He’d been with Cole, and hadn’t showered. He was tacky, reeking, sated, but depressed. He’d caught the streetcar that came up Pacific Avenue, not the one that stopped on the Venice shore. He was taking the long way home, thinking. He was on a dark stretch of road, at a point equidistant between two streetlights, when he heard the whistle of wind through long pinions. Without looking back, he dropped down onto the tarmac. Lucifer swooped, and missed him. Didn’t just miss, but miscalculated. As Xas dropped, Lucifer followed him down. An eagle that lands on a rabbit uses its momentum to carry the rabbit away. It dives, drives its talons through furry skin into flesh, then lifts off again. Lucifer must have aimed to do something like that—seize Xas and push off from gravity by vaulting up from the springy divot of the angel’s upright body, taking that body with him. But Xas ducked, and Lucifer extended his reach, and, because angels always had the lazy habit of not troubling too much to correct movements that might result in collisions—for collisions, though painful, never had ongoing consequences—when Lucifer’s snatch missed he was too low, and going too fast, to correct his position.
