Familiar Angel

by Amy Lane

  Like Emma’s analogy of the tornado or the hurricane, he knew what it was to be but a gust of wind, and mankind was the center.

  For Bel’s sake, he hoped to be the strongest gale he could summon.

  “I hate this view,” Edward said, not moving from his lean against Harry’s chest. “Makes me feel small.”

  “And yet you always look,” Harry chided.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful. Just means….” He took a painful breath.

  “We’re the best to do what we do,” Harry told him, although Edward had probably had this thought as often as Harry. “We know what it means to be small, to have no options, to risk death to get away.”

  “And then we grew,” Edward supplied. He looked to Harry’s other side for Francis and found a fluffy, small-boned bundle of denial on Harry’s lap instead. “Some of us.”

  Harry checked very carefully to see if Francis was still awake.

  “Did you know?” he asked softly.

  “Know what?”

  “That they were….” Harry wasn’t used to dramatic gestures—he was giving himself a headache trying to do something meaningful with his eyebrows.

  Edward looked at Francis and back to Harry. “Francis and Bel?” he asked, making sure.

  “Yes!”

  “No! Not until now! How did you know?”

  “Suriel told me.”

  Edward snorted. “I had no idea he was a voyeur.”

  Harry didn’t laugh. “We’re… I mean, all of us, we’re his contact with humanity, I think. He looks… looked in on all of us.”

  Edward hmmed.

  “What?”

  “I’ll just miss that about him, is all. But I won’t mind so much if he’s going to be here, a part of us, in our family.”

  Harry stared at him, struggling for words, and Edward sat up and started rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Past the strip, Leonard,” he called. “Keep going east.” He looked at Harry irritably. “What is your problem?”

  “You just assume he’s going to make it,” Harry said, finally putting his finger on what had blown him away. “You just—”

  Edward smiled, not his cold smile or his fierce smile, and Harry remembered why he’d had to work so hard to distract the miners from going after Edward. Edward was the pretty one.

  “He brought my brother back to us,” Edward said simply. “He can do anything.” He frowned at Francis. “Well, almost anything. Those two are going to be a handful, because I’m telling you right now, Emma is dead set on Bel going to Oxford.”

  Harry managed a nod. Edward’s casual assumption that they would get through this—Suriel, Bel, all of them—gave him heart.

  “Toward the Air Force base?” Leonard called. “Out by the speedway?”

  “Turn before then,” Edward said. “Go north on I-95 and take Corn Creek Road. There’s not much out there, but you’ll see the abandoned casinos before we hit Landy.” He glared at Harry. “Which is where we found Harry, right out in the middle of nowhere, not even a road to be found.”

  Harry shuddered. “I had a bag on my head,” he said apologetically. “And by the time you all found me—”

  “You needed fluids and bedrest,” Edward said shortly. “We know. But I remember. Keep driving, Leonard. We’re getting there.”

  And for Edward, that was a pep talk. Harry realized that more would have scared him and started running his trickier spells through his head, imagining himself as a pen of fire, inscribing the words on the core of his consciousness, to make the words all true.

  When Harry looked at this area on a satellite map, he saw some suburban roads, many of them partially completed. Yes, there were state parks and a reservation nearby—but some of the area was flat-out desolation.

  And this time of year, it could be hellishly hot.

  Still, when they spotted the dusty line of old casinos with the warehouses behind them off in the distance, Harry didn’t feel any lifting of the heart. For one thing, this area had been built up with the hopes of becoming a second strip. The optimism had been ill founded. The five casinos had opulent outsides, but only one of them had appointments or even carpeting inside. They’d been built in the sixties and had sat in neglect since, rotting until someone had come along to develop the land into the suburbs that were gradually spreading across the plain. There was a good fifteen minutes of freeway before that happened—and the result was man-made buildings that didn’t belong there.

  Which would make stopping in front of them look really suspicious.

  “Leonard!” Harry said urgently. “Is there any way we can get out of the car without you slowing down? The three of us—”

  “We’re going too!” Emma snapped. “I know you three think you’re the superheroes here, but Leonard and I—”

  “I’m not trying to leave you out!” Harry protested. “I’m just saying there’s hardly a soul on the highway today. If we slow down and park anywhere near those buildings, we’re going to be seen!”

  “Well then,” Emma returned briskly, “we’ll just have to make sure there’s nobody left to chase us when we’re done, won’t we?”

  Harry blinked at her.

  Well, yes. Emma had been kind and compassionate and strong as long as he’d known her, and that’s what Harry tended to remember. What he’d forgotten was that this woman had the audacity to summon an angel and a demon for study long before she’d ever created three tomcats and adopted them as sons.

  There had to be a core of fierceness in Emma Youngblood, or she never would have lived this long in the life she’d created for herself.

  “Okay, then.” Harry smiled his warrior’s smile, the one he used when he was spoiling for a fight and proud to do it.

  Leonard followed the highway to the turnout, and the air inside the car shifted, shimmered with tension, glittered with the potential for violence and dark deeds.

  Harry closed his eyes and began to visualize his enemy in agonizing detail.

  He remembered the coarse black jungle of Cass’s beard, the flakes of dandruff in his pubic hair, the yellow of his teeth as he laughed, right before fucking Harry until he bled.

  He remembered the pain, the constant fear, the dull ache of knowledge that Harry’s body—his fragile adolescent body—was rotting from the inside out, and Cass had planted the rot that was eating him alive.

  He could recall, in delicate ink lines, Edward’s look of disgust and pain as Cass had taken him that first time, while Harry lay practically dying beside him. The way Francis had hidden, a shadow with haunted blue eyes, at the creak of Cass’s leather boots on the rough boards of the brothel floor.

  He heard the screams of the girls Cass bedded, saw their weary smiles in the morning, washed the bloodied sheets.

  Let the fear and the hopelessness wash through him, as it had when he’d been not more than a child.

  Then, very deliberately, he remembered that first night with Emma. Remembered Suriel’s hands on him, his kindness.

  Remembered Suriel’s righteous fury as he’d killed Cass the first time, scattering his flesh across the clearing like ashes.

  And the memories continued—Harry’s first boy after the brothel, his realization that touching another person’s skin in intimacy could hold sweetness. Watching Francis practicing his letters one day, in a rare moment as a human, and the wonder on his face as he spelled his own name. Visiting Edward’s lovers in their homes, eating dinner with them, the simple kindness of human beings. Doing for John what had been done for him—helping him grow, helping him find a life, watching him forge a family, even if it included no lover.

  Harry felt each memory slide into place like a counting bead on a steel string—each one adding strength, flexibility, substance to the person Harry had been when he’d first run through that clearing, terrified and dying, doing his best to pull the only two family he had to safety.

  The raw materials of Harry had been there, but every person he’d loved, every person he’d helped, every
battle he’d fought and every peace he’d celebrated had created someone stronger, smarter, more able to deal with the terror of his childhood.

  And finally, as Harry was feeling his strength in his bones and the ends of his fingertips, he allowed himself to think of Emma and Leonard and Bel.

  The look of trepidation on Emma’s face as she’d told the boys she and Leonard wanted to have a child, and how they would lose some of their power if they gave Bel the same gifts they’d enjoyed.

  “Only so much raw power in the world, my loves. We would have to be willing to share, and then make up the lack with extra study, extra practice, you understand?”

  And Harry’s heart had swelled with pride, because this was his chance to give back the gifts he’d been given, his chance to love as he’d been loved, his chance to show Emma and Leonard that the family they’d given him was so much more than the ability to spend half his life as a black tom cat.

  And once he’d held Bel in his arms, his tiny brother, he’d learned love all over again.

  The car stopped, and Harry opened his eyes. Leonard had pulled behind the first casino warehouse, and Harry squinted at them, trying to figure out where Bel was being held.

  “The far one,” Leonard said quietly. “There’s a bunch of cars parked out front. Now what we were thinking was, you three would do recon, and Emma and I will be crouching there in the shade, waiting for your—”

  The slam of the car door interrupted him, and Edward cried, “Oh dammit, Francis!”

  Harry scooted across the seat, opened the door into the searing Nevada sun, and turned into a fifteen-pound cat, flickering over the sandy asphalt to keep the heat from scorching his paws. Edward ghosted behind them, swearing the whole way.

  Goddammit, couldn’t wait one lousy fucking moment, could he? Francis, you asshole, Bel’s not going to be happy if you get killed! Remember we don’t have angel backup this run!

  Francis’s voice was as delicate as china in their heads.

  I don’t want to die. I just want to get him back!

  I never wanted to die either! Harry barked at him. Now be careful and wait for us!

  His urgency must have seeped through, because when they flitted to the corner of the last warehouse, Francis crouched next to the beige aluminum wall, tail swishing angrily.

  Do we have a way inside? Edward asked.

  Harry peered around the corner. The front of the warehouse sported a large loading door that was locked and a smaller standard door—with a cheap door handle. One good yank would open it, Harry estimated, but he couldn’t do it as a cat.

  He turned human, trying not to groan when the sun hit his exposed skin. That was one thing cats had over people right there—all-over SPF. Very boldly, as though he belonged there, he strode up to the door and yanked on the handle. The door was locked but not shut completely, and it opened with a squeal and a protest of swollen metal moldings against the frame.

  Edward didn’t have to say a damned thing—Harry could hear his unamused silence.

  Did you bring the WD-40?

  Francis snickered in their heads, and Edward rolled his eyes. For a moment, Harry was reassured. Francis wasn’t a feral cat—not anymore. Slowly, year by year, he’d become more human.

  For Bel, he could keep himself.

  Harry held the door, and his brothers flickered in, and then Harry turned cat again and flickered after them.

  They had entered a small office, one probably intended for inventory and shipping invoices, but that had never been finished. The windows that would have normally separated it from the rest of the space had never been installed, and the three familiars leaped over the waist-high partition as though it didn’t exist.

  The warehouse seemed bigger inside than out—but part of that was the almost total darkness everywhere but under the high windows. In the far corner, under the squares of light thrown down by the bitter sun, a group of people huddled, surrounded by hired muscle on camp stools, semiautomatics resting easily against their thighs.

  Edward? Could you?

  Edward’s sleep spells were the best. Harry barely heard him whisper under his breath, and the bored, irritated aura that had surrounded the guards as they’d walked in faded. In its place fell a heavy, soporific stillness—a circus could have rollicked through the warehouse at that moment, and the men slumping on the camp stools would not have so much as dreamed of elephants. Unfortunately, the regular guards weren’t all they had to worry about.

  Big Cass leaned against the warehouse wall, arms folded as he questioned the people sitting or lying on the cement floor in front of them.

  “So,” he snarled, spitting on the floor near his feet. “I’ll say this one more time. You all should have been used up by now. Who stole that lot of you right out from under Roy Berta’s nose?”

  The group of women—and one man—stared back up at him impassively, and Harry recognized the girls from the run in Vegas, grown up now, looking capable and angry.

  But not scared.

  They’d done that, Harry realized. He and his brothers—they’d given them the hope to stare down a vicious psychopath with a gun.

  “We escaped on our own,” said one of the women. Anya—Harry remembered her. Skin the color of pale maple, with almond-shaped green eyes and a pointed chin, her blooming prettiness had been tattered but not destroyed by exhaustion and bruising along the side of her face. “And you were so insecure you had to hunt us down again? That’s just sad.”

  Cass took two steps forward, swinging the butt of his gun at Anya’s battered face.

  Bel’s hand, broad and masculine, blocked the swing, and as Harry and the others dug their front paws in to fly across the dusty floor, he disarmed his captor in one magic-enhanced yank.

  “I said don’t hit her again,” Bel snapped, fitting the weapon against his forearm with the ease of someone who had trained with a father who had utmost respect for weapons. Bel aimed the gun at Cass like he didn’t fear repercussions if he shot.

  Cass laughed.

  “That didn’t come out well for you last time you tried it, did it?”

  Bel shrugged. “You act like this power is something you earned. It was an accidental gift—those can be taken back.”

  Cass stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘accidental’? The fucker who scattered me across the goddamned wilderness certainly meant to do it!”

  Bel rolled his eyes, and his voice took on the patient, slightly pedantic tones of Leonard when he was in the middle of teaching the boys a particularly difficult lesson.

  “Yes—the death was on purpose. The resurrection was a byproduct of certain related things.” He nodded, and as Harry slunk closer, hugging the shadows, he could see that Bel hadn’t remained completely unscathed—he too sported bruises across his face, including a split lip and a broken nose. But then, the wall behind Big Cass was sprayed with blood, as though a bucket of it had been thrown from ten feet away. Apparently neither of them had escaped unscathed.

  “Certain related things?” Cass scoffed. “Certain related things? I’m immortal, cupcake! You saw my blood and bones scattered to the four winds and resurrected before your eyes! Is that going to go away?”

  Bel huffed, his finger steady on the trigger. “What you fail to realize here is that you’re incidental,” he said shortly. “Yes, great. You get killed violently and resurrected again and again and again. Immortal fear has given you the power of immortality. But have you benefited from this change? Have you ever, once, thought of using your next life in another way? You continue to be a mindless, violent brute. When you are dead forever, another mindless, violent brute will take your place—nobody will miss you. Nobody will care. And you did that. You made yourself nothing in the universe. You haven’t earned your immortality. You haven’t used it to redeem yourself. You’re a cipher who can bleed. The minute we cease to fear you, any power, any uniqueness you had in the world—that’s gone.”

  Cass gaped at him—and, oh dear heavens, he shrank. T
he great brooding, hulking presence of rape and bloodshed grew smaller. Grew less. Became almost nil.

  Harry’s breath caught in his throat. Oh, dear Bel, who had never had cause to fear in his life—bless him, bless him a thousand times over for learning the lesson of fearlessness at the knees of a man who once used fear as a weapon.

  But one man alone—even one as bright and shining as Beltane Youngblood—couldn’t conquer the mass of fear that a hundred and forty years of violence and violation had created.

  Big Cass started laughing, an evil, angry sound, and his silhouette grew larger and darker with every cackle.

  Bel didn’t flinch, but Harry couldn’t watch anymore.

  Edward, Francis, get ready to lead the girls out under the fog.

  Wha—? No! I hate this fucking spell! Edward’s ginger tomcat glowered angrily, but the light-boned Siamese gave a feline smile.

  Can Bel be a dog? There was a certain wistfulness in his voice, and Harry thought he’d been very self-controlled.

  If he thinks the girls will follow him. After all, the girls had apparently seen Big Cass get destroyed and reconstitute himself. He was pretty sure the man in their midst turning into a big dog wasn’t going to be any stranger.

  Francis’s affirmative sounded like the chiming of silver bells. Harry watched fondly as their youngest brother whispered between the sitting, watchful women, head-butting them unobtrusively until they petted him so he could give them comfort.

  It occurred to Harry how much true good Francis did in this form. While Harry and Edward worked on plans and strategy, Francis worked on calming down the people they were working for, on giving them hope and kindness.

  Francis was a lesson right there, in how making victims remember they were human also made them remember how not to be victims.

  Slowly—without even realizing it himself, probably—Big Cass’s looming, eight-foot shadow of terror shrunk to man size again just as Francis wound himself around Bel’s ankles.

  Bel shifted his stance but kept the gun trained on Cass. “You’re shrinking again,” he said pleasantly.

  Big Cass grinned unpleasantly, revealing black gaps where teeth should be. “I can fix that,” he growled. “Same way I got big in the first place.” He reached down to the girl closest to him, who cringed away with an unconscious gasp. “C’mon, sweetheart—you and me. I’ll teach you bitches how big I can be!”