She gave him a dispassionate expression. Her father had drugged her, too. Her sympathy wasn’t going to be easily stoked.
“One day, it was warm and all the kids were still outside playing as dusk descended. Knowing the cringe would soon hit, I climbed a downspout and huddled against the chimney. I saw the thing rise up and zigzag among my friends. None of them reacted. That was when I realized they really couldn’t see it. Only me…because I was bad, so bad my parents didn’t want me anymore. I just wanted it to be over. I jumped.”
Jovienne couldn’t hide her shock. Her fears didn’t drive her to suicide. But then she she’d had Gramma.
He continued, words tumbling out faster. “Like you, I was unconscious for weeks. I woke up with my scar.” He released the rail and poked at his temple. “A man named Vincent collected me just as I collected you. He brought me to San Francisco. As my pedagogue, he was the father I’d always wanted, even though he didn’t have the quintanumin.”
“What? How could he teach you what he didn’t know?”
Andrei shrugged. “I have no idea how he was aware of them, or how he knew what to say to teach me, but he did. More than that, he understood what I needed. Every evening when dusk grew near, he put a book in my hands. I learned English, focusing so hard on the words to try and forget the cringe was coming. Eventually, he gave me Shakespeare. The rhythm of those lines was the best distraction. Best, that is, until you discovered the heights.” He almost smiled as his gaze flitted over the water again. “I loved him.”
After a moment, Andrei continued. “I was seventeen when Vincent told me I was ready to test. He walked me to a run-down house in Little Italy and told me to go inside. He walked away.” His voice steadied into the flat tone of the pedagogue. “When the cringe began, when the thing rose so close to me, all the horror of my youth resurfaced. Terrified it would take me, I fled. I went home and told Vincent what happened.”
Jovienne’s eyes widened. I could have just walked away?
“For months, he asked me every day to retake the test. He argued with me, he counselled me against fear and suggested ways to get past it. In time, he stopped arguing and stopped asking me to go. His drinking had doubled and redoubled. I’d sought a different life, helping my fellow man through social work. It satisfied me. I wanted him to be proud of me but…” Iciness crept into his tone. “When I was nineteen, my drunk father got into his car and left while I was volunteering at the crisis counseling center. He died instantly when his car—” his voice cracked. “He died when his car struck the median and flipped, landing on your family’s van.”
Jovienne’s heart thudded slow. She’d given up on Andrei being her hero, but she’d thought he was the circumstantial bad guy, not the outright villain.
Andrei looked square in her eyes and repeated, “My father was drunk because I failed him. And he was behind the wheel of the vehicle that killed your family.”
He’s the reason my family died.
He’s the reason I was given the quintanumin.
He’s the reason my life has come to this.
“In my pain and loss,” he continued, “I returned to the house in Little Italy to test. What else could I do? I’d lost my father. I drove away all his pride before he died. I ruined him.” He drew a shaking breath. “I felt so guilty. All my anguish bled into that test’s fight. And I could have won.”
“If you could have won,” the words crawled between her clenched teeth, “why am I the abhadhon?”
He stared at his hands. “I had the demon down. I was ready to cleave its head, but it transformed into Vincent. I couldn’t finish,” Andrei said. “I couldn’t kill his false image though I surely destroyed the man.”
I’m the abhadhon because, of the two of us, I am the monster’s monster.
“Then I received the order to train my replacement.” Andrei faced her with as miserable a countenance as she’d ever seen him wear. “God sent me to you, Jovienne. Forgive me for the life my resistance, my failure, bought you.”
At that, her stoic teacher sank to his knees and said:
“My shame and guilt confound me.
Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender’t here: I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit.”
No one else would have the nerve to borrow the Bard’s apology. No one else could have done it with as much sincerity.
Eyes squeezed shut, she thought her tears would fall, but her cheeks remained dry. There was no forgiveness to give him.
She released the notion that Andrei was worthy of her love.
He used her to buy himself out.
ANDREI STRUGGLED WITH the decision, but Jovienne stood with her eyes shut for so long that he came to his feet and dared to embrace her.
She revived instantly and shoved him away. “Never touch me like that!”
He recognized the words as his own.
“It’s sick,” she whispered.
He allowed those syllables past his emotional barricade, allowed them inside where they would hurt. He deserved it.
“The quintanumin were shoved inside of my head while I was unconscious. They’ve been the focus of every Goddamned moment of my life since I woke. You knew everything and you told me nothing.” He saw her fist coming, but at the last she opened her hand. The slap cracked like a whip and her strength made him stumble. “I trusted you,” she shouted. “I believed in you! You were everything to me!”
He recovered his balance and stood slump-shouldered, rubbing his jaw.
Whispering, she added, “Not once did you even ask if I’d wanted this.”
“If you wanted this?” Surprise widened his eyes. His hand fell away from his burning cheek. “God chose you to be an abhadhon and so you are.”
“You aren’t!”
He blinked. “I failed.”
“You chose not to test. If you’re telling the truth, when you changed your mind and went back, you chose not to kill the demon, too. And somehow you managed to not be taken to Hell like you warned me I would.”
“It didn’t beat me, I ran away!” He hadn’t questioned any of that, satisfied that it had all been God’s will.
She turned her back on him. He noticed her bunched shoulders and her white knuckles, holding the painted steel rail like she’d be swept away if she let go. He never would have suspected that anything could make her this miserable. He’d believed she would be joyous as an abhadhon. “Jovienne—”
“You got to choose.” She spun to face him. “But you never told me I had a choice. But then you wouldn’t, would you? Because you needed me to be your replacement. To do this so you wouldn’t have to. You bought your way out with me, and now, NOW you want me to believe I didn’t have a choice because God wanted it that way? Fuck you, Andrei. If God had to get what He wanted, then you’d be the abhadhon.” She turned to leave.
He had to stop her. “I thought you’d want to know the truth.”
She glared over her shoulder. “Thanks. I feel much better knowing I’m here because you’re a failure.”
The words stung. “But you’re a success.”
“A success? How do you define success? I could have had a normal life if you would have killed one demon.”
He shook his head. “A normal life? No. You’re not one of them.” He threw his arm toward the city. “You see the cinders. We both did that long before the quintanumin ever came to us.”
“You don’t understand.” She gripped the railing again. “It isn’t just demon lives at stake.”
“You’re immortal now. You can’t die.”
“You think I’m worried about me? Damn it, Andrei! Didn’t you hear me? There’s a dead woman in an alley! An innocent woman died in the process of me getting the demon! You didn’t train me for this.”
Having carried the truth about her parents so long, he knew well how the death of innocents weighed on the soul. The death of those addicts the other n
ight had added to his burden.
He’d been overjoyed to know she was alive, but now, seeing her distraught, guilty, angry, and cold, this ache had to be tenfold worse than slaying the demon that looked like Vincent. It was like something ripped apart the girl he knew and put her back together as someone else. Someone he didn’t know.
As an abhadhon.
His eyes burned. “In spite of all that I’m not, Jovienne, I know what you are. You’re amazing. You’re not a quitter. I can’t believe that. I won’t. That’s not who you were when we met, let alone who you’ve grown to be with training. You chose to push yourself! You mastered techniques and learned to improvise in ways I couldn’t. I never forced you to practice. I never needed to.”
“You’re saying it’s my own fault even though you—”
“No! I’m saying that I was flawed from the start. My will was broken by the marms and my desire to live was shattered by the cinders. Please, don’t doubt yourself, don’t blame yourself, just see yourself how I see you. You’ve always been fierce, strong, and willful. Don’t let that change! You did what you set out to do. If you shift your mind to success and glory, nothing will stop you, Jovienne. Something inside you is driven unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” It was a good speech. It was heartfelt. It was spoken with passion and fervor.
Then Jovienne destroyed it, asking softly, “Don’t you know what drove me?”
Andrei knew.
His chin dropped to his chest and he searched for an answer, for words to fix this, but he found none. He looked up ready to admit exactly that, but the night gathered behind her like darkness solidifying, and that blackness formed wings which fanned majestically. The feathers sprung into focus, each fiber resplendent, tips bending slightly in the breeze.
His jaw slackened in awe of the beautiful vision she was. His knees felt weak before her glory.
She ruined that too.
“This stupid game we play is useless,” she said.
“Game? What game?” he asked.
“Lying for as long as we can to avoid the truth.” She swallowed quickly, as if that motion would reclaim the words she’d let slip. “The game we play for God,” she added. “There’s no honor in immortality like this or the price paid to achieve it when so many have already died.”
“There’s no honor in mocking the status you’ve earned.”
“Status? I haven’t any status.”
“Your wings—”
“I’m a servant,” she growled. “A deity-sanctioned murderer!” She shook her head. “I am a meaner creature, Andrei. In my test, the demon became the only person in my whole life who ever loved me. It became my mother.” She drew a shaking breath. “But that didn’t stay my hand. I proved that I’m a monster’s monster. This is what you helped make me. I can’t say I’m as proud of it as you are.”
The wings carried her away.
He watched her soar high over the Pacific. She didn’t look back.
When she was out of sight, his gaze dropped to the horizon beyond the embarcadero. The air was heavy with salt as if the ocean meant to share in the tears that should have been shed. He preferred it like this, tasting the saltwater air rather than feeling it on his cheeks or seeing it on hers.
The cold breeze swirled around him and elicited a shiver. He pulled his coat tight. It would be a long walk to McGhee’s.
NINE
Monday
Lake City, Florida
ARAXIEL SET HIS alarm for five AM and was on the road by six, breakfast burrito in hand. It was more than thirty-one hundred miles from Miami to San Francisco. That equated to a little over fifty road-hours, or less since the Bugatti inspired him to disobey speed limits.
He had plenty of time to consider his options for approaching this abhadhon.
San Francisco, California
JOVIENNE SLEPT. DREAMING, she stood in a white, windowless room at the foot of a hospital bed, looking down on a frail unconscious girl. Tubes stuck in her arms and plugged her nose. A bandage padded her temple. Monitors gathered around the bed like expectant family, but there was no one to visit this girl or read her favorite books aloud.
Recognizing her small self in that unresponsive prison of flesh, the beeps of the machines faded away and a voice she did not recognize began calling her name.
“Jovienne…Jovienne…Jovienne.”
No different from any other time her father summoned her, she felt torn between the fear of answering and the consequences of not answering.
She’d spent thirteen weeks like this, incapable of waking, suffering with this maddening calling of her name.
All at once, she grabbed the bedframe. Shaking it with all her might, she shouted, “Answer! Answer, damn it! Go if you can. You don’t want this life!”
A cry escaped Jovienne’s lips as she lurched up from her slumber and scrambled to her feet, panting.
Leaning against the retracted edge of the elevator door, she wiped her sweat-drenched brow. Having removed her clothes to sleep nestled in her wings, the cold air from the open warehouse chilled the sweat on her skin.
The weak evening light was a reminder of inevitability. Somewhere, a cinder lurked beneath the surface, waiting for its release.
Even if the average San Franciscan couldn’t sense the distortions in their world, it was there, secretly beating on their flesh, churning in the streets, slinking into their renowned restaurants and swirling around Coit Tower. It existed in the rolling fog and it touched everything with damp fingers.
She glanced at the armor piled on the makeshift table. She should be getting her gear on, but she didn’t want to. The city wasn’t overrun with demons now, so someone must have done this before her transformation. Probably the scarlet winged angel she’d glimpsed last night.
That decided it: when the quintanumin impelled her, she wouldn’t go. Let things go back to how they were days ago.
But what if another innocent dies because I don’t go?
Jovienne backed into the darkness of the elevator.
Drops of rain pattered onto the floor underneath the hole in the roof. When the drums thudded against the sky, she shoved her fingers into her ears. It didn’t muffle the drums at all. Rocking back and forth and humming didn’t drown out the percussion, either. For once, she wished she had the pills her father used to give her.
When the thumping beat finally faded, it wasn’t long before the Call That Followed brought her to her feet.
A demon was arriving in San Francisco.
And I choose not to go. It took all of her willpower to make her body sit down.
At that, the quintanumin erupted.
Triggered, Jovienne came to her feet again and, led by the instinct to answer, she exited the elevator.
“No.” She locked her knees and glared at the sky.
Distant thunder growled and a chill, damp wind swirled through the warehouse as the rain increased to a downpour.
“No! I will not go.”
Disgrace jolted through her body. Like the red lightning that had remade her, this buzzed and trilled as it grew stronger. When it throbbed inside her head, burning at the scar on her temple, she crumbled to the floor, curling and squirming into the fetal position like she’d seen Andrei do so many times when the cringe hit.
“Don’t make me go!”
Nausea burned in her stomach. Her body convulsed. Muscles spasmed. Sweat crept from her pores. Her stomach cramped and she heaved, but to no avail. Though she sobbed, no tears came. When she thought that she could take no more, lightning flashed and the pain disappeared.
Thunder boomed in the distance, as foreboding as her father slamming a door.
Feeling as weak as the day she woke from the coma, Jovienne lay panting on the floor. A low-level humming in her temples told her the pain would begin again in moments.
“You’re just using me,” she shouted at the sky. “Using me to get what you want!” Like Andrei. “What about what I want?”
The second round of pain beg
an. Her body became lead. This ultimatum threatened to crush her spirit into powder.
“You made angels. You made them obedient,” she whimpered. “But I was human first. You gave me free will!”
The pain and scolding was excruciating, but one thing was missing: the fear that it might kill her. As an immortal, this utter ache could go on forever.
If her resistance would only break her spirit, then her freedom would never be achieved by non-compliance. She had to be the monster’s monster.
For now.
She rolled onto her side and climbed to her knees, vowing to find a way. All the energy she once used for training, all her best efforts, would go into this one new focus.
Despite heavy legs, she gained her feet. She scooped up the abhadhim gear. As soon as she began putting it on, the pain faded. Her shaking fingers were stiff at the buckles, but she dressed. Stepping into the circle of rain pouring through the torn roof, she lifted her arms to welcome the knowledge of the demon’s location.
Leaping into the air, she headed south and earned the reward of grace, of being potent and fierce and utterly alive. Her body flooded with peremptory warmth and the strength of obedience. All traces of pain vanished. But the resentment in her soul redoubled. She’d thought herself a servant, but this was much worse. She had been beaten for not working.
She was a slave.
THE RAIN HAD passed by the time Jovienne’s feet touched down atop a crane. She studied the junkyard before her. Lined up to create wide aisles, cars sat in haggard pieces, their wounds exposed.
Activating the enhanced vision, she discovered that squinting could produce a color effect like night and heat vision combined. It made things in motion slightly blurry and easy to detect.
Like this, she detected a reddish-orange blob shaped like a four-armed demon. It darted along a row of the forgotten automobile shells. Because of the shape, she surmised it wasn’t harbored within a person and was therefore not a possessor. Not a changeling, either. It would have gone into ghost form and passed through the vehicles to escape her, or perhaps mask itself by having no substance to hold heat with. That left only one possibility: an imp.
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