by eden Hudson
No one should be looking at me like that. I was the fuckup, the disappointment, the weak link. They knew me. They talked shit about me—accurate shit. They should know better than to look at me like I was the guy who was going to save them. Mikal had said it best: I was a disease. I ruined everything I touched.
You will be the reason we win the last battle. You will be the Whitney who lives to see everything crushed under my boot, just like your mama’s skull.
My stomach pitched, but I didn’t puke. Inside my chest, my heart pumped. Again. That swimmy feeling poured into my head. I had to get out of there. Hell, even going up in flames would be better than this. Might even be the only way to protect these dumbasses from me—take myself out of the game early.
“Tough?” Willow was standing right in front of me, head cocked so she could catch my eye. “Are you all right?”
I blinked a couple times, then nodded. I took a deep breath. That helped a little, opening and closing my lungs so that my heart wasn’t the only thing in my chest moving. The way the air rushed in, then whooshed back out seemed to remind my heart that it was supposed to be dead. It stopped beating, at least.
Dodge came up beside Will. I thought surely he would say something about how crazy it was that everybody seemed to think I was good for anything—much less starting a holy war—but all he did was give me a smile and say, “Going into the family business after all, huh?”
Where was Owen? If anybody would have the decency to blurt out what everybody was really thinking, it would be him. I looked over Dodge and Willow’s shoulders, but Owen wasn’t there.
Will saw me looking for her cousin. “Owen and Clara… I left Bitsy with them. They’re going to get out of town when it starts.”
Bitsy. I’d forgotten about Will’s little girl. Will had a fucking kid and here she was, ready to throw her life away.
No. No way in hell. I grabbed her arm, ready to shove Will out the front door. No way in hell was I getting somebody else’s mom killed.
“Let go!” Will snapped. Her orangish-red hair whipped around her head as she tried to jerk her arm out of my grip.
I let go and stabbed my finger at the door.
“No.” She set her feet. “Scout said this was a volunteer army. Well, guess what—I’m a volunteer. And I’m not leaving.”
Dodge stepped up beside her.
“Look, Tough, maybe you didn’t get to decide. Family’s like that, I know.” The words rumbled deep down in his chest. He was using his Keep It Between the Band voice, the one he used when he wasn’t joking, when he had to tell somebody they were the problem and they needed to get their act together or get out. “But me and Will do get a choice. We get to decide whether to keep rolling over for the angels and every other NP or help you show them that people won’t stand for this anymore.” He glanced at Will. “That way our kid doesn’t have to do the shit we’ve done to stay alive in this town.”
I must’ve looked like somebody’d slapped me because Will jumped in to explain.
“She’s not his,” Will said. “Not biologically.”
“But she’s like mine,” Dodge said. “I don’t want Bitsy to have to go through the same stuff her mom did.”
Willow smiled at him, then she shined that smile on me. “We’re in this. You’re not going to change my mind or throw me out, either. I’ll just keep coming back. Like a bad penny.” She laughed and punched my shoulder. “Or a Whitney.”
I shook my head again, hard, but she didn’t say anything else, I guess because she already knew she’d won.
I whipped my hat off and scratched my hand through my hair. What I really wanted to do was rip it out by the roots, but it probably wouldn’t grow back, so I settled for dragging my hat back on and heading for the back room.
Nobody else said anything to me. Nobody was going to stop this. Hell, they were lining up to join Scout’s army. Who knew what kind of bullshit she’d been feeding them about revenge or freedom or something else retarded like that. And they fucking loved it.
Damn, I needed a drink. A Whitney special—a shot, a longneck, and a shot at Rowdy’s. Some ‘shine by the bonfire in Dodge’s back pasture. A forty and some SoCo Hundred Proof up in my room as far the hell away from everybody as I could get. Anything to shut off my brain.
Scout was just coming down the steps when I got to them. I grabbed her arm and pulled her through the door marked Restroom.
Told you, that faulty wiring in my head said.
“Tough, what—”
I locked the door behind us.
“You need me, don’t you?” She put her arms around my neck and hooked one leg around mine. “Let me get these clothes off. The crow magic works best if—”
I grabbed her wrists and twisted them behind her back, then spun her around so she was pressed up against the bathroom’s painted cinder block wall. I might not be a good enough guy to stop myself from feeding off her, but at least I could make sure it didn’t happen naked anymore.
She half-laughed, half-purred and arched her back so she could grind her butt against my crotch.
“Kinky,” she said. She probably thought it was, too, porn-star piercings or not.
That made me want to suck-start a shotgun. Scout was just a kid who thought doing it standing up and from behind was kinky. She probably didn’t even know that there were people and NPs who wanted to be cut while they had sex or who needed to make you hate yourself or who did it in torture dungeons or with ten other people at the same time. She probably had no idea that it wasn’t sexy—any of it—that the shit that shoves you down that direction, that makes you need to hurt yourself or need to hurt somebody else to get off wasn’t sexy, it was a pit you tried and tried to crawl out of, but you couldn’t, you could never get out. She probably hadn’t figured out yet that you couldn’t wash this shit off your soul, that no matter how hard you scrubbed, it was always going to be there. No, she was just a stupid kid ready to trade whatever it took to get what she thought she wanted.
She’ll figure it out. In about five years when she’s shoving somebody up against a wall in a bathroom, this’ll all finally sink in.
I wished I could shut my brain off. Just ten seconds without having to listen to its shit.
I pushed Scout’s head to the side and bit into the artery in her neck. She moaned and rubbed against me some more.
Just drink. Don’t fuck her. Just drink.
My good intentions lasted about two swallows. Then I fucked her. Put it on my tab.
Colt
The air felt like razor blades made of fire on my skin, scraping upward everywhere at once, burning and flaying me alive. Every breath shredded my throat to ribbons, then charbroiled the ribbons to ash. Every step I took felt like the sharp edge of a white-hot tin can shoved into my foot, scooping off the meat of my heel, the ball of my foot, the pads of my toes—anything that touched down.
The Gatekeepers hadn’t followed me into the Pit, and now I knew why.
I could feel the blood running down the back of my neck, my stomach, my forehead. It pooled in the hollows of my collar bones, dripped into my eyes, slid down my throat into my stomach and lungs. Wherever it settled, I felt it immediately dry up and turn to dust.
But when I looked down, there was nothing. Other than the cuts and bruises I’d gotten from the Gatekeepers, my body was untouched. My skin still glowed just enough that I could see that the feeling of physical pain wasn’t being inflicted on me physically at all. It was a torture of the soul.
Therein lies true Hell. The soul never died and the torture never stopped.
In the little bit of light coming from my skin, I could see cells lining the Pit to my left and right, going down, down, down, into infinity. Humans, fallen angels, and other creatures laid or curled in various parts of their cells, either silent with their eyes closed or screaming with their eyes open. There were no doors. No locks. No chains. No one made an effort to leave.
White hot razors slashed at my eyes. The corneas
became brittle and burnt. The fluid inside boiled until the pressure was unbearable. They were going to explode. I had to shut out the pain just for a second so I could go on.
I closed my eyes.
*****
Mikal shouted orders at the foot soldiers, pointing out my position on the second floor of the abandoned ice house across the street from Seventh Circle. Not like I was trying to hide, though. Even without whatever angel senses she had, and an immortality’s worth of experience in battle, she would’ve seen me. I had purposely skylined myself after getting off those shots.
The foot soldier leading Kathan’s security detail bolted toward the ice house, grabbed a corner of a busted-out window frame and scaled the wall. The rest of the detail fanned out, surrounding the building.
I hugged the rifle to my chest and ran for the back of the ice house, hopping over the piles of junk some hoarder had stashed up there, and trying to avoid the obviously rotten patches of floor. I wasn’t going to get away and that was fine. This plan wouldn’t work if I escaped, anyway. And even though according to the newly integrated non-person legislature Kathan would be well within his rights to retaliate, the press and paparazzi were still all over him. Executing a sixteen-year-old human in the street—who, admittedly, looked like he might even be a couple years younger—wasn’t going to win Mayor Dark any favor in the eyes of the human public, self-defense or not.
Which, Ryder had pointed out when we came up with this plan, was basically just me and Sissy saying, “Let’s hope Kathan wants favor in the eyes of the human public.”
That logic hadn’t deterred Sissy or me. This had to be done. Dad should’ve thought of it during the war, but he’d been in too much pain to think straight. He had a daughter who could banish demons from the face of the earth and he didn’t even consider using it on Kathan?
That wasn’t right. We should’ve known Dad wouldn’t have made a tactical error like that. Even out of his mind with grief and guilt, Dad never would’ve been that stupid.
This was a memory. I recognized it by the constant stream of thoughts. While I’d actually been running for the ice house’s mostly torn-out staircase the only things on my mind had been not tripping and carrying out the plan. It was later that I’d been unable to keep myself from replaying everything leading up to Sissy’s death, going over and over the things I should’ve done differently, hating myself for not having the brains to see that Dad would have tried banishing Kathan first thing if it were possible to banish him.
The security detail leader smashed into me from behind, knocking me into a wall of decomposing newspapers and books. I hit my head on something, but managed to come up slashing with the knife from my belt. Just a little game knife we’d found in the cabin, but the hooked back snagged the foot soldier’s cheek muscle and tore it away from his jaw, leaving a ragged hole where his bloody teeth and gums glared through.
My first hand-to-hand with Rian. I didn’t know his name yet or that he was Kathan’s third in command, just that I wanted to hack him to pieces and buy Tough, Ryder, and Sissy as much time as possible.
The security detail leader—Rian—growled and snatched the knife away. He planted it in the meat just above my knee, less than an inch from the bullet hole scar. I yelled. My leg jerked involuntarily, shredding even more muscle around the blade and hook. For a second I thought I was going to black out.
The rest of the foot soldiers crowded around us, covering me with their rifles while Rian ratcheted hot metal handcuffs shut around my wrists.
Then I heard the boom of the beanbag gun. That meant that in the confusion, Ryder had surprised Mikal from behind with his barbed-wire garrote and Tough had made it close enough to Kathan to fire off that homemade round of lye into the fucker’s face, hopefully blinding him.
Another boom. I hoped Ryder had thought fast enough to duck down behind Mikal’s wings—Tough’s second round of lye was supposed to be for her.
“I’ve got him!” Rian snapped at the other foot soldiers. “Get out there!”
Combat boots shook the rotten floor beneath me as the soldiers sprinted to the windows. I prayed to God that Sissy would be fast enough.
Rian hauled me to my feet and shoved his sidearm into my ribs, but I wasn’t resisting anymore. All my focus was on trying to hear what was happening out on the street. I’d heard Sissy banish demons before and it damn sure hadn’t been this quiet. Even half-deaf I would be able to hear Hell opening up and dragging Kathan kicking and screaming into eternity.
But Hell never came for Kathan.
There was a screech shot through with unnatural bass notes. Then Ryder’s Saiga opened up, fully automatic. Then a whoomp like a brush pile soaked with diesel catching fire. Sissy screamed. Tough yelled something I couldn’t make out.
Back when I was alive, there was a jump in this memory. During my nightmares and sometimes when I couldn’t block it out, I would experience the jump as Rian hauling me across piles of moldy books and papers and rat crap, feeling the tearing pain in my leg, a million times worse every time I took a step…then sitting on a bench in Halo’s old jail house’s only cell between Ryder and Tough, staring at the cracked concrete floor, feeling nothing. Even with all the tearing around Mikal did in my head, she had never been able to find those missing hours. Cutting them out of my memory like they’d never happened was probably the one good thing my brain had ever done for me.
Now that I was dead, though, I remembered all of it. Every second of being perp-walked down the rickety stairs. Feeling the pain, smelling the smoke and burning meat, listening to Ryder empty his drum magazine.
The whole time, every single step, Sissy’s screaming went on and on. It was like she didn’t need to breathe. The sound just kept going, drilling down into my brain, triggering some pool of animal rage and pain, until all I could think was, if it was so bad, why didn’t Ryder just shoot her and put her out of her misery?
I should’ve fought Rian—bad leg or not, I should’ve tried to fight him. But I couldn’t. Something inside me was already broken. The smell, the sound of Sissy screaming, and the complete lack of evidence that Kathan had begun his descent into Hell… This plan was supposed to have worked. God had practically written it on the cabin wall. But we had failed. Again. In that minute, I didn’t have any reserves left. All the fight in me was gone.
Down every single step, across thirty feet of rotten flooring littered with more brittle brown newspaper, out the busted door. Sissy’s screaming hit a higher pitch. I couldn’t believe anyone could make a noise like that. Throughout the entire war—four years of fighting—I’d never heard someone scream that way.
Rian dropped me in the street. The handle of the knife in my leg scraped against the blacktop. For a second, all I could see was red. Then the worn and duct-taped toes of Tough’s sneakers kicking at the asphalt next to a pair of shiny black combat boots faded into my field of vision.
I craned my neck as far as I could manage, trying to look up. A foot soldier was holding Tough’s scrawny arms up so that Tough’s feet barely touched the ground. Tears were streaming down my little brother’s face. Between bouts of incoherent sobbing, Tough screamed at the angel.
Ryder’s Saiga went quiet, and then he was cuffed and laying on the ground to my right. I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look my way. I managed to roll onto my side, away from the pain shooting up my thigh, and sit up so I could see what Ryder and Tough were staring at.
Directly ahead of us, a foot soldier kneeled on Kathan’s back, trying to jerk Sissy’s gravity knife out from between the mayor’s cervical vertebrae. Kathan wasn’t moving. Severing his spine had paralyzed him just like Sissy and I had hoped it would.
Off to the side, Mikal stood holding a gas can. The flesh around her eyes had bubbled and burned away in places from the lye, but she was grinning. In front of her, chained to a telephone pole, was a body engulfed in flames. Somehow the body was still screaming.
Sissy. Sissy was still screaming. The sound h
ad become hoarse and croaking, but she was still going. She was still alive.
Mikal turned to face us.
“You want to be martyrs?” she yelled. Her bubbling, melted grin widened until I could see every one of her perfect white teeth shining in the firelight. “Martyrs don’t die pretty, boys, and they don’t die fast. And when they ask for water—”
Mikal stepped closer to the body—to Sissy. She lifted the gas can to Sissy’s lips.
*****
I sucked in the scorching hot air of the Pit. White-hot claws ripped open my throat and tore into my lungs. I choked, then vomited blood. It burned my mouth like battery acid. My head ached like someone was hammering a hot gutter spike into my eyes and anchoring it in my skull.
I was laying facedown on the floor of the Pit. The rocky ground seared my skin. I could smell myself cooking, the same as I’d smelled Sissy.
Thinking that brought up another wave of acid-vomit that blistered and corroded every part of my throat, mouth, and lips.
I wanted to shut my eyes again. It hadn’t hurt while my eyes were shut. Not physically. But—
But closing your eyes was a trap. You went into your head, and what was waiting there was worse than torture. And when you decided to surface again, the agony in your soul hurt even worse. From here, going back into your worst memories or maybe your worst nightmares almost seemed like it would be a relief.
I looked around at the humans and other creatures lying on the floors of their cells. That was why there were no locks or chains. No one left. Ever.
I took a step. Burning metal sliced into the ball of my foot and scooped the pad away from the bones. Trying to set my foot down carefully didn’t make any difference, but the instinct to walk softly was too strong to just barrel forward. The next step felt like the rusty edge of the can snagged on my heel bone and chipped part of it away.
