Metal Angel Read Free

rolled over to bleep mode, dopplered past at the gay hustlers’ end of the street.
    When he had caught his breath a little, Texas said to the youngster with wings, “You gotta learn to fight if you’re gonna wear that kind of getup, kid.”
    The kid stood shakily on his long legs—being tall is unfair that way; if a tall person gets the least bit shaky everybody sees it. Blood on the young man’s face—just a nosebleed. Scanning him for injuries, Texas saw a shallow knife scratch across his bare chest and some lacerations, some bruises. Nothing to worry about. Also he noticed with muted surprise that he had somehow been mistaken about the color of the wings. They were much darker than he had thought. Brick-red, in fact.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked, his throat raw from shouting, his face smarting from the mauling it had gotten, his wrists aching. This would be a good time for the kid to thank him. But the kid stood fingering the blood trickling from his nose.
    â€œHot,” he murmured. He licked his bloodied lips, and his face grew rapt. “I can taste it. I can taste myself.”
    There was something odd about the way he spoke besides its precision. His voice sounded strangely intense and penetrating, so that even at its quietest it had been vibrant enough to be heard across the street. Yet now that he stood right next to him, Texas found it eerily distant.
    Shadowy eyes turned. The stranger asked, “Will all this blood coming out of me hurt me?”
    Shit, was the kid simpleminded? Texas answered only with a shrug, wishing, now it was over, that he hadn’t gotten involved, suddenly wanting very much to turn his back on everything, get back to his own room, tend to his own wounds … but he couldn’t leave a hurt retard standing on the street. Had to see him home. Dammit. He asked, “What’s your name?”
    â€œVolos.”
    â€œVolos what?”
    â€œJust Volos. I am of low degree. It is not considered necessary for me to have more names than one.” The stranger subjected Texas to a dark-eyed scrutiny from below frowning brows. “You are bleeding also.”
    â€œI know that.” Texas kept most of the annoyance out of his voice. What bothered him more than this problem youngster or his scratches, anyway, was the spectacle of his new eighty-dollar black Resistol cowboy hat lying flattened in the middle of the street. “Where do you live?”
    â€œHere. The city.”
    â€œBut where?”
    â€œWherever I am standing.” Volos was studying the blood drying on his fingers. “Sticky,” he remarked.
    â€œOh, for Chrissake.” Texas grabbed him not very gently by the elbow and urged him across the street, into the Palace Hotel and through its shabby lobby, glaring at the desk attendant to shut her up about blood on the carpet—as if winos enough haven’t puked on the carpet before now, lady. In the elevator Volos stood stiffly, hanging on to the walls, looking pale under his tea-colored skin. Shaken up more than Texas had thought. Texas led him down the third-floor hall, unlocked his room, flicked the light switch, and towed the kid in. Once released, Volos stood looking around him blankly.
    â€œSit,” Texas ordered, pulling a straight chair out from the wall. He handed Volos a wad of Kleenex, pulled down his beat-up old Stetson from the closet shelf—he felt naked without a western hat, wore one indoors as well as out except when Wyoma made him take it off for bed or company. Jammed the ratty white thing on his head, went out into the hallway again, and got ice from the machine, strongly feeling the small-hour blues weighing him down. It was his own mistake, to have stayed up this late. Whenever night found him awake at this hour he felt utterly alone, orphaned, like the last person on earth, even with Wyoma gently snoring at his side. And now there wasn’t even Wyoma. Just a jerk with wings