Concrete Savior

by Yvonne Navarro

  “Those people do sound pretty whacked.” Brynna couldn’t imagine the parents would be so foolish as to believe a child would be able to keep a secret like that. Which was more odd—that inane expectation or that people would pay the parents to retell the experience on public media? She followed as Eran went into the kitchen and threw away the soiled bandages and empty wrappers, then washed his hands. “So now what?”

  Eran slipped on a jacket, then picked up his wallet and Chicago Police star from the counter. “It’s a quarter to seven on Saturday morning. There’s no better time for the police work I told you about. Are you coming?”

  CASEY ANLON LIVED ON the Near North Side, in an eighth-floor apartment in one of a group of older buildings that had been converted to condominiums. Fifty years ago the area had been crappy and dirty, full of factory offices and manufacturing plants and certainly not anywhere a person would considering living. Time, money, and the need for space had taken over and developers had quickly stepped in to take advantage of buildings where a one-bedroom unit could head toward two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and a two-bedroom might top half a million. Eran figured if this was indicative of the going rate for property ownership, he was going to be renting for a long, long time.

  It was a nice-looking building, well maintained with triple-high windows and balconies onto which residents had put plants and flowers. By seven-thirty Eran was parked on Larabee just south of Chicago Avenue, where he could watch the main entrance to the building but probably wouldn’t be spotted by Anlon if he came out. Unless he decided to take a bicycle or something, it was a good bet Anlon would have to grab a taxi to go anywhere.

  “People live in these buildings?” Brynna asked. As always, she was interested in everything around her. “They look like offices.”

  “On the outside,” Eran told her. “On the inside they’ve been completely transformed into condos. They’re not to my taste—too modern and industrial—but a lot of people like them. I suppose they’re easy to take care of.”

  Brynna tilted her head. “Your place is modern. Plain, too.”

  “Not like these. I’ve seen the insides of a lot of these conversions. They’re like little white boxes with hardwood floors and track lighting. They’ll put in a new kitchen and some snazzy fixtures in the bathrooms, but in the end it’s still just a collection of rooms that altogether make a box that’s still tiny. A couple of years ago I had a girlfriend who lived in a place just like this. Her whole unit was only seven hundred and fifty square feet. I could’ve put her apartment into the coach house twice over—my bathroom is bigger than her bedroom.”

  “Really.”

  Eran glanced over and saw that Brynna’s eyes were bright with interest. “What?”

  “You had a girlfriend.”

  It was a statement rather than a question, but Eran answered anyway. “Yeah. Actually, I’ve had a few of those through the years.”

  “But this is the first time you’ve ever mentioned one. Was she special?”

  That startled him. “Special? No, no more than anyone else, I suppose. I only thought of her now because of her apartment.”

  “Why did it end between you and her? You are . . .” Brynna grinned at him. “What would the ladies call it? A ‘good catch.’ ”

  He squinted at her. Was she teasing him? In all this time, he’d never seen her exhibit much of a sense of humor. But as she’d reminded him on numerous occasions, demons were very adaptable. “That’s kind of personal, don’t you think?”

  Now she looked as surprised as he’d felt a few moments ago. “We’ve touched every part of each other’s body. I don’t see how we can get more personal than that.”

  The reminder made involuntary heat build in Eran’s face. A number of deliciously carnal thoughts tried to bubble up in his head, but he forced them away. Now was not the time to go down that road. “Physical personal and mental personal are two different things,” he told her. His voice had an edge of hoarseness to it and he cleared his throat.

  “How so?”

  He opened his mouth to explain, then found he couldn’t. It was ludicrous that he even try. He had a history of failed relationships going all the way back to his army days, that time when most of his fellow red, white, and blue-blooded baby soldiers were lining up with their girlfriends in front of army chaplains. None of the girls he’d hooked up with were willing to weather his overprotectiveness and stick around for more than a month.

  “It’s complicated,” was all he finally said, and although she looked like she wanted to find out more, Brynna ultimately let it go. The warmth that had blasted through him when she’d brought up their lovemaking had bled away in the face of his own pathetic history. With Brynna around he’d conveniently forgotten his particular tendency to overwhelm a partner, and while he still occasionally labeled it as jealousy, it wasn’t really that at all. He didn’t get upset when his girlfriend talked to another man, worked with someone, or even brought up her own past friendships, be they casual or serious, good or bad. He wasn’t concerned with the past, not a bit. It was the future Eran was worried about, the things that people did to people, strangers, friends, relatives, spouses. If a husband could be allowed to do despicable things to a wife, as Eran’s father had done to his mother by giving her the drugs that had killed her, then no one could be trusted around someone you loved, could they?

  No one could be safe.

  And being a cop for all these years hadn’t helped. It had just made things worse by showing him all that was bad about what humans could do to each other, the worst of the worst. His father might be a lump of dog crap, but he was nothing in the shit soup of mankind’s potential for cruelty and violence.

  But Brynna . . . she was a different thing altogether, wasn’t she? She was strong and capable and could take care of herself in a way that no other woman could. He didn’t have to worry that some crazy perp might hurt her. Because she . . .

  Damn it.

  She wasn’t human.

  Eran scowled, wishing he hadn’t cycled around to that, the part that involved Lucifer and Searchers and Hunters—all of which might do exactly what Eran feared—and who knew what else. Still, that was something else that couldn’t be avoided, not just because she was constantly reminding him—for his own good, she claimed—but because there could be no normal existence with her. And wasn’t that what he ultimately wanted?

  His expression relaxed. Maybe not. The truth was, after being with Brynna these last couple of months, the idea of a supposedly “normal” existence—day job, wife, one-point-five kids, house, dog, and a minivan—sounded completely and utterly boring.

  Brynna touched his hand then pointed. “Look.”

  Eran followed her outstretched finger and saw Casey Anlon coming out of his building. There were no cabs waiting in the taxi stand out front this early on a Saturday morning, but it was only a couple of minutes before one showed up and the young man climbed inside. Eran put his car in gear and pulled out behind the cab, thankful for something to break his current train of thought.

  It was easy to keep the taxi in sight on the Saturday morning streets. Not ten minutes later the cab angled to the curb in front of a Starbucks on Michigan Avenue and Casey Anlon got out. He paused on the sidewalk and looked around, but Eran’s black Mitsubishi was just another car on the street and there was no reason for him to catch sight of it. It was more crowded here, with people already lining up inside and settling at a couple of small sidewalk tables with their coffee and newspapers. Eran pulled up and parked in front of the nail salon a couple of doors down. Michigan Avenue was one long no-parking zone, but all Eran could do was hope the guy was too wrapped up in whatever was going on inside his head to notice. Eran figured things could go two ways: Anlon went inside and stayed, drinking coffee and reading the paper or whatever, or he got his caffeine fix to go and headed back out.

  But Anlon wasn’t inside the store for more than fifteen seconds before he came out again and stood on the sidewal
k, scanning Michigan Avenue and looking at his watch. Seeing him do that made Eran automatically check the time, although he had no better place to be than right where he was. The nephilim—he caught himself sometimes thinking of him the same way that Brynna did—stayed that way for almost forty-five minutes, and it wasn’t hard to figure that he was supposed to meet someone. Was he early, or was he being stood up? And if so, by whom?

  At five minutes to nine, Eran got his answer when a young woman came around the corner of Lake and Michigan. She was of average height but very pretty; at perhaps thirty years old, everything about her said confidence and she moved with the air of someone who owned the world. Eran hadn’t spent much time with Casey Anlon, but he was fairly adept at reading people; this young man would be absolutely bowled over by a woman like this.

  “What do you think?” he asked Brynna.

  “She’s not a nephilim,” she said. “Or a demon. Beyond that, I can’t tell anything about her, not from this distance.” She reached for the door handle. “Should we go talk to them?”

  “Not yet. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

  “But you can’t hear anything from here.”

  Eran smiled slightly. “Sometimes a little patience will get you a lot farther. Remember the way he freaked out on us at the station? If we confront him and his friend, he’ll zip up so tight that nothing short of a scalpel will get anything out of him.” Eran tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “And if this woman turns out to be his big secret, chances are she won’t talk to us, either. The next time we question him—or them, if this goes where I’m thinking it will—we need to have more information than either one knows we have. We want the element of surprise on our side.”

  Brynna watched the front of the store and he could tell she was considering this. “How long do we wait?”

  Eran realized he was gripping the steering wheel and still banging his thumb against it. He forced his hand to relax. “As long as it takes.” He glanced over at Brynna and realized she was grinning. “What’s so funny?”

  She shrugged, still smiling. “I was thinking you and I have very different definitions of what that means.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Yeah.” He hesitated, not sure he should ask, then blurted out his question anyway. “What’s the longest you’ve waited for something?”

  Brynna didn’t answer for a long time, just kept staring toward Starbucks and the people milling around the café tables outside it. He was starting to think she hadn’t heard him when her head swiveled in his direction. His stomach did a quick, unpleasant flip—nerves?—when he saw that her normally tan-colored eyes had taken on a tinge of bloody red. The strange hue seemed to deepen the ever-present shadows of her eye sockets, thinning her face and making it elongate until it was almost rapacious, hungry.

  “I have waited eons,” she said in a voice that so low and deep Eran almost didn’t recognize it. “Longer than anything you can conceive.”

  He couldn’t help himself—he had to know. “For what?”

  “Freedom,” she whispered. “Just that . . . freedom.”

  Eran didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything he could say. She was right, of course. What did he, with a human life span of seventy or eighty years—if he was lucky—know of eternity? The saying “It felt like forever . . .” disintegrated in the face of a being such as Brynna, who had endured so much more and for so much longer than anything possible within the mortal imagination. And she was still waiting—he knew that. Although he would love to help her, he knew he couldn’t. What she sought, if it came at all, would have to be bestowed by something with far more authority and ability than he would ever have.

  “They’re coming out,” Brynna said suddenly.

  Speaking of waiting, Eran realized he had no idea how long the two of them had been sitting there without speaking, each wrapped up in their own thoughts about what doing exactly that entailed. He sat up straighter, scrutinizing the two younger people with a detective’s eye. “Interesting,” he said. “He looks upset.” Anlon had followed his companion out of Starbucks and now they stood face-to-face in an almost classic argument pose. Anlon was talking and gesturing, but she just stood there; everything about her body language said she was calm and completely unconcerned about whatever it was that had Anlon’s boxer shorts twisted up. “Lover’s spat?” he wondered aloud.

  “No,” Brynna said. “These two aren’t involved. They didn’t kiss when she first got here—didn’t even touch—and they’re not touching now.”

  “Maybe he wants to be.”

  “Probably,” Brynna agreed.

  “Looks like they’re going their separate ways,” Eran said. “Wait . . . well, would you look at that.” He and Brynna watched in silence as the young woman suddenly leaned forward and kissed Casey Anlon full on the mouth.

  “Tell you what,” Brynna said after the woman had walked away and left Casey staring after her, “you stay with him and I’ll see where she goes. I’ve got my cell phone.”

  Eran thought about it, but only for a second. Brynna could take care of herself, at least against anything that humans could throw at her. As far as being overprotective of her, he was out of the woods in that respect—more or less—and he had to admit that of the things inhuman she might have to deal with, he probably wasn’t going to be that much help. “All right.” Still, he couldn’t help adding, “But stay in touch, let me know you’re all right.”

  Brynna just smiled.

  Sixteen

  Jack Gaynor had never hurt so much in his life.

  He couldn’t believe the fucking hospital had sent him home like this. “I’ve seen a lot worse,” the doctor at Cook County Hospital had told him. “You’re a big guy with a strong constitution. You’ll get over it.”

  Get over it? What kind of a bedside manner was that? The man had a patient who was burned enough so that he looked like a piece of blackened toast, for God’s sake, but he’d get over it?

  He was a big guy all right, and that was exactly what was working against him here. The weenie pain meds they’d prescribed weren’t doing shit, but Jack only had so many left and the doctor—the same sympathy-challenged motherfucker who’d sent him home—had made it one hundred percent clear that there would be no refills—“Make these last, Mr. Gaynor. I don’t do refills on narcotics. No exceptions, so don’t bother to call and ask.” If that little shit had to lie in Jack’s overcooked skin for a couple of hours, he’d change his mind pretty fast. In the meantime, Jack had to ration; he wasn’t stupid enough to think the meds he was taking weren’t working at all—they were, just not to the level he needed. But if he took too many now and ran out later, then he’d really be in an ocean of hurt.

  He stared up at the ceiling, tracing the cracks and ting not to move. It was bad, but if he stayed perfectly still, the hurt didn’t escalate . . . for a while. But he had to shift after a few minutes—he couldn’t help it. If he didn’t, the pressure would build and something would start to sting, or itch, or ache. It was a no-win situation.

  If only he could sleep for . . . what? A week? Two? However long it took for his skin to heal and the pain to go away. It had been only three days but it seemed like years. He had first- and second-degree burns on his face, scalp—so much for his hair—neck, arms and hands. But he’d live, oh yeah. He’d look like a damned freak, but he’d live.

  Freak.

  Wow, that was fucking ironic, wasn’t it? He could still remember what and who he’d been thinking about just before the stupid car had gone up in flames. Rita, that’s who, and Ken—or Kendall, as Rita insisted on calling her son. Those two and the never-ending problems they caused him, and how the boy looked liked exactly that—a freak.

  Even now, here he was laid up and hurting, and neither one of them was doing a damned thing to help him. After all he’d done for them—roof over their heads, food on the table, a good, secure family life—they weren’t doing shit in return. Punk-ass kid couldn’t even be conside
rate enough to keep his music at a dull roar so Jack could get some sleep. Weren’t teenagers supposed to sleep late? The bastard had fired up his CD player at fucking eight o’clock this morning, and it hadn’t let up since. He could almost feel every bass note on the surface of his skin.

  “Jack?”

  He jerked at the sound of Rita’s voice, then hissed at the searing sensation that ran up his neck and scalp where it was touching the pillow. He had bandages all over him and the staff at the hospital had told him to keep the burns covered, but they sure didn’t seem to be helping right now.