A Warm Heart in Winter (Black Dagger Brotherhood 18.50)

At a loss, Qhuinn looked around at all the things he’d seen before: The pool tables, the mounts of sticks on the wall, the balls arranged in their triangles on the felt. He saw the Persian rugs under each play area, the leather sofas, the bar with its top-shelf liquor bottles and its sparkling glasses.

“You want something?” Lassiter said as he got up.

“Ah…”

“That’s a yes.”

“Are you drinking? ’Cuz you don’t usually drink.”

“Not alcohol.” The angel went behind the bar. “Sit. I’ll make us some fruit juice for the vitamin C. You can’t be too careful with scurvy.”

Qhuinn sidled up to the long, thin granite counter and parked it on a stool. And then he watched in silence as Lassiter sliced four Hale Groves pink grapefruits in half and started to squeeze them on an old school glass mount, the kind that had a ribbed center to do the grinding and a circular base to catch the juice.

Clearing his throat, Qhuinn figured there was no reason to wait for better words. “So the night my brother died—” At that moment, he realized he would never use that other word. As accurate as it was. “—I know that you were in the tunnel. Just before dawn.”

Lassiter didn’t say anything; he just kept working the halves on the grind part. The juice that filled the base was pink as a blush and smelled like sunshine.

“That’s how Luchas’s remains were still there the following night,” Qhuinn said quietly. “You stayed with him all day long and blocked the sun from him. Didn’t you. You protected him… so I could see him one last time. Didn’t you.”

Lassiter tipped the juicer over a rocks glass and then put the serving in front of Qhuinn.

“I repaid you by attacking you.” Qhuinn swallowed. “And insulting you. Oh, shit, Lass, I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean it—”

“It’s okay.”

“No.” Qhuinn reached across the bar and touched the angel’s arm. “It’s not. Thank you for what you did for him and for me. And I’m truly sorry.”

Lassiter paused in the middle of working on his own serving of juice—and his eyes stayed ducked. “Just so you know, I can’t really talk about some things. It’s the rule.”

Qhuinn slowly straightened on the stool, a shimmy of awareness going down his spine and landing in his ass cheeks, causing them to pucker.

It was easy to forget who Lassiter was. What he was. The enormous power he held.

But at this moment, Qhuinn became fully in touch with the fact that he was sitting across… from a deity.

“I do what I can,” the angel murmured as he tossed the rind and picked up the last of the halves. “I do what I’m allowed to do. You know, to make things easier. My heart broke for you, and yet all I could do was stand on the sidelines and watch the crash. It’s fucking torture…” As his voice broke, he cleared his throat. “But I do what I can.”

Lassiter poured the juice into his own glass and then clinked the rim of Qhuinn’s. “Bottoms up.”

As the angel tossed his back, Qhuinn did the same—and had to click his tongue at the tartness. As the burn rushed down into his gut, his stomach rolled—but not from the grapefruit.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you,” Qhuinn said.

“Everyone wants to be in charge—until they are.” Lassiter put his glass down with such care, it made no sound on the bar. “Why do you think I watch the kind of TV I do? I’ve got to shut my mind off somehow. Otherwise, I’d go mad.”

“Shit.”

“All the strands of all the lives, woven in patterns of suffering and joy, the cloth infinite in every direction, the layers upon layers unending. And I see every fiber in every thread, at every moment. I feel the reverberations, too. I am but a tuning fork of flesh, struck by the hand of the Creator. I am but a servant of destiny, yet I am accountable.”

As Lassiter spoke the words, his voice grew deeper and deeper, and then behind him, revealed first as a figment of the eye, and then as a glorious, three-dimensional reality, the set of iridescent wings he usually hid appeared at his shoulders. And that was not all. From overhead, cascading down, not from the ceiling of the room, but from the great above, a shaft of light, brighter than the sun, yet not painful to the eye, bathed the angel in a halo that encompassed his entire body.

In his holy form, as a glimpse into eternity and the mystery of fate, Lassiter looked across the bar. And now his lips remained closed, even as his voice permeated the space around them.

Ask what you want to know.

Qhuinn began to tremble, a precipice he had not intended to confront appearing at his feet.

Ask. And I shall tell you.