I spent the next hour or two in a delirium. I might have attempted to heal myself like I had Resa, but I could barely mumble my name when I was wheeled into the emergency room. After an X-ray, I swallowed a pill. Pretty soon, although I still writhed in waves of disorienting pain, my muscles went slack. A lean doctor with short-cropped black hair leaned over my gurney. "Mr. Fernandez," she said, "Good news. No broken bones. So, we're going to manipulate your arm."

"Shoundzh good," I said.

It wasn't. She grabbed my forearm and pulled steadily, straight out. It hurt like crazy and I almost fainted away. But then there came a distinct thunk, and all of sudden I could breathe again.

"That's the easy part." She laid my arm across my chest and held it there. "Now you have to heal. Next thing we'll do is to put the arm in a sling and you have to keep it still for two weeks and treat it very gently for two weeks more."

"Gently. Right. Feels so much better. Fanksh, Dockh."

The doctor's lean, glossy blechth curled around her neck and craned to stare at me. Like Resa's, it's colorful stripes gleamed and it moved with sinuous grace. Outward beauty aside, the hot spite and hatred in its gaze bore into me like scorpion stings.

And that was my last sight as I fell asleep. I couldn't stay awake with the pain gone and the muscle relaxants in me. But my dreams roiled queasily like an ocean of oil, and I was a struggling albatross, unable to fly with black-clogged feathers. Slowly, I sank, until the heaving evil covered my nostrils.

A gravelly voice cut through the muck. "You all right, angel-boy?"

I thrashed back and forth until I could force sticky eyelids open. Father Brent swam in my vision, forehead scrunched in concern. My mouth felt pasty. "Uh ... hi. Yeah, I'm okay."

My bed had rails, and rolls of gauze trapped my right arm against my chest. A window in the unfamiliar room glowed with daylight. The ex-priest folded his arms across his flannel-shirted chest and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out. "Good. Apparently, as regards happy pills, you're a lightweight."

"Heh," I attempted a grin. My shoulder hurt. Without much thought, I briefly meditated on rightness, and sent a wave of it through my shoulder. There. Much better.

"Whoa," Father Brent's eyebrows rose. "Did you just heal yourself?"

The reflex "no" died on my lips and I timidly amended my reply. "Maybe?"

"I bet you did. You are the most advanced of us." Father Brent twisted around and nabbed items from my bedside table. I saw he had lost weight, especially around his middle. He handed me a plastic cup with water and a straw, then plopped a newspaper on my belly. "Real good article in today's paper. I think it'll help the next generation of angels cope."

It was far too early in the morning to think straight, so I sucked some water. If I could think mathematically like Trixie or Dr. Friel, I could have multiplied thirty and thirty. Today, there might be as many as 900 infected people in the city. Tomorrow, multiply by thirty again. 27,000. Only a day later, almost a million people.

But math wasn't my thing. And I didn't dream that certain dark intelligences nearby might also be calculating, and at that moment staring at their sums in shock.

I just let Brent's remarks fly over my head and sipped water. "I slept all night, huh? Where's Trixie? And why're you here?"

"I'm here because I care about you, believe it or not, in all your wooly-pated splendor. Trixie's here, somewhere. Probably asleep in the waiting room. Iona was here for a while. Resa was here for a while. Even that reporter stopped by, though she probably had ulterior motives."

I stopped sipping. "Resa was here?" I couldn't help the silly grin that spread on my face.

"Down, boy, lest you sprout a lust-blechth."

Brent's remark dashed my flash of good humor. After my face fell, I said, "Uh, you really think it happens like that?"

He shrugged. "Maybe you can sprout a new one. Who knows? Whatever a blechth is, it's a good parasite in the sense that it encourages the emotion it feeds on. Stands to reason, if you start feeling proud of yourself, a pride blechth will soon show up."

"So ... you're infected, now?"

"Oh, yes. Wow, Photropolis - How great is that place, eh? And my blechth shrank so much I think it's gone."

Slowly, my brain woke up. "Tell me about the sword. It really worked."

A meditative smile lifted his jowls. "Well, I like swords. I'm a bit of a medievalist. All through college and seminary, my favorite historical figure was Joan of Arc. Half my term papers were about her, one way or the other."

"Joan Ovark," I attempted.

"Joan. Of. Arc. National heroine of France. She heard the voice of God in her head and helped lead France out of the Hundred Years War to defeat those English skunks. The English captured her and she didn't behave. They burned her at the stake. Anyway, maybe I'm part French, because I've always loved that combination of unshakeable faith, inspiration, and courage that she represents."

Father Brent's husky voice had smoothed out a few notches, and he sounded like Orson Wells selling "no wine before its time." He seemed at peace with the world as he filled the bedside chair. "Did Joan of Arc have a sword like yours?"

"No. Hers was heavier and longer."

"Well, yours worked really well."

"Pretty gory, huh?" His grin still seemed peaceful. "I guess I have a sort of devil-killer instinct. I had a vague hunch the sword would work better than a gun, and I followed it. You've experienced the same sort of thing, right? You follow your instinct, and it somehow works out."

"That's true." Eagerly, I pursued more dangling ends. "What about Trixie? Did she really fly?"

"Yeah, I think so. She's learned how to turn into light ... more or less. And I guess light doesn't weigh very much."

I grunted. "And I learned how to heal a bone."

Father Brent leaned close. He was still pale, but it struck me as a healthier pale than before. And he wasn't sweating or breathing hard. He said, with an air of sharing a secret, "Yes, but I think that talent ... extrapolates."

"Huh? Extrapolates to what?"

"Not sure, but imagine if you can heal faster than you get damaged." His eyebrows rose and fell a few times, inviting me to reply.

"Oh, well, I guess I would ... stay okay?"

He barked a laugh. "Yeah, you'd stay okay."

A doctor came in, then. A different doctor, a short guy with a bodybuilder physique. "How is the patient this morning?" he boomed with fake joviality.

"Healed," I said, firmly.

"Ha-ha," the sturdy physician said, mirthlessly. "And you're the famous Rik, eh? The first case of the angel virus." Sarcasm laced his tones.

But I could see his lizardlike blechth, bedecked with layers of fancy frills. It reeked of pride and vanity. A few days ago, I would have seethed in resentment at the doc's condescending tones, but today all I felt was a deflating wind of sadness. If the fellow didn't have a driving need to appear better than everyone else, he could talk to a patient without belittling them.

I felt like I was floating above the conversation rather than immersed in it. "I appreciate your skepticism, doctor. Every scientist should have a healthy supply of skepticism; don't you think?"

The half-formed sneer on his lips uncurled. "Um. Yes, of course. How's your arm? On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?"

"Zero. I'm healed."

He chuckled a superior, aristocratic rattle. "You dislocated your shoulder, young man. I know it feels better than before, but you won't be tossing a baseball for at least a month."

Angel virus or no angel virus, I still remembered how to be a teenager. "Whateverrr. Can I go home?"

"That's what I am here to evaluate. Can you make a fist?"

My sense of the ridiculous was in full swing. I grinned like a fool as I cocked my arm back like a boxer about to throw a punch. Rolls of gauze trapped my arm to my chest, so the motion shredded the elastic cotton as my arm sprang free. "How's that?"

To his credit, he was horrified. He didn't actually mean me harm, he just had an ego problem. "Whoa! Whoa! You could reinjure yourself."

I managed to paint a look of contrition over my features. "Oh. Sorry, doc. It's my first time. What else do you want me to do?" I lowered my right arm and laced fingers over my belly. Next to me, Father Brent's eyes closed to mere slits as he repressed laughter.

Like an audience member at a magic show, the doctor knew some trick was being pulled, but he couldn't divine the mechanism. Gone sullen, he said, "Any tingling? Fingers, arms, anywhere?"

"Not a twinge. I feel good."

He frowned, deeply. "I don't see any bruising. Looks like you got lucky, young man."

"I am fortunate indeed," I intoned.

"Then you won't be needing a prescription for pain medication," the doctor said as his frown reversed itself into a distinctly evil leer. He assumed I did have pain, but even if I didn't, I would find the prospect of having a bottle of pain pills to be irresistible.

I didn't have a halo hovering over my head, but I sure felt like I did when I answered. "Correct."