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“Oh,” I softly said in shock as my insides screamed, “Holy fuck!”
It was all too much. Rosa, borrowed wings, me… In a blink of an eye, I was this man’s little boy again. I’d had my first kill, but that didn’t stop me from bursting into tears. “Dio, what am I?”
“Aw, my boy, I wish I was there for us to have this conversation face-to-face, but … you seem to be one of the most unique beings I’ve ever come across.” His own voice broke. “You’re a combination of different forces. Powerful ones.” He coughed. “Little Man, you even have a little of my kind in ya. But … balanced somehow. You’re truly magical.”
This was all so unbelievable, yet it felt … right. I wiped under my nose. “And Rya? An eagle?”
“Of light, yeah.” He exhaled. “The way you two are drawn to each other, it’s as if she was sent for you. She’s some sort of beacon, my boy. Your beacon.”
All her dreams that led me. All the light that poured from her beautiful spirit… Yes, it was making sense now, but I still didn’t know the why of it all.
When I hung up, Diesel was back to leaning on his thighs. “I’m presuming what he is is a secret.”
As a kid, I had been small but mighty, saying, “I’m not a bean spiller.” Now, trying to become a man, I answered, “Yeah, very much so.”
Diesel drew in a deep inhale. “She thought I was sleeping when she whispered something to me.”
My skin began to sizzle. “Okay.”
Coughing, he wiped at his short beard. “There’s so much emotional coughing tonight, someone is going to think I have a goddamn cold.” He winced, side-eyeing me. “Sorry.”
Weatherman practically screeched, “I can’t say god damn anymore?”
We all laughed and coughed through more tears.
Wiping under an eye, Diesel confessed, “I’ve not been known to fall in love. But your mama, kid, she took hold, and… I never got my heart back.”
I sucked on my inner cheek, but more tears came anyway. There was simply too much pain on this porch tonight. Death, life, love, and apparently, a hybrid deity.
I wiped snot on my jeans while teasing, “I’m hanging with bikers for protection, yet here you all are, out here turning me into a pussy.”
Laughter had the men holding their chests as if thankful they could. Life had been both long and hard on them with far too many reminders of how short life truly is.
Diesel took a cleansing breath then shared, “She whispered ‘he has to be a bastard. It’s part of the deal.’ ”
I sat forward in a hurry. “W-What? What deal?”
“I can only speculate, but… Is Dio part of..…?” His pointer finger gestured to the sky in question.
Like I had in the nightmare as a child, I heard gut-wrenching screams of suffering.
No longer a ‘bean spiller,’ I stared off into the night, like the two men had when not knowing what to say to me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Diesel’s finger slowly point downward.
Dio might have had some sort of deal with the devil, which formed his other side that I referred to as Diablo, but he was a good man. I couldn’t let my biological father think otherwise, so I begged, “If you see any good in me, you have to know it’s because of him. He was so good to me.” Tears refused to be held back. “He was so good to her.”
Diesel had me up and in a firm embrace, hugging me while I cried about a man I had never been permitted to talk about once taken from him. “Diesel, Ani and I had lived in a shithole, but he changed all that. He gave us a safe home. Food. Laughter.” I wailed into his shoulder. “He gave me love, Diesel. The only man I ever lived with who would’ve died for me.”
Weatherman stumbled backward. I think he was overcome with guilt over standing by and letting me be abused, for the love of his own boys, until the very end.
“Part of Weatherman died, son.”
I stilled.
Diesel tightened his hold after jolting me to get my attention. “The first time I met him, he was so full of life. Only in his twenties but madly in love, and with a boy he adored so much that he traveled across the country so this boy could know his biological father.”
I stopped breathing. “When he was gone. To see you. That’s when Piercer found us.”
