by Andrea Speed
Was this happening? Or was this another angel mind fuck? Logan closed his eyes and bit the inside of his cheek again, causing a shock of pain as well as a fresh spurt of blood in his mouth. But Logan opened his eyes to find himself still falling into darkness. What did he use as an anchor now?
He recalled what Ceri had said and realized Ceri might be his anchor. He thought back on his first meeting with him, which was in that hotel room in Tacoma. Logan was aware they’d had a couple of talks in Hell, but he couldn’t recall them, which Ceri said was fairly normal. People usually didn’t visit Hell, and if they did, they never left, so those who did and somehow managed the impossible often found their memories of it faded fast, to the point where they had completely forgotten about it within days—sans some external reminder, such as the son of Lucifer. It was an odd built-in Hell fail-safe, to keep anyone from trying to return. That led Logan to ask him why Lucifer thought anyone would willingly return, and Ceri sighed. “My dad is a greedy bastard. There are rooms in Hell that are made of nothing but treasure. Open the door, and a sea of jewels pours out on you. It’s extra crazy since Lucifer has no need of money. He’s never used it. He knows it means a lot to others, so he hordes it for the sole purpose of rubbing it in other people’s faces.” Which sounded like a pure dickhead move—meaning, of course, that he was indeed Satan. He probably invented the concept of income inequality.
When did Logan first realize he was attracted to Ceri? It was close to right away, after things settled and Logan was reasonably certain Ceri wasn’t going to kill him. Yet. It opened many uncomfortable doors for him. Why did he find a guy attractive? He went back into his memories and made some uncomfortable realizations.
For instance, Ceri wasn’t the first man Logan had been attracted to. He used to have this thing for an actor when he was a teenager. Everybody said the guy was really handsome, but Logan claimed not to notice that. Even though he watched every movie the man was in—though they were terrible—and stayed up late to watch him on talk shows. But it wasn’t a crush! No sir, he was as straight as they come. He just… really liked him. And when you were a teenage boy, absolutely anything could get you hard or give you a wet dream, so that didn’t mean anything either. No, sir. Everything else in his life was abnormal—his crazy mother, his precocious sister, and him trying to hold everything together and keep everybody fed and warm while also learning all the martial arts bullshit his mother insisted on, trying to keep her happy. He didn’t have time for anything else. At least in that one meager sense, he could be normal.
The most disappointing thing to Logan was he had basically enforced heterosexuality on himself. Not because his parents would disapprove, or his religion—what religion?—but because he felt he was dealing with enough things. Somehow he put himself and his own needs and desires in the back seat. And why? Wasn’t he miserable enough without doing that to himself? But that was his default, wasn’t it? He took care of others first and worried about himself later. But later never came.
Until Ceri, of course. Or perhaps more correctly, until he hit fucking bottom. Kidnapped by Hell only to return and find his sister had joined the angels, leaving him with no one anymore save for the son of Satan, who might be using him. Fuck it! World was ending. Might as well admit to himself he wasn’t only attracted to women.
So Ceri saved him, in more ways than the obvious one. Ceri helped him understand what his desires were, what he wanted, and what he deserved. That shouldn’t have been a big deal, but somehow it was. Because Logan was a mess of a human being, and he might not even be a human being anymore.
Which reminded him.
He imagined wings unfurling behind him, and by Cthulhu, he was slowing down. What the fuck…? How did that work?
Abruptly his feet touched down on something solid, and he opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. Yes, he had wings. They were lightly sketched out in blue energy, like slender veins connecting him to his new appendages. Oh, that was fucking weird. Dope as hell, but still goddamn weird.
That weirdness intensified as he looked around and saw he was somehow in the backyard of that home he and his family briefly had in rural Washington. It was essentially a mobile home, but it was on a parcel of property next to the woods, a lot that had wholly gone to seed. The “backyard” blended seamlessly with the scrubby woods, and a huge tangle of blackberry vines, big as a car and twice as deep, took up the space where a shed used to be. If you dug around in the vines, you could still see slats of rotted wood.
“Believe it or not, this was my favorite place,” Gill said.
Logan turned and saw her—adult her, not the ten-year-old girl she would have been in this memory—standing next to the rickety back stairs. He wasn’t that surprised. He should be angry that the angels were finally using Gill against him, but he wasn’t. There was an inevitability to this that seemed hard to fight. “Even though we had no privacy, heat, or dignity to speak of?”
Gill shrugged. “Dignity’s overrated, especially when you’re ten. Mostly I loved the woods and all the berries.”
“Oh man, I think we both made ourselves sick eating so many blackberries.”
“Yeah, but they tasted great, didn’t they? But that bush… goddamn, that was a monster.” Gill rubbed her arm as if remembering how the thorns would hook on to you. Blackberry and raspberry bushes had the worst motherfucking thorns. They never looked big, but once they had you, they never wanted to let go.
This run-down trailer was one of their few forays into rural poverty, as they mostly stuck to urban poverty. He remembered being amazed at how flimsy the place was. Mom said they only had to stay a month, and they ended up staying eight. They weathered a brutal winter, in which Logan was fairly certain he’d never get warm again. He remembered milk freezing inside a cereal bowl. It was an added drawback to the problems they already had. In fact, that’s what poverty was—one difficulty breeding another until there was no room to move due to all the unsolved problems.
“Almost killed us.” That was an uncomfortable reminder that Gill was actually dead. Logan sighed. “So are we fighting, or what?”
Gill shook her head. “I’m sure that’s what they want, but I don’t want to fight. In fact, I don’t want to help them at all.”
“You saw the light?”
She scowled at him. Logan thought he could see her wings as wispy white fog behind her. Or were those nearly translucent feathers? Hard to say. “Don’t be holier than thou, okay? Don’t rub it in. I did this because I thought it was the only way to rescue you from Hell. I knew there would be strings attached, but I didn’t expect them to just give up.”
Logan raised his hands briefly in surrender. “Okay, I didn’t say anything.” He paused briefly. “I take it they’ve decided I’m not to become one of the angels, huh?”
Gill eyed him warily. “You guessed that?”
“I figured once they got the better Fox, they’d cut bait on me.”
“Who says I’m the better one?”
“Me. I’m the self-defense robot who only found happiness with the son of Satan. I was a fucked-up deal from the jump. You had potential.”
Gill’s scowl remained, but he saw something like pity in her eyes. “Jesus, Lo, why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Put yourself down. You were all that stood between me and child protective services—and Mom and the mental institution—for years. Mom would have died long before she did, and who the fuck knows what would have happened to me in the foster system. And all of that isn’t even taking into account when the demons finally found us. You’re badass, man. Always have been.”
“It might have been better for us if we did go into county custody. For Mom too. Maybe she’d still be alive.” Those were the kind of questions that tormented him at night. Did he make the right decision? Was keeping them together at all worth it? He wanted to be angry at Mom, but first he couldn’t blame her for her mental illness, then he couldn’t blame her because socie
ty thought she was crazy, even though angels and demons were things that actually existed and were in fact after her and her kids. It was all so fucked-up.
Gill shook her head. “You can’t think like that. You did the best you could with the information you had.”
That still felt like a cop-out. But it did remind him of a question he always wondered about. “Where were the angels when the demons finally tracked us down?”
Gill rolled her eyes, looking exactly like she had as a teenager. “Believe me, I asked. According to Raphael, they didn’t want to ‘show their hand.’”
“So we could have died and they’d have moved on to Plan B?”
“Pretty much.”
“Motherfuckers.” He’d barely spat out the curse before what felt like a deep, unsettling roil moved through Heaven with the distant roar of a typhoon in its wake.
“Okay, so you know Cthylor’s gonna tear Heaven to pieces, right? If there are any decent angels, I say you grab ’em and head for Earth. It’s eviction day.”
Gill sat down on the rickety steps with an exasperated sigh. “Why? I understand Cthulhu is an irrational, destructive force, but why have such a hissy fit?”
“Because pissing off a protogod isn’t wise? And also, Cthylor really cares for Alex. I didn’t actually understand that myself until I saw the shadow of Cthylor, or whatever that was. Psychic field?”
Gill shook her head again. “Protogods don’t have feelings, or at least not as we understand them. It would be like a person caring for an ant.”
“But that’s it. People do. There are entomologists and weirdass guys who have favorite beetles and shit. Cthylor may have started looking after Alex as a lark, but along the way I think they made a genuine connection. And Raphael just tried to kill Cthylor’s pet slash step-child. How would you react?”
“I wouldn’t burn down their entire fucking house!”
Logan actually had some doubts about that, but it didn’t matter. “You’re not a protogod, are you? Raphael really stepped in it this time. Leave now, while you can.”
“I have a better idea. Help me stop it.”
Logan scoffed. “Dude, you can’t tell Cthulhu—and by extension, Cthylor—anything. You’re either on their side or you’re simply another corpse. There isn’t a middle ground.”
“So why team up with such monsters?”
“You’re acting like we had a choice. You don’t say no to Cthulhu either. Would Raphael have if he’d popped up on your doorstep?”
She opened her mouth, probably to protest, but then remained silent while she thought about it, a dozen emotions playing across her face. Finally she said, “No, I guess not.”
“So back to square one. Fucking run while you have the chance.” He hated to think this was the last gasp of Gill as he knew her. Eventually the angel took over, and all human memories—and human everything—disappeared. Gill was lucky she had lasted as long as she had. It hurt his heart a little to think he’d lost his sister for good, but of course he had. Right now, Gill was a shadow. Soon enough, she wouldn’t exist anymore. He’d failed her twice.
“Are you ever gonna tell me why you’re giving off a weird energy signature?” Gill asked.
That puzzled Logan for a moment until he remembered the new glowing dark thing on his arm. “Oh. Ceri slaved the Scourge to me so I’d always have a weapon for fighting the big boys.”
Gill’s eyes nearly bulged out in alarm. “The Scourge? You control the Scourge?”
“Yep.”
“Holy fuck. You realize what that is, right?”
“Mother of all hellbeasts? Big dragon-y dude? Yep. I saw it when it was freed from its… crystal thing. It wasn’t at all what I expected. It’s sort of more existentially terrifying than anything else. Although, yeah, you’d never mix it up with a terrestrial monster.”
Logan didn’t understand why Gill looked so surprised, until she said, “Morningstar really does care about you, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, he does.” If Ceri had both the Scourge and Godslayer, he’d be close to unbeatable, even by his dad. But why was Gill surprised? It made him wonder what the angels were telling her. “What, do your holy friends think he’s using me or something?”
“That was the implication, yeah.”
Implication? Ooh, were they saying Logan was Ceri’s fuck toy? You know, he might be into that. But that wasn’t the case. “Did you really think I’d be that easy to manipulate?”
Gill grimaced and turned her gaze on the blackberry bush behind Logan. “He is the son of Satan. He has sway.”
“Which he has never used on me and never would.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Yes, I can. I trust him as much as I trusted you.”
Gill grimaced in what resembled equal parts guilt and pain. It was funny how family ties could still bind and gag, even after death. “He makes you happy, huh?”
Logan nodded. “He does. I love him, and he loves me.”
“I’m glad. You deserve to be happy.”
“So do you.”
She scoffed but with little humor. “Too late. Angels don’t have emotions.”
“Bullshit. That’s what they want you to think. Have you seen how Raphael’s getting his panties in a bunch? That’s emotion.”
Gill’s expression faltered, and what may have briefly been amusement ended up looking like she’d realized she’d had a bad chili dog. “The next time I see you, I probably won’t recognize you.”
“I know, kiddo. I wish I could help you.” He was intensely sad for his sister, who had deserved so much better than this. Despite what the angels claimed, becoming one of them wasn’t a reward—it was a punishment.
For a very long moment, they shared the silence of their childhood memory and pretended the world wasn’t burning down around them.
TRUTH BE told, there was no way one of Esme’s spells, or even Lyn’s physical attacks, would genuinely hurt Raphael. He was an archangel and pretty close to indestructible. But they would be a distraction, and that was the whole point.
Of course, Ceri had to focus and not get distracted himself. Logan falling away was designed to do just that. He reminded himself that Logan was more than capable of handling himself, especially with his angel powers manifesting in Heaven, and with the Scourge and the blade of Alastor with him wherever he went. The angels didn’t know about that bit, but they soon would, and boy, would they fucking regret trying to separate Logan from the herd. He didn’t know if the Scourge would manifest differently in Heaven, but he had a feeling it would. Much like Godslayer, it consumed the life energy of its prey, and angel power was probably a delicacy to it, like caviar or those really fancy handmade chocolates. They might have to physically rip the Scourge away from it, like trying to wrestle a bear away from an all-you-can-eat buffet.
But that was another one of those problems for later. Right now, Esme was throwing spells like glowing balls of energy, anime style, and Lyn dove at Raphael like a falcon on the hunt as Ceri tried to slice his way into the angel’s midsection. Somehow Raphael was meeting his charges, but that would soon change. He was looking frazzled as hell. Finally he lifted a hand and blasted white angel energy out of his palm and Lyn managed to dive down and take the brunt of it, although it sent her crashing into Esme and they both hit the floor. Such an energy blast would have put a major hurt on anyone else, but harpies were clearly the inspiration for the Hulk. You could hurt her, eventually, but it would be a long and hard thing to do. Harpies were well equipped to fight anything the universe could throw at them.
“I’m going to enjoy skinning you all alive,” Raphael said, parrying Ceri’s thrust.
Ceri lunged with Godslayer again, and this time Raphael took a step back, proving he was on the losing side. Rather than forcing an attack, he was simply reacting. He wasn’t accustomed to being on the defensive. Their swords clanged, metal on metal, with another, more unusual, sound beneath. It was the deep, unsettling hunger of Godslayer c
lashing with the primal angel energy infusing Raphael’s sword. Both powers consumed, although in completely different ways.
“You’re really confident for a being about to be destroyed,” Ceri noted.
A gloating smile appeared on Raphael’s face, and Ceri really wanted to rip it off. “Am I really?” Raphael sneered. The white walls of Heaven seemed to expand, and suddenly the hallway behind him was filled with angels wielding their own flaming swords. They wore armor too, but none quite as ornate or fabulous as Raphael’s. They stood shoulder to shoulder, five in a line, and a quick count totaled maybe fifty angels. “Did you think Heaven would have no defenses?”
Ceri nodded. Made sense. Too bad it wouldn’t help them one bit. He met Raphael’s eyes and simply said, “Fhtagn.”
For a couple seconds, Raphael seemed confused. Maybe he spoke Old One and knew what the word meant, so its use here puzzled him. But then he realized it wasn’t the content of what Ceri said, but its origin. His eyes widened. Ceri looked over Raphael’s shoulder at the phalanx of attack angels and said, “Run if you want to live.”
But it was probably too late. An odd chill, like there was a crack in a window, except there were no windows, put the creeping shudders up his spine. Then the walls erupted with black tentacles made of smoke and shadows and baring bright, white, sharp fangs. They slammed into angels and twined around them. Neither having a physical body nor presenting as energy helped or hindered the tentacles. The angels tried to slash them with their swords, but the blades went straight through them with no damage done while the angels burst into miniature explosions of bright white light that was quickly absorbed by the tentacles, which got bigger with every angel ingested.
