R & R Ch. 04

"You might want to burn that," he indicated to the recently deceased Sevyr who was slowly shifting into his wolf form in death. As he opened the door and stepped into the darkness he could be heard muttering: "Rachel, it's been a long time."

***

I took a deep sip of the sangria and sat back in my chair, content to watch the Spanish dancers flow in synchronized harmony to the music.

"A girl might get jealous," Rachel brushed a hand across my shoulders as she returned from the brief visit to the bathroom.

"Keep leaving and a guy might get lonely," I rejoined, switching my gaze from the twirling girls to the angel sitting opposite, slowly caressing my leg with her foot under the table.

"It's your fault for getting the bottomless sangria," it was true, we'd already finished three jugs of the stuff and I was feeling a little buzzed.

"Well if you're complaining," I leant across the table and grabbed her glass, finishing the rest of the liquid in one quick swallow.

"Hey! That was mine!" the twitch at the corner of her mouth belied the mock anger in her voice.

"It was yummy!"

"Meany!"

"Come on let's pay," I got up and pulled her chair out for her and was rewarded with a quick peck on my cheek for my trouble. She held my hand as we descended and tottered between the tables to the till, partly for affection but I judged she was a little unsteady on her feet from the sangria and stilettos.

I snaked my arms around her and rested my head upon hers, breathing in the sweet perfume emanating from her, as we waiting for the waitress to swipe my credit card and print out the receipt.

"Thank you for a wonderful meal," Rachel whispered, leaning back into my strong arms.

"Thank you for wonderful company," I whispered into her ear, brushing her cheek with my own.

As we toddled back into the cold night I slipped off my blazer and slid it over her shoulders, smiling at the sight of the gorgeous slim women huddled into the overlarge jacket.

"You look good in my clothes," I briefly remembered her in nothing but an old oxford shirt of mine and banished the thought before my arousal took over.

"I look good in everything," she pouted, then a wicked grin spread over her face as she leaned in close and whispered, "and nothing."

"Let's get you home!" I proclaimed and picked up my pace.

I failed to notice the three diminutive humanoids stalking us on the other side of the road, too preoccupied with thoughts of ravishing the beauty next to me. I didn't clue in on them crossing the road in the middle of heavy traffic, and to my eternal shame I didn't even pick up on their presence as the closed to a few paces behind me. No, it wasn't until the first little bastard let out a hard kick to the back of my knee that I realized the little fuckers were there.

"Shit!" I cried out tumbling forward, down on one knee, hands scraping hard against the gravel. Rachel, propelled by my sudden fall fared slightly better, tumbling to the ground upon her behind. I felt another kick collide with my side and rolled away from any more incoming attacks. Lying on my back in a crab position I got my first glance at my attackers. At about four feet tall bedecked with long scraggily red hair and beards they weren't exactly the most fearsome creatures on the planet.

"Ah, look what we gots here boys," The middle midget growled in an Irish brogue, "A scared little crab." His two minions guffawed and took a couple of steps closer, withdrawing long sharp knives from their leather belts.

"The fuck are you?" I coughed, using my hands to propel me into a crouching position, eye level with our small attackers.

"Dwarves," Rachel responded, getting to her feet and backing up slowly.

"Christ," I regained my feet, resuming my full six feet five inches, grimacing down on the small creature before me, "He's barely tall enough to..." My thought was cut off as the Gimli-wanna-be let out a fast slash at me with the wicked little knife causing me to jump backwards several feet.

"Ta what?" Clearly the little guy was sensitive on the height issue.

" 'Nuff talking. Kill him get the girl,"

"First one that tries..." once again I was cut off by another attempt to gut me. Whether it was instinct, several years of playing football, or he was just pissing me off, I responded to the violence with violence. I shifted my weight to my left leg and kicked the little bastard soccer style in the face. It would have been comical seeing the dwarf fly three feet backwards to land on his head if it wasn't accompanied by a horrific torrent of blood and a sickening crunch of bone on bone.

"Look what he did to Tommy!" The third, and up until now silent, assailant exclaimed.

"Get him," The leader commanded as he charged, distracting me from the third guy who reversed the knife and threw hit hard in my direction.

"Look out!" Rachel cried, attracting my attention to the flying object just in time, I pivoted to the right and managed to avoid the knife embedding itself in my neck. Instead the projectile struck me hard in my right shoulder and I yelled out with pain as two inches of the hard steel cut through the hard muscle.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to block out the entire world and let the pain overwhelm me, forcing me into the deep blackness where pain didn't exist. A savage punch colliding with my stomach brought me out of feeble desires and sent me flying backwards.

Lying flat on my back, unable to use my right arm, unable to breath, I watched as the leader of the short assholes jumped upon my chest, took a hold of my hair and yank my head back. The knife flashing in his hand as he brought it down to my throat. A maniacal grin spread across his face, madness in his eyes, as he tensed his arm and...

The short would be murderer was blasted off his feet into the side of a building to crumple limply upon the pavement. My mind was struggling to put two and two together. Barely a second before I was looking at the end of my life; now here I was with a knife embedded in my shoulder and a small cut on my neck bleeding profusely.

"Rachel," I gasped, wanting to tell her to run, wanting to tell her to get help, wanting to tell her it was hopeless. I still hadn't managed to grasp the concept I wasn't dead and barely even conscious of the sixth member thrown into the tussle.

I twisted my head painfully and took a long look at the spectacle happening before me. The third dwarf was being held two feet off the ground, his pitiful legs kicking whilst his arms grappled with the stranger in the long black coat.

"Now listen here short round," The stranger had a deep seductive voice, his words annunciated clearly with the hint of a English accent coming through, "Go and tell the other's that they are protected, show them the bodies of your two little friends, and tell them to run away. Run far far away, because any who try to harvest her will die!" he threw the little guy a good ten feet and I was impressed by his power. Whoever this dark stranger was I owed him my life, and more than that I owed him Rachel's life.

"Oh Ryan!" Rachel ran to my side, thankfully devoid of any injury greater than a scraped knee, and cradled my head in her hands and kissed my brow, "Are you alright?"

"He'll be fine," The stranger interjected before I could offer an opinion on the subject.That's easy for you to say, you don't have a fucking knife sticking out of you!"Hello Rachel,"

"What?" I asked. This was seriously confusing me. Who the hell was he and how did he know Rachel.

"Michael?" She asked, looking up at the powerful and, I had to admit, handsome man standing before us.

"Sorry what?" I spat around the pain that was radiating through my body.

"Michael's an... old friend. I'll explain at a more convenient time,"

"Oh you mean when I don't have a knife sticking out of me?" I couldn't help but let sarcasm coat my words, I was having a bad day and this dark stranger having some hidden past with my... angel wasn't helping all too much.

"I told you, you'll be fine," Michael growled, looking at me with what bordered somewhere between disgust and indifference.

"Oh you have a lot of experience with this do you?" conveniently forgetting how he'd just dispatched the rejects from a Brother's Grimm fairy tale.

"Son, I've been through more fights and hard more things lodged in me than you've had hot meals." I don't like being called son, I barely tolerated it when my parents called me son, so to have this cocky guy who looked to be no more than five years my senior call me son was really trying my patience.

"Boys stop!" Rachel called out, seeing me open my mouth and probably knowing that something acidic would come out. A crowd was starting to gather now, a few moments before people were watching in horror and running away, but now the violence seemed to be over their curiosity was starting to peak. Thankfully nobody had seemed to have pulled out their phones during the actual incident but they were definitely doing that now, documenting the aftermath of the bizarre incident.

"Michael, he needs to get to the hospital," she left the sentence open but was clearly asking him for help.

"I'll be fine," I muttered, attempting to sit up but promptly discarding that notion as a new wave of fire spread through my body.

"I said you'd be fine, not that you should get up and walk around," Michael said with a sly grin and a wink at me before turning to address Rachel, "Listen, we can wait for the paramedics to get here or..."Or what?I asked myself.

"I'm not sure, he's only human... maybe we should wait?" She whispered, her eyes betraying deep concern.Maybe we should wait? No, we should definitely fucking wait!

"He'll be fine, he's strong and he's got a fair bit of power himself," Michael responded.

"Listen, I am still here, you can talk to me not about me!" I might as well have saved my breath for all the attention they paid me.

"Are you sure it wouldn't be better to wait?" Rachel queried, her hand was still caressing my face, but aside from that her entire attention was directed towards the newcomer.

"We could... but there would be photos, a police report, and much too much attention paid to you then you'll be comfortable with," he paused and glanced at his watch, "And I can only hang around for another eight hours... if it's not finished by then you'll be vulnerable."

'I can take care of her' I almost said it, the words were on the tip of my tongue, before I realized how foolish and stupid it was. It was true in this state I was in no condition to so much as save her from a mosquito, let alone whatever the hell else was out there.But why does he only have eight hours?

"Okay," Rachel said through gritted teeth, nodding once at Michael.

"Hang on..." I started, looking between the two of them, not liking where this was going.

"I'm sorry Ryan," Rachel said as she stroked my head, tears glistening in her eyes.

"Listen, I'm sure there-" I didn't manage to finish the sentence because half way through a cry of pain issued forth from my throat. The reason behind my sudden outburst was the hasty removal of the metal blade stuck deep within my shoulder. The wound, which was until then a constant ache that had me on the edge of tears, suddenly magnified astronomically, it felt as if somebody had taken a pot of lava and poured it down onto my shoulder. Mercifully, the pain only lasted for about five seconds before darkness crept into the edge of my vision and unconsciousness greeted me like an old friend.

***

I awoke between the soft white sheets of my own bed, shirtless with a large white bandage plastered over my shoulder, a crimson rose already growing on the white pad. I rotated my shoulder experimentally and was pleased, and very surprised, to find that although it was still very tender there were no more shooting pains.

"How are you feeling?" Rachel's soft voice was music to my ears, music which elicited a grin from me.

"You know, better than before," I attempted to shrug but stopped halfway through when a small stab of pain alerted me to the fact that whilst my shoulder felt good, it was in no way picture perfect.

"Good," She smiled sweetly at me, "Listen, I'm sorry for doing what we did, but we couldn't risk the publicity and what might follow, we would have been tied up till morning and then Michael couldn't have helped us."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a vampire," Michael informed me nonchalantly as he strode into my bedroom from the living room.

"Sorry, I could have sworn you said," I replied after a beat.

"A vampire, yes," He accentuated the point by curling his top lip to show me his pointed eye teeth.

"Right..." it was all I could think to say. What was most surprising, more so than the revelation that an honest to god vampire had just saved my life and apparently performed a fairly decent field surgery on me, was the fact that this new turn of events didn't seem to phase me at all. I was starting to take this whole heaven and hell, dark underworld thing in stride, "Um... thanks,"

"Don't mention it," he waved off the gratitude with a lazy hand, "Rachel gave you a boost so you're probably over the worst of it."

I glanced at the blonde but all she did was shake her head as if to indicate we'd talk about it later. With a bit of help from Rachel, I managed to pull a shirt over my body and stagger out into the living room, where I gratefully slumped onto the couch and accepted a glass of wine from Michael.

"I hope you don't mind but we opened a bottle," I noticed that he'd stopped being quite as... stand-offish? Arrogant?Did Rachel have a word with him?

"No problem, just please... try not to spill it on the carpet?" Michael shot me a puzzled look but when Rachel started to giggle he just shrugged and replied: "Sure."

"Okay, so," I started, leaning back into the couch and letting out a sigh, "care to tell me why the cast of time bandits decided to attack us tonight?"

"Ha," he barked at my joke, apparently finding it appealing, "okay well why don't you start with telling me what you know already?"

I recounted the story to date, starting with Rachel falling from heaven to land... well not exactly in my arms but at least at my feet, followed by the attack by the trio of assailants outside the cinema, continued by how Rachel told me about how she was some sort of power and finished with the attack this evening, conveniently skipping the intimate moments and the bit about shared emotions and pain.

"Right," Michael said when I finished, leaning back and massaging his temples with one hand, "Well, you know about Rachel being a power but do you really understand what that means?"

"Um, not really," I responded somewhat guiltily, Rachel hadn't really been able to explain it.

"Okay, so what it is.... It's like... see..." He paused and gathered his thoughts, "Okay so first of all, what you have to realize is that there is more to the world than just the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, et cetera. The power, of which Rachel speaks, is... well, it's another one of the forces that cause the world to turn. It's... a kin to a life force you see. Ever wonder what defines the line between living things and intimate objects? As in why are trees and plants alive but rocks dead?"

"Well, sure," Okay I hadn't exactly thought about it like that, but I had wondered where life starts, everybody does.

"Okay, well that's what the power essentially is. The power gives life to everything, it's a gift from God that bestows life to all things great and small. For most, the power is just something that exists, you can't feel it or use it, it just is. It powers you, like a battery if you will."

"So you're saying I'm a remote control and this power are the double a batteries that power me?" I asked somewhat skeptically.

"Kind of; more like you're a tv plugged into the wall. Your electricity comes from the power station which burns oil, you use the same power day in and day out and won't vary it at all until you are turned off, but now consider cars and planes and the such, the more petrol these vehicles have the more powerful they are... well that's kind of like the divide between you normal mortals and us of the underworld.

"You see, we can sense power, we can absorb it and use it better than most. That's why Rachel is such a temptation to us. Imagine the best meal you've ever smelled, like walking past a chip shop when you're hungover, the smell of chips is so overwhelming and intoxicating you just need them. Well imagine that but times a thousand, that's how Rachel seems to us."

"You mean she smells great?"

"No, not quite, we can sense her and it's like the scent of hot chips permeating through the ether."

"Right, so why aren't you... you know... overtaken?" I asked, stiffening slightly, and a little more worried about having this vampire in our midst that I was a few moments before.

"Because, I, unlike some, have self-control," a cocky smiled played across his lips for a few seconds, "I'm not going to say it's not difficult, but when you deprive yourself of nearly all pleasures for over three centuries you tend to get used to temptation."

"Oh right," I relaxed slightly but not quite able to shake off my anxiety completely, "So you're saying that we can expect more of these attacks?"

"Oh yes, and they'll become more and more frequent the longer she stays here, as her strength returns and more denizens flock to the city."

"What do you meant the longer she stays here? As in my flat or..."

"Or the mortal realm," Michael clarified, a faint look of regret flashing across his face.

"Well I don't see heaven taking me back too soon," Rachel joined in glumly, "And I'm sure as shit not joining the other side."

"So you have no idea what your trial is then?" Michael asked, holding Rachel's eyes for a moment longer than I was comfortable with. There was clearly a back story between them, one I would have to question her about later.

"Not yet, I'm hoping I just stumble upon it,"

"Well, until you do, you know you won't be safe,"

"Ryan's done a decent job protecting me so far," Rachel rejoined, slightly indignant. I know I shouldn't feel pride at my girl taking my side, especially since a couple of hours ago I was doing a fairly poor job protecting her and relied on Michael to save the day, but I did regardless.

"That he has, and he'll get better, but you have no idea what will be coming in the coming weeks," Michael replied ominously.

Silence permeated the room for several minutes, all of us lost in our own thoughts, until Michael's cell phone chirped loudly.

"Shit, its five o'clock, I better head out,"

"You're welcome to stay here," I replied politely, auto-pilot taking over.

"Thanks, but you have a few too many windows to make me completely comfortable," he replied dryly. I made to stand up but he waved me down, "I'll let myself out. Take care of the shoulder, you'll need to change the bandages tomorrow." He made his way to the door, stopping only when Rachel called out.

"Michael," there was a faint trace of pain her voice, and she got up, giving my good shoulder a slight squeeze on her way past, and made her way to the door. They spoke too softly for me to hear what they said, but I saw her grasp his hand warmly and say something which caused his face to relax somewhat.

"What was that about?" I queried as the door closed and Rachel joined me on the couch, sliding behind me so I could I lay back and rest me head just under her chin.

"It's a long story," She responded, gently massaging my neck.

"I have time,"

"Ryan, not tonight," she begged, "some other time but not tonight."

"Oh sorry," immediately I felt like an idiot, I didn't want to upset her and cursed myself as seven types of idiot, it was obviously a sensitive subject.