I tried to wave her away. “Stop it, stop it, I can’t see a thing except for primary and secondary feathers!”
“You know about birds?”
“Eighth grade. Never mind.” I was reminded of the best Christmas movie with dead people ever, Scrooged, when Carol Kane’s awesome Ghost of Christmas Present is twisting and jumping around and keeps whacking Bill Murray in the face with her wings. This was exactly like that, except it wasn’t December, it was November. November in hell. “You want to see them? Pop them out. You know—extend ‘em.”
This was pretty dumb, because I was standing in exactly the wrong spot. So at about the same half second I realized Laura had a near seven-foot wingspan, her extending left wing crashed into me.
Those suckers were strong. Picture a sparrow, lean and tough from being busy all day. And also with long blonde hair, and jeans.
“Oh my God! Betsy!”
“Could you help me up, please?” I groaned from the floor. Hell carpet. Bowels of the pit. Whatever.
She hurried over to me and hauled me to my feet. Her wings weren’t the stereotypical snow white you see in old paintings of angels. They really were like gigantic sparrow feathers—a plain but cute mix of mottled browns, powerful and practical.
“Sorry to disappear on you like that; I admit to being something of a micromanager. Oh, good, you’ve been doing some exploring.”
“Mother! I have wings here. Wings!”
“Of course you do,” Satan said, gazing upon Laura with maternal pride. “Your mother is an angel.”
“It’s so creepy when you refer to yourself in the third person.”
“Shush. Satan doesn’t wish to hear from the vampire queen at this time.”
“Creepy!” I shouted.
But the devil wasn’t paying any attention to me; she only had eyes for Laura, who, annoyingly, was even more striking with gorgeous yet practical wings sprouting from her back. “As I was saying before what’s-her-name spouted off—”
“You’re being a pill!” I said, keeping a wary eye on my sister’s wingspan.
“—you’re half angel. My lineage didn’t change when I left heaven.”
“Got kicked out, you mean.”
I was very surprised to find my feet were a foot off the floor, as Satan had closed the five-foot distance in half a blink and hoisted me up by the front of my shirt. “I. Was not. Kicked out. I left. On my own.”
“Touch-y! D’you mind? I’ve only worn this shirt twice; also, it’s from Eddie Bauer, which means it’s practically indestructible.” So, a fine choice for a jaunt through Demon Town. Oh, Eddie Bauer, only you understand my vacation clothing needs.
“Let her go!”
Super. Two winged freaks battling over heaven, hell, and my turtleneck. “Laura, I’m fine.” I tried a smile to show the Antichrist that being hoisted into the air and strangled by the devil wasn’t such a big deal. Shit, I’ve been on dates that were less pleasant. “It’s not like I need to breathe. Or mind dangling a foot off the ground. But if I have to grow my larynx back, you’re gonna be sorry!”
“Worth it,” Satan muttered, and let go.
Instantly I bent over and checked out my footgear. “You are sooo lucky I didn’t get a scuff mark, you big, jerky fallen angel!”
“I tremble as I consider that close call,” Satan said with a yawn.
“Will they work? I mean, can I fly?”
“What? Back on the wings again? After I had to suck up yet another felony assault from your mother? My Eddie Bauer shirt is fine; thanks for asking.”
Satan’s wings appeared out of nowhere just as suddenly as Laura’s had. The malicious cow waited until I was out of Laura’s line of fire, and into hers, before she showed us her damned (literally) wingspan.
“I have had enough”—I cut myself off and spat feathers again—“of facefuls of wings! Which is not a sentence I thought I’d ever, ever have to say! Hell just sucks, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yours are all black, like raven’s wings,” Laura said, awed. She put out a tentative hand and stroked her mother’s wing.
“Or really dirty ones. Like you spent a lot of time lurking in chimneys. Or the Koch refinery smokestacks.”
The pseudo-angels ignored me. Getting to be a common theme around here, I was sorry to note.
“Of course they work,” Satan was explaining. “But like anything, you will need practice. But you’re mistaken in your assumption that they’ve only now ‘appeared.’ They have always been a part of you, just like your Hellfire weapons. But they can only be seen by all eyes in this dimension.”
“So when I’m home—St. Paul, I mean—they’re there, but no one can see them.”
“Yes. It’s too much for the human eye to take in. I’m not sure I’ll be able to break this down for you, but I’ll try. Our wings sort of shift between realities. Your Hellfire sword and crossbow are always with you but can be seen only under the right circumstance—for example, on earth, they can be seen when you are stressed, when you are vengeful. You call on them and they appear to all. But they were always there. You aren’t making them appear, you’re simply making use of them. Your wings are much the same.”
“Like how Jessica can’t always get a taxi. If she’s somewhere late and deserted, cabbies don’t always see her. They don’t even think they’re being bigots about it; they’d pass a lie detector test that they never even saw her.” They both looked at me. “What? I’m trying to contribute to the weirdest conversation ever.”
“Well, all right. And I will say you’ve come up with a parallel that isn’t completely stupid or terrible,” the devil admitted.
“Aw. I’m getting all choked up and everything.”
“Choked, at the very least,” the devil muttered. My! Satan was Ms. Crabby Pants today.
Chapter 30
lt’s time to get down to it,” Satan said, and I managed not to shout, It’s about time, you angelic devilish psycho! “I can talk—”
“And talk. And talk,” I added. “And still: talk. Talk, talk, talk.”
“—but experience is the best teacher.”
“So! Much! Talking!”
The devil made a sound that was a cross between a sneeze and a snarl. “You’ve spent two decades on earth learning what it is to be human. Now you need to explore being an angel, for lack of a better word. You need to master moving from your father’s lands to mine and back again. In this place, in my domain—hopefully someday to be your domain—you can get a more accurate idea of your potential, your abilities. I’m sure you’ve noticed I come and go as I please, and I imagine you’re wondering how I can do that.”
“Not really, no.”
“Quiet, Vampire Queen. I was talking to the smart sister. From hell, Laura, you can travel anywhere on earth, and to any time. But accuracy and control require experience. To put it another way, you could read a dozen books on how to ride a bike but still not know how to do it when the bike is actually before you. So I want you to start traveling.”
I didn’t like the sound of this at all. “Travel where?”
“Wherever her abilities take her.”
“Hold up, Lady of Lies. I agreed to bring her here. I didn’t sign up for time-traveling field trips.”
“Why do you think you’re still in this conversation? So, dear one, are you game? Will you try?”
“No,” I said at the exact moment Laura said yes. I turned to her. “Oh, come on! Do you really not see where this is going? You know how we end up accidentally neck deep in Fiends or killers or zombies or babies or werewolves? And then we’re all, ‘I shoulda seen this coming.’ Well, we can! We can absolutely see this coming and you know it. In my opinion—”
“Which no one asked for,” the devil snarked.
“It’s a perfect time to run away like a craven dog. I am pro-craven dog. Let’s be dogs together.”
Laura was shaking her head with real regret, and with a sinking feeling I realized I was about to have two
choices: ask the devil to put me back in my own time in my own house, or tag along with the Antichrist. Which was no choice at all; I had no intention of abandoning Laura while she was trying to learn new skills. The learning was essential to her sanity.
Besides, she was formidable but she didn’t look it. God knew the kind of desperate characters she might run into (literally ... God knew; I didn’t). They’d eat her alive, prob’ly. Like I wanted that on my conscience this month of all months. Or any time, really. Two roomies dead in my service were plenty.
And Satan, that deceitful wretched bitch, knew it. She even smirked at me when Laura wasn’t looking. Real mature. And I was self-aware enough to realize that if I thought someone was being immature, it was time for them to reexamine their life.
“Betsy, I have to learn. I can’t—the dreams are so—I have to do this. But you don’t have to come. In fact, I think you should—”
“Shut the hell up. Of course I’ll come. Don’t be a stupid bitch.” Okay. Sharper than I’d intended, sure. But I was pissed. And scared. And pissed. “I hope you’re happy.”
“But I am, Betsy. I absolutely am. And unsurprised. I’ve been tempting people for an age; how could my own daughter resist?”
“That sounds a little creepy,” Laura admitted.
“A little! Ugh. Satan, you’re terrifying. And not in a good way. But don’t get cocky.”
“I defined cocky, you idiot. And how typical for you to underestimate me.”
And how typical of you to be unable to resist telling me how smart you are, That’s it, Satan ... open wide ...
“I can tempt anyone, Betsy. I was this close to talking Jesus into changing sides.”
“You tempted Jesus?” I didn’t bother to hide my shock ... and I hoped I was hiding the admiration.
“Of course. And he gave it serious consideration. He didn’t want to die, you know.” For a moment, the devil looked pensive and a little sad. “He knew it was coming and he knew it would be awful. I offered to change all that.”
I realized we were smack dab in the middle of hell as opposed to being on the periphery—all new tortures and degradations were going on around us. But I couldn’t look away from the devil.
Her face. The look on her face.
“I told him he could be ruler of all earth, subservient only to me, if he renounced his control-freak father. Who is, if you recall your Sunday school lessons, also my control-freak father. I even threw in invulnerability to physical harm. That was the only one that truly tempted him. Nobody likes the idea of a bad death.”
“But he said no?” Dumb question. Of course he’d said no.
She smiled, a wintry grin with no warmth. “Yes indeed. He told me he’d pray for me. He quoted Scripture to me; how dull. He told me to ask for his father’s forgiveness. And I told him he would die with the smell of his own shit in his nostrils. And I was right.”
“Mother!” Laura sounded shocked.
“You just don’t like to lose.” Jeez. Poor Jesus! Weird to think of the Savior as a flesh-and-blood teenager who was afraid to die, and more afraid to die badly. “That’s why you got all pissy with him at the end. You set the standard for being a sore loser.”
“Darling, I have never truly lost. Not when it was important. Not when it was something I very much wanted.”
Umm, I thought but didn’t say, we’re supposed to believe you wanted to be asked to leave heaven? I arranged my face into a polite I’m-listening-go-on expression.
“The boy would have been amusing company, but his betrayal and death did nothing to inconvenience me, so it all worked out in the end.”
I decided to pretend that didn’t send cold chills down my back. “So what you’re saying is, Jesus was the one who got away?”
Satan snorted through her delicate nostrils. “I’m one of humanity’s three enemies, along with sin and death.”
“Don’t forget taxes.”
“Ha! Even I’m not that relentlessly greedy and evil.”
“Point,” I conceded.
“I’m simply a giver of knowledge.”
“Actually, you’re a giver of crap. A giver of headaches and menstrual cramps.”
The devil ignored me, clearly much more interested in reaching Laura than sparring with moi. “Knowledge is like a hammer, you know. It’s neither good nor evil. What matters is how you apply it. My father disagreed.”
“God, you mean?”
“Of course, you twit.”
“No one told me,” I commented, “that there’d be so much name-calling in hell.”
“We had a rather large falling out over that difference of opinion, in fact.” Satan paused, examining the toe of her pretty, pretty shoe. “In retrospect, I could have handled it better.”
“Ya think?” In retrospect, the Bubonic Plague sounded uncomplicated and pleasant compared to a war in heaven. Satan: the master of understatement. It reminded me of David Carradine’s character in Kill Bill: “I may have overreacted.” Shyeah!
“My point, Laura, is that what you learn on your travels isn’t good or bad. It just is. And you’re probably the only person in several planes of existence who can learn any of this. My children,” she added dryly, “don’t precisely grow on trees. Laura is a ruby.”
“Uh-huh, and I’m a Capricorn. So help me out here. Laura was born of the Ant—and thank you sooo much for arranging that little reunion, you awful, awful harpy—so that makes Laura her daughter, not yours.”
“It doesn’t, actually. I have no physical body. I’ve never had one; no angel has. We take the form best suited to please our father ... or not. That’s how I can possess mortals. So whom-ever I’m driving at the time—that person is me, with all my thoughts and griefs and abilities. In this way, I am your mother, Laura ... as I was, for a time, Betsy’s stepmother.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“What is all this about any time as well as any place?” Laura asked, momentarily distracted as the three of us walked past Lincoln shooting John Wilkes Booth in the head. “Do you really mean that? You can time travel and maybe I can, too?”
“There is no maybe about it, Laura. Why do you think I’ve lived so long? Why do you think you will likely live well into your thousands?”
“I don’t get it,” I confessed, flinching as Lincoln popped another cap in John-boy’s head.
“I am unsurprised.”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch about it. It’s not my fault I partied too hard in college and got kicked out before I could—oh. Wait. That’s completely my fault. Okay, bad example. But you’re still a bitch.”
Satan rubbed her forehead with her perfectly manicured fingertips, as if fighting a migraine, or a tax audit. “I’m not talking down to you, Betsy, though I’m certainly prepared to do so at any given moment. You truly—your human brain, you can’t grasp it. Einstein couldn’t grasp it.”
“Oh, like Einstein is sooo great.” I made a herculean effort not to sulk.
She sighed. “All right. Pay attention. Time does not move. We move. And some of us can move backward as well as forward. If the average sack of meat and blood and pus could manage the trick, could stand still long enough, they would eventually catch up to their childhood, even their birth.”
“Wait. What? Oh, and that sack-of-pus thing? Gross.”
“You’re saying if you live long enough, you could reenter your own past?” Laura asked.
“Yes. Which is why no ordinary human could ever do this job. The human life span—” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”
“Yeah, well. That’s how quick we’re gonna be neck deep in shit.” I snapped mine. “Like that.”
Chapter 31
l must warn you ... although theoretically you can travel to any time or any place, you’ll be drawn toward those events that had a significant impact on you—of her.” Satan pointed at—dammit!—me. ”Because Betsy is part of your learning as well. And I will understand your dismay. Bad enough she’s part of you
r blood, yes?”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Laura said, but she had a peculiar expression on her face. Like she was somewhat concerned, but not all there. I think, in her head, Laura was already traveling to other zones and other times. “It’s not nice.”
“I only wanted to give you a last warning. As you mature, you won’t necessarily be at Betsy’s whims. But that could take time.”
“Luckily, this all didn’t sound awful and scary enough,” I said. “I’m glad you’ve saved the worst for last.” We’re stuck together because my sister and I are two of the few people on the planet with the potential to live for five thousands years, Ye gods.
Take time? Like what? How much are we talking exactly? A baseball reason? A school year? A decade? A century? Why do I have the feeling that spending a few centuries as sidekick to the Antichrist might have a detrimental effect on my sanity? Not to mention my wardrobe.
I shook my head but kept those thoughts to myself. “And again, thank you so much.”
The devil shrugged. “It wasn’t a coincidence that I shot-putted you into the parlor room wall so you could wake up here. I needed to show you a demonstration. The fact that your hollow, empty head sustained a concussion was just a bonus.
“You see, Laura is only part angel, something that has always held her back but which I could work around. Unfortunately, since I am complete in myself—”
“Complete in yourself?” I started to laugh.
“—my blood, my abilities, aren’t diluted by a human strain. But Laura’s are. I can move from here to there to there and back to here simply by the force of my will. Laura can’t ... at least, not yet. To move from place to place, or time to time, she needs to have strong physical contact with a blood relative. Her father is dead.”
“No shell,” I guessed. “Only his spirit. So no chance of physical contact with him.” Satan raised her eyebrows. “What? I pay attention sometimes.”
“Mmmm. So that leaves me. Or you. Which actually means you, Betsy, because she won’t learn if she simply taxis along with me for the ride.”
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