Repossessors of Souls: Expendable Pawns

by Danae Ayusso

  Lucifer turned her attention to her nails and studied her perfectly manicured—again, totally jealous—nails as if she were bored already. “Angelus, Angelus, Angelus,” she tisked, clicking her tongue as the name left her lips, and shook her head in disappointment. She licked her glossy red lips, her white on white eyes working over us many times before she smirked. “When will you learn that this has nothing to do with you, Brother? I could not give a damn about your soul. It is completely inconsequential. Because you really are nothing more than Daddy’s abandoned errand boy. Now, Zion on the other hand, that is a soul that I have been after for centuries.”

  Huh?

  “Go back to Hell, you high priced hooker,” I snarled.

  She glared at me. “You will watch your tongue when speaking to me, or you will regret it.”

  Not sure what that meant, and not wanting to risk the life of the man I love, I did as she asked and shut up.

  “You, little Miss Perfect,” Lucifer continued, “were not supposed to be possible. And yet, here you stand in all of God’s glory.” She held her hands out as if she was praising her father. “A pearl, I believe that is what our father called you, which would be coveted by both worlds and eventually hidden in the third. It was not hard to find you, Zion, even with Adramelech’s attempts at masking you. It only took a couple of Soul Seekers, and they simply brought you to my doorstep.”

  Damn it.

  “You have me, let him go,” I said and stepped from around Angelus, and he snarled.

  Lucifer appeared amused. “Why would I do that? I am the one that helped him find you,” she said then smirked. Her appearance changed to the naked woman from Hell that cursed Angelus before she changed back to Gucci wearing Lucifer and she batted her long, black lashes at us. “I am a very patient woman, and can find many ways to humor myself. Watching Little Brother there suffer in silence as his prayers to our father went unanswered was very enjoyable. Nearly as enjoyable as watching him renounce our father and his bigger plans. However, what was not enjoyable was you finding the loopholes in my curse,” she snarled. “He was supposed to hate you! You were supposed to reject him like every other piece of flesh that has thrown themselves at you! But no. You, the daughter of Adramelech, was smarter than your average blonde and took the hatred from him. That left me very little choice.”

  I raised my hand. “Crazy Bitch, table for one, I just did that yesterday and this little orchestrated cluster fuck has been going on and been planned for a long time now.”

  Angelus shook his head. “A Seer.”

  “Very good,” Lucifer purred. “I will have my war. I will have my chance at the Throne of Light. And I will kill every last one of you pieces of shit that took what was rightfully mine.”

  This time Angelus raised his hand. “What are you talking about? I get the getting the chance and starting a war bullshit,” he said, and I giggled at his faux enthusiasm, “but the rest is beyond my pay scale.”

  Hey, that’s my line!

  Lucifer leaned back and folded her hands together in front of her. “I know that Daddy Dearest left spies in his ranks, just as I have them in Heaven. It happens, and you have to commend the man for his moments of criminal genius. But what I was not prepared for was being denied. Adramelech was supposed to be mine!” she snarled and the ground started to violently shake. “Instead, he falls in love with that demonic bitch! A fucking demon! An angel and demon cannot find love, let alone procreate a child of both worlds.” She growled, glaring at me. “It was my child that was to take the throne of one world while I ruled the other, not take my throne and bring my kingdom down around it!

  “I followed her,” she said, seemingly regained her composure, “to the surface where she gave birth to a child, a daughter that bore the mark of the Trinity in her blood. For more than a decade I tried to acquire the child from my daughter, but she was under the protection of the angels, of our Father, and was impossible to get to.” She laughed, startling me. “Near impossible I should say. When you cannot get the lemons to make lemonade, you cut down the tree and strangle it with her own entrails. Your mother, my daughter, begged for her life and for the life of her child, but most importantly, for the life of her husband. That was the wrong thing to beg for,” she snarled. “I have never had more fun killing someone as I did killing my own daughter. You do look just like her, you know, in case your father neglected to tell you, so it will be like killing her all over again, and that I have waited centuries for.

  “But sadly, all those years ago,” she said, sounding strangely endearing—this bitch was insane—“before I could kill you, Adramelech somehow was notified, and he took his child back to his collection where I could not touch her. As long as you were in Hell I had no problem, for the most part, because you were not a threat to me in Heaven. But I grew tiresome of waiting for your father to pull his head out of his ass and accept my offer and create my heir. So I took his. He still has not forgiven me for that, and I doubt he ever will, but if he is not going to give me what I want, I will take the only thing that matters to him.”

  Two guns appeared in her hands and she leveled them at us.

  Instantly Precious was in my hand and I pointed it at her.

  “Aw, how cute,” Lucifer mused. “What are you going to do with that? I am a fucking angel,” she reminded me.

  I lowered my gun and nodded and she smiled.

  “Goodbye, Little Brother, Granddaughter, it was fun while it lasted,” she smirked and pulled the triggers.

  Lucifer’s head violently jerked to the side before she slumped back in her chair, and her guns rested on her lap. She sat in silence and watched the smoke from the barrels of each gun seductively dance in to the air, and it was the perfect, ironic, ending to an otherwise fucked up day.

  One hour ago….

  As the couple hurried down the streets of NYC, a familiar voice called out to them. “Have you been hiding from me?” Loke demanded, appearing in front of them then wrapped his arms around Zion and gave her a tight hug. “Oh my god,” he groaned, taking her hand in his. “Look at your nails! We are so going to get our nails done tonight, got it?” he said and cocked an overly delicate white eyebrow.

  Zion nodded and pulled her hands away from his.

  “Good,” Loke said with a wink then walked away, spinning the new collection of cheap white bangles on his wrist as he went.

  The violent electrical assault by Thor shook the building and the entire block. When the power started to flicker, that was the unusual couple’s cue to set their plan in motion.

  There was no turning back for them. This was their only chance, their only shot at ending this ridiculous game that not only threatened to take away the love they had waited countless lifetimes for, but it also threatened to kill the only person either of them had ever loved.

  The scrambling crowd moved around the couple that moved with the agility of an angel and the speed of a demon. A perfect pairing if there ever was such a thing, and the love between them was undeniable: Angelus moved in correlation with each of Zion’s movements, and each of her breaths was in time with his. Unaware of their unconscious movements, they reach out with their pinkies to brush against the other as they moved, a constant means of contact, something that neither of their souls could no longer stand to lose.

  “Now?” Zion whispered, scratching her irritated skin under the bracelet—not the accessory of choice for that particular outfit, nor were the cheap tourist stack of white bangle bracelets from a tourist shop that Angelus purchased for her while they headed to Manhattan, but they were necessary.

  Blindly Angelus slapped at her hand, silently telling her to stop scratching, and nodded that it was time.

  Zion made a face at him then started chanting under her breath, still scratching at the annoyingly itchy bracelet. “Jam lucis orto sídere, Deum precémur súpplices, Ut in diúrnis áctibus Nos servet a nocéntibus,” she whispered and fought the urge to moan when Angelus caressed the side of her neck with his finge
r.

  “I feel like I am at mass,” Angelus complained as he admired the way Zion’s full lips moved as she chanted.

  “Shut up,” she hissed before giggling. “It isn’t funny.”

  He absently nodded as he fought against the siren like call of her pouty lips.

  The white and silver bracelets on their wrists started to heat up and glow an intense white that made her squint and got much unwanted attention from the guards feebly attempting to secure the building. Angelus’ wings unfolded, and he quickly wrapped them around the couple and they disappeared, leaving the representations of themselves standing there.

  Very carefully, following Odin, Baldr and Adramelech’s directions, they opened up their minds to the ancient totems……

  ….“My Master says that you have to open yourself up,” Ariel said. “Only with an open mind will your intent for their use be tapped into. Pure intent,” she warned, eying the couple standing in front of her, their eyes fixed on the box Adramelech sent. “With an open mind, fearless heart, and purity of intention, you will be able to wield them without having to compromise your souls. Do you understand?” she raised an overly sculpted red eyebrow.

  Angelus shook his head, but Zion understood and nodded. “Tell Adramelech, if this doesn’t work, that he was the greatest man I have ever known and that I love him,” she whispered, and Ariel glared at the beautiful girl then vanished….

  …..“Stop!” the guards called out.

  Zion being the more open minded of the two, took to the power of the bracelets instantly; it was like playing a video game in her opinion. All of her weapons were accessible, and she could feel her corporal projection pulling them from her and she felt their power with each pull of the trigger. And for the first time since she suggested the suicidal plan, there was a shimmer of hope in her heart that it could actually work.

  Angelus struggled to gain control of the totem. “What part of flesh wound did you not understand?” he hissed, trying to distract the woman in front of him in the protection of the invisibility of his wings from his failure to harness the power as she had so easily done.

  Zion looked up at him with those large, dark brown eyes of hers and bit her bottom lip. “Oops, my bad,” she offered with a smirk.

  Looking in those loving eyes, those eyes that he had dreamt of for centuries, but never knew their color or just how beautiful they truly were, made his heart race and he let down his guard and the powerful bracelet linked to his mind.

  “That is believable,” he scoffed and made a face at her then pressed her back against the wall next to the elevators and tenderly caressed her head, fighting the urge to capture her mouth with his. Never had he seen anything so beautiful as the soul that completed his, and suddenly her very selfish suggestion of running off together and hiding for the rest of time had much appeal.

  Zion bit her bottom lip again as she slid her fingers down his muscular chest, and he caught her wrist as she started to slip her hand into his pants and shook his head—he wanted to indulge her, more than anything he wanted to, but in order to have their eternity they had to survive the present.

  “You’re no fun,” she pouted, and he reluctantly nodded, looking away from her. She coaxed him by the chin so she could look at him and smirked. “Remember, this is your plan,” she teased, both of them being well aware that it was Zion’s plan, and he smiled.

  Once the corporal projections of the angel and demon were many stories above them, Zion went to work on the elevator console. Carefully she ran the blade of one of her knives along the side of the panel and freed it from the wall. Her nimble fingers pulled out the correct colored wires in order to hook it up to the bypass power supply and started stripping them.

  “If I did not know any better,” Angelus whispered, watching the woman in awe. And unable to stop himself, he caressed the mane of hair spilling over her shoulder from her pony tail off of her neck, his fingers lingering longer than needed, but he felt as if he had to touch her. “I would swear that you have done this before….

  ….Loki shook his head, but Odin liked the idea. “Are you sure you will be able to rig it?” he was skeptical but in awe over the brilliance of the idea.

  Zion shrugged and nodded at the same time. “There’s an elevator in the back of the private conference room. Only one elevator has access to the top three floors for security reasons,” she explained, moving around the condiments acting as markers on the table representing the layout of Central Hub.

  “How do you know there is an elevator there if the top floors are for Upper Management only?” Angelus asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “Stolas threw it in me on the conference table once,” she said as if it didn’t matter, and the angel snarled. She looked up at him. “Get over yourself. It isn’t like you’ve offered to throw it in me. A girl’s gotta get what she can when she can.”

  Odin, sensing the fight about to start, stepped in. “If the power is out, how can you gain access to the elevator?”

  This time Loke answered from under the table where he was hugging a half empty bottle of vodka. “Two years ago the elevator broke in her building. The Super wouldn’t get off his lazy ass to fix it, and there was no way that Zee was going to walk her happy ass up that many flights of stairs with all those bags from her many shopping sprees, so she looked it up online and fixed it herself. You totally should have seen it, she was like the demonic MacGyver with tits!.....

  ….Zion shivered as Angelus’ words washed over her as he trailed the backs of his fingers down the side of her breast. “Really?” she moaned, closing her eyes, and temporarily forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

  The smug angel smirked then flicked her.

  Zion glared at him. “You find now, now of all times, to find a damn sense of humor?” she complained and softly smacked him in the chest then went back to stripping the wires she needed.

  His fingers caressed up and down the length of her long neck. “I am a very funny angel,” he reminded her.

  “In your own mind,” she grumbled under her breath.

  Angelus caressed the tip of his nose up the length of her neck before softly kissing behind her ear. “Oh come on, only an angel with an amazing sense of humor could have found you beautiful when your nose was shattered,” he traced the perfect, delicate slope of her nose, “and sitting off to the side of your face and you were swollen up as if you had the mumps, and let us not forget that you were blind as a bat.” He laughed.

  Zion glared at him and took his hand in hers then jabbed it against the exposed wires causing him to jump from the electrical shock. “Oh no you didn’t,” she tried to shock him again, but he pulled away from her and smooched his lips together.

  When she raised an eyebrow, he rolled his eyes. “Okay, bad joke. Sorry,” he dramatically huffed.

  Zion jabbed her finger into his chest. “If we survive this, you are so never getting laid again.”

  Angelus grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips then tenderly kissed her knuckles, caressing the tip of his tongue along the ridge of each and her eyes started to flutter shut. “Why am I doing this again then?” he mused, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Never again,” she whispered, but they both knew that it was a lie.

  The elevator dinged, signaling the cars arrival then the doors opened to the private elevator leading to the top floors.

  “Father, help us,” Angelus prayed then took Zion’s face between his hands. “If this does not work, it was always you, Zion,” he told her and tears flooded her eyes. Tenderly he wiped away each that rolled down her cheeks with his thumbs, just as she was trying to do with the tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “It will work,” she whispered, her voice flooded with so much emotion that it nearly dropped the usually fearless angel to his knees. “Because it was my idea,” she reminded him, and he laughed a choked burst of amusement.

  “But of course,” he agreed then tenderly kissed her; tears rolled down each of t
heir cheeks and blended when they reached the ridge of their lips that were pressed together so passionately that they appeared to have blended together.

  The elevator doors started to close so Angelus put his foot in the way to stop them.

  “Now or never,” he reminded her.

  Zion nodded and they ducked into the elevator car, the door closing silently behind them. Angelus pushed her against the back wall and started kissing her neck, his hands sliding down over her ass, pulling her up on her toes more. Never in a hundred-million lifetimes did Zion ever imagine that the person who would complete her so seamlessly would be an angel, an angel of all creatures, and yet she couldn’t be happier about it, about him…..

  ….“I do not understand,” Angelus admitted as he paced the length of the garden. “Why…I mean, how is it possible? Angels and demons, part, half, whatever, it does not make sense. I’m a devout follower.”

  “Fanatical would be a better word,” Thor retorted then laughed.

  The irritated angel rolled his eyes. “Whichever. The point remains, how is that possible? How is it that a demon, a beautiful, caring, self-centered, shopaholic, pie-consuming, demon understand me, an angel, when I do not understand myself? How is it possible that she gets the angels when I do not?”

  Thor shrugged. “What do you want me to tell you, Angel? You know as well as the next person that everything in your dad’s crazy head never makes sense to anyone but him. Hell, I’ve known that man for longer than I care to remember and I don’t think I’ve ever understood anything he’s done or said, but the end result has always been impressive and admirable. Your dad sent you to Hell to save that girl for a reason, most likely it was to save you from you.”

  “When did you become so damn romantic?” Angelus complained then slumped down next to the amused god.

  Thor laughed with a shrug. “Who knows? It tends to happen when you fall in love or you find that someone that you can’t live without, that person that you don’t know whether you want to punch them or kiss them, or maybe both at the same time. I can’t tell you why your old man wanted you to save that girl. I can’t tell you why she seems to get the angels and their fluffy white cloud way of thinking.”