Filthy

by Katherine Rhodes

  I nodded. “I remember. Ellie said Mr. Passyunk had her in the stable. He ran the whole thing, but I thought that it shut down after he died.”

  “No.” Haden shook her head. “Not at all. They reorganized and made the structure more nebulous so they couldn’t lose all the information again. And we’re fighting against that. We think that Mister Sansom, Mister Spring, and Ms. Juniata—” she tapped on the notebook “—are the ringleaders. We haven’t been able to get a bead on any of them. Until now.”

  I stared at my notebook. In the space of an hour I had gone from simply trying to decide if I needed to turn this guy in to being a potential key to a major sex trafficking ring.

  Haden was scrolling through my notes on the screen, occasionally stopping to read something that caught her attention.

  How had I missed that this guy was playing me? I was one of the best therapists in sexual trauma out there, and this guy had played me like a violin for five very long years.

  “Don’t feel like this is your fault, Bastian,” Haden said. “It’s not. I see your note here that says reclassify as ASPD. I know what that means. He probably played a lot more people than you over the years.”

  “I should have—”

  She stopped and looked at me. “No. You shouldn’t have. Sociopaths are hard to spot. Even by professionals. They are goddamn good at playing the game. And it’s all mind games. The best of us fall for them. I’ve been in interrogation rooms before I realized who I was with, and how they were in control of us even though they were in cuffs and under arrest.”

  Taking a deep breath she leaned back. “Now that we know he’s connected to the missing girl, we have a better idea of how to recover her. It’s been just one day since she went missing and we have time to find her before the next auction and movement of captives. Sometimes they put them up right away, sometimes they move them around to allow them to be broken. The girl wasn’t their typical victim, oddly enough. So, she’ll probably be sold off quickly.”

  “Typical?”

  “Typical.” She nodded. “They go for adopted children, foster kids. Grace is Amberlee’s natural daughter. If they took her, it was a request from your patient directly.”

  “Why adopted?”

  “Fosters and abandoned or homeless children.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re easier to miss. They slipped through our fingers faster. There aren’t full families demanding that we find their children. The twins? We’ve discovered their family doesn’t want them back, at all. They were poor and the grandmother is old and sick and the uncle doesn’t give a fuck. So, we’re having them sign them over to Lincoln. Or, Paige Domingues is anyway. Ellie was a street kid, taking care of her little brother. They all didn’t have someone like you behind them, demanding they be found, the kidnappers brought in. Easy targets.”

  “Christ,” I mumbled.

  She leaned back in the chair. “I can handle the search for Grace. But I want to ask you to help us. I want the names of the people who are parading around my city, stealing children. I want the people behind Sansom, Spring, Juniata, Lombard... All those assholes. Barry is our potential connection.”

  “I asked him to bring his girlfriend next time,” I mumbled.

  “I could kiss you.” Her grin was blinding. “Can you get names?”

  “I can try,” I said.

  “Don’t risk your life for this, Bastian, we can’t ask you to do that. But if you can get us anything on this Pipeline, we’d be eternally grateful to you.”

  Nodding, I slumped back into the chair.

  I let Barry play me, mislead me. He’d probably been stealing children for the past five years, and putting them into this Pipeline.

  God, what had I done?

  Wren

  “My Lord! There are two!”

  The face we could not see looked down at us, and a great laugh went through the fabric of space. So there are, his voice intoned.

  El was delighted. The other who stood there was not nearly as pleased.

  “They are soft and bright, Lord. Why?”

  Do not have such anger, my son, El said. I meant merely to give you a companion, but my enthusiasm for your happiness went further.

  “Lord, do away with the younger of the two,” the dark one said.

  “No,” came a sweet voice that sounded so desperately familiar. “No. Lord, please. The younger is like me. A female. Let her be.”

  She will not have a name.

  “I believe she will, but not yet, Lord. Not yet. Let us care for her as we will care for him, El.” A bright figure walked forward, bright white wings and gleeful smile on her face. “You have not made many of us yet.”

  He laughed again. Very well, sweet one. She is given to your charge. We shall name her later.

  The white winged woman took my hand, and smiled at me. “Come on. Your big brother has things to learn from El. I’ll teach you other things.”

  And I learned. To fly, to help, to love, to care. I learned to tend to the souls that came through the gates to Elysium, to protect them from those who had to go to Tartarus. I learned to help my twin brother, to avoid our older brother.

  Both my brother and I, the Morning Star and the Little Star, knew to stay clear of our brother the Dark Star.

  Then El created again, a perfect mate for my brother the Morning Star. A dark woman full of love, caring, dedicated to him, carved from the hot fire of Hell, rejected by the simple human she had been made for. My brother took her into his arms and into his bed and named her before El did. His Lilith, the bright dark demon.

  El was pleased, despite the Morning Star disobeying his wish to give names to things. He was also displeased with our older brother in that same time.

  Coekabiel—one of the first to be named. Angry, cold, distant, I didn’t understand hateful at first. But he had an air of trouble about him. He was comfortable with disturbing the peace we had in Elysium. He would refuse entry to Tartarus, and that was when El name our brother.

  Lucifer—second named of the three of us. He was fair, even handed, able to sit and give judgement to those who were not clearly meant for Tartarus, but weren’t clearly meant for the Fields. He was bigger and stronger than Coekabiel, El had made him so. But Coekabiel was strong enough, cruel enough, dark enough to still cause problems for those not of the After. That was when El named me.

  Lucifer’s voice was hot smoke and cool acid. “You are being given direction.”

  “Direction?” I stared up at him. I loved my twin brother with all there was to love with.

  “El has realized it would be wise to have his sons and daughters help to rule Earth and the After. I am not sure what El wishes you to do, exactly, yet. But he has granted you a name and guardians.”

  “I don’t need guardians,” I said.

  “Nonetheless.” Lucifer my brother stretched his hand forward and pointed to the ground ahead of him. It cracked and shivered, and split wide. Two flames leapt from the fissure and took up existence in front of me. One was pure white fire and familiar, and the other was black fire.

  “You are granted two, and a name,” Lilith said.

  “A name?” I gasped.

  The two flames settled and took form before my eyes. “A name,” they said together. “And you may name us, mistress.”

  I looked at my brother’s wife, who smiled back at me. “Just as I have a name, and my husband has a name. Our reality is changing, little star.”

  “You are the balance struck,” Lucifer said. “It is your duty to keep the sins in careful portions, to keep Coekabiel in check. You are temperance.”

  “Temperance,” I said, trying the name on my tongue. “So, I am both named and burdened with this.”

  “You are. The sins are yours,” Lily answered. “Name your guardians, but in your own time.” She folded Wren into her arms. “So loved, little star, our Temperance.”

  “This duty is not yours alone,” Lucifer said to me, taking me into his arms. “Now na
med, little sister, your place is here with us.” He motioned to the palace behind him, lit with warm fires from Hell.

  Welcoming flames.

  “Your charges are here, we keep them from Coekabiel. With you, and your guardians, they will be able to emerge again, and be able to balance the Dark Star. You will keep them from falling to their own sins.”

  A gout of flame rose next to Lilith, and a dark man, who looked like her, who shared her dark traits, stepped out. He walked with a slight limp as Lilith smiled and motioned to me.

  “Hephaestus has made you a gift from the darkness,” she said. “This will replace that weak steel you carry. It is anjir, by request of Lucifer and I. My brother was honored to forge it.”

  The gentle, limping man held the sword out to me. “For you, Temperance. To guard yourself, and your charges, to help fight alongside your guardians, and to help you fight for what is good in the Before and the After.”

  I smiled. “Thank you, Brother.”

  I wrapped my hand around the handle…

  I threw the sword across the room, smashing it into the wall, where it crashed and clattered to the floor.

  Fischer caught me before I hit my head on the stove, but I managed to puke all over the floor. Lincoln scrambled as best he could reach us, and dropped on to the floor away from the vomit.

  My whole body was shaking and convulsing and I was sobbing. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop the tears.

  “What the fuck did I just see?” I screamed. “Oh, God, what did I just see?”

  Lincoln pulled me into his lap, and Fischer scooted closer and ran a soothing hand up and down my back.

  “You’ve gotta breathe, baby,” Linc said. “Please breathe.”

  I dragged in a breath. Then another and another and between the warmth of the two men, I started to calm a bit. I looked up, my gaze darting back and forth between them.

  “You saw? You saw it?”

  Fischer and Lincoln looked at each other, and finally Fischer spoke, “Yes. We saw.”

  “What the fuck…”

  “I don’t know,” he said quickly. “We saw it, but it was…”

  “Unbelievable,” Lincoln said. “It was overwhelming.”

  My eyes darted between them. “Lucifer. Lucifer.”

  “I saw it too,” Fischer said.

  “Your twin,” Lincoln whispered, holding my hand.

  “How is that possible?! How can I be the Devil’s twin sister!?” I was shaking violently, and I couldn’t breathe again.

  “Fischer, can you take her to the couch?” Linc asked. “I’ll get this cleared up. Get her a glass of bourbon and I’ll be in in a minute.”

  Fischer nodded and scooped me right off Lincoln’s lap. We both eyeballed the sword laying there and chose to ignore it. He moved us into the den and I was glad he was carrying me—I couldn’t trust my legs at all.

  I heard Lincoln moving around in the kitchen, cleaning up my mess. “Fischer, can you please help him?”

  He handed me the glass of bourbon and nodded, dropping a kiss on my head. “I was planning to, little bird.” His voice was soft, and frightened.

  I couldn’t blame him. I leaned back on the couch after taking as sip of the bourbon and savored the burn of the honey-smoke flavor.

  When Lily—fucking Lilith?—had said it would trigger me, I hadn’t imagined that my entire life would just fall away and become pointless and meaningless in the scope of the universe.

  The devil was my twin brother. My older brother.

  I wasn’t born, I was created. By…El. God? Yahweh? I didn’t know. I didn’t really understand.

  All I had wanted was to protect my daughter, and a hellfire forged sword was the offered weapon. I had thought that I would see maybe more delightful filth with me and my men. Perhaps a little more about them, or others who might have information about this Pipeline.

  Not that the fucking devil was my brother.

  What the hell did I do with this information? How was this going to help me protect Ellie and the twins?

  I was shaking again.

  How the fuck was any of this real?

  I’d spent my life studying the human mind, human reactions, interaction, helping children and adults recover from traumas that were beyond most people’s comprehension. I was one of the best, and I couldn’t get my own mind to work through this.

  “I’m being drugged,” I mumbled. “There’s no other explanation for this.”

  Lincoln hobbled in, and sank next to me on the couch. Fischer brought the bourbon bottle and two more glasses and sank down on my other side. He offered Linc one glass and then drained the bottle into the glasses.

  Exchanging the bottle for the remote, he flicked on the television.

  “I think one of the best things that we can do to help ourselves, is to see if we can show you what we’re seeing,” he said.

  Lincoln grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together. “You saw through the thing at the hospital, so it makes us think that you can see what we do if we share. We’ve both been able to see the sins on everyone, including on television.”

  Fischer turned to a news station and set the remote down. “Just watch.” He put a hand on my thigh and gestured with the glass, then took a hard drink.

  Everyone on the television had bruises on their arms. Every single one of them. Some were darker, some were lighter. Some people had gashes on their arms, a few on their faces.

  An image of a man I knew had been recently caught for a mass shooting was covered in horrible wounds, there were worms and bugs on his face, and his hair was a writhing nest of… something. I wasn’t sure what and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Oh my God…” I breathed.

  “We can shut it off, but only after we’d been practicing and trying for nearly a week,” Lincoln said. “It’s horrible to see who is a liar, a cheat, a philanderer. Some you aren’t shocked about at all, and some just destroy you.”

  “Does each sin have its own wound?”

  They glanced over at each other, and then at me. Fischer sighed. “So far, the only ones we can tell one hundred percent are sloth and greed. Everything else is mostly a guess.”

  I gasped, and whipped my head between them. “You two…”

  “After your vision just now,” Fischer said, “I’m more than sure about why this is happening.” He pointed to himself. “Sloth.” He pointed to Lincoln. “Greed.”

  Pulling my hand from Lincoln’s, I leaned forward, bracing my head in my hands. “God, I feel like I’m going to puke again.”

  “Please don’t.” Lincoln winced.

  “I won’t,” I said. “So, let me walk through this with the two of you. I’m the devil’s twin sister, the Little Star or something like that. I didn’t have a name until… El decided he needed help with keeping humanity and our older brother in line. I was given the name Temperance, and told to balance the seven deadly sins.”

  Glancing back, Fischer shrugged. “Sounds about right.”

  “And balance means sleep with all of you?”

  Lincoln chuckled without mirth. “Well, I don’t know that’s the right interpretation of balance, but from all of the other visions you had, I’d say that you did, and someone had a real problem with it.”

  “Melchior,” Fischer said. “Whoever that is.”

  “But then, why aren’t we in the After? Why are we here, clearly not immortal or impervious?” I pointed to his broken leg.

  “I have the feeling that’s the whole question,” Lincoln said. “I think that we were punished by someone for something that isn’t wrong in the eyes of most…of the After.”

  “But what?” Fischer said, cutting into my own thought. “We’re not going to find out easily. We’ve been, once again in the visions, fighting this for a while. But Melchior seems shallow. That doesn’t seem like a reason to…”

  “Cast us down? Cast us out?” Lincoln offered.

  “That.”

  I ran a hand down my face,
and flopped back on the couch. “We’re not going to be able to figure this out, not today, not even in the next week. I don’t know if we’ll ever figure it out. God, I wish I hadn’t touched that damn sword.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Fischer said. “Things makes sense now. Like why we see sins, and why Lily has been so damn elusive.”

  “What about the kids? Elutheria? Timothy? Tabitha?” I asked. “They’re part of this too, and we know nothing about them.”

  Lincoln pursed his lips. “Let’s take this one mess at a time, little bird. We’ve been offered a few pieces of a few puzzles. Why Fischer and I see the sins. Why Lily’s been so elusive.”

  Fischer gasped, “Laxmi and Miriam!”

  “Versilange—oh!” I gasped. “The guardians.”

  “They’re your guardians.” Fischer nodded. “They are supposed to protect you.”

  Lincoln laughed. “From what we’ve seen, it’s more like they all work together. In the visions and in real life. I don’t think that relationship worked out the way it was supposed to.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m going to pick up that sword and figure out what to do with it. I could have used it the other day with the thing in the hospital. And I have the feeling I’m going to need it more and more in the future.”

  Fischer and Lincoln followed me back into the kitchen and we all stared at where I had thrown the anjir blade.

  “Made by my apparent sister-in-law’s brother as a gift to me, by the bequest of my twin,” I mumbled. “Lucifer is my brother. Christ.” I glanced at the two of them behind me, “Can I swear like that anymore? Am I allowed to use Christ and God as swears? I hope that’s not some unbreakable law.”

  “Ask Lily,” Fischer said. “She never did answer you about the cheesesteaks.”

  “I’m going to have a laundry list of questions for that woman,” I said.

  Without any further preamble I bent down and grabbed the handle of the sword, bracing myself. Nothing happened, thankfully, except for the feeling of familiarity in the handle.