“Wow, this beach is really dirty,” Maalik said, looking about at the garbage that had washed up with the tide.
Iofiel elbowed him. “Look at that,” she said, pointing up at the pier.
“What?” He laughed slightly, taking in her wide smile, “You look so stupid. What? The Ferris wheel?”
“Humans are good.”
“I know that, Blue. We literally exist to serve them.”
“Yeah, but...” Iofiel was all at once too overwhelmed to think. “I love them.”
She’d really only met one, and that had been Lupe, but she had loved Lupe from the moment she’d smiled at her, and she still had her bar of soap in her hotel room, waiting for her return. And the city was gone, and Lupe was gone, but the bar of soap was still there, and it meant more than anything else Iofiel could have ever hoped to own.
And even without Lupe, Iofiel loved humanity: she loved the silly workers at the hotel with their bright ties, she loved the tired bus drivers and the skeevy beachgoers. She loved every cashier and every beggar and every too-rich driver of a too-expensive car that passed her by. Some of them were horrible people, but they were all people, and every God-given bone in Iofiel’s body adored and envied them for that.
Maalik stared at her for a while, and she began to cry as she thought about the future, their future, her future— Maalik wiped away her tears with a good, strong smile on his face. “Ridiculous. We all do.”
Iofiel leaned against him until her tears began to ebb. Maalik ran his fingers through her hair without a word, as the ocean sung and the seagulls circled. Distant murmurs of humanity crept through the white noise at times, faint pulses that persisted through both their heads: their duty to the humans above, their never-ending debt.
Eventually they walked up to the boardwalk, disappearing into the crowd. Even in December, the off season, it was still a bit busy, warm enough to warrant an outing. Iofiel had her pocket money, and together they bought swim clothes. Then sunglasses, and big silly hats, and towels, and ice cream, too. She didn’t need to worry about money come tomorrow.
Iofiel didn’t really understand the mechanical rides and bright-flashing attractions the pier’s ‘amusement park’ offered, but she insisted on riding the Ferris wheel. Then again and again, until she ran out of money. She could fly at that height, but it was somehow nice, too, to be lifted there by something else. And better yet were the children who squealed and screamed with excitement and energy— and the adults, too, most of whom Iofiel could tell were secretly pleased by the whole affair.
The midday sun stretched over the ocean in a yellow-white-blue reminder that the world was too big to be understood. Humans went from people to dots to people again, the buzz of activity below— other, louder rides, and general chitchat— overpowering the seaside’s roar. The beach on either side seemed brighter than the sun, the dark shadows of the amusement park cast like a put-aside paper silhouette.
At the top of their last ride, Iofiel kissed Maalik again, and she didn’t even think it was a big deal anymore. She wasn’t sure he did either.
They were two creatures, not human, and they were in a park in California on the ocean coast of the United States, a country in a continent, an ocean away from yet more countries. They were dots too, and no more important than that.
It wasn’t like Iofiel would ever really know, but she figured: God loved her, for all her faults, as He loved the world. And maybe all these little laws and customs she’d always feared had their purposes, but maybe they weren’t endgame either. Maybe...
Iofiel was busy, trying to forget what she could of her problems.
They left the park and wandered into a public bathroom to change into swimming wear. She hadn’t had a chance to ask if Maalik had ever properly been swimming either, but that was the least of her worries. It wasn’t like there was a written decency code, but Iofiel had never worn anything shorter than knee length, and honestly short sleeves had only recently become chic among some angels. Though she’d picked something that covered a fair amount of skin, it was still honestly more underwear than anything else.
Oh, humans could be so ridiculous! She was thankful to strategically hold her towel over her exposed stomach as she emerged from the changing room, but Maalik didn’t seem to care. Well, he did have a known predilection towards crop tops.
“Ha!” Iofiel said, very loudly, when she caught sight of him. “I guess we made some obvious choices.”
They’d both selected swim suits that matched their wing color. Maalik’s swim suit was a matching two piece in bright green, with pink palm trees, while Iofiel had gone for a combo of a pink and white polka dot top and then a brighter purple pair of swim trunks (she knew girls commonly wore bikini bottoms, but that was still way too much skin for her).
“Oh!” Iofiel remarked, still taking in Maalik’s choice of outfit. She patted her towel-covered belly, and after a moment, Maalik wrapped his towel below his chest too: neither of them had bellybuttons, having never been born, and that was one thing Iofiel wasn’t sure could be fixed with magic.
“What’s with your arm?” Maalik said, as they left the beach shop. Though the skin was skill uneven and jagged, it passed close enough for a tattoo that she wouldn’t attract attention. “That looks like—”
“Just guess if I’m able to talk about it.”
They wandered to an empty corner of the beach, in the cool shade of a dirty pier. All of Iofiel’s exposure of water had been through the warm, comforting embrace of the University showers, so the ocean turned out to be startlingly cold, and exceptionally salty. She’d run in full force only to nearly flare her wings out in surprise. Maalik had laughed, but the moment he stepped into the water Iofiel watched his face fall.
Of course, in response to this fault in his character, Iofiel immediately got over her frigidness and threw a handful of water directly at his face. In response, Maalik coolly pushed her directly into an oncoming wave.
The sun began to set, and by the time the water began to legitimately become freezing, they were both used to it. Plus, as the fairly quiet beach quickly cleared with the advent of night, there was little harm in busting out a little bit of magic to keep themselves warm.
The ocean rocked Iofiel like the wind pushing a hammock, the same gentle up-down echoing through her head even when she stopped to stand. Night crept forward, and time passed without mention. Each beat of the waves seemed new compared to the last, and after a while, Iofiel was sitting on the beach next to Maalik, and no one else in the Heavens or Earth knew where they were.
Maalik rested his head on her shoulder, and she cradled his hand like an oyster hiding a pearl. The amusement park, a way off, was bright neon, any emerging stars hidden by the shell shock of the city. The Ferris wheel was lit up, still spinning, so bright the bare water over the sand was nearly a perfect reflection of its colors.
Everything was in motion.
“Thank you,” Iofiel said.
“Where are you going?” Maalik whispered into her neck, “I know I can’t stop you.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Hell.”
“Hell?”
“If I survive.” Her grip tightened. “Maal... I know my whole thing has been... hard on you. Then—”
“No, thank you. Come on. I’m the whining, stuck up, controlling asshole here. How do you put up with me?”
“I put up with you because I sincerely like you, and I think other people do, too. Let’s not apologize to each other, okay? Thank you. And you’re welcome.”
“You’re welcome too.”
Iofiel dug her toes into the wet sand. She wasn’t sure where she’d left her clothes. Somewhere along the beach.
“D’you think there’s anything weird about finding all this so beautiful?”
“Well, you are the angel of beauty.”
“When have I ever made someone see how beautiful something was, though? I don’t know if appreciating things really makes them... worthwhile. It’s about getting peopl
e to agree.”
“Are you going somewhere with this?”
“I’ve never seen anything more lovely than that overpriced wheel, spinning in the night. Next to Heaven, next to the Archangels, next to all my in-born memories of fjords and the northern lights. Humans are good.”
“Poisoning the Earth, though. Driving the world to its next extinction.”
“Yeah. I know.” Iofiel leaned over and kissed Maalik. She still wasn’t great at it, didn’t really know what a skilled kiss was meant to be, but neither did he.
She pushed him against the sand, and he hissed, “You’re going to ruin my hair.”
“One last day.” She hoped she didn’t have to say it, just kissed him again, messing with his hair on purpose. He just stared at her in confusion. Impulsively, she said, “We should have sex.”
Maalik looked like he’d been frozen in time. “What? No.” Maalik half laughed, but it caught in his throat and came out more like a strained squeak.
“I’m serious, really. We should have sex. No one’s going to stop us, no one is going to care, and I—”
Maalik interupted her. “You might die. Let’s not make it guaranteed. Besides, you don’t even... want...”
“I’m asexual, but… Well, maybe I’m not, or maybe it’s more complicated than a simple yes/no question. I don’t know what it’s like to really be anything other than myself, you know? I like you. I don’t think I’m attracted to you, don’t really know what that’d be like, but I like you. You’re my friend, and you’re maybe my something else, and I want to do this with you.”
“Why?” His voice was squeezed low, squished if a voice could be squished.
“Well. For me too. To give it a go,” Iofiel could smell garbage on the wind, but with her face against Maalik’s, it didn’t seem so bad. “I only have tomorrow left. One last night. I might be gone tomorrow. Might be dead. We’re friends who kiss sometimes.”
“It’s a big thing though,” Maalik stressed. “Sex. It’s a big event, kind of…”
“Why does it have to be? Can’t it just be… a thing?” Iofiel wasn’t thinking, but she rarely did. She was more following what she wanted, and what she wanted was to be human for the night with Maalik. She didn’t know if that impulse ruined her identity as asexual, or suddenly defined her as some other concise label. She didn’t really need to know to be happy. “I don’t know what it makes me, what it makes us, but I want this.”
“We really shouldn’t. And not in any teasing, dirty sort of way. There’s a difference between, er, a few kisses and copulation.”
“The world’s ending. What do you think’s going to happen?”
Traffic passed, cars mixing with the ocean’s waves. Both their faces were blue-pink-violet from the Ferris wheel sunlight, and when Iofiel kissed Maalik again, very lightly on the nose, that was it:
They flew back over the city, over the lights, to the hotel room, and yes, Maalik stayed the night.
26: Something Like A Weapon
THE NEXT MORNING, Iofiel stayed in bed until someone knocked on her door, and she took an equally lethargic Maalik’s head in her hands and kissed him on the forehead.
She threw on her clothes as fast as she could, glancing back to make sure Maalik was hidden from view before she peeked on the other side of the door. When she saw it was Archie, she sighed with relief.
“There you are.”
“Yeah. Hi.” His hair was a mess, looking like he’d just gotten up. Though he’d changed his eye color to brown, he wasn’t wearing his eyepatch and hadn’t bothered to do anything about his missing left eye, his eye socket gaping like an open wound. “Salem said he’d be by... Well, he said you knew what he was up to. And, uh, if I can intercede? What are you doing? Why are you working with him?”
“I’ll actually need you to do… it,” Iofiel pushed up her sleeve, pointing to her brand-like seal. “In the vaguest terms possible. The good thing about a bind is that it isn’t capable of listening properly, can’t read intent.”
“Whoah, that’s like— on you.”
“It’s a step above what Maalik is capable of, yeah, so I have to be... as careful as possible not to break it. I barely understand what it’s meant to bar. And there’s a few things I need to ask you that... I probably can’t, so we’ll be doing this pretty blind.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Iofiel raised her eyebrows. “If only.”
“Okay. Great, right. So. Something super vague you need me for, because you can’t do it, because you’ve been bound not to— I... think I could guess?”
“That’d be great. But there’s one thing first— Maal?”
“Maal— Maalik? Is he—?” Archie leaned forward, looking about.
Maalik seemed to have rolled onto the floor. “Can you kick me my clothes,” he said, sounding dejected.
“Whoah, what happened? Are you guys— like, did you—”
“Don’t think about or mention it to anyone, ever!” Iofiel said, full of fake energy as she tossed Maalik’s clothes over to the other side of the bed.
In a minute, he stood up, red faced. “What do you need?”
“Remove Archie’s bind.”
He started to roll his eyes, but dropped his expression when he saw how grave Iofiel was. “Alright.” He took Archie’s arm, avoiding eye contact, his two fingers on his veins. He drew blood before beginning a brief song. When it was over, he sealed the cut. “There.”
“So this is about the devil, huh?” Archie asked.
“I was hoping me facilitating that event would have helped make a precise connection, yes,” Iofiel said carefully, taking a pause between each word. So far, there was no sign the bind was reacting to any of this, but she preferred caution to death.
“The world’s due for February, you said, and you need to set up a trap for Lucifer.”
“Last three words. I know you know how to do it,” Iofiel said. She sat on the bed, one hand against her marked arm, trying to guess if she’d feel a slight twinge or if she’d simply die the moment she did something wrong. “Goat?”
“Goat? I’m sorry?”
“You know. Goats. Salem’s looking into buying one or two.”
“Why goats?”
“You know, goats?”
“Goats have nothing to do with the devil,” Maalik said, still looking extremely uncomfortable.
“I use my own blood,” Archie said.
“Is it that easy? Would he come if you called right now? Or should I use my own blood just to be sure?” Iofiel felt a jolt go through her, but she wasn’t sure if it was her nerves or not. Binds were advanced magic, both vague and specific, and even with what she knew, she didn’t trust Archangel Michael’s spellwork to follow the rules of the examples she could find in her textbooks. After all, so far she was communicating quite easily about something she’d been forbidden to discuss. Maybe her demon friends had feared this out of fear alone, not knowing how easy it was to avoid death?
Or perhaps this magic, especially from Archangel Michael’s hands, was smarter than she thought.
“He’s always come when I’ve asked him to. But I don’t exactly want to help you with this, you know? This is what that big discussion was... about. I don’t want to be involved.”
“It’s not what you think it is,” Iofiel said, and her arm shook again like she’d been hit my lightning. “We need to move.”
“What? You’re not dead.”
“I think this might be more complicated than that. Archie, please trust me. Salem’s meeting me with the goats in— uh, I’m going to try summoning him, but we need to head to somewhere a bit more secure. The woods.”
“You’ll stick out more in the woods,” Maalik said. “Also, I realize this isn’t the commentary you need right now, but—” He turned to Archie, “Why are you acquainted with the Morningstar, exactly?”
“Try not to worry about it,” Iofiel said, kissing him on the cheek. “You should leave before you get caught up any further.
”
“I’m already in, aren’t I?”
“You’ve heard too much. But tell them— tomorrow. Tonight. Or not at all, if you can.”
“Don’t die,” Maalik gently rested a hand against her cheek. “Though I know you can’t help it.”
“I know you can’t help what you do either, Maal. Stay safe, and get very, very far away.”
Maalik averted his eyes for a moment, his other hand already preparing the spells he’d need to fly. “Blue. I hope you’re doing the world right.”
He kissed her, and then he slammed open the balcony door and leapt into the sky, and off he went. Iofiel watched him leave, watched him briefly turn back and look at her.
“I have no fucking idea what the fuck is going on,” Archie said.
“Uh, try not to think about it, and never mention it to anyone, ever?”
“Alright— phew, alright. Well. You don’t need any goats, again, so if you can contact Salem and tell him that—”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well. Spare goats then. It only takes a minute to call Luci.”
“We need to go too, you know.”
“Not to the woods.”
“You know that’s where we’re going.”
Archie couldn’t fly, and Iofiel didn’t know any broad teleportation spells, so she had to carry him to the woods. It took about forty-five minutes for her to prepare her spells— after so much illusion yesterday, she was still tired. Plus, her arm began to actually hurt, reacting each time she made a movement with her right arm. She was nearly afraid she’d drop Archie by the time they were in the air, and when they landed she needed a moment to lay on the forest floor and try to cool down.
Her skin felt hot, and she drew Salem’s summoning information in the dirt with her fingers, relying on Archie to carry them out a few feet away. She would’ve liked to see if she could calm her pain through magic, or prayer, but had a suspicion either would make things worse.
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