Chapter 17 #2
“Besides,” the angel smiled, “everyone seems to have made it outside, so there’s no real danger.”
Foster turned, scanning the assembled residents he’d pushed aside in his panic. How careless of him, not to stop and check on their safety. He was immortal; the other tenants were decidedly not.
It was controlled chaos, people huddled and terrified as they watched their home go up in smoke, and Foster tried to pick out individual faces.
There was Mr. Fernandez from D2, who made washing his old blue Nova a weekly ritual that put religious zealots to shame.
Mr. and Mrs. Hem corralled their five sons, the youngest of whom wailed in his mother’s arms despite being almost ten years old.
Miss Darcy clutched her spoiled pug, the poor thing’s bulging eyes darting frantically in its smushed-in face.
With every face he counted, panic built in Foster’s chest. He swept the crowd once, twice, a third time.
Where was she?
“No,” he murmured, heart sinking. “No no no.”
“No what?” Gabe tilted his head to the side, eyeing him quizzically.
The fire crew pulled up and leaped from their truck, quickly assessing the scene. Foster started toward them, at the same time Mr. Fernandez spotted him and came running over.
“Foster!” He grabbed him by the elbow. “I can’t find Carmen!”
It was like his worst nightmare come true.
After losing his mother, Senora Delgado had become the closest thing he had to a maternal figure.
A cold sense of dread settled into his bones as he turned slowly back to face his building.
The world blurred around him as the beat in his chest seemed to slow.
Around him, life moved in the same sluggish pattern.
Firemen unwound hoses and shouted to each other, moving toward the blaze.
Mr. Fernandez tugged on his arm insistently, lips moving in soundless shapes as Foster stared over his head at the horror unfolding.
She lived on the fourth floor; she had a bad hip.
He had run right past her to save a photo of a woman who would be ashamed of his selfishness.
Slowly, so slowly, Foster turned back to meet Gabe’s eyes. There was a flicker of something like regret, or maybe concern. He knew what Foster was about to do.
“I have to,” the younger man croaked.
Cwall jolted towards him from his place beside the angel. “Foster, no!”
But he had already shaken off his neighbor’s grip, and pulled the photo of his mother from his jeans. He tossed it to Gabe, who caught it easily. “Hold this for me.”
“Be careful,” Gabe frowned.
Cwall skidded to a stop and turned to gape at Gabe. “Ya ain’t gonna stop ‘im?!”
“I couldn’t if I tried.” he smirked softly, something like wonder in the softness of his gaze. “That’s Lucifer’s boy if I ever saw it in him. Stubborn as hell and determined to get there.”
For once, Foster felt something like pride in the comparison. But he wasn’t just Lucifer’s son, he was Angela’s too, and she always knew right from wrong. And this was right, he knew that. He took off like a shot, racing back toward the apartment.
“Stop!” One of the firemen shouted, a look of alarm clear on his face. “Kid, ya ain’t even wearin’ a shirt!”
“He’s crazy!” Another man shouted back, angling his hose higher to blast at the relentless flames. “Somebody stop ‘im!”
One of the emergency responders tried to snatch at his arm as he passed, but Foster blew past. There was no chance of a mortal stopping him. He was divinity, born of the Godblood. He was untouchable.
He was slammed roughly from the side and tackled to the ground, rolling twice before he ended up on his back.
“What the fuck?” he groaned, attempting to rise to his elbows only to be pinned back down. He blinked, and the shadows above him settled into his father’s face. For a moment, he would’ve sworn the expression there was terror. Then he blinked again, and it was gone.
“You reckless, ridiculous child!” Luce bellowed, eyes alight with rage. “You could’ve died!”
“No, I couldn’t!” Foster protested, struggling against the iron bands of his father’s grip on his biceps. “I have to go back in, she’s still in there!”
“Who?!” Luce demanded, shaking his son as if he could force the answers out of him.
“Senora Delgado!” Foster shouted back, fighting to get free. “My downstairs neighbor! She’s still inside!”
“These firemen will get to her, that’s their job.”
“I can get there faster!”
“At what cost?” Luce shook him again, fear creeping back into the edges of his tone. “Tell me, what mortal is worth my son?”
Foster stilled, momentarily caught off guard by the question, then renewed his struggle. “Any of them! That’s the problem with you Divine pricks! Mortals matter too!”
“I will not risk you!”
“It’s not your choice to make!” His throat was raw as the words tore from it. “Who are you? Who are you to show up now and decide my life?!”
“Your father!” Luce snapped, hauling Foster to his knees. “Your father, who wants a chance to make amends before I lose you for good!”
“Too little, too late!” Foster staggered upright and shoved his father away. “I have so few people left that matter to me. I won’t let you stop me from saving one of them!”
He started to run back towards the doorway, only to freeze in his tracks at the sight before him.
The blaze was lower but still burning. The firemen advanced steadily on the building, beating at the flames with jets of water.
From the blackened doorway, a team hauled out a black and yellow stretcher with a prone form atop it.
“Carmen!” Mr. Fernandez gasped, and Foster dropped to his knees like a stone.
“No,” he murmured, whimpered, pleaded. “Please no.”
A hand settled on his shoulder, and for a moment, he leaned away from it. Then Gabe sank to his knees beside him and forced him to meet his gaze.
“She is not dead.”
Foster’s heart, which had been slowly tightening in his chest, skipped a beat. “What?”
“Look.” He tapped under Foster’s chin with two fingers, lifting the younger man’s gaze to the stretcher again. “She moves.”
It was true; her fist clenched and unclenched repeatedly on her rosary as the old woman moaned and muttered prayers in Spanish.
“?Abuela!” Foster shouted, springing back to his feet. “?Abuela, todo estará bien!”
He pulled away from Gabe and rushed to the stretcher. There was a small commotion, but the firemen settled when he declared himself her grandson. Luce watched him climb into the ambulance at her side, riding safely away from the dwindling inferno.
Relieved, he murmured, “Thank my brother that she lives.”
“You should thank me,” Gabe snapped, rocking back to sit heavily on the ground. “She was barely hanging on; it took everything I had stored up to keep her there. And I still cannot be sure it wasn’t all for nothing.”
Luce gave him a long look, raking him critically from the top of his tousled head to the soles of his designer wingtips. “I’m not so sure I should thank you, Gabriel.”
The other man flinched slightly at his name on Luce’s lips, at the frosty core of his tone. He swallowed hard. “Why?”
“I saw more than you might think.” Luce crouched down to be level with the younger angel, dark eyes flaring gold around the pupil. “You were willing to let my son run into a burning building.”
“He’s immortal,” Gabe pointed out drily.
“We both know that’s not entirely true, is it?” Luce spoke low and soft, his speech sounding pleasant enough to an outsider, but anyone who knew him could hear the threat laced within. And Gabriel knew Lucifer better than most.
“It doesn’t count, if he doesn’t know,” Gabe insisted. “It has to be willing.”
“You and your loopholes,” Luce sneered. “That boy was ready to rush in, with no regard to himself. That’s enough to satisfy the conditions.”
Gabe looked stricken. “I—I never knew that.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“It’s true, I swear!” Gabe shook his head violently. “I thought he had to know the risk, that’s what happened with Christos! Michael had to tell him, and—”
“That’s enough,” Luce cut across his ramble, pressing a slim finger to the air between them and forcing Gabriel’s lips firmly closed with his power.
He still wasn’t fully restored after his ritual, but he was close enough—and he would always outrank an Archangel, leaving them at his mercy even when he was weakened.
A long moment stretched between them, deep brown locked on sapphire blue as they silently sized each other up, the weight of the years apart evident in the subtle signs of age they wore.
Fine lines pinched the corners of Gabe’s eyes, and Luce knew he wore his own across his brow and bracketing his smile.
Rogue strands of silver threaded through their dark hair now.
More than anything though, there was an unfamiliar hardness chiseled into Gabriel’s visage; a cool detachment that likened him to a finely wrought statue rather than the eager, open warmth the pale angel used to display.
Finally, Luce cleared his throat. “Now, let me be perfectly clear, Gabriel.”
Unable to reply, the other angel simply waited, eyes narrowed slightly.
“We both know you are not a fool. You were my closest friend, once, yet you did not speak in my defense when I was wrongfully accused. You watched my nephew walk to his unnecessary death. And tonight, you almost let my son run to his. Those are three strikes.”
The silence was deafening between them. Luce could see the desire to speak written plainly on the other man’s face, but he ignored it. “They call me a snake, but I wonder if perhaps they gave that title to the wrong man.”
Gabe shook his head sharply, and Luce clicked his tongue.
“That’s one of your fatal flaws, Gabe. You’re always ready to make permanent decisions, but you can never accept responsibility.” He rose to his full height, leaving Gabe sitting mute in the dirt as he glowered down at him. “Whatever friendship we once had is utterly lost, I’m afraid.”