Triune Page 3

  “Mike... I thought I was seeing things, but there were feathers. Wings. I thought I imagined it, but here it is.” He held up the evidence, but Mike just lifted an eyebrow and backed up, going for his tea.

  “You know what they say about artists and madness, I guess,” he muttered, but there was a hint of doubt in his voice.

  “Maybe you’re dead.” said Brian with a grimace of uncertainty.

  “Dead. Really. Then how am I drinking tea with you right now?”

  “Well, but... the healing... and nobody could have survived...”

  Mike could only stare at him over the rim of his mug. There was no denying the healing. But the feather... what was Brian trying to say? Surely he didn’t think...

  “See if you can do anything.”

  Mike squinted at him. “Do anything? Like what? Jog around the block? Sing a song?”

  “No, like... walk through walls or something... ghost-like. I don’t know.”

  “You really are nuts,” Mike said with a snorting laugh. “Look. I don’t know what’s going on with the healing thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m just as solid as you are. I’m breathing, I can bleed, and this tea tastes pretty damn good. The feather probably came off the roof when I came through it. All right? Just looks like a vulture feather to me. So what about this fabled TV you have? I want to see if there’s anything else about that woman or the plane bombing.”

  With a long sigh, Brian pressed his lips together and nodded, tucking the feather into the cup full of colored pencils on his desk and then leading his brother up to the loft bedroom where the television was. He folded up the futon into a sofa and they sat together and watched for any news. Sure enough, the plane wreck was on nearly every channel.

  “Goddamn, there it is,” Mike murmured as he flipped between channels, much to Brian’s annoyance.

  “Just leave it on one station so we can get the full story.”

  “Fine, fine...”

  The reporters eventually got around to discussing the woman he’d saved, and he sat forward in fascination as a photo of her in happier times was put up.

  “There she is. Roberta Hall. Look at that.” Mike recognized her despite the difference in circumstances and appearance, and his mind went over and over their last moments together before impact. He smiled softly, knowing that he had, in fact, saved her life somehow. Brian’s pocket rang, and he dug around for the phone, flipping it open.

  “Barrett! Where are you?”

  “I got the guy to turn around and I’m at the airport getting a car. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. What’s going on?”

  “It’s Mike, he’s... perfectly fine...” Brian’s voice trailed off as he looked over at his middle brother, who was rubbing his chin, thinking he needed a shave.

  “Let me talk to him,” the two other men said at the same time, and the phone was handed to Mike.

  “Hey, Bear, he’s right, I’m fine.”

  “He was frantic! Said you’d crashed through the ceiling or something. What’s going on?”

  “I did, but... I’m fine. Something... it’s like a miracle. You’ll have to see when you get here.” Mike looked at his left forearm, which, other than an old scar from two years previous, was completely untouched.

  “I’m in the car, headed your way. See you in a few. Wait, you’re really okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m... I’m fine.”

  “Well thank god for that. Tonight’s meeting is shot now anyway, so I’ll hang out with you guys for a bit and get the whole story. See you.” The call ended, and Mike handed the phone back to his younger brother.

  “He’ll be here in fifteen, he says.”

  Brian nodded. “You gonna show him your new trick?” A little smirk of amusement played at his lips, but his eyes were still full of uncertainty.

  A funny look came over Mike, but he shrugged it off by flashing him a nervous little smile. “Yeah, how else will he believe what happened? Hey... can I take a quick shower? I’m kind of...”

  Brian blinked at him, realizing that his brother was still covered in dust, debris and blood, his clothes, what was left of them, torn and stained. “Oh god... yeah. I don’t really have anything that’ll fit you though.”

  “No, it’s okay. Just a shower.” Mike nodded at him and made his way into the bathroom. Once the door was closed, Brian went over to the back of the studio to check the damage and see how much he’d lost. And to check for something else.

  I know what I saw. I know I didn’t...

  He took the feather out of the pencil cup and looked at it again. For a secondary flight feather, it was huge. Impossibly huge. No owl, no vulture, no bird of any kind that he knew of had feathers that big. With the flashlight he searched the crater, pushing some of the debris with his shoe, and was rewarded with two more of the nearly black feathers. These were smaller than the first, but still amazingly large. Brian stared at the closed door of the bathroom for a full five minutes before he shook his head and tucked all three into the pencil cup.

  The TV distantly rambled on about something from the loft, the scanner still on behind him. He strode over and turned the radio off, the low rays of the sun catching his eye through one of the familiar windows. It was one of the works by the old man, the master artisan who had left him everything.

  The crimson robes and flaming sword... there was no mistaking who was depicted in this particular window. Michael the archangel flew there in all his life-size glory, his nearly black wings flaring behind him, each feather perfect. Primary flights as long as a man’s arm, secondaries measuring...

  “About twelve inches.” Brian couldn’t help but glance over at the feathers in the cup. They looked identical to the ones in glass before him.

  A knock on the door made him nearly jump out of his skin. Barrett was there, hair a little mussed, eyes filled with concern.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Brian let him in wordlessly, the eldest Mason’s eyes widening and darting between the skylight and the debris on the floor as he took in the damage.

  “Where’s Mike?”

  “In the shower.”

  Barrett merely nodded, walking around the studio, finally ending up in front of the point of impact.

  “And he’s really okay?”

  “Better than,” Brian said. “It’s like nothing ever happened.”

  Barrett turned and looked at him, brows knitting. They all knew Mike’s condition when he’d left Afghanistan, and now he’d fallen out of nowhere, through a skylight, and trashed the back of a glass studio without a scratch to show for it. He shook his head.

  “That’s impossible.”

  Brian nodded with a little half smile. “That may be, but he’s in there taking a shower right now to get the debris and blood off him.”

  “Blood?”

  Brian told him the whole story, beginning to end in detail, and was about to tell him about the feathers he’d found when Mike strode out in the bottom half of his damaged uniform, toweling off his hair.

  “Bear...” he breathed, and the two men rushed toward each other, ending in a warm embrace.

  “Brian told me... well... his story.” Barrett was loathe to say “told me what happened” because it certainly had to be fiction. Their youngest brother sighed.

  “I told him exactly what happened. Show him.”

  “Show me what?” Barrett lifted an eyebrow, unsure if he wanted to be shown, considering that blood had just been mentioned a few minutes prior. But Mike nodded, then picked up a piece of glass and sliced his bare arm.

  “MIKE!” Barrett grabbed his brother's wrist and looked at the cut in horror. Before he could say anything, however, the wound neatly closed itself up in front of his widening eyes. He dropped Mike's arm and backed up, his middle brother calmly brushing away the line of blood. The skin below was perfect. Their eyes met.

  “What just happened?” asked the elder Mason.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you d
on’t know? You just... and it...”

  Mike nodded. “I don’t know. But that’s how I survived that fall.”

  Barrett looked between his arm and his face and the window, a pregnant silence falling over the room. Finally Brian couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “And I found these,” he said, grabbing the soft near-black feathers from the pencil cup and holding them up like a trophy. “Because, dammit, I know what I saw. There were wings under him when he first hit the ground. Just exactly this color.” Mike rolled his eyes, but Barrett found himself staring at them, fascinated.

  “Those are huge.” He took a step closer, almost as if drawn to them. He took them from his brother’s hand and examined them, feeling their surprising softness. Mike couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “You cannot tell me you’re believing any of this. Please tell me you didn’t just lose your mind. Both of you. Both your minds. Lost. Because I’m not...”

  His brothers both turned to look at him in unison.

  “No. You’re crazy.” Mike’s disbelief was turning to slight panic.

  “I know what I saw,” said Brian firmly, then he pointed to the stained glass window. “You looked like that.”

  Without a word he turned his back on them, but then stopped. Where was he going to go? To the loft to watch the news of how he’d miraculously saved a woman, himself unharmed? Was he going to go out the door and start walking to Sacramento? Stare at the pile of debris that should have killed him?

  “That is pretty crazy, Bri,” Barrett said finally, and Mike let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He turned, mouth open to agree, when he was cut off. “But so is the ability to instantly heal.”

  Mike was growing more miserable by the second. “Seriously. You guys. You can NOT be saying what I think you’re saying. This is impossible.”

  “Yep,” they both said in unison. Mike hesitated.

  “Yep... you’re saying that, or yep it’s impossible?”

  “Both,” said Brian. Stunned at last into silence, all Mike could do was just stand there, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass, the outcome uncertain.

  “I told him I thought maybe he was dead,” started Brian, but Mike exploded at him.

  “I’m not dead! And I’m not a ghost! And I’m not a goddamn ANGEL!”

  The word seemed to echo and bounce around in the vast space of the room, the sun starting to set, the sky through the hole where the skylight should have been turning a darker blue.

  “I’m just... I’m just Mike,” he said softly, sinking again to the floor, defeated. His brothers joined him there, and they all just looked at each other, Barrett idly running the feathers through his fingertips. Mike looked at them pleadingly, then turned to his older brother.

  “Bear, come on. I know you can’t be thinking... this is crazy...”

  “It’s absolutely crazy. But...”

  “But what? Help me out here, I mean...”

  “But something about it...” Barrett shook his head and stared at the feathers in his hand.

  “Just feels right. Gut feeling,” put in Brian. He nodded a little. They all knew how Barrett trusted his gut, and how it was rarely wrong. Mike shivered and rubbed at the gooseflesh on his bare shoulders.

  “Getting... getting chilly,” he muttered, and went up to the loft, pretending to get a blanket, but staying there instead. The TV was turned off and the silence was deafening. His brothers picked themselves up off the floor, Barrett handing two of the feathers back, but keeping one for himself, still stroking it thoughtfully. Brian opened up the streaming news radio station he usually listened to.

  “And we continue our special report on the terrorist bombing of flight 237,” said the reporter, “with some new information on Roberta Hall, the woman who miraculously survived the fall from that mid-air disaster. We now have a statement from her family.” The voice changed to that of an older man, rough with emotion and nerves.

  “She’s doing all right, stable condition, they’re telling us she’ll be fine. She wanted me to read this to you all, so I hope that’s okay.” A brief murmured consent was heard among the reporters assembled in front of the hospital, and he continued after clearing his throat.

  “Okay, this is from Roberta. ‘I want to thank my guardian angel for saving my life, whoever you are, wherever you are, because I’m sure if you hadn’t helped me I’d be dead right now. He was in a military uniform, short dark hair, and I hope he survived. I pray he did. If anybody knows what happened to him, please tell me.’”

  The two brothers down below looked at each other. Mike had heard it all from the loft, but chose to continue laying on the futon and staring at the low ceiling.

  “You should visit her,” Barrett called up toward the loft, but got no response. Brian shrugged.

  “He needs a minute, I guess. And some clothes. God only knows what happened to his luggage, and He ain’t telling,” he joked. Barrett cracked a little half smile.

  “Yeah. He’s more my size than yours, but I didn’t bring anything. Hey, Mike,” he called up again to the loft. “You want to go shopping?”

  The futon creaked and he appeared at the top of the stairs, then sat on the top step. “Not really. Now everybody’s going to be looking for me. That lady’s... what... goddamn guardian angel. The clothes kind of give it away.” He leaned against the wall next to him and closed his eyes, just wanting all the weirdness to go away. But he was also infinitely grateful that he was no longer in constant pain.

  “All right,” said Barrett, “then give me your measurements and I’ll go get you some stuff. You can’t wear that forever,” he said with a nod in Mike’s direction. His middle brother nodded and wrote down some numbers on a scrap of paper, balling it up and tossing it to him.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Bear. I think I’ll get up on the roof and see if I can do something about the skylight. Can’t leave it like that all night.”

  “I’ve got some plywood out back in the alley,” offered Brian. “I think that’ll work. The skylight’s only six feet wide, so if we lay a few sheets across it...”

  Barrett nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got it under control. Be back in a few.” He hugged his youngest brother and then zipped off to the nearby mall that he’d passed on the way over to the studio. Mike sighed, making his way down, and the two went out to get the plywood.

  The studio was located in the midway point between the better side of town, marked by the golf course and condos, and the dangerous side of town where most of the calls on the emergency scanner came from. Brian’s studio hadn’t been broken into, but his walls had been tagged by various gangs numerous times and he was on his third car stereo. After the last time, he’d considered just skipping the break-in part and leaving car stereos on the sidewalk to avoid the ongoing damage to his car.

  Brian rounded the corner to the alley and crashed straight into a wall of a man in a dirty denim jacket that reeked of alcohol, sending the stranger sprawling into the other two that were there with him. Brian froze, eyes wide, then stepped backwards into another man with a yelp. Fortunately, the other man was his brother.

  “Hey. No problem, we’ll come back later,” Mike started to say as the men hastily tucked cash and packages into their pockets. But they were drunk, or high, or probably both, and the one that Brian had knocked over glared at them, then gave Brian a shove.

  “Tell your little bitch to look where he’s going, faggot.”

  Mike bristled, then stepped in front of Brian protectively. “He’s my brother, and you’re going to find some other alley to do your deals in, comprendo señor? Get the hell out of here.”

  “Mike, don’t. Let’s just...”

  But Brian’s older brother was already figuring how each of them would go down, three steps ahead of the enemy. That’s when one of them pulled a gun.

  “No, señor, you’re the one that’s gonna get the hell out of here, either by you walking, right now, or the cops carrying your body later,” the gang-b
anger growled at him. Mike put up his hands.

  “Hey. No need for that. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice. Bottom line... you don’t belong here, and we do. And you need to leave.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the man, and then fired off a shot.

  Knocked backwards by the impact to his chest, Mike cried out and sprawled on the ground, the gun turning next toward his younger brother. Instantly he was on his feet with a snarl and grabbed the man’s arm, the second shot going wild. As they grappled, one of the other men swore something in Spanish, his eyes widening. Mike took the opportunity to snap the first man’s elbow backwards so that he dropped the gun, then realized what the swearing had been about. The gunshot was nearly done healing itself, the bullet rejected from his body as the plate from his rib had been. Only a powder burn remained.

  “All that did was make me mad,” Mike said in an unnervingly quiet voice, a dangerous light in his eyes as a smirk crept up on his face. The three men backed up, the smell of fresh urine apparent, and bolted for the opposite end of the alley, disappearing around the corner at last. Mike started laughing softly, then turned to say something to Brian, but stopped at the look on his brother’s face.

  “What?”

  Brian was white as a sheet, eyes huge, one hand over his mouth, the other pointing behind his older brother. Mike looked over his shoulder to see what the problem was, figuring maybe the gang-bangers were back, but couldn’t see a thing. A massive dark gray wing blocked his view.

  He turned toward it, not quite understanding what he was seeing, and found himself turning completely around in a circle until he was back face to face with Brian. Then his stomach dropped and he felt faint.

  “No.”

  He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and ran a shaking hand over his face.

  “No. Brian. This is not happening. I’m going to wake up in a military hospital in Afghanistan. Any second now. I’m not here. You’re not here. None of this is real. Right.” He nodded firmly, took another deep breath, and opened his eyes.

  Brian was standing there staring at him, biting his lip, still deathly pale. “Uhm...”