I had a restless night and was just starting to get back to sleep when my cell phone rang.

“Ugh,” I grunted into it, not able to focus on the screen enough to see who was calling me at such an ungodly hour on a Saturday.

“Get your lazy rear out of bed and get down here. I’ve already tacked up your horse.” Then a click.

I stared at the phone fully awake and perplexed. Wyatt. And he sounded downright cheerful. Was this how humans dealt with conflict that involved someone nearly killing you? How they dealt with finding out their neighbor and best friend was a demon? True, he wasn’t in my bedroom dragging my naked ass out of bed, but he was still intending to keep our riding date. With a spark of hope, I leapt out of bed and pulled on jods and a polo shirt. I grabbed my field boots by the door and ran barefoot out to the stables. Wyatt tossed my helmet at me as I dashed in.

Piper, my big bay gelding, stood ready with his English saddle and bridle. Piper was a Thoroughbred Shire cross. He was tall and solid with a placid, unshakable disposition. Horses don’t like demons, and they especially don’t like me. It had taken me years to get Piper to let me put a saddle on him, let alone ride him. I loved riding, though, and the time it took to gain the horse’s trust was time well spent in my book.

Wyatt had saddled up Vegas for himself, a chestnut Quarter Horse gelding with an impressive pedigree. He was smaller than Piper, and less muscular, but full of heart with a silly sense of humor. Wyatt must have suspected I bought Vegas for him when I brought the horse home last year. I don’t ride Western, and have never been into Quarter Horses. I spent a fortune on this horse hoping Wyatt couldn’t resist and would ride with me. It had worked. Since Vegas arrived we tended to go out a few times a week when weather allowed.

I eyed Wyatt as he finished with Vegas. He looked the same as usual. Well rested, freshly showered (unlike me), cheerful. Had last night not happened at all? If I’d realized my neighbor was some strange powerful being who wanted to fuck me and kill me at the same time, I don’t think I would be out riding horses with her the next day. Well, maybe I would, but I’m not a human.

I hopped around the aisle of the barn in an undignified manner, putting on my boots as Wyatt tightened Vegas’ girth. We hadn’t spoken a word and I wasn’t sure how to break the ice while managing to carefully avoid mentioning the last six hours. I strapped on my helmet, then smiled and tossed Wyatt one off the rack.

“Catch.”

He caught it and scowled playfully.

“You must be joking. Since when have you ever seen me fall? Cowboy hat, maybe; riding helmet, no.”

I have this argument with Wyatt every time we ride. I’d done the whole “my stable my rules” and “my horse my rules” thing. He argued, but always gave in. And it’s true he never fell. The guy rode like he was crazy–glued to the saddle.

“Accidents happen, Wyatt. And I can’t put your brains back in your head”.

Wyatt looked at me speculatively.

“Can’t you? You seem to be able to heal yourself. To what extent can you do it with others?”

“I don’t technically have the ability to heal,” I explained. “I can fix myself, but I usually screw it up when I try to fix someone else. Besides, I’m not good with brains. They’re really tricky.”

Wyatt thought a moment. “Okay, why are brains so hard? As opposed to, say, a liver or an amputated limb?”

“The actual physical formation of the brain isn’t an issue; it’s all the neural pathways.” I loved explaining this sort of thing, and it was kind of nice to have this conversation with Wyatt.

“You have no idea the number of neural connections in the human brain. Plus, they change from moment to moment. You’re literally not the same person you were a few seconds ago, each experience changes the connections in slight ways. I could do a decent job, only to have you missing half your life experiences or a significant change in your personality. One little missed connection has huge consequences.”

Wyatt looked at the helmet with new respect.

“If you were a flatworm, I’d say ‘go for it’. I’d be pretty confident I could fix your neural network and you’d still be fairly close to the flatworm you were before the accident. Since you’re a human, I can pretty much guarantee I’d fuck it up big time.”

I was very serious. Wyatt seemed to realize that and put on the helmet without further argument.

We rode for hours without a word, just like we always do. Fast. Through woods, and over coops into adjoining fields and the public trails that snaked all through this section of Maryland. Normally we’d meet the occasional mountain biker or four wheeler, but today it was just us and nature.

I’m a terrible rider. Couple that with the fact that horses don’t like me or my kind much, and it means I spend a lot of my time in the dirt, on my ass, staring up at the horse. I only fell off once that morning, losing my balance over a coop. Piper stopped as soon as I hit the ground and looked at me reprovingly.

“Sorry, boy,” I told him, then looked around for a log, fence, rock, something to get me up high enough to climb back into the saddle. Piper was a big boy. After trying a few things unsuccessfully, I clambered up the coop, but couldn’t get Piper close enough. Wyatt rolled his eyes at me and finally hopped off to throw me back into the saddle.

As we cooled down the horses on a walk back toward my barn, Wyatt looked over at me cautiously.

“So, do you demons possess people? Like in The Exorcist?” he asked.

I shuddered. Possessing involves putting yourself in a human body with the human still in there. It is stupid and dangerous. You have maybe ten percent of your power, and it announces your presence like a bullhorn. Demons who regularly do possessions don’t last a fortnight.

“No. Only the very lowest demons do that. Not me.” Well, not since that time a few centuries back when a priest yanked me out and stuck me in a pig body instead. Pigs don’t appreciate that sort of thing.

We hopped off of our horses in the stable yard and walked in together. Wyatt still looked rather nervous. I could see the fear in him, even though he struggled to hide it. I wished I could show him that I was still the same person he grilled steaks with Thursday night. The same girl he pitched into the pool headfirst last week. I hated that he looked scared of me.

Tossing his saddle pad in the corner, Wyatt took his saddle into the tack room while I brushed Piper. I hoped he could move past this. I hoped we could at the very least still be friends. No doubt I’d see a for–sale sign in front of his house within the week.

“Sam? You need to come in here,” Wyatt called.

I walked into the tack room carrying my saddle and saw Wyatt standing over Boomer. My hound was sprawled on the floor, his brindle fur covered with bites, cuts and blood. He thumped his tail and panted as he saw me. I bent down and examined his wounds carefully. This couldn’t have been the angel. If it were, Boomer would have been dead and disintegrated. I couldn’t imagine what could have attacked him. No dog would have gotten a tooth on him, let alone tore him up this bad. A fox wouldn’t have taken him on. There were coyotes around, but even cornered and fighting for their life they wouldn’t have caused this kind of damage. The Allegheny Mountains used to be home to Eastern Panthers, but they were no more. A few had been sighted down south, but not up here. A bear maybe? A black bear defending her cubs may have done this. There did seem to be more claw marks than bites, which would indicate a bear. Boomer wasn’t one to back down from a fight either, stupid dog.

“Uhhh Sam? You’re, uhhh, leaking,” Wyatt said observing me cautiously.

I looked down and realized that I had let some of my raw energy creep up to the surface where it was glowing across my skin like a sheen of sweaty light. An opalescent drop fell to the floor and sizzled like acid. I discretely neutralized it. I never leak. It was a point of pride with me. How embarrassing. Just one more slip I couldn’t afford to make with an angel so close.

“Sorry. I was trying to think what could have done this. Boomer is smart, and much stronger than he looks.”

“I’d speculate big cat,” Wyatt said, bending down to look closer. “Or grizzly, but not in this part of the country. We really need to get him into the emergency vet.”

“No, he’ll be Okay,” I assured him. “It’s not that bad.”

Wyatt looked at me in disbelief.

“Let me at least carry him into the house and do first aid from the vet kit.”

“He stinks,” I countered. “I’m not letting him my house like this.”

Wyatt glared at me. It was a good glare. We stood that way for a while in a silent contest of wills.

“Okay!” I threw up my hands. “I’ll fix him.” I couldn’t say no to Wyatt. Especially now that our friendship was teetering on the edge.

“I thought you said you weren’t good at that when it wasn’t yourself. Let’s just take him to the vet,” Wyatt urged.

Wyatt had enough to freak out about without my explaining that Boomer wasn’t a normal dog. That would have to wait.

“I can do Boomer. He’ll be fine. Really.”

I picked up a rubber handled screwdriver and looked around. Crickets and spiders were too small. The barn cat hadn’t had her kittens yet, or I would have used one of them. Ah, there was a big mouse over behind the feed tub. I locked eyes with it holding the animal in place as I carefully moved the feed tub. Then I impaled him with the screwdriver.

“Here,” I said handing the squirming bleeding mouse–on–a–stick to an incredulous Wyatt. “Take this and stick him in the bug zapper.”

“Can’t we just take him to the emergency vet?” Wyatt asked, holding the mouse with an admirably firm grip.

“The mouse?” I asked confused. “He’s almost dead. I don’t think they can do anything for him.”

Wyatt sighed in exasperation and left the room with the mouse.

I surveyed Boomer, and when I heard the distinctive sound of the bug zapper, I put my hands on him. Before I fixed him, I wanted to check out his damage and make very sure that he hadn’t been in close contact with an angel. I couldn’t imagine an angel would scratch and bite, but just in case I sent energy down inside the wounds to explore. No angel or demon energy. Just plain old bites and scratches, thankfully. Satisfied, I pulled my energy back and readied myself to fix my dog.

One way I can fix is by driving cell reproduction into overdrive and accelerating the natural healing process. It involves minimal energy, but has its issues. You’re making a copy of a copy of a copy, and those cells aren’t as stable as what they originally were. For a really good heal, you need to recreate and that involves conversion. The resulting cells are solid and perfect. Better than they were before injury in most cases.

Unfortunately conversion has a very specific energy signature. Any angel who senses conversion (and they have very acute senses for this) knows exactly what he is dealing with and usually can track the energy to its source. So basically, what I was about to do to Boomer was like sending up a flare. I hoped that the energy of the bug zapper electrocuting the mouse would mask my own energy. Human energy usage often did, if the energy I used was small enough. Still, it was a risk. I was a fucking idiot risking myself like this just to make Wyatt happy.

It took seconds. I fixed everything at once. Cracked bone, chipped rib, torn muscle, veins, nerve connections, skin cells, regrew hair. He’d had a bowel perforation which was just disgusting. I had to recreate the section of intestine, and then search throughout his abdomen taking out bacteria and microorganisms that had no business outside the digestive system. As I stared down at the newly whole Boomer, I realized that Wyatt was still electrocuting the mouse.

“Okay, I’m done. You can stop now,” I called.

Wyatt came running in and handed me the screwdriver with a blackened, reeking lump of burnt mouse on the end. I looked at him in astonishment. What did he expect me to do with it? Eat it? It looked like a macabre shish kabob.

“I thought you needed that,” he explained. “For a magic spell or something to heal Boomer.”

His voice trailed off as he noticed Boomer was whole and standing beside me thumping his tail.

“Oh yes, worked great,” I told him tossing the mouse and screwdriver into the metal trash can. “Thank you”

I wasn’t about to go into lengthy explanations of how I hoped the electricity would cover up my quick fix of Boomer. How I hoped that I didn’t have an angel bearing down on me right now.

We finished with the horses and turned them out to pasture for the day, then stood awkwardly looking everywhere but at each other. Neither one of us knew what to say; how to end the morning.

“I’m going to grab a nap. I’m having some friends over for a gaming party tonight and we’ll probably be up all night,” Wyatt said looking at the rafters.

“Me too. Nap I mean, not the gaming party. So, see you around?”

He nodded, still looking at the rafters. We each paused a moment, then left. One step forward, two steps back. At least he was still talking to me.

I made a ham sandwich, showered, and curled up for a long nap. I had a busy evening ahead, and unfortunately it didn’t involve crashing Wyatt’s gaming party.