Familiar Angel

by Amy Lane

  “We are in the middle of the fucking desert!” Edward said rudely from somewhere over Suriel’s shoulder. “And he’s still here because you came closer to death than ever before and Francis and I were coming unglued.”

  Harry smiled wryly at Suriel. “He’s exaggerating,” he said, just for Suriel’s ears. Edward sounded like the most reasonable one of the three of them, but he was also—in Harry’s words—their worrier princess. Edward could prophesy doom better than any supernatural being Harry had ever met, and then he’d produce the facts and figures to back up his prediction. The fact that he was wrong 80 percent of the time didn’t seem to bother him. He insisted that was just because Harry would defy death to make sure Edward was only right once in a blue moon.

  But Suriel didn’t smile back as he sometimes did. “No, Harry. We need to give this one to Edward. This was as close as you may ever come again. I’m not sure I can make it in time to save you the next time.”

  Harry struggled to sit up, looking away. “I’m sorry, Suriel. I didn’t mean to worry you.” He looked around and frowned. “We really are in the middle of the fucking desert, aren’t we?” They were gathered around a campfire, and as he looked out, he saw five other fires just like this one. Each fire had a group of girls huddled around it, holding their hands out to the flames in spite of the mild night.

  Safety, Harry thought. They’d sweat where they stood if the fire would help them feel safe.

  About fifty yards away, looking as out of place as a fish walking on its fins, was the semitruck, sitting serenely under the purple stars.

  “That is unexpected,” he understated. “How—”

  “Suriel,” Edward said grimly, and Harry frowned again, looking around. About three campfires away he saw Francis, weaving sinuously between the girls’ ankles. Harry could see the aura of peace and sleep he was weaving as he sauntered, and he let out a sigh of relief.

  Then he turned to Suriel. “How could you!” he chastised. “You must be in agony!”

  A faint shadow flickered across Suriel’s features. “No more so than usual,” he said. “It was necessary.”

  “But why are you still—”

  “Because this is my last mission with you.”

  Harry gasped and held his stomach. “I’m sorry?”

  Suriel stood and helped him up. He peered into Harry’s face and brushed his cheek with a knuckle. “Nothing to be sorry about, my boy. I am… I am at a tipping point, you understand? I can either stop my visits, or I can endure trials to come down and live among the humans.” He swallowed and glanced out at the flickering fires and the gradually relaxing bodies of fifty human beings who had been bound against their will. “I can watch you all from heaven.” His voice went soft as velvet. “There are other angels who can help you.” The smile he turned to Harry was bitter as chocolate. “Angels you won’t have to worry about hurting until you are at the point of death. I’ll keep a good watch for you, Harry. I won’t let your family down.”

  “But… so now…?”

  “I’m here for one last adventure. If I decide to return, it’s to be my gift, you see, for accepting my bondage like a dutiful angel. I get to work among you for a while—a short while—and then I must go.” Or suffer torture to stay.

  Harry gaped at him, hearing the unspoken part loud and clear, wondering if he’d been shot again. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out, and Suriel simply walked away, cutting a wide circle around the large encampment. Harry could read the weavings of crystal light he left in his wake, and he recognized a protection spell.

  “Go?” Harry said numbly as Suriel’s body became just a celestial glow against the purple velvet night. “He needs to explain ‘go.’”

  Edward appeared at his shoulder, square jaw tight, red-blond hair shorn above his collar and allowed a few inches on top. “He means he’ll be up in heaven and we’ll be down here until we die, moron. It’s how angels and humans normally work.”

  Harry bit his lip, trying to breathe past the pain. “I… I… no Suriel? Why….” But he knew why. Suriel had just told him. Suriel was becoming human—too human. He would never be able to fulfill his duties if he continued to help the Youngbloods. “How….”

  “How do we stop him?” Edward asked, and damn him. He loved Suriel too—all the family loved him—but he sounded puzzled, and reasonable, and all the things Harry was not.

  Harry wanted to pound a fucking creosote bush until Suriel stopped this bullshit and things went back to normal.

  “Yes,” Harry whispered. “How do we stop him?”

  Edward squeezed his shoulder then, his friend, his brother, his companion for nearly a century and a half. “There’s two ways this can play out, Harry. One is that we take however much time Suriel is down here among us and convince him that falling is worth the trouble.”

  Harry swallowed. He hated this plan. “I’m not sure it is,” he said, his throat sore. He loved his life in Mendocino, and he loved his adventures here on earth. But sometimes, when he curled up into a little ball of fur on his bed at night, his heart ached with loneliness. He’d been cat long enough to know he wanted a human companion, someone to stroke his fur, to rub his whiskers, to scratch that one place on his ruff.

  He’d been human just enough to know he yearned for a lover, but more. Not a brief moment of pleasure, of skin on skin, but something longer.

  Something that combined the two feelings.

  Something he’d had only a few times since that moment in a clearing, a hundred and forty years ago.

  “Well, the other way is for you to join him in heaven,” Edward said, voice hard. “And I’m sorry if this bothers you, Harry, but that is unacceptable. So you had better just find a way to convince him to stay.”

  Harry glared at him. “I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  Edward grunted. “No, not suicidal—just damned transparent. Start looking at your own heart, my brother, and we can stop looking through Suriel to see it.”

  Edward started to stalk away, and Harry glared at him. “Edward—Edward, what am I supposed to do?” Usually they planned together, but their situation here was fairly unusual.

  “Go hunt,” Edward said shortly. “Everybody’s hungry, and Francis is busy calming them down. A few jackrabbits, a deer if you can find one. Suriel said he saw grazing land—a park or something—a few miles to the south. Make yourself useful, but don’t get hurt!”

  Harry felt the sort of dejection that only came from being at odds with his brothers. “I don’t get hurt on purpose,” he said, trying a playful smile.

  “Not on purpose,” Edward replied. “No.”

  He turned away again, and Harry opened his mouth. “But—”

  Edward held up his hand. “Harry, please. No more. Just be careful is all.”

  “Sure, brother,” Harry said softly. “I’ll be back periodically and leave the game outside each circle.”

  He changed form before Edward could answer and trotted off into the night.

  Oh, he loved the darkness and the desert. The hills of the central valley had such interesting smells—cows far away, jackrabbits close up. The flora was different, tough succulents, the occasional creosote bush or scrub pine. He smelled the soft earth and watered grass two miles to the south, as Edward had promised, and set off in that direction, whiskers quivering in hope of game.

  Ah! That bush to his right shook, and he looked at it sideways while he continued, his pace even, to trot southeast. And it shook again.

  He veered a little—still south, but southwest this time, as though he just leaned a little to his right.

  The leaves trembled, and Harry was too excited to hold himself together. He turned, smooth as a ball-bearing pivot, and darted into the bushes, claws out, teeth bared. Ah, it was a big one, plump and juicy, and it took a heave and a snap of the jaws to break the poor jackrabbit’s neck.

  It was still twitching as he dragged it back to the campfires, choosing the circle he’d
awakened in, apparently the one the men were using, so as not to frighten the women. He dropped the jackrabbit, feeling smug, and turned back into the night, kicking a little bit of earth across it as though to say, “I am done with this, and it’s your turn now!” He hadn’t taken many steps when the glory of light that came from an angel stopped him.

  “Did you bring us food, Harry? How thoughtful.” Suriel squatted in the dirt and extended his finger. Harry nosed it delicately, and then a little harder, and then a little harder. When Suriel started scratching him behind his ears, his back end grew a mind of his own, and he flopped to his side in the dust, glutted on the affection of the one the person he’d always craved it from the most.

  Suriel chuckled. Something about Harry in this form gave them their easy friendship again. No awkwardness, none of Harry’s guilt or yearning to spend more time with Suriel, none of Suriel’s underlying sadness or pain.

  Harry started batting his fingers, all play, and Suriel tapped him on the nose. “Now, I could stay here and do this all night, brave Harry, but I don’t think that one jackrabbit is going to feed all these people.”

  Harry swished his tail and stood up, kicking sand at Suriel in a snit and starting off into the night again.

  “Harry,” Suriel called. “Wait. I can come with you.”

  Harry turned to him, puzzled, just in time to watch as Suriel turned from a humanoid man with spectral wings and a lot of inner radiance into a… a… a cat.

  A long-haired ginger—a Maine coon cat, if one ever existed with long, flowing hair the color of Edward’s. He was enormous, a good four feet long and nearly two feet at the shoulder.

  For a moment, Harry just stared at him, dazzled, until Suriel cuffed him gently with a massive paw.

  Oh yes. They were going hunting.

  Harry gave the air a little sniff and then led the way, back from where he’d come, toward the parklands with the green and growing smells.

  And the deer.

  Suriel hunted like a dream. He glided, he charged, he pounced, all a fluid melding of spirt and muscle. Harry worked as the distraction. While Harry was sauntering around their prey, drawing the deer’s wary attention, Suriel snuck in behind it and leaped, bringing the animal down with a quick bite to the spinal cord and a crack to the neck.

  They didn’t stop at one deer, but kept hunting until three of them lay bleeding by the stream that fed the small park.

  When they were done, Suriel extended his powerful claws and very neatly eviscerated each animal, while Harry dragged the offal slightly away from the water so scavengers could have their way with it. When he was done, Suriel looked at him pointedly and then gestured imperiously at the stream.

  For the first time since they’d changed form, Harry felt compelled to use telepathy and actual words.

  Really?

  You’re covered in blood. Wash it off.

  So are you!

  Suriel looked down at himself and startled.

  What? Harry asked. Angels don’t get bloody?

  Well, not usually, no.

  Harry changed form and glared at him until Suriel did the same.

  “Not usually?” Harry asked, not bothering to strip. His clothes were just as bloody as he was—they would both need a good long swish in the water. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that usually my… my glory, I guess, takes care of the human parts.” Suriel sounded worried, and now Harry worried too.

  “Does that mean—you’re not human yet, are you?” Oh God—seriously, God—please don’t let Suriel get stuck down here, in this prison of loneliness that defined the boundaries of Harry’s heart.

  Suriel thought about it and then smiled. “No. No, I still have a ways to go. I think this is just… a lesson, you see? A reminder of the things I would need to worry about if I decided that I wanted to tip all the way over.”

  “Well, lesson learned,” Harry said with deep disgust. If he didn’t have to haul the deer across the desert, he’d be happy to just lick himself clean as a cat. But they needed to get the deer back to the fire in the next hour or so if the girls were going to eat before dawn.

  Harry was about to jump into the water—as chilly as it was—when Suriel gave a snort. “We’ll chafe if we walk back in wet clothes. Strip.”

  “The clothes will need washing,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes. “The girls won’t be any more excited about seeing men in bloody clothes than they would be about seeing us naked.”

  If he’d been another man, Harry would have sworn Suriel made a “dammit” face—but that couldn’t be. What reason would Suriel have to see Harry naked?

  “If we wash as cats, will the clothes wash?” Suriel asked, genuinely curious.

  “Yes,” Harry said, feeling patient. “Yes. Which is why I was just going to lick myself clean.”

  Suriel appeared to think about it. “Well, how about we strip and get in the water, then put on the clothes and turn, and then turn back after our fur is dry?”

  Harry stared at him, genuinely puzzled. “Because why?”

  Harry had never seen Suriel with a nervous tic before, but he had one now. He bit his lip in every appearance of embarrassed indecision.

  “Because swimming under the starlight seems like a lovely thing to do and this may be my only chance,” Suriel said in a rush, and Harry caught his breath.

  Curiously he looked around, recognizing the quiet of the desert, the beauty of the stars overhead, the myriad life-forms teeming at the spring.

  “Hunting was good, wasn’t it?” he asked, feeling that moment of delight again that came from watching Suriel in motion.

  “It was joyous,” Suriel said sincerely.

  “Then, if this is… is a thing you wish to do before you return, I say do it.” He grinned then, stripping his T-shirt off over his head and his cargo shorts and boxers down his legs. He laughed shortly, because he was wearing hiking boots, and he had to stop, bare-assed naked, to unlace them, but he was done quickly and then looked to see if Suriel was ready to leap into the stream.

  Suriel hadn’t moved—was, in fact, staring at Harry with his mouth slightly parted and his tongue resting on his bottom lip as though he was studying something.

  Harry gave him part of a smile. “Uh, Suriel? You, uh, may want to—”

  Suriel had taken to wearing modern clothes when he appeared before the family. His wings were always present, but they simply… were. An extension of his body. Clothes, ceiling, walls, just seemed to part to accommodate them. Today he was wearing a leather jacket, white T-shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots. He slid the jacket from his shoulders and pulled off his T-shirt while toeing off the black leather boots, and there was suddenly not enough oxygen in the world.

  Long body, defined chest, enough muscles in his stomach to make it ripple perfectly, and arms with firm bulges in all the right places, smooth, shining golden skin… in one heartbeat, two breaths, three blinks of the eye, Suriel ceased to be a sexless angel and became a very handsome, very desirable, very male being, and Harry’s heart crawled into his throat and tried to strangle him with its beating.

  The boots flipped off, and Suriel stepped out of his jeans and boxers, and Harry’s whole world stopped.

  It wasn’t just that he was well-endowed—although he was bigger than any mortal Harry had ever lain with—it was that he was… perfect.

  Hips, waist, thighs—oh dear Lord, even his knees were sexy—and of course that great swinging half-flaccid cock growing along his thigh.

  Suriel glanced up, his brown eyes taking in Harry’s speechlessness, and he smiled, an almost decadent, wicked expression.

  “Do you enjoy what you see?” he asked innocently.

  Harry had to swallow twice to answer through a rough throat. “You’re beautiful.”

  Suriel’s eyes hooded. “You are too, Harry. I’ve never seen you naked before.”

  Harry’s groin tingled, and his balls swung heavily by his thighs. “I’m, uh….” A hint of a breeze h
it the tip of his erect cock, and he shivered.

  He was already dripping.

  “Water,” he mumbled, turning and jumping into the spring.

  Oh no—that was a mistake. The rill was fed partly from an irrigation ditch and partly from a natural spring. The water from the irrigation ditch ran clean and cool, but the spring was heated. The water was like a summer bath, refreshing, but after a moment it was only a few degrees cooler than the blood that thundered through Harry’s veins.

  His erection was not getting any smaller.

  He heard a splash and turned to watch as Suriel plodded delightedly deeper into the rill. At its deepest the water stood only chest high, and every step seemed to fill him with new sensation.

  Harry couldn’t help it—they had people waiting on them, waiting on the spoils of the hunt—but he’d never been so entranced by another person’s pleasure.

  “Your first swim?” he asked, smiling.

  “It’s glorious.” Suriel relaxed, floating on his back, his arms and legs spread under the stars. Harry laughed gently and closed his eyes. The water lapped at his skin, and although his arousal hadn’t calmed down, he fell into the moment, the chirping of crickets under the bushes, the furtive sounds of rabbits and possums moving beyond the reach of the two deadly predators who had just turned human and jumped into the spring.

  He opened his eyes, and Suriel stood nearby, looking at him fondly through the darkness. “You look happy,” he said, sounding satisfied. “All this time, Harry—I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you happy.”

  Harry blinked at him, a frown marring the moment, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m happy at home,” he said, brows drawn together. “I’m happy reading with Leonard in the study or helping Emma cook.”

  Suriel shook his head sadly. “Do you think I haven’t looked in on you then?” He reached out with a gentle finger and traced the ridge where Harry’s brows drew together. “You have this line then too.”

  Harry bit his lip, feeling strangely vulnerable. “I’m just trying to—”

  “Trying to do what they tell you,” Suriel said softly. “Obedience has never come naturally to you, Harry. Perhaps you shouldn’t try so hard.” Again, his finger traced a delicate path over Harry’s face, and Harry caught his hand briefly.