The Angel sat up, wrapping the sheet around herself almost angrily.
“You don’t have to coddle me,” she said.
“No, but I’d like to,” Ray said with a leer. She just looked at him, and he shrugged. “Go take a shower. It’ll wake you up.”
That, the Angel thought, was a good idea.
“I could soap your back—” Ray offered as she stood with the sheet firmly wrapped around her. She stepped over the sweaty pile of clothes she’d discarded by the side of the bed, grabbed her duffel bag and headed for the bathroom. She slammed the bathroom door and, finally thinking clearly, locked it. “Anyway,” Ray called out through the door, “you can grab some more zzz’s in the car if you’re still tired.”
Car? The Angel thought. She turned the shower to cold and stepped under it. The icy torrent took her breath away and made her heart beat faster. For a moment she thought that it would be fun to have someone to soap her back. Maybe her front as well. Her hands slid over her flat abdomen, skirting the eight-inch scar that crawled over it like an ugly snake and the touch of it against her fingers banished all impure thoughts. She turned off the water. She dried herself, all but her hair, letting that hang down her back in an unmanageable curly mass. She took her spare underwear and black jumpsuit out of the duffel bag and dressed. When she came back into the bedroom. Ray was lying on the extra bed, legs straight out and crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, watching some weird movie with masked wrestlers on the Spanish station. He glanced up at her.
“What?” the Angel asked, though she knew the look on his face meant that there was lust in his heart.
“Nothing,” Ray said. “That was fast. All right. Let’s go.”
“Where exactly are we going? If you don’t mind telling me?”
“Not at all.” Ray grinned. When he smiled like that he looked years younger, and just about as dangerous as a pussycat. “We’re going to take a trip outside of town and drop in on the Living Gods. One of them, Osiris, is a precog, and may have some insight as to what the Hell is going to happen next. Maybe even where they took the kid.”
The Angel dropped her duffel bag on her bed, thinking that somehow Ray had managed to wrest all control of this mission out of her hands. She didn’t like that. Also, she was hungry. “Well—”
“What?” Ray asked as her voice trailed off.
“Do we have time for breakfast?”
Ray made a show of checking his watch. “It’d be more like brunch, but, sure, why not?”
That’s something, at least, the Angel thought.
They paused in the corridor as they left the room; the Angel making sure her door was really locked. She didn’t trust those credit card-like keys.
“I hope he wasn’t the one who got greased,” Ray said.
She looked at him as they went down the hotel corridor. “Greased? You mean one of them was killed?”
“So the cops told me yesterday when I went down to the station.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you finally reported to the police?” the Angel asked. “Or bring me along?”
Ray shrugged. “What, let them bother you too? It was bad enough that I had to deal with them.”
“Did you tell them about The Hand?” the Angel asked anxiously.
He just looked at her. “You think that I was going to tell them that we’re here in Vegas to rescue Jesus Christ from a bunch of crazed Catholic cultists?”
The Angel breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t believed Ray capable of such subtlety. It was good to see that he had unexpected depths. “What about the Living Gods?” she asked as they made their way through the lobby to the coffee shop. Too bad, the Angel thought, they didn’t have a buffet.
“Like I said. One of them bought it during the attack on the Mirage. The cops didn’t know which one. Funny thing, the body’s already been released. Some kind of religious mumbo-jumbo.” He put his hands out as the Angel glared at him. “Not that I have anything against religious mum—ah, religion.”
A shame, the Angel thought, ruminating on the Living Gods. They were pagans, but in their own way they were innocents.
They seated themselves in the coffee shop and the Angel ordered the he-man breakfast from the menu, pancakes, three eggs (sunny side up), hash browns, ham, bacon, and sausage, with toast on the side. Ray, saying he’d eaten earlier, only had coffee.
She watched him watch her as she ate. She thought of ordering another side of ham, or maybe grits, but Ray’s scrutiny was making her feel self-conscious. She didn’t want him to think she was a glutton. Besides, she was all too conscious of the fact that she had no money to pay for the food she was consuming.
Ray didn’t seem to mind, though. He cheerfully slapped down his credit card and then added a way-too-generous tip that bought a smile to the attractive young waitress serving them. The Angel didn’t like that. She didn’t think it was proper for young women to use their physical attributes to gull susceptible men into giving them money. And if there was one thing she knew about Ray, it was that he was susceptible.
They exited the Mirage through the lobby and a valet bought a car up to them as they waited at the curb. The Angel looked it over disapprovingly. She didn’t know what model or year it was, but it was big, shiny, and expensive. “At least it’s not an SUV,” she muttered as she got into the front seat.
“What?” Ray asked.
“Nothing.”
Ray was a fast, yet precise and careful driver. He didn’t speed. Excessively. He didn’t change lanes. Excessively. He drove like he fought. Quickly, instinctually, and seemingly effortlessly. The car responded to his touch like a trained beast. It seemed to purr as it glided down the strip. Its seats were comfortable. The soft whisper of the dual climate control fanned her like sensual tropic breezes.
She ached only slightly from yesterday’s battle, and was still hungry despite her large breakfast. The batteries that drove the awesome engine of her body were still not entirely recharged. She was still tired, more than she realized. Somewhere, after Ray hit the highway beyond the city limits, lulled by her comfortable surroundings and the smooth glide of the road beneath their feet, the Angel fell asleep.
She dreamed her interrupted dream again, and thought it true. She and the Witness faced each other, only this time there was love in his eyes, not contempt. They were fully dressed, and then they were naked as they day they’d been born, and the Angel felt no guilt about it. Well, not much anyway.
Any trace of guilt vanished when he touched her. His hands were gentle on her face, caressing her cheek, slipping softly to her throat. It was amazing that such a large and strong-looking hand could be so gentle as it trickled down the column of her neck lightly as the wings of a dove. It went lower and she shivered at the touch of his hand on her right breast. Cupping it gently. Whispering over her stiffening nipple.
She closed her eyes and their lips met in a soft, yet increasingly demanding kiss. The Angel’s breath started to come faster. He eyes opened and she was shocked to see that she was no longer in the Witness’s arms, but was being embraced by Jonah, the only boy she’d ever kissed, ten years ago.
That meant... that meant...
Suddenly her mother burst onto the back porch, screaming at them, saying vile dirty things. She swung a broomstick at them, snapping it across the Angel’s shoulders. She started to cry. Jonah bounded up from the back porch swing and lit out like the hounds of Hell were on his trail, and they may well have been. The Angel put her arms over her face and contracted into a ball as her mother screamed at her, waving the broken stick ferociously.