by Aya DeAniege
“We need to get that drink back.”
“Sure, just climb on into Hell, find Baal and beat him up until he spits it back out.”
“I can do that,” Sam said, sitting up.
I grabbed his arm and tugged him back down. He laid down, but there was a resistance to him as he did. Sam sighed and laid on his side once more, facing me. His head gave a little shake as he watched me.
“You don’t believe me,” he said.
“I’m an atheist,” I said, repeating what I had told him earlier, except this time in an annoyed voice.
“Ouch. Oh no, I think that means I’m supposed to die or something. Because if you don’t believe in something, it stops existing.”
“Like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Then, why are you still here and existing, if I don’t believe in you or your God?”
“I just like looking at your face is all.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Mm,” he murmured, eyes roving down my face and then my chest. He hesitated for just a moment, then looked back up and met my eyes. “Admittedly, if I thought I could get away with it, I’d be on top of you right now, taking advantage of all your good qualities. Maybe even enough to make you call out to my father.”
I laughed, covering my mouth with the stuffed animal as I did. He smiled in response, then he reached out and moved a strand of hair out of my eyes.
“What’s stopping you?” I asked.
“Your dream,” he said, settling his hand back under his face. “For starters, I don’t feel comfortable doing that to you after you dreamed about my attempting to force myself on you.”
“So?” I asked. “If you’re worried about feeling dirty, there’s a position for that, you know.”
“Oh, really?” he purred out, lips curling upward. “Well, if that’s what you’d like to do, by all means. It’s been a while since I simply laid there and took it.”
After seeing Grace off to school, I headed to the club. The others were already there, gathered in a booth with the drink before them. The new one, which one of the bartenders had created after having a dream about it.
I slipped into the booth and sat before the fourth drink.
“Baal is trying to claw his way out of Hell,” I said.
I reached out and caressed the stem of the glass, wondering how Grace had created this image for her chalice. She hadn’t known about the drink. No one outside the club knew about the drink, and even within it, we were keeping things under wraps. It had been created and tested for our anniversary party happening the next week.
“Does anyone remember how we got him down there in the first place?” Ralph asked, looking between the others.
“He went of his own accord,” I said. “He chose to go and rule Hell over serving on Earth or in Heaven. That was his choice. He can still come back, but he’s only been interested in a person or a place, never enough to actually come back. Why now?”
“And why Grace?” Mike asked.
“I checked with the bartenders,” Gabe said. “None of them made this drink during club hours, per their promise to you. I don’t understand how she could have formed this idea. I mean, anyone could have, but why this drink as her chalice? The one that our worker named after her. And how does she even know what a chalice is?”
“Lilly told her,” I said. “The idea of the chalice as the body isn’t a new one. She may have heard it elsewhere as well. The question is then: why is Baal trying to consume Grace’s soul?”
We all stared at the drinks before us, considering them in a heavy silence.
Demons dragged souls down to Hell, but they didn’t partake of a human’s chalice. They would place drugs in the chalice—in the dream world—or tip it over. They might bring several humans together and convince them to sip of another’s chalice. But for a demon drink of a human meant to take their soul and all that they were into the demon.
A shadow was not a demon, would never be a demon. The rules were different for shadows and demons.
That meant they could be killed, then subjected to the laws of God. As a demon, they would end up in Hell, stuck there for all eternity tormented by other demons and unable to escape ever again.
“Which brings us back to the original question,” Ralph said.
“What makes Grace special?” Mike said, looking up from his glass, to me. “Besides you being the one to take her on. Unless this is about that. You haven’t been with anyone like this since Lilly.”
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?” I demanded. “There’s nothing like that between us. I am seeing to her needs.”
It was impossible for me to feel like that about Grace. I would never feel that way about anyone else.
Just as, once Grace no longer needed me, I would never love anyone the way I loved her.
Was I really thinking about love?
“Buying her things, helping her move,” Ralph said quietly, keeping his eyes on his drink. “We’re simply pointing out that which you’ve yet to come to understand. You’re in denial, that doesn’t change the facts.”
“What facts?” I asked.
“You aren’t with her for the sake of her soul,” Gabe said. “You spent last night with her.”
“Lilly?”
“No,” Mike said. “The moving crew you hired. Your bill an hour later, buying her toys? You don’t buy them anything, except drinks to get them into bed. What are you even doing, Sam? Do you not remember what happened last time?”
“I do, thank you for the unnecessary reminder. What I do with my life is only your business when it causes a problem. And when that problem is caused, it is not your place to question me on it. You are meant to help me solve the problem. So, help me solve this problem.”
“Her background is strange,” Gabe said.
“How’s that help us?” I asked.
“What if she wasn’t… What if she’s not human? Wouldn’t be the first time a virgin birth happened. Mother freaks out over the birth, drops the kid off at the local hospital and bolts.”
I could very well see a woman in the modern age experiencing a virgin birth and doing just such a thing. The problem with that was that there were no virgin births, because He had learned from his mistakes.
No longer were actual virgins used. The births were still miracles, there was no father, but the women never knew that.
It was safer that way.
“You think Father sent her?”
Gabe shrugged.
“I’m just trying to toss out an idea. Father sent is a possibility. Demons do like claiming those souls sent by Father. Baal getting involved, however, is a little different. Him clawing his way out of his pit, that’s practically impressive.”
“What if her name isn’t her name?” Ralph said suddenly.
We all turned to him. He looked confused, yet surprised at the same time. Slowly, Ralph turned to me and frowned.
“You think she’s literal grace incarnate?” I asked.
“Grace, wings, and halos of the Heavenly Host can be delivered into the form of a reborn body which has lost its soul,” Gabe said, pulling out his phone. “We’ve witnessed it before with minor hosts. The wings of a pixie born on Earth as punishment for being punny.”
“He wasn’t laughing without his wings,” Mike snarled.
“But Michael did that,” Ralph said. “This isn’t Heavenly Host I’m talking about. What if Father sent Grace? What if she is grace born in physical form? This? Glowing and throbbing to the music of Hell? None of us told her about the drink. It was glowing from the inside.”
“This isn’t quite our colour, but near to,” Gabe murmured, turning the glass between two fingers. “It’d be the first thing we’ve heard from him in thousands of years. A grace, a chance.”
“Redemption,” Ralph added quietly.
The three of them turned to me, which caused me to stiffen.
Grace, that which all angels were bo
rn with, allowed us entrance into and out of Heaven. Without grace, an angel could not pass through the gates. They could be dragged through, kicking and screaming, by a guardian of the gates, but that shredded their wings, rendering them mortal and subject them to the laws of life and death.
We had given up our graces to remain on Earth permanently. We had a job to do, things to fix. The last line of defense between humans and demons. Since giving up our graces, we had very little communication with Heaven.
“If Baal is going after her, it’s very possible,” Mike said. “It would also suggest that it’s your grace specifically.”
“He doesn’t have a full set of wings, he can’t get into Heaven,” Gabe said.
A cold washed over me.
“He doesn’t need his own personal wings,” I said, looking over the others. “I’ve flown on the wings of another angel before. All he needs is to reach Earth. He can rip anyone’s wings from their backs and fly with them. Once through the gates, he’d simply have to remove them to prevent the guardians from awaking.”
“That’s how you got out to see Lillith,” Gabe said. “To warn her that Father was sending Michael to smite her.”
“I was doing my job,” Mike protested before anyone could speak up.
It was a fight that we had had for quite some time before everything was settled. We had all followed orders that we hadn’t liked. We had all done things which we never wanted to speak of again.
“If he’s crawling his way back to Earth, we need to know where he’s going to appear,” Ralph said. “There are a couple of possible weak spots in the city, which is why we’re in this city. Why we were told to come here.”
Gabe was uncomfortable for a moment.
“The witches have a spot. Just, strange buildings have been permitted over the years, roads and parkways with trees placed just so. Across different mayors and committees.”
“And they didn’t think to tell us?” I asked.
“We did strip a promising young witch of her magic and left her a drooling normal with no future whatsoever,” Gabe said with a shake of his head. “It’s no wonder they didn’t share this information with us in the first place. They relate us to Christians and the like, many of whom burned witches for using magic. Their trust is not guaranteed. Respect is not there.
“We should have used her for her spell, then turned her over to the Grand Coven, not dealt with it ourselves. That was foolish of us. Now we’ve got ourselves in a hole with them, and they’re only offering this information up because they’re concerned about what might be about to happen.”
“And what do they think is about to happen?” I asked.
“They’re calling it a landing pad,” Gabe said. “It’s on top of some skyscraper. It was completed after we built the club, believe it or not.”
“Are we certain our orders came from Heaven, then is the question,” Mike said. “And does burning it down change anything?”
“No, once activated, this sort of spell can’t be deactivated. It was random luck. What it means is that if any demon crawls out of Hell, it ends up there first. Then it goes where it pleases.”
“Doesn’t sound like the work of a devil,” I said. “If there was a landing pad, as you suggest, and we knew about it, we could just camp out on the spot and kill whatever came through.”
“You haven’t got a weapon,” Mike said. “Only I do.”
Killing Baal wouldn’t be like killing the Hell’s Legions. Our wings wouldn’t work, only a weapon of Heaven could do the deed.
“Then, I’ll take your weapon and use it for myself,” I said.
Using Michael’s weapon on Baal probably wasn’t a good idea. It should have been my weapon that I used. All Michael’s flaming sword did was piss Baal off.
My phone went off. I slipped it out of my pocket and opened my text. It was from Grace and was an image of her smiling face. Her smile made me smile. I responded with a query as to how her day was going, then set the phone on the table. That way, I could see when she responded.
Folding my hands, I set them on the table just by my glass.
“We need the address of that skyscraper. We need our weapons and whatever knowledge the witches have,” I said. “Mike, do a fly over the city, see what you can see, get a handle on this. Ralph, contact Heaven. Tell them we have the landing pad, let’s see if we can drive them out, or alter their plans. Gabe, reach out to the witches. I’m going to see what I can do from my end.”
“You mean, find Grace, kill her, and take that which resides inside of her?” Mike asked. “The grace will only leave her if she dies. Or, apparently, if Baal visits in her sleep and drinks of her chalice.”
“I’m not going to kill her, neither are any of you,” I said. “That’s not why she’s here, and if it were, we’d have no way to know whose grace it is. We can’t do that. It’s not fair to any of us, it would be greedy of one. We’re to keep her alive until her natural end. The grace will revert once that happens. Correct, Ralph?”
“Baal can only get into Heaven with your grace,” Ralph said.
“Fine, find a way for me to call him up from Hell, and I’ll end it here and now. No more waiting, no prayer or hope about it. Straight forward and dealing with this here and now. Everything he is, is my fault. All he does is on me. I’ve allowed him to stay there because I can’t exactly go down without a key of my own and the price for a key is far too high.”
When I stopped talking, they all just sat there. Staring at me as I considered my drink. I had expected them to leave, but they continued to sit there. I finally looked up at them, then around the club. No one else was paying attention to us.
“What are you waiting for?” I demanded. “Get going.”
They all slipped out of the booth and headed off. I continued to sit in the booth, sighing loudly through my nose.
Around me, the club continued as if nothing had happened. The bartender continued to stock things, the waitresses were wiping down the tables, and the back of house crew was moving through, inspecting everything.
I had a certain quality that my club always had to meet. With the anniversary coming up shortly, things had to be even more perfect. It wasn’t the anniversary of the club opening, no, it was the anniversary of the ground breaking. We planned to celebrate several anniversaries a year. It was a way to make as much money as we could, causing a celebration every few months to get the humans moving.
“Sir?”
I pulled myself out of my haze and looked at who had spoken. One of the doormen had snuck up on me.
“Says you called him for a back of house interview,” the doorman said, then motioned and walked off.
Across from me sat the cook from Grace’s old job. The two of us watched one another for a long moment before I reached out and picked up the glass before me.
I thought Grace had told me his name but I could not recall what it was. It had been a trivial detail that I hadn’t needed at the time.
“What can I do for you?” I asked before I sipped my drink.
Too sweet.
I made a mental note to speak with the bartenders about that. We were still struggling with balancing the sweet and tangy in the drink. Some of them got it almost right, but others dropped to one side or the other. Every drink had to taste the same, otherwise, there was no damned point in having a special drink.
A little tin that had once held hard candies was set on the table and then pushed toward me. I eyed the tin for what it was, a trap.
While I set my glass back on the table, I eyed the tin, and the Host sitting across from me, with suspicion.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He sighed, reached over and opened the tin, then pushed it further toward me. I leaned forward and peered into the box. Inside was a blackened something with a glossy, almost oily surface.
Even a couple of hundred years ago, such a sight was rare. In the modern world, however, black, shiny, oily looking something wasn’t a concern at all. It migh
t mean a health hazard or a chemical spill, but it didn’t bring up the concern that such a thing had once brought out in people.
“Ectoplasm,” the Host said in a bland tone. “Found it in my apartment building no less.”
“Let’s just cut out all the unnecessary,” I said. “You were sent by Heaven to watch Grace, why?”
He gave his head a little shake.
“I wasn’t told why, only to keep a close eye on her. To encourage some kind of connection outward. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was guarding a replacement for you. She’s just so… you.”
“She’s not me.”
“She’s you ten thousand years ago. She’s you in training, so cut off from everyone else and everything, afraid to make a connection.”
“Is He making more of us?”
“He’s decided it’s time that the four seats be filled once more. Either by new ones or by you.”
“We own our seats. He can’t fill them while we’re still alive.”
“All of Heaven knows that. We think He wants you all back, but it’s not our place to say because we don’t reside in those seats. One of you needs to come back and tell Him what for.”
“We won’t come back. We can’t come back. Not as long as the gates of Hell are wedged open. Baal is coming back. You realize that, right? He’s coming for her, targeting Grace. He even sipped of her chalice.”
“Sipped of her… why would he do that?”
“If he consumes her, he consumes the grace that’s inside of her. Then all he needs to do is find a Host and rip off their wings.”
“The guardians would never let him through.”
“They would if he removed the wings while still on the landing pad of Heaven. It’s possible.”
“How would he know it was possible?”
“Because I’ve done it before. He knows all I know.”
The Host was silent a moment. He looked away and made a face, then turned back to me.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked. “Have to kill him, or lock him away, and you can’t remove the wedge. If you could have, you would have done it already. How are you going to kill him?”