. His smile turned to alarm.

  "Hey, hey!"

  He scooted over, and for the next thirty seconds embarked on an almost comical attempt to reach me through the blankets on top of me. But in the end he found me and pulled me close, smoothing his hand over my hair, which rioted all over my head because it had been wet when I'd gone to sleep.

  "None of that now. You're all right now. It's all right."

  "I don't understand any of this. I've only been gone three days, Ian. Why would everyone think I've been gone six weeks?"

  He stared at me in disbelief. "What day do you think it is?"

  "July ninth. Or maybe, at most, the tenth. I met Russ at … the … "

  Where was Russ? I remembered him falling into step behind me as we walked through Ian's house to the kitchen and looking for him as I huddled, exhausted, on Ian's kitchen floor. I knew angels could hide their presence from humans, but it was strange that he would have just left me here—unless he had found Raum, and thought I was safer left in Ian's care while he dealt with the rogue angel.

  "Who is Russ?" Ian asked, the edge in his voice so slight I might have imagined it.

  I pushed a hand through my hair, unknotting some of the tangles. "There's so much I have to tell you, and I don't know where to start. I don't even think you'll believe most of it."

  "Suzanne … it's August twelfth," Ian said gently. "You've lost five and a half weeks of time. Where have you been? And who is Russ?"

  "Icarus," I replied vacantly. "He flew too close to the sun."

  He looked truly alarmed now. "Did you hit your head? Or did you have a nervous breakdown? I know … I heard that Raum left you." Three years ago. Three years ago and you're only now coming to me. Those were the words he wanted to say. I could hear them as clearly as though he'd actually said them.

  I looked at him, my tears blurring his face so that I couldn't gauge his expression. "I—I didn't know how."

  "How what?"

  "How to find my way back."

  "Back where, Suze?" His voice was gentle, but his expression—clear now because the tears had spilled from my eyes and were running down my face—was petrified.

  "To my life. Life before the malakhim. Will you listen without interrupting? Let me tell you everything, then if you'll feed me and give me bus fare, I'll go home and you won't have to see me again."

  He floundered for a reply, his mouth working words that his tongue couldn't force out. Eventually, he fell back on his I-must-be-gentle-and-placate-the-crazy-woman tone.

  "It doesn't work that way, honey. The police have been looking for you for weeks—you simply vanished off the street, Suzanne! Your car was found parked outside a café in Queen Anne, but the waitress can't remember you being there. Your coworkers are beside themselves—the bank is offering a reward for information on your whereabouts. You can't just waltz back in like you missed one day of work and forgot to call in sick!"

  He'd said too many words for me to process, so I simply disregarded them and went on like he hadn't spoken. "He came out of nowhere while I was walking to my car and asked to talk to me. I knew what he was right away, and why he was there. He was looking for Raum, because of what Raum … because of what he's become."

  "You're making no sense."

  "He's an angel." His mouth tightened. "A real angel, Ian, as in not human. From another realm. Wings and all."

  I didn't imagine him pulling slightly away from me.

  "Suzanne, that's … that's crazy."

  "I know."

  But crazy or not, I continued with my story, telling him everything I could remember about the time I'd spent walking Seattle with Russ, tracking Raum. About the two years I'd spent with Raum, and the three years in desperate limbo after he left me. About the murders. What little color was left in his face abruptly drained when I told him of being at Zanna's house and finding his ring in the lawn.

  "I lost it at Zanna's house. One second it was on my finger; the next, gone without a trace. The crime lab people looked for it but never found it."

  "Were you there often?"

  Ian sensed what I was really asking. "That was the first time I'd been there. She still had us both listed as emergency contacts. But you were missing, so they called me."

  I simply nodded. It didn't really surprise me. Zanna had always been a very constant little thing. "When I came yesterday, I—"

  Ian broke in again. "Suzanne, you got here two days ago. You've spent most of it sleeping—all of it, actually, since you came home from the hospital."

  "Hospital!" I exclaimed. "I don't remember going to the hospital."

  The lines of worry deepened around his eyes and mouth. "What did you think I would do when you showed up in this kind of condition? I took you to the hospital. They hooked you to an IV to hydrate you, bandaged up your feet, and kept you overnight for observation."

  I stared at him, deeply afraid now. I had no memory of the events he was describing.

  "Do you remember talking to the police?" he asked, and then shook his head. "No, of course you wouldn't, not if you don't even remember being at the hospital. They took your statement."

  "I was able to give one?"

  "Perfectly lucid, but there was none of this … this … malamute crap."

  "Malakhim," I corrected absently.

  "Whatever. You told them you had no idea where you'd been, you had no memory of anything after leaving work the day you disappeared. Suze—" He bit his lip, and then plunged on. "They even did a rape kit and took your clothes for evidence."

  "I wasn't raped," I said sharply, and then, uncertainly, "Was I?"

  "They don't think so." He placed a slight emphasis on the word think. "But you were dehydrated and malnourished and on the brink of exhaustion. The hospital wanted to keep you longer, but I assured them I could take care of you just as well, so they released you into my care." He sounded as though he doubted the wisdom of that action now.

  "And the police—what are they doing? I wasn't kidnapped, Ian; I went with Russ willingly. Raum has to be found and stopped, but the authorities can't help with that. If the malakhim don't want to be seen by humans, they won't be."

  He drew in a sharp
breath through his nostrils, signaling his struggle for patience. "Which is why I have yet to see this Russ fellow?"

  "Yes."

  "How very convenient, Suzanne. I can't say you're lying to me—I have no evidence that you're not telling the truth because this guy can turn invisible."

  Oh, I had been wrong—Ian wasn't struggling for patience but for belief.

  "Ian."

  "I suffered through Raum. I did what you asked me to do, and I left. I waited for you to come to your senses. And three years—three years —after he left you, you finally come to me. And what do I hear?"

  "Ian, why would I lie about this? Think about it."

  "Some cock-and-bull story about angels. This is one story I don't think I can swallow."

  "Then perhaps I should leave," I said quietly. "Because if you haven't believed me yet, you're never going to. I didn't have a chance once Raum came into my life. You can believe that or not. And when he left … I couldn't find my own way out of the mess; how could I expect to involve you in it?"

  Ian opened his mouth to speak, but I went on before he could make some stupid man remark and piss me off.

  "Do you know what I expected to find here, Ian? I expected to find you dead. When I found your ring at Zanna's—when I saw the lopsided heart and realized it was yours—I thought my heart had died right in my chest.

  "I remember screaming. That's all I remember until I woke up in a park down at the end of this street, wanting to die, too. I don't know how many days it's been since I found the ring … I think maybe Russ has been taking me through his realm sometimes to cut the distance we've had to travel while we've been tracking Raum. Time is different in their realm."

  Ian's eyes took up most of his face. My matter-of-fact, practical tone scared him more than anything else. Had I come in raving and shrieking and flinching at sudden movements or unexpected sounds, he probably would have handled it better. He'd have lain back down beside me, forced a sleeping pill into me, and set his mind to the problem of how to fix me.

  But how do you fix crazy when it doesn't know it's crazy? I could see the question circling in his mind, showing plainly in his eyes as apprehension.

  "I have proof," I said suddenly, struggling to pull the neck of the tee-shirt down to show him the marks of the malakhim bonds.

  "I've seen," he said shortly. "I'd like to get my hands around the throat of the person who did it. And where is the ring now, by the way? You came here with nothing but the clothes on your back. No jewelry at all. Why are you making up this elaborate story to explain why you disappeared?"

  I stared at him in silence, and then pushed the covers off me, swinging my legs out of bed.

  "Oh, come on, Suzanne," he groaned, collapsing backward onto his pillows. "You always do this when you get angry with me."

  "Do what, exactly?"

  "Run away."

  "I'm not running. I'm going home. There's no reason for me to stay here if you don't believe me. I can take care of myself."

  "Oh, that's obvious." His derisive snort incensed me more than anything else, but before I could respond, he said, "You can't leave. The police are supposed to come by later this afternoon with some follow-up questions. I assured them you would be here under my watchful eye."

  "You're treating me like I'm some sort of criminal, Ian," I said sharply. "That's very insulting."

  "I'm treating you like a traumatized woman who has been missing for six weeks," he countered in a level voice. "And I'm not about to let some crazy kidnapping asshole have another whack at you."

  A movement in the doorway caught my eye. Russ was leaning against the doorjamb, quite entertained by our conversation.

  "Russ," I said.

  "Him again," Ian muttered violently. "What about him?"

  I started to point at the doorway, but Russ shook his head and put a finger to his lips. My hand went up to rake through my tangled hair instead.

  "I was just calling him to see if he would deign to make an appearance. A little proof to substantiate my story would be nice."

  Russ didn't miss the bite in my voice. His grin widened. He beckoned to me to follow him, and I wondered just how I was going to escape Ian's watchful eye.

  "I have to use the bathroom." I slid off the bed, wincing as my wounded feet took my weight, and headed toward the door.

  "The bathroom's through there," Ian said, pointing at a door on the opposite side of the room. That figured—access from the bedroom. I pretended not to hear, and his exasperated sigh followed me as I bounced off the door jamb and limped into the hallway.

  "What do you want?" I hissed as soon as I estimated we were out of Ian's earshot.

  "I want to show you something. Come on—er—can you walk?" he asked skeptically, eyeing my old-woman hobble with doubt. "I think you were faring better in my care."

  "You're the only one who thinks so," I muttered. "I have some questions for you, such as why can Ian see me? I thought I was shielded."

  "You were shielded. I lifted it in the park before we came here."

  "Why? And how? I don't remember you doing anything special."

  "Doesn't take a circle of thirteen, incantations, and a blood sacrifice," he said, chuckling. "I simply ran my hand down your back. Shielding gone. Presto chango."

  I rolled my eyes. "You're no magician."

  "No," he agreed. "I'm much, much more."

  "Why did you leave me here? Why didn't you say anything to Ian? You know he doesn't believe anything I've told him."

  "Then why did you tell him? Personally I would have kept it to myself. I thought you would be safer with him than with me from here on out."

  I stopped, leaning against the hallway wall. Russ kept walking, his hand outstretched to open a door directly in front of us where the hall ended.

  "You found Raum."

  "Yes. But first I want to show you something. Can you walk a little farther?"

  "I think so." I grimaced as I took another couple of steps.

  "Come on, then." He opened the door before him, and waited for me to precede him up what appeared to be the steps to the attic. "If you fall, fall backward. I'll catch you."

  "Likely story," I muttered, and he chuckled again.

  Halfway up the steps, I muttered "The attic, Russ? How am I going to explain this?"

  "He already thinks you're crazy, so what's it matter?"

  "Good point."

  I stepped up, flinching, and grabbed the handrail to haul myself onto the next step. My feet were in raw, blistered agony, which reminded me …

  "You took me through your realm, didn't you? I haven't been gone only three days. I really have been gone six weeks."

  "There was no other way, Suzanne. I had to work around your human limitations."

  "I don't remember hardly anything about the last month, Russ. You realize that, don't you?"

  "That happens when a human goes through our realm: you sleep, or something close to it. Your physicians call it being comatose or catatonic. It's rare for one to remember anything of the journey. It was the best I could do at the time. Maybe not the wisest choice, I admit."

  He quirked a brow at me as I glared over my shoulder at him.

  "Did you need those six weeks, Suzanne? Would you have done anything other than wallow in the misery of Raum having left you and knowing what he's become?"

  I paused, leaning against the wall and shifting from foot to foot to relieve the agony. "No, probably not."

  Three steps to go. My feet screamed at the thought. Two steps. The dull throb from heel to thigh blossomed into full-fledged pain. One step. My legs trembled, and I hoped there was a chair to sit in when we got up there. Walking had been a bad idea.

  At last, I reached the top and took a couple more shuffling steps to allow room for Russ to come in behind me. The attic was surprising well lit; a floor-to-ceiling arched window with panes of leaded glass let in daylight. I could see sailboats on the Montlake Cut, canvas rippling in the breeze, looking impossibly tiny
from this distance and height.

  "So why are we up here?"

  The room was utterly empty except for a chair across the room and a neat cluster of construction tools and supplies; obviously Ian was working on this area of the house.

  "To give him the proof he needs," Russ replied easily.

  I turned to give him a questioning look and saw Ian hovering on the steps behind us, his face anxious and wary. Russ flicked a hand, and the door at the bottom of the stairs slammed shut. Ian jumped, whirling around, and when he turned back, his expression was fearful.

  "Suze—"

  "Shh," Russ said gently, and the rest of Ian's words dried up as his vocal cords seized. Panic clawed its way onto his face.

  "Stop it, Russ. This isn't funny. This isn't how I want to prove to him that I'm telling the truth."

  His eyes turned my way, and I stepped back, my brain spinning in freefall. No longer were they any of the colors he'd affected through our short acquaintance, but instead all colors and no color, a swirling kaleidoscope of every hue in the universe. His human façade shimmered like heat waves on hot tarmac, and then he was all angel: humanoid body, russet wings, a face that transcended beauty and stole both breath and rational thought. He was made of light that had mass, substance. I stared, transfixed.

  "You want him to know the truth. Here is the truth."

  His hand shot out, and my heart leapt into my throat. But he only swept his fingertips over Ian's eyes and lips. Ian blinked once, twice, and then his eyes focused on Russ. Widened until his eyeballs were in danger of falling from their sockets. Wonder battled fear, each claiming victories only to fall in the next second to the other.

  "Oh. My. God." said Ian, slowly and deliberately.

  "Hardly." Russ laughed a little.

  Ian's eyes traveled from Russ to the chair across the room, and his face went impossibly white. He opened his mouth, but Russ said "Shh, Ian." Ian's mouth closed with an audible snap as he was struck mute again.

  Russ reached casually toward me. My gaze fastened on the chair, anxious for illumination, as I let him brush his fingertips over my eyes as he had Ian's.

  My legs trembled, collapsed. A fine tremor raced through my body, intensifying until I shook like a sapling in a high wind. Raum sat in the chair, bound securely to its frame and gagged so tightly no sound would be able to escape no matter how hard he tried. But his eyes spoke when his mouth could not, and they caught and held mine in a steady gaze, beseeching, apologetic. Regretful.

  With no warning, Ian was launched toward the arched window by an invisible force. I shrieked in horror as he crashed through the glass and into the warm August air, his scream of terror silent, his arms windmilling, seeking purchase. At the last possible second, his scrabbling fingers found the sill, and the wall shook with the impact of his body as it swung against the house. Blood ran in rivulets from the window sill as shards of thick glass punctured his flesh.

  For one second that lasted an eternity, I huddled on the floor, utterly paralyzed with shock, caught in a triangle of confusion and conflicting loyalties. On one side, my human lover, who clung with bloody fingers to precarious safety; on another, my angelic lover, bound and gagged and probably a vicious, conscienceless killer; and on the third side an avenging angel glowering over the scene, magnificent in his righteous fury, a tower of blinding light and heavenly justice.

  I forced myself to stand, my trembling legs barely able to hold me up. Raum's eyes never left mine. Russ's eyes never left Raum. In the brief space of time it took for my heart to beat once, my eyes catalogued every detail in the deafeningly silent room. Only one stood out with painful clarity: Ian's hands, slick with blood, had begun to slip from the window sill.