The Night Beat

“Mister Rogers, this is not the way the doctors want you resting.” I decided I really didn’t like this nurse. She’d sounded a lot nicer when she’d first found him in here.
    Ralph ended our kiss slowly, giving me some time to sort of get myself under control. I only whined a little. “Coming.”
    Well, not quite yet, but it’d been close. “When does Nurse Nancy come back on duty?” The base of my tail wanted a quick word, and that word was “mister”, as in, why had she called Ralph that this time, when she’d used his title before?
    The nurse gave me a dirty look. “No idea. Why?” I examined her. No nametag. But she’d had on one before, I just hadn’t bothered to look at her name.
    “I like her better than you.” I looked closely at her. Eyes were just a little wrong. Everything was just a tiny bit different from when she’d been in here only minutes before. “I like her a lot better than you, as a matter of fact.” I didn’t question the instinct that said to hit her, I just went with it.
    My fist slammed into her face and she went flying. I switched to werewolf form as she hit the wall and also changed -- into a being with huge bat-wings.
    I got my jaws on her throat while I heard Ralph shouting that we had a loose fallen angel. I hoped he was using an intercom of some kind and wasn’t going to get involved, because it didn’t take genius to guess she was here to kill him, not me.
    Angels are hard to kill. Fallen ones are even harder. But she’d waited a little too long and I wasn’t in nearly the bad emotional or physical shape I’d been in hours, even minutes, before. I was still in a form of shock from everything that had happened, but I’d fought the Adversary one-on-one recently and one fallen angel chick wasn’t a real challenge after that.
    Plus, I’d spent many an hour up at the University Library, going through every edition of “How to Dust Dangerous Minions” written by a variety of heroes over the ages. There were a lot of chapters on how to deal with fallen angels and they all agreed on one thing -- strip the wings from the body first, sever the head from the body second. Do it right and you wouldn’t need step three.
    Did my flip around to the back while still keeping her neck in my jaws maneuver. Used my claws to rake at her wings. Ignored her clawing me back. We were in a hospital, after all. If I needed to get fixed up after this I wouldn’t have far to go.
    I heard the sound of running feet and a variety of beings raced into the room. I was a little preoccupied, but I did spot Sexy Cindy and Freddy in the group. She had a spray can which she aimed and emptied right into the fallen angel’s face.
    How Evil Fairy Repellent would be useful in this situation I had no idea, but it seemed to stun my opponent enough for me to get the upper claw. I wrenched my head and heard her neck snap. Good, but not good enough, and her wings were still attached, though much worse for wear.
    “Vic, jump now!” Ralph shouted in a voice that didn’t really brook argument.
    And I didn’t argue. I leaped off, up and over. I felt something swish by my tail as I flipped. I saw Merc swing an ax and cut off the fallen angel’s wings while L.K. did the same with her head. Apparently others had read up on fallen angel destruction. I got the distinct feeling these two were over bus driving as their main pursuit.
    I didn’t stick the landing, but instead gracefully slammed right into Ralph. I was afraid I’d hurt him, but he didn’t seem too rocked by it. I switched back to human as he helped me up. “Nice one. Thanks for the save.” He kept his arms around me. I didn’t mention it. And my arms were around his waist purely in the interest of not falling over.
    “I kind of owed you.” I didn’t know what else to say. There were a lot of other beings in the room and I wasn’t sure if that one kiss had been just to see what it was like before he trotted off into the sunset.
    “Is that why you kissed me?” he asked softly. I wasn’t prepared to swear to anything, but he looked like he was trying to act casual and brave. But his eyes were sad and disappointed.
    “Well, you kissed me .” Hey, it was true. “But that’s not why I kissed you back.”
    He swallowed. “Why did you?”
    I heard a dramatic sigh before I could answer. “Because she’s finally seen what you look like on two legs.” I looked over my shoulder to see Maurice saunter into the room. He shook his