Fall From Grace, page 3
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
“What the hell does that mean?” My arms instinctively folded over my chest as I narrowed my eyes at my friend.
Locke picked up on my attitude but let it run off him like a bead of water over a duck.
“I think she will recover physically. But her mental state might be…compromised.”
My mind, eager to be helpful much to my detriment, filled my thoughts with the scene that took place inside the child’s bedroom in Germany. Ludvig had fought so hard to stay alive for his wife and unborn baby.
Without realizing it, my arms slid apart, and my left hand rested where Mjolnir sat, incorporeal and unseen.
Then my mind added further salt to my wounds and reminded me of the orphaned boy that Ludvig had saved just before Samael had stabbed him in the back.
“Coward,” my mouth uttered without my brain instructing it to do so.
Locke’s eyebrow went up in question, piecing together that the comment hadn’t been directed toward him.
“Sorry,” I exhaled, bringing both of my hands up to my face. Fingers pressed into my eyes hard enough to create a private light show of dancing stars. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“There’s a boy in Germany…his parents…” At the realization that I had orphaned another child, my heart sank as my fingers continued to reach toward the back of my eye sockets. I could feel the soft orbs beginning to squish with nowhere to go.
“John!” Locke called out with mild alarm.
There was pressure over one of my wrists, and I jerked my hands away from my face to see a blur that resembled Locke pulling at my arm.
“What happened? How can I help?” he asked softly, still holding onto my wrist.
My vision was steadily returning to normal, but I felt a warm tear run down one cheek. Pulling away from his grasp, I wiped it away, only to realize something was wrong.
Looking down at my hand, I noticed the tear was bright red.
As I understood that my fingers had been pressing through my eyes, there was a feeling of surprise that was dulled by the weight crushing my heart.
Noticing Locke, I quickly rubbed the blood on my black shirt and answered his question.
“When Ulric surprised us in Germany, he and I fought…and…an-an-and I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings.” I inhaled deeply, trying to steady the words attempting to tremble from my lips. “Ulric was thrown into a house belonging to a small boy. He…he landed in the parents’ bedroom.”
“Ah,” Locke let out as his face shifted up and his single eye flicked back and forth in thought. After a few moments, he apparently came to a conclusion, as his face went neutral and his gaze returned to me. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he said, “Once this is all done, I’ll make sure he is taken care of.”
“Just like Magni,” I breathed just above a whisper, unable to give strength to my words. “Just like the baby from the plexiglass prison.”
Wide blue eyes filled with tears staring over rosy cheeks.
I shook my head to clear the haunting image.
“Now there’s another child whose life I’ve ruined.”
“What about the kids you saved at the hospital?” Locke countered with warmth in his voice.
“How did you…” I began to ask, my voice trailing off. “I didn’t tell anyone about that.”
“It made the news, John. An entire ward of children with cancer being miraculously cured—on the same day, no less—would of course be cause for national, even world news.” A smile dipped in pride brightened his face. “They showed the security footage. Even heavily pixelated, I would recognize that beard anywhere.”
I thought about the security footage at the hospital that I had tried, and failed, to erase, showing my body as nothing more than a blur with a doctor’s coat on. I hadn’t even thought about my beard and beanie being obvious to those who knew what to look for.
“Gabriel said I made a mistake.”
Locke didn’t say anything as his eye flicked between mine. His silence told me how perceptive the man was, and I realized I had to look up from how tall he had become.
“I’m proud of you, man,” I said, placing my own hand on Locke’s shoulder, mirroring the stance he still held.
At the praise, Locke averted his gaze and let his hand drop away, attempting to break contact between the two of us.
“Not very good at taking compliments, huh?” I lightly teased, letting my own arm drop back to my side, sensing his desire to not be touched.
I understood where he was coming from. We were both monsters whose past lives were paved with the countless bodies of our victims. Sometimes I forgot that my parents had been slain at Locke’s command. But it didn’t hurt anymore. I had forgiven him; not for his sake but for my own. Plus, I knew my mom and dad were in Heaven, watching me as I attempted to save all of creation. I could feel their pride, sometimes, when I was alone and letting my mind wander.
Locke inhaled slowly, drawing my focus back to him, and I could see the whirlwind of memories storming just behind his eye.
“I have a lot of making up to do. Gabriel showed me that.” Locke’s piercing gaze latched onto mine as he slightly tilted his face down. “He always seems to know what’s best, even if we don’t like it.”
Catching his meaning, it was my turn to look away.
“I hate that he made me feel bad for helping those kids. But”—I took in a deep breath and rested both hands on my hips—“I can see how he might be right. How many families across the world, going through the same nightmare scenarios, wondered why their child wasn’t saved like the ones I visited?”
Thunder chose that moment to rumble across the dark sky, drawing both of our attentions.
Looking up, I continued, “Hope…hope can be just as harmful as it is helpful.” My gaze fell from the sky to the ground, weighed down by my guilt. “How many kids died with their parents by their bed, hoping that they would receive the same miracle. It’s not fair…it’s not fair…”
“You truly are a hero, John,” Locke said, breaking me from my stupor with how odd a remark that was.
Looking up at him, my head rocked back a little as my face wrinkled in confusion.
Locke explained.
“Here you are, faced with impossible choices before you and a trail of torment straddling your back like some sort of twisted piggyback ride…and all you can think about are the innocent mortals you are unable to help.”
Without telling my head to do so, it turned to give me a view of where Depweg and Meli were just disappearing into the thick forest surrounding the new Fortress of Solitaire.
“He’ll forgive you,” Locke stated, and I could tell by the sound of his voice that he had turned toward the forest as well. “He always does.”
Twin weights that tipped the scales at over a cagillion pounds yanked my mouth down into a frown as I slowly shook my head.
“Not this time, man.”
I thought about my best friend’s mate and child lying in their grave, embracing one another as the earth slowly swallowed them, fed by Depweg’s own hand.
I shook my head and turned away as I mentally said, But it wasn’t real. They weren’t real, and that time line is gone. Blipped out of existence. I…I only hope Depweg eventually realizes that. I already miss my best friend.
I sniffled hard and clapped my hands once as I began shuffling on my feet, like a fighter just before the first round starts.
“Focus!” I instructed both me and Locke. But my wizard friend knew it was 90 percent directed toward me. “We have a job to do.”
“Right,” Locke agreed, nodding his head as if putting himself in the professional mindset that I secretly admired. “I’ll swing by the Council and see if I can find any help. The time dilation should be in our favor while I’m within the In-Between.”
“Neat. Neat, neat, neat, neat, neat,” I repeated while energetically rubbing my hands together. “I’ll talk with Papa T and see what he has to say about things.”
Looking at Locke and feeling a little relief from my own personal abattoir of grief, I threw out something that made me feel more like…me.
“Why do you keep winking at me?”
It took Locke a moment to realize what I was talking about, so I let a tiny smile lift one corner of my lips and placed a hand over one eye.
“What’s that over there?!” Locke cried out, pointing behind me.
Whirling in a defensive stance, I let predatory eyes scan the horizon, searching for the danger.
Then I realized what had just happened.
Closing my eyes and letting my head fall back, I straightened where I stood and slowly turned to see that Locke had tricked me and shifted away.
With a hint of admiration at his successful ploy, I smiled and whispered, “Dick.”
5
LILY
“You didn’t have to do that to him,” Greg said under his breath as nervous hands tugged at the material that was all of a sudden too tight around his crotch.
“He didn’t suffer long,” Lily countered, confidently striding down the hall in the direction the demon had confessed to her. His pitch had been high enough to make Whitney Houston blush. Greg had swallowed the bit of bile that had escaped into his mouth as he heard the crunching.
“Why are you walking so fast?” Greg asked in a stage whisper.
“You heard him,” she continued, eyes checking every sign they passed for the correct corridor. “Ulric’s boss is on Earth hunting the last of the deities, leaving Ulric alone to run Hell.”
“Ulric’s…boss?” Greg asked before understanding. “Oh! Sat—”
Lily whirled on Greg, forcefully clamping a hand over his mouth.
With eyes that flashed crimson, Lily demanded, “Don’t say his name while in his domain, fool.”
Greg held up both hands in placation while trying to nod in understanding. Lily’s grip, however, was so tight that he couldn’t move his head without the risk of removing his own jaw.
Lily held the position a moment longer, making sure Greg understood the message, before letting her eyes dim once more.
Letting Greg go, Lily turned and continued her search.
“How do you know where to go?” he asked nervously, glancing all around in search of demons clad in ninja gear clinging to the ceiling like black belt arachnids.
“I know the architect,” Lily answered as a veritable lifetime with the beautiful fallen angel played out in her mind in an instant. “There is order to his chaos.”
“Like someone who knows exactly where everything is in their office even though it looks like it should belong on an episode of Hoarders?”
“Not quite,” Lily answered as she audibly mouthed a sequence of numbers that Greg began to recognize.
“Fibonacci?”
In answer, Lily opened a doorway marked with an eighty-nine.
To Greg’s amazement and Lily’s expectation, the door that should have been just another office room was another long hallway with doors on either side.
“Boggles the mind,” Greg mused as he looked at the rooms that where evenly spaced out on either side of the hall.
“I’m honestly surprised to hear you say that.”
“Why’s that, if I may ask?”
“Your tent.”
“Oh, right.” Greg chuckled. “That is a much simpler trick that only involves stretching a modest amount of space in the, as you are well aware, pliable Faerie. I mean, what you did with the Seelie Castle is leaps and bounds more impressive than my little parlor trick.”
Lily nodded her head in understanding as she searched for the next number in the sequence.
“Still,” he continued, “this is beyond my understanding in much the same way I can’t fathom all the stars in the universe. What I did was take a cube and make it bigger. This…using the Fibonacci sequence and placing hallways where only a room should exist…”
“Here,” Lily interrupted the awed silence Greg had injected in place of words.
Opening another door labeled fifty-five, Greg simply shook his head in amazement as another hallway awaited entry.
“We are going in reverse?” he asked, feeling the answer forming as he spoke.
“Eventually, we’ll get to zero and the way out of here.”
“Right. If we went the other way…”
“We’d never escape, as the numbers in the sequence would continue to be placed further and further apart. It wouldn’t be long until it would take days, months, or even years to make it to the next hallway.”
Greg shivered at the thought of being lost forever in a never-ending labyrinth of identical office halls.
“That’s just rude,” he concluded.
Lily half grunted in affirmation of Greg’s astute assessment of this particular section of Hell.
They passed another information desk where a thin, scaly demon was napping in a generic black office chair. For a moment, Lily debated on slaying him on principle alone, but then realized that his eternal job placement was torture enough.
“These demons,” Greg began, formulating his thoughts into words as they walked. “They don’t look like what you’d expect.”
Lily could sense the building question that she didn’t have the answer to.
“Are they…or were they once…hum—”
“I don’t know,” Lily cut him off. “I was never privy to the machinations of this plane after its formation. After he…” Her words trailed off as she remembered a time long since passed. “After he was banished here because of what he did,”Lily thought about adding for me at the end, but decided to only internalize it, “I have only spoken to him a handful of times, and it was only when he wanted something.”
Greg was about to ask her to expand on the subject, sensing she was teetering on the brink of saying more, when she pointed to a door labeled thirty-four and briskly opened it.
The distance between hallways was decreasing noticeably, and Greg stifled the urge to ask, Are we there yet? He thought it would be a funny way to cut through the tension, but he hadn’t picked up an accurate read on Lily just yet.
“Are we there yet?” Greg’s mouth asked without direct permission from his brain, making him cringe in reflex of his body’s betrayal.
Lily looked over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow.
“You and John would get along.”
“Is that a compliment…or an insult?” Greg hesitantly asked, only having heard stories of the Vampire Currently Known As John.
“Heh,” Greg let out before catching himself.
Still looking at him, Lily stopped and lifted her already arched brow just a little bit higher.
“Made a…uh, Prince jo-joke. In, uh…my head.” If not for his wild beard climbing up his cheeks, Lily could have sworn Greg was blushing.
Out of curiosity, she dipped her face forward and peered at her companion from over the frames of the enchanted glasses, and was impressed to see a hideous demon staring back at her. Dark stone walls illuminated by dancing torches reminded Lily of Greg’s competence in relation to piercing Samael’s veils of deception.
Turning back, Lily consciously eased Greg by asking, “Royalty Prince? Or—”
“Artist Formerly Known As,” Greg clarified, slightly embarrassed.
Opening the next door in the sequence, Lily asked, “What was the joke?”
“I, uh…” Greg blanked, perplexed at how best to describe such an unimportant joke thought in the privacy of his mind.
“You, um, said we’d get along. And then…I, ah, asked if it was an insult because I’ve heard some unflattering stories about John.”
“And where’s the Prince joke?” she asked as they spotted yet another admin-type desk with a demon that appeared bored out of their mind.
“I thought to myself…I…I said Vampire Currently Known As John. Yo…you get it?”
Lily stopped, turned to face Greg with a look of amusement, and asked, “Are you nervous because you had to explain a private joke? Or because we are in Hell?”
“Yes.”
Lily’s smile widened at his ambiguous answer.
“Can I help you?” an almost human voice hissed. It had a feminine pitch to it that matched the subtle curves under the demoness’s robes.
The travelers both turned to face the desk that was a few paces ahead, and an idea came to Lily.
Still in the glamor Greg had provided, Lily casually leaned on the desk, feigned a sigh that only people swallowed by the workday can manage, and ironically asked, “When’s lunch?” with an accompanying eye roll.
The demoness barked out an air-filled laugh that sounded like someone was pressing the trigger of an air compressor over and over in quick succession. Lily imagined a snake laughing uncontrollably.
Looking closer, she took note that the ensemble strongly resembled a blouse and skirt combo which a secretary might have worn in the ’70s or ’80s, but it was still a one-piece robe.
“Lunch, right!” the demoness giggled while wiping a tear from her reptilian eye. “Maybe if we work through lunch, we can get off early and hit up happy hour!”
Lily faked a smile at the woman’s joke while assessing eyes noted subtle cues, like the admin’s grin that was attempting—and failing—to obscure the pain that so desperately wanted to be shown to the world.
“How long have you been here?” Lily asked softly, gently testing a theory she had formulated.
The woman stopped laughing as quivering eyes locked onto Lily’s. They were trying to determine if the inquisitor was friend or foe.
Sensing this, Lily reached out a hand to rest on the admin’s own.
“It’s okay. I’m a friend.”
Greg noticed what was happening and began to slowly move his body so that Lily completely obstructed the admin’s view. He didn’t know why he felt the urge to be unseen during the woman’s moment of vulnerability. It simply felt like the thing to do. As did turning his head in any direction but toward the desk.
His ears, however, remained ever vigilant. The question he and Lily had begun to form after passing the last administrative demon now needed answering. Can humans become demons?
