Frighteningly enough, Damien's was becoming a second home for me.
“The regular?” Signor da Silva asked, winking. He poured me a foaming mug of root beer.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to pay him. For the umpteenth time, he refused, smiling indulgently.
“Now now, it's costing enough to be in Samael's company. Best keep what change you have.”
“Shannon is an expensive girl,” Samael noted, ducking behind the bar. He grabbed the vodka off the shelf and downed it in one gulp.
“How is the Reaper holding up?” Damien asked, ignoring the liquor theft.
Samael groaned, slumped into a worn chair. “Not rosy. Metatron's on my ass to do tax returns on lost souls. There's a cholera outbreak, again. And, according to my schedule,” he muttered, whipping out a worn agenda, “some idiot is going to set off a bomb at a Ru
She sunk. “Rote reconnaissance. I was patrolling the edge of Dudael, just a routine check. I wasn't to stray beyond the border.” She shivered. Damien draped a woolen blanket around her. She pulled it close, face long. “But I heard a- a rip: like a tear in the Border. As if someone had crossed. Impossible, I thought- I was the only one that far in, past the gates. Even Uriel rarely visits that path. I was on the edge of the root network of spells that binds the lesser watchers. The enchantments there grow thick as trees, so dark they block all light. I was alone.”“And you pursued it?”Her head hung low. “Yes,” she whispered. “I disobeyed Zadkiel's orders. I thought it was just a fluctuation. The network is so weak, and my father is constantly developing repairs. I'd learned his craft, and I thought, w
Some say life is a dance. I've always seen it as one. Figures twirling round each other- electrons around atoms, boys around girls. When I was young, I would twirl endlessly in my swing, until I was drunk off the sensation. Then I'd stumble off my feet and collapse on the ground. Watching as the world spun around me.But I'd never seen the orchestra hidden in the pit. The music we ignored, that lets life go on as it must. I didn't know how painstaking each tune was, touched by a thousand hands. Damien's closed down, open only for business after volunteers returned from graveyard shifts. I could only tell who was inhuman by the bruises under their eyes. It was comforting to know we were so watched over- I'd never imagined before, thinking the world a mostly unfeeling place. We were born into it, and did with it what we could. I never thought there were safety nets woven in, of individuals willing to lay th
“You don't give me much of a choice.” I crossed my arms, cheeks flaring at his attitude. “You invite me to stay, then criticize me for bothering you?”“I did no such thing. I'm merely pointing out your fallacy.” He near-shoved me onto the couch. “Do you think you're safe here, maggot? Do you think life is a petting zoo in which you can frolic at no expense?”“Well, yeah.”“Then I've failed you, worm.” He leaned into me, bent leg driven between my knees. “At no point did I say I am safe.”“Most things aren't: even chocolate. It can give you hypertension-”“Food! All you drone on about is food. Is that all life is to you? Pleasure? But at what cost, Shannon?” he asked, voice wild.“Stop! Whatever you're doing, I hate it!”“Y
Why isn't it called V? Or E?-” He groaned. “I'm never giving you wine again.” I glowered. “You're so mean to me.” “You're irritating.” I sulked in my chair, words slurring: “You're horrible, rude, and a pig. You steal my frappacinos and sandwiches, you ruined my dating life. I wish you went poof,” I threatened. “Poof. And then disappeared.” “No you don't,” he said quietly. “Yes I do.” I sloshed my wine in his direction. “You just can't handle the truth. You hide behind snark and your scythe.” “I do not.” It seemed imperative he agreed with me. “Yes you do! Yes you do yes you do yes you do-” He pressed his palm over my mouth, then snatched my wine glass away. “You've had too much excitement for one night.” I yawned, voice muffled by his hand. “Where's the crab dip...?” My eyelids fluttered. I snuggled
“I mean, you have to wear something under those godawful musty robes...”“Bloomers?” Puck chimed in. Samael somehow half-Nelsoned us both, ignoring my human fragility. He stuffed the bra in Puck's face.“Another word, goat, and it's off with your rump,” Samael said through gritted teeth.“But I come bearing loathsome news!” the muffled satyr lowed.Samael sighed heavily. “Spit it out.”Puck did. “Fie. May carbuncles bloom on your bum!” He wriggled free of Samael's grip. “The Prince holds court in the tavern. Nary a sight's spared the gaze of thy twin.”Samael froze, grip digging in to me. “What?” he growled. “Michael is at Damien's?”“Rosy, Pox-Lord.”“Necrosis and gout,” Samael cursed. Smoke steamed from his ears. Squ
“Then go to the supermarket, you trespassing louse!”“Sam, is that you?”I was met with grim silence. My leg jerked, broken. I howled in pain. His eyes lit up the cavern- we were cast in a hellish light. He landed on a ledge that jutted from the waterfall.“What were you thinking?” he roared. Samael seethed as I writhed in pain. He lay me on the ground. “Be still,” he snapped. “It's just a sprain.”“It hurts!”“Face the consequences. And tell me why the bloody hell you're here.”“Because you left the car unlocked.” I moaned. “Ow ow ow ow ow-”“Infernal contraption,” he brooded. “But I clicked the locking device...”“Not twice,” I said faintly. My muscles tensed and untensed as cocktails of pain washed th
“My footman. The Angel of the Grave. He's quite a looker, if you fancy wraiths.” Samael wolf-whistled. “Get your luscious ectoplasm up here, helmsman!” he called. The smoke spewing from the smokestacks billowed upward. I was hit by a wave of disapproval, like when my Calculus teacher graded my 'creative' derivations. A black cloud frothed before us at the edge of the outcropping. Mummified feet with rotting bandages slipped forth: out stepped a skeletal figure covered in a thick black cloak. Dumah. The hood over his face pooled in his eye sockets and nasal cavity.The phantom advanced in broken movements. He held out bone fingers as if scraping the air.I screamed for the life of me. “Get that thing away from me now!”“Silence, Shannon,” Samael demanded. “Where are your manners?” The phantom tilted its head.&
Apparently, head minions were good for one thing: serving girls. I fumed in the smoky drawing room Samael and I had arrived at an hour before. He ignored me, grinning at some witticism his colleague said as I held his stupid tray of wine and cheese. The only reason I did so was because he promised me cheddar, and lots of it. He'd been leading me on a tour of Hell's offices, and I was enslaved as the wine-and-cheese girl. He reached for another cheddar cube- my cheese- and his fingers carelessly traced my breast.“Whoops,” he said, smirking.I was on the verge of smashing the damn tray over his head.After the boat, he'd allowed me to see nothing, blinding me with his stupid cloak and whisking me off through a dank-smelling area that bustled with eerie sounds. “Security reasons,” he'd said. Voices raised in argument had echoed above, alongside laughs and the possible beep of a coffee machi
I surfaced from his memories, finding his head in my lap. He clutched at my back like Jacob's wrestling angel. “You were so- so young.” I said. He hadn't been more than eighteen in his memories. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I stole you. I thought you were mine. It is how I understood things, as toy soldiers and spoils of war. It was not until I saw my brothers die for me that I realized the gravity of what I had done. I thought I was liberating us, that I would challenge our Father and demand our freedom.” “He would not let us step a foot past the Abyss, told us that it was the end. But I hungered for knowledge, and I sought more, made a pact with it. The void showed me what was Beyond, for a price. Now, in a sense, I am it. It drove me mad, or perhaps made me insane. Just like our Father was. He thought Himself the only one. He could not bear to know there were oth
I have loved you since conception, through the banks of time and across the waters of life.When I first saw you, Eve, you were golden. Father shepherded the twins proudly in to the court room, first-formed of humankind, made in the image of God. My brothers and I sang, welcoming you into the world. Adam gazed vacantly up at the Father, empty-headed and waiting to be crowned with His glorious Light. You were created to be his vessel as well, but your eyes stayed closed, refusing to open, and you drew soft, cool breaths, as if waiting for the moon to rise. It was not until I held you that you opened them. I still can not fathom that moment: their blue waters met my depths.My heart stopped, and I refused to part from you. God laughed and said I had the makings of a man in me. I did not know what I felt. I just stared into the question of your lips and waited, knowing in time, we would be.I held you at your christening and lowered y
“You look like a rabbit when you sleep. Your nostrils flare out and you sniff things. Occasionally, you squeak.” The Angel of Death sat next to me, peering at me curiously. I shook in trepidation, draped in his robe at the corner of his bed.I hadn't managed to string a word together for over an hour. He'd hand-fed me toast and counseled me through hell and high water. One moment I raged, the next I wept like a banshee. Now, I was silent, manically pulling down from the pillow case.“I watched you all night, you know. When you cried out, I sang to you, and you drifted back to sleep. What is it, to ride dreams, I wonder? Your little body, so warm. That it could contain such wonders.” He ran his fingers through my hair, braiding it meticulously. He drew a red ribbon from the air and fixed it at the end. Sam slid his arms over my shoulders, resting his h
It was then I remembered my nightmares. What drove me from my bed and sleep. I sunk into the night with him, to the depths of Samael's mind.Long ago, it happened. A reflection in the hourglass, the lip where sand siphons into the void.He gave me the heart from his breast. His ribs grew into the Tree. It throbbed in his hand like a secret. I took it, terrified.“It is yours,” he whispered. Tears softened his stony eyes. “It always has been. Take it. It will set you free.”“But I don’t want it! All I want is to be with you-”“Eve!” he cried, clasping his hands around mine. They trembled, and that scared me more than the gaping wound on his chest. He had never been afraid. “Please. If you do not, you will die.”“But this is our home-”“You do not belong here.” He p
“Different?” he asked, voice strained.I closed my eyes, running my tongue up his thumb, sucking. I nipped the top. He groaned.“Pyrrhic, you said?” I asked ruefully, dragging my lips up his index finger.“You're teasing me.”“Genius. Your turn-ons are weird.”“Damn your feminine wiles.”“You really like damning things, don't you?”He pulled me down into the snow with him, wrapping his wings around us so I might as well have been on a feather bed in a parka.Schubert's quartet peaked. He spooned me against his chest, arms wrapped round me like a mummy. Samael lay like a corpse for a moment, apparently getting in the zone. I grimaced as he stiffened. He laughed roughly at my unease.“That's just wrong,” I informed him.“Angel lust-”“Don
I crept onwards to the mansion, amazed I hadn't been caught. Then I remembered this was probably like a lobster trap. It looked like a house on the outside, but inside was a cage fitted just for me. And it wasn't like Sam- Sauron needed guards. Only Pallor would have been idiot enough to cross him, provided he was bribed by literature.Yards from the mansion, I questioned why I was here. Skeletons held a ball in the attic. The mansion's stone face was mortared with graves. I stood a yard from the entrance, an intimidating sweeping thing with a portico that bested the White House. Devils and fantastical beasts were carved into its wooden pillars. Wolves swallowed the crenelate. It was like a pipe dream from Hell.The door knocker yawned. It was a brass lion. Lionheart. Again.“Ah, a midnight snack. My master must have had surplus-”I whip
I thought I'd woke from a fever dream. I was back in my room alone, with the sun just creeping past the sill. I nearly danced out of bed, praising the morning for saving me.“What the hell kind of dream was that?” I shuddered. One in which I'd been the reincarnation of Eve, marched like a happy idiot into Hell, and, oh yeah, hooked up with the Reaper.“What the...?” A white scar shone on my breast, under the dark lace of my nightgown. I fell to my knees and gagged.“No,” I whispered. My eyes were catacombs. “No way in hell did I do that!”I frantically scanned my room. There was a rose at the head of my bed, stem charred as if it'd been roasted. It sat like a wicked promise.Revulsion seized me and I ran for the bathroom. I hurled til there was nothing but bile.I didn't leave my room for days. I slept until I c
I slept for a very long time.By the time I awoke, he was bones. They were strewn across the bed. The sunlight had eaten everything. I held his skull in my hands. It looked forlornly at me.“Samael?” I whispered.I'm here.He smiled. Just like he always had.Tears stung my eyes. I could barely form thoughts past my panic. I was angry at him. Sad. “What kind of game are you playing?”It will be alright. Just hold me.“Samael. What- What do I do?”Bring my remains to the river. Anoint me with the waters of life.I gathered his bones in the black sheets, now a shroud. I carried his remains like Ezekiel, knowing the marrow hid life. His room was vast, endless. I would call it a tower if it had any humanity in it. Instead, it was a living thing. At its cente
I witnessed his daily torture. Each morning, Samael fell. His shrieks heralded the rising sun. His plea echoed through the centuries: “Don't make me face this alone.” His beloved brother crushed him. Samael bit his heel like a beast. Michael ripped his glory from him: “Burn,” Michael cursed his twin. Stripped of his thorny crown, Samael fell to the howling sea. The blackness crushed him to it. The dark mother swallowed all, trying to erase his abortion from existence. But he held fast to his hideousness, made weapons from his pain. They sprouted from his rage, pinning the abyss to his bones. He roared “I AM.” The first claim of being. The blackness bowed before him. It recognized its master, the Lightbringer whose shadow it sprang from. He moved inside me like the Holy Ghost. “Do you remember how we fell?” Samael took Go