"Then why did you bring me here?"
"I didn't. Sure, Sabina may have planted the thought in your head. But you came of your own accord."
"Sabina's a friend of yours?"
"She'd probably prefer mistress. Did you fuck her?"
"No.
"Ali, DAmour!" the Nomad said, exasperated. "After all the trouble I went to getting her wet. You're not turning queer on me, are you? No. You're too straight for your own good. You're boring, D'Amour. Boring, boring@'
"Well maybe I should just piss off home," Harry said, turning back to the door.
There was a rush of motion behind him; he heard the bedsprings creak, and Stevie let out a little moan. "Wait," the Nomad hissed. "Don't you ever turn your back on me."
He glanced over his shoulder. The creature had shimn-fied up onto the bed and now had its bone and muck body poised over its victim. It was the color of the filth on the lamp, but wet, its too-naked anatomy full of peristaltic inotions. "Why's it always shit?" Harry said.
The Nomad cocked its head. Whatever features were upon it all resembled wounds. "Because shit's all we have, Harry, until we're returned to glory. It's all God allows us to play with. Maybe a little fire, once in a while, as long as He isn't looking. Speaking of fire, I saw Father Hess the other day, burning in his cell. I told him I might see you@'
Harry shook his head. "It doesn't work, Nomad," he said. "What doesn't work?"
"Me fallen angel routine. I don't believe it any more." He started towards the bed. "You know why? I saw some of your relatives in Oregon. In fact, I almost got crucified by a couple of them. Brutish little fucks like you, except they didn't have any of your pretensions. they were just in it for the blood and the shit." He kept approaching the bed as he talked, far from certain what the creature would do. It had disemboweled Hess with a few short strokes and he had no reason to believe it had lost the knack. BuL stripped of its phoney autobiography, what was it? A thug with a few days' training in an abattoir.
"Stop right there," the creature said when Harry was a yard from the bed. It was shuddering from head to foot. "If you come any closer, I'll kill Little Stevie. And I'll throw him down the stairs, just like Hess."
Harry raised his hands in mock-surrender. "Okay," he said, "this is as close as I get. I just wanted to check the fainily resemblance. You know, it's uncanny."
The Nomad shook his head. "I was an angel, D'Amour it said, its voice troubled. "I remember Heaven. I do. @s though it were yesterday. Clouds and light and-2' "And the seat'
"Me sea?"
"Quiddity." "No!" it yelled. "I was in Heaven. I remember God's heart, beating, beating, all the time@'
"Maybe you were born on a beach."
"I've warned you once," the creature said. "I'll kill the boy-,,
"And what will that prove? That you're a fallen angel? Or that you're the little bully I say you are?"
The Nomad raised its hands to its wretched face. "Ohh, you're clever, D'Amour," it sighed. "You're very clever. But so was Hess." The creature parted its fingers, exhaling its sewer breath. "And look what happened to him."
"Hess wasn't clever," Harry said soffly. "I loved him and I respected him, but he was deluded. You're pretty much alike, now that I think about it." He leaned an inch or two closer to the entity. "You think you fell from Heaven. He thought he was serving it. You believed the same things, in the end. It was stupid to kill him, Nomad. It's not left you with very much."
"I've still got you," the creature replied. "I could fuck with your head until the Crack of Doom."
"Nah," Harry said, standing upright. "I'm not afraid of you any longer. I don't need prayers-2'
"Oh don't you?" it growled.
"I don't need a crucifix. I just need the eyes in my head. And what I see-what I see is an anorexic little shit-eater."
At this, it launched itself at him, shrieking, all the wounds in its head wide. Harry retreated across the filthy floor, avoiding its whining talons by inches, until his back was flat against the wall. Then it closed on him, flinging its arms up at his head. He raised his hands to protect his eyes, but the creature didn't want them, at least not yet. Instead it dug its fingers into the flesh at the back of his neck, driving its spiked feet into the wall to either side of his body.
"Now again, D'Amour-" the creature said. Harry felt the blood pour down his spine. Heard his vertebrae crack. "Am I an angel?" Its face was inches from Harry's, its voice issuing from all the holes at once. "I want an answer, D'Amour. It's very important to me. I was in Heaven once, wasn't I? Admit it."
Very, very slowly, Harry shook his throbbing head.
The creature sighed. "Oh, D'Amour," it said, uprooting one of its hands from the back of Harry's neck and bringing it round to stroke his larynx. The growl had gone from its voice. It was no longer the Nomad; it was Lazy Susan. "I'll ss you," it said, its fingers breaking the skin of Harry's at. "There hasn't been a night when I haven't thought of "-its tone was sultry now-"here, in the dark together."
On the bed behind the creature, the boy moaned.
"Hush... " Lazy Susan said.
But Stevie was beyond being silenced. He wanted the comfort of a prayer. "Hail Mary, full of grace-" he began.
The creature glanced round at him, the Nomad surfacing again to shriek for the boy to shut the fuck up. As it did so, Harry caught hold of the hand at his neck, lacing his fingers with the talons. Then he threw his weight forward. The Nomad's feet were loosed from the wall and the two bodies,. locked together, stumbled into the middle of the room.
Instantly, the creature drove its fingers deeper into Harry's nape. Blinded by pain, he swung around, determined that wherever they fell it wouldn't be on top of the boy. they reeled wildly, round and round, until Harry lost his balance and fell forward, carrying the Nomad ahead of him.
Its body struck the charred door, which splintered under the combined weight of their bodies. Through his tear-filled eyes Harry glimpsed the misbegotten face in front of him, its hands slack with shock. Then they were out onto the landing. It was bright after the murk of the bedroom. For the Nomad, painfully so. It convulsed in Harty's embrace, hot phlegm spurting from its maws. He seized the moment to wrest its talons from his neck, then their momentum carried them against the banisters, which cracked but did not break, and over they went.
It was a fall of perhaps ten feet, the Nomad under Harry, shrieking still. they hit the stairs, and rolled and rolled, finally coming to rest a few steps from the bottom.
The first thing Harry thought was: God, it's quiet. Then he opened his eyes. He was cheek to cheek with the creature, its sweat stinging his skin. Reaching out for the spattered banister he started to haul himself to his feet, his left arm, shoulder, ribs and neck all paining him, but none so badly he could not enjoy the spectacle at his feet.
The Nomad was in extremis, its body-which was even more pitiful and repulsive by the light of day than in the room above-a mass of degenerating tissue.
"Are... you... there?" the creature said.
It had lost its growl and its silkiness too, as though the selves it had pretended had flickered out along with its sight.
"I'm here," Harry replied.
It tried to raise one of its hands, but failed. "Are you... dying?" it wanted to know. "Not today," Harry said softly.
"That's not right," the creature said. "We have to go together. I... am... you... "
"You haven't got much time," Harry told it. "Don't waste what you've got with that crap."
"But it's true," the thing went on. "I am... I am you and... you are love... "
Harry thought of Ted's painting; of the snake beneath his heel. Clinging to the banister, he raised his foot.