by Amy Barrett
The demon came and crouched in his line of sight without getting too close. “I am glad I won’t be seeing you again. Your face is uglier than mine.”
The gargoyle had fallen asleep and Nick had woken in hell.
Chapter 15
Ivan saw Nick fall asleep and wanted to stack things on his head. Like a game of buckaroo, he had promised the others that it would be fun. Ciara had considered it but Zerachiel was the authority and what he said went. He said they should leave him alone.
“When is the second date with that human then?” Abyzou asked, licking some ice cream off a spoon and smirking.
Ivan had taken to the floor and was in the middle of all the treats which had been dumped out. He picked up a chocolate bar and started opening it with his teeth. “There isn’t gonna be one,” he muttered past the wrapper, “just wasn’t that into her.” He got it open and spat the remains of the wrapper away. “You know what I mean mate?”
Abyzou briefly looked at Nick who seemed to be in an uneasy sleep. “Yeah.” She held the carton of ice cream up to Ciara, so she could take some. “On another note, Zerachiel, I have a question for you.”
The angel wiped the flavouring from the crisps he had been eating off his hands and onto his jeans. “Fire away”
“Why Ivan?” Abyzou received the carton from Ciara again and kept eating.
“What do you mean?” Zerachiel took another crisp.
“This had better be good cause I am awesome.” Ivan stuffed the whole bar of chocolate in his mouth and nearly choked.
Abyzou pointed the spoon at Ivan. “Not why him as a person, although I wonder that too.”
Ivan sneered at her.
“But why the name Ivan?” She concluded.
Zerachiel blinked and looked at Ivan.
“I know that reapers don’t have names so why did you name yours?” Abyzou asked when neither of them spoke.
Ivan spat out the chunks of bar he hadn’t swallowed. “Whoa, whoa. I don’t belong to anyone.”
Zerachiel waved a hand at Ivan. Ivan was fully prepared to give Abyzou a piece of his mind, demon or not. Zerachiel spoke before he could.
“What Ivan means to say is that I didn’t name him.”
Abyzou narrowed her eyes and glanced between the two of them.
“How did he get the name?” Ciara asked.
Zerachiel smiled as Ivan proudly thrust out his chest. “I gave myself the name. Cause I am just cool that way, mate.” Ivan could remember how confused Zerachiel had been when they had first met, and Ivan had introduced himself. Abyzou had a similar expression on her face now.
Ciara giggled.
The reaper was on cloud nine. The mere acknowledgment of his owning himself had made his day. He looked around at them all and even offered the sleeping Nick a smile. The fact that they all took notice of him in one way or another made the smile even bigger. Abyzou nodded and tilted her ice cream carton at Ivan like it was a celebration drink. Ciara chuckled. Zerachiel half smiled and shook his head. Ivan found that Zerachiel’s smirk was comforting and reassuring in a way that the others were not.
“Let’s do something mad.” Ivan stood up, crushing a piece of candy under his foot.
“Like make plans to defeat the demon that wants us all dead?” Abyzou scooped a lump of ice cream into her mouth and glanced around the room. Before anyone could answer her Ivan spoke up. He wanted to do as many things as he could with his friends while they could still see him. Granted Abyzou and Nick were not his first choice for company, but they weren’t so bad either.
“Let’s give eachother nicknames.” Ivan sat on the arm of the chair where Ciara was lounging.
“What good will that do? We don’t even know..” Abyzou began, turning her head to Ivan.
Zerachiel had been watching the reapers face and spoke in his defense. “Just do it.” He looked away from Ivan and focused on Abyzou. Leaning his elbow on the arm of the sofa he smirked. “Maybe your nickname should be hard ass.”
Abyzou rolled her eyes. “If you are referring to how toned my ass is then by all means.”
Zerachiel regarded Ciara as if she were a work of art and he a critic. “The nice one.” He concluded. “That would work best I think.”
“Nope” Ivan patted Ciaras head. “She is the pincushion.” He poked the area with her stab wound. “For obvious reasons.”
“Fine. Then you are the pinhead,” she said while casting her eyes to the floor.
Abyzou choked on her ice cream. “Perhaps you are not as soft as I thought.”
Ivan grunted and nudged Ciara with his elbow. “Nice one.”
“Very accurate I think.” Zerachiel rubbed the end of his chin.
They were laughing when Nick suddenly woke. “Huh… what?”
Zerachiel stood up and headed for the kitchen. “Nothing. We are just making fun of pinhead over there. Anyone want a drink?”
Ciara peeked over her shoulder and cringed as she moved. “A tea would be lovely.”
Zerachiel vanished through the door. There was some clattering from the kitchen.
Ivan took the angel’s seat.
“Can’t you sit in one place?” Abyzou asked.
Ivan shuffled and he ran his fingers up and down his arms. “I don’t like being still when there is stuff to be done.”
Nick rubbed his eyes. “What the hell do we have to do now?”
Ivan didn’t need to think about it. “Everything”.
Nick opened his mouth to speak but said nothing, instead watching Abyzou on the floor. She was in a big jumper which Ciara had loaned her. The sleeves were rolled up and she was sitting on the bottom. It was yellow, much brighter than the black trousers which she wore with it. Her hair was not carefully brushed or neatly plated but free flowing over one shoulder. She had raked all the hair to one side of her head, so it sat askew. Her face was flushed. Ivan couldn’t understand why they were staring at each other for so long. There was nothing too interesting about either of them.
Ivan listened to the sound of Zerachiel in the other room. They would need to wait for him before they decided on anymore nicknames. He is Ivan’s best mate after all.
There was a smash from the kitchen. Nick was the first to react, snapping his head towards the door, but panic brought Ivan to the kitchen first. Abyzou was close behind.
When Ivan burst into the kitchen the first thing he saw was Zerachiel. The remaining one of his wings had burst through his t-shirt. His jacket had been discarded on the floor. There was a lump on his back were the remains of the second wing lived. Across the room was Mephistopheles, squinting in the sunlight. His skin was pealing, and he was smiling wide enough to split his face.
“What a nice place.” Mephistopheles shifted his jacket up onto his shoulders and dusted the glass off. The window behind him was smashed to pieces. Ivan couldn’t imagine someone coming through such a high up window, at least not inwards.
Nick was stood beside Ivan. His body heat was enough to make Ivan want to take off his coat. Zerachiel drew his sword and used his chin to motion to the living room.
“Ivan, get back,” Zerachiel said.
“Don’t turn into a big ugly thing,” Ivan said to Nick, reversing past him.
“Sure.” Nick clenched and unclenched his fists.
Mephistopheles licked his lips, knocking a line of flesh from the top lip and onto the floor. “Just me and you then.” He tilted his head at Zerachiel. “You seem tense.”
Ivan was frozen. Watching Zerachiel advance on Mephistopheles, Ivan was finding it hard to breathe. Mephistopheles was smiling like a wicked witch and his apparent lack of concern about the angel and his sword sent shivers over Ivan’s body. It was seconds before they clashed when Nick dragged him from the room.
Ivan threw him off. “Whats your problem? That’s my mate. I am gonna go and try to kick some ass.” Ivan was too scared to actually fight but he imagined his moral support would help Zerachiel at least.
Nick grabbed his shoulders
and stared at him. “You need to think about this. You will only be a distraction for Zerachiel. He can fight better without you.”
Ivan hated how much sense Nick was making. But, unwilling to be wrong, he tried to go for the kitchen again. Nick stopped him and shoved him towards the living room. “Come on. We need to protect Ciara. She has been stabbed and needs her hero.”
Ivan glared at him. “Don’t patronise me.”
“Fine, just, lets go.”
They came into the living room to see Abyzou engaged in combat with many demons. She swirled around them like she was doing the rhythmic ribbon. Only her “ribbon” was a length of hells chains and it smashed the faces of any of the people she happened to catch with it. The sound of snapping bone was heard every two seconds and Ivan turned green. He decided that the best way to stop himself from being sick was to focus on Ciara. She was huddled on her chair, hiding her face. Humans were always funny to Ivan when they were afraid. Humans, so vain, protect the face over everything else, always throwing their hands in the way of it.
That was it, if Ivan could slip back into reaper mode, he wouldn’t feel sick around gore. He needed to think of these people as humans, simple and expendable. He was not attached in any way and would waltz right through death because that was his shit. While this reminder removed his sick feeling about the demon and Nick being injured, he found strangely that he couldn’t just banish the thoughts of caring what happened to Ciara. He was not able to switch roles with her and it weirded him out.
Shivering he made his way to her side. Well, he thought, if you can’t beat it embrace it.
***
Nick did not care about Abyzou. He told himself this everyday but watching her at risk put all his nerves on edge. He could not breathe properly. His heart wouldn’t work. It kept skipping beats and stopping for what felt like seconds at a time. His palms were sweating, and his muscles were twitching. He needed to do something to help or his body would explode. But what could he do if he wasn’t supposed to become the monster?
Zerachiel crashed through the wall from the kitchen. Pieces of plaster floated about like snow. One of his arms hung wounded but right before Nick’s eyes the skin joined back together in strings and pulled tight. The angel cringed, but he recovered and threw up his wing fast enough to block the coming demon’s attack. Mephistopheles hit the wing with his knife. It bounced off the feathers like they were made of steel.
Zerachiel rounded on him and the light from his sword made the demon flinch away. The sword came down in a swift arc, catching the demon on his shoulder. It barely sliced his flesh before Mephistopheles had dropped and moved from its grasp. Nick itched to help the angel as well. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he had seen Mephistopheles in the kitchen. It was the same demon who had killed his mother, who had taken the wolves from him and driven his sister mad. This was the demon who had sent him to hell before. He forced himself to put aside his longing for revenge. Zerachiel was already fighting the demon and Nick wouldn’t stand a chance against him if he couldn’t become the gargoyle.
Ivan was bundling Ciara away. The wall had almost fallen on her head and she was too weak to move herself. He had his arms wrapped around her and was half lifting, half dragging her out of the plaster dusted chair and away from the wall. The two of them were covered in flith and Ivan gagged whenever they passed gore of any kind.
Nick thought they would be okay and turned to Abyzou again. She was fighting off the demon hordes but even she could only do so much. They would overwhelm her by sheer numbers. Her arms shook when she lifted the chains. They had never appeared heavy in her grasp before. She struck out with the end of them and hit one of the coming demons in the face. Nick hadn’t even seen this demon approach, but she was almost within striking distance when Abyzou hooked her. The other demon wiggled and thrashed. Mad insults and curses came out of her mouth along with lumps of spittle that plopped onto the floor. The end of the chain was embedded in the side of the demon’s fat face. The soft tissue hugged the edges of the metal which created a canyon in the skin. Small pin pricks of blood squeezed out but otherwise the metal object was keeping the blood inside her body and it was buring the wound shut. Abyzou was much smaller than the round bodied demon. She should have had no chance of overpowering the giant.
The fat girl grabbed the end of the chain and pulled. This brought Abyzou into the centre of the horde. Nick moved to help her, but it was too much of a risk. If he entered the mass of demons, he would surely turn. Then his gargoyle wouldn’t care about the difference between Abyzou and the rest of hell. Yet if he did nothing then Abyzou might die. His heart squeezed painfully at the thought.
Abyzou grunted as the larger girl elbowed her in the face. The impact almost made Abyzou let go of the chain. It still clung to the face of the opposite demon. It squished back and forth in the skin. The sound made Nick want to remove the chain immediately to get some relief.
Abyzou was up again and she moved from side to side before the other demon, narrowly avoiding more limbs to the face. Abyzou got as close as she dared and yanked on the chain as hard as she could.
There was a sound, like suction letting go, and the chain moved an inch. The over-weight demon grabbed the end that was closest to her, in order to prevent the chains from ripping off the side of her skull. Abyzou tried to get some distance but more demons had joined the brawl. One forced his claws into her back and shoved her forward. Abyzou lifted a lamp from the coffee table and broke it on his face. This had little impact on him, but it was followed by Abyzous nails in his eye. The demon fell back howling. There was another ready to take his place. Abyzou was pushed into the arms of the larger demon and she grabbed her in a crushing hug.
Meanwhile, Ivan had moved Ciara into the corner. Nick heard the occasional yelp from them. Along the way, Ivan had picked up a pen, which he now held like a sword before him. Nick thought he should help them but there seemd to be no need. Every demon who went their way, took one look at Ivan and backed off. The reaper still looked a bit nervous but soon bravado took over and he stood tall, as if he was intimidating them away.
From near the hole in the kitchen wall, Mephistopheles cursed Zerachiel’s name. The angel was keenly focused on the king of demons. There was a wound on Mephistopheles’s chest that oozed blood and had light emanating from it. Mephistopheles was pressing his hand against it. Zerachiel was crouched on the ground, one hand rested on the floor, holding his bent upper half, one leg stretched out to the side and the other bent at the knee to accommodate reaching the floor. His wing was up and poised at an angle which put the edge of the top feather horizontal, like a knife slashed sideways. There was a splash of blood along the sharp side of the feather. Zerachiel smirked. He held his sword in his raised hand.
Mephistopheles was preoccupied with the wound, so the angel went to help Abyzou. He stood easily and deftly. He spun his sword around until it faced the correct way for approaching the crowd. His wing folded down over one half of his body, coming around his shoulder and reaching the middle of his chest. Here, it acted as a shield, so that Zerachiel could go on the offensive with the other side. He began cutting down the demons and Abyzou emerged from the pile. The more demons that were taken out, the more of her that Nick could see. She was very beaten but alive.
The weight lifted off Nick’s chest. He could breathe again as Abyzou and Zerachiel came to meet each other in the middle. Then a knife came flying at Zerachiel. Nick took too long to warn him, and Ivan was distracted with cheering. It spun, tip over end, through the air and stabbed into the stub of Zerachiel’s missing wing.
Nick had never heard a sound like the one that came out of the angel. To call it a scream would not be enough. It was a sound of pure agony. It stopped the whole room in its tracks. The cry almost brought forward the gargoyle as it loved suffering so much. Nick doubled over and had to concentrate to keep the beast within.
The remains of the wing gushed blood. It seemed to be a waterfall rather than a cut. The
knife had struck the piece of exposed flesh left from the ripping off of the wing. It stuck out from the bone marrow of the wing. Nick felt guilt sicken him. It would have been impossible for a demon to reach such a place without a gargoyle to rip it open first.
The smell of blood was thick in the air and Ivan threw up to the left of himself. He turned pale.
Zerachiel’s knees where wobbling. The sword tumbled from his hand, hitting the floor with muffled thud.
He collapsed onto his kneecaps. His mouth was open, but no sound came out. The cold day light illuminated the damage through the window. The blood was turned a surreal pink as the angel was bathed in light.
Mephistopheles stalked towards Zerachiel. Nick felt panic building and with it came the gargoyle. He had to keep it together or he would kill them all.
“Look at you now.” Mephistopheles spat. He looked down along his nose at the angel. “Down on your knees. Bet you are used to-“
His speech was interrupted by a kind of tribal yell. Ivan was sprinting across the floor, shoulders down like a rugby player. There was a mad look in his eyes. Ivan smacked into Mephistopheles and succeeded in taking him down. They landed in a heap.
Abyzou picked up Zerachiel’s sword and held it out to him. “Get off your knees.”
Zerachiel lifted a trembling hand and took the sword. He used it to prop himself up and came slowly to standing. His lips were pulled tight and he was paler than usual. Mephistopheles smacked his fist into Ivan’s face. Ivan yelped as his nose crunched.
Zerachiel marched over to Mephistopheles with fire in his eyes and swung the sword at him.
Mephistopheles dodged. “Aww does someone care about the little reaper?” He spat on Ivan who was still on the floor.
Zerachiel landed a blow to the side of his nose with the butt of the sword handle. Blood started pumping out of the demon’s face.
Mephistopheles grunted and Ivan crawled away. Ciara examined his face when he reached her.
The fight began again but despite Ivan’s heroics, the tide had turned. Zerachiel was weakened. His eyes were bloodshot, his arms were shaking and his lips were cracked against his teeth.
