Lover Arisen, page 6
The Bastard blinked like his brain was having trouble downshifting from his current Crisis of Demon-ish Derivation to the Whole-Foods-gastronomic virtue signaling that seemed to be his voice box’s favorite octave. “I—it’s healthy. Why wouldn’t I eat healthy?”
“You eat fucking sad.”
“My body is my temple.”
“Then why are you feeding it compost. You need to have a Twinkie and lighten up, true?”
Syphon made a dismissive noise—which was as close to “fuck” as he ever got outside of the field, the exhale containing some combination of syllables that equated to “fudge” or “feronica” or “fizzle.”
Kinda like kombucha or kale was a cousin of anything actually edible.
And what the fuck was a feronica, anyway?
“It’s harmonica with an f,” Syphon said with an arched brow.
Oh, V’d spoken that out loud. “Okay, Ben Stein, you realize that don’t make no sense. In spite of your everybody-knows-that tone, which I’d take offense at except for the fact that you’ve clearly had a crap night and I’m feeling sorry for you—‘feronica’ is not a real word.”
“Yeah, well, ‘true’ isn’t a question mark, either.”
V took a pause. Because he’d been working on his temper lately. “Don’t make me slap the stupid out of you.”
“Lately, I feel like stupid is all I’ve got. At least I’m giving you a big target.”
Syphon, the heartbroken assassin, turned away and started hoofing it for the pantry entrance to the kitchen.
Just as he rounded the base of the grand staircase, V said, “Sy.”
The Bastard glanced back. “What.”
“I believe him. Balthazar. If he says we still got problems, I take him at his word, and I’ll make sure I’m not the only one who does. If the Book and that demon are still around, we’ll take care of them.”
Syphon’s heavy shoulders slumped. “I can’t decide what’s worse. The idea my cousin’s gone mad… or that the enemy that attacked me in that stairwell at the psychic’s is inside of him.”
“We can fight anything. Together.”
“Can we?”
Leaving that rhetorical hanging, the fighter ducked his head and kept going, disappearing through the door into the pantry and his holier-than-thou diet.
“Motherfucker,” V muttered as he looked up at the ceiling.
Three stories above him, the mural of warriors on great steeds was baroque as hell, the charging movements, fierce expressions, and bulging muscles of the males and stallions all exaggerated, the colors bold, the shadowing strong.
For some reason, anytime he’d ever glanced at the artwork, he’d dubbed in debates of grave nature:
You’re wrong, Andy! the guy on the black horse screamed. You reseed lawns in October, not April!
Fuck you, Stewart! The dry season, coupled with the colder nights, won’t support root growth!
That’s why you need in-ground irrigation and proper fertilization, you twat!
*sounds of thundering hooves, battle cries, and clashing swords ensue*
Vishous re-leveled his head. Last week Andrew and Stu-Stu had gotten into it over which Paul brother was worse, Logan or Jake. At least both sides had won in that dated argument.
You know what you have to do, V thought as he looked toward the billiards room.
Funny, he’d rather try to quit smoking.
And as he started for the archway into pool table land, he realized he’d been avoiding going in there for… well, at least forty-eight hours. He, too, had sensed that Devina was still on the planet, and that meant that the Book couldn’t be completely written off. But he’d been determined to give the universe a chance to provide him with another option for getting a confirmation on the pair’s status. Any other option.
Big fat punch in the nad on that.
As a tide of exasperation crested, V shitkickered into the one place he really didn’t want to go—which, considering there was an open-late Hobby Lobby eight point four miles away from his precise location, was really saying something.
Pausing just inside the wood-paneled room, he forefingered his back pocket, took out a hand-rolled, and lit up. It was on the exhale, as he started by his preferred pool table, that he noticed the TV was off.
Had there been a fuse blown? Was the cable/Internet out?
And… wait, what? Why was the couch empty, nobody with ass-less chaps long-legging it in front of a Golden Girls marathon over there.
Just to be sure he wasn’t missing anything, V went around to close-inspect the sofa. There was no depression on the cushions and the throw pillows were plumped and arranged nicely in the corners created by the arms. So nope, even if the angel had gone invisi to avoid interacting, and was somehow able to tolerate his own company without benefit of the distraction of Netflix or Hulu or the Cartoon Network, his weight would have registered.
Plus come on, there was no way the screen would be dark. Lassiter ran on two sources of energy: Sunlight and anything with Bea Arthur in it.
“Where are you, angel,” V muttered.
As he tried to remember the when/where of seeing the guy last… it was more like, where had the disco ball been? V hadn’t been viscerally irritated for… well, shit, the respite had been at least a long weekend’s worth of time.
And to think he hadn’t recognized the non-noyance for the staycation that it was. Pity.
“Sire? May I help you?”
V glanced away from the unused remote. Fritz, butler extraordinaire, had materialized in the billiards room archway, sure as if the ancient doggen had an antenna out for anybody in the mansion who had even a passing need he could assist. In his penguin suit, and with that old, wrinkly face, the head of household staff was a fixture that, if V had been the sentimental type—which he was not—he might well have felt a little apple pie warmth in his chest for.
Okay, fine. Maybe he had some affection for the old guy. But like any sociopath wouldn’t catch a case of the fuzzies when faced with all that earnest?
Not that V was a sociopath. Not really, at any rate.
Fine, he was mostly not sociopathic. Especially when he wasn’t around fallen angels—
“Sire?”
“Hey, my man.” V cleared his throat and focused. “Have you seen Lassiter anywhere around?”
“No, Sire.” The doggen bowed low. “Neither inside nor on the grounds. May I summon him for you?”
By like, what, hanging that remote off the second story balcony and humming a few bars of “Thank You for Being a Friend”?
“Nah, I’ll find him. Thanks.”
“May I get you anything?”
Talk about your loaded questions. “I’m good. I appreciate it, though.”
The butler bowed again, so deeply, his jowls nearly Swiffer’d the floor. “Please let me know if there is aught I may do for you, Sire.”
After the doggen left, V considered whether to make himself a Goose, but he passed on that idea. He was off rotation, but you never knew, and the night was young in a way that inevitably would mean good news was not coming. So instead of sucking back some liquid sanity, he smoked the hand-rolled down. Then he flicked the stub into the cold fireplace, closed his eyes, cursed three times…
And just like Dorothy with her ruby fucking shoes, he was up, up, and away, traveling in a scatter of molecules to the Other Side, to the Scribe Virgin’s Sanctuary, to the place from which his mahmen had run her little cult of personality for eons.
As he re-formed up on the perpetually green lawn, he wanted to avoid thoughts of the one who had given birth to him, so he got his walk on and tried to view all the white marble, Greco-Roman architecture as a disinterested third party might: From the bathing temple to the treasury to the library, the last time there had been so many columns in one place had been Seti I’s hypostyle hall at Karnak.
Yes, it was true, he’d been watching ancient Egyptian documentaries lately.
Anyway, all the buildings he passed by were empty, and it was with no small amount of satisfaction that he took note of the persistent vacancy. Ever since Phury had become the Primale and freed the Chosen from their servitude, the Sanctuary had been a ghost town—and good for those females. They were out living now, not tied to the black robes of his mahmen.
They had left even before the Scribe Virgin had. So maybe this ghost town thing was part of the reason she had quit her job and given the reins of the race’s existential shit over to the David Lee Roth of fallen angels.
Thanks, Mom.
On that note, there was one place up here that was inhabited—or rather, that had better fucking be. The Scribe Virgin’s private quarters had a new tenant, and that must be where Lassiter was.
Vishous stopped as he came up to the wall around his mahmen’s courtyard, and it took him a couple of deep breaths before he could enter. When he finally stepped inside, the twinkling sounds of the fountain should have been a peaceful concert of water droplets falling into a marble basin. Instead, it was like fingernails on a blackboard. A human two-year-old screaming after they were denied a cookie. A wounded badger.
Who knew that the only thing harder than having the Scribe Virgin around… was not having her around—
Jesus, that was Lassiter, too. That was exactly how he felt about Lassiter.
No wonder his mahmen had picked the guy to be her replacement. The pair of them were lockstep right from the jump of the new era.
Yay, he thought as he stared at the magical fountain.
Like everything in the Sanctuary, the damn thing ran itself, no electricity or cleaning required, the specially charged H2O originating from no discernible source, every gallon forever sparkling fresh. The whole of the refuge was like that, self-perpetuating in its perfection: The illusion of all these temples, like the Augusta-fairway-worthy grass and the stupid Easter-ish tulips and the milky-white illumination that made everything seem to have an Instagram filter on it was an eternal kind of thing.
And no doubt exactly how it had been the moment the Scribe Virgin had I-Dream-of-Jeannie’d it all.
Well, not exactly. Phury had added the color. Before him, it had been shades of white.
And Lassiter? He’d made his own special contribution to the place.
“Where are you, angel,” V said as he pointedly ignored the tree he had once packed with songbirds.
When there was no answer, he crossed into the colonnade. The doors to the inner space were closed and he had a thought that, all of his black-wax, BDSM extremism aside… he might not want to know what was going on behind any of this Privacy-please.
“Lassiter,” he snapped. “You know I’m here. Stop playing hard to get.”
As he took out another hand-rolled and lit up, the smoke left his mouth in a rush. Just as he was about to do something really aggressive—like curse and stomp his fucking shitkicker—a set of double doors opened like Miss America was going to stiletto out in her pageant wear.
What was on the other side was about as far from evening gown elegant as you could get. Unlike the rest of the Sanctuary, there was nothing ocularly peaceful about Lassiter’s crib. And P.S., Spencer’s at the Aviation Mall ca. 1982 was missing their supply of black-light’able zebra print. Probably half of their poster selection, too.
“Where have you been?” V said as he regarded the Technicolor bedding platform.
Lassiter, the fallen angel, successor to the Scribe Virgin’s authority, possessor of powers that could barely be comprehended, was lying back against a stack of hot-pink satin pillows, his Fabio-worthy blond-and-black hair flowing everywhere, his bare chest rising and falling evenly. His long legs were k’d out, the leggings done half and half with black and turquoise this time. No shoes, no socks.
Because why not flash your ugly flappers for all the world to see.
Oh, and he’d painted his toenails coral. How cute.
“Hello?” V prompted. “Do I have to toss a hand grenade at you?”
Please let me toss one at you? he dubbed in.
Annnnnnnd that was when he noticed the book that was propped up on the angel’s ripped abs.
“Who the fuck is René Brown?” V demanded.
Lassiter lowered the spine, his odd-colored eyes lifting from whatever paragraph he’d been Gorilla-glued to. “Oh, hey. Wassup—and it’s Brené.”
“What the hell are you doing with that baloney.” V nodded at Atlas of the Heart. “Sorry, I mean, bre-loney.”
“I’m transforming my life.”
V indicated the zebra print on the walls, the throw rug that should have been thrown out, the sheets that were a spicy cheetah print. “FYI, I’d start with a dumpster, not the library, if you’re looking to fix anything.”
“I have to learn how to be the best me I can.” Lassiter flipped through the pages. “You know, go from a zero to a hero. Get my potential to become my reality. Be a looker not a hooker—wait, that came out wrong.”
“Did it, really?”
Abruptly, the angel’s eyes narrowed, like he’d picked up on a spill on V’s muscle shirt or something. Glancing down, V brushed at his pecs.
“What the hell are you looking at.”
Lassiter shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Can’t do what?” There was a pause. And then V caught the drift of the fallen angel catching his drift. “Bullshit, you can’t.”
“No, I really can’t interfere in all this stuff with the Book. Your mahmen overstepped in the game back in March, and you know where that got us with all those lesser hearts down the throat of the Omega, the Brotherhood nearly getting slaughtered in that alley thanks to the evil’s recharge—”
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“Well, you better if you’re going to get fluffy at me for not playing Dungeon Master to the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s benefit. I would if I could, but I can’t. The repercussions are going to hurt you all more than the situation as it stands now—”
“You’ve helped before. And FYI, I’m not getting ‘fluffy.’ ”
“Do you need a time-out in the ball again?”
V bared his fangs and hissed as he relived being stuck in that invisible prison—and Lassiter dribbling him, for fuck’s sake. “No, I don’t need a time-out in the—oh, fuck off.”
Lassiter put both his hands up, all whoa-Nelly. “You just look a little worked up, s’all.”
On the verge of losing his shit, V paced around so he didn’t prove the point. Then he decided to be the bigger vampire.
“Look, I’m not asking for you to destroy either one of them for us. I just want some information.”
“Knowledge is power. It’s more than the Schoolhouse Rock! intro.” Lassiter re-propped the book on his pelvic playing field. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on a journey to self-discovery.”
V walked across to the eyesore of a bed and stood over those naked-ass, nail-polished feet. For a brief moment, he remembered when he’d been the most cool-headed in the Brotherhood, the icy intellectual, the laser-sighted truth layer. Lately, the stressors had been coming at him so hard and fast, he’d turned into a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto.
Maybe he should be Brenéing his Brown.
But more than that… he needed Lassiter’s help. The whole Brotherhood needed the angel’s help.
“Francis Bacon said knowledge is power first.” He kept his voice low, level. “And all we want to know is whether the demon is gone. That’s it. We just want to confirm our target.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, there was a long period of silence—and V did not move. V wasn’t going to fucking move. Even if this took an eternity, he wasn’t budging one goddamn inch until he got what he came for. The Brotherhood, the Bastards, and the other fighters in the mansion were a powerful pack. But their numbers were not infinite. At any given time, there were threats from humans who might expose the species, the ever-present challenge of what remained of the glymera, and then a civilian population who wanted, and needed to be able, to see their King in person.
If resources were going to be diverted, it could not be on a wild-goose chase.
It just couldn’t.
Lassiter put his hardcover down for a second time and looked to the double doors V had come through—like he was considering using them himself. Or ruing the fact that he had opened them.
“I thought this was only about the Book,” the angel murmured.
“They’re a BOGO and you know it.”
Lassiter shook his head, for once losing his playful resistor act and getting dead frickin’ serious. “You’re rolling dice that may fall on your head, V. I know that you and I don’t see eye to eye, but I want you to listen to my warning here.”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Why don’t you assume that she’s still here and call it a night?”
“Is that your final answer?”
“It’s not an answer. It’s just advice.”
V stared at the angel and stayed quiet. After what felt like an hour, a soft, warm breeze wound its way around his ankles. And then the whole room they were in started to rotate, the garish horror of the animal prints smudging as the spinning increased in velocity, the multiple patterns blending into a swirl that began to fade away, like a fog was encroaching—or more accurately, the private quarters were disintegrating.
As everything disassembled into ether, V glanced down at his shitkickers and found that he was floating.
“Now can you tell me,” he said to the angel who was up on his feet and levitating as well.
“A fundamental can never be destroyed.” Lassiter’s long hair was teased in the wind that carried no sound. “It can be transferred into other forms, but it cannot be destroyed. There is no entropy with an immortal like Devina.”
V frowned. “What about the Omega? He was destroyed.”
“No, you shifted his energy to another plane. Butch delivered his essence to you, and you were the portal to that other dimension, but nothing died or disappeared. He’s just no longer here with us.”
A tingle went down V’s spine and sizzled his remaining testicle. “So the Omega is still around?”
