Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  My mom brushed the back of her hand against my cheek and I shuddered at the coldness of her skin.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I should’ve done more to try to help you.”

  “No,” she said softly. Sadly.

  I gently gripped her cold flabby arms, met her eyes. “I could have fixed you. I should have taken Typhon’s deal …”

  “Hush,” my mom said, barely above a whisper, and her eyes fluttered shut. A moment later, her eyelids quavered back open, wrenching my heart, opening the valves at the corners of my eyes. “It serves no good to doubt yourself. Act as you always have. With defiance. Stand behind your word and your actions. It will serve you well.”

  Her eyes slid closed again and she drew in a raspy breath. “Theo, you’ve been paying for me to live in the nicest long-term care facility in New York. Services that couldn’t be offered in Greece.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  My mom’s eyes now looked dried out, weary. She reached up with the speed of a tortoise and touched my hair, her impossibly cold fingertips brushing my neck. Smiling like a kindly decrepit woman from a story tale, she said, “I like what you’ve done to your hair.”

  I clasped my hand over my mom’s which was still intwined in my hair. I smiled. Couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t me; it was Simon.”

  Her dry eyes widened half an inch. “You finally found yourself a boyfriend?”

  “I uh, it’s not like that. I mean, there is a guy—well, we’re uh, separated at the moment.”

  “Oh?” The concern in my mother’s eyes pierced my heart like a pincushion.

  “It’s not like that. I mean, he’s like a different person now. We’re working through it. He’ll get better.”

  “You care about him?” she asked, gripping my hand.

  I swallowed. “I do. Yeah. I do.”

  “Then tell him.” She paused. “Love is important. So is …” Her eyes closed. I waited for them to open but they didn’t. I placed my free hand on her shoulder and her eyelids quivered open again. “What was I saying?”

  My breath caught in my throat.

  She pulled away her hand, jerkily, studying it first, and then my face. “I feel like I should know you …”

  I swallowed again. Nearly choked as I eased her hand back to her chest, clutching it tight.

  “You remember me,” I said soothingly.

  A moment later, recognition decorated her face. “Yes. You’re that nice nurse that takes such good care of me. Tucks me in …”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “The one who hums the nursery rhymes I once knew. So long ago, that was. My angel. My honey …”

  My mother’s eyelids eased shut and this time I took my hand from hers and hid my face. Only for a moment.

  I rounded on Edward like a wraith. “What is happening to her? What is going on?”

  He raised his hands as if his hands were tied like the attendant at a funeral home.

  “Life,” he said simply.

  I shook my head. “The exact opposite. She’s dying!”

  Edward took a breath. “Two sides of the same coin, the unending cycle. The cosmic balance.”

  I jabbed a finger at him. “Oh I’ll show you cosmic balance—”

  There was a tug at my sleeve.

  A cold wrinkly hand settled over my wrist. “There you are, my dear, Theo. My b-b-baklava. My sweet child. I will always … l-l-love you. My … d-d-dear … my dear … my child.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom! I’m so sorry!” I turned to Edward who stood impassive, his hands thrust into his pockets. “Do something! Do something, damnit!”

  A sudden shrill beeping sounded, muffled in the passageway beyond the doorway. Even so, its harsh pitch stung my ears from all angles.

  “What is that?” I asked, having heard it frequently enough in hospitals and hospices—always from other rooms though—to know it for what it was: the flatline of a heart monitor.

  I turned back to my mom. Her face looked apologetic. She seemed to slip further away from me, by inches at first, and then by yards, the glow of the doorframe masking her features one by one.

  “You can’t leave me,” I said. “I can’t … I’m so alone.”

  Edward appeared at my side, grim as a reaper. “Theo. It’s time to say goodbye.”

  I turned on him, scratched at his face with my nails which passed right through him like a hologram.

  “No! I’m not ready. I just need a little more time with her is all. A little more time.” I stretched out toward my mom. She reached back and we clasped hands as the doorway slowly tore her from me.

  “Be grateful for the time you have,” Edward chided. “You have been granted more time than most ever get.”

  “Cut the crap you sparkly vampire! Give me more time with my mother!”

  “I cannot do that.”

  I wouldn’t hear it. “You just did.”

  “At great expense to my life.” Edward placed a hand like cold marble on my shoulder. “I do not make the cosmic rules. You cannot comprehend how far I had to bend them just to allow your dead soul here, not to mention your mom’s living soul.”

  “Then don’t bend the rules—break them! I don’t want her soul to disappear. Not when it can come here.”

  Edward sighed, irritably. “Are you not listening? This is a temporary haven for the Shades of Others. It is not designed for human souls—”

  “Oh,” I said, raising my voice. “So you expect me to give Others a place to go when they die while letting human souls … die or go nowhere or whatever?”

  Edward didn’t say anything; I wished he would.

  Before me, my mother still receded through the doorway, about to slip from my grasp.

  “There’s so much we have to talk about!” I all but screamed in Edward’s face.

  Edward said, “You can’t.”

  “You’re wrong!” I pushed past Edward and toward my mom but whatever force was pulling her back, ripped her fingertips from my grasp. I pressed after her.

  “Theo …” my mom’s words trailed back to me through the light. I could barely see her as it engulfed her.

  “Yes, mother,” I called out to her.

  “I … love … you …”

  “I …”

  She was almost gone now, her features traced by indistinct lines.

  I stepped forward but Edward held me in place. He gave me a look that said I couldn’t follow my mother.

  I socked him across the jaw and stepped into the doorframe. When my mom’s face came into view she looked scared—no, she looked terrified.

  “Mom! Mom! I’m here!”

  “Oh, honey. You can’t come with me.”

  The shrill beeping grew louder. My mom swallowed and bit back a tear. “Theo, promise me something?”

  “Yes, anything!” As fast as I was advancing through the fog, the farther the gap between my mom and me grew. It pained me to know that I wouldn’t be able to catch up to her, to save her from whatever ordeal lay immediately before her. “Yes,” I said. “Anything!”

  “Your father … make peace with your father …” she said and whispered what I could have sworn was, “… Wayfinder …” and then she vanished into the light.

  Something jerked at my wrist, and I fell backward out of the doorway just as it sealed shut and disappeared. Edward, standing above me, wiped sweat from his forehead.

  I picked myself up and evenly met his gaze. “She’s about to die, isn’t she?”

  Edward nodded.

  I wiped a tear from my eye. “But as long as I stay here. In this InBetween, time on earth will stay frozen and she’ll stay alive?”

  “Trapped just before her moment of death,” Edward said. “Hardly what I’d consider ‘alive.’ ”

  “I don’t want to lose her. Keep her here. I think you have the power.”

  Edward’s lips tightened. “I don’t think you understand. A human soul in this place for too long wil
l cause Time itself to break. Ancient mechanisms will cease. The cosmic balance!” He stared coldly into my eyes. “The entire world—held at a standstill—will essentially die.”

  Kameno tost! This was all beyond me. But if it was true …

  I clenched my fists. “Why did you even bring her back to begin with? To taunt me with what I couldn’t have?”

  He shook his head. “As a gift.”

  A gift. I worked the word over my tongue. Sure, words couldn’t express my joy at being able to have a cognizant conversation with my mother for the first time in years. But at the same time it felt like a low blow.

  “So if I return to my body and … do your mission or whatever, I’ll unfreeze the world, and my mom will die? Essentially I’ll be killing her.”

  “You won’t kill her,” Edward said.

  I gave a ragged sigh. “Yeah, the natural order, cosmic balance, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean.”

  “Theo, believe me. I acted with the best of intentions. Confined to Typhon’s lab right now, you will not be able to hold your mother’s hand as she dies. I gave you what I deemed as something better: a conversation with her, soul-to-soul. Closure—a luxury many are not afforded in the time of a loved one’s death.”

  I turned away from Edward and ran a hand through my messy hair. He was right.

  Didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “Thanks. I … appreciate it.” I took a breath, half-expecting Edward to wrap a consoling arm around my shoulder. He just stood off to the side, observing.

  I lowered myself to the floor for a few moments, considering everything that had happened since I’d died and come to the InBetween. The glimpses of Typhon’s lab when I had one foot in both realms. The conversation with my mother …

  Glancing up at him, I said, “What is it you want me to do?”

  “My Mission, If I Choose To Accept …”

  “So, grab the sundial pendant in Typhon’s pocket? That’s all?” I asked. The fox creature moseyed up to me and brushed against my leg. Other mythical creatures and beings gazed curiously at me from the marketplace.

  Edward nodded. “I don’t expect it to be easy, but with the Brotherhood of Zeus infiltrating Typhon’s Arena as we speak, I trust you’ll be able to find an opening.”

  “Yeah, nothing to it,” I said, picking up the Other and cradling it like a baby. “What could go wrong?”

  “Well,” Edward said, “you’ll have less strength and energy when you are Re-Lifed. Essentially, your body will be less reactive.”

  “Hold on. ‘Less reactive?’ You mean, like I’ll be running at 50% capacity or something?”

  Edward fudged.

  I tightened my eyes. “What? 25%?”

  He raised a hand. “Now it won’t last forever. Your body will grow back to its normal strength—in time. But you’ve got to remember—you just died. The main thing is that you’ll have your soul. Had I not burned time to catch it in the InBetween … your body would awake soulless when Re-Lifed. Typhon’s resurrection process is not intended for humans.”

  “Gee thanks,” I said.

  “Also, you weren’t placed into a regeneration vat. That nasty bruise around your neck won’t be going away anytime soon.”

  I sighed. “I guess I’ll be wearing turtleneck sweaters for a while. Any more bad news for me?”

  “Bad is a relative term. You can choose how you see the glass—”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I don’t need the glass half-full, half-empty spiel. Anything else I need to know before you send me back to my body?”

  In my arms, the fox creature’s head jerked robotically.

  “Just the item. You must retrieve it from Typhon.”

  “What about the prophesy I’m involved in? Killing Typhon or whatever?”

  Edward shook his head. “I have memorized many prophesies concerning Earth and humans. There was a time when oracles spat them out like, ahh, candy, I believe the human phrase goes.”

  “Did they always come true?”

  “Hah. Hardly. With the sheer number of prophesies proclaimed by the gods, a few were bound to come true. But prophesies are just words; if left alone, they hold no weight. In the old days, world events and influential human figures had to be … guided by the hands of the gods. Sometimes they forgot their prophesies or changed their minds when they drank too much Ambrosia. Now that the gods are gone, well … I believe we choose our own destinies.”

  Made sense. It wasn’t like humankind had ever found an instruction manual concerning how ancient prophesies worked. Before the GrandExodus, many people thought the gods were just figments of their imagination.

  Edward raised his hands. “Any more questions?”

  “Yeah. Who are you really?” When Edward fidgeted, I said, “It’s the least you can tell me.”

  Edward sighed and raised both hands. The ancient Greek marketplace shimmered; a moment later, cold earth replaced the cobblestone floor, spindly trees the crumbling pillars and buildings, and a fat moon peeked down at me through wispy cloud cover. Owls hooted. Coyotes barked.

  “The Jersey Pine Barrens?” I said with a shiver.

  Edward nodded.

  “I’ll be GoneGodDamned. You’re what was watching me through the woods. The Jersey Devil.”

  Edward smirked. “One of the many names attributed to me. But since I landed there after the GrandExodus, I made it my home. The title fit, so I took that too.”

  I laughed. “So what’s your real name?”

  “It would not make sense in your language. I am the 13th illegitimate son of the Devil.”

  I swallowed. “Talk about burying the lead. I guess I really am making a deal with the devil …”

  “I am not doing this for personal gain and I will never ‘use you.’ In retrieving the pendant you shall be helping Others for all generations to come until we come up with a more permanent solution.”

  I glanced down at the fox creature’s erratic jerky motions.

  “Think of your familiars,” Edward said.

  I stood straight up. “I’m not going back on my word. Send me back. I’ll find a way to get it done.”

  Edward smiled shyly. “I knew I found a worthy champion.”

  I laughed. “You got a backup champion in mind if I fail?”

  “No.”

  I laughed again. “No pressure, right?”

  “Pressure creates pearls,” Edward said.

  I shook my head. “Just send me back.”

  “Very well. Hold on. It might be … unpleasant.”

  Unpleasant? But before I could dwell on it, I blinked and then I was in Typhon’s lab.

  For a moment, I thought my soul had stuck the landing—then I slipped back out of my body. But for an instant, I’d been back in control of my body, and I’d managed to lift a finger and stretch my lips into a tight smile at my familiars.

  Simon’s eyes shot wide. “She’s here! She’s back! Theo!”

  Then my soul was back in its hover-state. Fists and gunstocks beat against metal doors incessantly. I glanced about, suspended like a cat burglar near the center of the room above my body. Several of the metal doors surrounding the place shuddered with each impact, moments from caving in. Typhon and Echidna stood a few feet away from me, Echidna with her hand on Typhon’s shoulder.

  “What we gonna do, Boss?” Dickie Man shouted as he gathered gun magazines from the morgue-like slide out tray. “We don’t move soon, this place gonna be our tomb.” The dried blood on his face made him look like a harried sidekick to the main character from an old war film.

  “I …” Typhon said.

  Echidna’s face lit up. “The tunnels leading down to the Project!”

  Project?

  Typhon chewed over the idea. Then he sighed. “That way could prove to be our tomb as well. The tunnels aren’t yet complete.” He turned to the Minotaur. “Is that not so?”

  The Minotaur dropped his head. “You are CORRECT, sir. But we are so CLOSE. I can FEEL it.” Hi
s enormous twin snout holes snorted as he turned quickly to Orion.

  Typhon pursed his lips in thought. “We have the Wayfinder now. Perhaps … Yes, yes. It can work. It will work. We just need to hold these Zeus minions off long enough to buy time for our escape.” He turned to Dickie Man who now had more gun magazines and ammo belts strapped across his chest than Rambo.

  Dickie Man nodded. “Aye. The troops and I will hold em off till you’re safely away. Then we’ll follow and collapse the passageway … or head to the surface. They’re gonna hit us hard. We might not get to—”

  An explosion rocked the room like an earthquake. C-4 or Semtex or some other plastic explosive, I knew from my military days. There was a flash of sparks and bright lights and one of the metal doors to the cavernous, circular room blasted inward like the “infiltration” scene of any good heist or action movie. Red flames billowed inward into the lab and shadowy figures darted through the door as the flames died out.

  Gunfire erupted. Men shouted. There were battle cries, screams, pops and thuds.

  “Theo! Theo! Get up!” Simon was saying, standing on my collar just off to my side.

  But I couldn’t sit up because I was still in soul form.

  Had something gone wrong? Edward had sent me back to earth, hadn’t he? We were past the playing-games stage of our arrangement—why would he send me back like this? I was about to be shot or skewered by the Zeus gang—Sure, I was technically still in their employ, but I doubted they’d recognize me in the unfolding carnage …

  “Yeah, Theo, this is no time to be sleeping in,” Garfunkel said, tugging at my shoulder sleeve. “Wake back up. Don’t make us leave you …”

  Simon tugged at my hair.

  Ow! I said but they couldn’t hear my soul. If I didn’t move my body soon, my soul would have nowhere to go.

  A shadow fell over me and I couldn’t tell if it was a Zeus assassin or one of Typhon’s crew. I managed to swing my soul-eyes up at him like a porter hefting a heavy load, at a hooded figure with a sky blue bandana fluttering from his bare bicep.

  “Long live Zeus!” the man said in a blood rage, without checking to see who I was. With both hands tight around the hilt, he lifted a ceremonial dagger high above his head …