The spark strained inside her chest, scarcely acknowledging the miniscule release.
A horned viper poked his head into the office.
Delighted to see an old survivor, Lilith trilled to him. He slithered over to her foot and gazed into her eyes. His body was lumpy, like he’d swallowed a handful of golf balls.
She purred, “What did you get into, my handsome horned devil?”
His tail twitched. Not the way a happy dog might wag its tail when acknowledged by its best friend, but the way a body twitched when its nerves and muscles were shot.
“Oh,” she said, and then the handsome creature died, snip, skull bumping against her thigh before he keeled over on his side and coughed up an eyeball.
She blinked and picked it up between her thumb and forefinger. The eyeball was no wider than her thumbnail, but long and red.
Like a minion’s eye.
Two more similar lumps remained inside the dead snake’s stomach.
Lilith left the office and ventured into the shop’s main room.
Haniel slept in a barber chair, knees spread, head rolled back, mouth agape. Vulnerable. His brimstone-babies were nowhere to be seen.
Her veins yawned hungrily and her flesh felt so dry she might crumble to ash. She needed blood. Haniel didn’t stir. She could take him. Eat him. Taste the most succulent recesses of his heart.
Lilith breathed through her mouth and tried to focus. The eyeball in her palm stunk of brimstone, and she searched for a body to accompany it.
A smear of charred blood dribbled across the floor and led to the cabinets behind Haniel, as if a wounded creature had crawled behind its master to die.
She circled and crept closer, following the stench of caustic blood until she found a small massacre. Snake and minion corpses were entwined in a ball. Three minions crouched near the mess, Five-horn and two she hadn’t seen before. One had a pair of smiling, bloody mouths, one stacked atop the other on its double-wide skull. Its friend had a wormlike body, giant ears, and a hog nose on its flat face.
The minions grinned at her, pleased with themselves, fingers digging into the slaughter. Hog-nose offered her a long flap of liver. She declined, noting that all the bodies—snake and fiend alike—had been splayed open, bitten and ravaged, and all parties involved had died with bulging bellies.
They’d obviously been eating each other.
Cannibalism among snakes wasn’t unusual, but Lilith counted five dead minions. She grinned. Haniel had five fewer protectors. She eyed his throat and licked her lips.
She’d seen maybe a dozen, but how many did he have in all? Would more appear if she tried to drink from him? Maybe she could sneak a sip or two. He might not even notice. As long as he was available to sacrifice in the end, did it matter what condition he was in?
Lilith groaned. Her dry tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Despite her hunger, she hesitated. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something.
She didn’t have the luxury of figuring it out all by herself. There was no time. Hell, she didn’t even have time to revisit the orchard and track the dragon like she’d promised. She sighed.
Pride be damned, she needed to ask for help.
Lilith sent a flicker of Becoming toward his chair. Its four metal legs throbbed and twisted, separating from the seat. The cushion dropped to the ground with a thud.
Haniel jerked awake and flailed. “Wha?”
Four silver serpents skimmed over his legs, and he kicked at them. The once-a-chair snakes scurried together and entwined in a mating knot. He groaned and rubbed his ass.
“We need to go,” she said. She crossed her arms below her breasts.
His eyes bulged at the sight of her chest, all pushed up and pressed together. His gaze bounced around until the ashen bloodstains registered in his waking mind.
He scrambled to his feet. “What happened?”
“Your beasts were misbehaving.”
She tossed the eyeball at him. He caught it. When he opened his palm and saw the orb, he twitched and dropped it. His brow furrowed, his lips flattened. His eyes flitted around as if searching through his legion, identifying the survivors, noting the lost.
Rising to his feet, he towered over her. Dark, handsome, full of blood. Her veins rumbled, and she wondered what demon blood tasted like. Bowel and brimstone, probably.
“Let’s go back to the orchard,” he said. “We have to resume our search.”
She shook her head. “I know a faster way. There’s someone who can help us.”
He crossed his arms. “Bullshit.”
“Haniel, I want to conclude this business as much as you. Possibly more.”
He shook his mulish head. “We need to find Maggie.”
“How?” She scowled. “I can’t track an airborne dragon.”
“Why not? What about…droppings?”
“I am not scouring Boston for dragon scat,” she hissed. “We have to go see my associate. She’ll point us to a witch. We need this information or we’re dead in the water.”
He evaluated her, deliberated, and then said, “How long before we reach your friend?”
‘Friend’ wasn’t the right term, but Lilith didn’t correct him. “Depends on whether or not you plan on moving any faster tonight.”
He rubbed his knee. “Are you always such a bitch?”
“Usually. Now, can you move your ass?”
His jaw tightened until his teeth squeaked, but they left the salon.
Chapter 12
The night was less cloudy than the last, but colder.
“We need to retrieve a parcel,” Lilith said. “Then we can pursue your beloved dragon-food.”
Haniel’s mouth pinched. She thought her catty comment would have inspired another argument, and she would have welcomed the distraction, but he threw open the salon door.
“Lead on, bitch,” he said. “The sooner we run your errand, the sooner we can find Maggie.”
Lilith agreed. The faster I can leave this fuck-show of a town, the better.
Last autumn, she’d crashed the vampire social occasion of the decade. Mostly, she’d come for Lane’s help. As a fortuneteller and a scholarly collector who catalogued every discovery, no matter how mundane, he’d been her best choice of allies.
Except when he’d caught a glimpse of her future, he’d told her to run.
Of course, Lane either hadn’t predicted—or hadn’t prevented— his own death. Maybe his prophecies weren’t all good. Besides, his predictions mostly reinforced what he thought was best for the kingdom.
At any rate, Lilith hadn’t trusted anyone in the vampire court with her valuables. She’d found an unoccupied hovel and stashed her treasures where no one could steal them.
And that’s where she and Haniel were heading.
Snow, which had partly melted during the day, turned to ice again as night pressed down on the devastated town. Werewolf feces froze in piles near gnawed innards. Bones poked out of withering snowbanks.
Lilith, hungry and harried from being on the run, had to stop herself from pulling bones from the ditches and suckling on the cold marrow. Here and there, she siphoned off a wisp of her spark and discretely made small snakes.
Haniel remained quiet, sullen, more like a toddler ripped out of bed before dawn than a full-grown once-angel creature with a parcel of demons at his side.
If he cough up the damned key, she could clunk him over the head with a rock and be done with him. His meaty smell invaded her senses, roiled her gut, made her veins rowdy. Her dry tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and her eyes felt powdery in her sockets.
If only eating him was an option.
They journeyed down side streets, under causeways, and through the dense copse of sky-bound buildings and fire-torn destruction.
Her feet burned with cold. Frost bit at her cheekbones and stabbed at her eyeballs. A big adder, heavy with muscle and taut with cold, coiled around her waist. He stared at her, fixated, absorbing her subtl
e heat. She trilled to him as she walked.
Soon she carried more serpents on her person than slithered through the snow, given the way low temperatures interfered with a serpent's biology. Snip, snip: here and there, the smaller ones were eaten by larger snakes or by minions.
The walk was long enough for Haniel's knee to exhaust itself, and his gait deteriorated. He grumbled in pain, face red-cheeked, lips blue. Lilith hadn't cared for a human’s welfare in so long that she’d forgotten how damned inconvenient they could be. Haniel needed food, shelter, and rest.
Or they needed a damned automobile.
Lilith stumbled on the metal post of a fallen street sign. Stubbed her toe. Gashed off the toenail. She roared, staggered, hopped on one foot while clutching the other. Snakes scattered to avoid her pogo-stick dance.
Haniel laughed.
At first, she didn't understand the tumble of warbling notes or the face crimped with mirth. He chortled and bent at the waist, holding his gut as if all his pieces might tumble out. The legion flickered in and out of her peripheral, pointing, rolling, and guffawing alongside their master.
Embarrassment stained her cheeks and fueled her anger. She clenched her hands into fists.
Of all the indignities!
She was on the run from heaven's bounty hunters. Her oldest friend had perished in his own house fire. She hadn't been well-fed in years. And creatures from the pit were laughing at her?
Her eyes stung.
The pressure in her chest mounted and doubled, cinching her veins and kicking her heart. Lilith knew that if she dared expel such power, heaven would find her in an instant. She choked it down and limped away. Serpents slithered after her at a jaunty pace, and Haniel labored to keep up.
For miles, they continued in silence until they arrived at the unkempt Franklin Zoo. The land had been allowed to fall to ruin, and all its inhabitants had been left to their own devices.
A large fence guarded the entryway, bound by a fat lock. She balanced on her poor foot and kicked the lock. Cold, brittle metal snapped and clanged to the ground, but the fence didn't move; it was bound by snow drifts on both sides. She shrugged and climbed up and over, clumsy with interwoven serpents, her toe bleeding into the snow. Her raucous movements shook snakes from her limbs until only the big adder remained. When she landed on the ground, he tightened hard enough to bruise her gut.
Haniel staggered behind her, cursing as he mounted the fence and nearly fell. She didn’t offer to help him.
They walked through the zoo, across barren, haunting grounds that reminded her of the gulags in Siberia and why she hated the blood-stopping cold.
Zebra hides and hooves had been abandoned in blood-brown snow, but the animal meat had been taken. The bones bore evidence of a poorly-skilled butcher’s blades. A nearby barn stank of shit and rot, the smell so bad that Haniel covered his nose. A frozen, half-scavenged giraffe carcass sprawled in the snow, surrounded by werewolf tracks and piss.
Lilith hurried. They approached an exhibit building where several structures clustered together in a circle, decorated with a façade of nature, covered in an abundance of glass. Snow encased the structure up to the roof, rendering doors inaccessible.
Haniel looked at her quizzically.
She clambered up the snowbank and gripped the roof ledge. The big adder slid up her spine like a periscope to get a better view as she pulled herself onto the rooftop.
Haniel grumbled, “Kidding me?”
Lilith ignored him. She’d used a fallen billboard to cover the open ceiling hatch. It had iced over, and she had to stomp through the fibrous board to clear the hole.
She braced her elbows on either side of the hole and lowered herself in. The adder around her waist started and lunged aside, spinning her slightly as she dropped. Her knee slammed against the floor, a rough plaster surface.
“Damn.” She bit her tongue so Haniel wouldn’t laugh at her again.
His footfalls thumped across the roof, and she stepped away from the hole. Miraculously, he dropped to the ground with all the finesse of a comic book superhero.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
He gave a what-did-I-do look, but she turned and shuffled away, hiding her limp as best she could.
The exhibit was on her left. She’d long ago torn off the thick plastic window so she could crawl directly into the habitat. Frozen sand covered the raised floor, as hard as ice. On hands and knees, she crawled into the pretend-cave. Breathless, she scooped aside dead foliage and a few hundred rib bones from a green anaconda who once inhabited the showcase.
The parcel was precisely as she left it. Lumpy objects clustered together in a sack of soft camel leather, bound by cord, swaddled like an infant.
Her precious rucksack had become like a token, a holy emblem. She couldn’t wait to hold it again. She cradled it to her chest and sat on her rump. Her fingers shook. Her heart ached to pump blood, but the vessel was so empty it sent dry heaves through her emaciated body.
More than anything—more than blood—Lilith wanted to unwrap the package and verify its contents. She hesitated. Haniel stared, appearing curious and judgmental. Unveiling the ingredients would mean showing him and his minions, and she simply didn’t trust him yet.
Her long, bare legs shivered in the cold. The threadbare chemise didn’t cover enough, her ass cheeks rubbed on the cold rock, and she couldn’t bear the combined vulnerability.
Haniel crossed his arms and waited. He locked out his knee and leaned against the side of the enclosure. Pain tightened his features, pinched his eyes, and drew his mouth long and flat, making him look even more like his demonic pals.
A tremble of unease worried her gut.
He wasn’t to be trusted.
“I have what I need,” she said.
“We should go,” he said. “Maggie’s waiting for me.”
Lilith tried not to roll her eyes. “Maggie isn’t waiting for anyone. Your lost maiden, who assuredly isn't a maiden any longer, is probably dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
She weighed options. If she insisted Maggie wasn’t out there, then Lilith had nothing to bargain with. Pretending Maggie was alive would keep Haniel invested during the trek across Boston, but Lilith didn’t have any hope of recovering her. Until Lilith determined what that Most Sacred thing was, she wouldn’t sabotage their tenuous partnership.
Or, she could drain him to the point of death and drag his unconscious ass through the snow. The stink of sulfur railroaded that idea. The last time she’dlaid hands on Haniel, she’d been bombarded by minuscule demons.
Once he sees the girl, he’ll betray me.
Was she being paranoid? Haniel was a demon, or on the way to becoming one. His connections to heaven were clearly more tenuous than they’d once been. Maybe he’d like the idea of scorning angels. If the heavenly host had betrayed him, wouldn’t enjoy petty revenge?
She nibbled her lip and fondled the parcel’s contents through the leather, exploring every familiar bump and groove of each item and vial. If she knew more about what Haniel’s descent meant to him, she might find they had common ground.
What emerged from her mouth was, “Do you miss heaven?”
Haniel stilled. His eyes widened. He said nothing.
She persisted. “Do you miss God?”
Minutes passed before he reacted.
He hobbled a step toward the gallery floor where she was sitting and roosted his ass on the edge of the display. He laced his fingers together, knuckles white.
The adder slowly oozed his rotund body between them, and Lilith ran a hand over his scales.
Haniel said. “God—Elohim—wasn’t the same after His son died.”
“Wasn’t death part of the plan?” she asked.
“Sure, but plans don’t always account for sentiment. Things change.”
She smiled with relief. Heaven had changed. God had changed. The idea gave her immense relief. Maybe her destiny—namely, her death—wasn’t set in
unalterable stone.
“So what happened?” she said.
“The dynamic of power had shifted, and He wasn’t…emotionally available.”
“But you miss being up there, near Elohim?”
His hoarse, haunted voice said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Please.” She leaned in. “Help me understand.”
“I wasn’t allowed in heaven proper,” he said. “That realm—called Ouranóthen—is reserved for human souls. Shamayim is the surrounding realm, where I existed by the grace of God.” His head tipped back, and he stared at the ceiling with jungle leaves painted across it. “I miss the inclusion. Dwelling in Shamayim, oscillating around heaven, being near divinity, sensing the Holy Infinity, feeling my brethren’s hearts as if they beat in my chest…that’s what I miss.”
He took a long shaky breath.
Once stirred, her curiosity couldn’t rest. She knew the vampire, Arachne, had lured and caught the angel, but she couldn’t imagine how one would manage such a feat.
Could she catch the angel sent to murder her? Could she kill him, or make him fall? If she could grab the pursuing angel by the wings and make it explain itself, she’d try that. Maybe she could force the angel back to heaven and prevent it from ever coming back?
“Haniel, did you ever try to return?”
“Can’t. I lost my faith. Severed my connection with Elohim. I wouldn’t be able to find my way even if I tried.”
“Wouldn’t He, like, forgive you if you asked?”
Haniel coughed a cruel laugh, making the adder twitch and pay attention. Haniel didn’t seem to notice the puffy-jawed venomous snake; he’d grown more comfortable with her creations. Or maybe he was engrossed in his memories.
He said, “Some things are unforgiveable in God’s eyes. And His eyes see everything.”
She cleared her throat. “How did you come to be here?”
“You dragged me here.” He folded his arms.
She scooped up an anaconda vertebrae and tossed it at his head. It pinged off his temple. “Don’t be glib. You know what I mean.”
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