by SM Reine
For an instant, I was afraid that there was a second angel, but then I realized the strange new awareness had come from something else entirely. I could feel the newcomer inside my head. I could have pointed at him with my eyes shut just as surely as a compass pointed north.
I pushed up onto my elbows, breathing hard, and I realized what had really happened.
Fritz Friederling had finally woken up.
And we were bound.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MARY’S EYES BRIGHTENED AT the sight of Fritz. Literally. Everything about her started glowing, like there was a spotlight beaming out from inside her chest. For an instant, she almost looked beautiful, like she probably had before her fall from Heaven.
“Shamdan,” she said again. Now it sounded like a prayer.
“Yes,” Fritz said. “It’s me.” Blood streamed from the inside of his arm, spattering against his stomach, the flannel PJs.
He was holding the ritual knife. I hadn’t even realized I’d left it with him.
Fritz extended a hand toward her, but Mary didn’t immediately move to take it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry for everything.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” he said.
“But our son—”
“You had no control over Asmodeus. It wasn’t your fault.”
My jaw dropped. Fritz talked with total confidence, like he really had produced offspring with this old woman. How the hell did he know what to say to her?
“Adam told me that Asmodeus was my fault,” Mary said.
“He never dealt with his fallibility very well.” Fritz shrugged. “If Asmodeus was our doing, then wouldn’t everything that mankind has done be His fault?”
Mary sank to her knees as though she could no longer stand. She was just a few feet away from me, and I could see the hole that my gunshot had left in her back. She was bleeding silver. “Adam said it was because we didn’t have permission to make Asmodeus in the first place.”
It felt like I’d just clicked into a movie on Showtime halfway through and had missed all of the setup. I had no idea what they were talking about.
I didn’t want to wait for the exposition. I wanted to end this while she was distracted.
The Desert Eagle was still stuck in the rain gutter at the edge of the roof, not that far out of reach. Without getting up, I eased myself down the tiles, crab-walking for the gun as silently as possible.
Fritz was still talking, still creeping me the hell out. “That’s not true. Eve approved of our union.”
“Eve approved of everything we did,” Mary said. “I still fell when Adam struck me down. And you…” The words seemed to catch in her throat. “Asmodeus killed you.”
My hand slipped on the roof. A tile broke free, skittered over the edge, vanished into the darkness of the night.
The fallen angel whirled. Her bright blue eyes burned at the sight of me. “I’m fine now,” Fritz said loudly, trying to draw her attention back to him. He spread his arms wide. “Look at me. I’m here.”
“But Asmodeus killed you,” Mary said again without turning to him. She began to stand.
Hadn’t Sister Catherine said that Mary murdered the men only when she realized they weren’t her husband?
Oh shit.
I gave up my attempt at being quiet and slid toward the gun. My hand closed on the metal.
Mary shrieked as she flew at me.
Bracing my legs against the gutter, I twisted, aimed, and fired.
I fired three times and the first two shots missed. The last one hit the top of her shoulder, passed through. It struck one of her wing stumps. Silver blood sprayed me.
Mary instantly collapsed with a scream.
Fritz rushed toward us. Or at least, I think he was trying to rush. He was limping too much to move quickly. Looked like circulation still hadn’t returned to his injured foot. “The access door,” he said, seizing my hand and hauling me to my feet. “Run!”
I jerked Fritz’s arm over my shoulder, acting like a crutch as we ran across the roof.
It was weird to touch him now. His skin didn’t feel like someone else’s skin anymore. It felt like a piece of myself that had fallen asleep, like a numb extra limb.
“Faster,” he urged.
I glanced over my shoulder. Mary was already struggling to her feet again. Even drenched in her own blood, it didn’t look like she was slowing down.
The access door was on the side of the tower. I kicked it open, dragged Fritz inside, and shoved it closed behind us.
Mary slammed into the other side. The whole wall shook.
I leaped back. “Jesus!”
The doorknob turned. I jammed the deadbolt into place. It was a crappy little piece of metal that wouldn’t last long against the enraged pounding of a fallen angel, but it slowed her down. It would probably give us whole minutes until she broke through and murdered us.
“I think she’s angry,” Fritz said.
She rammed into the other side again. The hinges groaned.
“No fucking kidding,” I said.
I grabbed Fritz again, and we bounced down the stairs in the most awkward three-legged race possible.
The door shattered a few stories above us.
“Shamdan!”
“She’s not obsessed or anything,” I muttered.
Fritz responded by groaning, doubling over in pain. He fell off my shoulder. Grabbed his ankle. The foot was only looking worse. The toes were swollen to three times their usual size, like balloons about to pop. “I can’t walk like this, Cèsar.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll carry you again.”
Before I could pick him up, Fritz said, “Quick, do a piggyback.”
I looked at him blankly. “You want a piggyback ride?”
“Activate the bond,” he said patiently.
Oh. Now I understood.
An active bond was what happened when an aspis opened up the magical tie to his kopis, allowing both parties to draw strength off of each other. The manual for aspides had described how to activate the bond. I knew how to do it, technically speaking. But it was one thing to have metaphysics explained in loose terms and something else to attempt it.
Hooves rang out against the stairs.
“Now, Cèsar,” Fritz said.
I closed my eyes and looked inward, reaching for my center of power. That was exactly what the manual said: “Reach into your center of power.” Like it was so simple.
If I had a center of power, it wasn’t easy to find while I was running high on adrenaline. All I could hear was the beating of hooves and my pounding heart. My hands felt numb.
“Focus,” Fritz said. “You did the binding, and you can do this.”
He was right. I’d kicked ass at the binding.
What had Suzy said about me? I had a confidence problem. I turned into a pill bug when things got too hard.
I’d told her that she was wrong, and now I needed to prove it.
Magic glowed deep inside of me. I mentally seized upon it, tuning out the sound of Mary’s approach. I could smell her wheezing brimstone breaths from here. I ignored that too.
The manual had said to reach out to the bound kopis with that core of power, so I did. I unspooled my magic and extended it toward Fritz.
I could see him through my shut eyelids. He was a blazing white beacon in the darkness just waiting for my energy, so I hooked the magic into that beacon, connected us together. It felt like a silver hook dug into my ribs and anchored me to him.
Judging by Fritz’s gasp, he felt the same thing.
And then he was in my head, and I didn’t have to guess—I knew for a fact. I shared in his feelings. I felt the agonizing pain in his swollen foot and his twisted shoulder muscles, still aching from suspension in the bell tower. The pains quickly faded now that we were bonded, pulsing at the very edge of his consciousness like nothing worse than a bruise.
His thoughts also cascaded through my mind. Only a few of the wo
rds made any sense. Cèsar has done it…the active bond…finally…feeling strong…Naamah…
If I could hear Fritz’s thoughts, then he’d be able to hear mine, too.
Which meant it was definitely not a good time to think about Isobel. Don’t think about Isobel. Definitely don’t think about her boobs. Or her ass. Her amazing, perfect ass. Goddammit.
Fritz’s nasal chuckle rolled through the bond. Man, he even sounded dorky in my mind.
I really hoped he didn’t hear that thought.
“Stop thinking so loudly, Cèsar,” Fritz said aloud. “Your humiliation is going to give me a headache.”
I opened my eyes to argue with him.
Mary was standing on the landing with us, just behind Fritz.
He spun to face her.
The heady rush of power between us spiked in response to the fallen angel. Her sickening energy crashed into us, bounced off of the protective bond.
Even with the protection of the piggyback, Mary’s presence was almost too much. I could see why she would have given Bubba Tanner an aneurysm.
But we stood strong against her. Or at least, Fritz stood strong against her, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the two of us anymore. We had combined into one super-strong fallen angel killer. Like a Dinozord but so much cooler.
The angel didn’t attack us, though. She limped forward with love in her eyes.
“He didn’t hurt you,” Mary said. “God is good. Thanks be to Adam.”
Man, she’s crazy, I thought.
I was shocked when Fritz responded. It’s not her fault. And then, a moment later, I could clearly see how he planned to kill her. He was thinking about chopping the remaining wings off of her back and ripping out her heart, the same way that she had killed the blond men. Fritz imagined it with gruesome clarity.
I couldn’t help but think, What the fuck?
It will be a mercy.
“I will never leave you again,” Fritz said aloud, focusing on Mary. “Come to me now, beloved.”
Mary took another two clomping steps toward him. Then she stopped. “Wait. Where are your wings, Shamdan? Your glorious golden wings?”
Fritz hesitated to respond a second too long.
Her expression crumbled into one of pain. For the first time, she looked like she knew who she was, where she was, and what she was doing. “You’re not him,” Mary whispered.
Bad fucking time for a moment of clarity.
I was pretty sure that was my thought. Like ninety percent certain.
The angel lunged.
Mary shoved Fritz to the ground. I felt him strike the floor as though it was my shoulder hitting. She slashed her fingernails down his back, between his shoulder blades, as if peeling the skin open to search for his missing wings.
I felt that, too.
We screamed in unison.
I had the presence of mind to kick off the ground, propel myself forward, knock into Mary. I shoved her off of Fritz. We went rolling and my hips fell over the edge of the stairs. The weight of my legs dragged me down. I managed to grab the wooden platform, but I was just inches from falling all the way down the bell tower.
Mary had almost fallen, too. She hung inches to my right, face twisted with despair and anger.
“I never meant to hurt them,” she said. “I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
It was the last coherent thing she said to me.
Disorientation fogged her gaze again, and her mouth opened in a scream. She swiped a clawed hand at me. I couldn’t dodge—not without falling.
Fritz’s good foot stomped down on her arm. Her fingers twitched inches from my nose.
“Leave my witch alone,” he said.
He tossed Mary across the room.
She rebounded immediately. Her hiss didn’t sound remotely human, and there was nothing resembling consciousness left in her eyes.
Fritz flipped the ritual knife in his hand and attacked.
I’d never seen my boss fight before. He was pretty badass when it came to moving paperwork from one side of the desk to the other, sure, but fighting? I never would have imagined he was any good at it—when, in fact, he was goddamn amazing.
He moved so quickly that I couldn’t keep up with him. His foot lashed out, and then a fist. He kicked, punched, dodged, ducked, leapt up to kick again. He wasn’t James Bond. He was a blond Jet Li.
My muscles tensed and jerked with his as I hauled myself back onto the landing. We were still bound. My body thought it was his. Every blow, every wound—I felt it. Both the satisfaction of landing a good punch and the pain of failing to deflect one of Mary’s kicks.
The fallen angel was strong, but Fritz was fast. He pinned her to the wall face-first with a hand in the back of her head.
He brought the ritual knife hacking down on her right wing stump, severing it from her body.
Mary’s scream made my eardrums tremble. I clapped my hands over my ears, but I could still hear it through Fritz.
She elbowed him in the face. One of my teeth went loose. No—one of his teeth.
He ducked under her next strike. Fritz wrapped an arm around her, pinning the angel to his chest, and hacked again.
The other stump flopped to the ground.
Mary arched against him, her wail echoing all up and down the tower.
There was no expression on Fritz’s face as he shoved her to the ground, but our bond told the truth. His sadness was overwhelming.
He dropped down to straddle her, knees pinning her arms on either side of her. She thrashed weakly. Without the remainder of her wings, she was too weak to overcome Fritz’s kopis strength.
He kept his expression schooled as he offered the knife to me. “Do you want to do it?”
I think he meant that as a gesture of respect, offering to let me kill a fallen angel and all. It was probably the only time in my entire life I’d have the chance. Plus, the first kill of our new partnership. A victory.
Gazing down at Mary as she gasped and bled on the ground, I didn’t feel victorious. I felt sad, too.
“No thanks,” I said. “Just make it fast.”
Fritz drove the knife under her ribs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WE FOUND ISOBEL UNCONSCIOUS in the kitchen.
I set Fritz down in one of the overstuffed chairs before going to her side. I’d shut down the bond as soon as Mary died, but while I was thrilled to get my brain back to myself, it meant that Fritz was weak again. I’d had to carry him all the way downstairs. He definitely couldn’t stand up on his own.
But I also didn’t have to worry about the content of my thoughts as I pulled Isobel into my lap and checked her pulse. It looked like she had fallen and hit her head. Blood trickled from her temple. But her pulse was fine, and her eyelids fluttered at my touch.
She smiled faintly when she saw me. I liked that smile a lot.
“Cèsar.” Her eyes went suddenly wide. She sat up. “Mary!”
“She’s dead,” I said, steadying her with a hand on her back.
“Fritz?”
I pointed to the chair. Fritz gave her a small nod. His bad foot was propped up on a table, still black, still swollen, not looking good at all.
“Thank God,” Isobel said.
Thinking of what had happened to Mary—how an angel could have become that twisted thing that we’d fought upstairs, and how it had apparently been God’s design—I couldn’t help but grimace.
“Yeah, sure. Thank God,” I said. “Whatever.”
Isobel looked confused by my reaction, but didn’t remark on it. “I might have something to help with your foot in the RV, Fritz.”
Together, we staggered back to the foyer to find the RV intact and idling. Yelena waved excitedly at us through the windshield.
I tried not to groan.
Hey, being stuck in an RV with Yelena was a thousand times better than dying a horrible, messy death at the hands of a fallen angel. I could deal with it.
We holed up in the RV to w
ait for sunrise, sheltered within the church’s wards and the glow of Yelena’s magic. After Isobel rubbed some kind of smelly herbal salve on Fritz’s foot and bandaged the cuts on his back, the women went to sleep on the mattress above the driver’s compartment.
I stayed awake to make sure we didn’t get attacked.
At least, that was what I told everyone I was doing. The truth was that I was much too wired to sleep. The binding had given me a dose of energy a thousand times more powerful than any potion I could have brewed. I wasn’t sure I was going to sleep for the rest of the week.
So the ladies slept in the bed, Fritz crashed on the couch, and I held vigil.
Keeping watch in Helltown overnight wasn’t as bad as I expected. The nightmares bouncing off of the church’s wards had been harrowing at first, but it started to get kind of funny after a couple hours. They were relentless.
If I’d stepped out there, they would have eaten me alive. But I was out of their reach. The knowledge was way too satisfying.
My burned hand stopped aching a few minutes after I rubbed Isobel’s salve on it. I entertained myself by massaging it into my various bruises and watching them fade. Whichever witch friend had made that for her was pretty good. Soon enough, I was strong again—ready to wrestle oxen, if not another fallen angel.
Time passed. Night faded into the navy glow of pre-dawn.
One by one, the demons evaporated. The shadows faded. A sliver of sunlight glowed on the roofs of the buildings across the street, highlighting human architecture tainted by decades of infernal influence. It was kind of pretty, in a weird way.
Guess Isobel had been right about one thing: Helltown’s really not that bad once you get used to it.
“Doing all right?”
I turned to see Fritz dragging himself toward me, hair mussed and foot wrapped in bandages. He stunk of herbal salve. “Yeah, I’m good,” I said. “You?”
“I can’t feel my foot anymore.”
“Was Isobel’s salve that good, or is it the super fast kopis healing?”
“It could be either.” His grim tone said that he thought that neither was the cause of the numbness.
