Through the fire, p.14
Through the Fire, page 14
His dad would have been disgusted with him, but no matter how many ways Chris went over it, he couldn't think what he might have done different. Not unless he treated his own home like it was enemy turf.
Obviously, he should have.
Saboac kept letting him off the wall. Letting him get to a weapon, even, and then slamming a wing or a knife or a taloned hand toward Chris, and throwing him up against a wall again. There were burn scars on the walls now, and holes, and some of those on Chris, too. He wasn't sure about his left shoulder, anymore. Some of the muscles there were cut. Cauterized, so he wasn't bleeding out, but he couldn't lift the arm very well, and the pain ran through him in waves that had made him puke twice already.
He gotten in one good counterblow when the fucking angel shook him by an ankle and laughed. He palmed a vial of holy water from inside his coat and rolled, when Saboac dropped him. Stop, drop, and roll. Maybe if he could get Saboac to do that, the fire would go out and he'd have a fighting chance. Anyway, he rolled to his feet and smashed the vial into the reporbate's chest.
The fire did go out, just briefly, and just where the holy water splashed. Black ice formed in its wake, spilling in dots across the thing's burning wings, and Saboac screamed.
That was a win, Chris thought. He hadn't screamed yet himself, he didn't think. But he'd made the angel scream. He'd take it.
There was a broken window after that, and Chris was lying in the glass and the snow and the blood, all of which, he was pretty sure, was his own. The sky above him was grey with cloud cover, and an ashy pink, like his blood on the snow, at the horizon.
If he could get enough holy water, he could probably fry the reporbate angel. 'Course, now that Saboac knew Chris knew that would work, getting that much holy water was going to be hard.
Like getting that much holy water was gonna be easy anyway. Right now getting up was gonna be hard. Chris forced himself up to sitting, feeling glass crunch beneath him. His left arm was working even worse than before, and he couldn't stop to think about the concussive landing on his spine. It was lucky he hadn't cracked his head open on a stone.
He had to get out of there. Into town, where he could fill a gas tank or a giant squirt gun with holy water. Although it wasn't like Saboac would be sitting around waiting for him to come back and kill him.
He had to get out of there, and get Nicky off the property. That was more important, way more important, than anything else. Chris shoved to his feet, stood there a heartbeat waiting to see if he was gonna fall down again, and managed to turn toward the truck before what felt like a cannonball hit him between the shoulders.
At least this time his arm cushioned his head as he smashed to the ground.
Shards of pain shot through him, burning points that felt more vindictive than before. Like, having unexpectedly hurt the reporbate angel, Saboac now wanted to make sure Chris suffered for his…audacity. That's the word Nicky would use. Chris would just say for his balls.
For some reason that made him laugh. A harsh, croaking laugh, like he'd swallowed some of Saboac's fire along the way, but a laugh none-the-less, and he thought if he could laugh, then maybe he could get up. Tried the left arm. Didn't work. Tried the right one. Didn't want to work, but after a couple seconds, it did. Chris pushed up, first into a ball, then, with effort, backward onto his heels, even if his chin dropped to his chest, and his chest heaved with the effort.
His shirt was wet. Shirt and coat both, now that he noticed, what with staring down at himself and all. Pin pricks of pain amidst the wet, like ice had poked through his layers to scrape at him.
Except no. The thought came slowly, thickly, but hey, it came, and Chris felt that was pretty good.
It wasn't melted snow soaking his coat, or ice pricking his chest. It was broken vials of holy water, the ones from his coat lining. Those things were tough, but they weren't meant to take a hundred and ninety pounds of handsome man landing full-force on them. So Chris was dripping with holy water now.
And holy water hurt the reporbate angel.
He laughed again, somehow. Climbed to his feet, aware that fiery wings were pummeling him, that claws and blows were landing, and—on some level—that the angel was getting mad. Not just 'puny human hurt me' mad, but 'why won't this motherfucker stay down' mad.
"Because fuck you, that's why." Chris spun—wobbled, but god damn it, he got to tell this story, so he spun around like a fucking superhero—and lurched toward Saboac. Not trying to hit the angel. Not trying to dodge its blows. Just ran at the fucking thing, and hugged it.
It didn't even try to block him. Which made sense: Chris wouldn't know what to do with an enemy that ran at him with its arms open and no visible weaponry, either. So he collided solidly with the skinny bastard, and wrapped his arms around it with all the strength he had left. That wasn't much, to be fair, and his left arm didn't do much wrapping, but the important part was that he pressed his holy-water-soaked chest against the monster, and for a second, the monster was so surprised it let him.
Then Saboac began to scream. Bone deep banshee screams, so loud Chris's ears rang and popped and pain pierced through his skull. If he hadn't been holding on to the reporbate angel, he would have fallen, but since he was, he just held on harder, and it screamed louder. It felt like the earth broke apart beneath that scream, like the trailer would blow up, like vibrations would melt Chris's eyes and teeth and brain and guts, not necessarily in that order. He couldn't even tell if he actually heard it anymore, or if he just felt it, but it felt awful enough that if he didn't hear it that was okay, really, he was going to die of a melted brain in a minute anyway so it didn't matter very much.
What did matter was that pock holes of horribleness were opening up in Saboac's chest, that black ice chewed its way through the fallen angel, that maybe, maybe, if Chris could just keep not dying for long enough, he might at least take the feathered fiery monstrosity out with him, so Nicky would be safe. That, by Chris's standards, would be as good as it got.
Just before he realized that unconsciousness was only a breath or two away, he discovered he could still hear, after all, because he heard Nicky yell, "Get the fuck off my brother!" and then the space between Saboac and Chris exploded.
CHAPTER 11
The explosion threw Chris…away. Backward, probably. He couldn't tell anymore. He hit something hard with his spine, anyway, and his head cracked against the hard thing and he slid to the frozen ground and sat there stupidly as Nicky stormed up the driveway toward Saboac.
Nicky looked weirdly big. Bigger than usual. Too big, like something dark and dangerous rode him. His eyes seemed bright, even in the darkness, and his hands were clawed. For a blurry, uncertain moment Chris thought that might not be metaphorical. Saboac staggered in a half-circle, turning away from Chris toward Nicky, and Chris swore he saw a daggered smile cross the fallen angel's gaunt face.
Something much worse than Chris had happened to Saboac. He could see the damage he'd done, sort of. Everything was dark, which, well, the sun had gone down, and reddish, which was neither good nor normal. He didn't want to feel his face to find out why his vision was red. Either way, Saboac's chest was marked with the black ice where Chris had squeezed holy water onto it, but Nick had done something…else to the monster.
The pressure that had separated Chris from Saboac had left wounds in the fallen angel's chest, like Nick had grabbed it with those too-clawed-looking hands and sank the talons in, leaving long rendered tears through its torso. Fire leaked through the holes, although where the fire touched the holy water, it froze, which seemed to be hurting the creature. Chris, on a cough, said, "Go me," and wondered why the cough tasted like blood.
Saboac hunched inward, like it could protect its tenderized guts as it lurched toward Nicky. It had lost all its smoothness, all the speed that had made it so hard to fight, and even the battering strength of its wings. Chris wanted to get up, to attack the thing from behind to give Nick a better chance at killing it from the front, but nothing would respond anymore, not his right arm, not his legs, nothing. It all hurt, so he probably hadn't broken his neck, but nothing would move, either.
Nick's voice cut across the darkness. "Chris? You okay?"
He tried to say yeah, of course, and only coughed again, more weakly this time, instead. Nick's face went blank and Saboac gave a thundering hiss that had none of the power of its earlier scream. It leaped at him, suddenly fluid again, and Nicky simply…stopped it.
Stopped it like before, with a straight arm to catch its throat, except he never touched the thing at all. Saboac's pounce ended ten feet away, the fallen angel dangling in mid-air, with Nicky's clawed hand lifted skyward as if he held something in it.
Punctures appeared in Saboac's throat, cutting off the rest of the noises it made, and Nicky, his voice low and angry and dangerous, said, "You should have left my brother alone."
He turned his hand in the air, but Saboac didn't turn with it. Just the rips in its throat changed position, worsening, as Nicky lifted his other hand to hold it back-to-back with the first. Then, with a single violent motion, he ripped them apart.
Saboac tore to shreds with the motion, pieces of black-ice-fire scattering across the yard, flames guttering and flickering in the wind as they landed and searched for something to catch hold of. Nicky, teeth bared, turned to each of those shattered pieces and ground them to dust with nothing but his anger, extinguishing the fallen angel's remains. Grendel power washed off him in waves, hammering at Chris, who thought he would disintegrate if Nick turned that anger on him.
Of course he would. A fucking angel had disintegrated. Chris would probably just disappear like he'd never existed.
He felt like maybe he was gonna do that anyway, except Nicky was not in a good place and Chris couldn't just go and die on him when he was like this. Especially when it was his own damn fault Nicky was in such a bad place. If he hadn't fucked up, if he'd paid attention so Saboac couldn't blindside him, if Nicky wasn't so stupidly heroic that he came to help Chris anyway….
He would've been fine. Nicky would've been fine, if Chris had just died. If he'd gotten there too late to use his grendel power to fight a fallen angel, it would have been fine. He'd have been sad, but he would have gotten over it, and now, now everything was fucked up. Chris croaked, "Nick," and wasn't really sure if he'd made a sound, but after a few heartbeats—he counted every one—his brother turned his head toward him.
Nicky's eyes were definitely bright with power, glowing with it, like it burned him up from within. Chris wheezed his brother's name again, and Nick took a few dangerous steps toward him. The grendel magic he carried bore down on Chris, like he would be ground to bits like Saboac had. He shook his head, or tried, and Nick pulled up abruptly, the fire fading from his eyes.
The magic stopped, too, and Chris was able to take one easier breath. One: then he knew how badly hurt he was, and the next breath was a hell of a lot harder. He thought he made a sound, probably a whimper, and Nick shook himself like he'd just woken up. "Oh, shit, Chris. Chris!"
Nick ran to his side, and Chris had maybe three seconds to be real glad his baby brother had grown up so strong, but then the agony of being picked up swept over him and he faded into red-edged unconsciousness.
The house was filled with blood and fire.
Nothing really burned: it smoldered, thickening the air with smoke, but Saboac's flames apparently weren't as good at setting a house on fire as a little gas left in the pipes was. Lucky for Chris. Lucky for Nick, who would have been way too late if Saboac had just blown shit up.
There was a darkness in his mind, a stain that he flinched away from whenever he thought of Saboac's name. He couldn't stop thinking it, though, like the reporbate angel's presence was an empty tooth socket that he had to keep worrying at.
Maybe, just maybe, it was easier and safer to think about the mark Saboac had left on him, instead of the ones he'd left on Chris.
It seemed like not much more than stubbornness was keeping Chris alive. He was full of holes, mostly shallow, like Saboac had been toying with him, but a few terrifyingly deep ones, and more burn marks than Nicky could count. The layers of leather and wool flannel had gone a long way toward protecting him from the burns, but nowhere near far enough.
And there was all this power bubbling in Nick's chest, in his mind, in his hands, in his whole body, and none of it wanted to do anything about his brother bleeding out in his arms. He got clean bandages—Dad always kept a lot of those around the house, with good reason—and rubbing alcohol to wash the wounds with, and put as much pressure on them as he could, but all the goddamn power running through him wasn't doing him any fucking good at all, not now, not with Chris…like this. He couldn't put words to what like this meant, not without shutting down. He piled blankets on his brother and fumbled for his phone, actually putting a call through to Cheyenne, instead of just a text.
She picked up with, "This better be an epic fuckup, Nicky, like what the hell are you doing calling, you're scaring the shit out of me."
Nick said, "Chris is dying," and then it was all too real.
It took three hours for Cheyenne to get there. Not her fault: she was at home, over in Steamboat Springs, and that was a four and a half hour drive on dry roads. Keep him alive, that's all she'd said. Keep him warm, keep pressure on the wounds, keep him alive. Talk to him. Keep him alive. She didn't tell him to call the local paramedics, didn't tell him to bring Chris to a hospital, didn't tell him to do anything that would end up having to explain why the house was half on fire and how Chris had ended up full of puncture wounds. Just keep him alive. That's all she'd told him to do.
So he did. Three hours and some change, huddled beside Chris on a bed to keep him warm, mumbling stories about college and not even caring, right then, that most of them involved Stephanie, whom he'd scared off with grendel power. Just anything to keep Chris listening and alive.
Chris roused a couple of times, half conscious, then out again, and Nick's heart went colder and faster with fear every time he fell silent again. Chris's pulse was getting worse. Nick didn't know how to fix it. Being pre-med seemed pretty fucking useless right now. Chemistry and biological principles didn't help him put his brother's guts back together. He wasn't supposed to spend an internship following a doctor around to be sure this was what he wanted to do until this summer, although right now the only thing Nick wanted to do was be able to help people heal—
He was pretty sure he was saying all of this aloud. Less sure it was helpful, but Cheyenne had said to talk to Chris, so Nick was talking and talking and couldn't shut up.
Then the bedroom door banged open and Cheyenne was there, her face set behind a medical mask and her gaze already focused on Chris. The light seemed to change with her presence, growing warmer, safer. She had her paramedic bag with her, and handed Nick a saline drip like she expected him to know what to do with it. Get it up high, that's all that mattered. Higher than Chris's arm. He got a hanger and hooked it over a dresser knob. Heard Shy snapping latex gloves on, and turned back to see her bent over Chris's wounds, examining them. Her skin looked exceptionally dark compared to Chris's pallor. She was carved of midnight, and he was made of shallow blue-lit water.
"He's got so many burns." Shy breathed the words, probably not meaning for Nick to hear. "Get the burn ointment, you did a good job packing these wounds, he'll probably need blood, do you know his blood type—"
"We're both O positive. I can—" Nick didn't finish, just sat down and put an arm out.
Shy swore. "I'm going to need your hands right now. I'll stick you when Jake gets here."
Guilt lanced through Nick. "I didn't call him. I should have."
"Jake's not a paramedic," Cheyenne said flatly. "You called me, the person who could save Chris's life. And I called Jake. He was out east on some job, so he couldn't have gotten here before me anyway. He's on the way now. Should be here soon. Wash your hands and put a pair of gloves on, then get back out here and help me."
By the time he came back with the gloves and a medical mask in place, she had the saline drip in Chris's arm, and the light in the room was definitely warmer, like her just being there helped. "You did a good job," she said again, more quietly this time. "Most of these are shallow and at most need a stitch or two. There are two that are a problem, though, and you're going to have to help me. Can you do that without melting down?"
"Yeah. Just tell me what you need."
The next minutes passed in a blur as Shy sewed wounds with surgical precision. The light kept changing, wavering, turning gold and brightening, then fading back to normal. Nick shook his head, trying to steady it, and Cheyenne gave him a filthy look that told him to hold still. Even her eyes seemed bright with the gold light, like it was leaking around her irises. Nick lifted his head, looking blearily for light's source, then bent over Chris again, doing what he was told. Cheyenne turned her intense focus back on Chris, and the brightness glimmered again, like it was showing them where work needed to be done. "Okay," Shy finally breathed, and sat back. "Okay. If we can get blood into him, I think he'll be all right. Go wash up and then I'll stick you."
"Thank you." Nick sounded rough, close to tears. Cheyenne gave him a hard smile from behind her mask.
"Don't thank me yet. Later I'm going to want to know what the fuck happened here. Jake!" The last word came on a burst of relief as Jake came in, worry making him almost as pale as Chris. "Jake, what's your blood type?"
"A positive. Chris is O positive."
"Right. You wash," Shy said to Nick again, and he went to the bathroom, hearing Shy's low quiet voice updating Jake on what she knew.
