Darlings of New Midnight

by Andrea Speed

  “You tried to kill Logan.”

  Raphael scoffed. He was still focused on the flowers and hadn’t looked at her once. “Hardly. We tried to contain the threat of Cthulhu. It didn’t work. I still don’t understand how it failed, unless Cthylor has some unknown ability, or maybe the messenger does. It’s unclear.”

  “You tried to drown him. Him and all his friends. What the hell was that?”

  “An attempt to wash away evidence. It didn’t work either.”

  A human emotion genuinely came back to Gill. It was anger. “You could have killed him.”

  Finally Raphael deigned to look at her. “No. He’s the Destroyer’s pet. He would have protected him.”

  “He’s not his pet, and you didn’t know that would happen.”

  Most angels copied a look. Maybe it was how they were as a human, or maybe it was simply someone they saw. Trying to figure out a rhyme or reason for it was a form of madness. Gill had no idea who Raphael was copying, if he was indeed copying anyone. He had a narrow, morose face and long brown hair he kept on the top of his head in what she knew Logan called a “man bun.” She’d also heard him refer to Raphael as “that hippie-looking motherfucker,” but she had no idea where to start with any of that. Gill didn’t know if it was true on Earth, but here in Heaven, Raphael’s eyes were crystal. Not totally clear, although they mostly were—there was a hint of blue visible at some angles. But his eyes were like geodes, rocks with crystals inside. Why he made that choice was unclear. It was true that angels didn’t need eyes any more than they needed bodies, but somehow this was a telling detail. How, Gill wasn’t sure. That was part of the problem with your memories draining and becoming something else. It left you feeling caught between worlds most of the time.

  “Yes, I did,” Raphael said. “It’s easy to extrapolate what will occur from past actions. The Destroyer is very protective of his pet. It’s almost as if he has feelings for the thing, beyond the merely carnal.”

  Was Raphael constantly referring to Logan as a pet to annoy her? It seemed that way. But why? What was the point of that? “I thought you wanted him to fulfill his destiny and become an angel.”

  Raphael had looked away again, at his flowers. She still wasn’t sure if she knew what any of these were, if any of them were actual flowers. “It’s preferable, but not necessary. It was why we made two of you. In case one died young or was simply too stupid to see their purpose.”

  Gill still had enough humanity in her to feel that burgeoning rage surge. “What? What the fuck did you just say?”

  He glanced back at her, possibly surprised by the last bits of emotion in her. “You’re one of us now. Surely you see the wisdom in this.”

  “In what? The whole apocalypse doesn’t make sense. Why would we want to fight demons until one side is conquered and destroy Earth in the process? How does any of that make sense?”

  Raphael feigned a sigh and looked at her with what could be best described as pity, or a close approximation thereof. “If you wish to ignore prophecy, fine. I know that, even while you were a human, you thought most of humanity was terrible. It’s time for a do-over.”

  Gill had hoped being stunned went away with most of the other emotions. Apparently not. “What?”

  “You know your former species is destroying the planet, yes? You’d think that would spur humanity into a new renaissance, but no. They keep doing the same shit, as if their home isn’t dying under their feet. This experiment is over. Time for something new.”

  “What?” Gill wished she could ask something else. But her mind was reeling.

  “Again, you know this. You felt much the same way as a human. You recognized that killing the thing you’re living on is a recipe for disaster. Once humanity evolved, we hoped they’d get better, but it seems they get worse all the time. It’s time to scotch the whole experiment before we lose the planet for good. Maybe the next species will be smarter.”

  Gill didn’t know if her new angel guise was responsible for this, but did it sound all that bad? It sounded reasonable. Except, of course, for one sticking point. “But I can’t let Logan die. You agreed—”

  “I agreed to not kill him if I had a choice. There’s no choice to be made here except his own, and he has made it very clear that he doesn’t want to be reborn an angel. I’m sorry, Gillian, but the choice was his to make. Have you been able to convince him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ve just about run out of time. If he doesn’t want to be saved, we can’t force the issue.”

  This felt like a betrayal. He was being logical, of course, but it still stung. “What about Cthulhu?”

  Raphael shrugged, deadheading his flowers, which was weird. There hadn’t been dead flowers before, had there? “He’s nothing but an appetite. Chaos in a physical form. As long as he can destroy something, he’ll be happy. We’ll tell him he can wipe out the new race, the one that comes after humans, and that should make him happy. As long as he gets to wipe out something, he’ll be good.”

  Now that truly baffled her. Because while new angels were generally kept out of things, Gill was aware of the shock wave through Heaven at the announcement that Cthulhu was joining the battle on the side of the misfits. (Which was one of the unofficial names of Logan’s team in Heaven. The other was losers.) “You think that Cthulhu will listen to you? Wasn’t everyone terrified of him? And hey, didn’t his daughter—the one that Heaven knew nothing about—cause a spontaneous eclipse? That’s cosmic.”

  Raphael kept fussing with his flowers, and another brief surge of anger led Gill to imagine burning his garden down. “Of course it’s cosmic. It is the personification—beastification?—of entropy. It is a basic force of the universe. It was at the beginning and will be at the end.”

  Either she was missing something and she was the stupidest angel around, or this didn’t make sense. “Wait. Why is everyone so freaked out by Cthulhu and his daughter if they’re so easily handled?”

  “Because the lesser angels don’t know how to handle him.”

  “And you do?”

  Now Raphael deigned to look at her again, and his gaze was withering. “I just said I did.”

  “Did you ever before? Can anyone even talk to him?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my authority, Gillian?”

  Was she supposed to be intimidated? Gill honestly wasn’t sure. “I’m questioning your reasoning. Even if—big if—Cthulhu was okay with wiping out the next higher mammalian race—or whatever—what makes you think Cthylor will go along with that? Clearly the link between Cthylor and the messenger was stronger than you thought. You can’t assume that Cthylor will act as Cthulhu would.”

  “If I were you, I’d concentrate on trying to get your tragic brother to embrace his destiny before time runs out. It won’t be long now.”

  Gill hadn’t wanted Logan to be right. It wasn’t the first time she’d had that feeling in her life. And it ran about fifty-fifty. But he was right about the angels, wasn’t he? Because either Raphael was leaving out something huge, or he was a delusional asshole who thought his sheer righteousness alone would beat Cthulhu.

  Holy shit. What did she do now?

  THE THOUGHT of storming Heaven and basically burning it down was thrilling and yet so insane Esme wanted to scream and shake everybody for even thinking about it. What a way to die that would be.

  Again, being this torn was awesome. She should be used to it, though. Born from a long line of brujas, going way, way back, her mother was the inheritor of a legacy stretching to Aztec times, if you could believe her abuela. (Which… maybe fifty-fifty. She did love her hyperbole.) Her father was a Scottish warlock whom she barely knew, as he was successfully assassinated when she was three. Warlocks and witches always had enemies, and they were usually fellow witches or warlocks. There were spells that allowed you to absorb someone else’s magical abilities, but it usually took decades off your lifespan. Still, people did it, hoping they could circumvent death i
f necessary. The odds weren’t in their favor.

  It was exceedingly rare for a witch or a warlock to be born with a “gift”—it had to be someone from a very powerful line, and it couldn’t be predicted or engineered. It simply had to occur on its own, which was knowledge gained the hard way by the entire witch world. Esme was born with a birthmark that said she would evolve a power—the mark was a loose raven-shaped wine stain on her right shoulder, the size of a quarter. When she hit thirteen, her power manifested, and she ended up with one of the most powerful to ever exist: the evil eye.

  Although giving someone the “evil eye” was a euphemistic expression, and in some cases a genuine superstition, the actual evil eye was super rare. She was technically a balance of white magic and black magic, but the eye purely channeled dark magic. And, because it was a natural function of her body, her use of dark magic never cost her, which wasn’t typical at all. Casting a curse never drained her. She could theoretically do it morning to night, every day of the year, and never run out of energy. It made her the most powerful witch in the world and possibly to ever exist. Which meant she had a target on her back from puberty on.

  Not many had challenged her. That mostly happened when she was younger and less experienced and older witches and wizards thought she would be the most vulnerable. They were wrong. In fact, she was probably much more vicious with her curses when she was younger and more scared. She had to get older and more experienced before she learned how to use her power more subtly and, in many ways, much more cruelly. With youth came savagery; with maturity came creativity.

  Her mother and extended family tried to protect her as well, but considering how powerful she was, she was expected to do most of the heavy lifting. And although she did have a grandpa for a while, the truth was most of her living family was female, and for a very good reason.

  While she enjoyed the Harry Potter books as a kid, they were extra unrealistic to her because she knew the secret of magic. The secret was there were limitations based on gender. As her mother once described it, men could venture into the territory, but they could only go so far. Women owned all of the land. The most powerful wizard was still subordinate to a middling witch. There was a reason normals were afraid of witches but not wizards—wizards could only do so much. A witch could destroy you.

  Also, there was the fact that men in general were terrified of women, but that was a separate thing entirely. The important thing was Hermione should have destroyed Voldemort by book three. But that was neither here nor there.

  Esme was frustrated by the lack of choice—she was going to have to be a witch whether she wanted to or not, and her power level meant she would essentially be the “sheriff” of the supernatural world—but she understood it. She was the mystical equivalent of a nuclear weapon. Even if she wanted to shirk her duties, her power set wouldn’t allow her to do so. But nothing had prepared her for the reality of being one of two mystical world-destroying weapons and the other one being male.

  But to be fair, Ceri wasn’t simply a male. He was also half-demon, and not just any demon, but Satan himself. That’s why he was called the Destroyer, after all—he was the end of all things. But so was she. Could there be two ends? And now they were two ends working together to avert it. With two tactical nukes in play, it would seem that everyone would back down and stop fighting them, but that was underestimating what buttheads angels and demons could be. Demons could be expected to be assholes, but angels? Who knew they were so wedded to vague prophecies? Every being was a victim of habit, not only people.

  But after watching Ceri absorb Astaroth’s energy, she wondered if she—or anyone—could honestly take him on. She probably could, but she imagined it would end up what the military folks like to call mutually assured destruction. If she went all out, maybe she could beat him, but she wouldn’t be walking away from it.

  And the supernatural sheriff? When she first heard about it, she thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. When witches or wizards or demons or vampires got out of line, few were able to handle them and rein them in. Except her. She absolutely could. She was also expected to. Much like her evil eye, she was born with a gift, and she was expected to use it wisely. “Not going to do it” was not an answer.

  Again, she was getting away from the point. Storming Heaven. Sounded like suicide, and probably was. Well, it was until they got Cthylor on their side. Now it felt like it would be a massacre on par with a horror movie, and while there was some question whether they’d live through it, Heaven would certainly get the worst of it. You’d think they’d have some defenses, but if Ceri was right about the protogods—and he hadn’t been wrong yet—they might not be enough.

  Because they were in Japan and hungry, they decided to go to a noodle shop in Tokyo that Lyn knew about and said was good. Considering how packed it was, word had gotten around. But Ceri used his sway to not only get them a table, but a private one in the back, used for VIPs who didn’t want to mingle with the regular folk. That wasn’t why they were using it, though—they had shit to discuss nobody needed to overhear.

  Ahmed, who was never hungry, simply sat at the table. The rest waited until they had some really delicious noodles and green tea in their stomachs, along with some sake (because, come on, they were in Japan), before they got to the meat of it. Logan, who seemed to inhale most of his food, was the first to clean a space in front of his part of the table. “We need to know the general layout of Heaven, if you’ve got it. We need to know where they could be coming from, home field advantages, everything.”

  Ceri looked like he didn’t know how to answer, but Alex barreled ahead. “You’re thinking like a human,” they said.

  Logan scowled. “I am a human.”

  Esme sat forward and decided to be diplomatic. Technically, Logan was the only human among them. Oh sure, she was human too, in a way, but anyone infused with as much magic as she was probably ceased being anything close to human by the time puberty rolled around and she got her powers. “What they mean is you’re thinking like we have to do this like a regular attack. We don’t. Hell, we can send Alex in alone to do it. You up for that?”

  Alex smiled, like they were a person without a care in the world. Which is exactly what they were. Who had worries when they had the powers of Cthulhu in their pocket? “Of course. Cthylor would never let any harm befall me.”

  Absolutely no one doubted that anymore. Esme was mildly curious how cable news was explaining a spontaneous eclipse but couldn’t be bothered to find out.

  Logan frowned. “I know Alex probably could do it on their own, but shouldn’t we follow, if only to bat cleanup?”

  Ceri coughed, covering his mouth. And while his mouth was still covered so Alex couldn’t read his lips, he said, “And confirm what Cthylor might be up to in Heaven.”

  A great point. While Alex did seem to be a team player, it was only because they were working toward a similar goal. They’d be idiots to assume that if something changed slightly, Alex and Cthylor would remain fighting on their side. Dealing with Cthulhu was worth more than a deal with the devil because you had a chance to beat the devil. Cthulhu? Not so much.

  “Do we have a plan,” Logan asked, “or are we going in just to fuck shit up?”

  “Isn’t fucking shit up a plan?” Alex countered.

  Logan shrugged, a tacit admission that it was. Not a very detailed plan, admittedly, but it functioned the same. Logan glanced around the table as he asked, “Are there downsides to wrecking the shit out of Heaven?”

  Now that was a poser. Esme had no idea, but then again, if anyone asked her what Heaven did, exactly, all she could do was shrug. Did it do anything besides make asshole angels?

  Ceri, who probably had a better chance of knowing than the rest of them, poked his chopsticks into his rice. Lyn and Ceri were using chopsticks; the rest of them were using forks and spoons like uncoordinated, uncouth Westerners. Ceri also spoke flawless Japanese, but of course he would. “It’s possible we could force angels
to stay on Earth for a time. The same is true if we do a flip side and fuck up Hell—we’d send demons to Earth.”

  “You mean more demons,” Logan said. Ceri nodded.

  It was certainly not great as far as demons were concerned, but was that true of angels? What kind of mischief would they get up to on Earth? Hard to say. Angels came to Earth, sure, but they generally didn’t stick around. Why would they? They felt they were beyond humans. Human society offered nothing for them. At least demons got enjoyment from being asshats. Angels didn’t seem to enjoy anything. They were the universal harsh critic—but with less charm.

  “I don’t know what angels would do,” Ceri admitted. “They are a gray area.”

  “What territorial advantage will they have?” Logan asked. He was still thinking like a human, but he seemed to be trying to adjust a little, which was something. Esme couldn’t imagine what it was like to be powerless in a group like this. He must feel like Arthur from The Tick, except Logan didn’t even have a flying suit. On the plus side, he did have a helldragon now.

  “Well, Heaven’s adaptive to its residents,” Ceri said.

  Logan stared at him. “Which means what, exactly?”

  “They can change their surroundings on a whim. I assume they’ll use it in an attempt to disorient any trespassers,” Ceri said.

  “It won’t save them,” Alex said, cheerful as ever.

  Logan overused the word creepy when talking about Alex and Cthylor, but Esme was totally beginning to get it. Maybe because Alex was so young and bright-eyed, it was easy to ascribe sunny optimism to them, but to then combine that with a bloodthirsty chthonic god made the effect jarring. It seemed like nothing could give Alex pleasure besides wiping out a ton of beings.

  “No, but it’s good to know,” Ceri replied.

  “I gotta admit, this sounds completely fucking mental,” Lyn said. “And I want you to know I am here for it. I mean, we gotta do it if only for the story, yeah?”

  Esme sighed and patted Lyn on her very muscular arm. “Half of your most distressing stories start that way.”