Last Rite (20 page)

Every muscle in my body tenses and I spin on Ed. “Who is this?” I demand.

“Me,” he answers simply, his eyes questioning me.

“You…” I stare back at the man in the picture. “Who else?”

“My parents.”

Unholy Hell.

“These—” I say pointing to the photograph, “—are your parents?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“What do you mean, ‘so I’ve been told’?” My voice comes out as a harsh bark, and I see his eyes flit to the gun on the end table, easily within his reach.

“Pop died not long after that picture was taken, I don’t remember him.”

I look at the picture again. That face is unmistakable because it looks so much like mine. So much like all of our kind. I’m suddenly sure my legs won’t hold me. The room spins. I bring the picture with me as I stumble to the couch. “Gringus,” I whisper to myself as I sink into it.

“What the hell is going on?”

“You’re sure that’s your father,” I say, holding up the photo for him to see.

“As sure as I can be. That’s what my ma told me and I got no reason to think she was lyin’.”

“What was his name?”

“Gus.”

All the air leaves my lungs. “How is this possible? How did I not know?” I mutter, dropping my forehead into my hand.

“Are ya gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?”

I lift my head slowly and look hard at him. Imps have a tell—sulfur. I smell the air, heavy with pipe smoke. No sulfur. But despite that, I know it’s all true. It explains so many things.

“I knew your father,” I say, holding his eyes with mine.

At first, a cynical smile pulls at one side of his mouth, but then his face goes slack and his body goes rigid as he remembers what I am. “You mean…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Nope,” he finally says. “Can’t be.”

“How can you be so sure?” I ask.

“’Cause he was killed in an explosion in his factory. You said demons don’t die.”

“But when they’re posing as humans, there’s lots of ways Hell can make it appear as though they have. Most of them involve fire.” I meet his eyes as he slides into the loveseat across from me, studying them. Studying
him
. Then I glance back at the picture … the man, his eyes trained on the boy, pride and pure joy plain on his face. Paternal pride. There’s no mistaking that look—or the resemblance. I would have seen it earlier if I’d ever thought to look for it.

My memory flashes to the last time I saw Gringus. Marchosias had gotten word to me that he had been summoned and sentenced to the Pit. I got there just before his sentence was executed. He stood tall at the Pit, unapologetic. When I asked what happened, his eyes went cloudy—distant. “You wouldn’t understand. Not now, anyway,” he’d said. But then his eyes cleared. “But always remember, Lucifer. This—” he gestured around us, toward the Lake of Fire and the castle Pandemonium, “—isn’t all there is.” He brought his fist to his heart and tapped it there. “Sometimes you need to follow your own path.” He dropped his hand from his chest and placed it on my shoulder, staring hard into my eyes. “And some things are worth dying for.”

His execution was especially gruesome. Lucifer took his failure quite personally because Gringus wasn’t just any demon. He’d been created as Lucifer’s Left Hand. His Gabriel. I couldn’t watch as Lucifer tried to break him, but I heard he never gave in. Finally, after weeks of torture, he was carved into pieces and thrown into the Pit.

Lucifer never replaced Gringus. Rumor was that He was afraid to give any one demon that much power after what happened. I doubted Lucifer was afraid of much, but I also knew He was paranoid. Once burned …

“How can
you
be so sure?” Ed counters, pulling me back to the room.

I rub my aching forehead, then look up at him. “Because I knew him well. He was my Consuasor. My mentor.”

I close my eyes and loll my head on the back of the couch.

Frannie
 …

I pull a deep breath then exhale slowly, trying to absorb all of this. Frannie is Nephilim—half angel. But if all this is true, which I’m quite convinced it is, she’s also one-eighth demon.

Nephilim and Imps aren’t unheard of. They are more common than one would think. But I would wager my left horn that this has never happened before. There may be others with both angel and demon blood. But Frannie and her siblings, I’m quite sure, are unique.

They’re less than half human.

15

A Bat Out of Hell

FRANNIE

The blue flashing lights behind us shouldn’t be a surprise. Matt is doing at least 100, weaving through the sparse midnight New Jersey traffic. It’s really more of a surprise that this is the first time we’ve been pulled over.

He turns to me with a roguish grin. “Yet another chance for you to practice that talent of yours.”

I glare at him and my gut jumps a little when I see how easily we’ve slipped back into the banter. “You want me to Sway a cop?” I say.

Matt’s intense gaze settles on me. “Considering I died before I got a driver’s license, that might be a smart idea.”

Guilt cuts through me again, shredding my insides. “I’ll probably go to jail for this,” I mutter.

“We’ll both go to jail if you don’t,” he answers, his expression suddenly intense.

The pain in my gut stops as he turns and rolls down his window. The cop approaches warily, wielding his flashlight like a club.

“Hello, officer,” Matt says.

“I clocked you at ninety-six back there, son. What’s the rush?”

Matt eyes me, waiting.

Crap
.

“Oh, um, no rush, sir,” I stumble. “We were just … um…” I don’t even know what to say, and even trying feels skanky, like I’m trying to flirt my way out of the ticket. Only this is worse than flirting.

“License and registration,” he says before I can think.

“My sister was just about to explain to you that your equipment needs to be recalibrated because you dropped it,” Matt says, his eyes trained on me.

My gut clenches tighter. “Oh, yeah.… Remember how it fell on the ground when you got out of the car?” I say, lamely.

The officer, a good-looking guy somewhere in his thirties, stoops lower to see past Matt to where I’m sitting. Matt tips his head toward me in a “go on” gesture.

I clear my throat. “So, you know how the manual says dropping it can cause it to malfunction.”

He looks at me and, for a second, seems as though he might argue.

But then I think of Maggie and my heart speeds up, realizing every second we lose here may be the second it takes Marc to tag her. I feel a rush of desperation. I need to get to my family.
Now
.

The officer’s face takes on a puzzled squint.

I take a breath to calm myself down so I can focus on his mind. “Especially ’cause you heard something rattling inside after it fell.”

“Rattling…” he repeats.

“So it’s probably broken,” I say, gaining confidence.

He straightens up and rubs the stubble on his chin. “I should get it recalibrated.”

“Yes,” I agree.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention, miss,” he says, ducking down again and flashing me a dimpled smile. “You two have a nice day. And drive carefully,” he adds, standing up and banging his palm on the roof.

“Thank you, officer,” I say, my heart pounding.

We pull off the shoulder, leaving the cop standing there, staring after us.

“That was wrong in too many ways to count,” I say, knowing that there was no other way. We have to get home.

“Listen, Frannie. Your Sway is part of who you are. The sooner you get that, the easier things are going to be for you.”

I flash back on Luc saying the same thing not that long ago, and I feel my stomach lurch. Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? “I don’t want this.”

He glances sideways at me. “Well, you’ve got it.”

I slump into Matt’s shoulder and feel his heat. He’s as hot as Luc ever was. My stomach rolls, remembering what he is. I pull away and look more closely at him, looking for any change.

“Matt?”

He grunts without looking at me.

“How did you…” My stomach knots and I can’t say it.

He shoots me a glance. “What, Frannie?” The irritation in his voice is actually comforting. He sounds like the old Matt. My brother.

“How did you get wings?” I blurt.

His jaw clenches and he stares out the windshield. At first, I don’t think he’s going to answer. Finally, he says, “He gave them back to me.”

“He…?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

He turns his head and stares at me, and that’s all the answer I get.

I can’t hold his gaze, so I lean into his shoulder again. “Was it awful?”

“What?”

“When you lost your angel wings.”

For a long time, there’s silence, and my muscles ache with tension.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he finally says, his voice tight.

I’m glad he’s not looking at me when my face twists into a cringe. I shouldn’t have asked. Of course it was awful. I swallow. “How much longer?”

“Forever,” he replies, still staring out the windshield.

“I’d tell you to drive faster, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

His eyes flash as he turns to me, but then they become sympathetic. “I’m trying to hurry. It’d be really rough if anything happens to Maggie before we get there,” he says as he changes lanes. “I’d think after Taylor, that’d be pretty hard to live with.”

My stomach has been churning as the same thought has been burrowing deeper and deeper into my brain, taking root there. This is all on me. Taylor is dead ’cause of me. If the same thing happens to Maggie, I don’t know what I’ll do.

As I think it, I feel a stab of shooting pain in my gut and my hands reflexively go to my stomach. I look over at Matt in time to see his face pull into a satisfied smirk as he turns back to the road ahead.

“Why are you helping me?” I say when the pain subsides.

He glances at me from under raised eyebrows, clearly offended. “She’s my little sister too, Frannie.”

I don’t miss the derision in his voice and I decide not to push it. Why he’s helping me doesn’t matter. What
does
matter is that he was the only one who was willing to help me when I needed it.

GABE

Marchosias lurks in the shadows behind the garage at the side of the house. He’s propped on the fence with a clear view of Maggie and Grace’s window. A shadow lingers behind him, a form in the dark that I can’t make out. It’s not a demon—that much I know—so it’s probably Lilith.

Faith is on my heels as I pace between Marc and the house while he leers, his eyes glowing out of the darkness.

“Just zap him,” she whispers. “It would be justified.”

“It wouldn’t,” I answer. “He isn’t hurting anyone.”

She throws a glance over her shoulder as we round the corner of the house into the backyard. “But he wants to.”

“They all want to. It’s what they do.”

“Which is why the Almighty should just blow them all into oblivion. He could, you know. If He wanted to,” she says conspiratorially, once we’re out of Marc’s line of sight.

I peer through the kitchen window at Claire as she frantically mops the kitchen floor, the worry etched into her pale face. She keeps glancing at the phone, then the door. Finally, she leans the mop on the table and drops into a chair, face in hands, weeping.

This is so supremely unfair, and for an instant I think Faith is right. If there were no Hell, how much better things would be. But then the cold truth intrudes on my thoughts. Even if there were no Hell, there would still be evil. Man is perfectly capable of manifesting that on his own, without any infernal help. Without the threat of Hell, there’d be no checks and balances. No consequences.

I turn to Faith, my jaw tight. “And then what? There needs to be balance.”

She settles into the wicker loveseat under the overhang near the back door and pats the seat next to her.

I look back in the direction of Marchosias one more time and drop into it, feeling exhausted. I weave my fingers into my hair, elbows on knees, and try to think. After a minute, I feel Faith’s hand on my back, stroking softly, raising goose bumps on my increasingly human skin.

“You know, the fate of the universe isn’t all on you. Let us help you.” Her voice is soft, soothing.

I lift my head and she gazes at me, her expression softening. She reaches up and strokes my cheek. “Let
me
help you.”

She stares into my eyes for a long minute, her hand on my face, her expression hopeful.

I reach for her hand and gently lower it, backing away. “You
are
helping. You’ve been invaluable.”

“Gabriel,” she says, her fingers weaving into mine. “I want to be more than invaluable.” She brings my hand to her mouth and glides my fingertips over her lips. “I love you,” she says, hooking her other hand around my neck and pulling me into a kiss.

I feel myself start to shake as I turn my head to the side. Her lips slide off mine, but she doesn’t let go of me.

“Please, Gabriel. She’ll never love you like I do,” she whispers into my cheek. “I gave up everything for you.”

My heart spasms as I turn back to her. “You did
what
?”

She captures my eyes with hers. “It was you, Gabriel. It’s always been you. You’re the one I fell in love with.”

I close my eyes and breathe, trying to process that, but it’s impossible to think with her hands moving over my shoulders, caressing. “I’m sorry. I … I didn’t know.”

She pulls closer and I feel her breath, hot in my ear. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

Her lips glide across my cheek, toward my mouth, and I fight to ward off the desire I feel stir deep inside me. “I can’t, Faith.”

Her lips brush mine. “You can,” she breathes.

I force myself to pull away and look her in the eye, my jaw clenched and my breathing uneven. “You know that’s not true.”