by Jenny McKane
That, of course, was why Kiku and Asmodeus were persistent with the meditation. And the focusing. And the mindfulness. All of which Sunny detested something fierce.
It made sense now, why she hated it all so much. It was like her entire being—her mind, her ego, her body was fighting the role that the situation was going to require. That her friends were going to require. That saving the world was going to require.
Her mind was distracting her by obsessing over Gideon and thoughts of revenge, over how impossible this entire thing seemed—how doomed to fail they all were.
It didn’t make her hate zazen any less, but at least she understood a bit more why Kiku demanded excellence—it seemed that Sunshine’s mental clarity and focus could be the difference between success and failure. Between surviving the entire thing and certain death.
*****
Five weeks passed since Gideon and the nox fled Norway after destroying the summoning stones. Seiza still hurt like a son of a bitch to sit in after a while, but recently she’d been able to hold it a good five minutes before the tell-tale burning began. Her mind still bounced around like a flag in the wind, but Sunny had gotten better at acknowledging the random thoughts and letting them pass by rather than getting pissed off and frustrated and pulling out of the meditation altogether.
For her part, Kiku took every step that Sunny made and tightened the reigns. Instead of being easier on Sunny, Kiku became even more demanding of excellence and with less tolerance of distraction.
One morning over breakfast, Sunny dipped her rice rolled in a seaweed sheet into a small dish of soy sauce as she watched Kiku eat the pungent natto, or fermented soybeans, that Sunny flat out refused to try.
“Why are you here, Kiku-sama?” she asked, using the formal, respectful title owing to Kiku’s age and role in their student/teacher relationship.
For all her bellyaching and complaining to Asmodeus, Sunny hadn’t found it hard to adopt the deep sense of respect in Japanese and Buddhist culture.
“Nikkou needs me,” she said simply. Which, while not altogether untrue, as much as Sunny hated to admit it, still didn’t answer her question.
“Do you know what we’re trying to do?”
Had Asmodeus explained to the nun what was happening? She didn’t reckon they had access to television or internet much in their lives. What had they been told as to why angels and demons and humans were seeking refuge on their sacred land?
“Save world,” Kiku said as plainly as one might rattle off one’s plans for dinner that night or who they say in the grocery store the day before.
Sunny considered the serene old woman in her billowing robe in front of her.
“Do demons scare you?”
She wondered how someone so at ease in the present moment, who let little distract her from the task before her, would feel about the evil lurking in pockets of the world right now.
“No,” the nun simply replied.
“Why? How can you not be afraid?”
It didn’t make sense to Sunny, who had trouble sleeping at night at the thoughts of what the nox and the other feral demons Camael had running loose in the world were capable of—or what they were already doing while Sunny nursed herself back to health in the middle of the East China sea.
“Why is Nikkou scared? No demon here,” the woman said between slurped bites of stinky soy.
“No,” Sunny pressed. “But someday, maybe.”
“Maybe someday volcano explode,” Kiku said, chopsticks pointed directly at Sunny. “Maybe car break Nikkou leg and not angel. No idea. No scared.”
She let out a soundless laugh at the profound wisdom in such an innocuous statement—no idea, no scared. Kiku was basically telling Sunny that she had no concept of what was to come—so what was there to fear?
Well, according to her bouts with severe anxiety, there was plenty to fear.
But Sunny still hadn’t solved the Armageddon problem or how to extract penance on Gideon’s face in those sleepless hours, so there might just be something to what Kiku said.
Maybe.
“Why did you become a nun?”
It seemed like such an austere life. So formal. Dictated. Dedicated.
“Temple educated girls in the village,” she said after a brief pause, where Sunny wondered if she’d get an answer at all. “Monks and nuns fed us, clothed us, taught to read. Kiku want, too.” She put her hand against her chest at her own name. She’d wanted to serve others. “Nikkou also serve,” Kiku continued. “Serve with clear mind and purpose. Save world.”
Sunny cringed at the save world part, she couldn’t help it.
She could concede that she’d made a lot of headway in recent weeks, pun intended, but being able to hold your mind without intrusive thoughts for an hour was not the same thing as unravelling a plot to pit the world into darkness and servitude that had likely been hatching for hundreds of years before she was even born. It wasn’t the same as stopping an enemy she didn’t even know yet, either.
“Nikkou couldn’t save herself from a hole in the ground with a shovel,” Sunshine muttered under her breath as she rubbed her aching forehead.
Either Kiku didn’t understand her, didn’t hear her, or chose to ignore her, but the nun went back to painstakingly eating tiny bites of her food from the small dish with her chopsticks.
Sunny was done, so she gathered all of the dirty dishes on the table and took them to the small kitchen where she washed and dried them.
Life in the temple was smothering at times, but as the days wore on, she began to see how someone could forgo the trappings of modern existence in exchange for the quiet and rhythm of a life like this.
Not that Sunny had that option anymore. But in small moments where she had nothing but a repetitive action in front of her, she took a deep breath for the first time in a long time and didn’t worry about the end of the world and fire and brimstone.
And it was a nice feeling.
Chapter Three
Before she could utter any more words of protest, Asmodeus signaled to Sunny to speak the summoning words.
“Do it,” he said, more demanding than he’d been before.
Sunny stubbornly pressed her lips together as her mind raced with a million reasons why she shouldn’t be summoning one of the Guardian demons. It was a terrible idea. She wasn’t ready and there wasn’t any task to set them to as long as they were down a general at the moment.
Beleth’s stones had been destroyed not only in Norway, but in Siberia and New Zealand, as well. The stones didn’t have to necessarily be in the general north of the globe, so much as they needed to be in the northern general direction of a given area. For all Sunny knew, there could be summoning stones in the northern neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
There weren’t, obviously, or they might have traveled there already—but the point was the same. The group was on the lookout for a set of surviving summoning stones and as soon as they got wind of some, they’d likely be on the move again.
But until then? Sunny recovered. Sunny trained. Sunny waited.
Boring. Mind-numbing. And maddening, given how seriously angry she was at being an invalid.
Her head had healed for the most part and despite a few annoying headaches now and then, she didn’t seem any worse for the wear. But the longer she stayed in Japan, the more torturous things became when Kiku and Asmodeus dreamed up more creative “training” exercises.
And when she’d done her best to accommodate those and act like the leader she knew Asmodeus was grooming her to be, he came up with even more asinine ideas to push the limits of her mortality.
Like conjuring one of the Guardians to help her with a little training.
“You’re going to have to face them and introduce yourself sooner or later,” he pushed. “You might as well use this down time to get comfortable with conjuring them and not overreacting when they do appear. You practically looked ready to wet your pants when you summoned them the first time.”
She scowled at the comment, not mentioning that she, in fact, felt like peeing her pants each time a new Guardian demon appeared in the triangle laid out in salt. They were terrifyingly powerful creatures and she could feel their power rippling off them as soon as they were present—even though she was protected from them because she wore the ring her ancestor, King Solomon, had worn to enslave the 72 Guardians.
Much of what Asmodeus was saying was true—much of everything he said was true, but it was also a hard pill to swallow sometimes. Most times, actually.
In weaker moments, when she wasn’t expected to hold herself perfectly still in blank mind during zazen, she sometimes played a torturous little game of what if.
What if she’d never answered the summons that Michael had sent her during her first semester of community college?
What if she’d never met Gideon at all?
What if she’d never gone to Hell and left Gideon there to rot?
What if she’d never summoned Asmodeus and broken the first seal of the apocalypse on accident?
That one weighed heavily on her a lot. Despite the fact that she wasn’t raising a troop of horsemen to scourge the Earth, she’d broken a seal in the balance of things and started events in motion that would pit one side against the other—and for what it was worth, she was technically raising four Guardian demon generals to fight for her.
What if she’d never started down the road at all? Would Death have had a harder time seeing his goals through to the end? Had Sunny just made it all easier for him?
It was a bitter pill to swallow, that much was certain, so she tried to shake the thoughts as soon as they got too out of control before things got really depressing.
“Summon him.”
Asmodeus’ words cut through her reverie and she shot him a nasty look.
But she’d stalled too long already, so without much fanfare and before she could talk herself out of it, she summoned Agares, the Guardian of the West. The first general she’d summoned and convinced to help her.
Aperio. Aperio. Apperai. Agarei.
She felt the tug of magic at her core before she sensed the old demon had arrived. They had a connection now, she and the Guardians, and once they were able to summon and count Beleth into their numbers, the bond between Asmodeus, Sunny, and the four generals would be strong and nearly unbreakable during their quest to stop the machinations of Death.
The first two times she’d seen Agares, when she summoned him initially and when he came to the eastern summoning stones to help her fight off Tesah and Eron, he’d been wearing a toga and not much else. His white, stringy hair had been wild and unkempt, and he had a bushy white beard that went down to his chest.
This time, however, Sunny swore she was staring at the Most Interesting Man in the World, straight out of the Mexican beer commercials that had been so popular a couple years ago.
Agares, with his long hair braided down his back, wore tactical forest green military-style pants, a khaki t-shirt, and a forest green tactical vest. His beard had been clipped to a goatee and he looked like he’d gotten a tan.
Where the hell had he been in recent weeks?
Asmodeus asked him as much.
“Exploring,” was Agares’ reply, as he ran his eyes over Sunny, assessing the damage he’d no doubt heard about. He spoke to her next. “You look somewhat recovered. Learn anything, Solomon?”
She wasn’t sure Agares knew that she had a name of her own. It didn’t matter. Once they’d completed their task to stop Death (she probably should say if they completed that task), the Guardians would be free from the prison they’d been in ever since Asmodeus turned on King Solomon 3,000 years ago and caused his death. All 72 Guardians had been punished, whether they were in on the mutiny or not.
Sunny had never asked who had been in on it and who hadn’t. It didn’t matter to her at this point, as long as they were helping her now.
“Love hurts?” she quipped, an answer to his rhetorical question.
“Precisely,” Agares nodded approvingly. “Seems you and Baal are both in need of constant reminders that love serves no purpose whatsoever. Procreation does. Love doesn’t.”
He had his hands clasped behind his back as he went on about the failings of not only monogamy, but of all range of human emotions as well.
“Useless things, emotions,” he went on like a crazy old grumpy man who hadn’t realized his grandkids had tuned him out.
For all intents and purposes, Asmodeus had tuned him out and was sneaking surreptitious glances at his cellphone while the old demon prattled on.
“Nearly as useless as honor and awards that humans bestow on one another.”
Of course.
That was one of the more confusing aspects of Agares’ duties—he was one of the keepers of wisdom in the world (there were wisdom keepers in the demonic, human, and angelic realms) but he was also known as the destroyer of worldly honors.
In the grimoire, it hadn’t made sense to Sunny. What did that even mean?
Even Asmodeus shrugged, as it hadn’t been one of the duties that he’d observed much of in his short time with Agares.
“Tell me about that,” Sunny prodded, curious about what exactly he destroyed. “I’ve read that you destroy worldly and spiritual honors. Why? What does it mean?”
If she thought Agares would be cagey, she was wrong. He seemed thrilled for the opportunity to talk about his charges and how he carried them out.
“Men, demons, and angels get clouded when they’re given too many unearned accolades,” he began. “Even worse? Earned accolades. People really begin to believe all that is trumpeted about them when they’re earned.”
“So, you put a stop to what? The accolades? How does that even work?”
He had a bit of an evil grin on his face as he considered her questions.
“I orchestrate falls when necessary.”
“When are these falls necessary?”
“When the hype and the power associated with the honors threatens the balance in the world,” he said. “When a world leader gets too far gone to be reigned back in. When a demon general gets too much fire power to feel beholden to orders. When an angel believes they are destined by the powers that be to hold judgement over every living creature, angelic or not.”
Interesting.
“How do you make them fall?”
Agares motioned for Sunny to follow him as they walked around the tiny garden.
“I’m a walker and a talker, if you don’t mind, Solomon,” he offered as an explanation. “I don’t cause angels to Fall, with a capital F. I set up chain reactions of events that will strip a military general of his rank, that will have a senate giving its prime minister a no-confidence vote, that will have a Seraphim yanked back to the angelic realm to answer for his crimes. I sow seeds of discontent to do the work for me.”
Sunny looked at the outfit he was wearing and the change he’d undertaken since she had last seen him.
“Been sowing many seeds lately, Agares?” She was smiling when she asked it and to her surprise, Agares playfully shrugged.
“What I do in my off time, Solomon, belongs to me,” he answered coyly, which was odd coming from a white haired, white bearded demon. “But I will say this—it feels grand to be back doing what I love.”
Sunny couldn’t help but wonder if the work Agares did helped or hindered what they were about to set out to do. Was he sowing discontent in areas that helped people or were innocents harmed in the toppling of regimes?
And another thing—could his abilities come in handy with the work they had ahead of them? What sort of use could she envision for Agares’ duties when it came to Camael and Gideon?
If her hunches were right, Agares could prove to be a valuable tool in Sunny’s own personal quest for revenge.
The old demon was still talking when Sunny’s attention returned to the present conversation.
“Did Asmodeus tell you another of my hidden talents?”
Sunny he
ld her breath and shook her head no. Damn. What could he possible say? What on earth sort of power was he going on about now?
Clenching her hands, she braced herself as Agares flashed her a wide, toothy grin.
“I am a bit of a bard,” he boasted, sticking his barrel chest out proudly.
Sunny paused a moment, letting the words catch up.
“A…bard?” As in story teller and poet? She knew Agares liked to talk, but he told stories, too? No wonder Asmodeus had quickly retreated once she had summoned Agares. He had no intention of listening to the old windbag relive the glory days.
“Back in the first century, I found myself torn between two of my most sacred duties…”
He began talking as he walked in wide circles around the garden and Sunny found herself powerless to interject herself into his ramblings as he spoke. She simply had to listen to his story and follow him around until he was finished.
Sunny stole a glance back in the direction of the temple, swearing revenge on Asmodeus when she made it through the afternoon. She was going to find a way to make the archdemon pay for this little prank.
Chapter Four
Eli
Eli wasn’t sure exactly what he and Gabriel expected to find as they rolled into the outskirts of Vancouver.
The archangel’s mountain home, the very one where they’d prepared Sunny for her jaunt to Hell, had been left alone. Not only was it hours from civilization, there was a small band of Seraphim that guarded it on Gabriel’s behalf. Eli smirked. The higher order of Angels didn’t do it out of some sort of familial duty—they did it because Gabriel was the Herald.
And whether or not they looked down their celestial noses at archangels, those rabble and human-loving scum that dirtied their hands by interacting with people, they could not allow the Herald to be hurt or his property to fall into the wrong hands. It’d be easy to track the Herald with the right tools.
Gabriel, for his part, still largely ignored that part of his identity, Gabriel mused.
