J Ward - Crave

He opened the way in on a burst. “Jim? Jim?”

The glow from his bathroom illuminated the rumpled bed that he and Eddie had worked that girl out on the night before, as well as the clothes that were scattered around.

The connector to Jim’s was half open, the room beyond dark.

“Jim…?”

He knew the angel was in there. He could smell the candle smoke and the fresh blood and… the other things.

The rush to get to the guy evaporated as the reality of what he was about to walk in on clawed its way into his chest and suffocated him. But he was not turning back. He was an asshole of the first order, always had been. He was not, however, a pussy to turn away from the hard stuff.

Adrian walked to the doorway between the two rooms and leaned in. “Jim.”

The light in the bathroom behind him cut a path into all the pitch-black, the illumination stopping at the foot of the angel’s bed… as if it were too polite to show his condition.

After Adrian rounded the jamb, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust-

On a hiss, he vowed, “I’m going to kill that bitch…”

Jim was lying on his side, curled into himself as if to conserve body heat, and he was trembling in fits and starts. A blanket had been pulled over his big, battered body-no doubt by the archangel-and Dog was right by his face, pretzeled into a ball, going nowhere.

As Adrian came over, he got a little wag, but the animal didn’t lift his head, staying nose-to-nose with Jim.

The angel appeared to be breathing, his chest rising and falling, a soft wheeze breaching his busted mouth. His hair was matted and there was blood on his face, the features of which no longer looked like his own, thanks to a Michelin Man-like swelling.

Adrian sat down slowly. “Jim?”

No response, so he tried the name game a couple more times. Eventually, Jim’s lid cracked.

“Hey,” Adrian whispered.

He got a croak and then the eye shut and the body under the blanket shivered in a great seizure.

If this was anything like what Adrian went through-and given the way the guy looked, it was a one-for-one if he’d ever seen it-what Jim really wanted was a bath followed by a shower. But it was too early for that shit. Healing time first-there were just too many broken-andbruiseds to move him-which was the burden of an angel’s dual nature: being both real and unreal meant that at least half of you could get fucked-up but good, and shit didn’t spring back right away.

Adrian stood and went over to the heating unit that was under the windows. Turning the dial to “sauna,” he ditched his leather jacket and shut the connector to the other room, locking them in together. Then he got on the bed, stretched out on top of the thin blanket, and put his chest to the angel’s back to warm him.

As he lay there and heard the heater come on with a whir, he felt the earthquakes in Jim’s torso and limbs. Part of it was the healing process, which in some ways was more painful than the injuries. And part of it was the deep freeze of shock.

And part of it was the memories, no doubt.

He wanted to put an arm around the guy, but that was just going to be too uncomfortable for Jim: When he’d been in this condition, he’d lain naked without even a sheet on his clawed skin.

After a while, the billowing warmth that fanned out from the heater reached them, arcing over and raining down. Jim obviously felt the flow because he drew in a long breath and exhaled on a ragged sigh.

Lying next to the other angel, Adrian should have expected that this was where Jim would end up, and he had, to a degree. He’d known Devina had wanted the guy… back on their first assignment, back on that first night in the club in Caldwell. And he’d served Jim up to her.

With everything but the “to and from” tag.

Hard not to feel responsible for this.

Realllllllllly tough.

“I’ve got you, Jim,” he said hoarsely. “I’m right here for you, man.”

Down in the wine cellar, Grier went through the dossiers one by one while she waited… and waited… and waited some more…

Finally.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” she said, without looking behind herself.

Daniel took a long time in answering, but he didn’t disappear: Whenever he was around, she could feel the slightest of drafts, and as long as that was brushing the back of her neck, she knew he was still with her.

I thought you would hate him. And then you and he would have no one left.

“So you knew what happened.”

Daniel came around the table, one hand planted on his hip, the other buried in his blond hair so that the curls went halo on him. I was high when it all went down… so I just thought it was so funny, Dad bursting in with three guys in black. I figured it was his version of an intervention-all comic-book hard-core. But as they put the needle in my arm, he started to scream and that’s when I realized… it wasn’t funny.

Daniel’s eyes met hers. I’d never seen him that way before. To me, he was always so aloof and unemotional. It was… the reaction I had been looking for all my life, the visceral love I’d been after. See, I was like Mom, not you and him. I wanted more than that chilly disapproval and I got it, only it was too late… He shrugged. In retrospect, I was too needy, and he didn’t know what to do with a son who wasn’t cut from military cloth. Oil and water. I should have handled it differently, but I didn’t.

“And neither did he.”

It’s not anyone’s fault. It just… was.

Grier leaned back in her chair, thinking of the way their family had aligned, she and their father on one side, Daniel and their mother on the other.

It wasn’t his fault, her brother said with a kind of stern tone she’d never heard from him before. The way I ended… he screamed, Grier… and then as I was dying, I heard him say, over and over again, Danny boy… my Danny boy-

As Daniel’s voice broke, she was compelled to get up and go to him. Before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around…

Herself.

Please don’t hate him, he said from the far corner, having shifted quick as a blink.

“Please don’t run,” she countered.

I’m sorry… I have to go…

He disappeared before her as if he couldn’t hold his emotions in any longer, his despair lingering in the cold spot he left behind.

She stood for a time, staring at the vacant space he’d just occupied. She and her father had been two of a kind, and in their intellectual accord, they’d locked the others out, hadn’t they. Her mother and brother had taken to their addictions while she and her father had been in lockstep with the law and their careers and their external passions.

She’d known it on some level… and maybe that had been part of her drive to save Daniel. Her brother’s addiction and her efforts to pull him out of it had been the link they hadn’t found outside of childhood: She had always blamed herself-and for a brief moment tonight, she had blamed her father.

Now… she was angry at that man with the eye patch. Viciously angry. If Daniel had lived, maybe they’d have figured it all out. Forgiven each other, all three of them, for the past. Moved along to… something that their family had had only on the surface. After all, privilege and money and breeding could cover up a multitude of problems-and didn’t ensure that the closeness on a Christmas card was actually more than a pose once a year for a photographer.

Shaking her head, she went back to her seat and stared at the dossiers.

Isaac was going to even the score for her family, she thought. By being the one who brought down that maniacal bastard who had killed her brother and all but ruined her father.