by Nazri Noor
Belphegor shrugged, holding his hands up. “The satisfaction of seeing some growth in him, perhaps. Hah, growth, get it? He has so much potential, what with his grasp of nature magic. It pains even me to see all of that power go completely to waste.”
Of course. This was all about power, leverage, conquest, as it always was when it came to the princes.
His grin grew wider. “And besides, Mason – we have a bargain. You can’t just bow out of our contract.” He rested his fingers on his chest, pressing lightly, creasing his eyebrows. “I honored my end of the bargain, and so must you, young princeling.”
“I’m perfectly aware of that,” I said icily, lifting my chin at him. Ugh. Princeling. The word made my skin crawl.
I should explain. I’m what’s known as a nephilim – the spawn of a human and a fallen angel. As you might imagine, that sort of thing doesn’t fly with the people upstairs. I’ve been called many things: miscreant, mistake, abomination. But I’d never been called a princeling.
Yet it made sense. My father is, or was, rather, Samyaza, the king of the fallen. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, Lucifer was the first to truly fall, but when he fell, he fell all the way down. Samyaza was still an angel. The fallen – the Grigori, as they were called – stuck to their guns and their beliefs. Being one of Samyaza’s kids made me royalty, in a way. Not exactly something I asked for.
The dude in the alley, he was royalty, too, but of another sort. A demon prince. There are tons of those, governing every sin, vice, and earthly nuisance imaginable, but this guy was one of the big guns. Now, you’d think that the Prince of Sloth, someone who rules the domain of laziness and inertia, wouldn’t be very dangerous. But that’s where you’d be wrong. A demon is a demon is a demon, and the princes were the worst of them all.
“Well, keep me posted, then,” Belphegor said. “Just know that I had nothing do with those four that attacked you. That’s not my style. And need I repeat myself, Mason Albrecht? We’re friends.” He grinned openly. “Trust me.”
“Tough proposition,” I said. “Now, if there’s nothing else you want to talk about, I’m just going to – ”
I heard it first. Belphegor clearly heard it too, one of his ears pricking up at the first few sounds of popping. I knew what that meant. It was a bunch of mages teleporting into existence, probably an advance team of Wings from the Lorica sent to investigate. I flicked my wrist, the golden sword in my hand vanishing as it returned to the Vestments. Then I cursed under my breath, my feet already taking me towards the mouth of the alley.
Belphegor ran, too, keeping pace with me. I scowled at him, knowing full well that he had more than enough power to simply teleport to safety.
“Why don’t you just magic your way out of here?” I grunted as my feet beat a steady rhythm on the pavement. “Would be the easiest way to avoid the Lorica.”
Belphegor took a great gulping breath as he ran, his grin huge as he lifted his head to the sky. “Oh, I’m not escaping with you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m just here for a running start.”
I panted as I struggled to keep sprinting. Belphegor’s shoes clicked as he hopped off the ground, striking the pavement one last time. Then he soared up into the sky as a pair of huge, leathery wings burst from his back, tearing his hoodie to shreds. He turned his head over his shoulders just long enough to wink at me, then flapped his wings, disappearing up and away behind the clouds.
Fucking show-off.
4
The princes were bad news, at least based on the three that I’d already met. Yet in a way, the Lorica was even worse for me. They were the council of mages responsible for governing all of North America, keeping tabs on supernatural activity within what everyone liked to refer to as the arcane underground.
For the most part, paranormals agreed to uphold the Veil, an unofficial pact of concealing our nature from humanity for the safety of everyone involved. The world of magic and the occult was one that the normals were never, ever supposed to know about, even though it was intermingled and layered with their own.
What made it worse was how the Lorica had a headquarters right in the heart of Valero, making it an even bigger pain in the butt to avoid them. Valero, California was a weird little hotbed of supernatural activity. A lot of the gods – yes, the same ones from ancient myths and legends – liked to keep tethers and portals to their own dimensions within the city.
I’d met a few of them through my old friends, and these gods – entities, as all the most powerful of supernaturals were known – weren’t the kind of people I’d love to hang out with. Entities were like that. Fickle, frequently cruel, and prone to popping up whenever the hell they damn pleased.
Angels weren’t exempt from that kind of behavior, either. But at least this particular angel, the one sitting on my apartment’s window sill, didn’t want me dead. He was holding a newspaper up to his face, a golden pen in one hand as he perused the classifieds section.
“I didn’t think anyone read the newspaper anymore,” I said.
His eyes kept darting left and right as he scanned the ads. The pen dipped every now and again, scratching a quick circle around this listing or another. I cocked an eyebrow, clearing my throat when he didn’t acknowledge me.
“Raziel? Hey. Raziel. Buddy. I’m talking here.”
“Hmm, right,” he grunted, his eyes flitting momentarily upwards to connect with mine. “Just looking for things you can do for work. There are so many options here, Mason. Have you considered becoming a doctor? I hear there’s good money in that.”
I sighed, pouring two cups of coffee from the pot, its aroma drifting up into my nostrils and tickling the back of my brain. It didn’t even matter to me that it was just instant granules and hot water. We all have problems, and mine was having, like, no money left.
“Listen,” I said, offering him one of the cups, which he accepted after clenching his pen between his teeth. “It’s really strange to me how you can be one of the smartest people I know, yet you have zero idea of how many years it’s going to take anyone to go through medical school. I mean, I’ll be out on the street in a week. Two weeks, tops. We need a miracle. Wink.”
I actually did wink. I mean, I thought it’d help.
Raziel frowned, tucked his pen into his breast pocket, and set down the newspaper. “As I’ve said many, many times now, that’s not how it works. I can’t just snap my fingers and make miracles.”
I sipped my coffee, then grimaced – out of milk, damn it. “I wish you could. We need the money.” I glanced over my shoulder, then cocked my head towards the living room. I leaned closer to Raziel, lowering my voice. “Or you could miracle this guy right out of my life.”
Raziel made a face as he tutted disapprovingly, then made an even screwier face when he sampled his coffee. “This is dreadful. We need to get you out of this situation.” He lifted his arm and threw one delicately manicured finger towards the living room. “And that boy,” he whispered, “needs to carry his weight around here.”
“That’s the problem,” I said, sighing. “That’s not a boy. That’s a fully grown man in there, and he can’t even hold down a delivery job.”
We exchanged glances, then headed towards the sound of unbridled snoring, to where Florian was sleeping – still sleeping at four in the afternoon – on my ratty couch. My lips pulled back, arranging my mouth into a sneer. I never sneered, but with Florian, it was just impossible to hold back.
He was snoozing away, mouth open and snoring like a chainsaw on a tree stump. Sort of a relevant analogy, considering how Florian physically had a bunch of tree-like attributes: nut brown skin, hair in curls as tight as little vines and tendrils, and the sort of powerful, knotted build you’d expect from a sequoia, if a sequoia took the shape of a really, really lazy human being.
Florian slept with one arm draped across his eyes and over his head, the other tucked under his makeshift blanket. I say makeshift because that was at least one area where I couldn’t com
plain. He preferred to sleep under a duvet of his own making, one that he crafted out of natural materials magically conjured at our window’s planter box. Sometimes it was a fluffy sheet of moss. This time it was a carpet of leaves. Not gonna lie, it looked comfy as hell.
The problem was that Florian also tended to sleep with just the blanket. Like, bare-ass naked on the couch. It wasn’t exactly the worst since dryads didn’t seem to share the same physiological needs as humans – I was pretty sure he went to the bathroom once a week – but it was the principle of it. That couch was a disaster before Florian started living on it, and now it was a nightmare.
In contrast, Raziel was a study in elegance. This was a guy who liked the finer things, dressed in the kind of clothes that seemed nonchalant on first glance, but were nonetheless extremely luxurious. Hundred-dollar T-shirts, acid-washed jeans made in limited runs, squarish spectacles that looked like they had lenses made out of solid quartz instead of actual glass – kind of a hipster, really.
He probably moisturized every day – mornings and nights – and went for weekly manicures. And he had this mop of hair that looked floppy and careless, but you knew he paid hundreds for every cut. You knew that he used something impossibly luxurious like crushed pearls and gemstones to style it. If the light hit him at just the right angle, the sheen of his hair almost made it look like he had a halo, just like an angel.
Albeit one who couldn’t engineer miracles, or so he claimed. Raziel was the angel of mysteries. Not an angel of mysteries, mind, but the. He was an authority when it came to recording strange and terrible arcane secrets, to tapping into the riddles and rhythms of our chaotic universe.
That was the exact reason I found it so frustrating when he did his whole befuddled schtick. The dude had to be ancient, and he knew just about everything there was to know about the arcane underground and beyond, my actual tour guide to the cosmos and – don’t ever tell him this – kind of my mentor. He knew a hell of a lot about the Vestments, for example.
And yet.
“So you’re sure you can’t just use some kind of angel magic to get us out of this jam,” I said.
Raziel rolled his eyes and shook his head. “For the millionth time. No.”
I stopped myself from asking how he could afford all his damn luxuries. “Then we’ll do this together. Mom and Dad giving little Florian the talk about work and finances. No more allowances.”
“Am I Mom or am I Dad?”
I groaned. “I don’t care. Pick one.”
“Mom it is, then.” Raziel nodded at me, determined and ready.
I sighed, squeezing the bridge of my nose, then went to park both my mug and my butt on the coffee table, which squeaked threateningly. I only watched Florian snore for a couple more seconds before I started nudging him awake by the shoulder. He was heavy, and dense, too, way denser than a human his size would be, which meant that I didn’t really get to do much actual nudging.
“Florian,” I murmured. “Florian. Hey, man. Get up. I need to talk to you.”
Raziel stepped up quietly to my side, bent his head low, then spoke right into Florian’s ear. Sorry, yelled, I should say. A single ear-splitting “Florian!” was all it took.
I jerked away, cringing at the sound and wiggling one finger in my ear to check that I hadn’t gone deaf. All that stuff about choirs of angels and them singing on high at Christmastime and what not – that doesn’t apply to Raziel. The guy was slick, and sleek, and he could speak all nice and charming when he wanted. But when he raised his voice it was like rusty nails on the world’s biggest, scratchiest chalkboard.
Florian sat up straight away, his head snapping left, then right, eyes huge and terrified. He locked gazes with me, then with Raziel before he finally relaxed, heaving a sigh and sticking one finger into his ear. “There are nicer ways to wake people up,” he grumbled, glaring reproachfully at each of us with eyes the color of moss.
“Sorry,” Raziel said sweetly, smiling like the damn angel that he was. “Mason has something to say.”
Traitor! I looked at Raziel and turned my hands up questioningly. Then I turned back to Florian, sighing as I gathered up the courage to say what I needed to.
Leaning in closer, I clasped my fingers together, watching him intently. “If you’re going to stay here with me,” I said, “I’m going to need you to start selling your body.”
5
Florian looked up at the two of us with huge, sad eyes, confused and betrayed. “You – you what? Like for firewood?”
The poor, sweet idiot. Florian wasn’t a terrible person. He had kind eyes, a strong jaw, and even stronger arms. If only he’d put them to good use. He was just so damn lazy.
I shook my head, sighing. “I thought that would wake you up. I was just trying to get your attention.”
“Here,” Raziel said, pushing his own mostly untouched cup of coffee into Florian’s hands. “This’ll wake you up even more. Or kill you. Depends on your tolerance for instant.”
“Raziel, please. Listen, Florian. We’ve talked about this before. You know the price of sticking around me. I’ve spent a lot of time warding this place to keep us hidden. Anyone who comes knocking to claim or kill me will probably find use for a dryad, too.”
He raised his finger. “Male dryad.”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever, like it matters.”
Raziel pushed a finger into his chin. “I still find it confusing. None of the books say anything about male dryads or nymphs. All dryads are female. It’s the nature of the species.”
Florian folded his arms, sulking. “And we’ve gone through this before. Maybe I’m just different, okay? Do you ask a dog if it’s a dog?”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Raziel scoffed. “Because the dog couldn’t answer. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Good old Raziel and his inability to grasp anything beyond the literal. And this was where they always butted heads, brain against brawn. I squeezed the bridge of my nose.
“You guys. Please. Focus.” I ruffled my hair in frustration and gestured around our apartment. Well, my apartment, really. My name was on the damn lease. “Florian? I’ll make this quick. Rent is due. This is how stuff works in the human world. We need to pay up, or we’re out on the street soon.”
Florian sipped on his coffee, eyes somewhat vacant, like he wasn’t fully grasping my meaning.
I bent in closer, holding my hands up and speaking slowly to deliver the gravity of my words. “That means that you don’t get to sleep on the couch anymore.”
He gasped. The surface of his coffee rippled as his hand shook just the slightest. “Then where would I live?”
I slapped myself on the forehead. “Yes. Exactly. But also, where would I live? Come on, man. We’re supposed to be in this together. I don’t know why Belphegor wants you to live with me so badly, but we’re stuck with each other. I need your help.”
He set his mug down and twiddled his thumbs. “Belphegor said it was so I would learn to be more responsible.”
Raziel folded his arms and huffed. “That would be a start.”
Florian frowned. “Hey. You don’t get to talk to me like that. You don’t even live here.”
That was true. Raziel came and went as he liked. He was the first angel I ever met – the first nice one, at least, who didn’t attempt to murder me on sight. It was good to have his guidance around, like a sort of guardian angel with an unfortunate addiction to designer clothes. How he could afford them was anyone’s guess. But for all his intelligence and knowledge, when it came to human affairs, Raziel, the wise and all-knowing, the angel of mysteries, was functionally useless.
“Okay. Let’s not start another argument here. Florian? I need you to come up with a list of things you can potentially do for work. That’s your assignment for the day. Also to get dressed. Just write down anything that comes to mind. You’re strong. Maybe you can do some work over at the warehouses.”
He twiddled his thumbs some more. “Maybe.” His forehead
was wrinkled like bark, his eyes distant, like he was deep in thought. That was a good sign, then. At least he was thinking. “I’ll come up with something,” he said, his eyes filled with ferocity and determination when they darted to meet mine. “Promise.”
I gave him a smile. Florian was just as useless as Raziel was when it came to these things, but it was hard to begrudge him for his general – well, niceness. The jolly, not-so-green giant, all six feet and six inches of solid tree trunk in the shape of a man. Which was a strange way to describe Florian, perhaps, because he was just as flexible as any ordinary person despite the toughness of his skin.
“Well, I wish you both the best of luck,” Raziel said. “I’m off.”
I rubbed the bottom of my chin. “To help with the cash situation?”
He sniffed. “I told you, I can’t just interfere with matters like this. You’re on your own.”
“You’re probably good with a harp, aren’t you?” I said, half seriously. “And maybe trumpets. Could you find a gig somewhere? Maybe busk over in Central Square, or Silk Road?”
Raziel sniffed even harder, pointing his nose up at the ceiling. “That is prejudiced and you know it, Mason Albrecht. I thought you’d know better than that. Angels are good for more than just – ” He rotated his hand at the wrist, grasping for words in his frustration. “Just playing string instruments and frolicking among the clouds, if that’s what you think I’m up to in my spare time.”
I stared at him blankly. “So you really can rock out with a harp? I was right. Admit it.”
Raziel stomped his foot, huffed, then transformed into a pillar of light that disappeared through the ceiling. I sighed, then chuckled. Hey, I was still allowed to have some fun, wasn’t I? I left Florian to his rumbling, creaking thoughts and his terrible cup of coffee and headed to my bedroom, or the little alcove with the rickety door that passed for a bedroom. Then I shut said rickety door, because I needed time to myself to think.
