Rapture

Chapter Seven

Matthias woke up because sunlight was shining on his face. He wasn’t sure when that nurse with the wandering hands had left, but he’d intended to take off right after she had. No go. An unnatural sleep had rolled over him, sucking him under in a way that made him feel owned.

Frankly, he was surprised to have come out of it at all.

The hospital room looked exactly the same, but like it would have changed in the night? And he did feel better, as if his body were a car that had been sent in for a fender-to-fender service.

Who knew a handjob you didn’t want could lead to such a turnaround…

And it was strange. As he glanced around, he had a thought that it was a miracle he was still on the “outside.” But the outside of what—prison? A mental hospital? Something even worse?

Forcing his sloppy brain to come to attention, he tried to remember where he’d been the night before, what had happened before he’d woken up here….

I hit you with my car. I’m so sorry.

He closed his eyes and remembered that woman, that Mels Carmichael. Something about her had pierced through the fog that surrounded him, reaching him where it counted. Why? He had no clue—but under different circumstances, he could have spent a hell of a lot more time with her.

So much more.

But come on, he was not the romance type—his gut was loud and clear on that.

Shoving himself off the pillows, he was surprised he didn’t feel worse, and he gave his body a chance to file a different kind of report, one more consistent with someone who had been a hood ornament less than twelve hours ago.

Nope. Still felt better—

Get out of here. Get moving now.

Okay, it would help if he knew who was after him, or why he was running, but he wasn’t going to waste time trying to fight with those questions—not when his adrenal gland was consistently pointing at the door and yelling at him to get the fuck—

“I guess you’re not a John Doe after all.”

Matthias reached for a gun he didn’t have and looked across the way. The nurse was back, standing just inside the room, her presence like a draft.

Her affect was different in the daylight. No more seducer.

Maybe she was a vampire. Ha. Ha.

“They found your wallet,” she said, holding up a black billfold. “Everything’s in here, ID, Visa—oh, and your health insurance card. Your copay’s going to be up there, but most of the charges will be covered.”

She walked over and put the thing on the rolling table, right beside the card that the reporter had left behind. Then she stepped back like she knew he wanted space.

Long pause.

“Thanks,” he said into the conversational void.

She was dressed in street clothes: blue jeans, black clogs, puffy white Patagonia jacket that was pristine. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she smoothed it even though it was glossy-magazine perfect.

“I also got you some clothes.” She nodded over her shoulder. “They’re in the half closet behind there. I hope they fit.”

“So they’re going to let me go?”

“As long as you check out all right this morning. Do you have anyone to go home to?”

He didn’t reply—and not because he didn’t know the answer for himself. No questions answered, not to anybody. That was the way he was.

Long pause number two.

She cleared her throat and didn’t meet his eyes. “Listen, about last night…”

Oh, so that’s what this was about. “I’m going to forget about it, and you should do the same,” he said dryly.

Shit knew he had bigger fish to fry than a rubout forced on him by a beautiful woman.

Yeah, what a sob story that was. Especially compared to the crap he’d done to others—

Memories Loch Ness’ed below the surface of his consciousness, something shocking and monstrous threatening to make an appearance.

Who was he? he wondered.

Abruptly, the nurse’s dark eyes, those windows of the soul, locked onto his own. “I’m so sorry. That was really wrong of me. I should never have…”

Snapping back to the present, Matthias thought it was funny that in the daylight, all that power she’d had over him was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t even appear to be the type of woman who could be so aggressive. She was just a pretty young nurse with a hot body and great hair, who was looking vulnerable.

Had it even happened? They’d probably given him painkillers, and God knew that could fuck your head up.

Then again, if nothing had gone down, she wouldn’t be apologizing, would she.

“It was a total breach of protocol, and I’ve never done anything like that before. It’s just…you were in so much pain, and you wanted it…and…”

Had he? He remembered it had been very much the opposite. Except what did he know—he thought he’d actually orgasmed. Maybe that hadn’t happened, either.

Which would make sense.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d tell you that before I go—and you’ll be out by the time I come back from my days off.”

She seemed so honestly ashamed and distraught. And for some reason, he had a feeling it was entirely within his character to take advantage of her, for no other reason than that it would make her uncomfortable.

“It was my fault,” he heard himself say—and the instant the words were out, he believed the confession. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

After all, pity fucks operated on the same principle whether the damn things went all the way or not: woe is me; can you take care of my cock; thanks, honey.

The nurse trailed a pale hand on the fake-wood footboard of the bed. “I just…yeah, well, I don’t want you to think I go around doing that.” She laughed awkwardly. “I’m not sure why it matters, but it does.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

As she glanced over, her cautious expression relaxed into an honest smile. To the point where he found himself checking her ring finger for evidence of a marriage certificate.

Nope. Bare.

“Thanks for being cool about it all.” She looked over her shoulder at the door. “I guess I should go. Take care of yourself—and please remember to follow up with your own doctor. Head injuries are nothing to fool around with, and memory loss is serious.”

“Yeah. I’ll do that.”

The lie was so easy, he knew he’d told a lot of them in his lifetime. And as he returned her wave, he was processing her like she was a memo or a piece of mail.

Not something human—and that wasn’t her fault.

He had a feeling it was his hard wiring.

Great. Nothing like waking up and learning piece by piece that you were a real asshole…

He glanced over at the bedside table. The business card and the wallet were right next to each other, one black and thicker, one white and thin.

As he reached his hand forward, he didn’t know which one he was going for—

Ultimately, the wallet held the greater allure. Opening the folded leather, he stared at the driver’s license that had been slid into the clear slot. The picture was…well, he didn’t recognize the guy, but the nurse with the magic touch certainly seemed to think it was him. Was this what he looked like? A guy with black hair and a face that was handsome, but cold.

The printed info told him that his eyes were blue—and it looked like they were both working as they focused on the camera. Date of birth was this month. License expired then.

The first name, Matthias, was the one he went by, and the address was in Caldwell, New York, which solved the geographic question—oh, yeah, which he hadn’t been aware he’d had.

Caldwell, New York.

Back again. Or at least that’s what his instincts told him—

Get out of here. Get moving now.

Urgency aside, he took getting off the bed slowly, and when shit didn’t buckle, he pulled out the IVs from his vein and the pads from his chest. Leaning into the monitoring equipment, he muted the alarms before shuffling over to the bathroom.

The light was off, and as he stepped inside, he flipped the switch…and it was showtime.

As he met his own reflection in the mirror over the sink, he dragged in a raw breath. His eye on the one side was milky white, and his face was carved with the indelible lines of a lot of past pain—as well as some faded scaring at the temple where his ocular injury had occured.

That photograph on the ID was definitely him, if you added a little gray at the temples, but it had been taken before he’d—

“Sir, I’m going to ask you to get back in bed—you’re a slip-and-fall risk. And you should not have taken out the—”

He ignored the new nurse. “I’m leaving. Right now—AMA, yeah, I know.”

He shut the door in her face and started the shower. For some reason, as he refocused on the mirror, he thought of Mels Carmichael. No wonder her first reaction had been in the OMG category.

Not exactly a looker—

Christ, why was he thinking like that? What did it matter how anyone viewed him?

In a quick surge of coordination, he reopened the door to the room and stuck his head out. The nurse was gone, but no doubt she was coming back with someone who had Dr. in front of his or her name—time to move fast. He snagged the card that Mels had left and put it in the wallet. Then he grabbed the clothes from the closet and shut himself in the bathroom.

Ten minutes later he had clean hair and a clean body and was dressed in a plain black T-shirt, a black windbreaker, and a pair of loose jeans.

On his way out the door, he snagged a cane that he inferred had been brought for him.

The thing felt normal against his palm, and his gait was much faster with it. Like he was used to using one.

Heading for the elevators, he didn’t check in with anyone, no good-byes, no signing on the dotted line. Their billing department would find the man at the address listed on the driver’s license.

And maybe so would he.

Adrian’s scream woke Jim up and torpedoed him out of bed, his body landing in the attack position. With a crystal dagger in one hand and an autoloader in the other, he was ready for business of the human or Devina variety. Dog, being no dummy, just headed under the box spring, taking cover.

“I’m okay,” Ad said. With all the conviction of someone bleeding from an artery.

As Jim shot around the corner, he thought, Yeah. Right.

In the sunlight that streamed through the flimsy drapes, the angel looked absolutely wasted as he sat there sprawled on the floor, dark circles under his eyes, his black hair messed up, his hands shaking as he pulled at the loose collar of his Hanes T-shirt. His piercings, those pieces of metal that circled his lower lip and went up his earlobes and marked his brow, were the only things that sparkled. Everything else was all about the dead-but-breathing.

His pilot light had gone out.

Jim went over and held his hand down to the guy. “Time to get up.”

The other angel clasped his palm, and for a moment Jim stiffened, an unpleasant sting tunneling up his own forearm and making his instincts tingle in a bad way. But then he heaved Ad off the floor, and whatever it was disappeared.

“You been to see Nigel and the boys yet?” Adrian asked as he walked around like he was trying to shake whatever had gotten to him.

“What the hell for.”

“Good point.”

On that note, the other angel went into the bathroom and shut the door. After the toilet flushed, the shower came on, and then the sink.

Going over, Jim settled at the jamb and talked to the flimsy wood. “What was the dream about.”

When there was no answer, he curled up a fist and pounded. “Adrian. Tell me.”

God knew that Devina used all kinds of tricks to get what she wanted. The idea that she might have B&E’d Ad’s mental back door while he was sleeping was a well, duh.

He pounded some more.

When there was no answer, he fucked off modesty and barged in.

Through the clear plastic shower curtain, he got an eyeful of Adrian down on the ground again, this time with tile under his ass: He was crammed in the stall, his knees up, his elbows in against his chest, his head buried into his palms. But he wasn’t crying, or cursing, or falling apart, and maybe that was the scariest part. The angel was just sitting under the warm spray, his huge body folded up on itself.

Jim put the toilet cover down and sat on the thing. “Talk to me.”

After a moment, the angel said roughly, “She was Eddie. In my dream, she was Eddie.”

Shit. “That’ll make you scream.”

“He was there, too. He woke me up, actually. Goddamn it, Jim…seeing him was…”

As the sentence trailed off, Jim took particular care inspecting his dagger’s blade. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m going to kill her.”

“Only if you get there before I do.”

Adrian let his arms fall to the sides, so that his fists rested in the choppy pool of water forming around his ass. He looked defeated, but that was just for this moment. That icy rage would be back as soon as that demon came anywhere near them, and frankly, the predictable response was going to be a problem: You didn’t want your backup to go rogue on you, and that kind of mental state was hard to reason with.

“I think you need to ask Nigel for someone else,” Ad said softly. Like he could read minds.

“I don’t want anybody else.”

Except that was a lie. He was still coming to terms with his own abilities and weapons—sure, the learning curve wasn’t as steep as it had been in the first couple rounds, but he was hardly up to speed. And Devina wasn’t the kind of enemy where a marginal performance was even remotely acceptable.

So he needed some rock solid to back him up.

In all honesty, Eddie was the missing piece here. And that was precisely why he’d been taken out by the enemy.

Fucking bitch.

“Do you know anyone else?” Jim asked.

“There was another guy—above me and Eddie, actually. Almost on Nigel and Colin’s level. But he ran into some problems—last I heard he was in the In Between. Then again, he was a real wild card. You might as well stick with me in that case.”

“We’ve got to get Eddie back somehow—”

“He’s the only one who would know how to do that.” Adrian let out a groan and got to his feet, his massive frame rising like a tree. “Maybe Colin.”

Jim nodded and refocused on his crystal dagger. The weapon was clear as an ice cube, strong as steel, light as a breath. Eddie had given it to him—

A squeak and a thump brought his head back to his remaining partner. Ad had picked up the soap, but then dropped it, his hands lifting in front of his face, his mouth working like he was trying to curse.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh…fuck…” Ad flipped them around and looked at the backs. “Shit, no…”

“What?”

“They’re black.” The guy shoved out his arms. “Can’t you see? She’s in me—Devina’s in me—and she’s taking over—”

Jim had a moment of what-the-fuck, but he knew he had to step in and reel this situation back to reality, PDQ. Putting his dagger down on the sink, he shoved the plastic curtain out of the way, and grabbed the angel’s thick wrists—

That bad-news sensation hit him again, lighting up the nerve endings in his fingers and palms sure as if he’d put them in acid. Focusing on the guy’s skin, he wondered just what the hell had happened in that dream.

Except the flesh was completely normal. And people who had lost their best friends were allowed to crack up.

They couldn’t stay that way, though.

“Adrian, buddy”—he gave the guy a good shake—“hey, look at me.”

When the poor bastard finally did, Jim stared into those eyes like he was reaching in and taking hold of a part of the guy’s brain. “You are fine. There is nothing going on here. She is not in you, she is not here, and—”

“You’re wrong.”

The bleak words stopped Jim short. But then he shook his head. “You’re an angel, Adrian.”

“Am I?”

In a grim voice, Jim countered, “Well, put it like this…you better fucking be.”

After a tense silence, Jim’s mouth started moving, words coming out of it, sensible, chill-out syllables crossing the distance that separated them. But in the recesses of his mind, he sent up a prayer to whoever might be listening.

Devina was a parasite, the kind of thing that wheedled into people and infected them.

Made sense that someone emotionally compromised was more vulnerable.

The tragedy, however, was that he couldn’t have the enemy in his back pocket.

No matter how much he loved the guy.