Looking back, I wish I’d known that was gonna be the last even remotely normal day of my life.
At twelve, though, everything was either gravely serious (boys, mostly) or competely ignorable (my parents, my irritating toddler brother, or the public school my parents half-heartedly sent me to). I’d been in Redmond my whole life, and by twelve I even took most of the dangers of my neighborhood for granted. I was big, even for an ork. In the last few years I’d started to fill out in other ways, too, but what counted (as far as the walk home was concerned) was that I was nearly as tall as a fully grown smoothie, and that my babydoll tee was stretched just as tightly across my shoulders as it was across my boobs.
Just as importantly as my size, though, was the fact I lived there. People knew me. The block, a living, breathing, thing, was always watching. I might get a whistle or two, maybe a little grab-ass from a pack of younger kids that went roughhousing their way past me… but nothing serious. Nothing too bad. You look out for each other when you can, in a neighborhood like that. Even the Razors left most of us locals alone, when they weren’t tripping so hard on BTLS they couldn’t tell who was who.
So, imagine my surprise, when I got home from Marci’s and found my family’s little two bedroom apartment turned into a charnel house. I smelled smoke from the hallway, but didn’t think anything of it. My mom was never the greatest cook, and the soy-grub we ate most of the time didn’t cook very evenly anyways.
There was another smell I should’ve noticed, but didn’t. Death. Blood has a smell like nothing else, and when someone’s opened up just right by fist-razors, the smell of shit explodes out of them. It was the Manglers that did it. I’d learn, later, that they’d hit four other apartments that same evening, and swept out half of another apartment building that afternoon. The Manglers were a two-bit psycho gang, all chromed limbs (slick with blood) and metal eyes (staring at me, looking up from the ruins of my mother), cheap guns (two pointed my way) and drug abuse (riding the high as they’d gutted my dad and done worse to my mom).
I turned and ran, fast as I could (oh god oh god had that been my baby brother in pieces?), working my legs even while my throat spasmed and my mouth filled with vomit.
I heard three Manglers behind me, synth-voice boxes sending out barks and giggles and laughter like a pack of hyenas I’d seen once on a docu-trid at school. The sound of it (and the image of my family being used to paint the own walls that sticky-sweet brown-red) chased me down the dirty hallways and staircases as I ran, sobbing and puking.
I shoulder-checked the rear exit to the building, sending the steel fire door swinging wide open and slamming it against the brick wall it was mounted on. I made it maybe ten feet down that alley before a Mangler was on my back like a freight train tackling me; all metal and heavy, hot breath that smelled like beer and coppery blood, hard steel hands groping every soft spot I had. Then another was atop me, and a third. I shut my eyes, kicked and scratched and bit. Nothing helped. They kept giggling. I knew what they'd done to mom. I knew it was my turn.
Then, something incredible happened.
“Hey, fellas.”
"I'm kind of lost." I froze up, the Manglers did the same. Their giggling stopped. Oh god thank you thank you I’m saved I’m saved I’m saved. Remarkably casual, the voice continued. “You guys know how to get to Jenny’s from here? Big party tonight, hot date waitin’ on me, an’ I’m a little lost.”
The Manglers were as caught off guard by the ridiculous question as I was. One climbed off me, and I heard knives slide out of his forearm. Another stayed wedged between my legs, the last one over me, pinning my wrists. I dared to open my eyes, and I stared down the alley at a demigod. Even for an elf, he was beautiful. Long golden hair like in an old Thor comic book, a body built like an Urban Brawler’s covered by skintight leathers and a t-shirt that looked painted on, impossibly blue eyes, and a face twice as handsome as one of mom’s trid-soap stars. An angel.
“Guys? Hello? Jenny’s? Little underground club, y’know? I’m not from around here, and my directions were crappy, and…not ringin' a bell, huh?”
He raised golden eyebrows, glancing from one serial murderer-rapist to another, amazingly incongruous question just hanging there. A little cherry glowed brighter as he took a drag off a cigarette, then looked down at me. I felt my heart pound in my chest.
“How about you, sweetie? You know where Jenny’s is?”
Terrified, throat too full of fear and bile to let me speak, I just shook my head ferociously from side to side. No, no, no, don't leave, don't leave. Please God don’t let him leave me here. Please don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!
The standing Mangler’s throat-speaker warbled and he barked at the newcomer, wrist-blades slashing through the air and making it clear he wasn’t wanted here. The one between my legs let out a hyena’s little laugh, and ground his hips. The stranger flicked his cigarette into a little puddle, and I watched it, still upside down, fly through the air like a shooting star. The elf shrugged, and turned to leave.
“Oh well. I’ll find it eventually.”
I whimpered in renewed terror, then, and shut my eyes and tried to die before they got the chance to use me. Why couldn’t I swallow my tongue?! What had I done wrong to deserve this? I’d been saved, and the angel had just wanted directions and now he was leaving me here. I shook my head, eyes clamped tight against the unholy sense of humor the world sometimes displayed, and prayed to die.
I heard a strange little sound, and felt something hot splash across my chest and face. That same little noise – like a steel-wire brush shoved rough against wood – and the murderer between my legs collapsed on top me, dead weight. The coughing-brushing noise, again and again, and I heard a steel-limbed body hit pavement. Even in Redmond, the sound of silenced pistols wasn’t exactly common. Or, rather, especially in Redmond. Your average ganger didn’t bother being quiet about his killings. I felt blood wash over me, and struggled to breath. I was pinned beneath a steel-limbed jackal, but I could still twist my head and open my eyes.
The angel was standing there, a smoking automatic in each hand. Some trick of the blue-white streetlight behind him turned his longcoat into wings, the gunsmoke into a halo, an aura of purity. The three Manglers were dead, each one with two shots to the chest and one to the forehead. It might’ve taken two seconds.
I hiccuped.
Given how the last two minutes of my life had gone, I think it was fair for me to still be terrified. At that moment, all I could think was that he wanted me, too, and wanted me before the Manglers had taken their fill.
My angel promised me in a quiet voice that's not why he'd done it.
I wouldn’t know until a few years later, of course, when I humiliated myself by coming home drunk and throwing myself at him, that Deke wouldn’t ever be interested in me in that way.