Kevin landed four blocks away and walked into the city proper. His wings collapsed behind him like a trenchcoat, drawing no one's attention. Distant lights faded the dark sky to concrete, but softer, filtered by coming rain.
He stopped under a streetlight and looked up, watching the drops stitch down. One landed in his eye, its burn surprising. He thought they were only water.
People moved in the shadows as he progressed, silent to their own ears if not his, circling him. Months had passed since his last visit, and he wasn't sure if the memory of him dismembering one of the was fresh enough to ensure a safe walk.
He put up his hands when he got to the corner. "I'm here for Bone. Just to talk. That's all."
Someone laughed. "He no wanna talk to ju, meng."
"He no wanna talk to nobody," another voice added, joining the scrape of steps in the dark.
"Well, I want to talk to him, so stay where you are," Kevin said. Most of AJ's inner circle was composed of blood addicts, creatures he could render to meat without much effort, but they were still marginally human beings and he preferred not to harm them.
"Din' ju hear what we say, meng? He donwant no visitors."
"Hey, meng," said a third person, accompanied by the ominous brrrrink-ching of an unsheathed knife. "Let heem go. What we care if hees reception eesn't so friendly?"
"Yeah, what we care?" answered the first, chuckling. After a moment when tension hovered, Kevin felt them melt away like wild dogs.
He found AJ where he always did, in the burned-out church where Sabitha had once treated sickness. Half the time AJ remembered why he was tied there, remembered with a fierce and bloody clarity he attached to nothing else, and on those days Kevin kept to the rafters and made his conversation brief. The other half of the time, AJ wandered about like a child, touching broken windows and blackened beams, matching his small lithe body to the charred outlines of angels that decorated the walls.
The strike force had killed Sabitha outside. The dust of her had been borne away on the first strong rain. AJ put a stone on the spot, like Jews did on headstones, and a sort of holy pall fell over it. No one touched it, not even to cast a shadow. Kevin gave it a respectful berth.
He came to the door and tapped to be admitted. The next few moments would tell. He braced himself, hands fisted inside his pockets.
AJ opened the door (which involved lifting the enormous object out of the track and setting it to one side) and blinked at Kevin. His eyes were mild as a butler's. "Hi."
"Hi," Kevin said, body easing. "Okay if I come in?"
"Yeah, sure. Place is a mess."
Kevin didn't make the obvious remark, that the place had been burned to the ground and used as an ersatz crematorium and a bulldozer wouldn't make it suitable for company. AJ always said something about the state of it when he was in this dazed, reflective mood. Kevin simply edged past him and into the tilted cavern beyond.
AJ had been at work with a broom since Kevin's last visit. The silhouettes of angels were ground to one uniform ash-gray on the stucco. He'd glued hundreds of scorched books and pamphlets into a sort of sculpture against one wall, and begun filling in the panes of one shattered window with different shades of nail enamel. Sabitha, Kevin recalled, had always wanted a stained glass panel.
"Nice work."
"Thanks, yeah," AJ said, shoulders twitching as his wings spread. They were the most beautiful Kevin had ever seen on any angel, bluer than gaslight, bluer than the Aegean, bluer than hope. Irridescence swam on them, slid like liquid with the light. Even their shadow pulsed. AJ'd tried to dye his hair to match, chrome-blue, but there was no color on earth his wings wouldn't dim.
AJ sat by the window and pulled out the stopper on a bottle of Devil Red, dabbing color on the peak of a cracked pane. Kevin perched on the bridge of a hardback chair, weightless as all angels were, and AJ paused in his industry to gape.
"How do you do that?"
"I have good balance," Kevin said. AJ often forgot he could fly, too, sometimes even forgot his wings, which made their motion unpredictable. "Did you do anything today?"
"Not much," AJ said. He ran his finger over the edge of the glass, a slow squeak that merged into a groan. Blood ran down the pane. "Perfect color. I went for a walk, oh, and killed a gangbanger who was raping a chick on the hood of a really nice '67 Chevy. And then Joey grabbed me and dragged me to some guy's place." His forehead crinkled. "That was fucking weird."
Kevin opened his gloved hand, shaking out the powdered carapace of a Christmas ornament. The planned fallen-angel coalition, and its overthrow, had taken place during the holiday gang cease-fire.
"Gimme some of that," AJ said. "The dust. 's pretty."
Kevin jumped lightly to the floor to pour a measure of it into his hand. AJ stuck it to the wet lacquer with his fingertip.
"So you visited Chris," Kevin said.
"Chris! Yeah, that was it." AJ nibbled tacky glass from his fingertip, frowning at the bitterness. "Justin was there too." He spat.
"Justin?" Kevin asked, into silence as profound as detonation.
"Yep," AJ said, "just like my--"
The polish bottle fell from his hand, spilling its sour perfume. He touched his forehead with his fingers. "Where's my baby?" he breathed. "Oh, God, gotta find my baby--"
Kevin moved with irresistible fleetness, cramming his mouth over AJ's to swallow his scream. He sucked in, stealing the fragment of AJ's soul that struggled to unify.
Pain rushed through him, an arctic stab of loss that magnified his own regret. His knees buckled.
"Hey," AJ said, hand on his shoulder. "Hey, man, you okay?"
"Fine," Kevin whispered, and wiped his face of tears.
******
the end.