Good Side of Sin

by Haigwood, K. S.

  I always felt—no, he always made me feel like I was doing something wrong. First with the amazing first kiss and now this! Rejection. Rejection. Rejection. He tells me that he wants me, and then pushes me away. I don’t get it. Is it something I’m doing? Do I not know how to flirt? I rolled my eyes. Of course I don’t.

  What had been his purpose in even coming out here? To continue flipping my world upside down? Well, he had certainly succeeded. I was flipped. Up. Side. Down.

  Sitting up a little and forcing myself to breathe deeply, I realized that he’d flipped me the first time I ever laid eyes on him.

  He had been so much better at charming me back then, though. Now—now he was just scared, and it showed. Why was he scared? I practically threw myself at him and he just walked away! No, he ran away!

  Fury flooded through me and I shot to my feet with every intention of telling him where to—

  Then I felt it. I stopped and looked out across the brown grass, dead shrubs and lifeless flowers in the yard, and I saw her. Her flaming red hair was lifted up around her shoulders and face. By the breeze, maybe? I doubted it. The dry, hot wind was too tame. My hair was barely moving at all. She had to be controlling it.

  Amazing dramatic effects, demon. What’re your other tricks?

  She was standing a hundred feet down the dusty driveway, leaning casually against the dark brown and tan brick that housed the mailbox, like she had been watching us, and had been waiting for the perfect time for me to see her. I was alone now. How convenient. I made sure all my mind blocks were in place. I didn’t want her taking control over me the way she had Thoros.

  The smiling demon didn’t move forward, and I could only assume it was because the owners of the mansion had put some sort of barrier around the property to keep people out. Evil, lurking, soul-stealing demons didn’t seem to be an exception to the rule.

  Her smile grew wider as I took my cross on its broken chain from my pocket.

  “Come here and let me see that, little girl,” she said, her voice carrying very well on the slight wind. She seemed to be only one person, or rather she was using only one of her voices. We’d see if it stayed that way.

  I remained where I was, on the top step of the porch, and she scowled at me, like her words were supposed to have power within them to make me do as she’d demanded. You’re not the only one with tricks up your sleeve, fiend. “Why are you here? What do you want from us?”

  She moved her head from one side to the other, and then back again. “Not you, angel.”

  “What, then?” I said, and then heard the front door open behind me. I threw out my hand to stop whomever it was without turning around to see them, and then heard a lot of muffled cursing and scrambling and shouting as he rushed back into the house to get more back-up.

  “Send the mortal out to me and I will leave your sweetie pie alone.”

  Sweetie pie? “Not even if my own soul depended on it, bitch.”

  She smirked, but I could see anger boiling behind her eyes and knew I had hit a nerve. Aww, the poor little demon didn’t like to be called names. Too bad for her, because I’d had a long damn couple of days and I was already tired of her shit. Being nice to a soul-eater wasn’t going to happen tonight.

  “That very well may already be true.”

  “What, that you’re a bitch or that my soul is in jeopardy? Because I can tell you right now I already know them both to be true. But let me tell you two things you don’t know: you won’t be the one to take my soul from me and you won’t ever get control of Ethan.”

  She was silent for a moment, studying me, and in her silence I felt my back-up move up behind me. Without looking, I knew Isaiah was on my right and Troy was on my left. I didn’t have time to think about where Thoros was before I heard feet pounding back down the grand staircase and a whole lot of words Isaiah wouldn’t approve of coming from Thoros’ mouth. It appeared he wasn’t having a great day, either, but I felt his hand slip into mine and I instantly felt stronger. My irritation that he’d rejected me again was all but forgotten, for now, anyway.

  “Fallis,” Baddon said in a quiet voice, and I knew what he was asking the guy without him saying anything more. I had overheard them talking with Isaiah earlier about security. Isaiah wanted to trade out shifts between everyone in the house—with the exception of the mortals—watching the mansion, but Fallis had informed the group that he had already secured the house from top to bottom. He had finished by saying that Lucifer himself wouldn’t even be able to breach the protection he had placed on the property. That really wasn’t saying a whole lot, since Lucifer couldn’t even get to Earth, much less break through a magic barrier one of his previous demons had made. It kind of seemed unlikely to me that his magic could be that strong, but I was praying for the best and super-duper glad he was on our side now.

  “We’re good,” came the reply.

  I think every soul standing with me let out a breath of air the same time I did.

  “Go away, demon. You won’t get what you’ve come here for.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  The fingers gripped around my hand loosened and Thoros began to walk down the steps, away from us, toward the demon.

  Isaiah figured out what was happening the same time I did and hit him with something to wake him up from his trance as I grabbed his arm and jerked him back up the steps into the strong arms of Baddon and Troy. They would go with him before they would let him go to her alone.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Ethan asked as he stepped out onto the porch. “I heard—”

  “Get back in the house, Ethan!” I shouted, but kept my eyes on the evil demon who had started cackling now.

  “Holy shit! She’s back?” I heard Cross say as she realized the reason we were all alarmed and standing on the front porch of the house. The distinctive sound of a hammer being pulled back to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber of her pistol was heard a little too loudly. I was glad she wanted to do her part in protecting herself and the people standing around her. But the weapon she was holding wouldn’t actually do the trick. Hell, a missle wouldn’t kill it. If all went well, she wouldn’t need to find out if her mortal plan would work.

  “Paul, Marcus, make sure the humans stay behind me. Don’t let them loose from your grasp for any reason,” I said, and heard a simultaneous response of “Yes, ma’am!”. I then addressed the rest of the group with my thoughts. “I suppose they need to see what we’re up against. Keeping it from them is not going to help anyone.”

  “Hello, Ethan,” the demon said sweetly. I tensed and tried to block any mind tricks she threw at him. I had never done it before, but for some reason my instincts took over and I knew I could if I needed to. I had to protect this innocent—whatever he was—and keep him on our side of the fence.

  “Who is that and why does she know my name?” Ethan whispered nervously.

  The words came into my brain like they had been there all along, and I let them come out of my mouth without delay. I knew the reason the demon wanted him and it scared the crap out of me, but I had always known the fiend wasn’t here to make friends with us. Lucifer was behind this just as much as he was behind the destruction and fall of Heaven.

  “She wants Thoros to give her your soul because she physically can’t take it herself. She can only touch the souls after someone else has stolen them—same with Lucifer; he can’t take a pure soul if it isn’t offered to him. Obviously, Thoros can. Then he is expected to give the souls over to this demon to give to Lucifer. I knew it had been too easy for Rhyan to just ask for the demons to be released from Hell, and for Lucifer to just allow it to happen.”

  “Um… I’m lost—” Ethan started, but Thoros turned and cut him off, getting up and personal and growling in the guy’s shocked face.

  “Lucifer wants your damn soul so he can control you and all that power you are holing up inside that mortal body of yours! I only have half a soul; he has the other half, and so he is us
ing me as a tool to get yours from you. It’s practically the equivalent of him being on Earth without actually fucking being here! And it’s all my damn fault!” Thoros turned away from the guy and rushed to the edge of the steps where he proceeded to throw up the contents in his stomach. It appeared to be only liquid, and I made a mental note to get him to eat something solid later. It was one thing to have a mental breakdown over this, but he at least needed one advantage against evil. We needed him physically strong.

  His theory had been spot-on with the thoughts that had gone through my head only a moment before he’d said them out loud. I assumed Isaiah had been feeding him the information from my head, because his reaction to the news had seemed to catch him off guard. It obviously wasn’t something he’d been mulling over in his mind for a while. The only thing different was what he had said at the end: he thought it was his fault. I didn’t blame him or any of the other seven half-souled immortals.

  “So… what’s the devil going to do with me when he gets my soul?”

  I turned back to the smiling demon at the end of the drive. I knew what would happen: Heaven would fall and Lucifer would take ownership. Lucky me, I was the one that had promised to put a stop to all of it. I should have stayed with my job as an intake specialist, helping St. Peter bring the good souls into Heaven. Shit! I had to do it. There was no other way. And I had to keep everyone thinking positive, as well as keep myself from falling apart in the process. “Don’t worry about it, Ethan. It’s not going to happen. We are here to protect you and keep anything bad from happening. Trust me.”

  “I have someone here that would like to say hello, Ethan,” the demon said.

  I swear my stomach did a flip and I thought about joining Thoros over by the dead rosebushes he was upchucking on. The red-haired fiend reached down behind the mailbox and effortlessly pulled a gagged, middle-aged man to his feet. Dried blood painted the skin under his nose, mouth and ears, and his eyes were nearly swollen shut from the beatings he had suffered.

  I knew who it was—even before Ethan screamed out his name.

  “Dad!”

  Troy caught Ethan around the waist and slung him back into Joshua’s arms when he tried to bail off the porch after his father.

  I turned and waited for Ethan to make eye contact with me. “We’ll do everything we can to get him back, Ethan, but, until we know what we are up against, it’s not wise to try. I don’t think she will kill him. She wants you, and right now, your father is the only thing she has to lure you in. If she gets her hands on you, we will all die; the whole of humanity will belong to Lucifer. God chose you for a reason. I have to believe it’s because you have a good heart and choose to make good decisions. If you really feel that we can defeat the demon now and save your dad, then we will all step over that protection barrier and do our damnedest to make that happen. But… if you have even the slightest doubt, then we must wait.” I stood there a long moment and let everything I had said soak into his mind. “What’s it going to be, Ethan? Do we fight tonight?”

  He swallowed hard, and looked out across the darkness at the smiling fiend that held his father’s life in her hands. Ethan’s eyes were shimmering as he blew out a heavy breath, then he turned and walked back into the house without saying a word.

  “Oh, thank God,” I said as I exhaled the breath I had been holding.

  Isaiah patted me on the back. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Chapter 24

  Ethan

  Ethan had never cried—well, not that he could remember, and he remembered a lot. Memories from his past flooded into his mind and threatened to choke the life out of him. He remembered needles and odd smells and feeling funny from just being in the same room with whatever substance his birth mother decided to use that day to blow her mind apart.

  His dad hadn’t always been worthless. There had been a time in Ethan’s life that he remembered the man had been very strong and loving and liked to play catch and teach him things a lot of kids took for granted. Ethan had never taken those moments for granted, and those were the moments that kept him going for them both. He had prayed every day that the man who loved his son would come back to him from wherever he’d hidden himself in his own head.

  Ethan knew his dad’s wife wasn’t coming back, nor did he want her to. She had been the reason his dad had fallen into a deep depression and started drinking and gambling in the first place. How else was he supposed to get over the fact that he’d discovered his wife was a whore that used cocaine to mentally escape from the man she had decided to marry and the child she had chosen to have?

  People change every day. Some just don’t change for the better. Ethan knew that, but he had never given up hope that his dad would choose to change his mind about what was more important to him. He had never given up, but… that—that creature had taken the choice from him now.

  What the fuck was she? he wondered, wanting really bad to punch something.

  As if on cue, the big guy with blood-red hair stepped into Ethan’s line of sight. “We have a gym. You look like you need to let off some steam.” He jerked his head to the side, and then offered his big hand. “C’mon. I could use a spotter.”

  Ethan’s eyebrows popped. A spotter? He looked down at his one-eighty-five self, and then up to the nearly seven foot tall monster of a man with the deep scar running down the left side of his face, and wondered why he would pick him; it was obvious the guy could bench press at least two of him. If for some reason he actually needed help, Ethan knew he wasn’t going to be able to give him any.

  Ethan’s jaw locked tight as he thought about that woman with her red hair flying up around her head and with her fingers closed tightly around his dad’s throat. All of a sudden, he knew he could lift a car with one hand if one got in his way to kill the bitch.

  He met Baddon’s serious eyes with a pair of his own, and then took the massive hand that was offered out to him. “I can spot you.”

  Baddon pulled him to his feet with a broad smile, and then let go and led the way to the gym room. Ethan was amazed by how big the house was. They passed room after room, some decorated with extravagant art and colors and some more masculine and to more of a man’s taste. He paused and peeked his head into a room filled with books, and his first thought was of Emma. He’d noticed a rather large bookshelf at the end of her hallway, so crammed full of paperbacks and hardbacks that some were neatly stacked on the floor in front of it.

  “You like to read?” Baddon asked, startling him out of his daydream.

  Ethan shook his head as he smiled. “Uh, no—but I think Emma does.”

  The fire-engine eyebrows disappeared into Baddon’s hairline. “Your girlfriend?”

  Ethan chuckled. “Shit, I wish. But, no. I think you know her as Cross. She’s the, uh… the other human—the one with the gun.”

  Baddon’s expression turned to knowing as he nodded once. “She know?”

  Ethan shook his head and blew a breath out through puffed out cheeks.

  “I see. I guess you have more than one reason to hit the gym then, eh?”

  He only nodded, so Baddon turned and led the way down a long corridor, and then turned left, immediately made another left and opened a door. He flipped on a light as he led Ethan into the massive room.

  Ethan’s mouth fell agape as he took it all in. The room had to have been ten times as big as his apartment, easy. There were treadmills, exercise bikes, ellipticals, all kinds of free weights and weight machines, benches and steppers, punching bags, and even a freaking boxing ring.

  “Wanna go a round or two?” Baddon asked, and Ethan shot him a look of horror when he noticed the guy was pointing to the ring. Baddon laughed. “Maybe you’d better stick to something that doesn’t hit back.” He tossed Ethan a pair of gloves, and then pointed toward the punching bag. “Your mission: kill it. I’ll be over here with the weights.” Baddon winked, and then walked to his destination.

  I guess he really didn’t need a spotte
r after all, Ethan thought as he concentrated on pulling the gloves on, then strapping the Velcro in place. He glanced up at the guy when he grunted. Ethan gasped and nearly fell over a line of barbells behind him when he noticed the rack of weights on the bar. The steel bar was bowed nearly in a ‘U’ shape and there were at least five hundred pounds hanging on each end of it. That’s half a ton, if the guy isn’t using Styrofoam weights to screw with my head, he thought.

  Ethan thought briefly about ripping the gloves off and running from the room, the house, the city, but then the image of that thing with her hand around his dad’s throat popped into his head and he made a beeline for the bag hanging from the board and chain. Nobody in this house had tried to hurt him so far; they had only sworn to protect him and Emma, and they had told him that they would try to get his dad back to him alive. For some strange reason, he believed them… or he wanted to.

  Josselyn

  I was convinced the demon wouldn’t hurt Ethan’s dad. That’s why I made the decision to usher everyone into the house and ignore Lucifer’s minion. She would need him for a hostage to get what she really wanted: Ethan. His dad was the only thing she had to bargain with. I hoped.

  Isaiah had agreed with me, saying through my own thoughts, “If she does kill him, there is nothing we could have done to prevent it. Don’t trouble yourself with guilt that is not in your power to avoid. Our mission is saving Heaven, and Ethan is the key to that. It is her job to distract you from your mission. Do not let her.”

  I figured, if I took advice from anyone, an archangel would be my best bet, so I pushed everyone inside and even grabbed the ill Thoros, handing him over to Troy to be put to bed while I set Phoebe and Joshua to calming down the irate agent, again. The chick was making me want a shot of something strong, and I didn’t even drink.

  Everyone was making their way back to the sleeping arrangements they’d had before all the commotion with the demon got everybody riled up, and I realized that I didn’t know where they had placed me, if they had even placed me anywhere.