Marc Zicree - Angelfire

Russo regarded him silently for a moment, then looked down into the pages of his book, fingertips stroking the print. “I don’t know.”

Cal sank to the arm of the sofa. “We’re going in there blind.” He looked at me, the expression in his eyes cloaked by the darkness of the room. “We have no way of knowing what will happen to Magritte if we take her in there.”

“If? We have no choice, Calvin. We must take her in, and hope that Goldie can keep her safe.”

“Safe?” Russo’s smile was feral. “Ruby City’s never safe.”

In the hours before dawn, I lay awake on the sofa in Howard Russo’s office, listening to the city, to the building, to the sounds of the others sleeping, to the beating of my heart. This bespelled place was not silent; it was merely secretive. In the walls and in the corridor beyond the locked and bolted door there was movement, sly and questing.

It was these sounds that awakened me, jolting me up out of uneasy sleep to a soft chuckle from across the room. It was Russo, perched not behind his desk, but upon it. Reading.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” he said now, his voice a rasp that recalled Poe’s raven. His malformed head was silhouetted against the wan light that crept in through the blinds behind him. He canted it to listen, and the light caressed the wire rims of his glasses. “Just some acquaintances wondering who’s company.” He glanced back at me, stroking the pages of the book. “It’s okay. Don’t think they’ll try to come in.” He adjusted his glasses, looking at once familiar and alien, then poked his nose back into the book. “You sleep.”

But I couldn’t sleep any more than could he. The furtive sounds seemed to work on both of us alike. They beckoned to him, while he barricaded himself here, armed against them with books, clinging to what was left of Howard Russo. I, on the other hand, was afraid of something I could not name.

After a while of reading, he got up and paced the rooms, so quietly he seemed to vanish. I paced, too, but mentally. I had already, this night, worn a rut in the hardwood of the upper hall, crossing and recrossing it to the room at the back of the building where our night watch kept guard on the courtyard below.

While I was engaged in this, the office door lock clicked and the door opened, allowing a slender shadow to enter. It made its way with care past me to the living room door and in.

I heard their voices then-soft whispers exchanging information about time and activity … and perhaps more. Then they emerged into the office together.

“I’ve had plenty of rest,” Cal said softly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to fall asleep at my post… Sarge.”

“I’m more worried about you falling down at your post,” murmured Colleen. “The windowsill’s the best place to sit watch, but with the casement busted like that, you could easily take a header into the picket line.”

I could almost hear Cal smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m wide-awake.”

He leaned into her and their forms merged briefly. She said his name beneath her breath, and they parted, he to take the final watch, she to stand immobile at the foot of the sofa where I lay, pretending sleep.

“Oh, hell,” she whispered, then wheeled and disappeared into the parlor. She was back a moment later to unroll her sleeping bag on the floor between the sofa and desk and curl up within it.

I forced my eyes closed and was surprised to find sleep. I drowsed until the sun finally poured out its weak amber light to ooze around Howard Russo’s shades. I woke, told myself I was not comfortable lying on my back, and rolled onto my side. My glance, disobedient, fell to the floor.

The transition between the fleeting look and the gaze was seamless. One moment I was staring into darkness, the next I was watching Colleen sleep, ruddy, predawn light flowing around her. The thoughts I was struggling not to entertain; the sensations I was fighting to ignore; the emotions I did not want to name-they, too, threatened to be illuminated in that toxic spill of light.

Dear God, but I was tired. Yes, that was it. If I could only get adequate sleep, this would pass. If. If I could only comprehend the disease, I could find a cure. If I could wipe out the memory of that moment in the barn when I discovered the impossible lurking in my soul. If I could erase the feeling of her hands slipping from mine in the numbing flood.

Time rippled, and I was transported to a rain-slick road near Kiev. There, in a brief flicker of seconds, I had a dark epiphany: the life I had lived for the past fourteen years revolved on the instant I drew Colleen from the water. I had done for her what I could not do for Yelena and Nurya.

I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t want to know what it meant. So I struggled with the angel of revelation and called him “Deceiver.” I forced his wings to fold. I begged him for mercy, for sleep. There was still time before we must rise and travel. I would simply close my eyes and no longer see Colleen.

But before I could close my eyes, she opened hers. I was unable to move, to dissemble, to hide. She held my gaze for a moment, then smiled, closed her eyes, and returned to her dreams.

The struggle was over, instantly, leaving me with nothing but a peculiar wash of relief. Her smile-that warm, sleepy, child-like smile-had said to me that she yet saw in me a friend. Regardless of what I felt or imagined I felt, I would always be that-her friend, her confidant. This, I would let nothing change.

I slept then, and for the first time in many days did not dream of Chernobyl.

The sun was fully up when we rose. The rest was regenerative. I felt, if not content, at least acquiescent. Whatever coil of melancholy had wrapped itself around my heart had released it. Colleen, for her part, reacted to me no differently than she had before. She was still easy in my presence, and I determined that I would be no different in hers.

What had changed this morning was something I might have missed were it not for Howard Russo. Almost from the moment they appeared, he tracked Goldie and Magritte with his large, milky eyes, reminding me of a cat that has caught a bemusing scent.

Goldie was not unaware of this intense regard. To say it irritated him would be understatement. He avoided Russo, turning away whenever he felt the little man’s eyes on him, engaging his attention fully in our task of tucking away the supplies Enid and Cal ferried up from the courtyard against our foray into the Loop.

“Little shit’s giving me the creeps,” he murmured as we sorted sealed food packets into neat piles on the credenza behind Russo’s living room sofa.

I glanced over my shoulder at Russo and received a sly smile. “Yes? Why does he find you of such interest, suddenly?”

He shrugged, concentrating on the Army-issue food packets he was counting out. “Only the Shadow knows.”

It was, ironically, because of shadow that I saw it.

Howard Russo could not abide even the weak sunlight that wedged its way into his rooms through gaps in the blinds and curtains. Goldie had undone his careful tucking of the parlor curtains the night before, and now Russo took his eyes from the objects of his attention just long enough to seal the gap with safety pins.

In that initial darkness, Goldie gleamed as if his skin had been dusted in gold and burnished. He had a noticeable aura, like Magritte’s, if slightly fainter. More than that, the two of them were connected by a bright conduit of flare radiance.

My first impulse was fear. “Goldie,” I said, perhaps too sharply, “Goldie, look at me.”

He turned, his eyes going wide with surprise as I trapped his head between my hands to peer into them. They were comfortingly brown, with normal, round, human pupils. Had they always been that large, I asked myself, that luminous?