by Amy Vansant
The man laughed.
“I wish I always inspired that reaction in women.”
“I imagine you do.”
“True,” said Leo, smirking. “But I don’t meet a lot of women like you.”
“You mean like this?” Anne asked, putting her hand onto Leo’s and gently siphoning his power. She wanted to see if his energy had the sick feeling of her attacker in the alley. It did not. Leo’s power was extraordinary and intoxicating, confirming for Anne that Leo was an Arch Angel like Michael.
Leo reversed the flow of energy, as if to prove he could have the last word, and then removed his hand from beneath hers.
“No, I don’t meet a lot of women like you,” he said. “But then, I would be wise to avoid women like you, wouldn’t I?”
Leo took a sip from his bourbon. Anne knew that in situations like these, it was shrewd to be quiet and let the other person reveal him or herself. Silence was not her strong suit; patience being the only thing at which she was worse.
“So are we playing mysterious stranger all day or are you going to tell me what you want?”
“I know about your trouble in the alley after Brice House, and I wanted to let you know that I’m here to help. That’s all.”
Anne kept her poker face.
“And how do you intend to help?”
Leo took another sip of his bourbon, and then stared at the glass.
“The same way I’ve always helped. Michael never mentioned me?”
“Michael isn’t the chattiest fellow when it comes to other Angeli. I was under the impression that was one of the rules.”
Leo seemed genuinely surprised. “Not even with you?”
Anne ignored the jab and looked hard into Leo’s eyes.
“Do you know who attacked me?”
Leo shrugged. “I might have a hunch.”
“Are you going to share that information with me?”
Leo shook his head. “Nooo... Not at the moment.”
Anne let the conversation lapse. Leo did not leap to fill in the dead space.
He was much better at this game than she was.
“Well, this has been enlightening. Thanks so much for stopping by,” she said after a full minute of dead air.
“My pleasure. Nice to finally meet you in person, Anne,” Leo held out his hand and slid from his barstool.
“Mm. It’s been kind of frustrating on my end.”
As they shook hands, Anne felt the familiar energy exchange start to bubble in her veins and yanked her hand from Leo’s grasp. He laughed.
Leo took a twenty out of his wallet, placed it on the bar and turned to leave.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, from my brother,” he said, opening the door of the pub. By the time Anne turned, Leo was already on the other side of the glass that separated the small pub from the hallway. She could see his outline reaching for the door to the street.
“Who’s your brother?” she called.
Leo paused and turned to face her.
“Michael, of course.”
Chapter Fourteen
Con leaned against the convenience store window, directly opposite Anne’s hotel. He had borrowed the body of a young, white man with Asian tattoos covering both arms. He’d spent the first several minutes of his inhabitation fascinated by the plethora of pockets in the shorts worn by his host.
The Irishman liked this body. It was fresh and hard and he felt like he could thrash a fellow, should he meet someone who needed a good thrashing. Angry and frustrated from his exchange with Anne in her hotel, Con thought everyone appeared in need of a good wallop. He longed for the release of his fist striking flesh and the glorious dull slapping noise it made. Spending most of the day as a formless mass of energy made a man appreciate the small things. His days as an Irish bare-knuckle boxing champion seemed like a dream to him now.
Con thrust his hands into the pockets of his new shorts and discovered a pack of cigarettes. The package warned its contents might kill him. With a shrug, he opened the hard pack and extracted one. Matches sat tucked in the plastic around the pack, so he lit up and took a drag. The kid was going to smoke them anyway, he reasoned. It wasn’t as if he was giving the punk lung cancer against his will.
Con watched the hotel entrance, perking only when he noticed a blond man stride out of the basement pub’s door. He thought the large man had the aura of an Angelus, but he had barely hit the street before Con lost sight of him. The pedestrian street traffic was heavy, but not so busy that Con should have lost him in the crowd. The man had simply vanished.
Having seen few normal people disappear into thin air, Con felt confident the man had been an Angelus.
Seconds later, a gorgeous copper-haired woman burst through the pub door.
Annie.
Anne searched left and right, chose right, and wove her way through the tourists like a pole-bending pony. Con felt sure she pursued the blond mystery man. He ignored an errant stab of jealousy and racked his brain to place the man’s familiar face.
Con pushed away from his leaning spot and shadowed Anne from the other side of the street. Having seen the man disappear, Con already knew she would be disappointed in her quest.
Anne turned right at the next block onto Conduit Street, and Con visually tracked her until she ducked out of site behind the first building. He found a parking meter on which to repose, while keeping an eye on the spot he last saw Anne.
Damn, she was a good looking woman. What he could do to her with this body…
He patted his taut stomach and let his mind wander for a moment. He found himself torn between the need to protect his Sentinel partner, the urge to scream at her for dismissing him earlier, and the enticing naked romance starring Anne that looped through his imagination.
Although still angry, he felt he should stay and watch for Anne. After all, it was how he spent much of his time; following around the former pirate, trying to be as helpful as he could in his current state. But Con still felt the sting of Anne’s dismissal. He knew she was embroiled in her own intrigue, entangled in whatever Michael had planned.
That only made things worse.
An ill-timed tourist bumped into Con and he snarled like an animal. The man skittered away, hands aloft in apology. The surprise and fear in the man’s eyes made Con chuckle to himself.
Still got it.
Con spotted movement. Anne stood on the roof of the building behind which she had disappeared, holding a phone to her ear. Not a bad idea to get a quick bird’s eye view of the area, Con reasoned, but that wasn’t going to help her find the invisible man.
Con snapped his fingers and said the name aloud: “Leo.”
Pondering how much he despised Michael had reminded Con of the blond man’s name. Though Michael was the Arch of Con’s legion, he had burst in on him once to find him in conference with another Angelus who he’d reluctantly introduced as Leo. He’d tried to mask his identity from Con, but the Irishman could tell the giant blond was an Arch as well.
Now two Archs were on the case. They didn’t usually run in packs. Con had hoped the creature that attacked Anne could be easily explained, but two Archs working together did not bode well for easy explanations.
Con took one last glimpse at Anne and turned to make his way back up the street. She was fine on the rooftop. For now, his time was better spent investigating the Angeli family reunion. In addition, Con felt the need to sit down. His host’s shorts were constantly sliding off his hips, and repeatedly yanking on them did nothing to enhance his already miserable mood.
Con walked up Main Street, tugging at his shorts, making his way to the old Reynold’s Tavern on Church Circle at the top of Main Street. That was where he had enjoyed his last drink in Annapolis, nearly a hundred fifty years ago. It seemed a suitable place to have the next.
Arriving at the tavern, he discovered the main building transformed into a lunch and tea spot. Con grimaced. He felt confident the kid whose body he’d borrowed wasn’t a tea and
scones person, though it tickled Con to think he could ruin whatever tough reputation his punk host had with one public stop at a tea house.
Con checked the little bar in the basement of the tavern, labeled “The Sly Fox Tavern,” but found it closed. His scowl grew darker.
“Not sly enough to know when I need a drink,” he muttered.
Con cut through a parking lot, slipping down an alley between two brick buildings and emerged on West Street. To his delight, another old bar still stood. He remembered it as Sign of the Green Tree, but it now claimed to be the bustling Ram’s Head Tavern.
He avoided the crowded main restaurant and made his way to the basement bar. There were only two people in the dark stone room, the bartender and one drinker. The dreary spot fit his mood perfectly.
“Whiskey please,” Con said to the blonde girl behind the bar. “With a whiskey chaser.”
“ID?” she asked.
Confused, Con stared at her, unfamiliar with a whiskey called “Aye-dee.”
“I need to see your ID,” the girl said, more slowly.
Con slapped his head. ID. Identification. This body was so young, he never even thought to check and see if the kid was twenty-one.
Con felt the back of his shorts and found a wallet. He opened it. Concert ticket. Bank card. Girlfriend picture. Con paused. The girlfriend looked spirited, and leaned a little towards the trashy side. He nodded silent approval.
Con continued searching: forty dollars, condom, and license. He looked it over before giving it to the girl.
Jaysus, he thought, studying the kid’s mug shot. You can’t run a comb through your head before they take your picture?
Con found the boy’s birth date: 1987. He marveled that someone could have been born in 1987 and already be old enough to walk and talk, let alone buy a drink and use a condom. He handed the glossy square to the barmaid for her approval.
Con received his whiskey, made short work of it, and reordered. Swiveling on his stool, he surveyed the place. He hadn’t been in this room before. The basement would have been the kitchen when he last visited. Stone, dark wood beams, fireplace; it was nice to see things not change for a change. The place was empty, but for Con and a loutish brute at the end of the bar, who appeared to have set up shop for the day. Con imagined most of the tourists preferred the slick upstairs to the cold stone walls of the basement bar.
Con ordered another whiskey and prepared to do some serious thinking, when a girl in the corner of the room caught his eye. She had not been there during his last scan of the room. Con hadn’t seen her arrive.
The young, brown-haired girl smiled at Con from her location in the corner. She wore a loose wool dress. He would have dismissed her as a costumed historical tour guide, except for one detail he couldn’t ignore.
She was transparent.
“Shite,” he breathed.
“You can see me, can’t you?” asked a female voice at Con’s ear. Her movement to his side was too fast for the girl to have walked or even run to him, but he knew physics didn’t concern her kind.
“Would you believe it if I said no?” mumbled Con. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, but noted the squinty-eyed lout at the end of the bar already peering drunkenly down the line of barstools.
“Who you talking to, buddy?” asked the drunk.
Con watched his head weave back and forth, as the man tried to focus on Con.
“My twin brother.”
The man shrugged with his eyebrows and turned back to his drink.
The transparent girl moved in front of Con, half of her body behind the bar and half of it actually in the bar. Con winced. He hated ghosts almost as much as he hated Angeli.
“Do you have to do that? Make like a real person, will you?”
“Amy,” said the ghost, now appearing to sit on the stool next to Con. “My name is Amy.”
One of the odd side effects of Con’s condition was his ability to see and communicate with other disembodied spirits. These ghosts had been normal people, not Sentinels, when they died and all were weaker entities than he was. Most of the time, Con only caught a glimpse or sensed a presence, but this was the strongest ex-human he’d ever met.
“Happy fer ya,” said Con. “Look girly, I don’t have time to hear your story right now. I’m sure how you died was sad and tragic but—”
Amy cut him short. “How I died?” She put her hand on her chest. “Are you saying I’m dead?”
Con scrambled for an answer, his mouth hanging open.
“Uhhh...”
Amy smiled. “I’m just kidding.”
Con cracked a smile. “Funny. You got me there.”
“I can see you, you know,” Amy continued. “I can see who you are in that other body you’re wearing.”
“That’s nice,” Con sipped his last drop of whiskey. “It’s been nice to meet you. Run along now.”
The girl scowled. “You think you’re special because you can possess someone.”
Con looked her over. “Why yes, I do think I’m special. Thank you for noticing. Now piss off.”
“I’ve seen your type before, whatever you are.”
Putting down his glass, Con reached towards her. He thrust his arm through the spirit, and using his own energy to disrupt hers, caused the ghost to disperse. He’d learned the trick since losing his body. It came in handy for moments such as these.
A light mist hung in the air, and then nothing. It would take Amy a day or two to pull herself together again.
Happy to have rid himself of his pest, Con looked around for the bartender to order another drink. Unable to find a server he stared at his glass. The last words Amy spoke before dispersing nagged at him.
“I’ve seen your type before.”
What did that mean? He was the only thing like him, as far as he knew.
It would be days before Amy the Ghost reassembled. Although the disruption trick proved ideal for annoying human ghosts, he feared this time, he’d been too quick to send her packing.
A human ghost finally said something interesting, and he’d missed it.
Calculating the timing of Amy’s possible return, Con found his thoughts disturbed by a hard slap on his shoulder. The force of the blow doubled him over the bar.
“Hey buddy, you doing alright?”
Con turned to find the oafish drunk from the end of the bar grinning in his face.
Con sighed. For a fellow who spent most of his time feeling lonely without a body, he had started to feel downright crowded in this empty bar.
“Oh, it is happy days down here,” said Con, holding up an empty shot glass. “Cheers.”
Con turned his back on the man, hoping that would be the end of the interaction. He wanted to keep his host body out of harm’s way. He noticed the barmaid still missing, leaving him without someone who might call for a bouncer.
“You seem really chatty for a guy down here all by himself,” the lout said, laughing too hard at his own joke.
Con turned on his stool to face the man. Coolly staring into the eyes of the giant nuisance, he plucked at the man’s purple Baltimore Ravens football jersey.
“And you seem really big to be wearing a purple frock.”
The man scowled and sized up Con in his wiry, young man’s body. Unimpressed, he tilted forward on his toes, shoving his pudgy index finger into Con’s shoulder, both to make his point and keep his balance.
“Are you startin’ with me, ya little punk?”
Con looked at the offending finger, still pointed in his direction, and then trained his gaze back on the man’s eyes.
“No, boyo. I’m ending something with you,” he said through gritted teeth.
Con grabbed the man’s wrist, twisting it until he dropped the unsteady drunk to his knees. Con projected his own energy, allowing it to weave up the man’s forearm like ravenous vines. The Ravens fan watched in horror as the veins on his arm popped forward, his arm bruising before his eyes. He opened his lips to scream, but C
on covered the man’s mouth with his other hand, stifling him.
Con felt energized. Too energized. It occurred to him that the euphoric feeling was the rush of the human man’s energy coursing into his own body. It felt very similar to the reaping of a Perfidian. But he didn’t want to kill the human, no matter how rude he might have been, and he’d never possessed the ability to drain humans in the past. This was something new. Sentinels couldn’t drain human energy.
Horrified, the blood receded from Con’s face, leaving his host body ashen. His anger dissipated, and the energy he’d been projecting, wrapping around the man’s arm, vanished. The light of his power had been purple. Not red, like a Sentinel. Purple.
“I’m sorry!” Con said, still holding his hand over the brute’s mouth. The man thrashed, trying to escape. Con looked around the bar to confirm they were still alone. He couldn’t let the man start screaming and risk getting his host body arrested.
“Shut your gob, ya ape,” he hissed in the man’s ear. “I’m done—it’s done!”
“Con!”
Con heard the call behind him. His back to the door, he couldn’t see who entered, but knew it had to be someone who knew him, and someone who could spot him in another person’s body. Before the Irishman could turn, the stranger grabbed his shoulder with superhuman force. Con felt a draining sensation too painful to ignore. He reached to his shoulder and grabbed the hand of his attacker, reversing the siphon.
The hand on Con’s shoulder jerked away from his touch, giving the Irishman the opportunity to drop the lout and spin away. Released from Con’s grip, the Ravens fan crumpled to the floor and curled into a fetal position, cradling his bruised arm, his eyes wild with fear.
Con turned to face his attacker. It was the tall blond he’d seen leave the bar moments before Anne.
“Leo,” Con said, breathing heavily.
Leo stood in the doorway, eyes steady on Con. He leaned down and patted the blubbering man on the floor, straightening again after three quick taps.