James Baldwin - Stained Glass

But I was healing. It wasn’t the horrific, invasive, cell-crawling healing that I’d gotten from Sergei’s blood: The lacerations from the glass almost seemed to sigh as they pushed out pus and other refuse, then perfectly clear plasma as they knitted and repaired. My hands tingled as the cut in my palm half-sealed to something manageable. The energy lingered in the nerves of that hand, which twitched and danced on the bed as Angkor, frowning with concentration, somehow repaired the damage the glass had done. It didn’t feel bad. It was the opposite of bad. It made my breath hitch and my skin stir. My gloves were still on, but no one had ever touched my hands like that.

“Stop,” I said. My throat was clotting with nebulous fear, and as my anxiety peaked, I felt the healing accelerate. As the cut sealed, a silver ripple of… pleasure?… passed up my arm, through my chest, and down. Parts I preferred not to think about stiffened under the covers, which hurt. The pain startled and refocused me.

“I’m nearly done. Nerve damage.” Angkor’s delicate face was pouring with sweat as the focus of his magic shifted from my hand to my thigh.

The mingled pleasure and discomfort did not abate. I tried not to look at him, my face burning hot. The taste of honey and Angkor’s clear floral scent cut through the lingering lion musk and chased it from the room. He really smelled like Zarya. Like a Gift Horse.

“Nearly done,” he murmured. “Hang in there.”

The thigh puncture didn’t close, but the cut was now shallow – perhaps half an inch deep. The smaller ones had disappeared without a trace, and when I lifted my arms and looked over them, they were free of scars. Angkor sat back, and a huge, lazy smile of satisfaction spread over his mouth. His pupils were huge, dilated like a junkie’s.

“Have a look at your hand,” he said. His voice was thick, a rich golden brown that thrummed in my ears and did nothing to ease my discomfort.

Glowering, I slowly eased upright and removed my damaged, dirty glove. It revealed soft white skin, as pale as magnolias and nearly lineless. The hand that had been pinned with the shard was now seamlessly repaired, and to my surprise, no longer covered in blood. I flexed my fingers experimentally. There was a deep twinge in my palm, but I could form a fist and bend my fingers back and not scream.

“Not bad,” he said. “Not my best work, but I was fighting that HookWyrm the entire time. That, and I literally feel like something a dog threw up on the sidewalk.”

“You smell quite a bit nicer than that.” I only realized what I’d said after I said it. “I mean… you smell like a mage. Magic. Thank you.”

His expression curled into slyness with incredible mobility. He pinched his tongue between his teeth as he smiled, a weirdly sensual gesture I’d never seen a person make before.

I cleared my throat, glancing down. He was still mostly undressed, and averting my eyes from his face didn’t help. “Where is Talya?”

“She’s busy eating one of the dead guys outside.” Angkor shrugged and reached for the jar of honey. “She’ll be fine once she’s had enough calories. We’ll know she’s shifted back when we hear hysterical screaming.”

While Angkor spooned honey out of the jar and ate it like yogurt, I picked myself up off the bed. My muscles were stiff with fatigue, but it was not the screaming hot pain of deep wounds and burgeoning infection. The deepest punctures still hurt, and they still felt like lacerations, but they were no longer three inches deep. Manageable. I pulled my ruined glove back on and offered Angkor a hand.

“Thanks.” He got to his feet, the teaspoon still in his mouth. He’d eaten about half the jar, but his dark skin was still greenish with exertion and he swayed to balance. His face and hair were damp with sweet floral sweat that clung like perfume to his body. It was mouthwatering and infuriating at the same time.

“You shouldn’t have exerted yourself,” I said. “You’re not going to be good for anything now.”

“I just need something to eat,” he said. “No chance of that for a long time, though.”

“We have food,” I replied. “Can you take your own weight? I need both hands to properly use a pistol.”

He replied by gently freeing himself from my support. His expression was one of focused will. Sick as he was, he had the air of someone used to pushing his body to limit. “Not the kind of food I can eat. I’m a Hound. I hunt Gift Horses.”

I felt the parasite throb with a dull echo as my mind instinctively tried to synapse with Kutkha and failed. I caught up the Wardbreaker, fighting the urge to level it at Angkor’s face. “You… hunt them? For food?”

“Hunt. Capital H. I’m a keeper of the Pact.” He turned to me, and quirked his lips with a lazy feline smile. “Though if you let me suck you off, that would do.”

My mouth opened, then closed. My teeth clacked together. “Wh-?”

“You possess the raw essence of life.” He gestured with his head towards my crotch. “You know, that whole Crowley ‘fire within the reed’ thing? HuMan pleasure is hard tack rations for a Hound, but it does the job.”

I’d never wanted to backpeddle away in mortified horror and lunge forward to snap someone’s neck at the same time. Immovable object and irresistible force combined to leave me burning scarlet, furious and confused. After a moment of fraught, painful tension, I took a single step away from him. “Uhh… no. Thank you.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I just noticed that you had a bit of a ‘reaction’ before, and I was like ‘Hi there! Maybe he’d be interested.’” He held up his hands in surrender, and I had the momentary image of pinning his slender wrists back against the wall and digging my fingers in until he gasped in pain and threw his head back, bearing the long line of his throat.

As my pulse throbbed and my head pounded and my body did things I wasn’t sure I wanted it to do for a man, ever, I did the only sane thing. I bought my gun up and retreated as fast as I could, jaws clenched, breath coming hard and fast through flared nostrils.

“Hey, Alexi, we can’t do this.” Angkor held up his hands “Do you want DOGs? Because this is how we get DOGs.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” This wasn’t the kind of thinking and feeling a professional wetworker could never allow to clutter his mind.

“Seriously. Don’t ever point a gun at a Hound.” The sensual promise drained from his face, leaving it sharp and hard and focused. “When I look down the Black, the NO looks back. It sends demons through the gun, Alexi. Big bad ones. You should know that for a fact.”

It took me a moment to digest his words over the humiliating, painful rush of blood to my various organs, and the furious sense of threat that overwhelmed sense, overwhelmed rational thought.

Sense and reason. I was a mage, even if I was a crippled one. My Will asserted itself, and I lowered the muzzle of the pistol, grinding my teeth until they creaked. “I know what DOGs are, you patronizing… you…”

The memory of Zane’s earnest confession stopped me from using the slur, and it died on my lips. In years past, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about saying something like that, but Angkor and Zane had both saved my life. I could learn.

Angkor sighed, though from relief or exasperation, it was hard to say. I knew one thing: he wasn’t scared of me, except perhaps for the awareness that he was in danger of being shot or DOG-bit. You could pretend calm in a situation, but there were just some things you couldn’t fake. His pupils were normal. He wasn’t shaking. His hands were steady, and no sweat beaded on his upper lip. I might as well have been pointing a remote control at him.