“I called Patterson,” Roger, the brown-haired white paramedic said. “She described your wounds earlier and they look about the same to me.”
“Patterson?” I asked.
“Becki Patterson,” he said.
I nodded. “I remember her.”
“Most guys do.”
“Her partner used her first name, but not her last,” I said, and I knew I sounded defensive, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Sure, but I bet you don’t remember his first name,” Roger said, giving me a look that was so weary and cynical I wanted to ask him how hard his shift had been. I didn’t for the same reason he wouldn’t ask me. First responders barely admit weakness to their friends, let alone to strangers.
I had to admit he was right, I only remembered Becki’s name and I owed her partner for the bloody nose. I suddenly felt shallow and sexist.
His partner looked Pakistani maybe, but certainly some members of his family had come from a part of the world that was near Pakistan at some point. At the College of Angels, you could just ask someone’s ethnic background and they’d tell you even if your guess was wrong. They appreciated being asked and you trying; in the outside world some people appreciated the curiosity, and some people didn’t, so I’d learned to not ask unless the conversation gave me an opening.
The second paramedic that might or might not be part Pakistani spoke with absolutely no accent other than East Coast American with emphasis on Manhattan, New York. “The other guy won’t let us take him to the hospital for tests. He’s got bruising over his kidney and it’s painful when I palpate it. If either of you can talk some sense into him, I’d really like a doctor to look at him. You never know with a kidney shot that’s this tender.”
“Suriel, the blond woman with him, is his superior. She might be able to order him to see a doctor,” I said.
The paramedic shook his head. “She tried pulling rank and the patient wasn’t having any of it. He’s her bodyguard according to him, so he’s supposed to keep her safe and he can’t do that from the hospital.”
“How hurt is he?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Hard to say without a doctor and maybe more tests.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him seriously,” I said.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have hit him in the kidney with your fist, twice,” the paramedic said.
“We’re trained to fight angels, not mortals; that means you go for the kill.”
The look on his face let me know that I’d overshared. Charleston said, “It’s a metaphor; the kid was raised in the College of Angels before he wised up.”
“Oh, that cult, glad you escaped, that documentary about the divorced parents fighting for their kids was a heartbreaker. My wife and me, if someone tried to take our kids when they were just little bitty kids like that . . .” He just shook his head at the thought of what they’d be willing to do to save their kids from the “cult.”
I took a breath to say something but felt Charleston’s hand squeeze my shoulder. I knew what he meant. I shut my mouth. He was the boss and he’d just saved me from the fact that I’d told a stranger one of the deepest and most esoteric secrets that the College of Angels had.
“Can you give us some privacy, then we’ll be over to try to talk Harshiel into seeing a doctor,” Charleston said.
“Is that how you pronounce the name?” the paramedic asked.
“Yes,” I said, “Har-SHAY-el.”
“Okay, the other guy didn’t correct me,” the paramedic said.
“Then he’s in even more pain than he’s showing,” I said.
“I sympathize on the name thing; I just go by Sam now. I’ll give you some privacy and then help me get the other guy to a hospital.”
“My first name is Adinka,” Charleston said.
Sam grinned. “I’d fist-bump you if I wasn’t wearing gloves.”
They had a chuckle together and then we were alone, in a room with other people in it, but if we spoke low, we had privacy. “First, tell me the truth: Have you ever fought an angel?”
I shook my head. “We’re trained with the idea that we would be able to stand our ground, or even win like Moses and Jacob in the Old Testament.”
“But you don’t train with angels?” he asked.
“I never did, and most don’t. Centuries ago, it was the final test for becoming a Sentinel.”
“What, winning a wrestling match with an angel?”
“No, just surviving was enough. Winning meant you were destined to lead and train others. The head of all the Sentinels was the last one to fight an angel to earn his right to guard the College. Something happened during that fight that he has never spoken of that I know of, but it was enough for them to stop the tradition.”
“It can’t be that long ago if he’s still teaching and training.”
“He’s over ninety and you’d never know it.”
“Over ninety, that’s impressive.”
“He is very impressive.” What I didn’t say out loud was that all of us aged slower and lived longer than people in the outside world. We were told it was God’s grace so that we could serve him better, but I believed it was being surrounded by so much angelic magic. Angels didn’t age, and being so close to them some of that rubbed off on us, but whatever the reason we were told not to speak of it to outsiders.
“Why didn’t you stay with the Sentinel training?”
I shook my head. “The Sentinels work very closely and more physically with the angelic than any other specialty, and one day in the middle of training we discovered that I had one of the rarer gifts among the Angel Speakers.”
“Which was?”
“I can speak with the higher forms of Celestial beings without dying or going mad. It’s a rare gift even among Angel Speakers. Having it meant I was moved to even more specialized training. I kept up with the Sentinel training for a time, but eventually I had to leave it to concentrate on my own studies with my Celestial tutors.”
“I didn’t think any of the teachers at the College were actual angels.”
“They aren’t.”
“But you said . . .”
“I said tutors, not teachers. A tutor is one-on-one instruction in private. The Celestial don’t teach in the public classes.” I did my best to blank my mind and not think about what those few sentences meant for me as a teenager. I’d been thirteen when in the middle of Sentinel training the angels and Master Donel had discovered my true gifts. I’d split my time between my tutors and Donel’s training for two years; at fifteen I left the Sentinel training except for one-on-one instruction with Donel and a few of his best and brightest, which had included Harshiel. Donel had not wanted my gifts in his specialty to be lost through lack of training.
“You look a million miles away, Havoc,” Charleston said.
“Not miles, years, though not a million.” I managed a smile, but I didn’t feel it and doubted it touched my eyes.
“Is there a personal beef between you and Harshiel?”
“Yes.”
He stared down at me. “ ‘Yes,’ that’s all you’re going to say?”
“You asked, I answered.”
“If your friend over there wasn’t a tough motherfucker you could have killed him. You know better than to go for the kidneys unless lives are in danger.”
“I did know better, Lieutenant, but it was like I was back in the College, Harshiel and me fighting each other for the top spot. He was the only person who ever made me feel competitive like that. I think I wouldn’t have fought to stay in the training as long as I did if I hadn’t wanted to be better than him, or at least not worse.”
“He’s your frenemy.”
I nodded. “We were friends once, and then he couldn’t take that I might be as good at some things and better at others. He hates to lose.” In my head I thought, I just hate to lose to him.
“The two of you made each other train better and harder because of it?”
“Very much so,” I sa
id.
“Can you talk him into going to the hospital?”
“If Suriel can’t, then he won’t listen to me.”
“Try.”
“I saw his eyes, Lieutenant, he hates me. I didn’t know he hated me.”
“You’re frenemies, Havoc, it’s a love-hate kind of thing. He’s probably missed you being there to push him to greater heights.”
“I doubt very much that he missed me, Lieutenant.”
“Talk to him, maybe I can persuade both of you to go to the hospital for more tests.”
I looked up at him, startled. “I’m okay now, the bleeding stopped.”
“You were attacked by a demon, Havoc, and the wounds keep bleeding even though all the medical personnel tell us the wounds are too healed to bleed. You need a healing specialist to look at you, Havoc.”
“You want me to try to make it a sort of dare for Harshiel—if you go to the hospital, so will I?”
“Now you’re getting the idea.”
“He hit me in the wounds and opened them back up, simple as that,” I said.
“The wounds are healed, Havoc, they shouldn’t be able to bleed.”
“The first paramedics are testing the blood to see if it’s mine. You know how demons borrow body fluids from other places to use,” I said.
“That’s when they borrow shit or money from somewhere else to smear all over the place, or to trick some fool into letting the demon make them rich as a price for their soul. One case they tested the bodily substances at a possession and found out it belonged to half a dozen different people, none of them related to the possession,” Charleston said.
“That’s my point, sir, I think it’s not my blood.”
“Why would the demon keep wasting something as precious to them as fresh human blood to keep smearing it on you, and why aren’t you sensing the demonic activity that’s doing it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks for making my point, Havoc, now go talk your friend into the hospital and agree to sign up for more testing yourself.”
I wanted Harshiel to see a doctor, because what if I had damaged his kidneys, but I didn’t want to go back to the hospital for a lot of reasons. “I’m afraid if I go back for tests they’ll keep me overnight, and I have tentative plans to see Reggie for lunch tomorrow to talk over some stuff. I don’t want to have to cancel on her for something that can wait until we get the blood work on my clothes and bandages.”
“I take it this lunch is a positive sign, not just a hash-the-details-of-our-separation-out?”
I smiled. “Yes, very positive.”
He grinned at me and clapped me on the shoulder. “I am glad to hear that, Havoc. Okay, we’ll wait until some of the older blood work comes back, as long as you promise that if you start bleeding again for any reason you’ll head to an ER, or call me, and if the blood is all yours, you’ll agree to go in for tests after your lunch date.”
I finally nodded. “That all sounds reasonable, Lieutenant.”
“Good, then let’s try to talk sense into Harshiel and you can go home and get some rest at least.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s bullshit, I should have sent you home sooner.”
“I’m . . .”
“Don’t say fine.”
“I’m okay.”
He rolled his eyes at me, then motioned me up to walk across the room to try to reason with Harshiel. I didn’t think anything I could say would make any difference, but if Charleston thought it would, I’d try. I trusted his judgment about people, even when I thought I knew everyone involved better than he did. The hate in Harshiel’s eyes had shocked me; maybe it wasn’t just women that I didn’t understand, maybe it was everybody.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They had stripped Harshiel out of his shirt so they could see his back, but the very darkness of his skin made it harder for them to see if it was bruising badly, blood rushing to the surface. His usual upright posture in the chair was strained. I could see the tension in his shoulders and his hands gripping the arms of the chair as he tried to not hunch over the pain. I’d hurt him and hadn’t meant to, or had I? Charleston was right; if I hadn’t meant to hurt him, I wouldn’t have punched him like I had, so why had I done it? I honestly had no idea which made me feel worse somehow.
I started to say I was sorry, but he spoke first. “I did not know you were injured, Zaniel. It is not honorable to strike an opponent in an injury that I did not give them.”
“It’s all right, Harshiel, you could not have known.”
“Is it true that it was a demon that clawed you?”
“It is true,” I said, falling back into the rhythm of the language I’d grown up with instead of just saying yes.
“You fought a demon hand-to-hand and kept him from killing you?”
“I did, or I would not be here to speak with you.”
“And I used the wound against you in a fight; I am ashamed of taking advantage of such a thing.”
I started to touch his shoulder, then stopped, because I wasn’t sure how he’d take it. “There is no shame because you could not have known I was injured. I am the one who should be ashamed; I should not have hit you the way I did, such a blow should be saved for life-or-death battles only.”
“I thought you would be slower, less able because you left Master Donel’s training, but you were fierce and fought well.”
I bowed my head, putting my right hand over my chest, fingertips lightly touching my opposite shoulder. Falling back into the old gesture without thinking. “I am honored that you found me a worthy opponent.”
He tried to bow his head in return, but stopped the gesture halfway, frozen in pain. “Most worthy.”
“As a worthy opponent may I ask you to see a doctor, so that I will know that I have not injured you too badly?”
He raised his dark face toward me but had to finish the gesture with just his eyes, as if even that small movement hurt. I touched his shoulder then and fought not to touch the side of his face. When we were children, I had loved how dark his skin was compared to mine, but especially compared to Cosmiel; she’d been a natural redhead with the palest of skin to offset her green eyes. At seven, I had marveled at all the colors we came in, and it had been one of the hardest things to learn in the outside world that it was considered racist to remark on skin color. I had been raised to believe that our differences made us beautiful, and no matter how wrong some things at the College had been, it hadn’t all been bad; in fact some of it I wanted to teach to my son.
Harshiel was studying my face as if he was trying to read my thoughts, and then I realized he could read my mind. I’d touched him enough for him to be able to know what I was thinking. It was one of his gifts, but only with close contact. He couldn’t read someone across a room or across the world like others at the College. It was one of the reasons he’d been trained to fight, because if he could touch you, he had a chance of literally picking your brain.
“Zaniel,” he said, and reached up to put his hand over mine where I touched his shoulder. “If you missed us so much, why did you stay away?”
“Because I could not have all of you and leave the College,” I said. His palm and fingers were rougher than they had been the last time I’d felt his hand on mine. We’d both lifted more weapons, more weights, touched more of life. I felt the loss of not having been there for each other, but then I stopped my thoughts, let myself sink into that stillness that we’d been taught. If you didn’t want someone reading your mind or emotions you could prevent it by simply not thinking, not feeling. It was like the empty mind of meditation but reached in an instant. When you deal with angels, blanking yourself for a fellow human is so much easier.
He pulled back first and then we let each other go, but the eye contact stayed. Frenemies, Charleston had called us, but that wasn’t exactly it, more brokenhearted friends.
Suriel said softly, “I am not the only one who missed you, Zaniel.”
&
nbsp; “I did not miss him,” Harshiel said, looking away, but the lie was too obvious, or too late.
“The angels hear you,” Turmiel said, which was something we said at the College if you thought someone was lying.
“And the angels will heal me if I am worthy of it, I have no need of human doctors.” He started to stand but had to grab the edge of the nearest desk. I caught his arm and steadied him. He let me help him for a moment and then glared that hatred back at me, but now I was even more puzzled by it. He tried to jerk away from me, but the movement hurt enough that if I hadn’t been there, he’d have fallen.
“Please, Harshiel, let them do more tests; I could not bear it if something happens to you because I had been too zealous.”
“You were not zealous, you fought to win, as we are taught.” He looked around. “Turmiel, help me.”
The other man came but his dark eyes had widened; evidently Harshiel still didn’t ask for help very often. Turmiel came to take my place at his side, so he could keep standing.
“You are obviously too hurt to do your duty as Sentinel,” Suriel said.
“I have failed you,” he said.
She shook her head. “You have not failed me, not yet, but if you cannot move without Turmiel’s aid, then I am without either of you at my side.”
“Tell him to go to the hospital,” I said.
“We must all be back inside the walls before dark,” Harshiel said. The wording was odd, not back to the College, but inside the walls.
I looked from one to the other of them, trying to figure out what I was missing.
A Terrible Fall of Angels Page 23