“Connor, your wife is here, Jen is asleep, and what you’ve done, what you’re doing…” Lucian’s mother’s voice went haggard for a moment, the phone’s speaker crackling. “What would your father think? What would your brother think? Have you ever stopped and thought about that?”
“Ma, I told you, I keep telling you, it isn’t what it seems!”
But it was what it seemed.
Connor’s kit was on the table, pill residue smeared on the mirror, a short metal straw next to it.
“I told you, Ma. My back pain never went away, and this, look, it’s not exactly what it looks like.”
“It is what it looks like, Connor!”
“Ma, you’re not listening to me. You’re not fucking listening to me. I was in pain. I was having some goddamn pain and the doc stopped prescribing meds and here’s where I’m at. I’m not proud of it. I should have… I should have…”
“You should have thought about your family!”
“You aren’t listening to me. I did think of my family! I always think of my goddamn family. That’s why… the doc should have prescribed me more. I’ll get help,” Connor gulped, his bloodshot eyes tracing across the room. “I don’t need help; I can take care of this.”
“And you were snorting this stuff? That’s what Sam is telling me!” Lucian’s mother’s voice was shrill now, the woman oscillating between shame, anger, sadness, and shock. “Connor… how could you? How could you do this to your family!?”
“I didn’t do it to my family; I did it to me!” Connor bellowed. “How hard is that to comprehend? And you need to understand…”
“No, you need to understand, son. First, you will not speak to me this way. No, not now, not after this. And second, you will get help or I will… I will call the cops on you!”
His face red, Connor’s eyes darted to the evidence on his table. He moved toward it, like he was going to clean it up, but then he calmed himself, his hands shaking as he returned his focus to the conversation he was having.
By this point, Lucian had his MX-11 at the ready.
He was armored up, as was Danira, her hand on his shoulder as he slowly lifted his weapon, his eyes on the parasite attached to his brother’s neck.
He fired his opening shot.
It went straight through the parasite, the demon bug not even noticing Lucian was there.
“Fuck,” Lucian said, lowering his gun.
“You’ll get stronger,” Danira told him after a bout of silence.
She was interrupted by Connor, who had since hung up on his mother and was now seated at the table, sobbing.
“We should go; it’s best to let him deal with this on his own, for now.”
“Where?” Lucian asked dejectedly.
“Your place. Didn’t you say you wanted to try to make pizza? Let’s do that.”
Chapter Seventeen: Pizza Confessional
Lucian couldn’t get over what he’d seen back at Connor’s place, his mom’s distraught voice, his brother falling apart before his eyes.
All of it was a lot to take in, an overwhelming amount.
Now back in Old Death’s world, Lucian paced along the shoreline, Danira letting him cool off for a moment.
Back and forth he went, feeling weak, feeling like everything he’d done was for nothing.
He’d been so close too; Lucian had already removed his brother’s parasite once only for it to return, even stronger than it was before.
He’d killed angels, he’d killed his own kind, he’d potentially started a war, and he’d pushed himself to a limit he’d never thought possible in the time since taking the mantle.
Still, it felt like it was all for nothing, that he’d never be able to save his brother and from there…
“No,” Lucian said, a deep breath in as he tried to put a damper on his troubled thoughts.
He still had time; he still had to try.
“Hey…” Danira said, breaking him from his gloomy reverie.
Lucian glanced to his left to see something that nearly made him stumble backward.
Danira’s gold and white armor had completely melted away. She now wore a glimmering white dress and a golden apron over it, her hair pulled back, the blue paint on her face gone, a pair of white slippers on her feet.
“Danira?” Lucian asked, blinking twice.
“I thought we were making pizza,” she said, motioning him forward, suddenly shyer than she normally was.
“I…” Lucian swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to make pizza in black robes?” Danira asked, a sly grin on her face. “What about the flour?”
“Heh...” Lucian looked down at his legs, a pair of black jeans forming. They started to turn gray, and from there to a light blue color. The tops of his robes had disappeared as well, Lucian going for a dark maroon T-shirt. He finished his look off with a pair of gray sneakers and a dinner jacket.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?” he asked, looking at himself.
“We’re supposed to be making pizza…”
“That’s right.” Lucian nodded, a black apron forming on his body.
“Better.”
He approached the angel, still surprised to see her without the swath of blue on her face. Her skin was slightly bronze, her smile taking center stage on her face, something softer in her features as well, less warrior-like. “Everything will be all right,” she said, and while a simple statement like that shouldn’t have worked, Lucian’s worries slowly started to fade.
“Yeah, maybe. I just have to get stronger.”
“And you will,” she assured him. “You have time. I will try to help.”
Lucian moved to her, wanting to take her in his arms at that moment.
Instead, he stepped past her, waving his hand and conjuring a metal prep table. He also summoned a wood-burning oven for the pizza, the fire crackling inside, smoke wafting out of a chimney at the top.
“East Coast style,” Lucian said as a metal bowl of tomatoes formed on the prep table. “Trust me, you’ll like it.”
Feeling like he was a culinary wizard, he summoned the necessary vegetables—tomatoes, onions, garlic, bell peppers, black olives—Lucian dipping into his core and enhancing the items with flavors he was quite familiar with.
It hadn’t been for long, but when he was a teenager, Lucian worked a few nights a week at a local pizza joint in Beverly, a mom-and-pop shop that had been on Cabot Street for years. He had mostly forgotten about the experience, had only worked there for a single summer, but he definitely knew how to make a tasty pie.
And that’s exactly what he did.
While Danira cut veggies using a knife with a golden handle that she’d procured out of thin air, Lucian went about kneading the dough. He didn’t do anything too elaborate, like tossing it in the air, but he thought about it, and he even made the gesture like he was going to do it, Danira laughing.
He crushed the tomatoes with a snap of his fingers, adding fresh basil and other ingredients, a block of parmesan cheese forming on the table, shaped like the cheese wheels in Zero Enigma.
Danira shot a skeptical eyebrow over to Lucian. “How are you going to cut that?”
“Hugin,” Lucian said, his crow racing over to him. “Let’s see your claw.”
The retractable claw lifted out of Hugin’s head, Lucian giving it sharp fingers like Edward Scissorhands.
“Would you like me to grate it?” his spherical device asked.
“Please do,” said Lucian floating the cheese wheel over a metal bowl. “And do these two as well.”
Two more cheese wheels, one provolone and one Romano, materialized into existence as Hugin got to work.
“Clever,” she said as she returned to chopping vegetables. “You and your technology.”
In the end, their pies turned out to be of the meat-lovers variety, the pizzas piled high with hot sausage, thick-sliced bacon, and pepperoni. After adding the vegetables, Lucian put
the first pizza in the oven, away from the flames.
“I’ll keep an eye on it…” he said, looking toward the shoreline of the lake.
A table with a red and white checkered tablecloth appeared, two wooden chairs taking shape on either side.
Lucian lifted the sun from the horizon with the wave of his hand; the sky now had the illusion that the sun was setting, a dark pink orb on the horizon surrounded by waves of orange, not a single cloud obstructing the view.
Lucian watched Danira sit, her apron disappearing and her dress glimmering. She looked stunning. She looked like an actual angel, a soft halo at the top of her head lingering for a moment as a corona of light caused by the setting sun framed her.
The serendipitous moment passed, Lucian returning his focus to the pizza, watching the cheese bubble a bit, the oil on the meat glistening. He conjured a pizza peel with a long neck, and used it to move the pie away from the fire, the aroma meeting his nostrils.
It made him salivate, Lucian knowing for certain if he could get chocolate right, he could definitely get pizza right. And if he had to use a sliver of his mantlecore to do it, then so be it.
Pizza was worth it.
Lucian moved the first pie to the front of the oven, away from the fire, as he sent the second one in.
Once they were both done, Lucian glanced over to the table, lifting two columns from it to hold the pizzas. He made his way over to her, and as he did his apron disappeared, the pizzas settling before them, smelling wonderful.
“I’d say we should have something to drink, but all I can conjure is coffee,” said Lucian. “I tried to conjure alcohol before, but it had no effect.”
“Coffee after,” Danira told him, her eyes on one of the pies.
“Makes sense.”
They dug in, the pizza just as good as Lucian hoped it would be. Cheesy, crisp on the bottom, the meat perfectly cooked, the veggies enhancing the flavor, the sauce divine. Lucian finished an entire pie himself, feeling good, feeling happy, and also feeling like he needed to get something off his chest.
And he knew as soon as he cleared his throat that he shouldn’t say a goddamn word. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, Danira and him together, a date of sorts…
No, definitely a date. Definitely. And she’d already taken control of his bedding; it was only up from here.
But no.
Lucian didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t want to be like his brother. He wanted to tell the truth, for her to know everything.
“Yes?” Danira asked, intuiting that Lucian wanted to say something.
He shook his head, a sign from his subconscious that he should keep his mouth shut.
A sign that he was going to ignore.
“I…” Lucian cleared his throat again. “I feel like it is important for me to be honest with you.”
“Yes?” Danira asked, her voice just a bit quieter now.
“I’m just going to come out with it. Those angels that were killed by one of my kind, the ones that you’re talking about, that was me. I killed them. It was me that did it.”
“You did what?” Danira asked, her eye twitching.
“They attacked me; I was pissed about my brother and I didn’t hold back.”
“You’re the one…” Danira swallowed hard and set her slice of pizza down. She pressed away from the table, her golden crows coming to her.
“Danira, I wanted to be honest with you,” Lucian said, knowing already that he was losing the argument. “We need to be honest with each other, and I didn’t want…”
“Why would you tell me that?” she asked, the blue makeup starting to spread across her face, her armor reforming.
“You would have found out anyway. I wanted to be honest with you; I don’t want to have a secret that I have to hide away. Please, sit.”
“What… what am I doing here?” she asked herself, looking around at his workshop and from there to his Grimzilla, which stood powered down next to the lake, opposing as ever.
“Danira, please, let’s talk about this. Don’t…”
Danira’s sword took shape too, just as her golden mask covered her eyes.
Lucian had barely pressed away from the table when Danira brought her sword down, slicing right through the table and cutting it into two pieces, Lucian’s Grim Mechas racing over to engage her. She cut the first one away. “Call them off!”
“Away!” Lucian said, his robes forming, his bone armor taking shape as well.
It was with disgust in himself that he called his lava sword to him. If Danira could kill him, which he was certain she could do, he wouldn’t be able to save his family.
He had to defend himself.
His shoulder-mounted weapon formed, making a hissing sound as it locked on the angel, who had started to grow her wings.
“You’re overreacting,” he told her. “Please, it was just something that happened; they attacked me; I didn’t go after them. I just took it too far.”
“I’ve betrayed You,” she said, but Lucian knew she wasn’t talking to him; no, she was talking to a higher power now, and from what he could see under her mask, there was a bewildered look in her eyes. “This is my punishment.”
“Danira, stop!”
The angel started to lift into the air, Lucian almost equipping his carbine with its zero-point energy field manipulator option, which he’d be able to use to hold her down while he reasoned with her.
But he knew it wouldn’t work; it would only infuriate her more.
“Please,” he said, his mask melting away. “I have to be honest with you. For this to work…”
She settled her gaze on him. “Goodbye, Lucian.”
Danira exploded into the sky, disappearing in a glittery golden flash.
Lucian sunk to the ground, hating himself in that moment.
He couldn’t help but think that there must have been a better way to tell her, to go about this. But they were comfortable, they were enjoying each other, what better time would there have been?
“Idiot,” he whispered to himself.
And if they’d grown intimate and then he’d told her, what then? It would have been even worse than now.
Lucian relaxed onto the ground, his sword vanishing, Hugin and Munin hovering over him.
“Would you like me to get you a blanket?” Hugin asked, cocking its beak toward Lucian’s warehouse, his bed. “Anything?”
“No,” Lucian said, picking himself up. “I brought this shit upon myself.”
Chapter Eighteen: Moving On
Lucian knew better than to beat himself up.
And rather than dwell on what had just happened, knowing that there was nothing he could do about it now, Lucian decided to get proactive.
After all, he didn’t know if Danira would be back with reinforcements.
He set up his remote sentry weapons, then went ahead and spawned another Grim Mecha.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt, he created three more, so he had six replicants in total. He also summoned a fleet of injurecrows, enough to partially blot out the sky.
“Do you think that’s too many?” Hugin asked.
Lucian ignored his spherical creation as he turned his attention to Grimzilla, which came to life.
He spawned a second fleet of injurecrows that fanned out, all of this a precaution just in case Danira decided to bring company. With a wave of his hand, what was left of the food they had eaten and the broken table before the lake faded away, a dark feeling washing over Lucian.
Maybe it was better this way.
His focus was supposed to be on his brother’s dwindling existence anyway, and to add a relationship with a sometimes overzealous female angel to his troubles didn’t make much sense.
At any rate, it was something to tell himself, something to make himself feel better, to not dig the knife in too deeply considering what he’d just done.
It occurred to Lucian that he should perhaps visit his predecessor to get his take on the situation, but h
e figured he could wait until tomorrow to sort that out.
For now, he would hunker down, and to do so he made his way into his workshop and hopped onto his giant white bed, his clothes fading away, black pajamas appearing on his body.
A distraction was needed; Lucian quickly found one in the form of a movie he’d been hoping to catch up on, one that came out just a few days after his death.
As he watched the movie, he caught his creations patrolling outside of his workshop, Lucian almost certain that Danira would come ready if she did, especially if she brought back up.
He relaxed further, the soft bed eventually putting to him sleep.
In his dream, Lucian stood at the front of the bridge that led to Turners Falls, the Connecticut River moving quickly beneath him.
No longer were there the terrible wraiths known as injuresouls on the other side of the bridge; no, this time Lucian was greeted by the last person he expected to see in his dream.
The fallen angel known as Azazyel floated above the bridge, the man covered in thick gray armor, an angular, gunmetal gray mask shielding his face.
He conjured an enormous sword and flourished it once, finally pointing it at Lucian, daring him to come forward.
Lucian’s instinctive response was to grow his own armor, which pressed out of his flesh, hardening as it cascaded up his body, wrapped around his neck, and formed a skull mask over his face.
His sword in one hand, and an oversized energy weapon in the other, Lucian took off toward the fallen angel.
They collided at the center of the bridge, Lucian firing on him, the angel responding with a secondary blade that had morphed out of his arm, Azazyel easily stronger than Lucian, a better fighter as well.
But Lucian remained scrappy, popping back into the air every time he was knocked down, continuing to fire shot after shot at his opponent.
He would win this.
He would not let the fallen angel take the city, not let him ruin his life.
But Lucian was destined to fail.
Azazyel eventually placed a hand on Lucian’s back and drove his blade straight through his body, pulling up and out, Lucian’s spine cut in two, his body barely held together by whatever dream organs he still had left in his bifurcated carcass.
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