Flesh and Blood

by E. A. Copen

  “Was that always the plan? To kill everyone?”

  “Yes,” he spat through clenched teeth. “You, Christian, Danny, Evette. Every last fucking one of you looked down on me. I wasn’t good enough. Well, who’s laughing now?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not my fault you suck at magic, Theo.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare call me by that name. Theo is dead. He died when Christian Lenore picked him up on the side of the road, hitchhiking in a-hundred-and-ten-degree heat. Theo died trading his decency for water and the promise of greatness. And you know what he got for giving up the only fucking chance he had? Fucked in the ass and thrown aside, that’s what.”

  I put a hand on the banister and vaulted over it, landing in a crouch on the bottom floor. Spyder stumbled back a step. I moved forward, forcing him to keep backing up. “Christian was molesting all of us, Spyder. Using all of us. I understand your rage. Hell, I share it. It fucked us all up.”

  He planted his feet. “But at least you got what he promised you, huh? Power? Magic? Something close to happiness.”

  “I earned all of that, and I got over what Christian did to me instead of wallowing in it.”

  He leaned forward. “Then what the fuck are you doing standing in his apartment?”

  I grabbed Spyder by his shirt and slammed his back against the glass window behind him hard enough that a hairline crack spread through it. Lightning flashed, illuminating droplets of water racing down the glass and my reflection. “You were helping Remiel the whole time. Helping him with your magic, making him bodies.”

  “Yes,” Spyder spat back. “And I’d do it again. I’d do anything to hurt you.”

  “See, mate, that’s the problem. You didn’t just hurt me. You hurt the only people I give a damn about, and now you’re going to pay for it.”

  “Am I? Or have you bitten off more than you can chew?” He grinned and pointed upward.

  I looked up just in time to see a small magic circle activate and send a foul-smelling liquid cascading from a container placed there. It burned my eyes, skin, and mouth, leaving me no choice but to let Spyder go and wipe it away. A small amount of it got down my throat, and I doubled over, gagging and spitting. What the hell had he dumped all over me? It wasn’t until I finished gagging that I recognized the smell: gasoline.

  Laughter echoed through the apartment. I looked up, searching for the source of Spyder’s voice, but he was gone, disappeared to some other room in the apartment. “Burning me alive didn’t work at your house. It won’t work here!”

  “That was holy fire before.”

  I spun around, thinking he was right behind me, but there was no one there.

  “I know you can walk through that unscathed, but you’re still flesh and blood. A man in all the ways that count, right? You’re as flammable as the rest of us. It’s time you learned that.”

  The lights went out, leaving me with nothing but the city lights bleeding in to see by. I breathed in the harsh, burning fumes of the gasoline. He’d robbed me of two weapons at once by dousing me. I didn’t dare summon any fire, even if it was angel fire. I didn’t know how it’d react with gasoline. Soaked as I was, I couldn’t smell his stench, either. All I had to go by were my ears, which had already proven useless, and my eyes, which he’d just handicapped.

  Lights strobed in the darkness, and glass shattered behind me. I covered my head and ducked, realizing too late that I’d just witnessed two gunshots. I stumbled away from the rain blowing in through the broken window. Claws raked my arm, and heavy feet thudded past me. I spun, putting a hand to my arm in search of blood I could wield, but the wound had cauterized. What kind of claws could do that?

  Spyder laughed from the darkness, nowhere and everywhere at once. “You like it? They’re my own invention. See, when I heard you could use your blood as a weapon, I needed to find a way to take it away from you. It was a late-night infomercial that gave me the idea, one of those knives that toasts bread as you slice it. Unfortunately for you, the direct heat’s a dangerous thing. One spark and…” Metal struck metal, and sparks jumped in the inky blackness on the other side of the room.

  I stumbled away from where I’d been standing, calling up my memory of the apartment layout to try to use it to my advantage. Magic was out, at least most of my arsenal. I couldn’t call on the Heavenly Host since they’d already betrayed me, angel fire might burn me alive, and unless I could find a way to cut myself, I couldn’t use my own blood. The second story seemed the logical choice, so I moved toward where I thought the stairs were.

  Another magic circle sprang to life below my feet. I threw myself forward, narrowly avoiding being struck by a pillar of flame that rushed up from the floor. Spyder leapt at me from the side, but I saw him coming and kicked him in the gut. His claws tore my ankle, but they missed anywhere the gasoline had touched, ripping open bare skin instead. He hit the drywall and went through it, falling into what used to be Christian’s den. I grabbed the stair rail and rushed up.

  Hiding wouldn’t do me any good long-term, but getting as much of the gasoline off as possible increased my odds of success. I ran into Christian’s master bedroom quickly and quietly and shut the door to the attached bath. Please, let there still be some water in the pipes, I thought, and started ripping off my clothes.

  Pipes groaned when I turned the knob, and a burst of stale icy water spat from the showerhead. It wasn’t enough to completely clean the gasoline from my hair and skin, but at least it wouldn’t be as potent.

  Stairs creaked. I shut the shower off and fled the bathroom in nothing but my wet underwear to press myself against the far wall. The bedroom door creaked open, and Spyder’s long shadow melted into the dark floor.

  “Really, Josiah? This is the first place you run when you’re scared? I saw you with Christian.” He stepped into the room. “You worshipped him. Are you sure you didn’t like it?”

  I threw myself at him, tackling him to the floor. Spyder’s head bounced, but he managed to daze me with a palm strike to my chin. He swung his hand to catch me with his claws, but I saw them glowing red-hot and caught his wrist. Spyder punched me in the ribs with his other hand, I kneed him in the groin, and he immediately curled up, cradling his balls.

  I grabbed the strange glove on his hand and yanked it free before punching him in the face. “That’s for Maggie.” I punched him again. “And that’s for Stefan. This one’s for me!” The final punch broke teeth.

  Spyder’s head rolled to the side, and he laughed before spitting blood in my face. “Go on, asshole. Kill me, and your boyfriend dies.”

  A bright light flared downstairs, bathing the empty room in shadow for a moment. “Guess again.”

  Dark, dirty magic flared in a brief push, and Spyder’s eyes widened. “You severed my connection! How?”

  “Does it matter?” I picked up the glove.

  It wasn’t a pretty thing, just a crude contraption with magic circles and blades embedded in one of those cut-resistant metal kitchen gloves. With a bit of power and direct contact, he could heat up the blades to cauterize as they cut. Clever, really. If he hadn’t been such a shitcunt, Spyder might’ve gone on to do good things. Bastard was smart as a whip.

  I shifted the glove without activating the spell and drove three of the blades into Spyder’s stomach. He howled in pain as I twisted them, scrambling his insides. When I was done, I stood and tossed the glove aside.

  “Go on,” Spyder urged, holding the hole in his gut. “Do what you came here to do. Kill me. Stake me through the heart. You’ve won. Doesn’t fucking matter anyway. You’re still gonna die alone.”

  “Maybe,” I said, standing. “But you’re not. You get to take all the vampire scum of LA with you.” I extended my hands over him, forming a triangle with my thumb and pointers. Magic latched onto him like a striking snake. With a curl of my fingers, I drew blood out of him in ribbons, spinning it slowly, drawing it out as I should’ve with Christian. He didn’t deserve to die quickl
y. None of them did, not after what they’d done to Evette.

  Spyder screamed in agony and fought. He writhed and tried to call down spells of fire and lightning, but I’d cocooned myself in an impenetrable shield made of his blood. No magic could touch me, and his pained screams didn’t move me. He had shown me no sympathy, so I would give him none.

  No quarter for my enemies. Not anymore.

  “Enough, Josiah,” boomed an angelic voice behind me. Michael. So, the bastard had come to hunt me down himself. Figured as much. “Let the creature die.”

  “I’m not finished with him yet.” I wound up more blood, dark blood, in thin tendrils. Spyder had stopped fighting me. He was too weak now to do anything but moan.

  A blast of blue fire shot past my head and struck Spyder, where he lay on the floor. He immediately went up in flames, his limbs curling in toward his chest.

  I let go of the spell, and Spyder’s blood rained to the floor in thick rivulets. A drop landed in the corner of my eye and trailed down my face like a tear. I landed in the puddle on my knees, watching him burn.

  “You removed your protection spell,” Michael said.

  I closed my eyes. “Now everyone can see who and what I am.”

  “You’re dying, Josiah.”

  “And you’re losing the war you were so desperate to fight.” I looked up at him. “Told you so.”

  Michael bristled. “I had no way of knowing Ira would betray me. So many went with Ira. So many Fallen.” He shook his head. “Heaven has only one hope of winning the coming battle, Josiah. I need God.”

  “You need to eat a dick.” I grunted and stood, then limped into the bathroom to find my pants and pull them on.

  Michael watched me from the doorway with a frown. “I can help you, Josiah. We can help each other. You’ve got a lead, don’t you? You must.”

  I did, but I’d call Christian back from the dead before I’d tell him. “You made your bed, Michael. Go lie in it a while and get fucked.” I pulled on the gasoline-soaked shirt and pushed past him to wander out of the bedroom.

  The whole flat was flooded, thanks to the rain. Lightning flashed outside, hot and angry. I paused only to collect my bag from where I’d left it.

  Michael tore out to the balcony just as I made it to the door. “You can’t just walk away from me, Josiah! I can find you anywhere you go!”

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, slowly raising my gaze to his. “If I so much as suspect you might be following me, I’ll stop looking for Him. I’ll walk and let Remiel do what he wants.”

  “You’d damn the world out of spite?”

  “You damned the world, you cock-swallowing crow! You and your need for daddy’s approval. I don’t have anything left now, Michael. Do ya hear me? I’ve got absolutely nothing left to lose, and I’m on a ticking clock. Stay the fuck out of my way, or I swear to bleedin’ Christ I’ll let the whole damn world burn, and you with it.”

  He said nothing as I pulled open the door, but when I reached the hall, he appeared in the doorway and called to me. “Just answer me one thing, Josiah. When you find Him, what do you plan on doing?”

  I tapped the elevator button and stepped in, turning around and pressing the Door Close button before saying, “Getting some damn answers.”

  The elevator doors closed. I descended, covered in blood and gasoline. Outside, I stepped into a raging storm and a torrential downpour. The street was still empty. In a few hours, all the construction workers would line up, start the countdown, and blow the Nevada Terrace Apartments to bits, along with whatever was left of Spyder. The last standing reminder of where I had been forged would fall in a cloud of dust and debris, but I’d be long gone by then. I turned left and decided to walk a few blocks before I called a cab, never once sparing a glance back at the ugly building. Mum used to say God was in the rain, and it was never too early to start looking.

  Epilogue

  JOSIAH

  Two Weeks Later in Osaka, Japan

  The little shop was tucked down a side street in a poor neighborhood. I’d have missed it if I hadn’t been directed straight to the door by one of the locals. No sign advertised what sort of business took place inside, nor were there business hours posted. It was simply a little wooden door with a flickering light outside.

  I pulled the cigarette from between my teeth and immediately stifled a cough with my fist. Bloody syrup had already worn off. Before I went inside, I pulled another brown bottle from my coat, ripped open the lid, and chugged a few swallows of awful-tasting cough contents. Nausea rose and my head spun, little glowing dots appearing in my vision. I shook them away like the pixie dust they were, picked up my bag, and opened the door.

  A little bell rang over my head as I peered into a threadbare shop with a few plastic chairs and a single empty desk. An old metal fan rattled in the corner, moving back and forth. Artwork in the traditional ukiyo-e style hung on the walls, along with some strategically placed kanji. To anyone else, the symbols were mere words, almost senseless in their pattern, but I could feel the magic emanating from them from the doorway.

  “Konichiwa!” A middle-aged man parted the curtain that separated the front from the back of the shop and shuffled up to greet me. “English?”

  “Australian,” I answered, stifling another cough, then added in Japanese, “I can speak Japanese if that’s easier.”

  He smiled wider and nodded, continuing in English. “Very good Japanese! My English is very good. Sit, sit. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  I slid into the offered chair, but only because my head was swimming and my chest aching. “I—” Whatever I’d been about to say devolved into a coughing fit. I tried to stop it, but this one was persistent. They’d been getting worse for days. Soon, not even the cough medicine I’d stolen from the pharmacy would help.

  The man scurried to the side of the room where an old water cooler waited and filled a paper cup. “Drink,” he said and offered it to me.

  I finally managed to gasp in a shaky breath and lowered my palm from my mouth. It was coated in blood.

  His eyes widened. “You need a doctor.” He started to go to the phone on his desk.

  I caught his hand before he could move away from me. “I’m looking for Jihori Natsuki.”

  His body went rigid, and he seemed to grow a whole inch. He jerked his hand away and wiped a smear of my blood on his clothes. “What do you want with him?”

  I reached into the pocket inside my coat and took out the rolled-up paper I’d been carrying with me since Kuala Lumpur, letting it unroll gently.

  He stared at the image, then took it in his trembling hands. “Where did you get this?”

  “That is your work, isn’t it? Do you know this person?”

  “A person neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, whose features changed with the wind.” He lowered the paper. “Why does a dying man seek God?”

  I smiled. “Why do any of us? Will you tell me if He was here, and when?”

  The man dragged a chair over and sank into it, resting his head in his hands a moment before handing the drawing back to me. “Jihori Natsuki is…was my father. He’s been dead for some time now. Decades. My name is Masato.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I frowned. Maybe my source was mistaken. A dead man couldn’t tattoo God. Another dead end. I stood. “It seems I’ve got the wrong place.”

  Masato shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. This is my father’s work. More than that, it was his masterpiece, his final gift to the art and this world.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. The guy I’m looking for would’ve been here about five years ago, not decades in the past. Unless your old man is haunting the place and tattooing strange men, my source was wrong. And if your father is hanging out and doing that, you have bigger problems than I’ve got time to deal with.”

  “I tell you, that man was here,” said Masato in Japanese. “And so was my father, twenty years after his death. I know it sounds crazy,
but I did not dream it. The impossible happened here five years ago, sir. I…we did something unspeakably horrible and yet wonderful, my father and I.” He gestured to the chair. “If you sit, I will tell you about the man who tattooed God and the price he paid.”

  I looked at the door, sighed, and sat back down. It was late, and I’d come a very long way. Considering my condition, I didn’t have a lot of time left. I had to chase down every lead, no matter how ridiculous it sounded, and this was the most promising one yet.

  Author Notes

  When I started writing the Hellbent Halo series, one of the things I struggled with was what to do with Josiah’s and Danny’s relationship. Josiah’s inner struggle with identity has been a large part of the story. He’s a man who’s half a lot of things. Half-angel, half-human, half in and half out of various underworlds around the globe… He works really hard at avoiding having to box himself into being one thing or another.

  When I started Flesh & Blood, though, it felt impossible not to address sexuality in a book about sex, drugs, and the dangers of selling your soul to get in the fast lane to success. Josiah is the first bisexual lead I’ve written, but that almost didn’t happen. I’ll be honest in saying that it felt risky and potentially career-damaging to come out with an urban fantasy book where the protagonist wasn’t a straight male.

  At the time I conceived the series, I’d just come out as bisexual myself to friends and family. Growing up in a conservative Evangelical family, I didn’t know it was an option to question my gender identity or sexual preference. I didn’t even go to sex ed. My parents pulled me out of school and homeschooled me to limit “worldly influences” instead. Yeah, I was sheltered as a kid, but even then, I knew something about me was different. I struggled for years to define it, even after getting married and having kids. Coming out to my husband of all people was a pretty harrowing experience. Thankfully, he and my close friends have all been amazing and supportive. I know I’m one of the lucky ones.