Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  Theodore turned, killed the red-striped Urgda by hitting it in the side of the neck with the back of the axe, audibly snapping its spine. Then he charged toward Sebastian.

  Aloysius stepped in front of Sebastian and yelled, “He didn’t—”

  The axe hit him in the chest, breaking ribs and sternum. Aloysius felt nauseous more than anything else. When Sebastian jerked the axe out, air exploded out with it. Aloysius tried to gasp for another breath—he suddenly felt like he was drowning—but he couldn’t make anything come in. He was drowning. He grabbed both arms to his throat and tried to show them he was drowning, but nobody understood.

  He stumbled on somebody or other’s body and sat down before he could fall, like Maeve, face-forward into the ground, and have even more trouble breathing. He looked down and suddenly had the urge to cough. He didn’t think it would be a good idea, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  The axe in his chest didn’t hurt, but coughing hurt. He could feel the ragged ends of his lungs rubbing against each other.

  Jerome was trying to say something. Not to him, but to Theodore. Good. Jerome would be able to get through to Theodore if anyone could. Mostly by not saying anything, but saying enough. Aloysius knew he always said too much, even though Honey teased him about saving up everything he had to say for a big stack that had to come out all at once; she claimed that if he said things one at a time, people would understand him better.

  Maybe he should pray.

  He still couldn’t get any air, so he wasn’t going to be able to pray out loud or anything, but maybe he could pray silently to himself.

  Pray? Not pray? What would he pray?

  He found himself singing the alphabet song under (obviously) his breath. No, that wasn’t right.

  He tipped backward into the burnt grass, and someone made him sit up again. He supposed that was right; if they let him lean backward, he’d drown in his own blood. Someone was holding him up from behind and pressing Celeste Marie’s tablecloth across the hole in his chest.

  He looked at the girl.

  All this trouble for a little girl. Well, there were worse things to go to all this trouble over.

  With the tablecloth crushed into the hole in his lungs, he thought he might be able to get a little air. However, it seemed like there was something stuck in his lungs; he couldn’t get them to hold anything, and it sounded like he was making loud hiccups in his own ears.

  He was mouthing the words to “Heartbreak Hotel” now. He was pretty sure God wasn’t going to like that one. Or maybe He would.

  He was looking straight at Celeste Marie’ s horrible, old face, surrounded by a rat’s nest of hair and pasty in places from dried spit, when she winked at him. One eye opened, closed. A wink.

  Rigor mortis must be letting up, he thought, and shuddered in horror. Ugh.

  He heard someone yelling his name, but he couldn’t tell who. He shuddered again and quit trying to breathe.

  He blinked a couple of times. Open, shut. Open, shut. He couldn’t really see anything either way.

  On the whole, he preferred them shut.

  Chapter 47

  Jerome watched Aloysius relax, almost as if he was falling asleep, and slump in Sebastian’s arms. Sebastian let go of the tablecloth, which fell out of the hole in Aloysius’s chest and slid down to his legs, soaked with black demon blood.

  Jerome said, “Aloysius.”

  Sebastian looked at him. It was cruel to make him mourn a his brother the demon, with only a demon’s face to do it with. Jerome couldn’t understand the expression on Sebastian’s face the way he might have understood the expression on a human’s face. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have understood it, regardless. And the demons, gray or black, couldn’t cry.

  Sebastian looked back down at Aloysius. The black book was beside him. He put his hand on the book, then took it away.

  Jerome took a deep breath and finally noticed the gray demons around him were attacking Connor and Nick, trying to get rid of the black demons. Theodore was fighting with them. Jerome could tell that Theodore wasn’t paying attention to the fight; he just wanted something to do that wasn’t standing around and watching Aloysius pass on.

  The demon who had killed Maeve was dead already; Jerome wasn’t surprised. Theodore had always been an Old Testament kind of man. He would forgive anything he didn’t feel like bothering about, but if he felt like bothering about it, he wouldn’t stop until it had been repaid, an eye for an eye. Or two eyes.

  When Theodore looked back toward the fight, Nick had fallen into a patch of thick grass. He had almost disappeared under the blades, splattered with black blood. Jerome could see one black eye glittering in the shadows behind the grass. He wanted to apologize; Nick had come here to replace his dead brother. He’d been promised a paradise in which he could start again, and all he’d gotten was cut down by his people’s enemies anyway. The fight on his home world was probably over something stupid, anyway.

  Connor and Theodore fought on. There were three other gray demons left. Two. One. None.

  The two of them panted and stared at each other, holding identical axes. For a moment, Jerome thought the two of them would fight, they both looked so angry. But they didn’t. Connor put his axe blade-first on the ground, bent over, and tried to catch his breath. Theodore looked around with his thick gray hand over his brow ridge until he saw another group of a half-dozen gray demons standing in the road between two houses.

  “Those ones next,” he said.

  Connor said, “I can’t.”

  Theodore glared at him. “I see the leader. The mottled one. And three stripes.”

  Connor grinned, the long curl of his mouth pulling backward along his muzzle almost to his ears. It was a little off-putting to see all his teeth. “Bahgoral. If I blame anyone, I blame him.”

  Jerome said, “You didn’t have to come here. You should blame yourself.”

  “I tried to stop this!” Connor said.

  “You had the opportunity to stop it and didn’t,” Jerome said.

  Connor tried to stare him down but couldn’t. “It wasn’t that easy. I couldn’t kill my brother.” He glanced up.

  Jerome was still staring at him. “Say you’re sorry.”

  Connor got up and joined Theodore. “Let’s go.” Jerome seethed; the demon apparently thought it was easier to die fighting than apologize.

  Theodore bent over, picked up a rifle, and checked the chamber. “Find the rest of these and bring them here,” he said. Connor rolled over a gray body and pulled out a rifle. In a few minutes, Theodore had the shells out of the rest of the rifles and loaded in his, or held in a pouch on his belt. He held a rifle out to Connor, who shook his head.

  “I’ll only waste it,” he said. “And I want their blood to run down my face before I die.”

  Theodore nodded.

  The two of them ran around the buildings, out of sight of Bahgoral and his guard. Why it was acceptable for a spotted demon to be among the grays and not the black demons, Jerome would never understand. Shouldn’t they kill him, too?

  Sebastian had his hand on the black book again. He was flicking his thumb back and forth over the cover. Aloysius’s head had slid down into his lap as he knelt on the bloody grass.

  “What are you going to do?” Jerome asked.

  “I’m thinking about killing a lot of them,” Sebastian said.

  “How?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking about.” Sebastian kept rubbing his thumb.

  “Let me have him,” Jerome said.

  Sebastian looked down at Aloysius and pulled his hand off the book again. “I’ve sent us to Hell, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to.”

  “This isn’t Hell,” Jerome said.

  “What is it, then? Everyone I love but you is dead or will be in just a moment, because I don’t think Theodore went over there with the intention of living out the hour. Isn’t that Hell? I’m not saying I don’t deserve it, but what about the rest of you?”
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  “Do you deserve Hell?” Jerome asked.

  Sebastian didn’t answer.

  There was yelling from down the street, and Jerome saw four of the six demons fall, one crack after the other. Bahgoral dove sideways, and the last red-striped gray ran around the corner before Theodore could shoot him.

  Bahgoral roared, and other demons roared back.

  Theodore ran into the street, threw the gun on the ground, and plowed into Bahgoral in a giant hug. He wrapped both arms around Bahgoral’s chest and started to crush him.

  Connor raised his axe toward Bahgoral’s head, looking none to caring about whether he hit Theodore, too. The other demon charged from behind the house and knocked the axe out of Connor’s hands.

  More demons were running down the street toward them.

  Connor pulled his hands back, shook them, and bent over to pick up the axe. Theodore and Bahgoral struggled; Theodore was turning Bahgoral around so his back was facing the red-stripe. The red-stripe shoved the axe handle under Theodore’s hands and turned it, wedging his hands apart.

  Theodore backed away from Bahgoral, pulling his axe from his belt.

  The other gray demons were almost at the fight.

  “Are you going to kill them?” Jerome asked.

  “What should I do?” Sebastian said.

  Theodore lifted his axe and struck. Bahgoral stepped aside and let Theodore’s axe whisk past his ear. He stepped toward Theodore, flicking his ear, and struck back.

  The axe grazed Theodore’s right cheek and thunked into his shoulder. He dropped his axe.

  “I can’t decide for you,” Jerome said.

  “What would you do?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The gray demons reached Connor and, as far as Jerome could tell, tore him apart with their bare hands.

  Theodore grabbed Bahgoral’s axe with his left hand and jerked it out of his shoulder before Bahgoral could pull it back. With a twist and a turn, he was standing in front of Bahgoral with the axe in his hand. Another twist, and Bahgoral was on the ground and the axe was swinging toward his throat.

  Bahgoral’s head rolled.

  Theodore collapsed on top of him, two axes in his back.

  “Theodore,” Jerome said.

  Sebastian shook his head. “No. They’re dead.” He lifted Aloysius’s head out of his lap and set it on the ground beside him. Jerome stroked Aloysius’s head and squatted in the grass next to Celeste Marie. Sebastian opened the black book and squinted at it.

  “I can’t read English anymore,” he said. “Just the words written in the demonic tongue.” He put the book down and knelt.

  “Dear Father in Heaven,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

  The demons saw Sebastian and Jerome in the middle of a pile of bodies and ran toward them. Jerome thought he recognized the guard who had come for them earlier.

  “What happened?” the guard cried.

  “I bend to your will as a willow bends in the wind. I am the wind, I am your will.”

  Jerome said, “They killed my brother’s lover. She was Makkur.” He pointed at Maeve, then at Theodore. He considered telling the demons that his brother was human but decided not to test their credibility.

  The guard rolled Maeve over, gently cradling the back of her head. “Makkur,” the guard whispered. “Too bad. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  Jerome nodded.

  Sebastian said, “I am nothing. I do not merely belong to you; what you make more than belongs to you.”

  “No wonder,” the guard said. “I would have killed for her, too. You’re one of the four brothers, aren’t you?” He frowned at Celeste Marie. “And a demon.”

  Sebastian continued to pray: “You are not my master; I am not your slave. I am your hand, I am your tool, I am that which lies under your tool, the wood upon which you work.”

  “Things aren’t always what they seem,” Jerome said.

  “I am your dream,” Sebastian said. “And you dream that I am Sebastian, a sinner. And so I am satisfied to be a sinner in your service. I have sinned against you, as you have made me to do.”

  Jerome rolled his eyes.

  The guard said, “What’s he doing?”

  “Praying,” Jerome said. “Trying to figure out what God wants of him.”

  “God?”

  “It’s the name of his spirit.”

  “Oh, spirits,” the guard said, dismissing his confusion. “After a day like this, no wonder.”

  Sebastian said, “And now I humbly submit to the next task you would have me do. I beg you, God, let me sin no more. I am weak, and I cannot carry this weight of sin upon my back. I will do as I am. I beg you to make me no longer a sinner.” He dropped his head on his chest and went quiet.

  The guard said, “If you’re all right, I better get moving.”

  Jerome nodded and the guard rejoined the others. The guard spoke a few words, and the Urgda moved on.

  Sebastian didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Jerome lay back in the grass and waited for him. He found an unbloodied stalk, pulled it, and chewed it between his teeth. The grass tasted sweet on his tongue. Too bad vegetables didn’t taste this good, when Peggy had made them.

  Sebastian said, not praying, “I haven’t changed.”

  Jerome plucked another blade of grass and let him mull that over for a few minutes. He was starting to feel cross at Sebastian.

  “I’m sorry,” Sebastian said. “I did this. God didn’t make me do this.”

  Jerome said, “If you’re going to actually get down to praying instead of rattling the marbles around in your stupid head, pray for Celeste Marie.”

  “Dear Lord, we pray for the soul of this child, Celeste Marie, who lived her life in humble service to your will. She was better at pleasing You than I’ll ever be.”

  “That’s for sure,” Jerome agreed. And then, because he was feeling a little more generous now that Sebastian wasn’t being such an idiot, he added, “You and me both.”

  “We ask you that you bring her back to us, to restore what I have ruined. I don’t deserve it, and I probably haven’t learned my lesson. But I’ve been knocked down a peg or two. I could make You promises all day about what I’ll do if You will only restore her innocent life, but I’ve made a lot of promises lately, and I couldn’t blame You if you didn’t believe them. I offer up my life for hers, not that it’s an even trade.”

  “Amen,” Jerome said.

  “Amen,” Sebastian said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  They both looked at Celeste Marie. She was dead; her skin was ripped up all along the sides of her arms and legs from where she’d been carried. She was dried out and crusted with all kinds of disgusting things. Her hair would have to be shaved and a wig added before she’d be fit for an open casket.

  Jerome stroked her hair. He knew it was sticky with dirt, but his demon’s skin on the tips of his fingers was too thick to feel it. He wished he could cry. His head hurt.

  Celeste Marie’s chin nodded up and down, then up and down again. Her lips moved. She nodded again, and her chest rose.

  The grass rustled. Sebastian sank back on his knees. “God.”

  Jerome bent over Celeste Marie’s mouth. She whispered, “I hurt so bad.”

  He turned his head so his thick eyelashes stroked her face. She laughed almost soundlessly and whispered, “Owwww.”

  “Shh,” he said. “You’re having a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

  She tried to shake her head, but only the tip of her nose moved.

  “I’ll stay with you,” he said.

  Her mouth moved. “O…kay.”

  He found the tablecloth, shook it out, scattering Aloysius’s blood everywhere, and spread it over her. Then he lay next to her under the cloth, barely touching her. She relaxed. Her head lolled to the side, and she started to click in the back on her throat: a snore.

  Jerome listened to her breath and felt her warmth for as long as he
could, but it was like being under a warm sunbeam on a lazy afternoon. He slept.

  Chapter 48

  Aloysius was asleep in his bed, dreaming about Honey. She was crying over his coffin; he was dead. Then he pulled her down into the grave with him and had his way with her, laughing evilly.

  He woke up next to her with his hands up her nightgown, getting ready to make love to her. He noticed in an offhand fashion that he was human again and decided this was a good thing, because he could feel her better. The damned demons had fingertips like spades, flat, wide, and dead, and what fun was that?

  He rolled her over and climbed on top of her. She opened her eyes, which were a tiny ring of brown and a wide, deep pool of black.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Don’t talk.”

  He didn’t.

  He was lying in bed next to her afterwards, and she said, “Whew. When we get married, if you want to do that to me again, keep your mouth shut until afterwards.”

  “My breath is that bad, huh?”

  “Huh.”

  “What time do you have to be back?”

  “Noon.”

  “Noon,” he said, rolling it around in his mouth. “Noooon.”

  She threw a pillow on top of his head and got up. “I’ll meet you out by the truck after you finish your chores.”

  “The truck,” he said. “Truuuuck.”

  Honey went into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

  He laughed. He must be in heaven.

  He took her to church the next morning. Good thing, Sebastian wasn’t supposed to hear confessions that week.

  He hummed Elvis songs all the way to church.

  “That’s not very religious,” Honey said.

  He grinned at her.

  “Aren’t you in a squirrely mood this morning.”

  “Sure am,” he agreed.

  “Well?”

  He pulled into the Gray Hill parking lot. “You can sit on my lap during Mass if you want.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  They walked into church together, arm in arm. Aloysius almost tap-danced his way up the steps. If Honey hadn’t been shaking with laughter and trying to look at least a little dignified, he would have.

  Theodore was just inside the door. When Aloysius saw him, his heart caught in his throat. The man looked like death warmed over, pale, dark circles under his eyes, hands shaking. Aloysius let go of Honey’s arm and grabbed his brother by the shoulders.