by Jenny McKane
She was old and full of complaints, but a long time ago, she’d assisted Gabriel and his team by hiding weapons throughout the Northwest and by helping his Hunters when they needed a place to stay. That, and Gabriel had a soft spot for the woman, who used to own a knitting store.
She had a history with Sunny, too. Not only giving her a job (at Gabriel’s request) but by acting as a surrogate grandmother of sorts. Sunny had given her beloved cat Noodle to Kitty (Eli smirked at the play of words) when she’d gone to Hell and it looked now as though the old battle axe had claimed the former orange tabby stray as her own. The cat mewled and hissed in his travel carrier every once in a while to remind them all he was still there.
What a crew they made in Gabriel’s sportscar.
Their objective in Vancouver was simple: get an idea of just how bad or far the city had fallen since the wards and portals had failed and get Kitty safely to her next destination. Gabriel had mentioned a place of his in Idaho, Sun Valley or something, and it was where Metatron was bringing the few strays he had left, too.
They’d get through Canada and rally in Idaho before returning to Sunny.
It’d been two weeks since they left her with Asmodeus and the small, fierce-looking nun. More than anything, he didn’t want to leave Sunny alone. More than anything, he’d wanted to bring her along with them, but the archangels had been persistent and rightly so.
She needed to heal. She needed quiet and solitude to begin the long steps of processing her anger and grief over what Gideon had done to her. She needed space.
Eli didn’t want to give Sunny space, not really. He wanted to sweep her up and hold her against his chest and promise her that she’d never be hurt again—but they’d both known he couldn’t promise something like that. Watching Sunny’s heart shatter at Gideon’s hands had drudged up difficult emotions surrounding Lacey and it had turned out that the space was good for him, too.
At first, Eli had felt guilt for daring to think of another woman that way. Lacey had been, was, the queen of his heart. The love of his life. But he couldn’t help the protective feelings that Sunny brought out in him. The way she sparked his long-dead heart to life with her courage and willingness to do what was necessary when others wouldn’t. It drove him crazy sometimes, with the amount of risks she took, but it was part of what made Sunny who she was. And why he was crazy about her.
If Gabriel had picked up on his feelings, he hadn’t said anything. Thankfully. Even Eli wasn’t ready to unpack the complex box of bullshit that would entail.
Rolling into the outskirts of Vancouver, Gabriel let out a long whistle that drew Eli in from his reverie.
It wasn’t quite as stark as the battle line drawn in Chicago, but it was clear that Vancouver was not only under martial law, but that it wasn’t necessarily working.
Like Chicago, the outlying suburbs were mostly empty of cars and activity. People had wisely fled when they got the order to evacuate from their government. It seemed a few had stayed. the closer to the city they got, but even they were tightly guarded by armed military soldiers patrolling.
“Army? From the government?” Eli asked, squinting at the uniforms as they drove by.
“Doesn’t look like a militia,” Kitty piped in from the back. “Weapons are too new. Too uniform.”
Eli raised an eyebrow at Gabriel. Where did he find this lady all those years ago? Gabriel just smirked. Nothing Kitty seemed to say on the trip surprised him.
The more they ventured into the big city, the more tense the car became. The silence spoke volumes—the closer they got to the city, the more obvious it was that it was under siege. Cars, flipped on their tops and burned, were pushed off the road every few blocks. Scorch marks scored the sides of many buildings and there were more boards covering storefronts than Eli could count. He caught site of precious few non-military civilians walking around the deeper in they got, too.
Finally, they came to a military blockade and had to pull over.
A guard in a uniform came to the window and spoke with Gabriel.
“Do you guys have the permits necessary to pass through into downtown?” He was friendly enough, but the tension was clearly written on his young face.
“We didn’t realize we needed them, sorry,” Gabriel apologized slowly and calmly. “How’s everything down here?”
The guy, he was probably 20 or 21 years old, looked over each face in the car before answering. From the way he kept his right hand on the 9-millimeter handgun strapped to his right hip, Eli guessed he’d seen some shit lately.
“It’s a lost cause,” the guy muttered before standing up. “You need to turn back around. Only authorized personnel are allowed downtown now. It’s best if you get out of the city, to be honest. It’s only spreading and it’s a matter of time before everyone’s left to their own devices.”
“Duly noted,” Gabriel said with a curt nod before throwing the car into reverse. “Best of luck to you all.”
The soldier didn’t respond and turned back to his guard post as they moved back out of the city. Eli still hadn’t seen any sign of the demons themselves, though. Just the aftermath they left behind.
Were they somewhat nocturnal like they’d been in Chicago?
He hoped Metatron would have more answers than he and Gabriel had been able to find—the Canadian military wasn’t offering up too many answers and after trying to talk to three separate guards as they left Vancouver, they had all but given up.
Later that night in a hotel room, Eli scanned the news outlets, both local and national.
While they weren’t clinging to the generic “terrorist” line anymore, they weren’t exactly calling it demon invasion, and nobody had mentioned “portals from hell” in the few minutes that Eli caught. If anything, the news media was alluding to “extra-terrestrial” and “non-identified combatants.”
Eli couldn’t help but laugh at that one. The world they all knew was hanging on by a thread and they were still trying to dumb-down the masses. What was the worst they thought would happen if people knew angels and demons stood on the precipice of attack at that very moment? Would they high-tail it to church and start praying? Would they take up arms and get ready to toe the line?
Who knew? The powers in charge seemed to want to keep people docile and disoriented. Eli couldn’t help but wonder what the people making decisions really knew and if they were somehow being influenced by either side. It was a possibility.
Just as he was drifting off, Eli got a text message from Sin.
Sin: How was Vancouver?
Eli: Mostly closed off. Texas?
Sin: Holding strong. More guns than demons out here still.
Eli: Get your bar closed down properly?
Sin: All done. We’re headed your way in the morning. Any word on how our girl is doing?
Sin was worried about Sunny. They all were. She’d not only looked pale and wan as they were leaving, her eyes were either ablaze with anger or empty. She wasn’t dwelling in any in-between places at the moment.
Eli: Haven’t heard anything. Don’t think she has her phone on.
Sin replied with a frown emoji and the conversation dropped off. Tossing his phone onto his pillow, he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder and wish that Sunny would check in with him. Just a message or a short phone call. He wanted to hear her voice and make sure for himself that she was on the mend, that she’d be okay. But he got nothing from her and he constantly told himself it was foolish to want any more than she was ready to give.
Eli scrubbed his face with the heels of his palms and let out a long sigh. He needed a shower and to get some rest, as they had a long drive ahead of them in the morning. And the following day, they had a day-long flight to get back out to Japan.
As he drifted to sleep, Eli counted the ways he would make Gideon pay for double crossing them all. His betrayal had stung everyone and cut them deep, but none as deep as Sunny and Eli had a hard time getting past the brewing rage building in his soul
. They’d all sacrificed so much to get that asshole out of Hell, and for what? It’d been a giant waste of time and there was a significant chance that he’d been playing Sunny back then, too.
Selah’s disappearance had also been suspect. Was she in on the game or had she really gone to find healing against the nox virus that was claiming her? Plaxo had tried to find the former princess of Hell, but so far had been unsuccessful. There were so many holes in the story and despite that, all Eli cared about was getting Gideon’s head on a platter and wiping that cocky smirk off his face.
Not once did Eli ever tell Sunny that he’d warned her back during her training about how demon allies, especially the ones you hold closest, were known to turn on humans. It was why, as much as he liked Sin, he refused to trust the cambion. It was why he never trusted Gideon and why he’d do everything in his power to make sure Sunny never trusted him again.
Chapter Five
“…and then there was the time that I stole the Jade Emperor’s lucky slipper. Lucky for me, I’m a demon and he wasn’t or that would have been the last of ol’ Agares that day!”
The demon slapped his knee and howled at his story. He’d been doing that a lot the past two days, actually. Ever since Sunny summoned Agares to get more comfortable around him and to possibly learn a thing or two from him, she’d learned one thing for sure: he loved to tell stories. It was charming at first. Then it got a tad bit distracting. Then a bit annoying. And now, as she tried to study the grimoire in front of her as he prattled on? It was obnoxious.
But the problem with turning off Agares’ stories was that he might get offended. And if one offended Agares, according to his own stories, bad luck befell them immediately. And so, while Sunny knew that she was protected from any outright attacks from the old demon, she didn’t want to take her chances with bad luck, either. She needed all the good luck she could come up with to get through the coming months.
She also knew that Agares had spent nearly 3,000 years imprisoned alone and so, for a naturally social Guardian demon who’d been surrounded by subordinates and admirers for eons before that, he probably felt like he had to make up for lost time—and lost stories.
At present, he sat in seiza beside Kiku and had started up another tale about stealing rice from a dragon who hoarded it all in a cave. For her part, Kiku seemed unperturbed at the incessant chatter as she meditated and kept her eyes closed. And if Sunny thought Agares might notice that the small woman had her eyes closed and was trying to practice her zazen, he didn’t. He kept right on talking with his animated tone, his hands flying through the air as he punctuated a particularly epic fight scene he was recreating.
“…and the bugger came flying from the east like a giant lizard with wings.” Agares was hooting and hollering now, having picked up a stick he used as a mock sword and waving it about, thrusting it toward an invisible dragon enemy. “But he was no match for my fury! The villagers loved me from that moment on and erected a monument in my honor that still might stand today.”
Sunny doubted it.
She also had a hard time comprehending how Kiku could muscle through her meditation with Agares carrying on like he was. Later, as she was washing the lunch dishes and Kiku was sitting at the small wooden table in the temple’s kitchen drinking a cup of tea, Sunny asked her why she wasn’t distracted when Agares told his tale during her meditation.
“Always distraction,” Kiku said as she blew a breath over the top of the steaming tea. “Demon. Phone. Mind. Always distraction to ignore.” She took a tentative sip as Sunny dried the bowls. “Nikkou learn to stay focused in distraction,” she continued. “Or fail. Always be distraction when Nikkou fights angels and demons. Never quiet. Never calm. Always noise and emotion.”
Ah, yes. A teaching moment. Kiku never let one slip by and had begun to try to slip more knowledge into her conversations with Sunny. Sunny wasn’t certain just how much Kiku knew about what they were doing or what she was training for, but moments like these led her to believe that Kiku was savvy to what exactly they were preparing for.
“I’m trying,” Sunny said quietly as she put the last of the dishes away in the cupboard.
She couldn’t help but think about her old life and how chaotic things usually were. Sunny was never one to do dishes for meals she’d just eaten. She’d usually wait a day or two before she was forced to clean the dishes if she wanted a clean spoon. Even when she upgraded her living conditions and had Gideon’s loft, she was messy and only cleaned up after herself when necessary.
But life in the old temple was different and she was getting used to not having tons of stuff underfoot all the time. She was slowly growing accustomed to using the same bowl for each meal and washing it out after each use. Her clothing was deliberate and plain, just like Kiku’s, even though Sunny didn’t wear the traditional Buddhist robes. Her uniform had become dark athletic pants and a dark long-sleeved jersey top, mostly black or navy blue. It was functional and it let her worry about other things that were happening and not how uncomfortable the jeans were that bit into her thighs when she sat still for too long.
“That’s Nikkou’s problem,” Kiku continued. “Always trying. Never just do. Too much effort.”
Despite the fact that the small woman sounded a lot like Yoda at the moment (and sort of looked like Yoda, too, if Sunny was being perfectly honest), Sunny got the point she was trying to make. Sunny did a lot of trying and not a lot of simply doing.
She thought about everything she needed to learn instead of learning. She talked about all the meditation practice she needed instead of just practicing. She thought about all the healing ahead of her instead of just healing.
“Less trying,” Sunny repeated. “More doing.”
“Exactly,” Kiku nodded her head in approval. “Nikkou get it eventually.”
That made Sunny smile a little broader.
“Have you ever been in love, Kiku-sama?”
She wasn’t sure just how ridiculous the question was, given that Kiku was likely in her 70s and had lived a vow of chastity for most of her adult life, more than likely. But suddenly, Sunny felt ready to talk about things she’d closed off in the past few weeks. And Kiku, who didn’t necessarily know her long and sordid history, might be an objective ear.
If Sunny didn’t know better, she would have sworn the old woman blushed.
“You think old woman never loved?” She was smiling as she said it, putting to rest any fears Sunny might have had that she offended the nun. “I loved. Loved hard. Broke the world with this hard love.”
“Broke the world?” Sunny raised an eyebrow at that one. It sounded a bit familiar.
“When person young, their love is their whole world,” Kiku explained. “When love breaks, whole world breaks.”
That was how Sunny felt, certainly, but her story was bigger than what Kiku was talking about, surely.
“This broke more than just my little world,” Sunny said quietly. “It’s so much bigger.”
“Young people always think they have biggest love, biggest heartbreak,” Kiku continued, nodding sagely. “Kiku-sama learned eventually that love is never mistake. Never. Love gone bad was still love. Love save world.”
Now Sunny wasn’t quite so sure about that one, but she didn’t argue. Everything with Gideon had been a lie, it seemed. It couldn’t still be seen as love. Could it?
“He broke me,” Sunny whispered, not realizing she said it out loud until it was already out there. The truth was ugly, but at least it was said. Gideon had broken her—that much was true.
“People break people all the time,” Kiku said, her hand cutting through the air. “Putting back together is most important part of life. Here. Show you.”
The old woman pushed to her feet and walked slowly to the cabinet where Sunny had just put away the last of the dishes. She rustled through the sparse cabinet until she produced a small white, earthenware teacup. Spinning it around in her hand until she found what she was looking for, she turned a
nd showed Sunny.
One side of the small cup had a gold line arching through it where it’d been broken, painted gold, and put back together again. The flaw was beautiful and delicate.
“Kintsukuroi,” Kiku said, holding the word reverently in the air between them. “Golden repair. Break, make better. More beautiful.”
Sunny couldn’t quite grasp the moment that was transpiring between them just then, but later, the notion of kintsukuroi would resonate deeper within her than she thought possible. For now, her mind was just beginning to grasp the concept that something could be broken, repaired, and held more valuable than it was before.
It almost seemed like a pipe dream—a fairy tale told to children to make them feel better about their flaws. A fairy tale Sunny told herself to make herself feel better about just how broken and flawed she was after Gideon’s betrayal.
Kiku, for her part, didn’t press. She simply left Sunny standing in the kitchen, holding the broken cup in her hand, her head spinning.
Later that night, Sunny lie in her bed and found herself unable to fall asleep.
She understood that healing was a long process that couldn’t be rushed, but maybe, she told herself, it might be time to stop looking at herself like a broken piece of pottery that could never return to how she was before.
Maybe that was the point in what Kiku was trying to teach her about kintsukuroi—sure, there was a long road of rebuilding ahead, but it didn’t mean that the best part of Sunny had been wasted. Another part of her mind began to hold on to the notion, too, that just because of the way it ended with Gideon didn’t mean that what she’d felt for him and what he’d felt for her in this early days wasn’t still love.
