Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal (12 page)

Devina shrugged. “You were the ones suggesting we work together. Do you have another solution in mind?”

“Shit,” Adrian breathed.

“What’s a portal?” Sissy looked over at Ad. Stared at Colin. “Well?”

When no one spoke up, Adrian did his best to pace around the parlor. It was like trying to motivate a Model T with a broken axle, but staying still wasn’t an option. And he wasn’t the only one getting serious, either. Colin had braced his head in his hands, and even Devina had dropped the petting act with Jim; the demon was as motionless as a statue, staring off into space like she was doing long division in her head.

Or maybe calculating the very good odds that this was going to fuck all of them in the ass.

As nobody else was going to answer the question, Adrian figured, What the hell. “There are two portals that we are allowed to use—and both were brought into existence by the Creator. One leads to Heaven, the other to Hell. They’re how we go back and forth—how she gets down and back.” He stopped and faced the fireplace even though there was no flame in it. No logs to watch as they were consumed. No heat to warm his cold hands and feet. “For us to try to make one? For our own purposes? It’s a violation of the laws of the universe.”

Devina shrugged. “What’s the Creator going to do to us?”

“Not sure I want to find out,” Ad bit out. “Not sure we got a choice.”

“This could indeed get us into serious trouble,” Colin tacked on. Then he looked at Ad. “It’s on a magnitude of the stunt you pulled that got you punished.”

“Which one.” Adrian shrugged. “And I don’t know why you’re giving me the hairy eyeball. I don’t have that kind of power—that shit is going to need to be between you and her.”

Colin glanced at the demon and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. And yup, she looked equally disenchanted.

At least they were taking the risks seriously.

Devina nodded over at Sissy. “Open to page three hundred forty-one and a half.”

Sissy flipped pages back and forth. “Okay.”

“What does it say?”

“Which passage?”

“Start from the top.”

Sissy opened her mouth and started reading … but fuck all if Ad could understand what she was saying. The words were gibberish—and not any kind of Latin he recognized. Hell, he’d even been around when the guys in togas and sandals had been doing their jam, and whatever was coming from between her lips? Not it.

When she finally stopped, Devina nodded. “So I’m correct.”

“Yes,” Sissy said. “I think you are.”

In the silence that followed, Colin looked over pointedly, but Ad had to prioritize panic buttons at that moment—he couldn’t worry about whatever connection the two females in the room might be forging. “Look,” he cut in, “I don’t have a clue what you just read. But the portal idea, while batshit crazy, is probably our only option. If we can create a portal and keep it open long enough … maybe Jim can jump back.”

“But wait,” Sissy said. “If he killed himself to get over there, doesn’t one already exist?”

“It’s not one that is open to free use,” Colin said. “That particular portal is regulated by the Creator, and He has been very clear about its purpose and its restrictions.”

Ad glanced at Sissy. “Yeah, the Big Guy ain’t too happy with the idea that someone would disrespect the gift of life. You take your own? You’re going to get a proverbial slap on the wrist. Purgatory’s also where righteous souls who can’t let go of something or someone they left behind end up because their sorrow won’t let them transition upstairs. Not a pleasant place. It’s like Hell.”

“Fuck that,” Devina bit out. “Hell is
much
worse.”

“True. You’re there—”

Sissy interrupted. “So how do you make a portal?”

There was another long silence, and again, Adrian was surprised Devina didn’t jump in with a whole lot of chatter—and he wasn’t sure whether the fact that she didn’t was a good or a bad thing.

“Well,” he prompted the demon. “What do you think?”

Devina’s black eyes ceased to glitter, and her expression, for once, grew remote. “We’d need a tremendous amount of focused energy. Colin and I could face off and each cast an attack spell. In theory, assuming we are of equal strength, the opposing forces will become so great, this plane of existence will not be able to support them, and a tear will be created in the veil between here and there.”

Sissy frowned. “How can you be sure the door it opens will be into Purgatory?”

Man, she was no dummy, Ad thought. “We give it a tracer.” He glanced over at Jim’s motionless remains. “Yeah, maybe if we give it a direction…”

Devina bared her teeth like a dog growling. “You’re not throwing his body in there. It’ll be destroyed and he’ll have nothing to return to.”

Right, right, right. And if this didn’t work, she wouldn’t have a new toy to play with.

Ad shuddered at the thought of how she’d use those remains. “Blood, then. His blood.”

Colin nodded. “That is logical. The death, such as it was, was very recent. As a soul passes unto another plane, it is never a completely clean transition. Tracers remain in the flesh. In the blood.”

There was another long silence as the magnitude of what they were all thinking hit home.

“How can we trust you?” Sissy said to the demon.

“You can’t.” Devina shrugged. “But Colin would jump at the chance to destroy me—isn’t that right, archangel?”

“Oh, aye.” Colin’s eyes narrowed. “The satisfaction would almost make up for my loss.”

Devina’s mouth lifted in something close to affection. “And I will never let myself get hurt. So when he hits me, I’ll hit him back. Likewise, he won’t fail to defend himself either. Satisfied, little girl?”

To Sissy’s credit, she didn’t take the bait. She just nodded.

After which there was still more silence, which Devina filled by murmuring to “Jim.” Shit, considering how well the demon was getting along with the corpse, you had to wonder why she wanted him to come back.

“There’s only one remaining problem,” Ad said. “Aside from the whole what-if-this-doesn’t-work.”

“Agreed.” Colin scrubbed his face. “In fact, I shall be more concerned if this does function according to plan. It is precisely how the Dead Sea was created.”

Sissy glanced over at the archangel. “I thought that was from tectonic plates shifting or something.”

“Lassiter,” Ad and Colin said together.

At the sound of the name, even Devina rolled her eyes. “Oh, Christ. Him again.”

“So at least this has been tried before?” Sissy asked.

“Yeah, and look at how well it turned out.” Ad shook his head. “A three-hundred-mile, one-thousand-foot-deep hole in the earth.”

“And that still did not stop him,” Colin said.

Devina glowered. “I seriously thought the bubonic plague was going to take him out.”

“That was you?” Ad asked.

“I had to do something.”

“Okay, okay, so what’s our problem?” Sissy demanded, like she was trying to refocus the group.

Adrian looked up at the ceiling and could only imagine the Creator’s reaction. “The Big Guy’s going to be pissed if we do this. There’s gonna be repercussions. Fuck the plague for real—He’ll come after us, and shit is gonna get ugly.”

With Eddie gone and a cock that no longer worked, it wasn’t like he had much to “live” for, but that didn’t mean he was happy to volunteer for suffering.

“You ready for that?” he asked Colin. “I’ve already been through the whole wrath-of-God a couple of times, and I’m way down the totem pole compared to you.”

Before the archangel could respond, Devina spoke up. “It’s going to be fine.”

Ad laughed. “You don’t have that much power, demon.”

“I’ll tell Him it’s my idea.” She stared across at Ad, then Colin. “The Creator begot me on purpose to provide chaos to His universe—otherwise utopia would exist and there would be no need for Heaven. I am His balance, the darkness to the sunshine, the bitter cold to warmth, the scorching heat to temperance. I am the disease to health and the poverty to wealth. I am the cheater who stands side by side with the honorable. This is my nature, His gift to me and the world. He cannot and will not punish what He Himself has conjured up with deliberation. If He does? Then He has failed.”

In a quick series of calculations, Ad tested the theory, looking for holes, searching for ways in which Devina’s “helpful suggestion” could come back and bite him and Colin hard. He could find nothing: Devina was a lying, cheating slut, but you could always,
always
put your money on her self-interest.

And out of everything in this world and the next, she wanted Jim Heron. She was clearly willing to do anything required to get him back, and she was smart enough to know that she wasn’t going to be able to shift blame at the last minute. The Creator knew her too well to buy that shit.

The Creator would, however, believe it was her idea, and Devina might just have a point. And if she didn’t? What the fuck did he care. It wasn’t his ass on the line.

“You’re prepared to go to Him,” Ad said, “after it’s through. Assuming it works.”

“I am. As soon as it’s over—and I know what He’s going to say. As if He and I haven’t been through these conversations before?”

Good point. She’d been fucking shit up on the earth for how long?

“Okay, I’m in,” Ad announced.

“Aye,” Colin said. “Myself as well.”

Sissy spoke up. “Anything I can do, I’ll help, too.”

Devina’s black eyes flashed. “Then let’s get my man back.”

“EeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE-eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEEumumum—away—”

As nobody else was around to rock out of tune with him, Jim leaned his head back and kept yelling at the top of his lungs, “Uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way…” Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. “In the jungle … the mighty jungle…”

He was a really fucking bad singer. Worse even than Adrian had been back in the beginning—before the angel had come clean about the fact that far from being tone-deaf, the bastard could actually give a choirboy a run for his money on the Hallelujah Chorus. Jim, on the other hand, was the real deal when it came to being the anti-
American Idol
.

His repertoire also sucked ass. He’d been drafted into the XOps system shortly after he’d murdered the rapists who had killed his mother—so it wasn’t like he’d had a typical late-eighties high school experience steeped in Van Halen dances and AC/DC delivered into the ears by a Sony Walkman. He did know the words to “Jingle Bells,” but that reminded him of his mother, so it was a no-go. He’d already run through “Happy Birthday” a couple of times. Next up after this one? He was weighing the pros and cons of either that thing you were supposed to sing on New Year’s Eve or the Twix commercial.

Talk about needing a break.

“EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee-uh-umum-away…”

He’d tried flat-out yelling Nigel’s name for how long? But he’d had to give that up—not that his vocal stylings were fixing the sand problem, but the songs kept him going better than just the name.

“…darling, don’t fear”—a spasm of coughing cut the verse off—“my darling…”

Shit, his voice was drying up.

Gray, powdery ground. Relentless dusty wind. A never-ending horizon where the sky was one with everything else. Jesus Christ, this brought new meaning to the word
hell
, but as long as he didn’t sit down, as long as he didn’t let the cold whip his legs out from under him, as long as he kept going …

Yeah, what, he thought. What then.

It was impossible not to wonder how many of the souls before him had motivated themselves into exactly this kind of aimless amble. And in all the distance he’d covered, he hadn’t seen one goddamn sign of life … or Nigel.

To keep himself from going completely insane, he pictured the only thing that could bring him back from the brink: his Sissy. Her long blond hair. Her eyes that reminded him of the blue snapdragons his mother had grown around their farmhouse. Her voice that had this freaky way of grounding him and sending him flying at the same time. Her clean scent and the mole on the side of her neck and the fact that she had a wonky fingernail on the pinkie of her left hand.

He pictured the way she tended to fiddle with the collar of whatever shirt she was wearing, as if maybe she’d forced herself to stop chewing her lip or the quick of her nails and needed to burn off the twitch.

He remembered how straight her two front teeth were, and how crooked her bottom six were.

When he thought about her, it was as if he recalled every breath she had ever drawn and expelled, even before he’d known she existed.

Great. After all these years, he finally grew a romantic bone in his body … and his girl was on the far side of the moon for all he could get to her—

Oh, come
on
, what was he going on about? Even if she were walking side by side with him? It wasn’t like that was the way things were going to go for them.

The saddest thing about ending up here, apart from the fact that he’d fucked up the war, potentially lost his mother’s place in Heaven, and was going to spend eternity blowing around a
Star Trek
set like some red shirt left behind by the
Enterprise
, was that he’d never told Sissy he loved her.

Then again, maybe he’d done her a favor. Like she needed his bullcrap?

He stared up at the gray sky as his boots sank into the ground one after the other, as his legs strained to keep the stride up, as his body yearned for a sit-down. The isolation made him feel everything so much more deeply … until the loneliness and the regrets were as though the sun itself had settled in the center of his chest.

Burning him. Singeing him.

Keeping him both warm against the cold and in utter agony.

For the love of God, was there nothing here, he thought—

At first he ignored the sound, but eventually, the persistence of it registered more than its volume. He stopped and clapped his mouth shut.

Instead of looking at whatever it was, he turned so that his better ear, the left one, was pointing in that direction.