Devils Inc.

by Lauren Palphreyman

  Gabriel grabs Crow’s chin. “And what if you didn’t miss? What if you killed her? Then what!”

  Crow jerks to his feet, shaking Gabriel off. “Then Adalind would be dead, there’d be no trial, and this whole mess would be over.”

  “And what about you?” Gabriel prods him in the chest.

  “I don’t give a shit about me.”

  “That’s quite clear,” snaps Gabriel. “Do you realize what would have happened if you’d killed an Ethereal unprovoked? Hell. For eternity.”

  Crow lets out a bitter laugh. “I’m pretty sure I’m already there, mate.”

  They stare at each other, Crow’s jaw clenched, and Gabriel’s cheeks pink with fury. Then Gabriel grabs his chin again.

  “Pull yourself together,” he says before releasing Crow roughly and stepping away.

  “So . . . what are we going to do?” I ask, bringing the conversation back on track. “I don’t know if you noticed, but Adalind turned into a humongous Serpent monster.”

  Gabriel rubs his face. “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Shall I make us some drinks?” chirps Josie, breaking the awkward silence. “I think we could all use one.”

  Gabriel’s gaze moves to Josie, seemingly noticing her for the first time.

  “You’re Rachel’s friend, the bartender from Apocalypse.”

  “Yeah. Josie. You must be Gabriel.”

  She moves forward, arms widening to hug him, and his eyebrows lift with alarm. I touch her arm and shake my head.

  “Oh. Not a hugger, huh?” says Josie. “Well, nice to meet you. Drink?”

  Gabriel sighs. “Why the hell not?”

  Josie slips behind the bar, surveying the numerous types of apple juice in the fridge, the basket of apples by the mirror, and the bottles of green liquor stacked on the shelves lining the redbrick wall.

  “Wow, this girl is really into her apples, huh?” she says, trying to sound upbeat. “Everyone okay with appletinis?”

  I head to the bathroom while Josie mixes drinks, more to get away from the tension than anything else. When I come out, though, Crow is leaning against the hallway wall, arms folded over his big chest. I stop.

  “Hey,” he says, his eyes wary.

  “Hi.”

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I incline my head. “Yeah. You?”

  “Aye. I’m okay.” He pushes away from the wall to step directly in my path. I catch that familiar Omen scent of woodsmoke. “Listen, Rach—”

  “Crow,” I say, meeting his stormy gaze, “I can’t do this right now. It’s all so messed up. And Adalind . . .”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He exhales and pulls something out from within his leather jacket before looking at me sheepishly. “I, uh, got you something.”

  I don’t take it. I don’t even look at it. Instead, I take a step back.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Are you trying to win back favor with my brother?”

  His eyes widen. “No. I’ve screwed it up with you and your brother. I know that. I just . . . I saw it at the shop, and I thought you might like it.”

  There’s something almost childlike to his demeanor as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I sigh and look at what’s in his hand. It’s a DVD. The Godzilla remake.

  “You can throw it out if you like,” he says when I just stare at it. “I just . . . well, you liked the old version, so—”

  I snatch the DVD out of his hands.

  “Er,” Crow starts, but I’m already running back into the main room, not bothering to hold the swinging door open for him.

  Gabriel and Jonathon are sitting at the bar—Gabriel plopping an umbrella into Jonathon’s bright green drink and explaining that the decoration makes it taste better—while Josie cleans behind it. They all turn as I drop the DVD on the nearest high table.

  “I think I have an idea,” I say. “About how to get rid of Adalind.”

  “Really?” says Gabriel, absently stirring his cocktail.

  I cross my arms. “There’s no need to sound so surprised.”

  “Well—”

  “Shush,” I say. He falls silent. “Have you ever seen Godzilla?”

  “The old version, or the remake?” asks Gabriel.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say impatiently. “Either.”

  “No,” he says.

  I look at him, perplexed. “They why did you—?” I shake my head. “Never mind. It’s about these two monsters that fight each other.”

  I look around, my eyes catching Crow’s. He’s slumped back down on a stool, his expression dark.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” says Gabriel.

  “Beats me too, babe,” says Josie, leaning against the bar.

  I take a deep breath. “In Godzilla, there’s this monster—”

  “Godzilla?” says Gabriel.

  “No. I mean, yes. But there’s another monster. It’s causing all this havoc, and the humans can’t kill it. But Godzilla is this worse monster. They fight, and Godzilla wins.”

  Gabriel looks confused. “We’re here to stop the Serpent before she kills Adam and Eve and thus puts an end to all humanity, not discuss movies. What are you saying?”

  “She’s saying that if we want to win this, we need a monster that’s worse than Adalind, mate,” says Crow, and I can tell from the way he’s straightened that he’s getting into the idea.

  “And where exactly are we going to find a monster worse than Adalind? She’s a giant, unkillable serpent with the intelligence of an immortal human,” says Gabriel.

  “I know where,” I say, then I turn to Jonathon. “You said so yourself, she wouldn’t want him here because he’d be pissed she did all this without his consent.”

  Gabriel gets it now. His face drains of color.

  “You can’t possibly be suggesting what I think you’re suggesting,” he says.

  “It could work,” says Crow.

  Gabriel snaps his head toward Crow. “Do you really think that? Or are you just trying to get in Rachel’s good books?”

  Crow gives a half-shrug, eyes glinting, and takes a sip of his bright green drink.

  “I mean, seriously,” says Gabriel. “How would this not be making everything a hundred times worse?”

  “Yet you’re not saying no,” says Crow. “Which means you know it has legs.”

  Gabriel’s cheeks pinken as he looks down at the bar. “We can’t . . .” His voice is quiet. “I’m an Angel. It goes against everything—”

  “Think about it, mate,” says Crow. “He doesn’t want to be on Earth. Not yet. He knows he can’t stay because he knows he can’t win. That’s why he was recruiting all those years ago. That’s why I was murdered in the first place. But there’s been no activity since, right?”

  “No. But—”

  “Don’t get me wrong, he’ll be pissed to be here. And he’s a monster. Much worse than Adalind. We’ll all be putting our lives and our souls in danger.” Crow shrugs. “But we’re in danger anyway if Adalind succeeds. As is the rest of humanity. And he’s the only monster she fears; the only one with the power to drag her back to Hell.” He raises his glass to me. “I’m with Rachel on this one.”

  I appreciate the support even if I’m not sure Crow, with his many schemes of self-destruction, is the person I want on my side.

  Jonathon blows out hot air. “We’re putting a lot of faith in the idea he won’t want to continue with the Apocalypse once here,” he says.

  “Aye. But you’re a man of science, mate,” says Crow. “What would you say the evidence is suggesting?”

  Jonathon stares at Crow, then at me. Then he sighs in the way that I know means I’ve won.

  “Just so we’re all clear, what exactly are you suggesting, babe?” Josie says, but when I turn to her, I can tell from the worry in her eyes that she already knows.

  I pick up my drink and stick an umbrella in it, noting Gabriel was right—it does taste better with a bit of decoration.
<
br />   “I’m saying we deliver the final Revelation Scroll,” I say. “I’m saying we trigger the actual Apocalypse. I’m saying we summon Lucifer.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  An hour and a half later, Crow and I stand outside a tall, tired-looking apartment block in downtown Los Angeles.

  “This the one?” he says.

  I glance at the Afterlife app. Jonathon gave us the privileges we need to see where Adalind lives. Crow’s black spot and my red one are right over it on the map.

  “Yeah.”

  It’s taken too long already to get here. The traffic was bad, thanks to what the radio reported was a sinkhole on the street leading to Devils Inc.

  Adalind must be trying to get into Halo Corp.

  We need to get the final scroll and deliver it to Apocalypse before it’s too late.

  Crow turns his head to look at me. The sky is overcast—a stark contrast to the bright sun and blue skies this morning—almost as if it knows what’s coming. It darkens his already stormy eyes.

  “Well, shall we?” he says.

  I pull my gaze away. “Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

  He walks to the building’s peeling white door and puts his hand flat against the buzzer. The shadows from the hanging basket of dead flowers and the traffic lights slide over to collect at his feet. Slowly, they travel up the doorframe.

  As he does his Omen thing, I quickly check Afterlife. Gabriel’s white spot is at Halo Corp, where he headed to draw up some forces should we need to fight. Jonathon isn’t on the map, but I know he went with him to make sure Adam and Eve were safe. I quickly swipe over to find Josie’s purple pinpoint at Apocalypse. She went as soon as we left Evie’s to find out as much as she could about what happens once the end is triggered.

  The click of the door draws my attention back to our breaking and entering. Crow steps in casually, as though he’s entering his own home rather than the residence of a gargantuan serpent.

  “You coming, little Demon?” says Crow.

  Truthfully, I’d have rather brought one of the others, but Crow was the best for this Ethereal burglary job.

  “Yeah. Don’t call me that.” I follow him into the mouth of the building.

  “Sorry. Rachel,” he says as we head for the stairs. “Which floor?”

  “Third floor. Apartment fourteen,” I murmur.

  He takes the stairs two at a time, and I follow, the lights in the walls flickering as he passes. When we come out on the third-floor landing, the shadows are already sliding down the floor ahead of us to curl up Adalind’s door and break the lock.

  When Crow puts a hand on the handle and pulls, however, it doesn’t open. He frowns, then bends down to peer through the keyhole. I wrench him back.

  “Have you never seen a horror movie?” I hiss. “Because this is the point where some idiot looking through a keyhole gets their eye poked out.”

  “Nice to know you still care, little De—”

  “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  His gaze flicks pointedly down to my hand. “Aye.”

  Weak blue flames dance at my fingertips. I curse. I’ve tried my whole life to hide my feelings, and now I literally burst into flames when I get pissed off? I hate that Crow knows he can still get under my skin.

  I hurl the small ball of flames at the lock. It shatters, creating a small hole in the wood.

  “You’re a dick,” I say.

  “She had an anti-Omen device built around the lock,” he explains. “See the light around it? That prevents the shadows from—”

  “You could have just said that.”

  “Aye. But where’s the fun in that, little Demon?”

  I have to swallow down another wave of irritation as Crow kicks in the door.

  “Fun? This is fun for you, Ewan?” I ask as we step inside, and then I feel a burst of satisfaction at the way he tenses at the sound of his real name.

  But I don’t enjoy it for long because now we’re in, and I have a scroll to find amid what turns out to be a lot of clutter. I guess when you’ve been alive since Genesis, you end up collecting a lot of crap.

  The prominent features are a scuffed black sofa, a black leather recliner, an old boxy TV, a pile of leather books on an antique-looking coffee table, and a small writing desk littered with maps and law textbooks. There are used mugs everywhere and a black marble fruit bowl full of rotting apples on the chipped windowsill. Weirdly, the shelves on one wall are almost entirely filled with those Troll dolls with the brightly-colored hair.

  Crow exhales next to me. “Not fun, no. Maybe I just want you to be angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe because anger is better than nothing at all.”

  I look at him hard. “Seriously, Crow. What the hell do you want?” But then I hold up a hand. “No. You know what? We don’t have time for this. Let’s just get the scroll and get out of—”

  I stop talking, my eyes drawn across the room. Above the desk, there’s a collection of photographs, including that awful “slutty Demon” photo of me from Instagram.

  “Oh, god,” I say.

  “I know,” says Crow, though he’s staring at the wall of Trolls.

  “Not that,” I huff. I tug his arm. “That.”

  “Can’t have a villain’s lair without a photo collage of your diabolical plan,” says Crow darkly.

  “That’s seriously creepy,” I say, my irritation momentarily forgotten.

  “Aye,” says Crow, crossing the room to rip it down. Then he looks down at the desk and picks something up. “Oh, hey, scroll’s here.” He turns to face me, brandishing a yellowing piece of parchment sealed with crimson wax. He throws it in the air and catches it. “That was easy.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “You just don’t give a shit, do you?”

  “Eh?”

  “Who says shit like that right before an Apocalypse? Are you trying to tempt fate?”

  A smile spreads across his face, and he shrugs, but then he runs a hand over his mouth.

  “Just . . . talk to me, Rachel,” he says. “Tell me I’m a dick. Throw a fireball at me. Whatever. Let’s just get on with it.”

  “So you can feel better?”

  “Aye. So I can feel better.” He crosses the room, stopping close enough that I can smell his shower gel. “It may have escaped your notice, but I’m a selfish dick. Just hit me or something.” His breathing is heavy, like he’s bracing himself for what’s next. “Go on,” he says. “Just do it.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Liar. Come on, little Demon. Hit me.”

  As I glare up at him, a lick of angry heat flares in my stomach. A part of me does want to lash out; to inflict some of my pain on him.

  Instead, I take a step back. “You should have told me. It wasn’t fair. Not what you did to me. Not what you did to Gabriel either. I’m not going to hit you to ease your conscience. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Fine. Don’t do it to ease my conscience. Do it to make you feel better.”

  “I need time.”

  “We don’t have time.” His cheeks are flushed, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he seems genuinely agitated. “We’re about to trigger the Apocalypse.”

  “Let’s just go,” I say, starting to turn away.

  He grabs my arm. “I’m sorry. I truly am, Rachel. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Like hell you didn’t,” I say, spinning back around and wrenching my arm out of his grasp. Although I can see his satisfaction at provoking a reaction, I don’t care. He’s right. It does feel good to be angry. “You hid something from me. Something I deserved to know.”

  He opens his mouth to reply, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop.

  “And I know, we had a casual thing. It didn’t have to mean anything. But you did exactly what Gabriel said you would. You worked to hook me. You tried to make it seem like more than that. You tried to make me open up to you, to tru
st you.”

  “Rachel, listen—”

  “No. You listen. I see what you do now. You flit around fabricating real connections until you get what you want because you’ve figured out that’s what works best for you. It’s messed up. For a moment, you made me feel like we actually had something, and I don’t connect easily.” I stop then, feeling flushed.

  His eyes flash. “Has it ever occurred to you that you felt that way because we did have something?”

  “No. You’re married, Crow. You hid it. Who does that!”

  “I know. And I know it’s messed up. I love her, and ever since I lost her, I’ve had to focus on trying to make things right or I’ll go fucking insane. I can’t give anyone else what they want or deserve from me, so most of the time, I don’t even try. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything. It doesn’t mean everything is fake. It just . . . I don’t know how to do this.”

  I shake my head. “I might almost believe you. But you did the exact same thing to Gabriel.”

  “Aye. And I cared about Gabriel too!”

  Even in the cramped apartment, the words echo.

  With a sigh, he rubs his face. “I don’t know how to do this,” he says. “I love my wife. I always have. I always will. But it’s over. I know it’s over. I just . . . I just can’t let it go. Ever since I died, it’s been my only fucking purpose. Making things right. And if I do let it go, I’m scared I’ll fall apart.”

  He looks at me then.

  “I care about you, Rachel. Yes, I started out protecting you because I wanted something from your brother. I never lied about that. And at first, I slept with you because I’m a dick and I thought you were hot. I admit it. But the rest of it . . . I wasn’t trying to mess with you, or fake something, or get a hook into you. It was just . . . me.” He shakes his head. “You deserve better. I should have exercised caution. I—”

  “You should have been honest with me,” I say quietly.

  “Aye. I should have been honest with you. I’m sorry. I truly am. And if this all goes to shit”—he glances at the scroll, then back to me—“I just want you to know that. Because if I get trapped in some depth of Hell and I can’t get to you, I want you to know that you didn’t mean nothing. I’ll never be able to tell Maddie that. But I had to tell you. Before the end. I had to. Maybe that’s selfish. But I had to. I just . . . I’m sorry.”