Metal Angel (6 page)

“You tyrant. You scourge. We were gods, and you made messenger boys of us.”

Volos's wings had gone stormcloud black. They lifted from his back, the long, harsh feathers rustling as if fronting a high wind, and Texas stroked what he could reach of them, coaxing them down again. Tingling through his hand he felt the angel's pain and rage—they felt familiar to him, very similar to his own. He felt them give way to sadness, as his own sometimes did, and he leaned back against the bed's headboard, slipping down so that he cradled Volos's chest in his lap, so that he pillowed the angel's head on his belly, clear of his belt buckle. He steadied it there with one hand on the kid's coarse, dark hair. With the other he rubbed the back of the kid's neck. Kid, huh. Been around for millennia. But it didn't matter. Tonight Volos was a baby who needed to sleep.

“Father.” Volos spoke wearily to the air. “You joker, I claim you father. I have flesh now. I can sin. Bad as any of them. Try loving me, why don't you?”

“Hey,” said Texas softly, “you ain't the only one got father problems. Shut up and go to sleep, for Chrissake.”

He slid his hand down to pat Volos's back. Between shoulder blades to which the wings attached with great bands of muscle was a hollow where tiny curled feathers grew, thinning to bare dun skin at the spine. For what might have been an hour Texas slumped and held Volos and hummed Willie Nelson to himself and stroked the feathers, the skin. He had become so tired that none of this seemed strange, and he watched with acceptance so deep it could only be called faith as the wings quieted and lightened, first to warm gray, later to sunset-pink, the color change starting at the base of the wings and flowing pinion by pinion to the tip, as if beginning at Volos's heart. And he watched with patience so deep it could only be called love as Volos's shoulders and wide chest quieted, breathing steadied, wings relaxed. Once folded over the angel's back so tightly they quivered, now they slackened so that they sprawled to either side. Texas's long legs, slanting off the bed and propped up on the shabby armchair, supported the injured one. The other lay open on the bed as Volos slept.

Texas continued to hold the angel until he was sure-and-then-some that he was sleeping. No hurry. Not going anywhere soon. Only when he ached in every cramped and assaulted bone did he ease the injured wing onto the armchair, get himself gently out from under Volos and stand up. Volos turned his head once, settling himself on the bed, then slept on. His face looked tawny but not flushed. The fever was down, and Texas felt so limp with relief and weariness that he stood gazing.

Sleep did not change Volos much. Even awake, the kid had that same look, profound and rapt and innocent, that glow of beauty most people attained only when they were making love.

Texas blinked at his own thoughts and got himself moving. Edged around the armchair to the foot of the bed and pulled the cover up to the kid's shoulders, careful, very careful not to touch the hurt wing. He hobbled to the john. So tired he'd maybe better stand himself in the shower, huh? But he managed. Left his belt loose. Lay down next to Volos on the bed, a narrow share of it, on top of the blankets, too done in to cover himself or care about the customary nighttime shouting and screaming on the street below.

He awoke late the next morning to find Volos's wing, the uninjured one, blanketing him so that he lay warm as a chick by a nesting dove.

chapter four

My God, he's a wet dream
.

Brett Decimo restrained herself from whispering the thought aloud. She liked power even more than she liked male tail, and she had not gotten where she was by showing a weakness for male beauty, however extravagant. It had taken toughness and risky timing to make her investment, Club Decimo, one of the Basin's hottest night spots. That, and a good ear for new talent on audition night.

He's a walking turn-on
.

Guitar in hand, he was on his way to the stage, where like anyone else he would have just five minutes, no more, to impress her. No one ever had to know she was impressed already.

There he stood. Tall. Cloaked from his shoulders to his booted feet in heavy folds of black. Bare-chested, and Brett noticed how smooth his tawny skin was over his nicely defined pecs. Like a weight lifter or a fashion model he had depilated his chest, she surmised. Broad shoulders. He had fastened the cloak at his throat with some sort of heavy brass brooch, barbaric-looking, wonderfully strange, like his face—which was strong-boned, hollow-cheeked, yet with something sweet and shy in the expression of the eyes. And with lips worth fainting over. Full, sensitive lips—focusing on them made Brett start to think in practical terms. She wanted to kiss this man, and possess him, and after that she wanted to cash in on him. On the basis of his looks alone she smelled money in him. He seemed made to be worshiped.

“Name,” she demanded crisply.

“Volos.”

No last name. Gimmicky. She made a show of boredom as she wrote it down. “All right, play,” she told him.

Volos did not obey her, but lifted his hands to his throat and swung off the cloak so that she saw the wings. They did not at first impress her. Just another gimmick. Being a jaded Angeleno, she sighed with exasperation.

“Play, please.” With edge in her voice.

The first notes flew up plangent and strange, like tropical birds. A moment later, deeper chords had settled into a jungle drumbeat, a good beat, something people just had to dance to … then Volos leaned into a riff, and Brett blinked: This guy was making a nothing-special Gibson sound like two guitars, like electric coitus. He was cookin', smokin', hot, hot, hot; he knew how to move, and then he started to sing and blue blazes he knew how to do that too. And his wings were going rainbow as the song heated up, band after band of luminous color, cyan, magenta, mauve, rippling down them from root to tip. It was, Brett had to admit, very well done. This guy was his own goddamn light show. A gimmick, all right, but it was a good one, it could make him a hot property. Briefly she wondered who he had gotten to make the wings for him, how they were wired and where the control mechanism was hidden.

She liked his sound: hard rock, almost heavy metal but not quite, with plenty of beat and groove and guitar thrash yet more songline to it than most contemporary music. Melodic—the guy had a fantastic voice—but full of passion, not slick or sticky. Familiar enough that people would like it. Different enough that they would remember it.

Somewhere far down the list of her priorities Brett listened to the words of Volos's song:

This angel's taking a fall

This angel's full of the devil

This angel ain't no dead person Daddy

This angel is alive

I WANT TO LIVE

Yah yah yah yah yah

I WANT TO LIVE

Show this angel where they keep the cookies

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

I WANT TO LIVE

Show me who to give my heart to
.

Ow ow ow ow wow

I WANT TO LIVE

Show me how to get you out of those clothes
.

Show me what … oh woman you know what
.

Oh devil lover show me

Why please show me why

I want to live I WANT TO LIVE

Before I die
.

“Okay,” she told him when he was done. “Hang around, I want to talk with you.”

Luckily it was not too far a step from lute to guitar. Volos had been considered a slow study as heavenly choristers go, but there had been eons for him to acquire skill with stringed instruments. Certainly he could play guitar. And sing—yes, he could sing. Even as a member of the lowest rank of the incorporeal host he had somewhat learned to sing. Any of the countless disembodied voices of the eight higher choirs could have shamed him, but Volos did not care, because they were far away and not even as material as air, whereas he was real, real, feet on the floor, swaying with a guitar as his dancing partner, raptured by the tremor and pulse of the instrument physical as a living body in his arms, the rush of his voice in his throat, the thrust of his diaphragm, the bright-pink ache of his lungs. It was for this that he had come. Even more than for fucking it was for this that he had come: to solo, to sing with his fundament in his voice.

To be human was to sing, Volos believed. Singing, he would be human, he would be accepted, he would be understood. Perhaps even loved.

There is a relentless dues-paying logic to the rock-stardom process: Start in the clubs, auditioning on talent night, maybe if you're any good catch the manager's interest, maybe get called to fill in for somebody who doesn't show. Then in the fullness of time maybe open for somebody bigger than you, go on tour to the small venues, learning like an apprentice whore how to sell yourself, learning how to handle yourself onstage when the crowds get ugly. Build a repertoire of songs and moves. Maybe if you're lucky, find a good booking agent or a pushy manager. Make a tape, take it around, hope it gets heard, hope somehow you catch fire, hope somebody puts out the word that you're hot and a recording studio hears it. Do this for a while, maybe five years, maybe ten, until finally, somehow, the break comes and you're the one headlining and you're a star. Usually it happens, if it happens at all, just about when the wrinkles start taking over your pretty face and all the eyes turn to somebody younger, wide-eyed and sweet-throated and new. This is show biz. Stars rise slowly, fall like stones.

Brett had managed a few talents in her time and watched them fizzle. If she could find a way to beat the system, she had sometimes thought, if she could sign on a really promising adolescent hunk (her enthusiasm was only for attractive male singers) and find him a shortcut to stardom so he got there while he was still young and gorgeous and could manage to stay aloft for a while, she would make a fortune.

Those wings were a shortcut if she had ever seen one. They were very lifelike. She had never run across anything like them.

And the guy wearing them—

If she had any sense she would make him her client rather than her lover. But just this once, she decided, she was not going to be sensible. This one time she was going to break the rules. Make him both.

He was standing in the doorway, waiting for her, getting in everybody's way and seemingly quite unaware of it. With his black cloak on again, he loomed, and unlike many tall men he did not slouch or make a show of awkwardness to diminish his tallness. But neither did he seem to menace. A homeboy loitering on the street corner needs self-consciousness in order to menace. Volos had none. Lounging, blocking traffic, he occupied space as thoughtlessly as a tree.

“Volos,” Brett summoned, brushing past him.

He followed her. She loved the way he walked, with forward impetus like that of a raked street rod, with graceful booted vehemence. She led him out of the empty music hall and into the main barroom, the night-spot attraction she had built out of chrome and shadows, neon and mirrors. Selecting a table, she watched Volos struggle with his wings and cloak as he sat with her.

“Why don't you take those wings off now,” she told him.

“No, I cannot.” There was something faintly foreign in the way he spoke. That accent pleased her, because it took a low-pitched, vibrant, very sexy voice and made it even better, made it exotic, distinctive. But she was not pleased that he had not done what she had said concerning his wings.

“They'll just get in the way,” she said.

“Because the rooms are so small,” he agreed. “Yes, it is a nuisance.”

Something in his voice distanced him from her and made her wonder if he and she were speaking the same language. The cloak was perhaps meant for concealment, but it drew stares. Brett heard a woman passing by say something about the new extreme padded-shoulder look.

The bartender hovered at her elbow. “Shot of tequila with salt on the side,” she told him.

Volos seemed not to know what to order at all. He had to be even younger than she thought. Good. She liked them young.

“Try a margarita,” she suggested.

“That will be good, yes.”

He sounded questioning. Men, they were all the same. Like children. Had to be managed. While the drinks were coming Brett tried to make arrangements with Volos. She wanted him to open for the Friday night act she had already booked for Club Decimo, wanted to see what sort of repertoire he had, how he handled a crowd, whether the audience liked him. But it was difficult to talk with the strobes rapid-firing and the dance-floor music vibrating their bones.

She jolted her mouth with a fistful of salt, followed up with her tequila. “Something wrong with your drink?” she shouted at Volos when she could speak. He had not touched it.

“Wrong?”

She teased, “I'm going to think you don't like me.”

“Like you?”

“Just drink the booze,” she said.

He raised his salt-rimmed glass and downed his drink all at once, choking on it a little. Watching him, Brett felt surprise and warm anticipation—he had done just as he had been told. She could get things started sooner than she had thought. There was no need to play games with this boy. No more plying with liquor would be necessary. No seduction. No subtlety.

“Come on,” she ordered Volos when he set down the empty glass, and he followed her obediently out of the place, like a large dog. It was just as well that they could leave. He would have been an embarrassment on the crowded dance floor, with those tacky wings—he could barely get through the door. Brett led him to her candy-apple-red Corvette, and instead of sitting beside her he perched atop the seat back.

“It is a nice thing you have a convertible,” he remarked. Because of the wings, she intuited. He would not have been able to fit into her car at all with the top up.

She demanded, “Can't you take those damn things off?”