Winter Wishes

by Vivian Arend, Vivi Andrews

  Above her, light poured out of the windows behind the alabaster cross and cast a soft glow over the courtyard. Sasha moved close to the side of the building where the crowds seemed thinner, slipping between the wall and the palm trees lining it. She’d never felt the urge to stand in line for four hours just for the privilege of hearing someone with wings tell the story of the Nativity, but there were angel and Archangel masses in every church large enough to attract them tonight.

  Maybe that was why there were no angels available to keep innocent mortals from being abducted by demons. They were all too busy being fawned over by adoring congregations.

  The bronze doors swung open and the distant strains of “Silent Night” filtered out over the courtyard. A cheer rippled through the mob as it surged forward, rushing the doors like Black Friday shoppers.

  Sasha didn’t know how to get to the catacombs beneath the cathedral, but getting inside was a good first step. She flung herself into the crowd, elbows out as a buffer, and rode the tide of people into the cathedral.

  The skyscraper ceilings and creamy pale stone walls made the sanctuary seem echoingly peaceful, in spite of the carnival excitement of the crowd as they scurried up the aisles.

  Sasha detached herself from the throng rushing toward the pews and scanned the sanctuary, looking for signs of stairs. She needed to find a way down to the crypts before the ushers realized she’d broken away from the herd. She hardly expected a large flashy sign pointing toward the entrance to Hell—it might ruin the happy Christmas buzz of the holiday faithful—but there had to be stairs somewhere.

  Sasha moved toward the altar along the edge of the sanctuary, scanning the nooks and alcoves for stairs. Worshippers poured eagerly into the pews as the organist segued into “Away in a Manger.” The atmosphere was an odd combination of festive and reverent—the religious equivalent of a boy band concert. The pious bounced in their chairs, whispering excitedly to one another and pointing toward the nave.

  Curious to see which Arch had inspired such levels of giddy adoration, Sasha stepped out from behind a pillar and looked toward the altar. Jaded though she was, and in spite of her recent less-than-ideal encounter with an angel, Sasha’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. Even in the muted light from the candles, he seemed to glow. Or maybe he really was glowing. Sasha had heard of angel light, but cameras could never capture it so she’d always just thought it was a product of the overactive imaginations of angelophiles.

  He stood with his back to the congregation, wings partially spread. They seemed white at first, but the longer she looked, the more colors she saw sparkling inside the white. Her memory called up an old physics lesson a lighting tech had given her backstage when her mother was going through her Broadway phase. Sitting on the catwalks with their feet dangling down over the stage three stories below, he’d shown her how to slide colored gels in front of the lights to cast pools of richly saturated color onto the actors, mixing them together until the combination of all the colored lights created white light. “Light controls the show, Sasha-girl,” he’d bragged, showing her how the different lights could change the colors of the costumes, make the actors appear sickly or tan and make the theatre feel hushed or noisy without a sound.

  Then her mother had stepped onto stage and the techie had sighed. “Now angels are different, Sasha-girl.” He’d laughed softly, gazing down at her mother with the same hopeless adoration she’d grown up seeing on every face. “Angels are made of light.”

  The angel in her kitchen hadn’t been terribly light, but the Arch was a different story. White feathers were supposed to be the absence of pigment, but instead his wings were like white light—the combination of all colors. Shining even in the dim, reverential candlelight.

  No wonder the sight of a single angel was rumored to have brought mankind out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. The heavenly host were magnificent, even when all she could see were partially furled wings, blond curls more commonly seen on cherubs and a slice of his back.

  That blond head tipped to the side, as if he was listening to a voice only he could hear—and for all she knew, he was. The angels always implied God spoke to them, never giving any details on the whens and hows. The white-light wings flared then folded more tightly to his body. He turned, deliberate and unhurried—I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille—and just as his profile came into view, a ray of light bounced off the pipe organ and illuminated his angelic face. A sigh traveled through the audience.

  Uriel. The Archangel of Transformation and yearly contender for People magazine’s Sexiest Angel title, capable of simultaneously inspiring religious awe and screaming fangirl crushes.

  And he was looking straight at her.

  Sasha swallowed, incapable of breaking eye contact even from thirty yards away. His features were boyish, but those eyes. She had a sudden sympathy for the ants on a sidewalk. Uriel’s depthless silver stare made her feel small and insignificant, a microscopic fleck on the span of history in which he was a warrior prince, commanding empires and tipping the scales in great battles. He was Apollo, riding a golden chariot though the sky and she was nothing compared to the scope of his existence.

  Then his lips quirked up on one side and Uriel, Angel of Presence, fourth of God’s seven lieutenants, winked at her.

  Sasha went preternaturally still.

  He knew. About Jay’s abduction, her quest, the portable arsenal she had strapped to her body beneath the worn red leather of her jacket, all of it.

  Irritation rushed through her, breaking her awed trance. Of course he knew. He was an angel. The bastard probably had a hand in selecting her as the angelic whipping girl of the night.

  The entire heavenly host were on her shit list at the moment, but Sasha didn’t think storming up to the altar and cursing out Uriel would be terribly effective. She had a mission and no time to waste on holier-than-thou assholes.

  Uriel’s smile turned biting, as if he could hear her thoughts. Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus, she hoped he couldn’t hear her thoughts. His wings snapped open like a weapon being drawn and the congregation gasped in appreciation. It would have been even more awe-inspiring if his wingspan hadn’t been crooked.

  It seemed so unangelic to be anything but perfect, Sasha was surprised he would unfurl his wings completely if they were lopsided. Then she realized it wasn’t a deformity in the wing, but the way he was holding it. He’d twisted one wing to angle downward.

  Pointing awkwardly toward a sign for the mausoleum at the back of the church and a staircase heading down. The crypts.

  Trust an angel to make giving directions into a spectacle.

  Sasha nodded her thanks—hoping she didn’t look half as bitterly ungrateful as she felt—and cut across the sanctuary to the stairs.

  The mausoleum didn’t look like the spooky crypt she’d envisioned. A pair of guardian angel etchings flanked the doors. Even with no light coming through the stained-glass windows, it was bright, airy and spacious, with the same clean geometric lines as the rest of the cathedral. It didn’t feel like a tomb. And there was no sign of Hell’s gatekeeper.

  Sasha pulled the invitation from her pocket and reread it. The catacombs. Not the mausoleum. Could there be another crypt beneath this one? There were no stairs here. Studying the parchment, she noticed a watermark of the numbers 140 like a mirage beneath the script. She angled it for a better look, making out the shape of a falcon, holding a key in its talons and with the name John in a banner across its breast.

  Great. John. Because there was bound to be only one John buried here.

  She wandered along the corridor and scanned the names listed on the crypts, pausing for a moment when she saw Gregory Peck’s final resting place. The burial couches were numbered, but the numbering skipped from 135 to 141. Frustrated, Sasha tracked back toward the front of the mausoleum and stepped into a nearby alcove, searching for the missing couches. She yanked on the double doors leading off the alcove, but they were locked tight. Then the
stained-glass window caught her eye. At its center was a crest with a winged lion standing on a banner with the name St. Mark scrolled on it.

  Not a dead guy named John. Saint John.

  Sasha moved quickly through the side chapels, searching for the bird with the key and hoping Uriel hadn’t pointed her in the wrong direction just to be an ornery prick.

  She almost missed the St. John alcove. Shooting off another hidden nook, it wasn’t visible from the main corridor. The stained glass was a perfect replica of the watermark, but when she looked at the invitation to confirm, the picture had changed, now reading Geryon.

  Sasha tested the two sets of double doors leading off the alcove. The first didn’t budge, but the second swung open easily, revealing a small private crypt. To the right of the door, three burial couches were stacked on top of one another in the wall and an etching on the stone identified it as plot 140. Only the middle couch appeared to be occupied, the inscription reading Geryon Smith, but the dates for birth and death couldn’t be right. They were exactly one hundred years apart—but the date of death wouldn’t occur for another ten years.

  Sasha didn’t want to touch the tomb. She’d just as soon leave the pillaging of gravesites to Indiana Jones, but if this was the only way to get to Jay…

  She reached out and tentatively tapped the engraved name. Nothing happened. Sasha licked her lips nervously. “I sure hope you’re not decomposing in there, Geryon,” she muttered before giving the tomb a shove.

  It didn’t creak and groan and reveal a hidden staircase like action movies had conditioned her to expect. The wall just vanished, taking the entire room with it.

  Chapter Five

  The Blurry Lines Between Heaven, Hell & Hollywood

  Sasha wasn’t in a crisp, gleaming white crypt anymore.

  “What the he—” She stopped herself before referencing Hell, uncertain what the protocol was for swearing in the Underworld. “Hello?” Her voice echoed as if she were on a cavernous sound stage, but the dim, torch-lit room she was in was small, barely bigger than Saint John’s alcove. Sasha spun three hundred and sixty degrees, trying to get her bearings.

  There were no doors, no windows, just a seamless drywall box, but somehow she had been transported here without moving an inch. In theory, that meant she could get out again. Unless the entire quest was a trap. But why would the angels go to such trouble to trap her here? It didn’t make sense. This had to be the entrance.

  Or some kind of waiting room. The only furnishings were a high-backed chair, a freestanding lamp and a coffee table stocked with back issues of Us Weekly and Hello! magazine.

  “Great. The waiting room of Hell. So where’s the damn receptionist?”

  A high, chattering giggle echoed behind her.

  Sasha whipped around, her hand going to the Desert Eagle on her right hip.

  A little man crouched in the shadows.

  “You weren’t there a second ago.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Wasn’t I?” He giggled again, the sound skittering around the room like a bird fluttering off the walls.

  “Geryon?”

  “Please, call me Gerry.” He stepped into the light from the lamp and Sasha realized what she’d thought was a crouch was his natural height. He couldn’t be more than four-feet tall, but his shoulders were those of a much larger man, broad and heavy. He wore snug black leather pants and a flowing pirate shirt hung open midway down his chest. He had a thin, greased moustache—the kind that hadn’t been popular since the twenties—and when he smiled his face was eerily familiar, though Sasha was sure she had never seen him before. She would have remembered the horns. Not to mention the solid red complexion.

  Nubby horns the size of a thimble ringed his head like a crown, poking out of his oil-slicked black hair, and his skin was the ruddy color of red clay.

  He looked classically demonic, but she’d envisioned the gatekeeper as bigger, more imposing. Maybe breathing fire or with razor-sharp teeth. Not as a chittering Oompa-Loompa with a pirate fetish.

  “You’re the gatekeeper?”

  “Mmm,” Gerry mumbled vaguely as he circled her, peering up into her face. “So you’re the one dating Satan’s stepson, eh? I thought you’d be taller.”

  “Sorry, you’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Sasha said, beginning to feel like that was all she ever said. “I don’t know Satan or his stepson.” She flashed the invitation. “An angel sent me. I need to get into Hell.”

  And with those words she officially surpassed her daily quota of things she’d expected never to say.

  Gerry beamed at her and scuttled back to perch on a stool she would swear hadn’t been there a minute ago. He crossed his legs and laced his fingers over one knee. “Complicated business, angelic quests. They never tell you everything you think they’re telling you.”

  “I hear you on that one. They didn’t tell me shit.”

  Gerry giggled, and again the sound seemed to travel around the room without him. “I like you, Christian. You’re funny. I can see why he chose you.”

  “I wasn’t aware a sense of humor was a criterion for being picked on by angels.” And she certainly hadn’t been trying to be funny. She waved the invitation again. “You’re the gatekeeper, right? I give you this and you let me in?”

  “Well—” Gerry swung his top leg, rocking on the stool, “—there is the small matter of the toll.”

  “Of course.” There was always a price. “And the toll is…?”

  “That’s a nice jacket.”

  “I don’t really think it’s your color,” Sasha retorted, already emptying the pockets of artillery and stripping the brick-red leather from her shoulders. She flung it at him and he caught it deftly, plucking at the seams with sharp little nails and humming happily.

  “Lovely workmanship. Thank you, Christian. I shall treasure it always.” He swung the jacket around his shoulders like a cape, the hem brushing the floor. “Now about your toll.”

  She wedged her Taser into her front jeans pocket, adjusting it so it didn’t bump the angelic .44 Magnum on her hip. “The jacket is my toll.”

  “Is it? Did I agree to that?” Gerry’s giggle roamed the room again. “Christian, Christian. You will never make it in Hell if that is how you make deals with devils. Giving me gifts before we agree to a price? You give me all the power in the negotiation.” He shook his head dolefully. “I like you, but the next demon may not be so generous.”

  So generous as to steal her favorite jacket. Damned Oompa-Loompa. “How does one make deals with devils?”

  “Very carefully.” He smiled viciously. “Angels, humans, you’re so direct. A demon never comes at a deal head-on. You cannot reveal what you really want. Exposing your desire makes you weak and dealing with demons is all about strength, getting everything while giving nothing. You give a compliment, offer something you have no intention of giving until your opponent reveals what they truly desire. Then you have the power, see? Angels have rules and brute force. We have strategy and finesse.”

  There was pride in his voice and Sasha was struck by the realization that she was talking to a real, live demon. It was a symptom of how insane her night had been that it had taken her this long before that whammy hit. She had never even seen a demon on television before. They were hermitlike with their privacy. And now, here she was, getting a crash course on demon negotiations from a devil himself.

  A thousand questions leapt into her mind—Are demons really evil? Why would they bother tempting man? Do they feel happiness? Joy? Love?—but she didn’t have time to interrogate Gerry. Jay had been in Hell for nearly two hours already. She had no idea what was happening to him and the longer she delayed, the more a gnawing sense of worry ate away at her insides.

  She needed to negotiate her entrance into the Underworld. Quickly.

  Give a compliment… “That’s a nice moustache.”

  Gerry preened, stroking the greasy curl on his upper lip. “You like it? My glamour was locked
when I was imprisoned here, so I can’t change it, but I think it suits me. Don’t you?”

  “Definitely. It’s you.”

  “Douglas Fairbanks had one just like it, you know.”

  With those words, Sasha abruptly realized who Gerry reminded her of. The twenties moustache, the swashbuckling clothes, even his facial features were similar, with the exception of the horns. Geryon was Douglas Fairbanks as an Oompa-Loompa demon. She’d heard a demon’s ability to change his appearance varied, but it never occurred to her that a small, horned man with red skin would try to make himself over into a long-dead silent-movie star.

  “You a big Fairbanks fan?”

  “He was the first.” Gerry sighed, radiating hero worship from every ruddy pore. “The first of the Hollywood royalty. His charisma could captivate an audience.” His expression turned sly. “There’s power in that, you know. No one could hold a viewer in the palm of his hand quite like Fairbanks.” Gerry hopped down from the stool and wandered over to the wall, pulling down a framed black-and-white photo that hadn’t been hanging there a moment ago. “Morning Star was jealous, of course. In retrospect it might not have been wise for me to tell Lucifer to his face that Douglas Fairbanks was more charismatic than he, but a hundred years guarding this gate is a small punishment. Though the time does seem to stretch these days. I don’t get many visitors. Are you sure you won’t stay?”

  “I really should be getting on.” She had no way of knowing how long it would take her to find Jay and bring him out. Visions of torture danced in her head—this Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly Sugar Plum Fairy material.

  “I don’t have to let you pass,” Gerry said with a cagey smile.

  Sasha’s eyes flicked down to the celebrity rags littering the table—this week’s issues by the look of them. Gerry might not get out much, but he had the most up-to-date celebrity gossip at his fingertips. “That’s a shame,” Sasha said carefully. “If you don’t let me through, I don’t think I can tell you the inside scoop on Trista Lovelace’s new boyfriend.”