by K. B. Draper
Sammy pushed open the double doors, ushering out the second wave of rescues. I did a quick turnaround, seeing if I recognized if there were any MIAs, not super confident in my roll call abilities. But one noticeable person was missing. “Ariel?” I asked Sammy, but before he could answer, Ariel pushed through the doors with Lilly cradled in her arms. Kind of a wasted effort in my opinion since her husband had kabobbed her with his glow-y sword earlier, but Ariel was an angel so she probably had a smidge more conscience than moi, so, yeah, go her.
We moved the crowd to the far end of the parking lot as sirens began to sound. Doc Molly was already running triage, bossing the bobbleheads around. I gave her a thumbs up before finding Michael in the crowd and jogging over to him. I tapped at my temple, “You need to do your mind wipe thing on them. We don’t want to try and explain locusts and Mr. Crusty Face.”
Michael gave me a grim grin. “Wait until you see his brothers.”
And with that peachy thought I circled back to Ariel and Sammy, who didn’t seem too worse for wear, having taken a flaming arrow to the chest. “You good?” I asked.
“Good.” He nodded to Ari, “Healer wife,” he explained. And speaking of, Ariel had laid Lilly out, unceremoniously, between two large trucks, blocking them from the rest of the crowd. I’d expected to see a large hole in her gut where Sammy had run his sword through her, but nada.
Sammy must have sensed my confusion. “Her body is healed, but she’s still lost in the dark. Ariel will find her and bring her back.”
“If she can’t?” I asked.
“She’ll remain there tortured for all times or at least until her body fails her.”
“Like tortured, tortured? Or like annoying, give you a hard time, make fun of your face tortured?”
Sammy gave me a knowing grin despite the doom and gloom situation we were currently in. “Torture-torture.”
I sighed. “Fine, find her and bring her ass back.”
Not that Ariel was waiting for my permission. She’d already brought her hand up and laid it across Lilly’s forehead. Ariel’s eyes were closed and her lips were moving in what I assumed was—sorry not sorry to stereotype, but she was an angel—a silent prayer.
A fire truck pulled into the parking lot, followed closely by another one, the fire chief’s suburban, and the two county ambulances shortly after that. The ambulances veered off toward the crowd of people while the fire trucks took up position around the gym.
I took turns between the three scenes playing out, stopping when Lilly’s eyes fluttered open. “What happened?” Her eyes were wild as she sat up, her hands clawing at her throat. I guessed the memories of chugging a locust cocktail rushed back.
“Can you do the mind wipe thing like Michael?” I asked. Sammy waved a hand in front of Lilly’s face, her hands dropped, and her eyes went all blank and blinky. “What happened? Where am I?”
I crouched to go eye to eye with her, pointing my finger over her shoulder. When she turned to look, I gave an exhausted sigh. “I hate to have to tell you this, Lil, but you burnt down the gym.”
Her hand flew to her mouth as she twisted more fully to watch the building before her burn. “How? What did I …?”
“I don’t know exactly, but there are rumblings about you violating some city ordinance.”
Her eyes flew back to mine. “City ordinance?”
“Or code, I don’t know. I think you exceeded the amount of streamer to candle ratio or something, but I’m sure it can be worked out. Probably a fine, maybe a little jail time. But that’s nothing compared to the gossip around town, am I right?”
Sammy was shaking his head, but fighting a grin as he stepped forward to offer Lilly assistance to her feet. “You can worry about all that later. Let’s get you checked out by the EMTs.”
I oh so helpfully escorted Lilly toward the crowd of classmates, taking advantage of the travel time to describe in great made-up detail how she’d fainted and gotten mouth to mouth from Aaron Hall, who was infamous for eating his boogers and spinning around in circles so he could smell his own farts. She was hyperventilating by the time we handed her over to the medics. And my job here was done.
I found Ashlyn and Mia. “Let’s get out of here before we get caught up in questioning. Where’s Michael?”
“He erased memories and headed back to check on Apoc and Danny,” Ashlyn answered.
“Sounds like a good plan,” I said, swinging wide to Sammy and Ariel. “Michael is already headed back to check on the kid. We’re following suit. You two in this, or were you just here to attend the worst class reunion ever?”
Sammy reached for Ariel’s hand. “We’re in this,” Ariel answered.
Chapter 11
Six was pacing the parking lot of the motel when we pulled in. His haunches visually relaxed when he saw me … or it could’ve been when he saw Ashlyn. Probably Ashlyn. I couldn’t blame him, I have the same reaction.
“Hey, buddy. All good in the hood?” Ashlyn asked, getting out of Woody and giving his head an affectionate rub. He moaned his pleasure. Again. Same.
Sammy parked alongside us, a decked-out SUV, a pearl white with gold trim package, which played super angely or drug dealer depending on where ya park it. I’ll be honest that I was a little disappointed it wasn’t a chariot, but I didn’t blame them for the upgrade. I mean the heated and cooled seats alone.
Ariel came around the front only to come up short, her eyes going wide when they found Six. Ashlyn caught her reaction and stepped forward to protect my—fine, totally her—hell hound. “He’s friendly,” Ashlyn offered quickly.
“Tink!” Ariel exclaimed.
And before I could repeat the ridiculous name, Tink flattened Ariel. I lunged to grab him, but pulled up short as he stood over her, giving her face a thorough tongue bath. Ariel’s sputtering laughs were a nice distraction to the otherwise doom and gloom of our current situation. “I take it they know each other?” I asked Sammy.
“I’m going to assume he was one of her hounds. Ariel is responsible for training them and the horses, when we …” and he gave the clouds a double-finger point.
“But I found him in hell,” I said, as Ariel began to disentangle herself from the hell hound or heaven hound or whatever he was, but for sure we were not going to be calling him Tink.
“We have much to discuss,” Sammy said.
“Ya think?”
The motel room had been small before, but it was next-level claustrophobic when occupied by three angels, one demon hunter, three assistant demon hunters, an in-question hound and the star of the show, Apoc, who currently was sucking on his own big toe. Impressive, but likely not one of the skills that had Lucifer threatening the end of the world.
Danny demanded to be filled in on the details that he had missed. We took turns with the pieces and parts. Mine, which if I do say so myself, offered the most colorful descriptors and required the most Apoc ear muffs applications. #Winner. For his part, Danny shifted between listening and tapping away at his computer.
The long and short of it all: we were in deep and Michael really didn’t need to add Conquest’s ultimatum to his shit pile as he wasn’t handing his son over to either side. Surprisingly, that included Sammy and Ariel. I mean, the last angel sent down had been on Team Turnover, so I’d assumed, wrongfully—yes, ass-u-me, whatever—that they’d all be on the same boat … or was it ark? Whatever.
But nope, Sammy and Ariel supported Michael’s decision. They didn’t elaborate on their stance, just simply vowed to fight alongside us, no matter the foe. Something I could get behind. And I believed them. Sammy I’d always trusted, and even though I’d just met Ariel, I had a feeling she was legit as well. Michael had obviously known them for an eternity and apparently took them at their word, so we went with it. I mean, I still had questions, Tink being toppers right now, but hopefully we’d have an opportunity to chat about that and a few dozen plus a thousand things in the not-so-end-of-the-Earth future.
“I’m moni
toring newsfeeds,” Danny offered, bringing everyone’s attention back to immediate WTFN (N=Now, for those of you not in the know.) “If the other horsemen are here or arriving, I assume they’ll make their presence known.”
“Guess you three don’t have any special evil spidey senses that would give us an idea?” I asked the winged ones in the room.
Sammy looked at his wife as she spoke. “Not exactly, but I will feel it if there is a great amount of suffering.”
“After …” The dulling sorrow in her eyes gave me the answer so I let my question trail off.
“After or while they’ve caused their damage, yes,” she finished.
“That little gift has got to totally blow,” I said, Ashlyn backhanding me in the gut as soon as my words hit the airwaves.
Ariel let out a small chuckle. “It does blow, but I also have the gift to heal some things, so that helps.”
I nodded, as adding a supernatural nurse to the team made me feel a tad better about having Mia, Danny, and Ashlyn signed up for this fight. “Okay, so where do we go from here? And please say it’s somewhere outside of this room, ’cause I’m getting a little claustro-too-close-to-so-many-armpits-phobic.”
“If we don’t know where or when the horsemen will arrive, I assume we don’t know where or when Lucifer might arrive either?” Ashlyn asked.
“There will be a …” Sammy looked at his wife for assistance.
“A pull,” she offered.
He nodded. “A pull. Lucifer will have to draw on the balance to come over here, especially if he tries to bring his army. It will be a significant draw, and we will likely feel it.”
“The balance?” Mia asked. “Sorry, I’m new to this? I need some catching up.”
“We’re right there with you,” I assured her.
“The balance between good and evil was how this plane was designed. Or I should say redesigned after the incident in the garden,” Michael offered. “He held up a hand to stave off my already forming questions. “Yes, there is a whole lot more to that story than the version you all have.”
“I knew it. It totally wasn’t Eve’s fault, was it? Adam set her up, didn’t he?”
Ariel gave me a wink.
“Probably not the most important part of the story,” Danny offered.
“Says a dude,” I retorted.
Michael cleared his throat. “As we’ve discussed before, it takes power and energy for either side to come to this plane. A demon or angel here or there uses small draws from that collective balance, but if …”
“If Lucifer wants to bring his army then he’s going all in,” I finished for him. I got three nods.
“How about tonight with the horseman?” Ashlyn asked.
Ariel looked at the other two winged ones. “I felt a small change and then a larger pull a few minutes before the locust hit the gym.”
“Same,” Sammy agreed.
We all turned to Michael. “I have been disconnected from the balance ever since …” He didn’t need to finish the sentence because “knocked up a demon queen” was an understood statement. “But I knew something was going on when Six’s hackles went up and Apoc abruptly stopped playing with his balls.”
I snorted. Apoc was entering into the “what are those?” discovery stage of his childhood, but I knew Michael was more likely talking about his new pastime of creating glowing spheres of light. He’d play and chat away with them for hours. Especially at night. We’d put him to bed and thirty minutes later you’d walk by his door, and there would be light coming from around the jambs and he’d be in there chatting away. I didn’t blame him. I’d do the same thing if I could create real imaginary friends with a clap of my hands.
“Then of course Danny came running in and told me what was going on,” Michael continued.
“But they all pull or cause disturbances, right? You’re saying they’re different intensities depending on what’s trying to come over?” Danny asked, still looking down and pounding away on his keyboard.
“Yes,” Ariel confirmed.
“Okay. Then I might have something. I’ve been trying to figure out where Lucifer might choose to rise, thinking we’d want to try and be there when he gets there. So I’ve been looking for anything symbolic—”
“Ah right, symbolic, so we’re headed to Georgia?” All eyes swung to me. I rolled my wrist in a “come on, get with me” motion. Ashlyn was the first with the eye roll, followed closely by Mia.
“What?” Danny asked.
“Devil went down to …” Mia offered in a halfhearted sing-along.
I got four groans and one enthusiastic clap, but that was from Apoc, who also gets excited when he finds a three-day-old Cheerio in his car seat, so yeah. “Fine, let’s hear your plan if you think you have a better one.”
“Actually, I think I do,” Danny said, “I mean, I don’t know, I’ve been working on something for a while now.” He looked up at the angels. “I’ve been working on something kind of like what you’re talking about, only a more techie version of trying to identify what you describe as the pulls on the balance.”
“Interesting. How have you accomplished it?” Ariel asked.
“Well, I started with using my ancestors’ ways of locating demonic activity. They used things like weather patterns, shifts in climates, disturbances in nature to know where to send the Hunter.”
“Pulls on the balance do directly affect those things,” Sammy offered. “And not too far off what it feels like during a pressure change or the energy you feel in the air during a thunderstorm.”
“So you what?” Mia dropped on the bed alongside Danny, taking in his screen. “Created a predictive response model for seismic activities. Nice.” She tapped the screen. “This was tonight?” She tilted her head as she took in the data.
“Yes. And here …” Danny punched a couple of keys.
Mia began nodding in agreement. “Crossed with geographic and topography maps. Bad ass.”
Danny’s native skin tone went a little rosy. I was going to comment because you know that’s what I do, but Mia’s brain was off and running now too, talking about satellite imaging and hijacking a satellite feed something-something.
I yawned. “Wake me when you two get to a point.”
“He’s tracking predictors. Dramatic shifts in atmospheric, environmental and meteorological balances,” Mia joined in. “It’s genius.”
“Exactly,” Danny replied.
“Oh my god, we have two of them,” I said, only to have Ashlyn shoosh me. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t effective. “How do you know it works? How do you know you’re not just looking at some cosmic fart or something?”
Danny smiled. “Because it got us to,” and he nodded to Ashlyn.
I looked at Ashlyn, then back at Danny. “Mississippi?”
“Yep, it was my first test of the program. I’d been tracking all the different data points, and when I got a significant spike I suggested we head to Mississippi.”
“Wait,” I narrowed my eyes. “You said that old gypsy woman at the carnival told you it was written in the cards.”
“Because if I told you my demon-o-meter said so, would you have gone?” Danny asked, already knowing the answer.
“Point. So what did the old gypsy woman really say?”
He smiled. “She told me I would meet a beautiful, dark-haired stranger, with kind eyes, and a sharp mind.”
“Gag me. And I want my twenty bucks back.” I snapped my fingers at him. Ashlyn knocked down my outstretched hand, mid-gimme-gimme motion. “Fine, what is your magic demon-o-meter—we’ll be having a renaming contest, by the way—saying now?”
“Well, I have to do some tweaking and add some filters.” He was already typing away at his keys. “Now that I know about the balance thing it explains some of the wonky readings I was getting. But now …” He hit one last key, studied the data he saw there and smiled.
“Holy shit,” Mia said. “That was last week?”
Danny nodded.
“Tonight?” Mia asked.
Danny nodded again.
“Holy shit,” Mia repeated.
I cleared my throat.
“Sorry,” Danny said, he turned his screen to face us. “Last week’s reading of this area.” There were two relatively flat red and blue lines running across the screen. He did a reach-around, not the fun kind, and swiped once at the screen. “Now, here’s tonight’s readings starting around seven.” A new graph appeared, its lines spiking and dipping like a drunk trying to draw mountains on an Etch A Sketch. He pointed at a peak. “Here’s at seven.” He tapped an even higher point on the graph, “And then eight, right before Conquest arrived. Then while he was here, it was nearly off the chart.” We all took a second to study the graph. “Good news is it’s relatively flat again.”
Ashlyn tapped the blue line that was dipping below the red one. “But not as flat as it was last week. Does that mean there’s still something here or …?” Ashlyn asked.
Danny glanced at our three winged friends and then Apoc, who was using Six as a binky.
“Right. Makes sense,” Ashlyn stated.
“Okay, so how is this going to tell us where or when Lucifer is going to pop up.”
Danny looked at Michael. “How’s your uncle with the ironic symbolisms?”
“I’d say he’s a fan. For a whole century he wore a red skin suit, tail, and horns.”
Danny flipped his computer back to face him, clicked some keys, and then spun it back to show a picture and Wiki page of a town.
“Hell, Michigan?” we chorused.
“You think he’s going to pick Hell to come out of Hell?” I asked, with what I can’t say exuded a whole lot of buy-in to his theory.
“What makes you think he’s choosing Hell?” Ashlyn asked.
Danny leaned over and swiped at the screen. “I’ve been monitoring things across the country and this was Hell last week. Nothing.” He flipped the screen again. “Last couple of days.” The lines were trending up. He swiped again. “And last couple of hours.” The graphs weren’t as active as when Conquest crashed our party, but they were definitely in pre-party mode.
