by Todd Young
And if he were, who knew what would come now?
He smoothed Finn’s hair away from his forehead. “I love you, you little cockhead.” Finn snuffled contently, hearing something in his sleep perhaps. Angel smiled. He leaned forward and kissed him on the brow.
The crazy thing is, now I love him too, Cole said.
He’s pretty special.
Cole slipped into silence, the tone of which was clear to Angel.
He hesitated for a moment, smiling falteringly. Not as special as you, of course. Cole blossomed, love and delight flooding him before overflowing into Angel.
Angel closed his eyes and sighed. Where were they going? What was going to happen with their lives now? Hell, they weren’t even human anymore.
It’ll be all right, Cole said.
You think?
I know.
How can you know?
I just know.
90
They were woken in the morning by a loud clang. Hunter slammed the cattle prod against the cell and they jumped, struggling to their feet. He stood in the gloom, his face severe, and waited for minutes, motionless, staring at them as though they were inanimate objects, or as if he might fathom what they’d done if he glared long enough.
“I’m going to kill one of you,” he finally said, and then added, “I. Think,” his intonation intended to be humorous.
He glanced at Finn.
“It’s going to hurt.” He paused. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Finny, you lying little maggot piece of shit.”
Hunter?
Hunter jolted as Finn’s voice cut across his thoughts.
We love you.
“I don’t fucking love him,” Angel said.
“I love you.”
“You love me?”
Finn nodded, his hair bouncing.
Really?
Again, Finn nodded.
Angel froze. Finn had pretty much just welcomed Hunter into their burgeoning consciousness. He’d not only heard Finn, but had now spoken. The others had fallen silent, retreating to the shadows. They watched on warily.
Angel turned to Finn, perplexed.
Hunter didn’t quite understand right at the moment. He thought he was talking with Finn alone. He hadn’t sensed the others, fathomed how close they were, or recognized Miriam, though he was questing suspiciously now, a dim awareness of a larger presence haunting him.
It’s me, Angel said. I can hear you too.
He had just that moment picked up on the fringes of Hunter’s thoughts and had jumped forward, trying to break across them. Hunter had been angrily wondering if something he’d been told — something about Finn and Angel and what they’d done yesterday — was true, though the picture he had in his mind of it was twisted and ugly and was tied up with power and the ability to dominate and even kill another person. Along with the thought, or sparking it, had been an image of Miriam, sitting in Hunter’s drawing room, dressed as though she belonged in the nineteenth century.
She was smiling.
She looked triumphant.
Was this really happening?
I don’t just love you, Finn said, piercing their thoughts and stepping forward. I want to be with you. Now, if you’d like. He yawned, feigning casual desire. Hunter narrowed his eyes. We could do it again.
Hunter hesitated. “I came down here for a reason.” He glanced away, and for the first time Angel could remember appeared uncertain. “I’ve been told … told that you … that he and you,” and here he pointed, “bound with one another.”
Silence.
“You know what that means?”
Finn shrugged and turned to Angel, his expression so guileless Angel wondered for a moment if he’d forgotten.
“You don’t know,” Hunter said, though he obviously didn’t believe this.
I don’t think so.
“Finn. Open your mouth and tell me.”
“I don’t … yeah, well, hell, of course I know.” He took a breath. “She told me.”
“She told you?”
They nodded.
“And did you try what she said — you and … him?”
Finn opened his mouth. Again he glanced at Angel. “Yeah, but it wasn’t any good. He’s a dud.”
“You know you’re mine, don’t you?”
Of course.
Hunter smiled. “Well, I promised her I’d bring you back with me — both of you — but I guess she’s expecting an angelic majesty.” He squinted. “You do know what that means?”
Neither of them answered.
“It’s a very dangerous thing — for some people.” He turned his eyes on Angel. “I’d say it’d be very dangerous for you, dear.”
Angel blinked rapidly, battling to hold Hunter’s gaze.
And that’s why I can tell, Hunter went on, that it hasn’t happened. If you’d bound with him, he would have consumed you. He grinned. “Come on, then,” he said, and slipped the key into the lock.
A decisive voice shattered their awareness. Don’t fucking touch him. If you touch him again, we’ll kill you. It was Jason, anxious for Finn, though he sounded unfamiliar somehow, as strong and forceful as Angel had ever heard him.
Hunter jolted and the keys clattered onto the flagstones. For a moment, he looked frightened, but quickly regained composure. “Sounds like your boyfriend, Finny. He’s not long for this world.”
“He’s not—?” Finn huffed, angry at having shown he cared. “Whatever,” he said, dissembling. He waved a hand dismissively and turned away.
Like Jase said, if you touch him, we’ll kill you. This was Cole, as sweet and clear and incisive as a bell.
Again, Hunter jolted. He’d bent forward to retrieve the keys but was now straightening. “You …” he began, clearly disturbed at having heard Jason and Cole. “You …?”
“They’re our mates.” Finn lifted his chin. “We’re close to them. That’s all.”
“Right.” Hunter lifted his eyebrows cynically. Given his tone of voice, he not only didn’t believe Finn but didn’t care if Finn knew it. “Well, looks like they’d better come along too. Culling to do.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness.
“Fuck!”
“What?”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Talking to him? Hell, Finn.” Angel raised his fist, but as Finn gazed at him untroubled, he lowered it again.
Finn turned away and then back again, his face coloring with anger. “If you had it your way you’d never confront anything. You think we’re going to get out of here without a fight? I mean, do you even think? You’ve been sitting in this fucking cell for weeks, and now we’ve got a chance, you’re not prepared to take it?”
Angel winced, drawing his head away as Finn stepped close. He took a breath and gathered himself. “What’s the chance, Finn? What’s the chance?” he said, ending on a shout. He thrust Finn in the chest. “He said he was going to kill one of us. He said culling. You do know what that means?”
“Of course I know what it means.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? It doesn’t bother you that a psychopath has just walked off in the direction of the person you’re supposed to love most in the world with the intention of killing him?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Yeah? Great, Finn. Glad you can see the future. Glad you can manipulate reality.”
They were glaring at one another now. It was a challenge of some sort, and Finn, in reply, casually stretched out and gripped a bar. He seized it as though it were Play-Doh. The steel gooped through his fingers, reforming again as he drew his hand away.
“Can’t I?” he said quietly.
Angel gasped.
He closed his eyes and reeled. Whenever in the past he’d heard someone say they were dreaming, or they thought so, he’d considered it stupid. He could always tell the difference; waking was waking and dreaming was dreaming. But this? Right in front of him, Finn had thwarted the laws of physics — at least, he’d thwar
ted the classical laws. Angel had heard this sort of thing was possible. According to quantum mechanics it was possible to walk through a wall, but …
“When did you? How …?”
“When we were sleeping last night, I …. It’s imagination, like you said. I remembered something Gary told me, one of his things about Christ. He was talking about a mountain — Christ I mean — and said you could cast it into the sea. ‘Whoever says to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.’”
“A mountain?”
“Yes, but that’s the point. It could be anything, so Christ chooses a big fucking thing. People think it’s heavy, but that’s an illusion. It’s like I said,” (Finn was becoming excited now), “reality’s a mindscape, and with certainty, you can change anything.” He paused. “They use the word ‘faith’ but that’s misleading.”
“So why the fuck are we standing here if you can get out?”
“Again, Angel, I don’t want to be rude, but you really can be a little dense. Yes, I can escape, but I do have the capacity for empathy even if I don’t always choose to use it. I mean, to put it simply, what good would it do you if I walked away?”
“You could …”
“Go for help?”
Angel smiled. “Yeah, well, I guess.” He hesitated. “Don’t call me stupid, huh?”
“I said ‘dense’.”
Angel glowered.
“You’re so easy to get to.”
91
They had a couple of minutes of hurried speech before Hunter returned. Cole and Jason looked surprisingly well, and as Angel ducked his head and sought Cole, his heart swelled. The moment their eyes met he knew it’d be okay. Despite what had happened they understood one another. He smiled sheepishly and Cole smiled in reply, a quiet acknowledgement that had in it an odd undertone of confidence that wasn’t at all characteristic of Cole.
Something had changed.
Angel frowned.
Now the cell door was being unlocked and it struck him that there were four of them. They could rush Hunter, surely, given their combined strength. He’d no sooner thought this than he was whirled away in his mind to a calm, peaceful place, as if he’d been transported to a desert oasis. He felt like he was sinking into feathers, and it reminded him of being in his mother’s arms, a child.
It was Miriam.
She had taken him in hand in an attempt to calm him. She was asking him wordlessly, in her secretive way, to accept the situation and go with Hunter quietly. In her labyrinthine mind she was questing forward to the future and playing out the architecture of time as a myriad of variables never-endingly intruded, shifting countless eventualities. She was excited but weary. She’d almost escaped in the past and had been thwarted. Today she knew she had a chance again, yet that was all it was for her, a chance. She might be hopeful about it, but she was quite prepared to find herself locked down again at nightfall, perhaps for years.
She was so successful in whisking Angel from the here and now that he only became aware he’d left the cell when the portico of Hunter’s house loomed in the darkness. Cole was beside him. He reached for Angel’s hand and squeezed it gently as Hunter opened the front door. The parquet floor of the lobby gleamed under gas lamps; the double doors of the hall stood open beyond it.
Angel sucked a breath through his teeth nervously. His last visit here had not been a happy one, and as the way he’d been treated returned to him, he glared at Hunter’s back. If there was a chance, if they could somehow break out of here and get this guy ….
As they stepped onto the marble floor of the hall, he heard piano music floating gently down the stairs and again he pictured Miriam playing. He guessed she really was here. A piece by Tchaikovsky chimed louder as they climbed the stairs and walked along the hall, rising in tempo. It burst upon them as Hunter opened the door, and there was Miriam, in profile at the piano, blue, glittering, startlingly beautiful, and with frail, pitiful wings butterflying out of the back of her embroidered dress.
She stopped; the music broke as she turned. The piano chimed on for a moment and then Hunter spoke.
“Well, isn’t this nice? Nice to get out, Miz? Meet some people?”
She chose not to reply. She was studying each of them in turn, her eyes flitting from one to another. Each of them, apparently, was fascinating, and she was finding it difficult to quell her excitement. She finished by turning her eyes on Cole a final time. He seemed to hold some particular interest, and as she stared, Angel took a step toward him. He laid his hand on Cole’s lower back, and right at that moment glimpsed a fleeting smile from Miriam, something meant for Cole, the meaning of which he failed to catch.
“Drinks all round. We’re going to have deaths, today, Miz. Three, I’d say. Oh, by the way, you most likely noticed.” Hunter spread his hands to indicate he’d come up empty. “No angelic majesty.”
She glanced at him. Nothing he’d said appeared to bother her in the slightest, her eyes considering him as though he were a familiar, passing annoyance, perhaps a stain on the carpet or a meowing cat. Her head, as Finn had described, was striking, glistening with tightly packed, bright blue feathers.
“It won’t make any difference,” she said. “You’ve lost.”
“Lost?” Hunter drew his head back and grinned. He began to laugh, and moments later was still laughing, standing at the bar cart and pouring them each a whiskey. “Miz, Miz, Miz,” he said, “You seem to be cursed with eternal stupidity.” She lifted her chin to him and gazed unseeing for a moment, picturing something inward. “I might kill you too.” He handed her a drink. “You want to come and sit on the sofa?” She took the drink and got down from the piano. A moment later they were all seated, ice rattling in their glasses as they intermittently sipped. “I always think, before you kill someone, that you ought to talk. Don’t you agree, Finn?”
Finn shrugged.
“I mean, here we have Jason, and ‘Angel’, and … you.” He nodded at Cole. “You’re all looking splendid in your pretty, little bodies with your colorful wings. I mean, I do like you. I like fucking you. But now …” He shrugged and screwed up his face in mock concern. “You have been messing around, haven’t you, Finny?” Finn gazed at him impassively. An awkward silence passed between them and he took a sip of his whiskey. “I can tell now, now that I’ve been with you for a few minutes. You’ve tried it with him.” He pointed at Angel. “Haven’t you?” He waited for a reply and then sighed. “It’s not like we haven’t been here before, is it, Miz?”
Silence.
“No one wants to speak.” He laughed, and then gulped on his whiskey hungrily. He looked a little deranged now, his hair mussed and his eyes swimming. “No one on my side,” he muttered. “They die and I’m here.” His mind seemed to have run onto some glum, melancholy track. He stared blankly at nothing, swilling his whiskey. A moment later he swung on them unexpectedly, his mood abruptly altered, his voice thunderous. “Who’s first? Who’d like to be decapitated? Or fucked to death?”
“Finn,” Miriam said, her voice gentle, “why don’t you show Hunter a little love?”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“Hunts?” Finn leaned forward. “You want to be together?”
“Together?”
“Yeah. Now?”
Hunter startled, his eyes narrowing. He glanced at Miriam and then at Finn again.
“Let’s go along to your bedroom.”
Even Angel, who had no idea what was going on, could tell this was a ruse. Some plan had been hatched by Miriam or Finn or the two of them, something he’d been shut out of, and as he peered into their minds and tried to catch what it was, he met not only Jason but Cole. They were side-by-side with Miriam and Finn on this, standing together, not only good friends now but … partners?
Cole turned to him. “Sorry,” he said, and shuffled away.
Angel reele
d. What? Sorry? If what he had just gleaned was correct then it was he and not Hunter who was being played. Cole had just admitted … had just gone and as good as told him he was with Jason now. And that was just the start of it, Angel realized, as he gripped his head. There was no hope for them, no hope for him, at any rate.
Finn had given in. He’d decided that he did in fact want to live with Hunter; he’d decided he couldn’t do without the sort of … love Hunter gave him; that he couldn’t bear to be parted from it. It was all he’d ever known. Hunter had made a concession for Miriam, for her freedom, and Jason and Cole could be … together, but …
Angel shut his eyes and swayed.
Where did that leave him?
“Like I said, sorry.” Cole got up and walked away. He crossed the room to Jason, who was sitting on an armchair.
Angel lifted his head. Miriam was gazing at him. In pity? Is this what her life had been? You’ll find someone, she said, and Angel hated her. It was her fault. She’d orchestrated this. She’d said he and Finn could bind and now …
He cried desperately, “Cole?”
“What?”
“Shut up, Angel.” Finn’s voice was sharp with anger. “Learn your fucking lesson. You’re a cheater and you deserve what you got.”
“I’m a … I’m a cheater. I’m a … fuck you!” He was already on his feet and moving toward Finn, but Hunter struck him on the back of the head.
92
When he woke, he was on his back in the drawing room, crumpled awkwardly on the rug. It struck him that he’d been left here, that no one had bothered to lift him to the sofa, and as he stumbled to his feet, he recalled what had happened.
Miriam was at the piano again, playing a piece by Satie. Jason and Cole were seated together, talking quietly on the sofa. They didn’t look like lovers. At least, Angel couldn’t see it. They didn’t … suit one another, he thought, trying to clear his head. Jason was too kind and gentle, though he seemed to have assumed the role of the dominant partner, Cole nodding along to everything he said. As Angel watched them, he was reminded of the night he’d spent with Jason. Jason had been so beautiful then. He was so much more beautiful now. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t understand …