by Zoe Cannon
He didn’t look at the floor. He would never be able to keep this up long enough if he looked at the floor.
A little of the tension in the other demon’s body disappeared. Marik could see him running through the mental calculus, and deciding this probably wasn’t going to be a fight. “We’ve been searching for you for a long time,” the demon said. “We thought you had gone rogue. Until I tracked you here and found this… creature… lying in wait.” He kicked the bundle of feathers with clawed toes. A broken whimper rose from the floor—not even a scream this time.
Marik swallowed harder, and didn’t look. “Did you kill him?” He couldn’t keep the roughness from his voice.
But the other demon was too busy puffing up his chest to notice anything amiss. “I did better than that,” he said with a smile that begged Marik to ask him for details. When Marik didn’t, he indulged in a small pout before continuing sulkily, “The salient point, if you don’t care to hear the full story, is that he is no longer a threat.”
Marik nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
The demon peered at him curiously. “I know your reputation. How did one of them overpower you? Have you been his prisoner for this long?”
“That doesn’t matter.” He tried not to show his anger. Tried to hold the tears at bay. Tried, so hard, not to look. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of blood—so much blood—and broken, matted feathers. He quickly averted his eyes. “Let’s go home.”
As Marik had learned the first time he had fought in one of Hell’s civil wars, there were only two ways to kill a demon: so quickly that it was over before they saw you coming, or slowly and painfully, with all the devices of Hell at your disposal. Marik would have preferred the second. Only because it was out of his reach did he choose the first.
He stepped forward, faking a stumble from some imaginary injury. He held his breath, expecting the other demon to see through his deception. But what Marik and Sacha were to each other was, for most of their kind, unthinkable. That worked to Marik’s advantage now. As the demon reached out to catch him, there was no hint of suspicion on his face. Even a transparent ruse like this was easier for him to believe than the truth.
Which meant he didn’t see it coming when Marik’s claws pierced his chest, and fingers imbued with the strength of Hell snapped his breastbone to get to his heart.
The other demon stared at him with shock-widened eyes as Marik pulled the heart from his chest. Too late, the hand he had extended to help came in for an attack. But he was already falling. His claws never even pierced Marik’s skin before he dropped, lifeless, to the ground.
Marik dropped the heart atop the demon’s body. He could already feel his old instincts surging back, spurred by the smell of mingled demon and angel blood—both familiar smells from his old life on the battlefield. Long-forgotten patterns transmuted his rage to something darker. He wanted to crush the heart under his foot, or force it down his enemy’s throat. He took a deep, ragged breath. None of that would be useful, or even satisfying. Not when his enemy was already dead. And he wasn’t that person anymore. Not since Sacha.
He took another breath, and this time, the smell of blood didn’t make him think of battle. Instead, it made him gag as he remembered whose veins that champagne-scented liquid had come from. He prepared himself as best he could—straightening his back, clenching his jaw. Then he turned to face the scene on the kitchen floor.
The floor was coated in blood, like someone had dipped a mop in the stuff and swirled it around. Sacha lay in the center, curled in the fetal position. His skin had always been pale, but now it looked gray. Marik suspected more of his blood was on the outside than on the inside.
Marik forced himself to sweep his gaze slowly over Sacha’s body, to gauge the extent of the injuries. He had expected to find wounds in a dozen places. Instead, almost all Sacha’s skin was unblemished. Marik focused on that—on the smooth lines of his torso and his limbs, nothing wrenched open or bent at the wrong angle—because he couldn’t bring himself to look at the one injury he had seen.
But he had to do it. He knelt at his lover’s side, and reached for the wings. The demon had torn them off almost completely. The wounds were jagged and bloody, with whole chunks of flesh missing. Marik could picture, all too clearly, how the demon had ripped with his bare hands and sliced with his claws—slowly, so slowly, savoring every scream as the wings tore free inch by agonizing inch.
But he hadn’t finished the job. One more small motion would have severed the wings completely, but the demon had stopped short. Marik would have liked to think that was because he had interrupted before the demon had gotten the chance. But he knew the omission had been intentional. The demon had wanted Sacha to suffer.
An angel’s wings were their connection to Heaven and the Divine Presence. They couldn’t live with that connection gone. If the demon had severed the wings, Sacha would have died almost instantly. But like this, with each wing still hanging by a thread, he would instead die slowly and painfully, over hours or days. Or weeks. Marik had made it last weeks, once, in his former life.
Sacha’s eyes were closed. He was breathing, but shallowly, and with too long a pause between one breath and the next. Marik wasn’t sure if he was conscious. He rested a hand against Sacha’s cold cheek. Sacha’s eyes fluttered open weakly. Marik opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Sacha stared at him without seeing him, then closed his eyes again.
If Sacha hadn’t been unconscious before, he was now. At the very least, he was unaware of everything that was happening around him. That was for the best, Marik knew. It meant he would feel less pain. But still, selfishly, he wished he could have the chance to say a proper goodbye.
He stared down at his claws. He knew what he had to do. Slice the wings free the rest of the way. Kill Sacha quickly. For Sacha’s sake, suffer the agony of the final scream that would come, and of knowing he was ripping away the one thing his lover loved more than him.
Sacha had never said it outright, not once in all their centuries together. He had never so much as mentioned his work, unless Marik had asked a direct question. But Marik followed him, once every few months—not for any sinister purpose, just for the pleasure of seeing Sacha come to life in a completely different way than he did in his arms. When Sacha was offering a human the knowledge they needed to change the course of their life, he shone with joy, and with purpose. Marik could give him many things, but he couldn’t give him purpose.
And Marik had seen him communing with the Divine Presence, late at night, when he thought Marik was asleep. The bliss on his face… Marik had never managed to draw that look from him when they were in bed together. And he had tried.
For his part, Marik had never let on that he knew. His jealousy, when it surged despite his efforts to keep it tamped down, was his own to deal with. He had as much of Sacha’s heart as it was possible for Sacha to give, and he was satisfied with that. He loved Sacha enough to give up everything he used to be—and to accept that Sacha would never do the same for him. And he loved Sacha too much to take away the rest of what held Sacha’s heart.
But now he had no choice.
He hovered his claws over the tattered scraps of skin and muscle that were holding the wings in place. One quick slice to each, and it would be over.
But his hands wouldn’t move.
He clenched his jaw tighter. All he was doing, with this delay, was prolonging Sacha’s suffering. Even if human doctors would have known how to care for an angel, the wings had been ripped away too deeply at the base for mortal medicine to have any hope of reattaching them. Sacha needed the expertise of Heaven. And in the state he was in, he had no hope of finding the strength to return home. The wings would never bond with his flesh again without divine help, and no angel could survive without—
Marik stilled, claws hovering in place.
No. That wasn’t true. Some angels could survive without their wings.
The fallen angels, a
ncestors of all demons, had been gifted with the ability to survive without the wings that had once been their connection to Heaven. In place of the wings they had lost, and the divine connection they had lost along with it, they had a substitute, an inky darkness in their blood that filled all the places in them where the divine light used to go. Heaven had meant it as a curse—because that substance didn’t just allow them to survive without the divine light, it gave them no choice. The light of Heaven would burn away the darkness in their blood wherever it touched them, and without the darkness to sustain them, they would die. The very touch of their home had become poison to them.
Heaven had expected them to regret their decision, and agonize over the decision of whether to accept eternal exile or try to return home and die in the attempt. That was why the door had always been left open to them. Their wings had been their connection to home, but not their means of reaching it, except in a symbolic fashion. Any of the fallen could have flown home with a thought anytime they chose.
A few had done it, and died. But most hadn’t bothered. Instead, they had responded to their curse with a collective shrug, and crafted a new home for themselves in Hell, one much better suited to them.
The darkness was passed down in the blood, or so Marik had been taught. He had thought that was only a metaphor for genetics, until he had seen someone torture an angel that way once. The demon had pricked her own finger and held it inches from the angel’s mouth, threatening to shove it down his throat and force the darkness into him. When the demon had grown bored with the angel’s thrashing and screaming, she had sliced open her palm, and forced thick gulps of blood between his lips until his eyes went dull. He had still been alive, after it was over, but all the fight had gone out of him. Marik had watched him trying in vain to call out to the Presence, and growing more dead-eyed every time he received no response. He had thought it was great fun, back then.
Now the thought made him sick. But the memory didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had that same blood in his veins.
Slowly, he pulled his claws back from the bases of Sacha’s wings. He placed a single claw over his wrist. It wouldn’t take much blood to send the darkness of the fallen coursing through Sacha’s body—the demon in his memory had overdone it. There would be no danger to Marik himself; he would heal quickly enough.
They both would.
And Sacha would survive. Without the Presence that held his heart.
Marik asked himself—would he want to live in a world without Sacha? He knew the answer before he thought the question. He had gotten a glimpse into that world already, and that brief taste had been more than enough. And because Heaven was to Sacha what Sacha was to him, he knew Sacha wouldn’t want to live in a world where he was forever cut off from his home.
He knew that. But his claw sliced through the shiny green of his skin anyway. A drop of dark blood welled up.
He couldn’t live in a world without Sacha. Everything else was irrelevant.
Sacha would be angry with him. More than angry. He would hate him, at least for a little while. But he would learn to adjust, in time. The rest of the fallen angels had.
His claw dug deeper. He bit his lip against the pain as a thin stream of blood began to flow. He held his wrist over Sacha’s parted lips, and waited for the blood to start flowing fast enough to drip between them.
Such as skin had taken on a sheen of sweat. His breaths were even more shallow now. Each exhale brought a tiny whimper that sounded more mechanical than organic. The sound wasn’t an expression of pain, so much as a byproduct of the process of dying.
“I’m sorry,” Marik whispered. “I don’t want to live in a world without you. I don’t want to be the person I was before you, and I know that’s where I’d end up, eventually.” A drop of blood hung suspended from his wrist, not quite ready to let go. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. Knowing it would never be enough. Knowing Sacha would never accept his apology, would never forgive him for this.
He shook his head sharply. Sacha would adjust. He would. And if he didn’t, he could always take the option those few fallen had taken, and be no worse off than he was right now. The door to Heaven was always open.
Marik went still.
Then, in a quick sharp motion, he yanked his wrist back and wiped the blood away with the hem of his shirt. He bent over Sacha to make sure none of the liquid had made it into his mouth. It hadn’t. His lips were still the same pale white.
The door to Heaven was always open. The fallen could reach it with a thought. And so could their descendants—but why would they? It would mean death for them, and they, unlike their ancestors, had no fond memories of the place.
Marik couldn’t commune with the Divine Presence like Sacha could. If he could have, he would have called the forces of Heaven down, regardless of what they would have done to him, and begged them to save Sacha’s life. Sacha could have done the same, called on his angelic brethren to save him from the attacker, or to bring him back to Heaven for healing. He might not have had the strength to cross over on his own, but he could at least have gotten a message through. But he hadn’t.
Marik had a good idea as to why. Even Heaven had its dark side. In the name of righteous vengeance, no punishment was too severe, and no grudge too long-lasting—and to Heaven, all vengeance was righteous. They would have seen him as a corrupting force, trying to make Sacha stray from the light—as if he had that kind of power over Sacha’s heart. They would have thought—correctly—that he had brought this fate down on Sacha’s head. And then Marik would have been the one bleeding to death on the floor.
Sacha hadn’t wanted that for him. He had chosen to die alone instead. Even though he didn’t love Marik with the all-consuming passion Marik had for him. Even though Marik had never been more than second-best in his heart.
If he had been willing to give up his life, couldn’t Marik—who, unlike Sacha, had nothing else to live for—do the same?
He gathered Sacha in his arms. The angel’s limp body felt too light. Sticky blood coated Marik’s arms; matted feathers clung to his skin. But when he rested his fingers against Sacha’s neck, a weak pulse still fluttered there. And when he gathered Sacha against him, trying to pull the drooping wings in close without hurting them more, he felt Sacha’s hot breath against the curve of his neck.
He closed his eyes. He placed one last kiss against Sacha’s blood-streaked hair.
Then he thought, Take me home.
He didn’t mean the home he had been born into, the cutthroat realm of Hell where he had risen swiftly through the ranks without stopping to wonder what it was all for. Nor did he mean this apartment, as much as he loved the place he and Sacha had designed purely for comfort, from the cool silk sheets to the big overstuffed couch that felt like a warm hug. He wasn’t thinking of any of their other homes over the centuries, either—or even of Sacha himself, although Sacha was more home to Marik than any of those other places had ever been.
No, he was searching for the home that his blood remembered, even if he didn’t.
But he didn’t feel any change. He could still smell Sacha’s blood all around him, could still feel solid ground under his feet and sticky feathers clinging to his skin. Had he been wrong? Had he failed? His grand decision—had it been meaningless after all?
Then his skin began to grow warm. This wasn’t the heat of Hell, thick and oppressive. This was more like stepping outside on the first truly warm day of summer, and letting the chill slowly seep out of his bones. It was the sun after a week of rain. It was Sacha’s arms around him.
He opened his eyes onto… light. Light, and nothing else. It was too bright for him to see anything beyond. But somehow, it didn’t hurt his eyes. It didn’t hurt any part of him.
Had the old story been wrong? Had it been a myth, that the fallen could never go home?
He smiled down at Sacha—and saw tiny, luminous motes of dust rising from his arms. He didn’t understand what he was seeing, until he caught sight
of thick ropes of muscle beneath his skin, things that shouldn’t have been visible. As he watched, more pieces of himself sloughed off and floated away, before burning up as tiny sparks in the air.
He didn’t feel it. He still felt like he was standing under the summer sun, smiling as the rays melted the memory of winter from his flesh.
Sacha’s eyes drifted open. As he breathed in—a full, deep breath this time—a look of bliss crossed his face. The kind of pleasure Marik could almost—but not quite—inspire in him.
He knew he had the same expression on his own face as he smiled down at Sacha, because Sacha had always been the only one who could make him feel that way.
The light bathed him in a gentle warmth, even as it took him apart one piece at a time. But it wasn’t the light of Heaven that warmed his core. That came from the sight of the look in Sacha’s eyes as he breathed in the air of home.
This time, Marik didn’t close his eyes. He met Sacha’s rapt gaze with one of his own, and let the warmth take him.
These Long and Winding Roads
Doug Hart sat alone in the back of the church, his trucker hat pulled low over his eyes. People kept glancing over their shoulder to shoot him curious and faintly judgmental looks; everyone else was dressed in their Sunday best, and there he was in his stained denim jacket, wearing three days’ worth of stubble. He didn’t pay them much attention. He was just passing through; he would never see any of these people again, and by tomorrow, none of them would so much as remember the man who had shown up at Sunday mass looking like he needed a shower, a shave, and an etiquette guide.
He had sat in quite a few churches, over the years. Some were as richly adorned as palaces, while others were single rooms with peeling paint and unreliable heat, their walls held up through sheer force of will. This church was no palace, but it was, perhaps, a small mansion. The dark wood of the pews was polished to a fine finish, and topped with plush velvet cushions. As Doug watched, a little girl two pews up from him got her hand smacked by an older lady for pulling a loose thread free from the cushion she was sitting on. Stained glass was set into the windows in abstract patterns, shining like gemstones. Incense wafted out from the altar to tickle Doug’s nose, a dark rich scent strong enough to cover any less-savory smells that might be lurking underneath. The priest’s voice echoed off the walls, making him sound larger than life as he stood expounding upon some passionate point that Doug hadn’t bothered to note. Doug was more interested in the look on the man’s face, a cool and serene contentment, the look of a man who had found his place in the universe as he stood like a king staring down on his domain.