Angelfire

NINETEEN

DOC

During the frantic moments in which Enid and Goldie battled the Source for Magritte, Howard Russo slunk away into his office like a cowering animal. I found him there, barricaded behind his desk in a swivel chair that dwarfed him. He was reading in the dim glow of a lamp over which he had draped a sweater. The feeble light reflected in the lenses of wire-rimmed glasses balanced precariously on a nose barely capable of holding them.

My surprise did not escape him. He held up the book. “Dostoevsky,” he said. “Crime and Punishment. Reading helps me hold onto myself.”

I came a bit farther into the room, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. “Hold onto yourself?”

His face pulled into a rueful leer. “Didn’t always look like this,” he said. “Feel like this.”

There was a howl from the street, the sound of trash cans falling, rolling, followed by strange, guttural laughter.

Russo flinched visibly and bared his teeth. “Every night,” he said. “They come out. Not always so noisy. But I know. I feel them.” He chuckled, a gravelly echo of the laughter from the street. “Can Howie come out to play?”

I moved to sit on the sofa across from the desk. “And do you want to … go out and play?”

The street erupted with what might have been the yap-pings of wild animals… or something else.

Russo slanted a look at the window then turned his face to me. “I don’t want to become that.” The words were clear and deliberate. The voice almost fully human.

“So you read.”

He stroked the pages of the book. “My head clears out when I read. I feel… like myself.” He shrugged. “Probably only a matter of time, though … This place you guys came from-there are really people like me there?”

“Yes. And like you, they don’t want to become… something else.”

The door swung open then, and Cal stood in the doorway, light from the other room flooding in around him.

Russo blinked and shielded his eyes. “Do you mind?”

Cal hesitated, then closed the door and stepped into the office. “You have any preferences about where we sleep?”

Russo shrugged. “Anywhere’s fine. Sofas are pretty comfy.”

“Where were you going to sleep?”

“I sleep down below. In the daytime.”

“You said you knew how to get into the Bubble,” Cal said. “How?”

“There are people inside. They have to eat. Stuff has to go in. Wagons, whatever.”

“So, what-we just walk in?”

To this, Russo offered a broad leer. “Only if you have something they want, counselor. Which you do.”

Cal glanced at me, then shook his head. “What could we have that they’d want?”

“Angelfire.”

“Magritte?”

Russo nodded.

I stood, cold to the core. “Why? Why would they want flares?”

Russo shrugged. “Don’t know. But I’ve never seen one turned back.”

Cal took a quick step toward the grunter, who flinched back as if he feared violence. “But you’ve seen flares go in? Angelfire. You’re sure? How many? When?”

“Some,” said Russo warily. “Now and again. I try not to go up that way. Messes with my head.”

“Messes with your head,” Cal repeated. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Place sucks at you. Makes you itch.”

I thought of the Black Tower in my dreams and understood him. “You’ve seen flares go in. Have you ever seen one come out?”

He shook his head.

“What happens to them in there, Howard?” Cal asked.

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?

His brow furrowed. “Doc, what…? What is it?”

I put a hand to his forehead, brushing aside the tumble of thick curls. No fever. “Close your eyes,” I told him.

He did, grinning nervously. “C’mon, Doc, you’re scaring me.”

Cal had come into the room and caught the exchange. He dropped the packs he carried and hurried to us. “Something wrong?”

As certain as I could be that Goldie’s eyelids showed no sign of increased translucence, I stepped back and shook my head, meeting Cal’s worried eyes. “I had a moment of concern. The aura is so much stronger this morning.” I indicated the distance between Goldie and Magritte, which she had closed since I began my examination, her own face eloquent with distress. The closer she drew, the brighter became the trail of light that connected them.

Cal followed the trail with his eyes. He turned back to me, his face going pale. “You thought he was changing.”

Goldie took a startled step away from us, then caught sight of the radiant cord and blushed violently. “Oh, that. It, uh… I guess the longer we’re together, the stronger it gets.”

He laughed. “I thought maybe I was breaking out in manic hives or something.”

Ah, sarcasm. Dostoevsky called it the last refuge for the soul whose privacy has been invaded. At times it makes excellent camouflage. At others it simply advertises what one wishes to conceal.

Russo had turned from his task at the window and sidled up beside us, his eyes darting, his impossibly wide mouth cracked in what can only be described as a leer. A sound that was more whine than giggle emerged from between his lips. “Told you.” He crooked a finger at Goldie. “Told you she was good.”

Light exploded in my eyes, buffeting me like a scorching wind-hot, white, searing. It tore Howard Russo off his feet and slammed him backward into the curtains he had so painstakingly pinned shut. The window shattered with a sound like a rifle shot, but the thick fabric held. Russo hung against the forest green velvet for an instant, then pitched forward onto the floor.

In the stunned hush that followed, there was only the sound of our breathing and the muted rain of glass on the street below. I turned fearful eyes to Magritte, certain the spectral attack must have come from her. But she was innocent, staring at Goldie, her hands to her mouth. It was Goldie whose body pulsed with residual energy, Goldie whose eyes poured venom onto the crumpled grunter. He turned his eyes to Cal then, and whatever Cal saw there caused him to take a startled step backward. Goldie brushed past him and left the room, leaving an almost palpable charge of static in his wake. After a moment of hesitation, Magritte darted after him.

Cal and I both moved at once to kneel over Russo’s crumpled body. He was still breathing, thank God, and his neck had not been broken, though by all rights it should have been. We rolled him gently onto his back and I began to check for broken bones.

He moaned and his eyes fluttered open. “Son’fabitch,” he muttered, and tried to sit up.

Cal put a hand on his shoulder and held him down. “Not until Doc gives you a clean bill of health. How is he?” he asked me.

“Lucky to be alive. That was no gentle slap.”

Russo grunted and Cal shook his head, his expression grim. “No, it wasn’t. Damn Goldie. I don’t know what…”

“Possessed him?” suggested Colleen wryly, from behind him. She reached past him to hand me my med-kit. “You know how he is about Maggie. Do you really have to ask?”

They exchanged a long look.

Cal nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’d better go talk to him.” Colleen let out a throaty chuckle. “Be careful.”

She watched him leave the room, then stepped over to the window and reached up to pull the curtains back inside the casement. Outside, more glass shook free to shatter on the asphalt. “We’re gonna have to board that up. I guess I’d better go see if I can score some plywood.”

“Will you help me move Mr. Russo to the couch?”

She hesitated. “Do I have to?”

“Can make it myself,” croaked Russo.

“Colleen,” I said. “Do you not care that Goldie might have killed this man?”

She peered down at him, capturing his gaze. He looked away. “That is not a man, Doc. That is a weasel. And I’m not saying that because he’s a grunter; I’m saying it because he’s a weasel. That was a truly crappy thing he said to Goldie. And I’m damn sure it wasn’t real pleasant for Maggie, either.”

I looked up at her. “Perhaps he doesn’t know any better. He is, after all, not quite himself-something of which he is painfully aware. His humanity is slipping away from him, Colleen. Can you not at least credit him for trying to preserve it?”

She frowned. “What do you mean? What makes you think he’s trying to preserve anything?”

“The little sanctuary in the cellar where he spends his days. This carefully barricaded place where he spends his nights. The clothing he chooses to wear.” I straightened a tweed lapel, then nodded at the book that lay atop the Queen Anne table beside the chair. “That.”

Colleen turned to look. “Dostoevsky. One of your guys.”

I did not smile. “Yes, one of my guys. Crime and Punishment-a book that turns upon what it is to be human. Did you perhaps wonder why he didn’t try to go out during the night?”

“Uh, well, at a guess-because we wouldn’t have let him?”

I shook my head. “He never does go out at night. He doesn’t want to become like them.” My gesture took in the streets and whatever slept below them.

She and Howard Russo shared another look, a longer look, then she turned her eyes to me. They were extraordinarily green and uncharacteristically soft. She squatted next to me on the floor, meeting me eye-to-eye across Russo’s body.

“You’re a piece of work, you know that? I think Goldman would probably call you a mensch. And Viktor, yesterday, when I said that about you not being my father…” She hesitated, her lips pressed together as if to keep words from escaping. Then she leaned across Russo, kissed my cheek, rose and went off to “score some plywood.”

Russo stirred, drawing my attention to him. His eyes were trained on my face. He grunted. “ ’M’not sayin’ a word.”