Through the fire, p.6
Through the Fire, page 6
The knot in Chris's belly tightened dangerously, like it wanted to squeeze tears out of him. He reached over and put his hand on Nick's shoulder, cautiously. "Yeah. Me too, Nicky. Me too. Hang in there, buddy. We'll be home soon."
Nick nodded, and Chris drove a little faster.
The double-wide they'd grown up in when they weren't on the road hadn't changed much in four years, except it was cleaner than Nick expected. He stopped in the kitchen door, honestly confused by recently-vacuumed carpets and windows that had obviously been washed within the last week or two. It smelled decent, like somebody had cooked something worth eating in the not-so-distant past. The living room couch, visible around the end of the kitchen wall, had the same frame he remembered, but the pillows no longer caved in at sprung, crushed corners.
Chris, a few steps ahead of him, said, "Close the damn door, you're letting all the heat out." Nick did so with a guilty twitch, then glared at his brother's shoulders.
"I'm not four, you know."
"Yeah? Then why didn't you close the door behind you?" Chris threw his ichor-covered coat over the back of a kitchen chair and started stripping off his clothes on the way through a door that hid the laundry room. "You've still got some clothes here from when you left. The sleeves are probably short but it's gonna be better than what you're wearing now. You wanna shower first while I get the laundry going?"
"You do laundry now?"
Chris gave him a peculiar look from just inside the laundry room. "I always did laundry, dude. Who do you think kept your clothes clean for school?"
Nick opened his mouth and shut it again on the obvious answer, which was 'Dad', because if he thought about it at all, he could only remember their dad washing his own clothes, not theirs. "…thanks."
"'swhat big brothers are for." Chris came out of the laundry room in his underwear, which was more—or more accurately, less—than Nick could handle right then. He made a sound of dismay and put his hand up, blocking his view, then grunted as Chris smacked his shoulder on the way by. "Man, get over yourself, you've seen me more naked than this. Fine, I'm taking a shower first. You do the laundry. Detergent's on the shelf. Make sure you use the yellow box. The other stuff gives me hives."
"Then why do we even have it?"
"'cause Dad."
For a second Nick thought there was going to be more to that sentence, but 'because Dad' was actually reason enough. He went to do the laundry, using the stuff in the yellow box, then took the blue one off the shelf and held it to his nose, inhaling.
Chris found him sitting against the washing machine in his underwear twenty minutes later, the blue box spilled by his side, his head buried against his knees, and the body-wracking sobs all but abated. "Shit, Nicky." He slid down to sitting, put an arm around Nick's shoulders, and pulled him sideways into a silent hug.
"I haven't even talked to him in years," Nick said hoarsely. "You'd think it wouldn't matter."
"Nah, man." Chris sighed. "He's your dad. It doesn't just go away. I couldn't throw that stuff out. Smelled too much like him. Couldn't do it. It's okay, Nick."
"It's not. He died mad at me."
"He died stubborn," Chris said quietly. "I don't think he's been mad at you for ages. He might have even been proud."
"Bullshit."
"No. I don't think so." Chris fell silent a few seconds. "You need a shower, man."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Nick climbed to his feet and this time Chris blocked his eyes.
"Jesus, Nick."
"What was all that talk about me having seen you more naked than that, then?"
"Man, you were smaller last time I saw you this naked! Go! Jesus! Go take a shower and cover yourself!" Chris threw a handful of laundry detergent at Nick and he gave a small rough laugh, more than he'd thought he could a minute ago, and went to shower.
The bathroom was a lot cleaner than he remembered it, and he stood in the hot water a while, the backs of his eyelids flashing between images of the funeral pyre and the burning angel. Saboac. The heat from the pyre had been worse, but purer. Burning away—not sins, but maybe lies. The kinds of lies people told themselves to get by. That it didn't matter if his dad wasn't supportive. That it was okay to have cut Chris off as well as their old man. Burning it all away so uncomplicated heartbreak could do its thing. He was pretty sure it wasn't just hot shower water sluicing down his cheeks, but no one else was there to judge him.
Just himself, and that, Nick figured, was enough.
Saboac's fire had smoldered, clogging the air, thickening in Nick's lungs. Killing, instead of purifying. As if its slow burn had intended to sink into his skin, melting it like it had the old house's carpets. He couldn't scrub the sensation off, regardless of how hard he tried. Finally he climbed out of the shower, and dried off, wishing he could stand in front of his father's pyre again and let it…decontaminate him, after Saboac's touch.
He went still, no longer toweling his hair. "Chris?"
"What!" His brother sounded irritable.
His brother usually sounded irritable. No reason to let that stop a conversation, or they'd never talk at all. "Did that thing say anything? The burning angel?"
"No, why?" Chris appeared in the short hall that led toward the bedrooms as Nick stepped out of the bathroom.
"Have you ever heard the word 'Saboac', then?"
"No. What's the deal?"
"It's…it's…in my head. The word. Like it put it there. I think it's its name."
"I never heard of an angel Saboac."
"Me neither. Look it up while I get dressed." Nick went into the bedroom he'd shared with Chris until he left, then froze, taken back in time and thrust into the future all at once. There were still posters on the walls from when they'd been teenagers, less of buxom babes than science fiction badasses. Nick guessed Chris still had a thing for Ripley. His own poster of Einstein's imagination quote was still up, hanging above a bookshelf that had a couple of his dusty high school sports trophies on it.
But everything else that said he'd once lived there was gone. To be fair, he'd taken most of it, and didn't know why Chris would keep the rest hanging around. There was a double bed now, instead of the two singles they'd had smashed up against the opposite walls with the piece of tape down the middle of the room to delineate my side and your side. The shelves below his trophies held knives, guns, and what Nick thought was a garrote, which seemed particularly gruesome. The closet door, partially opened, showed a limited number of coats and heavy shirts, rather than the jam-packed-full mess of clothes, shoes, random boxes, and general junk that had once been shoved in it.
Folded on the foot of the bed were sweatpants, a t-shirt he'd owned when he was fifteen, and socks and underwear so new they hadn't been taken out of the packages yet. Numb with the clash of past and present, Nick got dressed and padded out to the living room, where Chris was scowling over his phone. "You said Saboac? S A B O A C?"
"I don't know how it's spelled, but yeah, that sounds right."
Chris turned the phone toward him, displaying a Wiki page. "Well, that sucks, because Saboac's a fucking fallen angel."
CHAPTER 5
"A f—" Nick took the phone out of Chris's hand, sitting as he skimmed through the article. "Not a fallen angel. A reprobate angel. No. Reporbated. What the hell is that." He trailed off, reading it more carefully while Chris sat back down and pulled his feet up on the couch like a kid.
"It's fallen, man. Nobody except some old guy at the Vatican cares what 'reporbated' is."
Nick, softly, said, "Shit," then shook his head. "No, I think it makes a difference. Fallen's a big deal, like, that's defying-God territory, right? But this says God desanctified Saboac."
"Fallen, desanctified, what's the difference?"
"Did you read this or not?"
"I'd just found it when you came out!"
Nick pulled a hand over his face and offered the phone back so Chris could read it, but Chris just stared at him expectantly. "Lucifer fell, Chris. He defied God and was cast out or fell or whatever you want to call it, and a bunch of others went with him. But they're still angels. This one isn't. God took away its sanctity, its angelicness. I think it's, like…pure evil."
Chris squinted dubiously. "I thought that was Lucifer's whole gig."
"I mean, I don't know, man, it's not like I've interviewed the devil, but can an angel even be pure evil? But this thing—" Nick shuddered, suddenly remembering the oily feeling of its touch. "I think this thing can be. Is."
"Well, if it used to be an angel and God took away its angelness, how can it even be anything? Wouldn't it just like shrivel up into cosmic nothing?"
"I don't know! It doesn't say!"
"What the hell good does that do us, then? What did pure evil want with Dad? Or us?" Chris inhaled sharply. "With you?"
Ice dotted down Nick's arms and spine, like the shower he'd just taken had been a cold one. "Me?"
"It grabbed your head, not mine."
"I was the one holding it!"
"You friggin' straight-armed it after it grabbed you!"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"I don't know, Nick, are you in the habit of lifting people ten inches off the floor with one hand?"
Nick reeled back. "…no…"
"So I'm guessing it's got something to do with you! And you knew its name. And I didn't." Chris's voice cooled suddenly, down-shifting from aggravation and confusion into something Nick recognized as much more dangerous. "It wanted something to do with you, Nicky. And I didn't stop it."
"You blew up the house it was in."
"Think that's enough to stop a fallen—a desanctified—angel?"
"No." Nick closed his eyes. "No, I don't."
"So we gotta figure out—Jesus, I don't know. Who knows about angels, for God's sake?"
Nick opened his eyes again to give Chris a flat look. "I dunno, maybe God?"
Chris gave him a filthy look in return. "Right, 'cause you've got him on speed dial? No? That's okay, 'cause I've got the Pope in my contacts, I'll just call him up like 'yo, dude, reporbate angels, tell me the story there.'"
"All right! All right, Jesus, you don't have to lean in to the smartassery. What about…I don't know, what about Grandma?"
Chris's eyebrows shot up. "Why would Grandma know about fallen angels?"
"I don't know, except she always seemed like she knew everything, and…I don't know. It was a dumb idea." Nick pushed his hands through his hair and sat there, caved in over himself. "Does she even know about Dad?"
"I called her, yeah."
Hurt and anger crushed the air from Nick's belly. He tried to inhale around the emptiness, and pushed grated words out. "You called—"
"Look, okay, I know, okay? I get it. I called Grandma but I texted you, I get it, I'm an asshole." Chris slammed out of the couch and stomped toward the kitchen like accusations were stalking him.
"You really are." Nick stayed where he was, still trying to breathe around what felt like a gut wound. "She couldn't come?"
Chris banged things around in the kitchen, maybe emptying the dishwasher. "She's got a cow that's had a hard pregnancy and it's supposed to give birth any day. She was afraid if she left it she'd come back to two dead animals."
"And she didn't like Dad much anyway."
"She said she was sorry and we should come out to the farm," Chris said, on top of that. "Just like she's been saying since Mom died."
"She was probably right."
The banging went quiet, and after a minute, so did Chris's voice. "Yeah. Probably. Do you wanna go?"
"I can't. I gotta go back to…" A different kind of twist hurt Nick's belly again. "Back to school. At some point."
"With a desanctified angel on our asses? On your ass? How're you gonna explain that to pretty little Stephanie?"
"Chris, I swear to fucking God, if you can't stop being a dick…"
His brother crossed into Nick's line of sight to offer him a cheeky, asshole smile. "You know it's part of my charm."
"It really isn't."
Chris's smile fell away and he went back to unloading the dishwasher. "I'm not wrong, though. I mean, maybe we killed that thing and it was just an extra-special freak and you can go back to your nice life with your nice girlfriend and your nice…whatever. But maybe we didn't, and it comes after us again. Or you. What are you gonna do then? Tell her there are things that go bump in the night? Or about the freaks, since they're actually scarier, 'cause they're still people?"
"No! No. No, Stephanie's…she's my normal, Chris. She's everything I'm aiming for. I don't want her pulled into bounty hunting, much less vampires and whatever Saboac is."
"Your normal, huh." Chris sounded like he was looking toward Nick. "How long've you been together?"
"About eight months."
"Wow. And she's everything you're aiming for? So, what, you really are gonna marry her?"
"I mean…maybe? I don't know, man. But even if I don't, or especially if I don't, she doesn't need to know about all the crap we've seen. Our lives here, they're fucking weird, Chris. Even without the grendels, bounty hunting can get kind of monstery. I don't want her to be involved in monstery."
Chris came to the kitchen entrance, drying his hands. "'Grendels?'"
"The freaks. I don't like the word freaks and there's the Bhuntr Beowulf board and I thought…grendels."
"Hnh. Yeah, okay. That's kind of cool." He went back into the kitchen and Nick heard the scrape of one of the chairs against the linoleum floor. "This is more than 'kind of' monstery, though, Nick. I know you want to go back to Cali, but I think we really have to figure out this Saboac thing first. Maybe we should call Grandma. She's old and weird. She knows stuff."
"No." Nick got up to change the laundry as the washing machine started beeping. Chris was working on his jacket on the kitchen table, scrubbing ichor out with strong-smelling leather cleaner. "No, you were right, why would she know about reporbate angels. Besides, she's part of normal, too, Chris. I don't want to screw that up. I'd like to go out to her farm. Maybe this summer. I'm supposed to intern, but…I don't know. Maybe some family time is more important. I already—" Nick leaned heavily on the washing machine, head dropped as his throat went tight. "I already screwed that up big time," he managed after a minute. "I can't fix it with Dad. I shouldn't blow it with Grandma, too."
"So you're not gonna ask Grandma anything and you're not gonna tell Stephanie anything and you think I'm the one who thinks he has to do everything on his own?"
"Historically, yeah." Nick finished putting the clothes into the dryer and joined Chris at the kitchen table, watching without seeing as Chris scoured gunk out of his jacket. "I mean, when was the last time you asked anybody for help?"
"You, this morning."
"Before that!"
"S'not the point, is it. Point is, you're gonna have to tell Stephanie and your boyfriend someth—"
"He's my roommate, not my boyfriend. Tyler."
"Whatever, man. You're going to have to tell them something. If you're staying."
Nick, sharply, said, "I'm not staying," then both heard and felt himself lose the edge as his shoulders slumped. "I'm just…not leaving yet. Because you're right. Saboac being there doesn't seem like a coincidence, so I want to know if it was after Dad, or after us. Need to know," he amended more quietly. "'Cause if it was after us, I can't go home until it's dealt with, or I'll endanger everybody around me."
"Yeah, well, lucky me, I don't have that problem 'cause I don't have anybody around me." Chris wiped a clean cloth over the coat's leather, then rose to hang it in the laundry room, where he cracked a window open to help dissipate the smell. He pulled the door closed behind him, mostly keeping the cold out of the rest of the house, although Nick could feel the breeze from below the door skating across his toes.
"Why don't you?"
"You left."
"Man, I'm your brother, not your prom date. Why don't you have somebody else?"
"I had Dad."
"Are you being deliberately obtuse?"
"I don't even know what that means." Chris stumped past him into the living room, leaving Nick to put his head in his hands again and wonder when, exactly, his brother had gotten so stubborn. Except Chris had always been that way, and if Nick was honest, he might acknowledge it was something of a family trait. Even their grandmother had a mile-wide streak of stubborn that had driven her into the edge-of-nowhere farmhouse after her husband had died. Their mom had grown up out there, 'cause Grandma said cities weren't safe enough these days, never mind that the old lady had run off more than one rustler with her shotgun and had stories that raised the hairs on Nick's nape when he was little.
She would hear him out, if he called. She'd tell him he was crazy, after that, but she'd hear him out, and Nick almost wanted to get her reassurance that he was a little off the deep end.
Except she didn't know about the vamps and the freaks, which meant he already had more information than she did, so he knew he wasn't crazy, and her reassurances wouldn't do as much good as he wished they would.
And arguing with Chris would do him even less good than that. Nick sighed and went to look for his phone, which turned out to be in the laundry room, getting cold even though the dryer was running. There were a couple of text messages from Stephanie that he answered with a promise to be back in town soon, and an appalling gif from Tyler that he deleted without responding to. Then, laundry room door closed and the dryer running at his back, he sat on the floor and called Jake. "You with Stephanie and Ty?"
Jake's surprise came across the line. "Nick? No. Is Chris okay?"
"That's probably a question for a therapist."
A bark of laughter answered him. "I meant, are you calling because something went wrong, but valid point. What's up?"
"I don't know. I'm worried about him. Everything sucks. I miss Dad." The answers came in a rush, none of it what Nick had intended to say.
Jake sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, I know, buddy. I'm sorry. Are you guys done, then? Did you take care of the problem?" The slightest hesitation before the final word filled in all the details that couldn't be said aloud on the phone.
