“Angel-assisted suicide? Fuck.”
“Or, fucked, as the case may be,” said Persephone. “There’s more. What I’ve heard from reliable sources is that Big Boss decided if the angels were going to be given that kind of power over us, there had to be a balance. She’s really into balances. Rumor goes that angelic blades can also be used to kill them, but only while they are in their spiritual form, which means you’d have to find a way to carry the thing into Heaven or Hell to do it. And of course, you know the old saying: you can’t take it with you when you go, angelic blades included. When they wrap themselves in mortal flesh, it just vanquishes them from Earth for a while.” Persephone chuckled. “Wrap themselves in mortal flesh … You know I hate that saying? It makes them sound like something from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
Riona nodded and grinned. “I admit, I’ve had more than one moment over the last year where I felt like I was stuck in some B-grade horror flick. But no need to explain, I’ve witnessed that one. Remember, I saw Ramiel use my dagger to kill off Lucifer. Do you know anything about the curse?”
The shot glass paused before Persephone’s mouth. “Curse?”
“Yeah, my mother used to tell me when I was younger that it was poisoned, then another witch told me there was a curse woven over it.”
She shrugged. “Don’t know anything about that. Sorry.” Four shots in, Persephone was sure they were both sufficiently toasted. She took their shot glasses to the utility sink behind the bar and rinsed them out. “Good place to keep it, at the safe house. No demons can get to it there. Just please, for my own ease, keep it out of sight when I’m not around.”
“Not ready to die yet?” Riona chuckled.
“Oh, I’m ready. Just a few things I have to take care of first.” She dried her hands on the towel.
Realization bloomed across the witch’s face. “So I guess my momma wasn’t really lying then. My father is dead.”
“How you come by that?”
“Well, between what you just said, and Ramiel telling me my father was no longer with us.” She sighed. “I guess having a dead mortal father or a dead archangel father leaves me in about the same place. It doesn’t really make sense for me to be sad about it, does it?”
Persephone shrugged. “Maybe. Are you sad?”
Riona nodded. “A little. Steph, you ever heard of any one else like me? A child of an angel? I have so many questions now, and no one to ask.”
“You’ve forgotten that you have Ramiel,” Steph suggested through a half-smile. Riona just rolled her eyes. “Come on, Riona, you know he’s going to be there to get you through this. He’s a stand-up guy. He’s not going to flake.”
Riona did a double take. “I thought you hated him.”
“I do, frequently. Look, it’s late, and we’re both more than tipsy. Chipper’s probably gone for the night. Why don’t you just sleep here? You can use his bed.”
“Really, that’s okay?”
Persephone shooed away her comment with a swipe of her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Can’t guarantee his room is the cleanest or best smelling. He is a weredog after all.”
“He is?” Riona asked.
“You didn’t know? Yeah, his kind have been in service to Hades and I for centuries. Loyal, tough creatures. Couldn’t ask for better security. Anyways, if you want to crash in his room, it’s behind the kitchen.”
“And you?” Riona was already sauntering across the dance floor on her way to a set of red, swinging doors marked ‘entrada.’
“I have a penthouse downtown were I usually stay, but the couch in my office folds down in to a bed.” A fact which Ramiel had exploited on more than one occasion in recent weeks. “There’s a shower back there, too. Again, no telling what he’s got it stocked with, but based on his general aroma, you shouldn’t have any problems finding some Old Spice.”
Chapter 23
She awoke in a foreign bed, wearing sweat, a stranger’s shirt, and hung over in epic fashion. It was her junior year at college all over again.
Chipper’s room was cold, stale. As Riona sat up, even by the light of an amber sunrise that beamed down through a head-sized skylight, she could see her breath misting the air. She stood, maneuvered her pants back on, grabbed her sweater from the chair she’d thrown it over, and crept into the empty club.
Riona hadn’t been back to the Grotto since the night she’d vanquished Asmodeus. Which, by more than chance, was the night she’d almost taken Marc’s v-card on the dance floor. Her eyes studied the shadows to the far right of the DJ’s platform, to the space where just a few months ago, she’d kissed him breathless and senseless. Her feet carried her where her heart ached the most: to the intersection of life and memory. Her back pressed into the wall, she remembered how the cool surface of the polished concrete had stung against a body aflame. Her eyes adjusted to the dim recesses, and for a moment, she could trick herself into believing the outline of the man who’d last stood there with her was before her eyes.
“You know what the real cracker is on that one?” Azazel’s disembodied voice swirled around her, seeming to come from all directions at once. “Being you are who you are, it may not have damned him at all.”
“Who’s there?”
“The one you’ve been thinking of summoning since last night.”
Her eyes clenched. She shook her head. It couldn’t be. True, she’d been on edge of whispering his name several times, but she’d stopped short of summoning the fallen angel. “How do you know that?” she breathed out.
“Because you, my dear, are one of us,” Azazel answered. “Or at least, partially. Or haven’t you noticed you can perform magic without words? Mortals can’t do that, you know. You don’t need to speak my name. If you think about me with desire, I’ll hear it. There’s a lot of things you could learn to do that others can’t. You just need a teacher.” He hesitated a moment before playfully adding, “I could be that teacher. I could show you how to harvest angelic powers. I could show you how to do a lot more than mortal magic could ever hope to achieve.”
“If I call on you, will you harm me?”
“Tut, tut, Riona, I’ve already told you that you’re off limits,” the fallen angel’s voice answered. “I won’t do a thing to any pretty little hair on your head. And I don’t need you to summon me formally to appear, but I’m not the kind that likes to drop in on a beautiful young woman without an invitation.”
“No.” While temptation to see if Azazel’s words were brawn or bluff, the certainty in her voice couldn’t be misconstrued. “I don’t need you. Leave me be.”
Riona felt a tickle on the side of her face, like someone had stroked her cheek with a feather. “Very well. You’ll know where to find me, if …” He chuckled. “When you want me.”
Just at that moment, the door at the front of the club cracked open, and the messy-haired weredog who normally sulked in the goddess’s shadow came in. The morning light stung her eyes, making her hand shoot up to block out the intrusive beams. She pushed herself off the wall, stumbling over a chair, temporarily blinded.
Chipper froze when he caught sight of her. “Um, okay … And you’re here … why?”
Meekly, Riona flexed her fingers in midair. “We had a girl’s night last night. Or something. I hope you don’t mind, but I used your bed. Steph said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Nah, it’s cool, if she offered. Except …” His eyes flashed up to the stairs leading to Persephone’s office. “You’ll forgive me saying, but I kinda thought that guy you were in here with a few months ago and you were a couple.”
She remembered the encounter outside the bar, of how she had tried to charm her way into the club by acting like a Petunia Pole-lover, and how Dee had jumped to her defense when Chipper scoffed at the attempt. “Oh, no,” Riona said. “Me and Dee have never been a thing.”
“Not you and my mistress’s brother. You and that stiff, the other guy. The one who looked like he had a pole up his butt.”
; “Marc.”
Chipper shrugged. “I guess.”
“He’s dead.”
“Too bad. You were cute together.” He leaned in and winked at her. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about you and Steph. I’m all discreet and shit.”
Riona was tempted to correct him, but didn’t really want to regurgitate the actual cause of the slumber party. Also, she knew from Dee that things between Hades and Persephone were tense at best and near murderous at worst. If Chipper would let the topic die and promised not to tell anyone, what the hell did she care?
“Thanks,” she said with more than a bit of confusion. As she pushed her frigid finger into her sweater pockets, she was surprised when something rectangular and leathery filled her palm. The Bible. Its presence jolted her; she’d totally forgotten about sticking the thing in there a few days ago. As the last place she wanted to head to right now was home, Riona figured it was finally time to track down the answer to what awaited her at the Buddhist Center. “Any way you can help me call a cab? I forgot my phone at home.”
He stopped chugging from the gallon of milk he’d pulled out from under the bar. “You need a ride somewhere? My bike’s out front. Little cold though. It snowed overnight, too.”
“Really? That would be great actually. I just realized I also don’t have my wallet.”
Chipper smiled and paced in place, like a dog that had pleased its master and was all aflutter with praise.
“Sure, just give me a chance to lift my leg, and then we can hit the road.”
The Center for Divinity in the Action of Now. From the outside, it looked more like a place that should be named, The Center for the Demolition of a Soon-to-Be-Condemned Dump.
The brick office building sat amongst a row of similar ones that differed only in the fact that their windows were boarded over. For a few minutes, she thought she must have been in the wrong place, but a Happy Buddha statue and some signage displaying Chinese characters in gold painted text convinced her otherwise.
“You sure you want me to leave you here?” Chipper surveyed the length of the empty street from his perch on his chopper. “This don’t exactly look like a safe part of town.”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” Riona assured him. “I’m not scared of anything human anymore, and I’m not picking up any demon vibes here. I can fetch a ride on the T to get home.” She pulled out the ten dollars from her pocket that he’d insistently pushed toward her when she’d gotten off the bike. “Thanks, Chipper. I owe you one.”
“No problem.” He stood before shifting his weight down, his right foot engaging the kick starter. “Anytime.”
Her first apartment after college had been over a Chinese restaurant in the Back Bay. Not fake Chinese food, the quaint dishes of Kung Pao chicken and fortune cookies that Americans generally thought of, but authentic, immigrant-cooking-for-immigrant dishes that left her kitchen smelling like a fish market and pushed a musty-gingery stench into her entire, if limited, collection of clothes. It was amazing how a smell could take you back through the years like that. Even if the Buddhist Center wasn’t actually a sizzling pot, the reminiscent hint of cabbage and egg hung in the air.
A man not quite five feet tall and as skinny as a non-fat latte bustled up to a mundane space made up of a water cooler, a large pock-marked desk, and a task chair with only one arm rest.
“Zăoshàng hăo,” he chirped out upon seeing her.
Riona inched back. “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese,” she offered apologetically.
The man smiled, and spoke again in an accent as heavy as wet wool. “How you help?”
Riona reached into her pocket and pulled out the palm-sized book. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to her what a horse’s ass she’d look like pulling out a Christian Bible in a Buddhist Center, as though she’d been recruited by the Mormon Church to proselytize. Nevertheless, when she handed the Asian man the book, opened to the back cover where the address was scratched, he took it with no sign of annoyance.
“Someone gave this to me and told me to come here.”
He just continued to stare, turning the volume over as though he expected there to be more written somewhere.
“But that was a while ago,” Riona admitted. “Maybe it’s too late. I don’t even really know why I was supposed to come here anyways. Unless you have some scrolls you think I might be worthy of.”
He looked up at her perplexedly.
She coughed a laugh. “Never mind.”
His hand flexed, causing the Bible to close with a snap. “Follow.”
The paint on the wall, pale white with the occasional yellow stain, peeled and cracked. Florescent lights overhead sizzled. Toward the end of the hall, she could swear she heard the twinkling cascade of a fountain.
“Here,” the man said to her as he shuffled to the side and pointed at a darkly painted wood door with a dull brass handle. “Go! Go!”
“What’s in there?” Riona asked, suspecting she’d somehow stumbled into a massage parlor or back alley acupuncturist, and wondering which would be the more embarrassing to encounter.
He only flicked his hands harder. “Why you ask what? Not when? Not why? Go. Go see.”
With a shrug, she reached out, wrapped her hand around the door, and turned the knob.
It wasn’t unusual to have a few plants in your office. Experts claimed it was good for both the body and the soul. Riona wondered, however, what the experts’ opinion of indoor jungles were.
Though the door behind her, and the wall holding it, were perfectly intact, in all other ways, Riona stood in a tropical forest. The tinkling sound intensified, and she was sure if she traveled a few dozen yards to the right, she’d come across a waterfall. Before her, a verdant quilt of green dotted with red flowers presented itself, only a path wide enough for a body remained open.
Riona looked back over her shoulder at her host still lingering in the hall. “What is this?”
“You go!” he said again, gesticulating. “He there. You go.”
The light grew dimmer the further she waded under the cover of the canopy. Only after ten minutes of side-to-side winding around vines, bushes, and tree trunks did she see evidence of a clearing. When at last she stood on its border, Riona found it was only large enough to contain a raised platform about the size of her queen bed, atop which sat an Asian man dressed in an orange-brown robe, his legs crossed and his eyes expectant yet serene.
“Before I answer your question, first you must answer mine,” he declared. His accent was more mild than the secretary’s, but understanding him still took her some work.
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
He smiled like a child amused. “Sit.”
Seated before him, she could see more fully the study of dichotomies this man presented. He was clearly an older man; perhaps in his sixties. Wrinkles lined his eyes, his shaven head still played host to barely-visible gray stubble. Yet, his brown eyes twinkled, and his movements, though few, were graceful and liquid. Thin, yet with full cheeks, a hint of a smile teased his lips. Riona couldn’t tell if it was because he was delighted to see her, or because he was amused by her confusion.
“Are you human?”
It seemed a fair question to ask someone sitting in a jungle inside an office in the middle of Boston’s industrial zone.
“Ah-ah-ah.” He wagged his finger before her. “My question first. And you must give me your answer correctly, and then, you can ask yours. Now …” He shifted slightly. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
The roll of her eyes, a response in which she was all too well rehearsed, came on before she could stop it. “Oh, brother. That old one? I went to college, you know. I took Intro to World Religions. I know the answer is silence.”
Again, his finger admonished her. “That is not your answer.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it is not,” he affirmed. “It is the answer for many, many people. But you are not many, many people. You are you. Your an
swer is different.”
“It is, huh?”
Riona flattened her hands out, palm side up, over her knees and stared at them, trying to figure out if her newly discovered angelic heritage had tipped her off to some heretofore unnoticed physical anomaly. Her bisque-toned phalanges looked just as human as ever. She pulled her left hand down and raised her right to the level of her eyes for closer inspection. Several swats through the air failed to produce more than a rush of air on her face.
She bit her bottom lip and mulled it over, wondering if the monkish man in front of her knew just how different she was. A day ago, she had said, Yeah, I’m a Pure Soul, so I guess I’m hardly status quo. Now, her inner nag chastised her with a tongue click and a cocked hip, And oh yeah, the daughter of an archangel and the bequeathed of a dagger that can kill immortals. Does that mean I get circled in the ‘one of these things is not like the other’ game?
Then it clicked. Yes, she was different. As Ramiel had once told her, she was hard-wired to be who she was, an ass-kicking demon slayer. Silence would never be her answer for anything. Actions would. Always.
Riona cocked back her hand, swung forward, and slapped the monk right off his keister.
Her hands cupped over her mouth when she saw the old man rubbing the raised red welt across his face, kissing the floor.
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t … I just thought that was the answer. I’m such an ass. Are you okay? Do you want me to go get that guy outside? Please don’t sue me. I’m saving up for a new car.”
With each heave of the monk’s body, visions of a kitchy little sports coupe dimmed. So engrossing was her anxiety, that it took her a good few blinks and breaths to catch on that the man before her wasn’t crying, but laughing.
“Sir?”
He rolled up slowly, giving her further evidence of just how tickled pink he was. “That,” he said, pausing to shake a finger at her. “That was the correct answer. It is the only one that his daughter would have given.” Then, holding his palms up to the sky and shouting as though the trees were his audience, he added, “I believe that is satisfactory?”
Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) Page 18