CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I was thrown back into that place of song and color, where angels traveled on golden threads like spider silk that ran throughout the universe, holding everything together. I realized that the spider analogy wasn’t me. I heard Ravensong think Grandmother Spider, and there was movement along the threads like something huge and monstrous. I thought NO, and the movement was gone, and we were back in the crystal, silver, and gold space where angels in pure form raced back and forth along the singing notes of creation.
One of the angels paused and looked in our direction. It was like looking into fire, except the fire could look back at you. Would her mind survive this? I felt tiny hands on my arm and somehow I knew there was another one touching her, and then I felt pressure, metal slicing through reality, pulling her back from the brink of staring too long into the abyss, even if it was a space that went up instead of down, or maybe went everywhere at once, but even filled with fire and warmth it was still an abyss that would look back at you.
I was back on the floor of the interrogation room with Ravensong gasping beside me as if she’d run a long distance as fast as she could. I could see the Valkyrie standing over her with pale braids and metal helm, her shield held in front of Ravensong, a sword that burned with a light of its own in her other hand. The eyes that glared at me from the helmet were a storm-cloud gray and angry.
I wanted to say It’s not my fault, she touched me, but you do not argue with gods, or demigods, or the messengers of Deities unless you have no choice. Short of that, let it go, because divine beings do not take well to mortals that argue back, or most of them don’t. I’d been told that the Norse pantheon and some other more warlike pantheons liked for their followers to have a fighting spirit that extended even to fighting the gods, but that was all theoretical for me. The Big Guy that I followed wasn’t big on defiance.
The raccoon chittered up at me, patting my arm. I wasn’t sure if it was reassuring me or scolding me for endangering Ravensong. I just didn’t speak enough raccoon to be certain, and then I looked into those shining dark eyes and I knew it wasn’t chastising me. It was more a pat on the arm to say It’s okay.
I smiled at him, and then Ravensong said, “That was intense.”
“That’s one way of saying it,” I said, and looked at her. We stared at each other for a second, her blue eyes to my brown, and then she smiled at me. It was a little lopsided as if she couldn’t quite find her usual smile, but it made me smile back, because she’d just survived so much more than Gimble had, and it had put him in the hospital. Looking into her older, wiser face, I knew she wasn’t going to need a doctor for the glimpse of the infinite. They’d want to look at her hand, but her mind was intact. She was good.
The Valkyrie was back to standing at her back again rather than covering her with a shield and having a bare sword in her hand. The danger was over but the glare in those storm-cloud eyes didn’t like me much. It was a silent warning to knock that shit off, or we would have words.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Ravensong said, looking up at the towering figure. The Valkyrie glared at me one more time, then faded from sight, though the huge bear appeared and roared at me before they both faded.
“Sorry about that, I know it wasn’t your fault; you’d think after this”—she held up her hand—“I’d know to keep my hands to myself.”
The raccoon petted me again with its strangely human-looking paw and then moved to Ravensong, cuddling against her like it was a cat. She reached out to it as if she could touch it as solidly as it touched her. I watched its gray ombre of hair move under her hand, reacting to her touch. Was that just an illusion my mind was filling in, or was she able to pet her totem for real?
She smiled at me. “It’s as real as the sword and shield that saved me in your shining palace,” she said.
“Did you read my mind?”
She shook her head. “I read your face.”
“I thought I did better cop face than that.”
“You do, or Detective Havelock does, but this Zaniel of the Angels, his face shows every thought.”
I didn’t like that doing angel magic made me easier to read, but it made me more vulnerable in all sorts of ways, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Me losing my poker face was the least of it.
“Your friend seems no worse for seeing . . . the shining palace,” Suriel said, using Ravensong’s phrase rather than the words we had learned for it.
“Her guides and Goddess saved her,” I said.
“Her magic saved her,” Suriel said.
“That, too,” Ravensong said.
I stood up and offered Ravensong a hand.
“What, you think the old lady can’t do it on her own?”
“Aren’t you ladies always complaining that chivalry is dead?” I asked, smiling at her.
She grinned and took my hand, using her right hand without thinking about it. I didn’t think about it either until I felt the difference in skin texture. I pulled her to her feet using the new hand. The scales felt cool and smooth, but I could still feel them so though I thought smooth, it wasn’t the same kind of smooth as human skin. The skin was red with darker highlights like an antique ruby that sat in the crown of some long-ago king. The delicate black claws pressed into my skin, dimpling it. I realized her hand looked more like the raccoon’s paw than the demon’s hand from the hospital.
Once she was standing, we let go of each other. A pinprick of blood popped out on my skin where one of her nails had dimpled the flesh.
She didn’t notice, but Suriel did. “You might want to be careful until you adjust to your new hand.”
“It will take some getting used to,” Ravensong said, holding it up and wiggling the fingers in front of her face.
“The nails seem quite sharp,” Suriel said, looking at my arm.
Ravensong saw it, her eyes going wide. “Oh shit, Havoc, I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, and wiped the blood away, but the bead of red welled up again. Apparently, I was going to need to hold pressure on it before I put a bandage on it.
“How deep is it?” she asked, looking worried. The Goddess may have vanished from my sight at least, but the raccoon was still there at her side, on its hind legs now looking worriedly between us.
“Not bad, I just need to hold pressure on it and then put a Band-Aid on it. I cut myself worse shaving.”
“But you will have to practice with the hand to find out how much pressure human skin can take from the nails,” Suriel said.
“Yeah, I’ll have to be careful with the little woman when I get home tonight.”
“Little woman?” Suriel asked.
“My wife.”
“Ah,” Suriel said, and the one sound held disapproval.
Ravensong heard it, too, because she frowned at her.
I decided to try to lighten the moment. “It took me a while to figure out that the woman who teased me the most at work didn’t even like men.”
Ravensong grinned at me. “A woman can admire the view without wanting to marry it.”
“So your wife explained to me at the Christmas party.”
She smiled and a look came into her eyes that showed just thinking about her wife was a good thing. I hoped to get back to that with Reggie. What Louie, short for Louanne, had told me at the party was that when Ravensong joined the force, being lesbian wasn’t a good thing, so she’d been more flirtatious with the men to cover it and never lost the habit. It had helped that she could talk about Louie instead of Louanne. They’d been together twenty-five years and were still stupid happy together; they were what I hoped to have with someone someday. It startled me that I had thought someone someday, not Reggie and now. We would have lunch tomorrow and then a date after that. We’d kissed today, held each other and it had felt so good, but it had been six months between kisses. It still scared me that I hadn’t put her name in that thought, but it would be okay, we would work things out.