by David Green
Suraz leaves me by the entrance and storms off behind the bar, through the door downstairs to where the real action happens. The barkeep on this floor, Guz, does his best to pretend a seething Nephilim ain’t just stomped by. Gotta appreciate the man’s decision not to get involved. I know I sure as Hell wouldn’t.
A bunch of posters hang behind the bar, mostly for bands that play at The Styx, the Tomb of Nick Cage amongst them. Now that’s music the living and the dead can appreciate. Except that today, plastered over the top of their flyers, are missing posters. Dozens of posters for cats, dogs, even horses.
Huh. Those weren’t there yesterday.
I glance at Diana. Her eyeless sockets peer up at me, but I’m getting swell at reading her face. Right now, it says, What the Hell have you got me into?
“All’s well,” I murmur to her, throwing her a small smile, even though my stomach’s churning. “Suraz is just…passionate.”
Diana covers her ears as the band on stage slams into action. The Styx has two levels. The living, unaware as ever, hang around upstairs, oblivious to the fact that below them is a hive for Haven’s demonic and ghostly population. It’s funny; the place draws a crowd who’re into the occult, arcane, horror films and Stephen King books, like they sense what the place is, but don’t have the awareness to see what surrounds them.
Terrible music, though.
The bands that play here all have names like Mr. Urine, Cow Annihilation, and Toxic Puke. They’re masters in creating horrific, dirge-like cacophonies and the Goths love it. I’m watching the bass player, hearing nothing but the drone of crunching guitar, and I wonder if he even knows why he’s there. The track doesn’t have even the slightest bounce of a bass line. A million miles away from The Beatles, and I’m pretty sure Diana is missing Nirvana right about now.
“Nick, what the fuck have you done this time?”
I jump before I can stop myself. After Diana, Charon and the park, my nerves are shot. Pink-haired Ruby, owner of The Styx and barkeep downstairs, glares at me now that she has my attention. Look, she has to shout so I can hear her over the goddamn noise of Sludge Hammer or whatever these punks call themselves, but by the look on her face, I reckon she’d scream bloody murder at me even if we stood in a library.
We usually get along, but events last night involved me in the death of her best customer. I took a case a while back that took a nasty turn. Cyril’s familiar, Francis, searched for a way to summon Lucifer—seems like it’s the thing to do in Haven at the moment—and ended up sacrificing a number of poor teenage girls to do it. I Expunged him. Didn’t have a choice. Expunction doesn’t just mean death; it means total eradication. It’s a Hell of a punishment, but Francis deserved it.
Cyril took exception, and wanted my head. Guess I understood. Demon familiars don’t just love each other. It runs way deeper than that. Their connection’s on an elemental level, and I’d scrubbed Francis from the tapestry of existence. So, we got into a ruckus, and Cyril lost his head. In my defense, I didn’t deliver the killing blow—Suraz did—and I did help clean up the mess.
“Nothing,” I yell back, spreading my hands wide, “honest. Nephilim grabbed me on the sidewalk and yanked me in here.”
“Huh,” Ruby fumes, before glancing at Diana, who looks like she wants to sink into the floor. I wonder if she can? “Who’s this?”
A line of living, ghosts and demons file out of the basement door, many ashen-faced. More so than usual, I might add, which takes some doing when you’re talking about the dead.
“What’s going on?” I ask, ignoring her question.
Ruby scowls. “Suraz crashed through the door and told us all to get out. Took one look at his face and agreed. Then I saw you and put the story together. Of course it had to be Nick fucking Holleran. Again. You gonna make me ask twice?”
I glance at Diana. She’s standing as close to me as possible. Poor girl. I really shoulda taken her somewhere else to talk, but I’d run outta options. Cops outside my apartment, murder scene in my office, Charon and fog monsters in the park. This is all too much for her, and my head ain’t screwed on right. I’ve no idea how to look after a kid, alive or not, and in a moment of divine clarity, I understand this case she charged me with involves just that. She’s a child, alone in Hell, and I’m the closest thing to a responsible adult she has.
Well, shit…
“A client. She. Is. A. Client!” I shout over another passage of crunching guitar and screaming from the ‘vocalist’ in the band. “I came here so we could talk. I didn’t know Suraz would be waiting on me. I’ll bring you up to speed later, yeah?”
From the corner of my eye, I see a ghost approaching, Luis is his name. He’s sheepish and a nice enough sort. Told me one time he reckoned he didn’t get into Heaven because he never went to church, said the frescos freaked him out. From what I’ve learned, God’s fickle enough to use that as a reason, but I’m sure a fella as shifty as him’s hiding all kinds of skeletons.
“Ah, Nick?” he mutters, wide eyes darting everywhere and nowhere. “The Nephilim wants you downstairs.”
“No shit,” I deadpan. Think I’m feeling a little better. My smart-ass side’s returning. “Come on, Diana. Let’s see what Suraz has to say.”
“Are you in trouble?”
She doesn’t move. The folks Suraz evicted stare at us, a mixture of speculation and concern on their faces. Kid’s shit scared, and I can’t say I blame her.
“No.” The reassuring smile I give her makes my cheek muscles throb. “Me and the Nephilim go way back. Just a misunderstanding, is all. We’ll straighten things out, then me and you’ll talk shop. Don’t worry, sweetheart, Suraz is…”
We walk through the door, and the words ‘a teddy bear’ die on my lips. The Nephilim stands in the room’s center, black wings spread, mighty golden broadsword planted point-first in the ground. He’s an obsidian terror, teeth bared, yellow eyes narrowed. I look away from the bright red blood on his blade, then notice he has it splashed on his black armor and face.
“... pissed,” I finish, with a sigh.
The Nephilim holds up his mighty fist, unfurls a single finger and points right at me.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Nick Holleran? You have one life left. Should you act with such recklessness?”
I can’t look at him. The weight of his glare is too much. It feels like powerlessness, but tenfold. A kind of waking sleep paralysis, trapped inside the dead weight of your body, mind screaming, begging you to do something, but it just won’t do as it’s told. Suraz’s voice thunders in my head, pushing my skull to breaking point. I want to sink to my knees, but that stubborn, pig-headed streak’s latched onto something, and I can’t help myself.
Hey, it shouldn’t surprise me. Curiosity got me killed once already.
“Why do you give a shit?” I growl. “There’s millions of souls in Haven, living and dead. Hell, there’s a bunch of folk who can see just like me upstairs.”
My eyeballs throb like invisible needles are sinking into them. Despite what I said to reassure the kid before, me and the Nephilim have shared a handful of words in five years. A slice of advice over a drink last night’s one thing. This level of ferocity is something else altogether, and my flesh ain’t happy with me fighting against Suraz’s will.
“The Devil didn’t break God’s laws for any of them, Holleran.”
“Ah,” I say, pieces sliding together as I stare at a point beside his face. It’s better than looking in his eyes. The hammer trying to split my skull becomes just a little less insistent. “So that’s what has you all riled up. You’ve spoken to him, the Devil? Interesting.”
The thump of the band upstairs fills the silence between us. Then, with a petulant toss of his head that sends his raven hair flowing, Suraz slams his sword into its sheath and his wings fold against his back. The weight threatening to crush me eases, an
d I hear Diana whisper in relief. She felt it too, maybe more than I did.
“Yes,” Suraz says, shoulders sagging a little, like the anger pouring from him has left his limbs weak. “After his encounter with you.”
“There’s more to this,” Diana whispers, at my side. She’s trembling. “He’s hurting. So much sadness now the rage has gone.”
If Suraz heard, he doesn’t show it.
“Look,” I say, spreading my hands. “I didn’t ask Lucifer to heal me. Quite the opposite. I’d made my peace, but he did his own thing. Who am I to argue? You should thank me. From what Lucifer says, I spared him from some nasty business. Heard Wheeler could have extracted all kinds of binding promises from him.”
Suraz strides towards me, and halts a sword’s-reach away. Between him and Charon, I’m getting pretty damn sick of swords tonight. I force myself to look him in the eye, and Goddamn, if it isn’t one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My brain’s boiling and I’m surprised there’s no steam pumping from my ears.
I see the sorrow as his stare penetrates me. I’ve seen Absin a few times and she has that look too. It figures. Heaven is a perfect existence, they say. Sure, Suraz and her chose to follow Lucifer in the fight against God, but they lost, wound up exiled. Never to return.
Nothing can compare to the life they had before. Thing is, I get the feeling Suraz’s sadness runs deeper than that, more personal.
The Nephilim nods. It’s a grudging acknowledgement.
“I am aware of this, and I appreciate your selflessness. Though it benefits you little. Heaven is closed to you.” Suraz frowns and looks away. “As it is to me.”
I wanna ask a question, but Diana throws me a gesture that, despite the age gap, I can interpret as ‘shut the fuck up’. She glides forward, like she’s attached to an invisible string leading to the Nephilim and reaches out to him, takes his hand in hers. Suraz blinks. A look of shock passes across his face when they make contact. He kneels in front of her, eyes to sockets.
In complete silence, the Nephilim stares deep into her small face, and whatever passes between them isn’t for me to know.
The moment stretches until Suraz smiles—a fucking smile from the Nephilim of all things—and caresses Diana’s cheek with a fingertip.
“She is a rare one,” he says, looking up at me. I gotta admit, having one of Lucifer’s Goddamn archangels kneeling in front of me with a serene smile plastered on his face is a sight I’m not prepared for. “You are helping her move on?”
It’s my turn to blink. The endgame with Diana’s case hadn’t occurred to me until now. When I discover her killer, she’ll get closure and move on, if God allows it. Children are innocent, so he’s got to, right? Despite only talking for the first time tonight, Diana represents the one constant thing in my second life: the ghost in the corner from day one. Not sure I’m ready to say goodbye to that.
“I guess. Yeah, I mean, that’s the case, right? Closure.”
Suraz climbs to his feet, Diana still holding his hand. “I see you attract trouble, Nick Holleran, but your cause is noble. Watch yourself. You should have died twice already, Lucifer grants few mortals the same chances as you. Hell stirs, human, and you stand at the center of its unrest. This I know, and so do others. See to the girl, but take care. Forces beyond your comprehension are making their move, and they will not hesitate to end you if you get in their way.”
He releases his hold on Diana and pats her on her tiny head. Giving me one last, hard stare, he strides by.
“Gee, thanks,” I mumble, then a thought pops into my head. “Wait!”
Suraz pauses, his back to me. There’s something I gotta ask him. The question of why Hell’s the way it is, with humans living beside the dead, has plagued me these last five years. Last night, the Devil handed me a nugget of truth.
“Lucifer told me that we all lived in Heaven. That the humans joined his rebellion, and God cast us all out. That right?”
“Yes.” Suraz’s shoulders sag again. “He… We…fought for you, though your kind do not remember. For God’s angels, Heaven represented perfection. That bliss did not extend to everyone.”
“So God just created this whole place to punish us, like Lucifer said. What about Charon? He created him too?”
The Nephilim spins on his heel, finger pointing my way again.
“These are dangerous questions, and ones you would do well to forget, Holleran. One life left.”
He sweeps from the room, leaving me with more questions and no notion to stop asking them.
“Let’s get a table,” I say to Diana. “We got some talking to do.”
…
I put myself into Diana’s shoes as the bar returns to normal around us. The folk Suraz evicted slink back in and get on with their night like nothing happened. All except Ruby, who’s eyeing me something awful, but she brought me over an Old Fashioned and put it on my tab.
Bob, a dead guitarist, is back on stage, strumming his acoustic. Some say he died there and never stopped playing. I wonder if his last name’s Johnston, and if he sold his soul to… Wait, what am I thinking?
Weariness is prodding me. My body’s remembering the punishment it’s taken over the last twenty-four hours now that Lucifer’s shot of vitality is wearing off. I hoped I’d make the night, but all the excitement since leaving my office is catching up with me.
Diana sits across from me, an untouched glass of paint-stripper on the table. It ain’t real paint-stripper, but it sure tastes like it. See, ghosts have vices like the living and some enjoy getting ‘wasted’, but alcohol for the living won’t cut it. Not strong enough, not by a long shot. So Ruby serves them a concoction made up of medicinal alcohol, powerful spirits that should never get mixed, and Lucifer knows what else.
I move the glass away from Diana. Not sure why Ruby poured it for the kid. Even though she’s dead, she’s underage. Force of habit, I reckon.
Diana stumps me. She sprang Awareness and Strengthened pretty much overnight. She can walk, talk and affect the rest of Hell, and interact however she wants, plus this whole ‘empathy’ thing. Never seen that before. Why’d that happen now? Why so quick?
But I gotta understand what it’s like for her. The kid woke up in the office where her murderer took her eyes and did God knows what else to her. I take her on a sojourn through Hell, where we’re waylaid by Charon, creatures in the mist and a fucking Nephilim.
So, I smile, and I keep it simple.
“Rough hour, huh? Tell me about yourself, kid.”
What else can I say? I’m an only child and I lost my folks young. Mommy and daddy issues hover like a ghost in the corner of an office. I spent most of my childhood alone, so I’ve no experience talking to kids, let alone dead ones born almost two decades before me.
She throws a little furtive look around, attention settling on a table close by. A dead couple sits at it, talking away without a care in the world. Donny and Beth died in a climbing accident ten years back and wound up staying in Hell. Nice couple.
A frown forms as I wonder what’s so interesting about them. Maybe it’s how they’re sitting on a solid chair, but then so’s the kid. Hell’s like that. The ghosts can interact with anything. It’s their plane of existence, just like ours, so why shouldn’t they?
Then it hits me. Donny’s Korean, Beth’s black.
“It’s all so different,” Diana breathes, lips curving into a whisper of a smile. “A black gal sitting in a bar with her fella who don’t look like her.”
“Things have changed,” I reply, my fingers itching to pull out a cigarette. Instead, I take a sip of the Old Fashioned, deciding I can do without Diana’s thoughts on smoking. “We’re moving on from all that. Or we’re trying our damned best, at least. Sure, there’s still pockets of assholes spouting bull, but we’re mending what can be mended and we keep on trying. It ain’t always perfect, but w
e’re getting there. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. A white dude who’s never had someone scream in my face about the color of my skin.”
“They love each other so much,” Diana says, as if she didn’t hear a word I said. “Can’t you feel it?”
I glance over my shoulder at Donny and Beth and shrug.
“I can see it. The way they’re staring into each other’s eyes, all moony-like.”
“What about you, Nick? You said you’d talk to Rosa about your date.”
Laughter bubbles up from my chest, and I shake my head. “We’re talking about you? Who’re you, anyway? Cupid?”
She gives me a small shrug, attention still locked on the love-ghosts. “I know how you feel about her. All those emotions jumbling around when you think about Rosa. You ain’t gonna solve them by pushing her away, mister.”
“Fine,” I sigh, pulling out my cell. Diana’s intuition with emotion and feeling interests me. It should. Saved my bacon tonight, no doubt. She sensed the cluster of souls gathered here, and picked out a path through Meadow Park to The Styx. Man, bet that pisses old Charon off. “I’ll send her a message, see if we can bump our date up. Then can we talk about you?”
She nods. “Sure, Nick.”
I send Rosa a message. As has become my mantra tonight, I keep it simple.
Hey, I know I said next week, but I’m free tomorrow. Sound good?
“Right, done. This empathy you have. It’s not new, is it? I’m asking since you don’t seem surprised by it.”
Diana turns to face me, and I fight the urge to look away from where her eyes used to be. Instead, I picture her with eyes and smile back. It ain’t her fault she looks the way she does, and me acting all childish when she stares my way won’t do her any favors.
“I guess I could always do it a little. It’s why I helped momma so well with the babies. I knew how they felt before they did.”
“World’s a weird and wonderful place.” I take a sip of my drink, considering my next words. My mind’s running slow. Fuck, I’m tired. “Still, bet your talent had its drawbacks.”