by Amy Lane
Francis didn’t talk to the girls—because, coming from a cat, that would have scared them to death—but he’d hidden in a corner and projected serenity, kindness, and hope.
Enough so that when the guards had left and Harry and Edward were able to bust the lock on the door and roll it up, the girls didn’t fight—and weren’t frightened—when the boys ushered them into yet another semitruck, this one full of clean clothes, food, soap and water for washing, and bottled water for drinking.
Francis and Edward had gone with them, Francis as a cat and Edward as a man. Edward had been their best linguist as the years had gone, so he spoke to them in Russian and Spanish by turns, telling them it was an escape and doctoring the ones who were hurt.
And Harry got to drive.
Harry loved to drive.
But he was not quite as fond of it when people were shooting at him.
Right now there were four battered vehicles—transport vans and SUVs—full of unwashed musclebound assholes shooting at the truck.
Edward, keep them down!
No kidding! Francis has a shield around us, but it’s only so strong!
Shields were hard—Harry couldn’t do one, and Edward could only project a little bit of radio interference. Francis could do the most complex spellwork of any of them, but he didn’t work well under pressure.
Harry spotted an off-ramp ahead, relatively empty, with an overpass that actually led beyond a series of hills to his left. He had no idea what lay over the hills, but the road wrapped around them, and hopefully he could shake these guys there.
Or at least push their cars off the road, which would help a hell of a lot.
Hold on!
The off-ramp was on his right, and the turn over the overpass was at an acute angle the other direction. By all rights, the mass of the truck should have pulled them over. But Harry focused his will and lifted—hard. The truck didn’t fly necessarily, but it did lift up enough to balance itself on the road instead of flipping in a leviathan tangle of twisted metal and pulverized flesh.
He heard Edward’s Oolf! in his head but was concentrating too hard to respond to his fear.
What he knew would happen—but hoped wouldn’t matter—was that the cab of the truck, running now at right angles to where the bad guys were disembarking on the off-ramp, made a perfect target.
The first flurry of bullets caught the door, but they were fired wildly from a distance and his luck held. The second flurry of bullets from the next jeep in line was a little closer—and one of them punctured his luck.
And his shoulder and his lung.
Dammit!
Oh Jesus, Harry—call him!
I can still drive!
His body exploded into a giant painflower, but he kept both hands on the damned wheel. He’d been hurt before—a knife in the ribs in Monterey, a serious beating in Las Vegas, and a solid shot to the stomach in Portland—and he knew how to keep functioning. There was enough magic among the familiars and Emma and Leonard to keep him from dying, even from a mortal wound, and if he could just hold on for a bit, grit his teeth and growl through the pain, he could get his brothers and their charges to safety. Edward could heal him then—healing was Edward’s specialty, like defense was Francis’s.
They didn’t need to resort to drastic measures.
More shots, all of them wide but still dangerous, and Harry pulled in as much air as he could and gunned the godsbefucked semi. The road dropped suddenly and then rose, and he was damned if he was going to lose any momentum if he had to weave through two minivans and an SUV to do it.
He made it through without touching any of the innocent vehicles in his way and stood on the accelerator to pull the truck through the first grueling hairpin turn.
He could actually hear the girls scream in the back of the truck, no magic telepathy required, and he silently begged their forgiveness. The back end of the truck lifted up, and he used his magic to fight it back onto the road. The tires caught, and his heart started beating again, but sluggishly as the blood poured thickly from his shoulder and chest.
He could fight his way through the haze of pain, but dammit, he was having trouble breathing.
Harry, if you don’t call him, I will!
No—please. It hurts him so much…. But Harry was fading, he could feel it, and the next turn of the road was coming. Two of the jeeps were passing him on the wrong side, against the rail, guns blazing, and Harry gave the wheel a yank. The truck skewed, and the jeeps were smashed through the rails and rolled down the side of the hill, bodies flying out as they went. Harry barely noticed because he was fighting the wheel so hard to get it back online. Oh, dammit… dammit… he couldn’t breathe anymore… couldn’t see…. The truck swerved, and the front wheel broke free before he wrestled it back onto the road.
Oh God. He was going to get his brothers and the innocents in the back killed.
Suriel, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I need you—
A brilliant flash of light materialized next to him, and Suriel’s hands, bright and shiny and clean, entered his vision, taking the wheel from him.
“Oh, Harry! You’re dying again! Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
“Didn’t want… hurt you.” And the blackness behind his vision finally won. As he slumped behind the wheel, Suriel’s warmth surrounded him, and he could smell eucalyptus and green tea.
EMMA AND Leonard and their three familiars had lived in the little cabin in Mendocino for nearly twenty years before Harry figured out the cost of calling Suriel.
By then each of the boys lived in his own room and had a bathroom to share, and Leonard had introduced running water and a small electric generator run from a windmill they built on the cliff.
Emma summoned Suriel perhaps once every two years, based on need. Once it was to help teach the boys healing spells, and once it was to discover a language spell that could allow them all to learn languages they’d never heard. She usually waited for a peaceful night, one during which all the boys were excited about their studies and had saved up questions to ask.
Harry loved the nights Suriel came.
He stood while the boys ranged around him in a careful circle, their heartbeats taking the place of the powerful hex bags Emma had used before. There was no blood used in this spell—no demand. This was all about courtesy. “Suriel, our friend, our wise scholar, our compassionate angel, can you come and converse with us this fine night? We will be respectful of all discourse and generous with our faith.”
Those were the actual words of the spell Emma made them memorize, and Harry—who had yet to learn the knack of poetry or languages—secretly treasured every syllable.
He would never forget the safety, the feeling of belonging that night when he’d curled up in Suriel’s arms and Suriel had taken a moment to comfort a strange animal and an even more bewildered human being.
On this particular night, long after the others had fallen asleep—Edward and Francis curled up in contented purring balls, Emma and Leonard dozing on the couch nearby—Harry had kept Suriel long past the allotted time, asking him questions. Why were the stars bright? Why were humans subject to disease? Would the rest of the world someday have the seemingly magical things Leonard had brought to their home with engineering and education?
Suriel answered every question patiently, with kindness, and Harry sat cross-legged in his position on the floor, eagerly keeping the angel there for as long as possible.
Finally the night wound down, the candles lit for the summoning guttering in their stands, and a pregnant quiet settled between them. Harry looked longingly at Suriel’s angel-bright face and realized the vague impression of inhuman beauty he’d gotten that first night had changed subtly in the years that passed. Now those features had refined themselves to a pleasing narrowness, a square jaw, an almost piquant chin, wide-set gold-brown eyes, and that glorious reddish hair.
Harry didn’t want to fall asleep, because then he’d have to stop glutting himself on the beauty o
f Suriel.
“Now, if all of your questions have been answered….” Suriel’s lush mouth quirked at the sides, as though he were very aware that Harry had been stalling.
Harry’s heart pounded in his throat. “One more,” he begged in a whisper. “Suriel, why are some people attracted to their own sex, like me, and some people attracted to both, like Edward, and some people to the opposite, like Leonard and Emma?”
Suriel’s eyes widened. “Because that is how you were made,” he said simply, and then a profound sorrow crossed his features. “It was not supposed to be a painful or a confusing thing. God made the mold, but humans added their own spices—”
“Like how Emma flavors the meat with garlic and Leonard just uses salt and pepper?” Harry asked, needing to be clear.
“Yes. Exactly. And sometimes things get a little muddled in the process. There are women whose genitalia is male, but their hearts are female, and men who are the opposite. That is the human part of the equation—and there will surely be a human solution.”
“That would be hard,” Harry said, thinking unashamedly about his cock and how much he’d learned to enjoy it in the past twenty years. They’d spent five years, at the least, hearing Emma talk about how there was no shame in any kind and enjoyable thing their bodies did before the memories of the brothel faded enough for them to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.
“You like your body?” Suriel asked, and on the surface it was an affectionate interest that drove the question, but Harry heard something deeper throbbing beneath the angel’s voice, and his heart warmed.
“I like it very much,” he confessed with a grin. “In the brothel, all the touches were… ownership. I was meat. But Emma told us our bodies were our own—they should feel good.” He could feel his expression turning sultry and hoped there was no sin in talking of such things with an angel. “I like feeling good, Suriel. I like it a lot.”
Suriel’s throaty laughter was the sweetest reward for his candor. “I’m glad you feel good, young Harry. That is as the God and Goddess intended.” Suriel spoke sometimes of the Goddess, but he’d managed to neatly dodge any questions about her, and Emma didn’t press.
“What about angels?” Harry asked—never subtle, not Harry. “Are they allowed to feel good?”
A look of profound sorrow crossed Suriel’s features—but that wasn’t the worst of it. Suriel began to speak, and as the words came, a terrible network of slashes, as though from a glass-studded whip, opened up on his face, his arms, his chest, his thighs.
“Angels fall,” Suriel said softly, his voice quivering with pain. “Not the great fall of Lucifer and his followers—I’m talking smaller. Usually, they fall in love with someone or something in the mortal world, and they come to earth. Their immortality and brightness fall away, and for a mortal moment, they walk the world as men and women, and their lives are their own for a lifespan before they ascend to the heavens again.”
“Suriel! Your face—”
“Some of them bond to their humans, and their humans ascend with them, or they are reborn together, to find each other again and again.”
Tears began to fall from his eyes, lovely sparkling diamonds dropping gently onto the horror of bloody stripes, appearing and healing on his flesh.
“Can you do it?” Harry asked, appalled by his suffering, hurt to his core. “Can you leave your bondage to a God who would do this to you?”
“Oh my boy,” Suriel said, his sorrowful smile wounding Harry worst of all. “I am the Angel Who Is Bound. It is my job to suffer for all of those bound to service against their will. Every moment I spend with you and your beautiful family is a joy to me—but always, always there is a price.”
Harry was sobbing by now. “Oh, Suriel—don’t. Don’t do this if you’re to be tortured for it!”
“But staying away would hurt me most of all.”
And with that, the last of the candles blew out and the first bit of sunlight shone through the window. Suriel disappeared, leaving a small puddle of actual diamonds in the center of their summoning circle, where his tears had fallen.
Harry turned cat as he’d faded out of sight, and he stayed that way for the better part of a year. Finally, Emma pried the story out of him.
“We can’t call him anymore.” Harry wept on her as he’d rarely wept, even in the early days when his heart had been so sore from his use in the brothel that sometimes he couldn’t breathe. “We can’t—we can’t.”
“It would hurt him worse,” Emma said softly into his dark hair. “He wouldn’t come if he didn’t love us. Sometimes, if we love someone deeply enough, we’d endure a thousand tortures rather than stay away.” Her face softened. “I stopped summoning Leonard when I realized he was being tortured in hell for speaking to me. But he missed me, you see—began to appear to me in dreams, just so I could tell him about my day.”
Harry nodded and wept more into her shoulder, but he listened. He’d never thought of love before, until he’d seen Emma and Leonard, working together, pulling together to build a life and to parent the three motherless boys they had included in their circle by accident.
But he’d spent twenty years by this point seeing how a couple functioned, listening to them argue and knowing that when the argument was resolved, they would make love. Emma and Leonard had things to teach him about being human that he’d never fathomed as a child, and he would not turn from that learning now.
“What made you call him?” Harry asked her, his voice raw.
“I wanted to interact with him,” she said, laughing softly. “I wanted to see his expression unclouded by the filter of sleep. I needed him so badly, I had to trust he was telling the truth when he said he was glad to be with me, no matter what the consequences. Sometimes that’s all you have—trust that you are enough.”
Harry eventually stopped weeping, and he turned cat a little less often as the year passed. And when the time came that Suriel’s guidance was needed once more, he didn’t object to the family calling him.
He even stayed up late again, to talk to Suriel one-on-one, to enjoy his company.
Suriel thanked him as he faded, saying the private moments with Harry made his appearance worth the pain.
So Harry had achieved some peace with their angel, a way to accept the affection he so obviously bore their family without drowning in guilt and self-inflicted pain.
But as the family business had changed, grown more dangerous and purpose-driven, he’d been forced to call Suriel more often—and each time he thought it hurt the angel worse.
The first time had been the beating in Las Vegas.
Edward and Francis had gotten away with the girls—and a few boys—but the mobsters who ran the prostitution ring had caught Harry, who’d been the last one out of the building.
Harry told the boys to go on without him and to come back when their charges were free, thinking he could stall, could hold out, could manage about anything the mob goons dished out in the meantime.
The beating had begun, and he’d held tough—but when his ribs had broken, puncturing his lungs, he’d thought longingly of Suriel and how he’d never see the angel again.
And Suriel had appeared.
Harry remembered that moment, the golden light of benevolence and kindness washing over him, Suriel’s voice rocking him to his core, the fury cushioned in Harry’s ears by Suriel’s intent.
The mobsters had dropped to the ground, screaming, their ears bleeding with the scream of an angel protecting his family.
Harry had passed out then and awakened healed and naked in the desert, Francis and Edward drawing near, frantic because he’d dropped out of their telepathy for an hour. Suriel had delivered him—from torture, from death—and then disappeared without a word.
Harry knew he was loved as a family member, but he mourned for what Suriel must have endured to love him.
He vowed to call Suriel as little as possible after that.
Suriel, on the other hand, seemed to just appear w
hen Harry needed him most….
“HARRY?”
Harry was in someone’s arms, somebody strong who smelled like eucalyptus and tea. Harry had taken lovers over his lifetime—but never for long. A flirtation, a feeling, a moment encased in glass—those things he could live with.
Giving his heart to someone—committing beyond his family—that was not a thing he could live with.
Emma had explained very carefully. Choosing a mortal lover meant one of two things. Either the familiars could give up their powers and live as mortals did, or the familiars could live with their lovers but watch them grow old and die.
Emma and Leonard were the only home Harry had known. Francis, Edward, and now Bel—they were the brothers he’d forged from his heart. He’d never give them up for a fancy or a flirtation.
But this… this was quite different.
This wasn’t a fancy. This was a cornerstone in the bedrock of his soul.
“Suriel?” he mumbled. “What are you still doing here?”
The hand over his brow soothed him, lulled him away from his agitation. “You were very close to death, Harry. I’m not ready for you to die quite so soon.”
Harry’s dry chuckle made no sound. “I’m nearly a hundred and sixty years old, Suriel,” he corrected, still finding it hard to breathe. “I should have died of the pox before I was twenty. Every minute after that is a gift.”
Soft lips brushed his forehead. “You should never die, Harry. You should be young forever and ever. And loved, so passionately, so thoroughly, that your soul is greedy for one last touch of your lover’s soul.”
Harry smiled, lost in Suriel’s poetry as easily now as he had been in his youth. “I’ve yet to find a lover like that. I’m beginning to doubt they exist.”
“Someday you must.”
The sadness in the tone was unmistakable. Harry struggled to sit up. “Suriel, where are we? You usually disappear after you come. Why are you still here?”