Metal Angel by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page B

of heartache. Volos’s voice broke. Texas reached over to toss the hot pillow aside, then sat on the bed where it had been and pulled the kid down into his arms. Volos yielded without seeming to be aware of him, once more looking past him, seeing someone else.
    â€œYou tyrant. You scourge. We were gods, and you made messenger boys of us.”
    Volos’s wings had gone stormcloud black. They lifted from his back, the long, harsh feathers rustling as if fronting a high wind, and Texas stroked what he could reach of them, coaxing them down again. Tingling through his hand he felt the angel’s pain and rage—they felt familiar to him, very similar to his own. He felt them give way to sadness, as his own sometimes did, and he leaned back against the bed’s headboard, slipping down so that he cradled Volos’s chest in his lap, so that he pillowed the angel’s head on his belly, clear of his belt buckle. He steadied it there with one hand on the kid’s coarse, dark hair. With the other he rubbed the back of the kid’s neck. Kid, huh. Been around for millennia. But it didn’t matter. Tonight Volos was a baby who needed to sleep.
    â€œFather.” Volos spoke wearily to the air. “You joker, I claim you father. I have flesh now. I can sin. Bad as any of them. Try loving me, why don’t you?”
    â€œHey,” said Texas softly, “you ain’t the only one got father problems. Shut up and go to sleep, for Chrissake.”
    He slid his hand down to pat Volos’s back. Between shoulder blades to which the wings attached with great bands of muscle was a hollow where tiny curled feathers grew, thinning to bare dun skin at the spine. For what might have been an hour Texas slumped and held Volos and hummed Willie Nelson to himself and stroked the feathers, the skin. He had become so tired that none of this seemed strange, and he watched with acceptance so deep it could only be called faith as the wings quieted and lightened, first to warm gray, later to sunset-pink, the color change starting at the base of the wings and flowing pinion by pinion to the tip, as if beginning at Volos’s heart. And he watched with patience so deep it could only be called love as Volos’s shoulders and wide chest quieted, breathing steadied, wings relaxed. Once folded over the angel’s back so tightly they quivered, now they slackened so that they sprawled to either side. Texas’s long legs, slanting off the bed and propped up on the shabby armchair, supported the injured one. The other lay open on the bed as Volos slept.
    Texas continued to hold the angel until he was sure-and-then-some that he was sleeping. No hurry. Not going anywhere soon. Only when he ached in every cramped and assaulted bone did he ease the injured wing onto the armchair, get himself gently out from under Volos and stand up. Volos turned his head once, settling himself on the bed, then slept on. His face looked tawny but not flushed. The fever was down, and Texas felt so limp with relief and weariness that he stood gazing.
    Sleep did not change Volos much. Even awake, the kid had that same look, profound and rapt and innocent, that glow of beauty most people attained only when they were making love.
    Texas blinked at his own thoughts and got himself moving. Edged around the armchair to the foot of the bed and pulled the cover up to the kid’s shoulders, careful, very careful not to touch the hurt wing. He hobbled to the john. So tired he’d maybe better stand himself in the shower, huh? But he managed. Left his belt loose. Lay down next to Volos on the bed, a narrow share of it, on top of the blankets, too done in to cover himself or care about the customary nighttime shouting and screaming on the street below.
    He awoke late the next morning to find Volos’s wing, the uninjured one, blanketing him so that he lay warm as a chick by a nesting dove.

chapter four
    My God, he’s a wet dream