Page 21

Loren

Brooklyn, New York

August 10 th , 1992

At the end of the neighborhood street, my truck rumbled to a stop at the curb behind a battered Crown Victoria on blocks.

In the middle of the afternoon, the area was quiet and largely uninhabited.

A few doors down, a woman sat on her porch wearing a nightgown and holding a cigarette.

She paid me no mind as I piled out of the Chevy and sniffed the air.

There were so many smells here, but I was only looking for one.

Amidst the grass and dry rot and cigarette smoke, I found Indy’s scent.

Sweet. Faint.

My hound yipped and spurred me on, along the splintered sidewalk toward a squat building that had once been white.

Paint peeled off the broken siding, and grass had grown into the chain link fence.

I didn’t know how he found this place, but I didn’t need to wonder.

Indy found company everywhere he went, and not always the good kind.

The covered porch sagged on one corner atop a broken post, and all the windows were open, letting paper-thin drapes flutter in the breeze.

It was bright out, but dark in there, and every step up the fragmented driveway brought Indy’s smell more strongly.

My hound was ecstatic, happy to have found our phoenix after a frantic search.

I’d been detained in Hell for three days, then released this morning.

But, when I arrived at our apartment, Indy was gone.

I wasn’t sure how long he waited and worried before he ventured out on his own, itching for a fix.

I checked the clubs first. His usual haunts.

The bartenders I questioned were cagey about the whole thing.

They’d seen him, sure.

Indy stood out in any crowd as a pretty young thing with bubblegum curls and wide, golden eyes.

But no one was willing to confess to more than serving him a drink and sending him on his way.

Then I found his car, tagged with a parking ticket in a lonely alley.

My second round of more direct, forceful questioning of the club staff yielded better results.

He went home with someone.

I might have assumed he was looking for a hookup, but Indy had never cheated on me.

Even when he danced and chatted with other men, it went no further than flirtation.

He wasn’t interested in what random men had to offer.

Drug dealers on the other hand…

Climbing the creaking steps into the porch, I approached the chipped wooden door.

Underfoot, a weathered mat read Welcome!

with peace signs and smiley faces scattered around.

It may have been cheerful once.

Now, it looked as derelict as everything else.

I raised a trembling hand and knocked.

Not shaking from fear.

I’d passed that on the way here.

I was coping with rage now.

Indignation. Spite.

Three days I spent getting passed around at one of Moira’s obscene parties.

Groped and prodded and told to be grateful for the attention.

I was scared then. Scared again when I came home and thought something terrible happened to Indy while I was away.

Maybe it had, and I was about to walk into it.

And that made me angry because I should have been here with him instead.

I should have been able to prevent this—whatever it was.

No one answered my knock, but the fragrance of amber and honey was too potent to deny.

Indy was here. So close it was like I could reach through the door and touch him.

Grab him and pull him to me, tell him I was sorry and that he was safe.

I wouldn’t leave him again.

I’d made that promise before.

Fortunately, Indy didn’t remember all the times I’d broken it.

Grabbing the knob, I rattled it side to side.

It didn’t yield, but neither did I.

A door made for a flimsy obstacle between my treasure and me.

My hound snarled, and I echoed the sound, then reared back and kicked the slab of wood.

With a loud pop, the frame cracked, and the door swung inward.

It was dark inside, like I’d seen from the street.

Dust motes drifted upward, glinting in the sunlight that cut around my silhouette.

It was quiet, too, with no cries of alarm or cursing to answer my entrance.

Unease prickled up my back, and I reached into the shadows across the threshold and drew my glaive.

I softened my footsteps as I entered the living area.

A dilapidated couch and a few bean bags surrounded a low table piled with ashtrays, beer bottles, and glass bongs.

The bulky wooden entertainment center had once housed a television and maybe a few speakers, but those were long gone, leaving only the shell of a cabinet.

The house felt like a shell, too.

Or a carcass, decaying from the inside out.

The kitchen lay directly ahead, but I passed over it in favor of the hallway branching to the left.

Padding across the creaky floorboards, I went down the hall with my polearm tucked tightly to my side.

There were three doors in total, one on each side and another at the end.

All stood open. If I had been relying on sight, I might have needed to search them all, but my nose led the way.

The room on the right.

I walked into it as though pulled, drawn on stumbling steps while heavy dread sank into my feet.

A bedroom, stripped of its furniture and bare save for a stained mattress shoved into the corner.

A pane of cracked glass allowed the sun to beam into the otherwise dank space.

And there, slumped against the wall with his head tipped onto the low windowsill, was my doll.

My darling. My heart.

Indy’s pink curls were damp with the same sweat that glistened on his bare chest and streaked mascara down his cheeks.

He was half-dressed, stripped to one elbow-length fishnet glove and a miniskirt.

His ungloved forearm was dotted and bruised from multiple injection sites, the purplish stains dark on his pale skin.

It reminded me of how I first found him: locked in a dank basement and trailing tubes full of poison.

Sickness roiled in my gut, and my glaive wisped away as I darted forward and hit the ground on my knees.

I gathered him to me, onto my lap, cradling him as his head lolled back.

His eyes were closed, and his chest stirred with the shallowest breaths.

A rubber strap cinched around his bicep, denting the muscle on both sides.

My lip curled at the sight, and I hooked one of my shadowy claws beneath it, cutting through with ease.

I moved my hand to his face next, cupping his jaw, thumbing across his cheek, staring like the force of my gaze alone would wake him.

He didn’t even like injectables.

Wasn’t his scene. But nothing was off limits when he was already high.

Already lost to reason.

“Loren?”

It wasn’t Indy’s voice, and I gripped his body tighter as I spun around.

Kneeling with my back to the door and the hall beyond, I was vulnerable, cornered, and my hound felt the press.

A snarl ripped out of me before I saw who spoke.

A dark-skinned man with burred black hair stood in the doorway.

He had his arms crossed, his head tilted, and a somber frown drew down the corners of his mouth.

The sight of him made my fine hairs stand on end.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snapped.

Evander freed his hands to raise them as he advanced into the room.

He made it two steps before I growled and flashed my teeth at him, all the while hugging Indy closer.

He always felt small to me, almost ten inches shorter than I was and feather light.

But he seemed frail now, so limp and waifish I feared I might break him if I held on as tightly as I wanted to.

“Relax, puppy dog,” Evander cooed.

“We’re on the same side.”

Heaven and Hell were as opposite as they came.

By that measure, so were Evander and I.

My snort was enough of a disagreement to prompt the angel to gesture to Indy.

“When it comes to him, we are,” he clarified.

“You didn’t answer me.” My fingers twitched with the desire to resummon my glaive.

I’d never raised a weapon to the angel, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did.

But I’d never craved it like I did at this moment.

Evander heaved a sigh, and his hands lowered a bit.

“Try me again?”

“Why. Are. You. Here?” I bit off each word.

“Did you…” My gaze fell to where Indy curled in my embrace, and my features hardened before I turned them back on the angel.

“Did you do this to him?”

“Did I put a damn needle in his arm?” Evander’s expression went from incredulous to stoic as he answered with a succinct, “No.”

My jaw clenched as I thought of who did tie off Indy’s arm and show him where to stick the syringe.

My informant at the club didn’t give me a name or description to go on, just this address, this desolate place where Indy had been abandoned.

Discarded. Forgotten.

Something in me ached; a familiar old wound that flared up sometimes.

Every time, really, when I found Indy in the peak or valley of his latest relapse.

This was worse, though.

More visceral than baggies with colorful pills that made him giddy.

Those looked like candy and, if I didn’t know better, I would believe they made him happy.

All I felt here was sorrow.

“He likes pills,” I muttered, struggling to make sense of it all.

“Not… this.”

On his feet a short distance away, Evander finally let his hands drop.

“He likes getting high.”

The pain in me flared sharp and bright, and I scowled at the nosy angel.

He’d been here. He was everywhere, and he could have been of help for once.

Could have done something angelic.

Worked a damn miracle.

Lifted a fucking finger.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” I demanded.

Evander crept closer, and this time I didn’t stop him.

He stood over us, looking down with an almost pitying squint.

“Free will looms large, Lorenzo. It’s what some might call the foundational block of humanity.” I snorted again before the angel tagged on, “Why didn’t you stop him?”

My muscles tensed as I glowered at the other man.

“I wasn’t here. You were?—”

“You didn’t stop him because you can’t,” Evander cut in.

“I’ve watched you bumble through this for decades. Your presence, your oversight, changes little.” He motioned to Indy balled in my lap.

“The bird does what he wants.”

My head shook, sweeping loose locks across my shoulders.

“He doesn’t want this.”

Indy had told me as much a dozen times or more.

He hated the drugs. Hated the addiction.

Hated himself, and that hurt worst of all.

In the pause, I heard myself repeating the same thing I’d told myself countless times over the years: “He can’t help himself.”

This time, Evander scoffed.

“You’re making me question your intellect, pup.”

I let slip a rumbling growl, and the angel chuckled.

Despite my indignance and the anger that had been simmering since I pulled up to this wretched place, my focus hung on the idea of a miracle.

People prayed for those, sometimes they even got them.

When Jonathan was dying, his wife asked for Heaven’s intervention, and she’d gotten Hell’s.

My curse, my damnation, had been her blessing.

I didn’t want Hell involved in this, and I had no soul left to give for Indy’s sake.

Maybe it was Heaven’s turn to step up.

“Can you…” My teeth clicked together, holding back the question that begged to be asked.

After a pause, I relaxed my grip on Indy and opened my arms just barely.

It took more hope than I had, faith and trust I sorely lacked, to offer my treasure to the angel.

“Can you fix him?” I asked.

Begged. Or was this a prayer?

Offered from my knees to a heavenly being.

A desperate plea for a favor I didn’t deserve.

Evander’s expression was indecipherable.

He crouched across from me, and the urge to pull back came even stronger when the angel reached out and brushed a curl off Indy’s forehead.

“You think he’s broken?” Evander asked.

I stared down at Indy.

Shadows circled his closed eyes and dots of glitter flecked his cheeks.

His skin was pale and ashy, but he was still beautiful.

Still so precious to me, my tether to love and life long after my death.

Was he broken?

“No,” I replied.

But yes. He was. And his brokenness was destroying me.

Evander rested his palm on my shoulder, and I slumped beneath the weight.

“No,” he echoed.

I looked up at him as my vision filmed with tears.

Had I answered incorrectly?

Would his response have been different if mine was?

Draped across my thighs, Indy stirred.

His golden eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first. Then, they found me, locked onto my gaze, and he smiled.

“Lore, you’re here.” His voice was cracked and scratchy as he murmured, “I’ve been looking for you.”

He raised his arms—thin, wavering things—and slung them around my neck.

A prompting pull brought me into range so he could press chapped lips to my cheek.

His face stayed beside mine, and I looked past him at Evander, who watched with that same inscrutable expression.

“Go,” I told him, trying to stay calm when I wanted to shout at him to get out.

If he was merely a spectator to our lives, an observer of the endless tragedy with no power to change it, then I would gladly be rid of him.

Evander’s lips pursed.

“It’s not that I don’t want to?—”

“Go!” I barked, and Indy whimpered.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” His words slurred, and his grip on me loosened as he dipped toward unconsciousness.

I shushed and tucked him in again, shielding him from the glower I gave Evander.

My bitter glare said everything I didn’t.

Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

There was a reason I had been the answer to Jonathan’s wife’s prayers.

The same reason I’d never asked the angel for help before now: I’d known better.

Miracles weren’t given to people like me.

Adulterers. Sodomites.

Sinners.

As for Indy, maybe Heaven didn’t have enough grace for an addict with bubblegum hair who liked makeup and dresses and kissing other men.

He was broken.

We both were.

And there would be no fixing it.