Concrete Savior Read online

  screams, and the thunder of the train as it bore down—

  then everything that he and Glenn Klinger were in

  this world was obliterated by blackness and noise.

  Two

  Brynna Malak sat hunched over the Sun-Times at the kitchen table, keenly aware, as she always was, of the man sitting across from her. Eran Redmond was reading his own newspaper—he preferred the Tribune—and he seemed so relaxed, so damned comfortable here in the kitchen of this little coach house on Chicago’s Near North Side. Yes, it was his place, and everything was being repaired, all the excuses and reasons had been made and accepted by both landlord and insurance company, but after all that had happened, did he really feel that everything was right with the world?

  He glanced up and caught her staring at him. “What?

  Brynna opened her mouth, then closed it and lifted one shoulder instead. “Nothing,” she finally said, but her frustration showed in the way she slapped impatiently at the bangs hanging in front of her eyes. She didn’t like things blocking her vision and her hair was getting long, growing into annoyance territory. She should find Eran’s scissors and hack it off. Short . . . yeah. Really short.

  Eran dropped his paper onto the tabletop and leaned on one elbow. “Come on,” he said. “You’re lousy at subtle. Just spit it out.”

  “It’s just . . . so strange,” Brynna finally said. The intentness on his face, that way he had of focusing so fully on her that it made her feel like the center of the universe, just frustrated her more. Did he have to do that? “You’re so strange.” She waved a hand from left to right across the width of the kitchen, taking it all in: new oak cabinets, caramel-colored granite countertops, new sink, fancy faucet, pricey ceramic tile floor. Even the table and chair set was new, since the original ensemble had been smashed into a couple dozen jagged pieces and fouled with sulfur, burned blood, and bodily fluids. The only things left to do were repair the cracked and pitted wallboard, then paint over the smoke stains and blackened edges. When that was completed, the last evidence of their deadly battle three weeks ago with one of Lucifer’s Hunters would be wiped away. It was ludicrous the way the whole kitchen was on its way to looking like a photograph out of any one of a hundred home decorating magazines that the humans always seemed to be reading. “You sit there and you just . . . act like everything’s normal. Another day in the life of Eran Redmond.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, then pushed back and folded his arms. “Well, it is, isn’t it? Another day in my life? And yours, too, at least the way you—we—have made it.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean yes. I—hell, I don’t know what I mean. I just can’t believe that you sit there and accept that I just fell out of nowhere and turned your entire existence upside down. I mean, what kind of person does that?” He opened his mouth but Brynna cut him off. “Wait, don’t answer that. I know you’re going to say something I don’t want to hear.”

  “You mean about lo—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she repeated.

  “Fine,” he said, but the placid tone of his voice softened what could have been curtness. “What would you prefer? A reality check? Would that make you feel better?”

  Brynna frowned at him, not sure where this was headed. “It might. At least then I could be sure you’re not just in some kind of psychological denial phase.”

  “All right. Then let’s take it from the top. I’ll list all the salient points and when I’m finished, you can tell me if I’ve missed anything.”

  “Salient points?”

  “My turn to talk, not yours.” He held up one finger, then tapped it with another, repeating the process every time he finished with a sentence.

  “You’re really a demon—a fallen angel—who ran away from Hell.”

  tap

  “You’re here in human form because you want to be forgiven so you can go back to being an angel again.”

  tap

  “As it stands right now, you believe that the way to do this is to protect nephilim—half-human, half-angel beings—from being killed by other demons before they can perform whatever task they were born to do.”

  tap

  “We just went through essentially round one of you doing just that.” For the first time since Eran had started, he paused as a shadow slid across his features. “And we found out that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want.” He took a deep breath, then kept going.

  tap

  “And you have these things called Hunters after you that want to bring you back to Hell.” He raised an eyebrow, giving Brynna a flash of the sarcastic s.o.b. shew he could be. “If that last one was still around, we could thank it for my new kitchen.”

  tap

  She shifted, getting impatient with Eran’s checklist litany and that infuriating tapping sound. In response, he held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “I didn’t believe you at first but now I’ve seen enough proof to believe all of the above. And—”

  tap

  “I’m in love with you.”

  tap

  She sat there, for once truly speechless. He’d tried to say this before, yeah, but she’d always seen it coming and been able to stop him. There was something about hearing it out loud that made it . . . irreversible. It was like breaking an egg. You could look at the mess, but no matter how badly you wanted to, you couldn’t unbreak it. “No,” was all she could finally manage.

  “Yes.”

  “Stop it,” she said. It came out sounding sharper than she really felt. She swatted again at the hair across her forehead. “You can’t do that. I’m not human.”

  He shrugged. “Human enough. At least this version of you is.” The corners of his eyes crinkled suddenly. “Even your hair is getting longer.”

  “This isn’t funny, Eran!”

  He reached across the table and grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “What do you want me to say, Brynna? You want me to lie? I won’t.”

  Just this small touch was making heat build between them already and she pulled her hand free before the contact could get them both in trouble. Her resistance had given way only one time, almost two months ago, but if she let herself think about it, the memory of that single night could bring about an abrupt, nearly ferocious hunger inside her to repeat it, to fel his lips against hers—

  Stop it!

  Below the table, Brynna gave herself a hard, vicious pinch on one thigh, using the very real pain to bring her spiraling thoughts back into line. She had to stay grounded here, keep focused on her goal. Even though she had set herself up in the guest bedroom, it was still difficult to live in the same house with him. She didn’t—couldn’t—let her thoughts wander into areas that would only get them both in trouble.

  As if sensing she would neither surrender nor talk about it any further, Eran sat back again and shook open his paper, effectively creating a wall between them. Brynna let her gaze drop back to the Sun-Times, trying to concentrate on the words. Now that she had settled in here with Eran, Brynna read the paper every day, front to back. Not only was it an excellent way to keep on top of what was happening in the city, it helped her hone in on humanity. Every day she learned more about the twenty-first-century version of the men and women with whom she now shared an existence. On the surface, she seemed to fit in perfectly, and she had to admit that was Eran’s doing. His connections had gotten her started as an interpreter, where she could use her ability to speak and understand any language in existence to make a damned good living. Where only a couple of months ago she had been only a few steps above crude, now she could successfully—at least most of the time—pass for a socially acceptable modern working woman. She had even learned, most of the time, to not only consider but care about possible consequences before she opened her mouth.

  Still scanning the text although her thoughts were trying to stubbornly return to Eran, her eyes stopped on a headline midway down page three. “Check this out,” she said, grateful for a chance to ch
ange the subject. “Man Saves Seizure Victim.”

  Eran lowered his paper just enough to look at her over its top edge. “Saved him from what?”

  It didn’t take Brynna long to read the single-column piece. “It says a man on the subway platform had a seizure and fell in front of an oncoming train. The conductor saw him fall but it was too late to do anything more than slam on the brakes. This other guy jumped onto the tracks and pushed the first man down until they were both flat so that the train just passed right over them.”

  Eran’s paper lowered a little more. “Really?”

  “According to the article, aside from some bruises and scrapes, neither one was hurt.” She paused, then added, “Well, the guy did have a seizure and might have some problems stemming from that, but that’s not related to the train.”

  “Hopping in front of a subway train—pretty ballsy. That’ll make the guy a citywide hero. He’ll get some good publicity out of it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Brynna said. “He never even told anyone his name. The person who wrote the article got there right away because he heard it on the police band, but the rescuer was gone. The police interviewed a bunch of people who were there when it happened and got a description, but no one knew who he was. According to them, he insisted he was just trying to help. The fire department ambulance was the first on the scene and the medical techs spoke with him, but they said he left after they put the guy he saved into the ambulance and got him settled.”

  Above his glasses, Eran’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “He didn’t stick around to bask in the glory?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I’m surprised. Most people would jump at the chance for a public pat on the back.”

  Brynna tilted her head. “Is it really so hard to believe one human being would help another?”

  Eran shook his head, but the movement was more cynical than anything else. “You know how you keep telling me that there is no such thing as coincidence? I believe there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

  Brynna frowned. “ ‘Free lunch’?”

  “It’s a roundabout way of saying no one does anything for free. Everyone expects some gain on their part, or some kind of reward, for doing something. Wait and see if this ‘hero’ doesn’t turn up on some radio talk show, or on an Oprah spin-off in a few days. One way or another, he’ll spin it so that it works to his advantage.”

  Brynna’s eyes widened at the bitterness in Eran’s voice. Sometimes—like just a few moments ago—he seemed so different from the hardcase detective who’d thrown her in jail after she’d stupidly swatted him on the wrist. At other times, that familiar and strictly logical cop snapped to the surface so completely she couldn’t help wondering if the softer side of him was nothing more than a clever charade. “I thought I was the one with very little faith in mankind,” was all she said. “You sound like a poster boy for pessimism.”

  Eran had the newspaper back up, hiding his face. “Do I? Sorry.”

  A coping mechanism, Brynna decided. That’s why he was talking this way—it was how he was dealing with what he perceived to be her rejection of him. She thought she’d avoided the issue, but she’d misjudged. It was nothing but a stalemate, with her thinking she’d sidestepped but him letting it happen. In another minute, he got up and went into the oversized bathroom, where she could hear him talking softly to Grunt. In response, his Great Dane made a low sound that was halfway between a whine and a groan, and Brynna felt her stomach twist in unexpected sympathy. Grunt had tried to defend Brynna in the fight with the Hunter and gotten burned for it, literally. The dog had been born deaf and couldn’t hear anything Eran said, but she was clearly comforted by his presence as he checked her bandages and petted her.

  Brynna’s gaze went back to the article, which stated that the man who’d fallen on the tracks, Glenn Klinger, had been the victim of some kind of seizure. They didn’t have a statement or any further information on him because he’d been rushed to Cook County Hospital, although the reporter did mention the people around him said he was dressed like a blue-collar worker, in a uniform with his name sewn on the shirt pocket. That made him sound like a regular guy, nothing more than your average Joe Citizen on his way home from work. Brynna was willing to bet there was a much deeper story here, but she thought Eran was wrong; it could rest with either the unidentified hero or this Klinger guy. The first question was obvious: why save this particular guy? Was there something special about him? The second was one that only someone like her, someone Highborn, would ask.

  Was the mysterious rescuer a nephilim, the offspring of a human mother and an angel father? And if so, was saving the life of this man, Glenn Klinger, the single divine task for which he had been born? Which simply circled back to her original query about Klinger being special for some reason.

  Maybe . . . on all accounts. The movies that Eran watched all the time on his DVD player had plenty of heroes in them, but a man who would truly risk his life for that of a stranger was a rarity in real life. And unless the hero showed up again for . . . What had Eran called it? His public pat on the back. Yeah, unless he came back for that, Brynna would never know the answers to any of her questions.

  Three

  “I did it,” Casey Anlon said. He was smiling so widely that he felt like his face might crack. “And it worked—I mean, of course it worked, or I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, right?” He and his girlfriend, Gina—okay, so maybe she wasn’t really his girlfriend, not yet—were having lunch at the McDonald’s on Clark and Monroe. She was watching him with rapt attention, her brown eyes wide in her pretty face. Impulsively he reached over and touched her hand. “And it’s all thanks to you. You know that, right?”

  She smiled and picked up a napkin so she could wipe her fingers. “Don’t put all the credit on me, Casey.” She was careful to keep her voice low enough so that only he could hear. “I wasn’t the one leaping in front of a train to save a complete stranger.”

  “But you told me where to be, and what was going to happen,” he pointed out. “If it wasn’t for you, that guy would be dead now, instead of getting his head looked at and fixed.”

  Gina shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “For you, maybe.” He looked around, trying to make sure no one else was close enough to eavesdrop. Still, he wasn’t like her, a . . . what did they call it on the television shows? Spook. What an odd, unattractive word. It was hard to equate it with the lovely woman across the table, with her waist-length blond hair and doe-like brown eyes. Casey preferred to think of her as special.

  He pulled his chair so far forward that he almost put his elbow in the French fries. “How do they do it? Make you able to see things in the future like that? Drugs? Mental exercises? Because I’d love to be able to learn—”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Gina said in a sharp voice. He blinked, then her voice softened as she continued. “You think you do, but believe me when I tell you it’s no blessing. How many people do you think I haven’t been able to save throughout the years?”

  “Well, I guess I . . . don’t know,” he admitted. “Have you been in this program that long? I mean, you said years but you just don’t look that old. But if they’re giving you drugs or something—that could really be dangerous.”

  “I knew what I was getting into,” she said. “And honestly, I really can’t talk about it. It’s supposed to be classified, you know? If they found out I told you about it, about any of it, I could end up in jail. And you wouldn’t be free and clear, either.”

  He frowned, then realized this was his chance to ask the question that had been rolling around in his head for about a week, since the first time she’d mentioned this . . . ability of hers. “Then why tell me? Why take that chance?”

  Gina looked thoughtful. “Because you seem to understand me, Casey. We’ve been hanging out at lunchtime for a while now, but I can talk to you about things that no one else seems to follow, you know?”

  He didn’t, but h
e nodded anyway. Who was he to deny it if she felt a connection to him? The truth was, they’d never talked about much of anything in depth. They’d met only a little more than a month ago, outside of a sandwich shop on Adams. Lunchtime again, she’d been looking somewhere else and walked smack into him, knocking his bag to the ground—where it’d been promptly stepped on by someone else. That brought only a mumbled apology as the guy kept going, but the embarrassed Gina had insisted on buying him a replacement; in turn, Casey had pushed for her to join him at one of the sidewalk tables outside. She’d only agreed then because she’d felt obligated, but they’d hit it off so well that now they met for lunch nearly every day.

  She picked up her burger and took a healthy-sized bite. “You’re right, though. It’s drugs.” Her voice was low and hard to understand, and it took Casey a moment to sink in that she was purposely talking around her food. “I don’t know what kind and I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but it’s timed dosages. And every time I get a new one, I see something.” She glanced up at him, as though she was ashamed of herself. “They don’t care about the people involved, you know. They just record the results and move on. Looking for the next great secret weapon, I suppose.”