Concrete Savior

by Yvonne Navarro

  “Hey,” Redmond said as he came up. “It’s definitely the same young man who did those other two rescues—I recognize him from two different videos.”

  Brynna looked at him in surprise. “You have videos?”

  He nodded. “One from the subway security camera, the other from a kid who used her phone to record the car incident. Not top quality, but enough. I thought for sure that you’d want to talk to him, but one second you were right behind me, the next you weren’t.”

  Brynna nodded absently. “Yeah.”

  Eran frowned at her. “What’s going on?”

  She inclined her head toward the ambulance. One of the police officers had closed its back doors and the vehicle was taking off, turning onto Lower Wacker Drive with its emergency lights still flashing. As it disappeared from sight, they could hear its siren change pitch to give the occasional warning blast. Eran stood next to her without saying anything, then finally spoke. “I can tell there’s something turning around in that head of yours, so I’ll ask again: what’s going on?”

  She turned to face him. “Remember what I told you about Mireva, and how at the moment of her death I saw the task she was born to complete, and why she had to do it?” He nodded. “Well, I saw this woman’s future, too, and why she had to die.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “She was meant to die today, Eran. Had she lived, she would have done terrible things.”

  “Like what?”

  “She wasn’t right mentally,” Brynna said. “I saw the school where she goes every day. Her teacher was there—the woman over there with all the kids around her, and they were all there, too. I could see everything that would have happened. Her teacher, and at least one of the kids, would have died at the hands of the girl the nephilim tried to save.” She looked at him steadily. “She would have killed people, Eran. Gone on to become a murderer.

  “Just like Glenn Klinger.”

  HE WAS COLDER THAN he ever remembered being in his life.

  A fireman had given him a blanket and Casey pulled it tightly around his shoulders and stared numbly at the gurney where paramedics were still working on the girl he’d tried to save. Another woman had walked up to them and was standing with one hand resting on the girl’s ankle. She was tall and oddly striking, with choppily cut chin-length hair and a deep, almost sensual shadowing to her face that Casey could see all the way from where he stood. He didn’t know her place in the scheme of this little drama, and after a few moments, the medics scooted her away and loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance.

  He shivered as he watched the doors close. He had lived in Chicago all his life and, much to the envy of his family members, the cold had never bothered him. Even the most brutal of winters barely fazed him—while others were huddled beneath heavy parkas, scarves, and winter gear and sloshing miserably through the snow, a medium-weight coat did Casey fine even when the temperature dropped below zero. The weather—hot or cold—simply didn’t sink in.

  But this . . .

  It chilled him all the way to his heart.

  Casey stared morosely after the ambulance as it pulled out. The lights were still flashing and as it drove away he could hear the driver occasionally hit a more obnoxious horn to try to clear traffic. That meant they hadn’t given up, but he knew it wasn’t looking good. Chalk this up as another entry into the It wasn’t supposed to be like this file, right along with the Glenn Klinger thing.

  “You need to get out of those wet clothes,” someone said. “We’ll take you home.” Casey pulled his gaze away from the now-disappeared ambulance and focused on the voice. His nerves twanged as he recognized the detective who’d just questioned him; the woman he’d seen standing by the gurney was there with him, studying him with unreadable oak-colored eyes. He wanted to refuse and just take a cab, where he could be alone with his thoughts and his failures, but he didn’t think he should.

  He followed them to the detective’s car and got in the back when the man held the door open for him. Was the woman a detective, too? She was dressed well, in a business suit and high heels, and when she walked around and climbed into the passenger seat, he thought she must be. When they were all settled in, Casey cleared his throat. “I’m sorry—what did you say your name is?”

  “Redmond,” the cop answered. “Detective Eran Redmond.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “This is Ms. Malak,” Redmond said before the woman could answer. “She’s a department consultant.”

  “Oh.” It was all Casey could think of to say. He wasn’t really interested anyway.

  “What’s your address?” Redmond asked.

  Casey gave it to him, then realized how much he was looking forward to going home. He’d get in the shower, he decided, and stay in it for a very long time. He didn’t know if the hot water would make him feel any better, but it sure sounded good.

  “So just to make sure I correctly understand what you told me earlier,” the detective said, “you did not know the girl you tried to save. Right?”

  “Right,” Casey said. He resisted the urge to add anything when the detective didn’t respond. He’d once read that people always had the urge to fill in pauses in conversation, and that’s how a lot of criminals ended up talking themselves into incriminating evidence, or even confessions. He wasn’t a criminal and he didn’t know why he was thinking about that sort of thing right now, but there it was.

  “So what made you jump in the water after her?” the woman asked after a few moments.

  Casey inhaled. “I . . . guess I don’t really know. I mean, she was there and it was obvious that she shouldn’t be. When she fell, it was just automatic.”

  “Witnesses say they saw you running toward the bridge while you were still on Wacker Drive,” the detective said.

  Casey’s stomach did an unpleasant flip. “I could see her,” he said quickly. “I knew something like that couldn’t end well.”

  “Really.”

  The detective lapsed into silence again and Casey fidgeted in the backseat. It shouldn’t be too long until he got home and he could end this whole painful experience.

  “And the other two?”

  Casey flinched at the unexpected question. “What?”

  “The other two people you’ve rescued. Did you know them, or were they also strangers?”

  For a long moment Casey literally couldn’t find his voice. “I don’t know what—”

  “Choose your answer carefully, Mr. Anlon,” Detective Redmond interrupted. “You really want to stay on the e of honesty here.”

  Jesus, how had this man known about those? What was going on here? “No,” he finally said. “I’d never met either of them.” He almost added that he didn’t know their names, but cut himself off at the last second. That wasn’t actually true, was it?

  The woman—Ms. Malak—turned so that she could look at him. “So how did you come to be there for them at the exact moment they needed help?”

  There was something about her gaze that made Casey squirm. It was deeper than it had any right to be, as if it could penetrate all the way to his soul and rip out the truth. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t dare tell the truth, either—he had to protect Gina. And himself, too. The Chicago Police Department was one thing, but classified experiments by some unnamed federal agency were another animal altogether—one that was big and vicious and would damned well bite. Given a choice of which of the two organizations he wanted pissed at him, the answer was pretty obvious.

  “It was just a feeling,” he said. She looked at him without saying anything and he knew the detective was watching him in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from adding, “I just kind of get those sometimes.”

  “Really,” the detective said again.

  Casey nodded jerkily. He felt absurdly like one of those rubber puppets, the kind you stuck your hand into and controlled with your fingers. He looked out the window and ground his teeth when he realized the detective had p
assed his building and kept going. “My apartment’s back there,” he said.

  “I still have some questions that need answers,” the detective responded.

  “I’m really tired.”

  “Funny,” the woman said. “You don’t look tired to me.”

  Casey frowned but kept his mouth shut. The truth was he felt fine—he wasn’t even cold anymore—but how could she have known that?

  “We’re going to take you down to the station for a little while,” Redmond said suddenly. “Just to hash out a few things.”

  <

  He looked up in alarm. “Maybe I should have a lawyer.”

  “I don’t see why,” the detective said. “You’re not being charged with anything. There’s not even a crime involved. I’m just looking for a little cooperation. You’re up for that, aren’t you?”

  The cop was right—there was no crime. What was he afraid of? Saying something about Gina, that’s what, but the more he resisted, the more suspicious they would become. “Of course,” Casey said, hoping his reluctance didn’t come through too much in his voice. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Of course you don’t,” said the detective. But Casey could have sworn the man had just a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

  THEY TOOK THE NEPHILIM to a room that was exactly like the one to which Eran had taken her the first day she’d met him in July. In some ways that felt like a long time ago, but in others it was barely a blink in time—especially his time, since his life on this earth was so short. It seemed odd that things would circle around to where she was the person on the other side of the two-way glass, watching someone else who was about to be questioned when not so long ago it had been exactly the opposite.

  Eran wouldn’t let her go in and talk to the guy alone, so Brynna watched the nephilim while she waited for Eran and Bheru to deal with a few things. He’d told her the young man’s name was Casey Anlon, and although he didn’t have much more info than that, he’d assured her that he would by the time they got back. Brynna thought Casey seemed unaccountably nervous for someone who supposedly hadn’t done anything wrong; then again, almost anyone who wasn’t used to being in a correctional situation probably would be unnerved. Add that the guy had dropped into the Chicago River in a failed attempt to save someone’s life less than two hours ago, and it all made for a pretty lousy day. No wonder he was fidgety and wanted to head home.

  “Ready?” Eran asked.

  Brynna glanced over her shoulder and nodded, then inclined her head toward Bheru Sathi. She hadn’t seen the Indian detective since before she had moved in with Eran and all the events that had led up to that. Now he lifted one side of his mouth in a smile that could only be described as knowing, as if he had predicted a long time ago to his partner that there would be something more, much more, between Redmond and her than that first cop-to-witness meeting. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d done exactly that and Eran had just never told her.

  Eran and Bheru led the way into the room and Brynna followed, trying to stay as unobtrusive as possible. A useless effort—Casey looked up as soon as the door opened and his gaze fixed on her rather than on the two detectives. Did he know instinctively that there was something different about her? Maybe, but if he’d had any true notion, he would have been shocked, indeed. Finally he pulled his gaze away and looked toward the detectives. “How long is this going to take? No offense, but I’d really like to go home and get out of these clothes.”

  “Of course,” Bheru said in his lilting accent. “I’m certain we will only be together for a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” the young man said, but he was clearly unhappy.

  Eran settled on a chair across the table from him. “So you’ve been causing quite a stir around the city this last week or so.” When Casey didn’t say anything, Eran continued, “You’re like the modern version of Superman or something, flying around and saving people everywhere.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Casey muttered.

  “Oh, I would,” Eran said. “This is the third rescue in eight days. Friday to Friday.”

  “An exceptional record,” Bheru said. “So how is it possible that you know where to be for these people, Mr. Anlon?” He folded his arms and although his expression remained completely pleasant, he still managed to convey a don’t-bullshit-me attitude. “At precisely the time when they most need assistance?”

  Casey mumbled something, but his voice was too low for either of the detectives to pick up. Eran leaned forward. “What did you say?”

  “I said ‘not precisely,’ ” Casey repeated. There was an undertone of something in his voice but Brynna couldn’t quite pick it up. Resentment? Disappointment? Or was it self-chastisement? His next words reinforced her most recent speculation. “Didn’t quite make it this last time.”

  “No,” Bheru agreed. “You did not, and that is quite unfortunate. And so I ask you again: how is it that you know you should be in a particular place at even more or less a particular time?”

  The young man didn’t answer, but he was looking more and ticunhappy as the seconds ticked past.

  “Well?” Redmond prodded. “A skill like that could be mighty useful in this day and age, you know.”

  “I get these feelings,” Casey said. He was mumbling again, his voice so low that the two men had to lean in to hear him.

  “Feelings,” Redmond repeated. Brynna shot a glance at him and he caught her eye. What she saw there took her back yet again to her own interrogation last July, and how she’d said essentially the same thing and he hadn’t believed her. Things were different now but he wasn’t stupid; if Casey Anlon was the same as Brynna—a fallen angel with demonic powers—he knew Brynna would have found him out instantly. Casey was special—a nephilim—but he didn’t have any powers, angelic, demonic, or anything else. He was just the offspring of a celestial being, put on Earth to complete a task.

  Brynna frowned at him. This nephilim’s task—was it saving someone? The children of angels were charged with one thing, but that was all. Could this half human have lost his way and not be able to identify his assignment? No one ever said nephilim were savvy—if they were, the faction of Hell that included demons like Lahash and Gavino, Searchers who were assigned to trick each nephilim to his or her unaccomplished end, would have given up eons ago. Like so many of Hell’s permanent inhabitants, they wanted the payoff without having to do much of anything to get it.

  Now Casey Anlon hunched his shoulders. “Yeah. Feelings. They come and go.”

  “So what are we talking about here?” Bheru asked. “Do you hear voices? Do you get directions to specific locations?” He spread his hands. “I am compelled to ask because few people have ‘feelings’ that convey to them the depth of information required to perform the tasks that you have.”

  “I don’t hear voices,” Casey snapped. “I’m not crazy.”

  Redmond regarded him solemnly. “We never said you were.”

  “I don’t like where this is going,” the younger man said. “I—”

  “It’s not ‘going’ anywhere,” Bheru interrupted. “We’re just trying to figure out how you did this. Think about it—is it so hard to understand why we’re curious?”

  “I suppose,” Casey said, but Brynna thought he sounded like nothing more than a sullen teenager who was being forced to admit he was wrong about something. She took advantage of the way he was making a great show of picking at his fingernails so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone in the room, slipping around the table until she was only a few feet away from him.

  “Well?” Redmond prodded.

  Casey sighed and finally looked up. “There’s nothing I can tell you about them,” he said. “They just happen, okay? Out of the blue, and then I just know where to go and where to be.”

  “Like how? Does the address just pop into your head?”

  “I don’t know how I know,” he insisted. “I just do.” He slapped the table angrily. “Can I please just leave? I’ll find my own way h
ome.”

  The timing would never be better than now. “Please don’t be upset, Mr. Anlon,” she said. “We’re just trying to learn from you.” She stepped forward and placed her hand lightly on his right shoulder—

  —and let herself sink into another realm.

  She was still in the same room, with the same people—Eran and Bheru and, of course, the nephilim. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected although she couldn’t have said what “that” was, exactly. Nuisance demons, perhaps, like the ones that had tormented the old Korean man and his daughter in that first case she’d helped Eran bring to a close. Maybe a glimpse of this mysterious power the guy seemed to have, this ability to feel when and where he should be in order to save the life of someone whose existence was marked by destiny to come to a quick and early end.

  But this . . .