Through the fire, p.25
Through the Fire, page 25
"Will that do?" Ari asked again.
"Uh." Chris swallowed. "Uh, yeah, I guess—I guess it will. Wh." There was probably a word or even a whole sentence he meant to say after the syllable, but his ability to think stopped there and didn't start again.
Ari's grin flashed a third time. "Good. Your brother is Exalted. Th—"
A hard, loud laugh burst from Chris's chest, hurting his throat. "He's fucking what? Exalted? Gimme a fucking break. He still eats Froot Loops for breakfast."
The angel's smile faltered and he looked taken aback. "That seems…ill-advised. They're mostly sugar, and hell on the roof of your mouth."
Chris's eyebrows shot up. "Angels can say hell?"
"The devil can quote scripture for his own purposes, Christopher."
"Do not call me Christopher again."
Ari, with visible, real curiosity, said, "Or what?" and Chris had absolutely no answer for that. "Exalted," Ari repeated after a long enough pause to be certain everyone knew where the power balance lay. "It means he's—"
His expression darkened and he stood, turning toward the door before it opened again and a Black guy in a flowing robe and loose trousers stalked in, snarling, "Castaway."
Ari said, "Dogsbody," in a disparaging tone, and the new guy—who had to be at least six inches shorter than the angel but made it up in shoulder width—said, "Don't trust anything the castaway says," to Chris. He wore his hair shorter than Ari's, close-cut on the sides with a little more length on top, but he had the same kind of impossible perfection to his features as the angel, with deep brown eyes and a flawless mouth currently set in a warning scowl.
"I assure you I haven't told him a single lie. Or do you intend to dispute the fact that this boy," Ari said with a languid gesture at Nick, "is Exalted?"
"This one is fallen," the new guy said to Chris. "Don't trust him."
"What? No, dude, he had—who are you?"
"My name is Elemiah, and I'm an—"
"Honestly, if you say 'an angel of the Lord' I shall positively hurl, Eli."
Elemiah—Eli—gave Ari a withering look. "I am an angel of the Lord, and you no longer are, Arioch."
"Please." Ari—Arioch, apparently—sniffed. "I'm no less angelic than you. I merely have free will now."
"You only serve a different master."
"At least I do it because I chose it!"
"Will you two shut up!" Chris's voice cracked, which weakened its authority, but the bickering angels, if that's what they were, at least fell silent and gazed at him in something approaching hurt astonishment. "That one," Chris snapped, stabbing a finger toward Ari, "is definitely an angel. He had a halo. Who the fu—"
Eli, with the air of someone who didn't have time for nonsense, shrugged his shoulders as if an itch lay between the blades, and with a soft rush of sound, the entrance of the church filled with wings. Feathery, glinting with gold, absolutely vast. Almost as soon as Chris understood what he was seeing, they snapped away again, and he discovered he was on his ass on the floor without any real idea how he'd gotten there. "Turn around!"
The smaller angel lifted his eyebrows, but did, briefly, and Chris turned an accusing glare on Arioch. "I thought you said it was hell on suits."
"There may be some disadvantages to being castaway," Ari replied tightly. "Are we quite finished?"
"What the hell is castaway?"
"Exactly what it sounds like," Eli said. "He was cast out of Heaven. Fallen."
"I was not cast," Ari said through his teeth. "I chose."
"Is a fallen angel, castaway, whatever, even still an angel? Why would a fallen angel answer a prayer?"
"Your brother needs help," Arioch said. "Does it really matter right now?"
"It might." Chris, inspired, dipped his hand inside his coat, came up with one of his last vials of holy water, and stood to fling it in the blonde angel's face.
The angel—fallen angel—flinched irritably, but didn't scream or smoke or sizzle into a puddle of ichor, although faintly exasperated disdain did cross his face as he brushed the water away. "Look what you did to my suit."
Chris's confidence wavered. "Why didn't it affect you? It burned Saboac."
Ari's lips peeled back like an offended cat's. "Saboac is unclean. I am merely—" He cast a furious glance at the other angel. "Fallen."
"Was." Chris curled a hand into a fist, looking down at Nick. "Saboac was unclean. Nicky killed him."
"He what?" Both angels, fallen or not, were momentarily united in shock. Then Elemiah crouched over Nicky, just as Arioch had done, and said, "It may be too late, then."
"On the contrary, I'd say my timing is flawless." Arioch lifted his gaze toward the distance, then transferred it to Chris. "I understand you don't trust me, although I've hardly given you reason not to. Still, let me offer you another reason to."
He reached for his belt, and Chris's voice shot up. "What the fuck, dude!"
Obvious amusement flickered across the angel's face. He loosened and removed the belt, which did not, to Chris's huge relief, send his pants to the floor as he handed the belt to Chris.
As he handed the sword belt to Chris. A three-foot blade, previously hidden by the cut of Ari's long coat, hung from one side of the leather contraption. Eli hissed, and Chris took the thing, baffled. "What's this for?"
"For the oncoming fight."
"Dude, this isn't the crusades, okay? I don't know how to use a frickin' sword."
"I suggest you adapt. I believe our enemy is upon us."
Chris got halfway through, "What do you mean?" before the church door slammed open and more demons poured in.
Demons shouldn't be able to be able to come in to churches. That thought popped into Chris's mind and held there for far too long, wasting time during which he should have been fighting, running, or saving Nick. Demons should go up in flames on holy ground. That had to be in the rulebook somewhere. Nick hadn't been able to get into the church while conscious, and he wasn't even a frigging demon.
No, but he'd sucked up a lot of desanctified angel power, and the blonde fallen angel clearly thought Saboac was a whole lot worse than he was. Chris ground his teeth and shoved the whole debate away, trying to drive himself into action as bat-winged, screaming monsters flew at him from an otherwise-ordinary-looking evening. He took a step forward, meaning to protect Nicky if nothing else.
Elemiah knocked him aside with the same step, either finally in motion or Chris hadn't been frozen as long as he thought, and bent to scoop Nicky up effortlessly. His wings snapped open again, and this time the glimmers of gold at the edges burned, fire outlining feathers until they stood out individually instead of being a blurry soft-looking mass. Then he leaped with as much ease as he'd picked Nicky up, clearing the pews and—
—and Chris didn't know what happened next because the flood of demons didn't stop. He threw the sword's sheath off, swung with the blade, and overbalanced. "God damn it, I know how to use knives!" The sword's steel shone with a fiery light, giving the individual demons more edges and shadows than they'd had in the diner. That was something, at least.
Ari, from somewhere in the mess of rushing demons, said, "Well, excuse me," but the blade in Chris's hands twisted as if it had a life of its own, or heard him. Then he had two knives in his hands, flawlessly balanced, both with the same fiery shine as the original sword. His fingers went so cold he almost lost his grip on the hilts, then shook himself, muttering, "Fight now, freak later."
He tightened his grip again as a sleek narrow dark thing came for him, and swept the left-hand blade up, catching the demon in the gut. It erupted in a shower of sparks, obliterated instantly. He had almost enough time to admire that before there was another one on him. He sliced with the other knife, splitting the thing wide open. Thick sludge dripping from the wound and it gave a short, hard scream before his second blow killed it. "Babies, where have you been all my life?"
Arioch, briskly, said, "Hell," and Chris checked the impulse to throw one of the knives at him. He wouldn't be able to, anyway: the air was dense with things that stretched and pulled apart, or bubbled into another and expanded. He struggled to think of what they reminded him of, then coughed an unhappy laugh as he killed another of the ones that seemed to at least be able to remember what it was shaped like.
Lava lamps. That's what the blobby, shape-changing ones reminded him of. Except lava lamp goo didn't roll forward, claiming ground and pushing him back against a pew. Arioch didn't seem to be doing much better, although shadows blurred and brightened as he fought. Chris fell back another step, then had to climb over the pew to get away. They were starting to realize there were other aisles they could use, their attack scattering as they tried to get past Arioch and himself to the front of the church, where Nick lay. They didn't even try to enter him the way the ones at the diner had done to the customers there. He had a lot of questions as to why, and no time to ask. Sweat rolled into his eyes, stinging, but he was afraid to brush it away, afraid that even a single missed strike would lose the battle.
They weren't going to win anyway. He pushed the thought away. Even if it was true, it didn't matter. Every minute he kept these things away from Nick was a minute in which—
He didn't finish that thought either. Didn't know how. Slice and strike and jab, the knives moving in his hands, sometimes along his outer forearm like he was a weapon himself, other times turning so he could stab beside or below himself, trying to hold a line that kept falling back, step by step by step. "Where the hell are they coming from?"
Arioch, less briskly than before, said, "If only it were Hell, I might be able to stop them. Stand back."
As if there was anywhere to freaking go. Chris dared one glance behind himself, looking for Nick. He lay on the floor, partially hidden behind the altar. The other angel crouched over him, evidently not giving a shit about the fight going on in the back half of the church. "Hey!"
Eli didn't look up, but sudden brightness threw him into harsh relief. Chris turned back toward the fight, a hand lifted to protect his eyes against an increasing brilliance that almost cut at the demons all on its own. It had the same clarity of light as Arioch's body-encompassing halo, like a star coming to rest inside the church. There was no heat, though, only light, almost too bright to look at before it flared, and Chris abruptly understood why the halo had thinned across Arioch's back.
He had wings. Fallen or not, he had wings, huge and carved of light, insubstantial, the opposite of shadows. They ghosted to the church walls, beyond them, pinion feathers stretching through physical matter, and the demons weren't falling to nothingness, they were stricken by the touch of those wings, burning in the same way they did when Chris stabbed them with the knives he'd been given.
And it still wasn't enough.
They kept coming, flooding in, threatening to overwhelm even the castaway angel's brightness as his wings swept inward, catching demons, frying them, and opened again, throwing them away. Chris surged in again, ducking beneath the wings, stabbing and cutting and, he thought, yelling. Yelling a lot. Mostly obscenities, but it drew the demons' attention, which kept them from swarming past him toward Nick. They funneled straight toward him, too many to fend off, but that was Arioch, keeping them from going down the other aisles now, his insubstantial wings enough barrier for the roiling mass of demonic bodies.
Well, if he was going to die, at least this one would go down in the history books. Not that anyone would believe it, but still, fighting demon hordes was a pretty epic way to go.
Arioch, sounding very far away, said, "Elemiah," through gritted teeth, and the world thundered to an end.
Wings. The sound of the world ending was wings. Elemiah's wings, clapping open with enough force to knock Chris aside. To knock demons aside. To knock Arioch, who looked otherwise immoveable, aside: the castaway angel fell against the door, temporarily blocking the next wave of demons.
The rest of the thunder was Elemiah's landing, a deafening crash of body and weaponry. He had a sword. A big fucking sword. Chris didn't know where it had come from, but then, the angel had wings, too, and Chris didn't know where he kept those, either, so he wasn't gonna worry about it too much.
And then there was the fire.
Unlike Arioch's cool light, Eli's fire had heat. Blinding heat, roaring from the gold-lined edges of his wings, rising around him in unrelenting flames as his wings closed into a cupola. The blaze shot upward, sparks darting into the air, catching bits of demon flesh and incinerating them, and for some reason Chris thought of kneeling in front of his father's pyre and screaming.
The pillar of fire inched out from where Eli knelt, then expanded in a single smooth rush. Chris caught one breath, expecting it to burn his lungs, and the fire passed across him harmlessly, even as it turned the demons in its path to ash. The whitewashed floor under his feet wasn't even scarred by the roaring flame.
It passed through the walls, through Arioch, through the door, before fading somewhere in the parking lot.
Elemiah rose gracefully, the wings and the fire and the blade all—extinguished, or vanquished, or something. Nicky would know the word.
"Nicky." Chris forgot about the angel's grace, about the roasted demons, about the castaway brushing non-existent ash off himself, and bolted for the front of the church. The angel said something, behind him, but he didn't catch it as he swung around the altar to find his brother stiffly trying to sit up.
CHAPTER 18
A whole brass band had set up in Nick's head, with every instrument out of tune. Even the drum. Nick didn't know if drums could be out of tune, but the one in his head was.
There were probably more important things to think about, but he had a dark, hissing spot in his mind that he didn't want to even look at it, much less think about it. He sat up an inch at a time, a little disappointed to find out he could. "Chris?" The word didn't really make it out of his throat.
Chris appeared anyway, stumbling around the side of something big, something pale, something Nick didn't remember from the diner, and crashed to his knees. "Nick. Nicky, you okay?" His arm went under Nick's shoulders, offering support as he sat. Nick didn't want to think about how much it helped.
It seemed like there was a lot he didn't want to think about. "I feel like hell. What…" His head dropped, and he sat there, just about swaying in Chris's grip, before taking a deep breath and lifting his head again effortfully. "Not to be an ingenue about it, but where am I? What happened?"
Chris fell back with a hoarse laugh and rubbed a hand over his face. "We're in that church up the street from the diner. You kinda passed out after that demon fight."
"I don't…remember." Some of it hissed there, in the dark place in his mind, but he didn't want to look. "What happened back there?"
"You were pulling demons out of people," Chris said grimly. "And it happened like Gramma said did with Mom. The demon stuff went in you."
"Your mother suffered this as well?"
Nick didn't know that voice—deep, gravelly, reassuring—or the man it belonged to, when he came around the other end of the—altar, apparently, if they were in a church. "I couldn't go in the church." His voice cracked like he'd been asleep, or parched, for hours.
"I dragged you in while you were unconscious," Chris said. "I dunno why it worked then."
"A sleeping form holds no immediate threat," the stranger said. He was Black, good-looking, not very tall, but well-dressed in what looked something like a west African agbada made of silk and embroidered with gold and red threads. From Nick's perspective on the floor, he looked a little imposing. "And consecrated ground has only the most rudimentary of protective magic about it to begin with. Easily overcome by demon hoards, for example."
"Uh-huh." Nick lowered his head to pinch the inner corners of his eyes, then looked up again. "Sorry, you are…?"
"This is Elemiah," Chris said, sounding dry. "He's an angel."
"Chris…"
"No, I know, but seriously. I prayed, dude, and an angel showed up."
"Two, actually." Another voice, this one silken smooth, preceded the arrival of another extraordinarily good-looking man, this one white, blonde, tall enough to definitely be imposing from Nick's seat on the floor. He threw an expensive-looking long coat over the altar, and shrugged his suit jacket off to drape it over his arm. "Arioch. You may call me Ari. Or Harry, if you must."
"I don't think I must." A throb of pain ran through Nick's skull. He thought if he could see inside his head, the pain would be red, dancing along the paths of darkness that were sinking into the wrinkles of his brain. "Chris…"
"Seriously," Chris said again, more quietly. "I prayed. They showed up. That one's, uh, what'd they call it, castaway? Fallen, anyway. I guess he works for the devil or something." He gestured toward the blonde, whose expression tightened.
"I was not cast out. I left."
"Sauntered vaguely downward, did you?" Nick muttered. To his surprise, Chris barked quiet laughter and elbowed him. The castaway angel, however, veritably smoldered with anger.
"I left," he said again. "Purposefully and deliberately, turning my back on hypocrisy that preached and punished—" He broke off, then visibly redirected his words, snapping, "There was no sauntering, Exalted. I left."
Chris whispered, "I didn't know you'd seen Good Omens," and Nick said, "I read the book," back, although he'd seen it, too. The point, though, was to make Chris's expression fall and for him to hiss, "You nerd," so it worked, and Nick dropped his head to cackle quietly.
When he looked up again, both the purported angels were staring down at them as if they were…humans, Nick supposed, and for some reason that struck him as funny, too. A sound perilously near a giggle erupted from high in his throat. Chris, clearly without knowing why, gave an almost equally high-pitched laugh. Half a second later they were leaning on each other, howling and hitting each other's shoulders, and barely thirty seconds after that, the hysteria fled and Nick found himself wiping his eyes, not sure if the tears were laughter or something else. It had only been a week since their dad's funeral. Eight days, maybe.
