“And that’s my cue.” Dee said, then gave Anwen a quick peck on the cheek. His voice boomed, overcoming the rising clamor. “I challenge!”
Abruptly, the light display worthy of a Pink Floyd concert stopped as Dee pushed his way through the throng. Anwen tried her best to pull him back, but she’d have had a better chance of arm wrestling an eel. The outburst threw a wave of cold water on the celebration as the whole community rounded on Zeus’ only remaining son.
“Dionysius?” Shock had bleached Persephone’s olive skin, and she looked to her brother with a frosty glare. “How can you challenge? You haven’t even heard my proclamation.”
“Okay, so let’s fast forward to it. Basically, you think we should go out and murder all the archangels, even though we have no grounds. Does that about sum it up?”
Persephone’s eyes narrowed. If he thought she was going to pull back on the rhetoric any, he was sorely mistaken. “Perhaps, living among mortals as you have for so long, you’ve forgotten the threat the angels pose. Or maybe, being that you’ve become their lapdog as a Pure Soul, you think they’ll coddle you where they murder us.”
The demigod blanched. “Excuse me? You forget that I’ve basically spent the last three decades of my life being one of the Council of Seven’s assassins, running around and vanquishing demons without so much as a thank you, and risked my life numerous times, all in an effort to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. I’ve lost...” He paused, swallowed hard, then continued. “I lost my wife and son in the process. Is this how they’ve coddled me?”
Riona took a position next to Dee, weaving her fingers through his. “It’s not just the nephilim that suffer loss,” she added. “I lost a man I loved. But it’s not the archangels’ fault. Not in the least.”
When Dee turned to her, What the fuck are you doing? etched into his expression, she just gave him a reconfirming nod. He would take it. Any second now, he told himself, Hades would be chiming in to back him up too. Maybe having the keystone witch testify would show the mortals were on the side of the sane. Time to get to the point.
“I get being pissed about the way most of the angels treat us, but, come on, Steph? You’re seriously going to stand up there and make it sound like Ramiel swooped down in the night and did away with Zeus like some sort of Hashishin renegade? We were both there. Zeus asked for his death.”
“Only to resurrect your wife!” she belted. “And this is how you thank him for his sacrifice? You side with the enemy?”
“Ramiel is not the enemy!” Dee bellowed. “We can’t fault the archangels for following Big Boss’s orders. They’re angels, that’s what they do. They have never taken a nephilim life without orders from Big Boss or without the specific request from one of us as set out in the accords.”
“Dee is right.”
At last, Hades had intervened. Dee’s body eased a little. He hadn’t missed the way so many of the crowd were giving him the evil eye.
But then, a sneer crept on to Hades’s face, and Dee took a step back.
“And does anyone doubt that, with Zeus gone, the rest of us are next?” The former lord of the underworld asked. “The angels will swarm the mountain just as soon as they have the ability to draw plans. They will torture us, applying their magic until we beg for death. And when we ourselves have asked it, how can it be said they are not simply executing their duty? And more importantly, we may be humanity’s only hope against suffering the same fate. How long they must have planned this! Was not anyone else surprised when Dionysius was recruited to be on the mortals’ magic brigade? No other demigod has ever been a Pure Soul. They wanted him, because they knew this very moment would come, and his loyalties would falter. Perhaps even lead others astray, so they would turn on our kind like the traitor son of Zeus!”
Dee’s fists clenched so hard, crimson drops slicked down the heels of his hands. His gravelly voice growled. “I would never do anything to harm our people. I will defend them to the ends of the earth.”
“Prove it, then!” Hades roared. “Take the ambrosia. Embrace the cause of our people and join us in the battle. Or would you refuse, and by doing so, dishonor your family, your queen, and your father’s legacy, by continuing to act as the Council’s puppet? Come now, Dee, to whom do you pledge your loyalty, now that it has come to this?”
Dee’s teeth ground. “I might ask you the same thing, traitor bastard.”
“You’re not going to kill the archangels,” Riona declared, as though any argument to the contrary had as much truth in it as a Pumpkin Spice Latte had actual pumpkin.
Jerry attempted to pull his wife back. “Not like this,” he spoke right in her ear. Riona acted her Riona-est, and broke free of his grasp.
“What about Ramiel, Steph? Going to kill him too? I haven’t known you that long. Maybe that’s what you do with all your exes.”
The goddess’s face boiled crimson. “Riona, cease! You have no place in this.”
“I don’t?” Obviously, Persephone didn’t know the Keystone all that well either. “I’m half archangel, after all. Going to kill me too?”
What happened next happened all too fast. All Riona would recall was a momentary look of sorrow and regret in Persephone’s eyes, followed by the feeling of her body jerking back just as her field of vision bleached white and turned hot. The next thing she realized, she was in Jerry’s arms, with him standing at her back. This she knew only by smell and instinct. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything. Everything was pitch black.
“What happened?” She discovered her voice had taken on an odd quality, flattening in the air like she was trapped in a closet.
It was Dee who answered, however. “Hades has power over the earth. Like, literally, the soil and stuff. He enclosed us in a mound of rock.”
“I remember. Zeus would ask him to do this sometimes, when a nephilim was being held for trial, to keep him from escaping,” Anwen choked. “Dee, can’t you use your strength to get us out of here? You can break the rock.”
“Sure I could wallop it and probably crack it open, but I can’t control where the roof over us would fall. More than likely, it’d come down on our heads. I’d be as likely to kill us all as save us.”
“Trial?” Jerry said. “Mountain justice is swift. Persephone is probably soliciting counsel right now from the Court. With the down-with-the-Heavenly rampage they’re on, I’m kind of thinking we can expect a wall of lightning to fry our asses once these walls go away. Have at it, Dee. I’d rather be crushed to death than electrocuted any day.”
Riona shifted her balance, reaching into the inky void before her eyes, seeking Dee and Anwen. “Everyone touch me.”
Jerry leaned in, whispering in her ear. “Maybe we need to reestablish boundaries vis-à-vis the group thing post-matrimony.”
Even at a time like this, he could still make her smile. “Not going to be an issue, Jer. I think I can port us. I’ve gotten really good at doing it myself.”
“There won’t be much need for that either anymore.” Jerry pressed his lips to the sensitive spot right behind her ear. “Right, you heard my wife. But please, keep it above the waist and below the elbow.”
“No good,” Anwen said. “I think I have her tit.”
“I’m really hoping I have her thumb,” Dee added. “Either that, or Jerry’s dick is even smaller than I thought. And manicured.”
Jerry’s hold around Riona’s waist tightened. Riona closed her eyes, and thought of the place she most wanted them to be. Nothing happened. Then, she remembered what Azazel had said to her about porting. It wasn’t the desire to be some place that would cause the shift to happen, it was the determination that the place held the one thing she needed most of all.
What they needed most was to be somewhere no one could harm them.
There was another bright flash the next moment. Just as quickly as the luminescence came, it dulled, and the air around them became brittle and cold. The street they found themselves on was clothe
d in the eerie partial light of the city at night. Brownstone buildings to the left and right met their eyes, swathed in shades of gray save for the occasional window from which the dull glow of a nightlight illuminated the frame.
“Holy shit!”
Dee’s exclamation worked as a blanket statement. Even Riona was in shock as she rubbed her eyes. She’d done it, and she’d got all four of them to exactly where she knew they’d be safe.
They were home.
Chapter 6
The woman at the front counter almost fell off her chair when she looked up from the crossword puzzle. Generally, Ramiel tried to avoid interacting with humans, other than what his role with the Pure Souls required. Mortals didn’t have much capacity for making sense of the affects the heavenly hosts inspired. In cases such as these, where he appeared in his customary male form, fashioned with a bit of arrogance and preference towards symmetric beauty, if the human was a young woman in her childbearing years with a viable libido, his nearness could induce scenes that looked like poorly crafted porn plots.
Luckily, this particular human had enough control over her instincts to quell any awkward thrusting of her breasts or suggestive moves with her pencil.
“Can I, um, help you?”
Shit. If only Uriel hadn’t placed wards over the retirement home, meaning even archangels had to come and go the mortal way. No porting allowed. Not that Riona’s mother, in her diminished and failing body, could have outrun any Fallen who came calling. Still, Ramiel thought at the very least, the woman should have a chance to end her own life before someone showed up to do it for her.
“I’m looking for Molly Dade. I’m her... uh...” He couldn’t lie. He was disobeying the current prince coming here. He also had some demerits at the top level for schlepping about with a nephilim even though it was against the accords. Mortals often used the phrase, “only God can judge me,” and luckily in Ramiel’s case, that was the Bible truth. Otherwise he’d be on probation. “I’m a friend of her daughter’s,” he decided on, figuring that wasn’t technically a lie. “I need to talk to her, if that’s okay. Can you tell me which room is hers?”
The woman, though her chest suggested she was breathing a little heavier—a clear effect of his spark—looked him up and down, like she was trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. “I don’t think you want to...”
“Please, Megan.” He used his angelic gift to call her name out of thin air as he reached across the desk in the lobby and took the woman’s hand. Immediately, her face flushed and she deeply inhaled. “I need to see Molly. I promise, I’m not some sort of weirdo or predator.”
Megan licked her lips and arched her back. “I just mean you won’t find her in her room. She’s sitting in the garden out back.”
Ramiel looked down the hall, to a door at the end with an inset window, cross-stitched by nature with flurry and ice. “But it’s freezing outside.”
“Miss Dade doesn’t care. The staff try to get her to come inside, but they get scared of her when she gets angry. Got a bit of a temper. She could scare the devil himself.”
“If rumors are true...”
Ramiel cut himself off. No need to let the cat out of the bag on just how much Molly had once been capable of. She may have had her memories turned to sashimi through the years by angels working on both sides, but she was still a legend to those who’d been in the know.
“I could take you out to her. Or, show you to her room to...” Megan scooted to the front of her chair. “Oh, my. Your hand is so... warm. And big.”
Immediately, Ramiel pulled back. The mortal already bore the telltale signs—flushed cheeks, dappled skin over her chest, dilated pupils. She was... attractive, he’d have to admit, and for a moment, his mind stitched together scenes of what a coupling with her could become. He brought up the houselights in his imagination, however, when he saw the charm that dangled at the end of a chain, hidden in the valley between her breasts.
The crucifix had always looked like a poorly drawn X to him, as if it marked all the territory off limits to archangels. Long before the Christians adopted it as the marker of their faith, it had been a Roman symbol, and before that, ancient pagans had used it as a sign of their so-called gods. Little did those ancients understand their gods were mere nephilim, themselves just the survivors of an earlier prototype of humanity. They were off limits, too, or else Ramiel this very moment would be on Olympus, confessing his love to Persephone as he brought her passion to peaks that shamed the rugged landscape of her birth.
Megan frowned, but then seemed to become aware of her loss of control. She blushed over as she melted into her seat. Ramiel thanked her for the assistance and headed out the door.
Immediately, as he emerged on to the porch, his eyes locked with Molly’s across the yard, though he could barely make out her profile through the smoke that wafted in front of her face. He felt like a woodland creature that had wandered into the pre-fixed sites of a mighty huntress.
“Molly?” he asked, hugging himself as though there were a need to shield against the bitter New England winter chill. “Why are you sitting out here? You’re going to freeze to death.”
“We both know I’m overdue on that bill as it is.” She inhaled a deep drag, then waved him over, her cigarette pinched between two bony fingers. “I figured one of you angel types would be showing up pretty soon. Have to admit, though, I’m glad it’s someone from your side. Azazel scares the shit out of the nice little girl who works the front desk. I guess this means things are coming to a head, huh?”
He took a seat beside her on the bench. “Something like that. Listen, Molly, I need to ask you something. I know your memories are a little sketchy, but if you can just tell me what you remember, I’d very much appreciate it.”
“You want to know if I know what Michael’s end game is,” Molly said without a single peep of doubt in her voice.
Ramiel felt his Adam’s apple (which by the way, was a stupid name, given the fruit had actually been a plum, but he supposed Adam’s Shriveled Dates didn’t hold the same ring) bob. “Do you?”
“I know enough to know you’re asking the wrong question.” When he only displayed confusion, she continued. “Why would the prince of the heavenly realm, the Chief of the Council of Seven, the most powerful of the archangels, give up all that titular glory just to overthrow what was already his?”
“Simple—more power.” Ramiel crossed his arms over his chest and nodded, agreeing with himself. “That’s been the way of men since time immemorial. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even an archangel would eventually break under the weight and find himself unsatisfied.”
“You spend too much time in the flesh, blending in as a mortal. You’re starting to think like one.”
“Says you. I came here straight from the pearly gates.”
“Hit your head on them when you were running away? You angels and your good and evil and the battle for men’s souls. What the fuck does it matter, what happens to men’s souls? They’re indestructible, unless Big Boss gets involved. Listen, did you know that Riona had a twin brother?”
The wild change in subject threw Ramiel. He replayed Molly’s words in his head, trying to figure out if he’d missed something. “From the moment I was aware of your pregnancy, I sensed only a girl.”
The wind shifted, blowing the smoke right into his face. Had he been human, he’d be hacking. “Makes sense. You came on the scene right after I vanquished Michael. I still can’t believe you guys bought the story that I’d broken up with him and that’s why he chose to bide his time with Buddha instead of returning to the heavenly realm, as if he had heart enough where I was concerned to have to sulk off and mend it.”
“We never really understood what he saw in you. We were all kinda perplexed.”
Had he been human, Molly’s glare would have forged a chemical burn on his retinas.
“Sorry, no offense meant.”
“I find that hard to believe. I wish I could tell
you what I saw in him, but my memory of our relationship has long since been purged by one of you guys. Wish I had at least one recollection of what was probably the best sex I ever had. Would that have hurt so much?”
He mocked clearing his throat and shifted on the bench. “At least our side only redacts memories. If it had been Azazel put to the task, he probably would have created false memories of Michael raping you repeatedly. But you were saying—a twin?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Molly extinguished the butt of the cigarette on the side of her oxygen tank. “But Michael told me he only needed a girl for his plans. He told me to get an abortion, and to bring him the fetus so he could destroy it magically as well. Otherwise, it would keep growing even after it was extracted. But Molly Dade wasn’t hit hard with the onion cart as a child, no sir. I went to the clinic like he asked—I had a friend, another witch, who worked there as a nurse. I told her the situation, that I’d made a mistake with a controlling man who was breaking up with me, but demanded I abort my son and was so crazy he wanted me to give him the fetus as proof. When I gave it to Michael, he summoned his blade to kill it. I went into hysterics and grabbed his angelic blade.”
“What a motherfucker, god damned...” Ramiel stopped when Molly side-eyed him hard enough. “Sorry. Okay, then, if it would keep growing outside the womb, and Michael didn’t kill him, what happened to him?”
She grimaced. “Ask Gabriel. He took that memory from me.”
Ramiel shook his head. Something else to follow up on down the road. “So, you got his heavenly blade and turned it on him. He was vanquished, you were safe.”
“I was safe, but Riona wasn’t.” She shrugged. “Gabriel tried to clean my memories of Michael, but then I kept freaking out because I wondered how I ended up pregnant and had no memory of it. In the end, Azazel gave me just enough of a memory of the truth, with bonus fake footage of Michael as an abuser—I guess he figured I needed some excuse to rationalize why I left him and didn’t want him involved in my life—to manage my psyche. But I still knew Riona’s dad wanted something from her, and that something was bad. So I did something I had never done before.”
When Spell Freezes Over (All My Exes Die From Hexes Book 4) Page 6
