by Rob Thurman
“We’re sure it was all worthwhile, that this will work?” He leaned against the wall. I could see him through the sword itself, his image wavering through the rippled surface of the blade.
“No, we’re not sure of anything, but I scraped the bottom of my bag of tricks for this. If it doesn’t work, no one will bitch that we didn’t give it our best shot. Cronus will be giving them plenty of other things to bitch about. Torture, death, the sun falling from the sky, being thrown into another world where sharks are people and humans are chum.” I pointed the sword at Leo, admiring the crystal sheen of the blade—straight and true. “I think I want one more meal at the diner. One more helping of biscuits and gravy in case it’s our last.”
“I know you don’t equate that with the Last Supper, you with your heathen existence.”
If anyone had worse timing than a demon, it was an angel. “More of a Last Lunch.” I let the point of the broadsword drop toward the wood floor as I swiveled to face Azrael. Griffin was right or rather I wished he were right. The sudden appearance and disappearance should be somewhat akin to poofing. I knew I would appreciate a sound effect to let me know when an angel or demon shimmered into existence behind me. Bell the cat. If they both weren’t so fond of their own voice, and they were, you often wouldn’t have any warning. “You’re not invited.”
The disdain in the purple-black eyes was the same as it had been before. “If a sword could fell a Titan, don’t you think we would have tried it?”
“With one of those flaming swords? Did you ever wonder where they come from, the swords made of fire? Whatever angel is passing them out up in the Penthouse, did you think he made them? It’s ironic that all the smiting you and yours does is with weapons made by dead païen.” If you could make a sword out of water, you could out of fire as well, the Namaru’s natural environment. I smiled. “Why, sugar, you don’t look pleased to hear that. Your feathers are ruffled.”
“He looks ready to drop a load on a statue’s head, I think you mean,” Leo added, pulling the ponytail holder from his hair and resecuring it tightly.
Azrael ignored the insult and the one who’d delivered it. “That is not so. Our weapons are of Heaven and always have been of Heaven.”
I didn’t try to change his mind. In my life and my occupation I’d learned that you can change behaviors, with the right kind of motivation, but you can rarely change minds. Logic was useless. My natural optimism had taken a beating from reality more than enough to learn that while truth and facts were nice thoughts, they required a reasonable medium to take root. Angels weren’t often reasonable. It would be easier to pry the six-pack out of a NASCAR fan’s hand than to change an angel’s mind. “Did you want something, Angel of Death? Was Ishiah wrong in thinking you could do what needs to be done? Killing is easy for you, but leading—is that out of your depth?”
“I can do both, easily. You should remember that.” His wings, often an indicator of an angel’s mood, stayed flat. They hadn’t been disturbed, although I’d told a tiny white lie and said they were. Azrael was right. I should remember he had no problem with killing, certainly no emotion attached to the act. Which was worse? To kill out of cold arrogance or to kill out of a hunger for violence? Angels and demons, if you asked me, the only difference was location. “I came to see if it was worth it. If we had a genuine chance or if all of this has been trickster talk and trickster ego. Liars, thieves, you hold nothing to be sacred and true, including your word.”
“I always keep my word. There are plenty who would tell you that. They’d have to crawl out of their unfortunately early graves to do it, but they could tell you.” I hefted the sword again. “This is a win-win for everyone, Azrael. Try to keep that thought in your tiny parakeet brain. We all stand together or we all fall, and that fall will make Lucifer’s seem like a trip to the ice cream store. Just do your part and we might make it. Think how Heaven will look at you”—I nudged—“with adoration and admiration. They’ll love your ass, put it up on a pedestal.” As Lucifer’s followers had once done to him. “You’ll be the hero of Heaven.” It did sound better than hit man of Heaven, but Azrael was not interested in heroics. He wasn’t made that way. He was interested in saving his own life though and that would have to do.
“If you fail us, I shall kill you before Cronus has a chance,” he promised.
“If I fail, trust me, death will be the least of my worries,” I said. This time the wings did spread, because he knew—he knew, at least, that was true. For everyone. Killing didn’t cause an emotional flicker, but thinking of how Cronus would make the rest of existence an endless damnation that Hell could never begin to dream of or match—that ruffled Azrael and good.
“Then do not fail.” He was gone before I could make sure Ishiah had given him the right time and place. It didn’t matter. I knew he had. Ishiah was thoroughly dependable and one of the exceptions that proved the rule about changing minds. Ishiah wouldn’t let me down. I didn’t know how he had been made, but it was far from the template of Azrael. Ishiah could kill, most likely had killed, but he would feel it and I thought he would regret it, whether it was justified or not. That made him a better person than I was.
“One tentative RSVP from Heaven,” Leo said. “Now what about Hell?”
“That’s going to be a roll of the dice. Cronus needs only one more demon. I’m hoping that’s not because he caught Eli peeking out of Hell and took his wings. Without Eli, we’re pretty well screwed.” I put the sword down on the couch. It magnified the weave of the material beneath it. “He’s the only high-level demon I know. . . .”
“Since you killed the others,” he interrupted.
That was unfair. How was I supposed to know I’d need one or two later on? You didn’t keep around a rabid dog on the off chance that Hollywood would call you to make Cujo 2, Wrath of the Motherpupper. “He’s the only one I know,” I went on, “and of all the ones I have known, the only one silver-tongued enough to have a hope at getting us what we needed. Not many demons could deliver up Hell itself.”
“Maybe not even Eligos.”
“Maybe not.” I shook my head. There was no point in worrying about it as there was nothing we could do about it. “We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed.”
“You don’t think that no matter how this ends, Heaven and Hell are going to think we didn’t do our share?” he asked, knocking once against the wall in punctuation.
“They have a trickster and a god playing on the team. What more could they want?” I knew what I wanted. Païen kind as far from Cronus as they could get. Cronus was the sole remaining Titan. The others, like him, couldn’t be killed . . . except by their own hand. Only a Titan was powerful enough to kill a Titan and they’d all eventually done just that, but to themselves. All that unending power, it led nowhere but to insanity. The other Titans had turned that insanity inward and died of it. Cronus was the only one who had turned it outward, which was apparently the ticket to escaping suicide. Unfortunately, outward also equaled homicide. Two “cides” to every story, but with a Titan the story was always a horror. I didn’t want our kind near that horror. We were too few as it was.
“I don’t know. Perhaps a functional trickster and god?” Leo said with a wry lift of his eyebrows.
“Picky, picky, picky.” I narrowed my eyes as the raven tattoo on his chest appeared to move when he shifted positions. “Why don’t you put on a shirt, Captain Kirk? Or are you going to try distracting Cronus by having him put dollar bills in your pants?”
“Oh, now you notice. It’s the end of the world and suddenly you can see. It’s good to know what it takes. Next time we shower together, I’ll arrange an Armageddon.” He turned and headed back to the bedroom. That was serious talk from someone who had at one point and could again in the future when his powers returned. You had to feel flattered when someone was ready to end the world for a romp in the shower. Or that might just be me.
Yes, it probably was just me. I didn’t mind.
Yo
u took your fantasies where you could get them.
Chapter 16
We skipped lunch at the diner. While I would’ve liked to have my potential last meal there, it was too close to Trixsta, or what was left of it. I didn’t want the boys to see it, and I didn’t want to see it either. It was best to fight on an empty stomach anyway. When there’s a possibility someone plans on stringing you up by your own intestines, it’s much less messy. Or a more mundane penetrating wound to the abdomen . . . Did you honestly want someone looking at the ground at your feet and asking if that was biscuits and gravy pouring out of the gaping hole in your stomach? No, that sort of thing took you right off your game.
Before we got into yet another stolen car, I had to ask Griffin a question. It wasn’t one I wanted to ask, but it was part of the plan, the most important part. If he said no, I wouldn’t blame him, except I knew he wouldn’t say that. I also knew who would, and I respected him all the more for doing it.
“No fucking way,” Zeke said. I hadn’t seen him angry with me before. That made this the first time and it was memorable. He was doing it up right. Green eyes were always among the most beautiful, I thought, and yet they could turn hard in an instant, the deepest and coldest of ice, merciless as a riptide. “No fucking way you are putting a bull’s-eye on Griffin’s chest. You’re not singling him out to that goddamn freak. We can all face Cronus, but you’re not dangling Griffin like a piece of meat for an alligator.”
“Zeke, it’s not like that,” Griffin countered.
“Griffin, it is like that.” I had put the sword in the car and now stood, hip against the metallic blue of the SUV, a four-wheel-drive felony. “Don’t think it’s no different than Zeke playing demon bait when you’re on the hunt, because it is. If Cronus gets to you, you won’t be able to fight him off and we won’t be able to pull you back. He’s not a demon. If he touches you, it’s over.” For Griffin and for us all.
“But you won’t let him, will you?” he said with a certainty in his voice that was the best gift anyone could’ve given me, and few, because of what I was, did. Unwavering trust.
“No, I won’t.” I touched his face and the bruise that hadn’t had time to fade. “But don’t agree to this because you think you have something to make up for. If you do, I’ll know it, and we’ll go right back upstairs and let the Apocalypse come. I mean it.”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen the error of my ways there. Ex-demon is now politically correct in my book. It might be why Azrael finds me so disgusting. If I can rise up and change my ways, others could as well. I want to do this because it’s the right thing to do.” He bumped Zeke’s shoulder with his own. “It is, Zeke. You know it, and you would do it too.”
“I don’t care. You almost let demons kill you. Demons. That’s goddamn pathetic.” Zeke pushed him with enough force to shove him back a step. “How can I look after you if you won’t look after yourself, huh? How? I fucking can’t, can I?”
“Trixa won’t let Cronus kill me.” Griffin didn’t push back. Zeke had been pushed enough this week, emotionally. He would’ve tolerated physically better. “And if she can’t stop him, then I will. I promise, Zeke, and I’ve never broken a promise to you. Hell, I couldn’t. You know that.”
“Damn it. Damn it.” Zeke hung his head. “Just . . . shit. If you get yourself killed, I’m not speaking to you again, and this time I mean it.” He got into the back of the car and slammed the door hard.
“It’s not fair to him.” I was wearing the same clothes I’d worn yesterday to rob the museum. All black, but the fall while running from the museum guards had taken its toll. I had washed them this morning. There was something ignoble about showing up to a battle wearing muddy streaks on your shirt and gum on your knee. “But then again I guess it’s not fair to any of us.”
“I think you and Leo have had it easy for too long.” Griffin curled his lips. “Time to know what it is to fight with a baseball bat instead of an Uzi.” He opened the same door Zeke had shut. “Move over, you cranky bastard. Don’t make me PDA you in front of God and everybody.”
As the door closed again. Leo cracked his knuckles in the palm of his other hand. “An Uzi. I think that boy vastly underestimates who we are.”
“Who we were,” I reminded him. “Are you ready to be human?” I’d learned over the past few days that playing human was easy, but being human was a bitch. I’d lost a home I’d never thought I’d want, and I was a person I never thought I’d be. Still, I hadn’t once in my life let a lack of resources stop me from doing what had to be done. That wasn’t going to change now. Being human would only make the victory that much sweeter, life itself that much sweeter.
“We’re going to get our asses handed to us,” Leo said with grim humor.
“Oh, without a doubt.” I sighed as I started around the car. “Cronus will need a shopping cart to haul them around in.”
Because life . . . It wasn’t always sweet.
Arrow Canyon is about an hour northeast of Vegas. I’d hiked it before, on feet and paws. A narrow canyon that runs several miles long with petroglyphs painted on the walls and a dam at the end; it’s a good place to commune with nature or end it. Cronus wouldn’t care how picturesque the battlefield was, but during the week and work hours, the location would guarantee hopefully that no bystanders happened to wander into the middle of something they couldn’t imagine no matter how much acid they’d taken in their misspent youth. The hikers tended to stick to weekends . . . whether they had a history of wild drug-induced hallucinations or not.
Brown rock rose high around us as we walked about a mile from where we left the SUV at the municipal well. Leaving it was necessary as I didn’t want it thrown at us, and I was sure that if it was around, it would be. We ended up at the trailhead of the canyon. There were creosote bushes, Mojave yuccas with their green leaves like pointed daggers at their base, and a blue sky with tattered clouds so white they almost hurt your eyes. As you went on, the canyon would narrow considerably. In a tight spot and near the dam were not precisely where I would want to be facing Cronus. There was no reason to make things ridiculously easy for him. If he was going to kick our asses, at least I wanted him to work up a mild sweat over it.
I’d sacrificed my favorite shotgun to make Griffin’s “kidnapping” by demons look more convincing to the cops, but Leo had an early birthday present tucked away for me in his closet, a Benelli semiautomatic shotgun. It would blow the head off a demon easily, but against Cronus it would be less of the baseball bat Griffin had mentioned and more of a toothpick. I’d left it behind. The sword was what I carried. The great thing about a sword made of water, besides how it glittered brightly in the sun . . . very fancy . . . was that it was light. It weighed less than the pitcher of water had and much less than your conventional broadsword.
Griffin and Zeke both were carrying guns as well. They wouldn’t do any more good than Leo’s own shotgun, but it was hard to go into a fight without some sort of weapon—natural or manufactured. “This is it.” I scuffed the dirt under the black sneakers we’d stopped and bought on the way. Neither boots or bare feet were going to make it a mile over the Nevada desert, and Leo hadn’t happened to also purchase me footwear for that early birthday present. “Where we make our stand.” It wasn’t especially auspicious that the word “stand” was almost always accompanied by “last.”
Zeke shrugged. “Here or at the am/pm. Doesn’t matter, except at least I could get candy bars at the am/ pm.”
“I only wish someone were here to write down those poetic words for posterity,” Leo said. “They are epic in breadth and scope. Homer would be green with jealousy.”
Zeke pumped a round in his shotgun. “There’s not a whole lot poetic about dying,” he said matter-of-factly.
He was right. I took a deep breath, feeling my mortality acutely. I’d always been mortal, but I hadn’t been so vulnerably mortal. I hadn’t been human, hadn’t given them credit for staring into the face of death with nothing more
to keep them going than hope, optimism, or ruthlessly channeled resignation to their fate. If we survived, I’d be tempted to give them a little slack in the future. “Griffin?”
As Leo and Zeke flanked him, Griffin showed his wings and spread them wide. Zeke had been right. They were the wings of a dragon, flown out of the heart of the sun to land impossibly on Earth. They were the same beautiful gold I’d seen before, untarnished and wholly undemonlike. Hopefully, Cronus wouldn’t know that. As I stepped in front of Griffin, my back to him and the sword down and behind my leg, the Titan proved he didn’t. He appeared twenty feet in front of me. Subtly this time, with no moving of the world, only a small ripple in the shadow of it. It was all the worse for that.
The emptiness inside him, the dark clots of nothing-ness that swallowed everything and anything, was pouring out. From his eyes and his mouth, it ran down the unnaturally smooth face... down the inside-out shirt and cardboard cutout of jeans, down the offensively careless costume of a human being, and began to eat away at the ground beneath his feet. The earth was being unmade beneath him, unraveling in tiny pockets as you could for the first time see what reality was formed from. It was glorious to see and then horrible to watch it die. Cronus took a step and the world cringed beneath it. His blackly bleeding eyes fixed on Griffin and the word passed out of his mouth through the shadows. “Finally.”
“Finally is right,” I said. “Finally your days are no more. You took my one home, you bastard, but you’re not taking the other.” He wasn’t taking Griffin either. Griffin had risked his life for my plan and Zeke had risked that much more. I wasn’t going to let Cronus pass through me to Griffin and his wings. Pure and simple. It wasn’t going to happen.
Cronus thought differently, proving it as he took another step toward us. He was at the end, so close to the culmination of what he’d started nine hundred and ninety-nine demons ago. He was within reach of tipping that first domino that would bring all the others down. He needed only one more wing to get the map to find Lucifer, to navigate Hell. But he didn’t have to worry about finding his way around Hell—Hell found him just fine.
