“Four hundred?” Katy bit her lip, her eyes darting left and right as she stared at the floor. “Dad, you know I’m saving to get a condo.”
“And pay your student loans, I know. But look, don’t worry so much about your loans. I’m sure you’ll get a raise at some point and those loans will be a thing of the past. If I can ever get your uncle’s boat up and running, he says I can sell it, and I’ll definitely help you with those loans. The system is a predator, you know that. A single father can’t put his daughter through college, so she takes out loans and they come collecting. Fucking higher ed mafia if you ask me, but hey, I shouldn’t say that ‘cause I’m in Boston right now. Who knows what kind of Harvard or MIT graduate student is on this train right now…”
“Fine,” Katy said, cutting her dad off. “I’ll transfer it to you. Please, I need you to pay me back, though. It’s two thousand dollars now.”
“Two thousand? What about all the times...?”
“Dad, please, you know I can’t do this. My therapist…”
“How much are you paying that goddamn therapist? If you sent that money to me instead, I’m sure I could double or triple it. I know a guy…”
“Dad, I’m hanging up the phone.”
“Wait, Katy!”
“Yes?”
There was another long pause, Lucian boiling with rage as her father asked, “Can you transfer it right now?”
“Sure,” she finally said, bowing her head.
Lucian’s cape lifted off his shoulders, anger swelling inside him.
It was time to pay Katy’s father a visit.
Chapter Five: Scratched Off
Lucian dropped to the roof of one of the trains heading out of Boston.
He recalled playing a video game in which he ran on top of train cars, fighting enemies coming at him from the front and the back.
He smirked at this thought; it was uncanny how many details from his current life he could relate to gaming.
The wind whipped past him, the train clanked on the tracks below, and as the train sped along, Lucian shifted into the train car.
Half a dozen death dates appeared before him and he ignored them all.
The train came to a stop, the doors on the right sliding open, people spilling out.
He pressed through a man carrying a heavy duffel bag; a pair of Asian women speaking softly about the clothing they had purchased on Newbury Street; a family all in New England Patriots apparel, the mother scolding one of her children, yanking on his arm as they stepped off the train.
Lucian settled his gaze on Katy’s father.
Her father wore a Red Sox training jacket with the letter B on the sleeve. He was heavier than the last time Lucian had seen him, the man currently working on a stack of scratch-offs.
Lucian recalled a time that Katy’s father had gone into detail about his strategy for scratch-offs, how he always asked the clerk what number the ticket roll was at, how he liked to only scratch the tickets that were somewhere between seventeen and forty-one on the roll because this was where the winners always were, at least according to the man who had blown through more money on scratchers than anyone would care to admit.
Once, Lucian and Katy had just finished having sex when her dad called to announce his big winnings. Katy was still topless as she sat up, Lucian watching her get excited for her dad then suddenly shifting to concern.
He’d won five hundred dollars that day, but it had cost him six hundred to do it.
Her dad considered this breaking even.
As Lucian watched her father move to the next scratcher, a disgruntled look on his face from not winning on the last one, he recalled a time that Katy had borrowed her dad’s car.
“Don’t judge me,” she’d said in a moment of self-awareness that she rarely exhibited.
“Don’t judge you for what?” he’d asked.
She motioned toward the glove box, which was stuffed full of lottery tickets.
She then shifted her hand toward the center console, which was covered in cigarette ash and paper particles from the scratchers.
The man’s death date appeared.
Name: Frankie Weston
Date of Birth: 06/16/1958
Date of Death: 04/19/2020
“You’re supposed to be dead, Frankie,” Lucian whispered as he noticed something on Frankie’s back.
It was a greed parasite, the type Lucian had seen back at the casino in New Hampshire, but it was something else as well.
Part of the demon bug was black and shriveled, yet its upper half was peach-colored and bulbous like a caterpillar. Lucian suddenly recognized that Frankie was inflicted by two parasites, one keeping him alive and the other feeding off his addiction.
To make matters worse, the two parasites had merged.
Lucian hesitated for a moment as he wondered how Katy would react if he killed the parasites keeping her father alive.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time to contemplate this as a muscled stinger shot out of Frankie’s back, tearing into the floor at Lucian’s feet as he flashed away.
The battle was on.
A fireball burst from Lucian’s hand, engulfing the muscled stinger. A tendril shot toward him and wrapped around his wrist, just as his handgun appeared. He managed to fight the tendril off, aiming the handgun at the parasite on Frankie’s back.
He unloaded his magazine, the bullets striking the parasite and sending splashes of inky black liquid into the air.
Lucian’s crows dug in, both ripping into the peach-colored portion of the parasite’s body, ripping off one of the eyes jutting out of the top of the demon bug.
Lucian’s sword materialized in his hand just as one of the parasite’s tendrils broke through the train window.
Air gushed into the cabin; Lucian pressed off the metal floor, landing on the ceiling.
He charged toward the parasite, cutting through stingers, its muscled fists, its praying mantis-like blade arms.
One of the demon bug’s blade arms cut through Lucian’s shoulder, reminding him to equip armor.
No matter.
Legs sprouted out of Lucian’s arm and it attached to the side window. Two retractable claws burst out of the knuckles on Lucian’s severed arm and it took off.
His arm cut through one of the thicker tendrils as it flipped itself into the air, landing on the enormous growth of parasite now bubbling out of Frankie’s shoulder.
It drove its claws in again and again, Lucian going with his plasma blowtorch once he saw his opening.
Because his arm was still regrowing, Lucian had to use his chin to trigger the handle on top of the blowtorch. This action sent him spinning backward, a beam of concentrated energy cutting into the floor and tearing out of the train cabin, the exit point rimmed in bright orange.
Still upside down, Lucian used his weight to lower the blowtorch in the direction of Frankie’s two parasites.
The blast completely fried the parasite, disintegrating his severed arm as well.
As the train came to a stop, a thick light spiraled out of Frankie’s back and into Lucian’s chest.
“See you around, Frankie,” Lucian said, turning away from the man.
The Newburyport/Rockport line sped away, Lucian perched on top of a shelter meant to help people to shield themselves from the rain and snow. It dawned on him at that moment how odd he would appear if someone could actually see him, how creepy it would be.
Here he was, Death incarnate, watching an older man with a stack of scratchers step off the train, Lucian’s crows hovering over his shoulders.
Lucian smirked at this visual as Frankie dumped his stack of losers into a trashcan. A cold wind blew up as Frankie checked his phone, typing in his bank code to see that his daughter had transferred him the money.
A spare paper bag tumbled past; Lucian’s smile faded away.
He was upset at the way Frankie treated Katy, but deep within him, he knew that there was nothing he could have done about it in
the past.
Even though she did it out of the kindness in her heart, Katy enabled Frankie.
But now, as the Grim Reaper, Lucian had just sped up Frankie’s death.
And he didn’t know how much he’d sped it up by.
He dropped down to the ground, his cape swelling up behind Lucian before settling on his shoulders.
Lucian despised Frankie more than he’d ever despised the man before.
To take advantage of Katy like he did, to totally abuse his power in their relationship…
Another call came in, Frankie grumbling as he fished his phone out of the front of his Red Sox jacket. “Yeah, I got the money, Pat, just like I said. Put it all on the Broncos. No, not all of it. Just three-hundred. Make it three-fifty. That’s all I can spare at the moment. A man’s got to eat. Yeah? I know the odds, and I’m following it. I’ll try to get some more over the next day. Yep. Yep. I’ll get it transferred now. You know I’m good for it, Pat. I’m serious, this time. My daughter just sent me some of the money I loaned her.”
Frankie paused, not paying attention to the couple walking behind him, the younger man clipping him in the shoulder.
“Hey!” Frankie shouted, rearing his hand back like he was going to strike the man with his phone. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, pal?”
Rather than say anything, the man stopped dead in his tracks and turned to Frankie.
“Yeah? There a problem, pal?” Frankie asked, his phone still in the air. “I’m standing here, ya fuckin’ prick. Hold on a sec, Pat, I got to deal with some little prick here.”
The punch came out of nowhere, striking Frankie so hard in the face that Lucian heard the bone crack.
Frankie fell, smacking the back of his head on the metal railing before finally reaching the pavement.
He slipped to the ground, his face red now, blood gushing out of his nose.
The crowd began to part; the man who’d punched him took a step back, his girlfriend grabbing his arm, fear coming across her face as a cold look settled across his.
“It was him,” someone said as a station security officer pushed his way into the crowd.
Lucian floated next to the man in shock, watching it all play out as people pushed through him, watching as Frankie’s death date started to blur.
A police officer pushed his way through the crowd and cuffed the guy who’d struck Frankie, a dark look on the man’s face as his girlfriend argued with another officer who’d showed up on the scene. A doctor in the crowd came to Frankie’s aid, trying to make sure nobody moved him until the ambulance came.
It was too late.
They were all too goddamn late.
Frankie Weston was dead.
Chapter Six: Beach Bummed
Lucian North floated just a few inches above the beach in Portland, Maine. To his left was a recently painted lighthouse sitting atop a pile of rocks; to his right a small cliff that overlooked the sea, a single bench on the cliff. Behind the bench sat the mysterious cliffside home shielded by an old wall.
Everything was as it should have been, from a couple seagulls with ruffled feathers hopping on the beach, to a man and woman taking their shaggy dog out for a walk along the shoreline.
The only thing out of place was Lucian, Death incarnate, the Grim Reaper loitering on the beach, deep in thought.
He had already checked on Katy.
Being there while she received the call from the hospital had been brutal for him, especially with the knowledge that he had been directly responsible for her father’s passing.
How long would her dad have stayed alive had Lucian not intervened? He cursed himself again and again, Hugin checking in every so often before racing back out to the water to join its counterpart.
Lucian couldn’t shake this feeling that he had played God.
And even though the conjoined parasite had attacked him in the subway, not the other way around for once, Lucian wished the outcome had been different.
What made it even worse was his ability to be there with Katy, but not for her.
Driven by guilt, Lucian knew he’d wind up checking on her time and time again over the next few weeks to make sure she was okay.
But what happened if she wasn’t? To be as strong as Lucian was, but to have absolutely no power, not even able to make a phone call, would only make his continued existence even more excruciating.
“Goddammit,” Lucian whispered, the sun nearly gone, just a ripple of crimson and orange shifting across the waves as they broke on the shoreline.
“That’s no way to speak about Him,” a voice said from behind Lucian.
He turned to find Danira standing there in all her glory, her wings slowly shrinking, light shimmering around her.
“You came,” he said, instinctively smoothing his hands over his robes. He felt his cape clamp down on his shoulders, offering him encouragement.
“I always keep my promises.”
“Did you promise? From what I recall, you mostly waved me away. How’s Hashul?”
“He has recovered.”
“Still an asshole?”
Danira didn’t answer his rhetorical question as she approached him, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, her gaze fixed on the horizon, the darkening landscape, and lumpy islands in the distance.
“We have to stop doing this, you know,” she said, not looking away from the water.
“Doing what?”
“Meeting.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Because I’m a demon?” Lucian asked, the ends of his cape lifting into the air and settling.
“This won’t end well for either of us.”
“You’re taking this too seriously.”
Danira tried to stop a smile from crossing her face. “I’m much older than you.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“You’ve been a demon for less than a month.”
“Are we back to calling me a demon?”
“Lucian.”
“Danira.”
She turned to him, a line knitting between her brows.
“I can’t be curious?” Lucian asked.
“Curious about what?”
“All of this. The only person I had to talk to before you was my predecessor, and now…” Lucian thought to Yoshimi, the Japanese Death whom he’d befriended. “I guess I’m not completely alone, but it’s nice to have a friend.”
“Is that what you think? That I’m your friend?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Lucian told her. “But I definitely would appreciate it if we didn’t try to kill each other anymore.”
“You know that’s not possible,” she said.
“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of. Why is it not possible? We experience similar things; you see the parasites as demons…”
“Demons are demons,” she said firmly.
“Do you really believe that? You’re starting to know me better, know what I’m all about. You don’t really think of me like that, do you? Don’t you see that that’s not what I’m here to do?”
“I feel like we had this exact same conversation on this beach just a few days back.”
“We did,” Lucian said.
“Where have you been, anyway?”
“I needed to take some time off,” he told her.
“And what did you do during that time?”
Lucian turned away from her, rubbing his hand on the back of his hood. “I played video games, worked on a few creations.”
“It’s hard to imagine a thing like you playing video games.”
“A thing? I thought I was a demon.”
“And what video game were you playing?”
“It’s called Zero Enigma. Heard of it?”
Danira shook her head.
“I’ve been playing it for a while. I suppose I should complete the main storylines, but I kind of got wrapped up in some side quests.”
“Sid
e quests?”
“Actually, I named a character after you,” Lucian said, grinning at her. “She doesn’t look much like you, but she has a sword and can use magic. A spellsword.”
“And what’s this spellsword do?”
“She kind of follows me around and helps me kick-ass,” Lucian explained. “I mean, um, successfully complete my side quests. But we fight too. Not each other. Bad guys. I guess that’s the easiest way to put it.”
“Good to know.”
“It’s not what it sounds like.”
“There has been a lot of concern, you know,” she said, tone of her voice changing as she changed subjects.
“About what?”
“What happened at the South Wind. The Progeny of Light are considering it an attack, and some of them think it was coordinated.”
“Coordinated? By who?”
Lucian’s crows sped in front of him, chased by Danira’s spherical creations. They all slammed together into a big group, dropped into the water, and came back out spinning.
“Yes, between you and the Watchers, the fallen angels.”
“But you know that’s not true, right?” Lucian asked. “You were there; you saw what Azazyel was doing.”
“I saw it, but my community isn’t unlike yours. I mean yours when you were alive.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There are sensationalists, and some of them secretly like the drama that the sensationalist can pass.”
“So someone’s spreading false rumors?” Lucian asked.
“That’s right.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, my own kind is also interested in what happened. In fact, they were supposed to meet with me, or rather, I was supposed to meet with them, tonight.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Because fuck them. They have no power over me,” Lucian said, trying to sound as confident as possible. “And I already told them everything that happened. I went after my predecessor, who your people had imprisoned.”
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