Black_Tide by Patrick Freivald

crap on me. You don't get hurt, not for long, and you're never, ever sore, so if something's wrong you need to go to the doctor."
    His arms folded around her, enveloping her in his warmth and scent, gun oil and cheap coconut shampoo and a hint of yesterday's Old Spice. "I'll be all right."
    She leaned her head back against his chest. "You'd better be. You die on me, Momma will kill you."
    They ate breakfast and chatted about house repairs and Christmas plans. Matt ate six eggs and four buttered biscuits, so his appetite hadn't changed, and despite his complaints he moved with the same fluid grace she'd come to expect.
    She opened her mouth and he cut her off.
    "Yeah, no problem."
    She froze and waited.
    He looked up from his plate. "What?"
    "I didn't ask yet."
    He looked from her to the plate and back to her. "Huh. Yeah, that's been happening more often lately."
    She leaned in to look in his eyes. "Is that okay? Is it safe?"
    "Yeah, of course." He answered too fast. "Just another Aug resurging, like the others. Janet knows. I'm in good hands."
    "What about 'No safe levels?' Gerstner?"
    He frowned. "I'm in this either way, but right now it looks like Gerstner's influence is totally gone. I shouldn't—You don't have anything to worry about."
    She smiled and put her hand over his. "You know I'm going to."
    He squeezed. "I know, babe. But you shouldn't have to."
    She kissed his nose. "It's my job."
     
    *   *   *
     
    Matt flipped stations on his way to the store, the scan transitioning every few seconds between country music, rock and roll, and drumbeat hysteria about the looming blizzard. A familiar voice took him back to a cramped shop in St. Augustine, before they knew the truth about Jade, ICAP, and fallen angels. The discordant blend of Florida-Georgia hick and high-falutin' diction belonged to the proprietor of the tiny store Rastogi had taken them to, tall and gaunt with rotting teeth and something dark slithering behind his eyes, hostile to Augs and stingy with information. He'd found an audience on NPR.
    "—aren't the cuddly cherubs of Valentine's Day cards. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he sent his angels to do so. When the plague took the firstborn of Egypt, he sent his angel to do the reaping. They're not living creatures the way we think of them; they're embodied shards of divine will."
    "And you think they're among us?" The host kept his voice too soft in the habit of public radio personalities.
    "How could I doubt? God saw the hubris of augmentation and smote the wicked to the ground. Arakiel's cult slaughtered thousands before he disappeared. And let's not forget Ramiel in many places at once, until that man revealed his true form as an Ifrit, a monstrous creature of fire and sand. These names are not coincidence, they are known to us. They are the egregoroi, the Watchers, who came down from heaven to lie with human women and for their crimes were cast into the pit of Tartarus."
    Matt pulled the truck into the crowded parking lot and killed the engine but not the radio. The man spoke at length, prodded by the host, about angels and devils and the occult, a mish-mash of religions and legends informing his opinions. He got the nature of Gerstner Augmentation dead wrong, but his hypotheses about Arakiel's "vanishing" hit a little too close to home. As far as Matt knew, that egregoroi—or the glass pillar he'd become—collected dust in a cold iron cage at a black site in Mumbai.
    "Well," the host closed, "you're listening to Religion Today on National Public Radio. We've been talking angels with Nigel Rush of St. Augustine, Florida, Doctor of Ancient Mythology, Divinity, and Archaeology. Thank you, Doctor Rush."
    "Pleasure being here. Be safe."
    Matt grunted. He wouldn't have pegged the gawky, creepy man a "Nigel."
    Bumper music trickled out of the speakers, so he killed the power and went into the store, grabbing a cart from the rack on his way in.
    He sighed at the lines. Nothing provoked panicked