Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  I was killed in Typhon’s Arena.

  Wait … the Arena.

  Am I still in the Arena? Maybe floating in a laboratory tank?

  There was a rustle beside me and I turned as a slightly translucent foxlike creature slinked out around a pillar, gazing at me with curious eyes. I thought it was kinda cute until its triangular head twitched abruptly, and a long tongue slid out and smeared its furry lips. It blinked and yawned, revealing tiny sharp teeth.

  Even though there was a smoky, semi-opaque haze to its features, my senses warned me that it could hurt me all the same.

  I slid my back off the pillar behind me and scrambled across the elongated shadow bars, and nearly into the hulking frame of a broad-shouldered ghost-pale lion. With a flick of its musculature, it twisted its neck, sending its glorious shaggy mane flapping like glistening tendrils. A low growl escaped its closed jaws, pearly canines showing beneath raised lips.

  Great. Just great! I thought as I shot to my feet and sprinted toward the temple entrance.

  I didn’t make it far.

  My body twisted through the air, struck the ground, rolled over and over. I threw up my arms and legs to protect my core and vital organs, but the massive lion’s paw had already pressed down against my chest, compressing the air from my lungs.

  The paw’s padding was surprisingly soft, the claws curving over my shoulder blades, predictably sharp as they pressed into the stone floor beneath me. Like the foxlike creature and the flying fish, its body had an ethereal smoky quality to it, but the pressure it exerted against my body—and the claws digging into the stone—proved that this was no harmless ghost creature.

  Above me, the pure white mane flickered and swayed as the creature’s whiskered maw lowered toward my neck, puffed a graveyard breath over my face that lifted my hair.

  I expected it to eat my face; I didn’t expect it to talk.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  The voice was low and gravelly and regal, and came to me via a psychic link which didn’t freak me out too much, considering I was used to my familiars conversing with me in that method.

  My familiars—AKA the constellation Libra—who rode on my shoulders in the guise of an angel-and-devil combo invisible to all but me.

  The ghost lion applied pressure with its paw, shook its glistening mane irritably. Its claws sank deeper into the stone, pressing me down with it. “Why do you smell like my brethren?”

  “Um …” I said, getting my first good look at the magnificent creature above me. I’d seen it before, in Typhon’s Arena. Leo the constellation. And he looked pissed.

  Leo twisted his head and snapped his teeth like some feral animal—make that a giant mythical lion. Pain glared in his eyes, pain directed at me. But why? What had I done to him? And why was he here with me, wherever I was?

  “Are you … OK?” I gasped.

  The lion chomped his jaws again off to the side as if nipping at a chunk of meat that wasn’t there. There was something erratic and almost robotic about the jerky movements.

  Suddenly, Leo snapped at my face, pulling short just inches from my nose, and at this distance it was impossible to miss the glaze of confusion in his large cat eyes.

  “You hurt me,” he said softly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

  “It burns!”

  Leo reared up on his hind legs and gave a mountain-sundering roar, revealing a gash in his glorious pelt. As he pawed at the air, the edges of the wound seemed to simmer and bake.

  “Oh, that,” I said, wheezing and scurrying backward as fast as my hands and feet would take me. “A big misunderstanding. See, I didn’t realize you were kin to my familiars at the time—the little shits don’t think it’s important to tell me those kinds of things …”

  Leo lowered himself back to all fours, pawing at the dirt, his cloudy eyes tracing my every movement.

  He growled again, low and harsh, and I stiffened.

  “Maybe I could put some aloe vera on that?” I said. “If there’s aloe in wherever this place is …”

  Leo advanced toward me, jerked his head up and then down, and yowled.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  The lion’s breath mussed my hair like a steam cleaner. He swiped out at me with a skillet-sized paw and I scurried farther backward.

  “I don’t even know where here is,” I said, picking myself up and turning as Leo prepared to pounce. I got two steps—

  And ran right into the arms of a young man with marble skin, a slender but muscular body and messy hair. I recognized him from somewhere but in the moment I couldn’t quite place it. Wearing a white T-shirt under a dark canvas jacket, he looked somewhat out of place standing in front of the temple except that his pale but very beautiful face was cut like that of a Greek god.

  “I call it the InBetween,” the young man said with clear disregard for the leaping lion at my back. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and the fact that I couldn’t place his name made me scowl.

  Wrapping an arm around my shoulder, he guided me around to face the beast, and with a savage growl, the pouncing Leo passed right through us like a ghost. The lion landed with catlike grace, whipping furiously around, his pompom tail tearing through the temple’s exterior stone wall as though it was plaster.

  “Now, now, Leo. Calm down,” the man said gently. “We have a guest.”

  I pulled myself away from my savior, took in his familiar face again. Suddenly I knew it was from a TV show or movie, but which one? “Guest? InBetween?” I said, backing into his hard body as Leo padded up to us.

  “Sit,” the young man said. “Like a good boy.”

  Leo promptly sat and lowered his head with a subdued thundering in his throat. The man smiled at me with his eyes and then patted the lion’s head, buried his hand in the creature’s glorious mane.

  And that’s when I realized who I was looking at.

  Edward Cullen, the vampire from the Twilight series.

  “What the f—”

  “What Happens When You Die In The GoneGod World”

  “Did I hit my head?” I asked, stepping away from him.

  “No,” Edward said.

  “Am I in a Twilight movie reboot?”

  “No.”

  “Then where the hell am I?”

  The fictional vampire glanced at me impassively. “I already told you. The InBetween.”

  “Really?” I said. “Because it looks suspiciously like a memory from my childhood.”

  Edward shrugged. “I wanted you to be comfortable.”

  I threw up my hands. “Comfortable? Why? What is this place?”

  He sighed and indicated Leo sitting before us, the foxlike creature still lingering among the stone columns and various shapes flitting about the ancient Greek marketplace. “A place for the Shades of Others. When they die.”

  I stared at Edward for a bit. Ran both hands down along my chest and thighs. “Uh, human, here.”

  The vampire chuckled. “Of course you are.”

  Ughh. My conversation partner, wearing the disguise of a pop icon, was definitely an Other—a mythical creature or being forced to live on the Earth ever since the gods packed up their suitcases and closed down their heavens and hells. How could I tell? Because Others could be so obtuse at times when interacting with humans.

  With too many questions pinball-machining around in my head, I settled on “What are you? Fairyfolk? Warlock? Skinwalker?”

  Edward stood statue-still. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Bull,” I said with my hands on my hips.

  Edward turned and surveyed the marketplace. “Bull? I do not see a ‘bull.’ ”

  I exhaled loudly. “It’s a saying. It means that’s a rubbish answer. I wake up here, with no clue where I am, hunted by a giant lion and talking to a fictional vampire. Who are you?”

  Edward smiled mysteriously. “I’d rather not say.”

  Grr.

  I took a few breaths;
it’d do no good to piss off my savior, not when he proved he had control over a larger-than-life constellational lion. “You’re at least going to tell me what’s up with the Mission Impossible mask. Why do you look like Edward Cullen?”

  “Ahh,” Edward said. “Apologies, I did not think you were Team Jacob …” He raised a pale hand to his face and I got the impression he was about to morph—or literally tear off his face in favor of something more werewolf-y.

  I raised a hand. “No. I’m not. Well, Simon is, but I don’t even like Twilight … anymore. I mean, glittering vampires … seriously?”

  Edward studied me carefully. “But I’ve seen the, ahh, demographics reports of viewers your sex and age range. I thought this visage would please you.”

  “Huh?”

  He stood straight and tall. “Most young girls like movie vampires.”

  I scoffed. “Well, I’m not ‘most girls’ and maybe you just found the wrong vampire.”

  Edward raised his hand to his face again like a magician about to perform a trick. “Allow me to try again—”

  “No,” I interjected with a hand to his wrist and a sidelong glance at Leo still sitting obediently next to us. “Just tell me why I’m here. I was under the impression that when humans die, their souls go nowhere.”

  Edward nodded. “Fair enough, I shall explain. As you may or may not know, Others do not possess souls. When they die on Earth, they simply cease to exist.”

  “Except for this place?” I said. The fox creature padded up to Edward, stopping suddenly and snapping at the air as if trying to catch a butterfly.

  Edward reached out a hand and petted the creature’s furry head. Its motions instantly became less erratic, smoother. “No. This place is an exception. It is linked to a pendant Typhon keeps in his pocket. You might think it looks like a pocket watch or a miniature sundial.”

  “I know of it,” I said. Typhon had shown it to me before he threw me into the Arena with Orion. According to Typhon, the item was supposed to control which Others truly died in his Arena and which ones got resurrected.

  “Since this item exists, Others do not have to truly die. They can come here instead.”

  I scratched the back of my head, my hand getting stuck in my tangly hair. I jerked it free. “OK …?”

  Out in the marketplace a translucent ogre picked at his nose. Without notice, he suddenly swept a lanky arm along the ground and clapped both hands together as if playing cymbals in a marching band. Badly.

  “Pardon me for saying so, but these creatures don’t seem too … healthy. They look like shorted-out automatons. Why would Others want to come here if this is what the afterlife looks like?”

  Edward glanced off to the side. “There is something wrong with them.”

  “OK …?” I said again. “That’s sad and all, but how does that concern me? I’m dead.”

  Edward clenched a fist, then released it. It was subtle, but with my special ops training, it was difficult for me not to miss changes in body language. Threat perception and all that.

  “That is not permanent,” Edward said. “Typhon’s Arena has revived your body. Although unprecedented for humans after the GrandExodus, your soul can still return to its vessel.”

  “Then send me back.” Sure, living had its woes: paying rent, finding matching clothes in my closet, trying not to burn Simon’s pancakes. But I had a lot of unresolved issues back on earth. My dying mother, my partner under the influence of the Seven Deadly Sins, Typhon’s scientists wanting to dissect my familiars.

  Edward tensed his fingers again, and then sighed. “I want to. I really do,” he said.

  “But what?”

  The vampire faced me, his topaz eyes and full lips drawing me in. “Human souls are not allowed in this place. I had to burn a lot of time to get you here.”

  Damn. I hated when Others burned time on my behalf. When they used magic they had to sacrifice minutes or hours off the end of their life.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “A decade of my life.”

  “A decade? Why?”

  Edward tapped his forehead for a few minutes before addressing me again. I didn’t need to notice his taut neck muscles to feel the tension forming a barrier between us. When he spoke, his words were slow and cautious. “The opportunity was too great. I have been searching for a champion ever since the gods left. Theo Apollonia, I believe you may be that champion.”

  “Come again?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Wait,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Are you threatening me? As in, I can’t go back to my body unless I agree to help you?”

  Edward didn’t say anything.

  I shook my head. “Forget it. I don’t make deals with the devil.”

  Edward’s features tensed again and for a moment I thought the tension was going to roll away as per our conversation so far. Instead, the vampire’s eyes inked over with black and bruises welled up under his eyes.

  Oh shit. I took a step backward. “I uh …”

  Lashing out faster than my eyes could comprehend, his hand gripped my arm like a claw and what followed, happened quick: I chopped down upon his wrist; his other hand latched onto my throat, ripped me off my feet. I planted a foot against his chest, knocked him back. I fell to the floor and rolled into a crouch.

  Edward snarled and paws and claws began to tap the concrete all around me.

  From my periphery and over my shoulder, Others of all shapes and sizes—some I didn’t even know their names of—stamped my way. They advanced in a loose pinwheel formation, coming from the ground and the air, teeth bared, eyes wild, homing in on me.

  “I uh—would be open to reconsidering,” I said, but it was too late. The beasts were on me. There was no way out.

  Crouching to protect my core, I raised my arms over my head to defend my face.

  I closed my eyes.

  “I Feel So … Transparent”

  I expected ghost claws and ghost teeth to tear into me. But when I opened my eyes, I found myself in a cold, stone passage draped in Orion’s arms. Except I wasn’t actually in Orion’s arms; I was translucent and hovering just over his shoulder like a guardian angel, tugged after my body.

  My frail, vulnerable, lifeless body, still wearing the clothes Typhon had provided me during my “stay” at his penthouse suite as well as the running shoes Lucy had lent me before the Jersey Pine Barrens job.

  My soul followed my body as if connected by an invisible leash. A few moments later, Orion had passed through a door and I recognized the laboratory under the Arena. Orion’s eyes searched over the room before he deposited my body on a stainless-steel examination table. I still wore the clothes I’d had on in the Arena, and Simon and Garfunkel peered out from the safety of their shoulder pads.

  They looked so scared, so vulnerable.

  Meanwhile, Orion continued to glance about the room. He located his tactical backpack, hunting knife and crossbow as I continued to hover intrinsically above my still body.

  Why had Orion carried me back here? Had my death enabled him to fight off the Seven Deadly Sins formula coursing through his veins? And where was everyone else?

  From my left shoulder pad, Garfunkel climbed out and said softly, “She’s dead. I can’t believe Theo is dead.”

  Simon gasped. He clambered out of his protective shoulder pad and padded along the table so he was standing right next to my face. “She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. She just cant …” he repeated like some tragedy survivor.

  I may not have been in my body, but I could feel my familiars’ pain. And if I wasn’t already dead, it would’ve killed me.

  “I’m right here,” I said, waving my see-through hands inches from my familiars’ faces as I floated awkwardly above them. “Can’t you sense me?”

  Garfunkel suddenly looked up. “Maybe Theo’s a ghost! Maybe she’s still with us!”

  For a moment, Simon looked hopeful as he glanced up and right through me, his tiny eyes s
earching.

  “I am here, damnit,” I said, making even more frantic gestures. I felt a well of pent up energy inside my soul but I couldn’t tap into it or control it.

  Orion glanced from me to one of the bubbling green tanks of liquid and then back to me.

  “Orion!” I waved to him but he couldn’t see me either. So much for being the great Wayfinder. Maybe he could help my soul find its way to its body.

  A metal door shuddered from somewhere off to the side and Orion picked up a glass beaker, slammed the wide end down upon a gurney so that he held a cylinder of sharpened glass out before him.

  Garfunkel cracked his neck as he stared off in the distance. “They’re coming.”

  “Who?” Simon said, blowing his nose on his shirtsleeve.

  “The Brotherhood of Zeus guys. You saw them going through the Arena stands toward Typhon before Theo …” Garfunkel made a noose-like gesture with his hand around his neck, allowing his tongue to loll out. “After what Typhon did to their mansion HQ, they’re pissed and out for blood. We’ve got to hide.”

  I shuddered. My familiars may have been invisible but they were so small and mortal.

  Simon leaned his ear over my chest. “She’s still breathing. Barely. But she’s still breathing! We can’t leave her.”

  Several doors now shuddered from the shadows lining one side of the lab.

  Garfunkel sighed. “Unless we want to combine into Libra again, I think our best shot is to sever the bond and hide. They may search Theo’s body.”

  Simon glanced up at his worse half and huffed in a deep breath. “Leave her? Leave her?”

  Garfunkel threw up his hands. “Come on. Let’s do it. Agree. We both have to be in agreement if we’re going to separate from her. So just agree.”

  Simon buried his head in his hands. “We can’t leave her—she’s still alive.”

  “Is she?” Garfunkel said dismissively as he watched my chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. “Her body’s on autopilot. You know, lights are still on but nobody’s home …”

  My familiar wasn’t wrong. Laid out flat on the metal slab, I looked like more of a shell instead of a person.