Winter Wishes

by Vivian Arend, Vivi Andrews

  “You aren’t evil,” she said, addressing the only part of what he’d said that her brain could process. I’m the farthest thing in the world from angelic.

  “I know that, but they don’t. It isn’t black and white, good or evil, but angels don’t see grey.”

  “It’s not true. The angel thing. I would know.”

  “Your mother might not even know,” Jay offered.

  Sasha felt the foundations of her world start to slide. “My mother?” The Angel of Hollywood.

  “The angelic line must come through her. Didn’t her father disappear shortly after she was born? Your grandmother, Maeve Christian, she was a starlet in the forties, wasn’t she? Beautiful enough to tempt an angel. She might never have known what he really was.”

  “The wings would have been a pretty big hint.”

  “They can assume a human disguise, just like demonic glamour. You would never see the difference.”

  “Glamour.” Great. Another thing to worry about. Sasha fixated on that, so she wouldn’t have to think about the earth-shattering angel thing. “Is this even what you look like?” she asked, waving to the six-pack abs and bitable ass. He probably had horns and tentacles beneath it all.

  “I’ve never used glamour on you. It probably wouldn’t have worked on an angel’s granddaughter anyway.”

  “Could you not say the angel’s granddaughter thing like you’re certain it’s true?”

  “Sasha, you can wield an angel’s sword, your blood burns lesser demons like acid, and my mother and Lucifer both recognized the light in you. I am certain it’s true.”

  Jezebeth hadn’t been calling her an angels’ pawn. She’d been screaming angelspawn. “You said you weren’t sure, at first. When did you suspect?” And why didn’t you tell me?

  “From the start,” he admitted. “Can we talk about this more after we get you topside?”

  The evasion twigged something at the edge of her thoughts. Sasha was through not listening to her instincts. There was something Jay wasn’t telling her. She just needed to find the right question.

  “Is that why you tried to pick me up? Because you thought I was angelic?”

  Jay closed his eyes and huffed out a low groan.

  Jackpot.

  “I’m going to be completely honest, because I promised I wouldn’t lie to you anymore, but I would really appreciate it if you could try not to hate me for this. I don’t feel this way anymore.”

  Sasha’s grip tightened on the angelic gun. “Go on.”

  “During the Dark Ages, demons were allowed to wander the mortal plane freely, but our excesses and vices upset the balance of good and evil and when we meddled too much in the affairs of man, God decided to bring us into check. Christmas morning had been declared a time of rebirth—the anniversary of man’s redemption and God’s grace—and it was decided that no demon, or creature of demonic origin who was more evil than good, could inhabit the mortal plane on Christmas. Dawn of December twenty-fifth became known as The Cleanse—a moment when any evil being caught above would be smote by the wrath of God.”

  “Killed?”

  “Worse. Death is a transformation of the soul’s form. Smiting is banishment to the deepest level of Hell. No demon or demonspawn has ever returned from The Cleanse, and I knew I wouldn’t survive it, but I wanted to remain in man’s realm. When I saw you, I thought it was a sign. If I could somehow absorb angel light, I might be able to survive and stay. I never planned on falling in love with you.”

  “Please stop throwing that word around. Love isn’t a cure-all pill, Jay. Saying it doesn’t magically fix everything.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say instead.”

  Sasha didn’t know what she wanted to hear either. Somehow the idea that he had only approached her in the first place because he wanted to use her cut much deeper than finding out he was a lying demon. He could be a demon and a tough guy and still be her Clark Kent, but this changed him to her. After a lifetime of being used to gain access to her powerful family, Sasha had thought she’d finally found someone who was different, someone who only wanted her, but now it turned out he’d only been interested in her because of another branch of her family tree.

  Was something wrong with her? Why could she never compete with the appeal of her pedigree?

  “Why not spend Christmas dawn with my mother and me, then? Surrounded by the offspring of angels. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Her voice sounded foreign, hoarse.

  “Things have changed,” he said, his voice equally rough. “It was always a gamble to stay above for Christmas, but I didn’t have anything to lose before you. Maybe I never would have gone through with it, but I couldn’t take the risk when there was a chance I could go back to Hell for Christmas and be back with you by New Year’s.”

  “The angels…they want you out of Hell by dawn. Do they want you…cleansed? Smote?”

  “That’s the most likely option. They don’t like it when we break the rules and get above ourselves.”

  “But there’s another option?”

  Jay shrugged. “It’s possible they meant for you to redeem me. Angelic quests for redemption are usually reserved for humans, but this could be a special case.”

  “What would I have to do to redeem you?” She may not be sure how she felt about him right now, but she didn’t want to condemn him to an eternity in Hell chained to a wall either.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Purification was never really a forte of my kind.”

  “Look. You get me out of here and I’ll see what I can do about redeeming you, but after that we’re done. Okay?” That must be hands down the weirdest breakup speech in the history of mankind.

  A muscle in Jay’s jaw jumped. “Fair enough.”

  Her throat tightened, choking off any more words. That’s what she wanted, right? So why did her chest ache at the thought that he’d give up so easily? Why couldn’t she stop wanting him?

  * * *

  Fair enough. Luckily, demons weren’t known for their fairness.

  Jay didn’t have to show her the way out. He didn’t have to play by the rules. If he did nothing, the sun would rise with her beside him and she would never be able to walk away. Sure, she’d be trapped in Hell, but they would be together. He’d have an eternity to win her back, rather than a handful of minutes before the dawn.

  He’d heard his mother’s thoughts and Lucifer’s. They didn’t understand or trust the depth of his feelings for the angel-girl. Love beyond a person’s usefulness was a concept foreign to demonkind and foreign concepts were always dangerous. If Sasha didn’t redeem him, he wouldn’t be allowed back on earth to pursue her. They would keep him occupied in the Underworld until her mortal lifespan was up. Even if she was likely to live longer than most thanks to her angelic heritage, Jezebeth could outwait her.

  But if they stayed here together, he could protect her. He could teach her the ropes in Hell and, for a while at least, she would be totally dependent on him. It was cold and manipulative, but he’d never balked at icy practicality before. He didn’t even have to do anything to make it happen. All he had to do was nothing. Delay a little longer.

  The idea held a sultry temptation.

  Jay gazed down at the woman at his side. Bedraggled and bruised, with a bandage on her arm and a gun in her hand, she was everything that was wild and fierce and vulnerable. His chest contracted and he swallowed thickly.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice buzz-saw rough. “We’d better hurry.”

  He ran toward the mob at the exit gate. He needed to feel his blade cutting into flesh, needed vengeance against the worlds that seemed aligned against him. If he could hack his way through, drowning in the quick rush of violence, then he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that it was his fault. He had done what any demon would have done. He’d lied, deceived and manipulated Sasha, trying to bend her to his ambition, but all he’d managed to do was sabotage the one thing that could have saved him. Regret was a weakness h
e refused to feel, so he poured it into the blade and swung hard, slashing into the mindless minion hordes at the door.

  He might be beyond redemption, but he could still see Sasha free of the Hell of his making.

  Chapter Eleven

  Angels We Have Heard in Hollywood

  Jay fought like a man possessed—which considering his demonic background, wasn’t such a stretch. Gore flew and blood splattered in a horror-movie montage. Sasha followed tightly in the wake he cut through the minions, firing whenever anything lunged at his unprotected back. The gate was thirty feet away, then twenty, then five. It was over so quickly. Before the battle had fully begun they were through the doorway, spilling into the murky twilight of the pre-dawn night.

  Tall, coarse grass tangled around her ankles as she spun, ready to obliterate anything that came through after them, but the minions shied back, hovering on the other side of the portal.

  “They can sense the dawn,” Jay said behind her. “They won’t follow. We don’t have long.”

  Sasha spun to face him and found herself looking out over the lights of Los Angeles. The portal had dropped them in the Hollywood Hills, not far from the iconic sign. A suitably dramatic setting for their farewell. And it had to be a farewell. Neither of them knew how to redeem him.

  “Jay…” She didn’t know what she was going to say. Have a nice life? She’d thought they were going to break up yesterday and it had been depressing but not heartbreaking. Now, after everything they’d been through in the last hours, why did it feel like she was giving up The One? She wasn’t even sure she believed in The One. Was it just the intensity of the night? The bond of surviving together? Or could it be him?

  “I’m sorry about how things turned out,” he said when she couldn’t find the words. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I thought I could use you. But even though I should probably regret ever meeting you after what I’ve put you through tonight, I can’t. I’m glad I got to be with you, for however short a time, Sasha. I lo—” He broke off, grimacing. “I guess I’ll stop throwing that word around. But I’ll be…thinking of you. You’ll always have my…regard.”

  He nodded once, as if he’d said his piece and was satisfied. Sasha was anything but. He started toward the portal and Sasha’s feet rushed to stop him before she even realized she was moving. “Jay, wait.”

  He turned to look at her just as a burst of light split the darkness, illuminating his face in a brilliant white glow. The snap of wings was loud in the pre-dawn silence as a shimmering angelic warrior touched down between them.

  “You succeeded,” Zacharael’s emotionless rumble intoned.

  “How do I redeem Jay?” she demanded. Sasha didn’t know how close the dawn was, but she wasn’t going to waste time.

  The angel watched her, ignoring Jay’s existence, his face as blank as ever. “How did you find the Underworld?”

  Small talk. Great. “It wasn’t what I expected. How does redemption work?”

  “Not as you expected how?”

  Was this some kind of test? “I didn’t think Hell would smell like lemon Pledge, okay? I expected fire and brimstone. The classics.”

  His wings rose and fell slightly—an angelic shrug. “It is both.”

  “So I’m just lucky you didn’t send me into the inferno part, is that it? Can you redeem Jay now?”

  “You are very human,” the angel said, displaying the first hint of emotion—a mild, impersonal surprise.

  Sasha glared at him. “You might have told me about the angel blood thing.”

  “No,” he said softly, with a low ache that made Sasha’s eyes tear up just hearing it. “I could not. This, giving you this chance, is all I am allowed to do.”

  Sasha studied the angel with a growing sense of familiarity. Something about the eyes. Suspicion took root in her thoughts. “Why?”

  “Ordinarily your Jay would be banished to Hell for the length of your time on earth and you would never see or hear from him again, but I wanted you to have the chance I—”

  “The chance you didn’t have with my grandmother,” Sasha finished for him. He seemed so cold, but now she saw fissures in his wintry shell and beneath the angelic hauteur lay an echoing sadness. “Why did you leave her?”

  “When you are called back to Heaven, angelic duty is not something you are allowed to shirk. It was not choice as you know it, but it was my first and only regret. Leaving Maeve.”

  “She never married. She said she never stopped loving my mother’s father.” This was her mother’s father. This angelic creature who didn’t look old enough to run for public office. Oddly, the thought wasn’t as disturbing as it might have been. There was something paternal in Zacharael.

  “I know. I did not want her daughter’s child to be alone as she was. This was the only chance I could give—to allow you to stay with the one you love.”

  “So Jay can stay now? He’s redeemed?”

  “That is in your hands. Forgiveness and love are yours to offer, not mine. If you can embrace the good in him and he is truly more good than evil, The Cleanse will not harm him. He will stay on the mortal plane, no longer a demon, but not truly human either, released from his demonic obligations. But if you cannot truly love the demon, then it is best to send him back now, so that he may live out the rest of eternity below.”

  “Can’t you do something? You’re an angel.”

  “It is not my choice,” Zacharael explained gently. He glanced at the sky. “You have some time yet, before the dawn, to decide.” Then the angel actually smiled. “I’ll need my sword back, though.”

  Sasha nodded, relieved to have something else to focus on for the moment, pushing the decision back a bit more. “Thanks for the loan.”

  She extended the two Desert Eagles butt-first to Zacharael. He reached out and lifted them from her hands. The second they left her fingers, the metal shimmered and shifted, transforming back to the long, wicked sword she’d seen him wearing when he appeared in her kitchen.

  “What are you angel of anyway, that you need a sword like that?”

  “Surrender,” Zacharael said with a soft smile.

  “As in surrender or else?”

  “As in the surrender of meaningless cares. I help to release the attachments to physical things. I think He sent me Maeve so I would be gentler in my commission, to give me an understanding of the pull of the mortal world.”

  “You’re never angry with Him? For making you give her up?”

  Zacharael smiled sadly. “My anger is never greater than my fear of the Fall. Better a slave in Heaven than a king in Hell.”

  “Hell didn’t seem that bad. At least the part of it I saw.”

  “It is that bad,” Zacharael and Jay said simultaneously.

  “Even the part of it you saw,” Zacharael continued. “You are human. You see only one thing when really it is all.”

  “Is this one of those theological issues where we’re supposed to ignore the contradictions and evidence of our own eyes because of faith? Like how angels always say they don’t see the differences between the religions? They can’t all be true.”

  “We see things differently,” Zacharael said simply. “Contradictions coexist within the truth because they do. You think if A and B oppose, it must be one and not the other, but I see both. We do not say in God anything is possible. We say in God all things are possible.”

  “All things except good loving evil, right?”

  “Do not mistake the possible and the permissible.” He glanced again at the eastern sky. “And if you truly believe he is evil, he’d best be going. Dawn approaches.” His wings stretched out, angling to test the air. “It was my pleasure to meet you, even if only for a moment.”

  “I won’t be seeing you again?”

  “Not in this life, but I’ll be watching over you, Sasha. I always have.”

  He launched himself into the sky, his wings beating hard as they raised him higher, a white shadow on the deep grey sky. As she watched him
fade from view, Sasha felt the last of her delaying tactics diminishing with him. She looked down from the sky to find Jay watching her, his expression guarded.

  “Interesting guy, your grandpa.”

  It was decision time. The moment of truth.

  Sasha looked at Jay and knew what she had to do—even if he would hate her for it. She had promised him redemption if it was within her power, but now she knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t take the chance that she would fail. Jay was trusting in her angelic nature, but she was too human. There were too many shades of grey in her white light. She knew herself well enough to know there just wasn’t enough good in her to save him. She couldn’t let him take that risk.

  So Sasha forced herself to meet Jay’s eyes squarely and say in a voice that was smooth and ice-cold, “You need to leave now. I can’t help you.”

  Jay’s black eyes narrowed. “Coward.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Dawn of the Damned

  “Excuse me if I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to risk an eternity in the deepest, darkest pit of Hell,” Sasha snapped.

  “I’m glad to hear you aren’t itching to have me smote to the nth circle of Hell, but this isn’t about The Cleanse and you know it.” Jay shook his head angrily. “You and your goddamn walls. You can never let yourself lean on anyone, can you?” He stalked toward her, using his size to loom over her. “Explain something to me. How is it a woman can march into Hell, fight off hordes of demonic minions, argue with the Devil himself and still be chicken-shit scared out of her mind at the prospect of letting herself love someone?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Are you sure about that? Ever since we met you’ve been holding me at a distance, keeping a part of yourself hidden from me.”

  “I’ve been hiding things from you?”