“You know, every time I talk to one of you gods or an angel or a departed who might know a little more than most, I get a different take on what I am. I’m Charley Davidson. That’s what I am. I don’t go to war. I don’t eat gods. I’m the least violent person you’ll ever meet.”
“Oh yes. I could sense your peaceful nature when you had the Razer kill all those men the other night.”
I startled, surprised he knew about the Colombians.
“It is in every fiber of your being. You devour your enemy without remorse. You make war look like child’s play. The generals of this world would do well to recruit you.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him.
“Then why are you here?” I asked as if I didn’t know. But I had to stall. To come up with a plan. I couldn’t just stop time to try to get to her. It wouldn’t work on him. He’d be right there with me. I didn’t dare try to get Reyes’s attention, although he’d probably figure it out sooner rather than later.
“Ah. Well, as you know, we are gods. We can go anywhere and become anything we desire on any plane as long as we have a way to get there. A portal? And therein lies my problem. Lucifer got us into this dimension. He used Rey’azikeen to do it. But the Razer only works between this dimension and Lucifer’s. Doesn’t do me much good. Therefore, I need a portal that can get me anywhere.”
“I’m a portal.”
“Yes, well, your Jehovah and I are not on speaking terms at the moment. He owes me a few thousand soldiers. Never paid up on a contract.” He leaned closer. “Just between us, don’t trust the Guy. No, I need your daughter.”
Every muscle in my body tensed in a knee-jerk reaction.
“I am not here to kill her, Elle-Ryn,” he said, rushing to appease me. “I would not be so base.”
“I thought you were helping Lucifer for that very reason.”
“Not at all. I just need her to get back to my home dimension. True, I’m going to kill every living being there when I get back, but you don’t know how they treated me.”
“What makes you think my daughter is a portal to your dimension?”
“Please, Elle-Ryn. Isn’t deceit beneath us?”
How the hell did he know? I just barely found out myself. I braced myself. Forced myself to calm. To think of something to say to stall him longer. “Then … then why are you helping Lucifer if you just want to leave?”
“Public relations. I scratch his back sort of thing. Her death is inevitable, either way.”
“You just said—”
“I don’t want to kill her. I did say that. And I don’t. But an everyday traveler using a portal is one thing. A god, however … we tend to destroy them. Portals. They’re usually only good for one trip, us being so vast and powerful.
“So, yes, I will end up killing your daughter, thus fulfilling Lucifer’s greatest desire. But I won’t kill her out of spite or malice. I mean her no harm. Harm is just an inevitable part of who she is. It’s in her genetic makeup.”
I eyed him curiously, trying to keep the anger from my expression. “Perhaps I’ll use your heart as a candy dish.”
“Perhaps I’ll split your skull while Rey’azikeen watches.”
We could do this all day. Hurl threats and insults at each other. I crossed my arms. “So, again, why are you here? Did you expect me to hand my daughter over to you?”
He cackled again, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Oh, no. We’ll find her eventually. We are hundreds. Thousands. If she is still on this plane, we’ll find her. I just need you out of my way first.”
“Do you?”
“You are proving more cumbersome than we’d imagined. Though I must say, Lucifer did warn us.”
“Who is us?”
“Lucifer’s army, of course. You didn’t think he’d forgotten about you? Or your daughter? He’s a little obsessed with all those prophecies that swear she is going to bring him down.”
“He’s just a fallen angel. I could bring him down with my little finger.”
“Yes. And you should have when you had the chance. He’s in his home dimension now. Safe from you.”
I let the barest hint of a smile slip across my face. “Never.”
He cackled again and clapped his free hand on the table.
People began to notice the hold he had on the girl. They whispered to one another. Weighed their options. Tried to decide if they should intervene.
“I’m sorry,” Eidolon said. “It’s just been so long since I’ve been around a power like yours. I’m getting—what do they call it?—a rush just being near you.”
“You mean a hard-on?” I asked, trying to insult him.
“In the worst way.” Before I could comment, before my next heartbeat, before the next ray of sunshine found its way into my hair, he moved. Fast, like Reyes. And just as deadly.
I threw both hands over my mouth when the girl’s head whipped around. Her neck cracked, and she crumpled to the ground, her tiny body like a doll’s.
I sat there, stunned, my vision blurring instantly.
Shawn moved first. He lunged for the thing that only looked like an elderly man. I barely got out the word No! before I heard another sharp crack. Shawn fell onto the sidewalk. His head on backwards.
People started screaming and running in the opposite direction.
Even more so when Eidolon brought out a revolver. “I have to make an impression.”
He raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The body he’d inhabited fell, bringing the total count up to three.
I slid to my knees beside them and stared, aghast. Why? The man was already dead.
Then it hit me. While I sat confused and focused on the bodies, Eidolon burst into a cloud of smoke—shattering the windows nearby—and enveloped me. Forced himself inside.
A blinding pain, beginning in my chest and spreading through my whole body, clawed its way into every cell. Shredded my tendons and cracked my bones. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. He was trying to rip me apart from the inside out. He concentrated his efforts on my heart, digging as though searching for something.
I clutched at my chest. Fought to take in air, but my lungs were cement. Just as I started to lose consciousness, I felt Reyes close by. Furious. Powerful.
I blinked, tried to focus past the pain, then wondered if I were seeing things, because he had transformed. In my blurred vision, he looked angelic. But there was nothing angelic about Rey’aziel. Colossal black wings. Solid body. Muscles cording with each movement.
He raised his sword and bought it down in one defining stroke.
Eidolon shattered. Swirled. Tried to regroup.
I gulped at the air around me and held my arms to my chest before realization dawned. Everything I felt, every ounce of pain, every spike of fear, was only the human part of me. The miniscule part. The grain of sand.
He had yet to see the rest of me. So I showed him.
The essence that was Eidolon turned to face Reyes. That seemed to make my husband happy. Reyes lowered his head. Watched him for that split second from beneath hooded lids before Eidolon launched forward.
The instant Eidolon reached him, prepared to overpower him with his energy, the malevolent god jerked back as though a dog reaching the end of a chain.
Surprised, Eidolon took an almost human shape. He gazed back at me. And if mist could look surprised, I imagined that’s what it would look like.
I plunged a hand into his center. That part of him that had more mass than the rest. It was what he’d tried to get from me. My heart. The core of my being. The very center of it.
In one quick movement, I ripped it out of him, this beast who was after my daughter. I devoured it. Swallowed it whole. Then I absorbed what was left of him, the feeling one of euphoria as his molecules melted into mine.
Reyes looked on, not surprised in the least. When I turned to jelly, he was there. His arm wrapped around me. His face inches above mine.
I reached up and brushed my fingers against h
is wings. Astonished.
Then I remembered the girl and her grandfather and … and Shawn. Not to mention the pedestrians around us. Were they caught in the cross fire?
Reyes and I emerged onto the mortal plane, and I scrambled to my feet.
People were injured all up and down the street. One woman was hemorrhaging blood by the bucketsful. A piece of glass had pierced her jugular. Others were screaming and running away, their faces bloodied but otherwise okay.
I knelt beside Shawn. He was draped over the girl as though trying to protect her, but his eyes faced heavenward.
I reached down to touch him. I’d heal him first. Then the girl. Then the woman and anyone else. I didn’t think I could bring the elderly man back. Once a god took up residence, there wasn’t much left to bring back.
“You are forbidden,” came a familiar voice.
I didn’t bother looking back. Michael’s energy, along with that of his spies and a few reinforcements, undulated around me. Pressed into me. Suffocated.
“They died because of a supernatural fuckup. They deserve their lives back.”
“You may restore only if the soul has not already been freed. Only if it has not left the vessel and entered our Father’s kingdom.”
I stood and turned to him. “Their deaths were not natural. The blame lies at the feet of a god. This is on us.”
He drew his sword.
And Reyes drew his as his wings slowly unfolded.
“Rey’azikeen, we have no quarrel with you.”
Reyes’s mouth formed a ravenous smile. “Sure you do.”
Michael refocused on me. “You forget your place here. You are reaper. Nothing more. You have no right to use godly powers in a dimension that already has a God. It’s”—he looked up in thought—“cheating.”
“Somehow I can’t seem to care.”
“But it is what you agreed to when you became the portal of this world.”
“I didn’t agree to Jehovah stealing my memories,” I said, pulling arguments out of my ass. Searching for a loophole.
“You did, actually. You made a deal. Jehovah sends the rebel to your prison instead of the hell He created for him, and you serve as reaper in this world until your term is complete.”
“Yes, Mae’eldeesahn told me that much. But why take my memories?”
“Prior knowledge of where you came from would influence your duties here.”
“In what way?”
“Father considers this a probationary period. If you cannot obey His laws, you will be banished. And what better way to make you follow the rules than to take your memories, the memories of what you are and what you’ve done? You were at war for hundreds of thousands of years in your dimension. You came out the victor even though you profess to crave peace. Still, you won. That knowledge could influence your decisions here, as they are now.” I shook with anger until he added, “It was your idea, after all.”
My brows slid together in disbelief. “Why would I do such a thing?”
“Do you know what war does to a being, even one as powerful as yourself? The memories are excruciating. Perhaps you are who you are now because of their absence. Perhaps you wanted to forget what you did to win.”
“Why? What did I do?”
Reyes had stepped beside me. He wrapped a hand around my arm.
“That is not my concern. What you do in this world is—as is restoring a soul that has already been freed. One that has already left the vessel. It is forbidden.”
“These people would not have died if Eidolon had not killed them. It is not just.”
“That is not for you to decide.”
“So”—I kneeled down, threateningly close to the girl—“if I restore these people, I will be banished?”
“Cast from this world forever.”
Anger shook me so hard, my teeth chattered.
“Dutch,” Reyes said, trying to bring me back.
I felt the anger in him as well. Felt it tighten his skin and crave release, but I also felt concern. For me. For Beep.
Michael tilted his head, waiting for my answer.
But the rage that had been bubbling suddenly sprang forth. A sword manifested in my hand and in one blinding movement, I sliced into Michael.
A thin red line spread across his chest, and one corner of my mouth tugged heavenward. “There you are,” I said, mesmerized.
Despite the depth of the cut, he didn’t flinch. His men, however, drew their swords and readied for battle. Reyes did the same.
I was seconds away from summoning my own army when I realized what I was doing. Risking other beings, righteous beings, because … why? I was angry? I was spoiled? Was I throwing a tantrum because I didn’t get my way?
Maybe they were right. Maybe I was a god of war. Maybe I craved it. Lived for it. How incredibly irresponsible.
I shook out of my musings and focused on Michael. “Did you give Jehovah my message?” I asked him, referring to our earlier conversation where I’d promised to take over the world.
“I did.”
“And?”
“He will meet you on the battlefield at your leisure should you name the place and time.”
I stood taken aback. The battlefield? Fight? Jehovah? God? The same God I grew up worshiping and talking to when no one else would listen? I’d always known He was there, watching over me.
Still, I was angry. To wield such power only to have it suppressed. To have it caged when it could do so much good. I wanted to spout something super sassy, but nothing came out.
Michael seemed to sense my sudden inability to form a complete sentence. He stepped closer despite his angels tensing.
Reyes stepped closer, too.
“Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia, perhaps you’d like some time to think about it.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. I glanced down at the sword in my hand. It was ancient, and I got the feeling it had already seen many battles. Too many. I was here for a reason, and that reason was probably not to take over this world.
The sword disappeared, and I shouldered past Michael to do what I could, what I was allowed to do. I knelt beside the woman with the plate of glass in her neck. Since we were still incorporeal, she couldn’t see me. She held on to the glass, knowing that removing it meant certain death. Blood bubbled out of her nose and mouth, and the fear in her eyes, the sheer terror, wrapped its tendrils around my heart and squeezed.
Before she knew what was happening, I melted the glass, put my hand on her throat, and healed her. If that was all I could do, that was all I could do.
Michael stood over me. Reyes at his side, making sure he didn’t get too close.
“It will be harder for you now,” Michael said, “knowing what you know. What you are capable of. You are like an addict who has gotten a taste of heroin after years of sobriety. Only if you fall back into old habits, you will lose your family forever.”
21
I ran out of coffee this morning. Tequila seemed a reasonable replacement. Everyone is so pretty today!
—MEME
“What did he mean by old habits? If I am this god of war and I crave the blood of my enemies like others crave, say, coffee—just thinking off the top of my head—why would righting a wrongful death be forbidden? Wouldn’t that be a step in the right direction? I can see war being forbidden, or starting a revolution, or … whatever else war gods do, but righting a wrong?”
Dr. Mayfield sat on Spock, a logical armchair that cattycornered Captain Kirk, taking notes. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left her with Logan, the mischievous Native American vampire. She’d checked on her sister, traveled the world a bit, and now worked as a psychiatrist for the departed. And, apparently, for me.
“It makes no sense,” I continued. “But this bottle of tequila sure does.”
I turned it upside down and let the liquid scorch my throat. I’d never really understood why people drank when they were miserable. It only made matters worse in the long run. But for some reason, tequila seemed li
ke the answer.
Surely, I was meant for more. And why would I agree to have my data banks deleted?
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked me. She had a blunt force trauma who needed her to analyze his recurring nightmare tugging on her shirtsleeve. My time had been up half an hour ago, anyway.
I nodded. “I’m glad you’re still working.”
She closed her notebook. “Me, too. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”
I saluted her with the near-empty bottle as she vanished. Then I took out the pendant, the god glass, and held it in my hand. Rubbed the glass cover. Studied the intricate design.
If I couldn’t save people in this world, how could I save any in the next? The next being a hell dimension created by Jehovah for His rebellious brother, Rey’azikeen. My husband.
Two questions arose immediately when I’d first come upon this information: First, what kind of god builds a hell dimension for the sole purpose of imprisoning His brother? Second, what the hell did Reyes do that was so bad his own Brother built a hell dimension just for him? It was kind of like his very own Holiday Inn, only without the pool or room service.
Then again, what did I know? It could have been created with all kinds of luxuries. All kinds of amenities to make the long, lonely hours of an eternity in solitary confinement more bearable.
But my gut reaction to the words hell and dimension would suggest otherwise.
I ran my fingers along the warm surface of the pendant. I used to think that it was always warm because I carried it in my pocket, against the heat of my body. I later came to realize its warmth was probably more a product of what it housed. Maybe all hell dimensions were hot. I would think there would be a need for a cold one, or perhaps a really humid one, just to add a little variety.
The image of the little girl Eidolon had killed, so utterly terrified and unable to even move, flashed in my mind again. But Jose Cuervo came to the rescue. He was such a great guy.
I realized Reyes had been watching me spill my guts to Dr. Mayfield and get wasted at the same time from the comfort of Captain Kirk. He’d been drinking, too, but his tastes were a little more uptown. He was probably drinking scotch or bourbon or some other drink that sounded sexy when it rolled off the tongue.