And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  Palls sighed. “Not possible. Mark and your feathery friend went inside that diner.”

  “What diner?”

  The “diner” was what had landed in front of our car. The place was a large, oddly-angled establishment made of white painted wood and sporting broad windows that displayed the shape of patrons—most of which had wings—sitting at booths. A big fat black sign pointing down at the diner’s roof dubbed this place “Slice of Heaven” with a wedge of orange pie beneath it.

  As I gawked at its sign, Palls pulled up beside me.

  “I know we got a lot to talk about, and hell, I don’t even know where to start. But let’s slap a rain check on that. Right now, we’re still in the Fourth Circle—still in Hel’s reach—so we’re not out of the woods yet.” If that wasn’t ominous enough, Palls stared at the diner. “I’ve heard rumors about this place. The only establishment in all of the Nine Circles that’s run by angels, the Fallen kind. I don’t think I have to tell you they’re not going to be too kind to the two of us. Just stay sharp and maybe … I don’t know, act normal.” With that, Palls grumbled under his breath that he could use a beer and made off toward the diner’s front door, leaving me completely alone on the strip of road.

  I bent back over into my “What-the-Hell Ostrich” position and muttered, “Fucking angels.”

  CHAPTER 18

  A round woman sat on a round black stool by the front door of the diner. Without saying anything, she counted us four, snagged a corresponding number of menus, and led us to our booth. As soon as we slid into our seats, I took a good look around.

  The diner looked like every other diner I’d ever been to: a single row of stools for solo eaters, small tables for pairs, bigger booths for larger parties. On the walls hung pictures, not of people, but of pies: pumpkin, chess, pecan, and key lime, to name a few. At the far end, fastened to a wall, was a television. Definitely not of the flat screen variety, this massive hunk-of-junk was playing a single show.

  “Full House?” I exclaimed, keeping my voice down. “A diner run by angels in Hell is playing Full House?”

  I thought my voice was low enough to not be heard beyond our little circle of weirdos, but nevertheless the entire diner went quiet and all the angels stared in my direction. Actually, stare is not the right word. Rather, everyone stopped what they were doing and tilted their heads, wings, and bodies toward me as if waiting for me to say something else.

  Cain cleared her throat. “Full House is a perfect show, Grey.”

  “Y-yeah.” I nodded. “Totally.”

  The entire diner went back to what they were doing.

  Wanting to take my mind off of that, something from the first time I met Cain stood out in my mind.

  “Hey, Cain. Didn’t you say angels don’t need food?”

  Cain smiled broadly and looked ravenously at the menu. “This is a pie and shake place, gorgeous. Pie and shakes ain’t food. And guess what, they aren’t served in Heaven, believe or not. Order whatever you want. It’s on me.”

  I had a hard time accomplishing this. It wasn’t that any of it looked terrible, it was just that the whole menu was written in an odd language. From the pictures, the pie pieces looked enticing.

  Our waiter stopped in front of us. He looked human, but his neck was stretched like he had swallowed an umbrella. Surrounding his throat, hovering where his Adam’s apple should have been, was a gold ring. The angel flipped his notepad closed while cringing with obvious distaste at our party.

  “I’m sorry. Who are ya’ll with?” he asked with a heavy seasoning of snark.

  “Oh, forgot my halo,” Cain exclaimed, removing a gold ring from her left ring finger. As if it wasn’t made of metal at all, she pulled it open to fit over her head. Stopping it around her neck, she gave our waiter a mildly salacious wink. Displeased he couldn’t just kick us out, he rolled his eyes and asked, “What can I get you?”

  “Bah! Three of everything,” Cain replied before anyone could get a word out. Then she added, “and throw four drinks for me in there. Make ‘em strong!” The waiter scooped up our menus and trotted away.

  The place was packed. From the counter to the booths, every seat was taken. There were angels with and without wings. There were malformed angels, ones with long, swollen arms and others with feathery tails. All of them wore their halos around the neck instead of hovering over their heads. Regardless of what they looked like, it was obvious they wanted nothing to do with Palls or me. I could feel their eyes lingering on us from time to time and their gazes weren’t particularly friendly.

  Needing to ground myself, I asked, “Mind explaining what this place is and why we’re here?”

  Cain tried to laugh it off. “Beats the cats in Olive Garden, eh?” Neither Palls nor I broke so much as a smile. “You guys are the worst. All right, fine. This place is the reason I followed you all here. We angels call this the ‘SoH.’ It serves as a place for Fallen Angels to transition. It’s like a sentient pie and shake palace; it moves around the Fourth Circle, helping out any Fallen that shows up.” She flicked her ring/halo and it wobbled back and forth around her neck.

  “What kind of ‘transition’ are you talking about?” I asked.

  Cain looked at me, eyes half-lidded. “In my case? The one into the unemployment line.”

  The waiter came by and served up fifteen small plates and four drinks. I wasn’t sure how this all fit on the table, and to some extent, it didn’t. But we made do. The pies themselves looked edible, but I was too caught up with what Cain reached for first to have a chance to consider tucking in.

  With one hand, the ex-angel of death downed an entire drink that suspiciously looked like a concoction of blood, skin, and hair pureed into a small mason jar. I was so horrified by it I think my internal panic button broke. I just sat there on permanent pause, mouth open and eyes fixed open.

  Wiping her crimson mustache, Cain belched. For the first time, I became truly aware of Cain’s other-worldliness…her strangeness. Even with her wings out all the time and her casual demeanor surrounding everything having to do with the afterlife, it was something I had taken for granted.

  The other thing I had been taking for granted, and which became painfully clear watching her slurp down bloody meaty bits, was that while my corporeal body was built with pain and suffering, it wasn’t built with a gag reflex.

  As she grabbed another one to down, I grabbed her hand to stop her.

  “Cain—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—what-the-fuck?”

  She blinked at me. “You don’t like the pie?”

  “I’m sure Grey’s referring to the cup of mutilated meat you just downed,” Palls explained, obviously wanting to throw up himself.

  The angel sat back against her seat. “Fine. A little Afterlife 101. This is the Fourth Circle, also known as the Abaddon of the Haves and Have Nots. Story goes, Abaddon was the name of the largest angel to fall from Heaven during the Great War. Abaddon was massive, an angel who could only be measured in centuries. Think about that—a being who wasn’t miles long, but measured in lifetimes. Anyway, he fell and landed here, but instead of rising again, Abaddon sunk into misery for everything he and the reset of the Fallens did and did not do. So, instead of moving the poor lug, the architects of Hell built this entire circle inside his bones and flesh. Those five mountains you saw in the distance were the fingers of his left hand.”

  “So we’re inside a giant, decomposing angel?” I closed my eyes. “I feel like a broken record here, but did you ever think it might be nice to share this kind of information a bit earlier?”

  “Didn’t come up,” Cain replied glibly.

  I nodded, but mostly because the mason jars full of human bits was immensely gross. “And what’s that got to do with the guts-in-a-cup?”

  “The Fourth Circle is where we angels end up when it’s all said and done,” she explained, “
This place is for our transition into the ranks of demons, suffering, and minimum wage. You all may have corporeal bodies, but angels are ethereal. We were made perfect and that cannot be undone, hence the need for these pretty things.” She held up one of the bloody cups and I thought I spotted a fingernail swirling inside. “On Earth, I didn’t need food to survive. But in order to stay here, angels must defile ourselves. It’s either that or we turn to ash. That’s why this place is so important to all the angels employed down here. Without it, we would cease to be.”

  She pulled open her collar to show us the gray hole and her cracked, dying flesh. It began blooming with color, a clear sign that her drink was doing whatever it did to heal her.

  “Cheers!”

  With that, Palls and I were forced to watch as she wolfed down another entire cup in one big gulp. Between the hearty slurps, I saw the other angels all had crimson filled cups of their own. After a large, satisfied gasp, Cain held up the empty cup in mock salute and added, “And they serve it in these little mason jars. Ain’t this adorable, Mark?”

  The blue man, who hadn’t been paying attention this entire time was caught rubbing his tongue on what looked like a cold slab of lemon meringue. He sat up and nodded agreeably.

  “First of all, stop calling him Mark,” I snapped. “He’s not Mark. He’s the un-Markiest person I’ve ever met. Second, you’re right. These mason jars are pretty damn adorable and I wish I had these in my apartment back when I was alive.”

  “Why do you sound so angry about it?” Palls asked, squinting at me.

  “It’s how I started this conversation and I forgot to change my tone. Lastly, why is it that I can’t have an uneventful afterlife? Didn’t I meet the ‘fucking weird’ quota back when I was alive? And what do you mean ‘perfect’? Most angels I see are...” I flipped a look at a particular angel in a corner booth. While her body seemed normal, her face looked as if someone who had never met a human being in their life had put it together. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were switched, her mouth sported no lips to speak of, and her eyes were literally drawn on. In fact, they were drawn in with pink and purple ink to look infinitely attentive to whatever was being said.

  Cain laughed. “That’s a testament to your kind, not mine, darling. The holiest of beings have no grasp on human anatomy so their attempts to blend in, well, totally suck.”

  I knew firsthand this was the truth. Cain and Barnem looked very-much-human, but they had been hanging out with my kind for a while. Those weirdos who showed up just before I died—the new owners of Heaven— looked like terrible renditions of actual humans. They had reminded me of starved owls stuffed into human flesh, and not very “angelic” at all.

  I glanced toward the bat-wing doors that led to the kitchen area. As a waiter pushed her way through, I saw a few people running back and forth. Two faces in particular seemed very familiar. For some reason, I could have sworn I saw the married couple that ran my favorite burger joint back in Queens. It was for a fleeting second, but they sure did look like Pops and Lady slicing pies. As I sat up to take a closer look, the doors stopped swinging and I lost sight of them.

  Confused, I sat back down. “Hey, Cain. This place serve anything other than pie and shakes?”

  The angel downed her third cup. “Nope.”

  I sighed. “Can’t believe I’m saying this. I mean, I knew I’d miss the whole ‘living’ thing. I knew I’d miss my parents and, yeah, part of me even misses the shit-show only New York could supply. Never thought I would be fantasizing about Burley’s though.”

  Palls tossed me a side eye. “What’s a Burley’s?”

  I sat, flabbergasted. There was no way Palls would have known about my favorite little eatery, but still.

  “Burley’s is a burger joint. The burger joint. You bring in your own ingredients and Pops and Lady cook it up. Onion rings. Potato chips. Beef jerky.”

  “An undead bird.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, Palls.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “Not what I meant. Heads up.”

  Palls gestured to a black shadow whizzing by the diner. It took to the air once more before plummeting into a window, sending hundreds of tiny shards of glass everywhere by the far end of the diner.

  The Screech landed with a large clatter on the back of an angel, driving his head into his blackberry pie and probably killing him in the process. With its big leathery wings outstretched and its black skin hanging limply off its bones, the bird opened up its large beak and cackled:

  “I JUST HAD AN OMELETTE. IT WAS WEIRD AF BUT WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT FROM A BREAKFAST MADE IN HELL. HASH TAG ILOVETHESMELLOFSULFERINTHEMORNING

  It then died on the spot.

  All of the diner patrons went back to their food and conversations.

  Seeing the bird flop onto the ground while an overworked angel broomed its carcass aside, I just had to ask, “What’s the point of all the Screeching? Isn’t he the embodiment of evil? You’d think he’d have better things to do with his time.”

  An angel with long earlobes—ones that hung so low they curled out onto the table— peeked out at me from the other booth.

  “Hey, buddy,” I shouted over, “Don’t you try to angel-shame me. I’m not siding with the guy. I just think he should get his priorities straight. Go back to your pie.”

  He looked away and Cain added her two cents. “Might want to keep that under wraps, Grey. We may be Fallen Angels, but we don’t side with the Dark Lord.”

  “Blah. These people hate me anyway. And don’t forget that I’m what I am because of the delusional righteousness of an angel. If you ask me, Good and Evil run on the same schedule. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference. What’s wrong with a little blasphemy?” I asked, looking at everyone in my party.

  Cain tapped her fork over to a sign hanging over the head of the short angel who’d seated us. On a finished wooden frame, the phrase “HOME SWEET HOME” was painted in bold blue lettering. And, on the bottom, scratched in with a sharp blade were the words “Except for blasphemers.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Give me some space on your soapbox. I’m not saying anything everyone isn’t already thinking. Hell has always been sold as a place of endless fire and torment. So far, I’ve seen more torture filling out warranty contracts at electronics stores. If this place is Hell, what is Heaven?”

  As soon as that comment landed, as of punctuating the end of my sentence, something struck the side of the diner so hard, everyone’s plates and cups were launched into the air and came crashing down onto the floor.

  Cain, wide-eyed, immediately looked at me. “Grey?”

  I put my hands up. “Wasn’t me.”

  Out of nowhere, the television attached to the wall at the far end of the diner let out a high-pitched wail. The screen burned a white color and then the static of snow.

  Onscreen, Hel appeared. The non-decaying side of her face seemed to have been crying and her voice trembled with both rage and pain.

  “Hello, Hel-heads. I come before you today to declare the end of my highly popular and frequently watched show. I just can’t go on.” She bowed her head and started screaming.

  “SHE KILLED HIM. SHE KILLED MY FEN. THE ROTTEN BITCH KILLED MY BROTHER.”

  When she swung her head back up, Hel’s eyeball had sunk deep within the twisting nerves. “At least that’s what I felt. But just now, a curious Screetch just arrived, addressed specifically to me. And it came bearing the name of the person I want to eradicate.”

  A chill ran through my body as Hel positioned herself really close to the screen.

  “Amanda Grey, I’ve found you.”

  Suddenly, the television jerked to the side and split open. A body unfolded from it— female, muscular—but its head remained the broken television set. Just like the camera-headed creatures from Hel’s show, this one had been turned into one of her Followe
rs.

  An angel stood from his table and conjured a large golden whip out of thin air, but the television-headed Follower proved too fast. It drove its arm through his chest, tearing off one of his wings in the process.

  The diner exploded into a panic as, from the windows, several dozen camera-headed Followers, armed rats of Misfit, and trolls poured in. Palls set three of them ablaze as they tried to jump Cain, and scythe in hand, she clove two more in half—though she seemed distracted by the other cups on the table.

  “This can’t be happening,” she screamed, slurping one down before the table imploded under the weight of four trolls.

  “Friends was an overrated show,” one troll yelled as he grabbed my hair. I stabbed him in the eye with a fork and scrambled away.

  My entire party rushed out of the door and bolted to the car. Not-Mark leapt into the backseat and I flung myself into the passenger side. Only Cain remained behind. She stood by the door, fighting off one wave after another. There must have been over fifty disciples of Hel fighting the other angels inside and, in the distance, I saw a small army shambling its’ way toward us.

  “Cain!”

  The angel wasn’t listening, so Palls grabbed her by a wing and threw her into the car. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he didn’t even wait for us to close our doors before hitting the gas. In a flash, we hit the sandbank and landed back on the road.

  Cain looked out of the back and began to sob as Hel’s army plowed into the walls of the diner like a wrecking ball. As we sped away, we could see angels being dragged out onto the desert and killed. Some trolls climbed the Slice of Heaven sign, tipping the whole thing over and sending it crashing through what was left of the roof.

  It was at that moment—the moment where Cain lost her only chance to survive in Hell—that I realized every Circle was closing in on us. Even if I did get to Petty, even if I did face down the Dark Lord, how I was going to get us out?