The Devil You Know (21 page)

“No,” I answered. I covered my face with my trembling hands and wept. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wept. I think it had been in one of my many foster homes. “Go away.”

“I’ll wait until you’re done sniveling.”

“Fuck you. Go to hell.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Nicky.” He dropped his handkerchief in my lap. “This is so much bigger than you can handle. And though you have the power, you don’t have the training. You can’t control the Arcana, Nicky. Hell, you can’t even control yourself. I want you to come home.”

“No.” I scooted back away from him.

He lit a new cigarette and took a long drag, painting the tip of his high-end smoke with his blue blood. He eyed me wisely. “You’re my son, Nick, I hope you realize that,” he said. He patted my leg consolably. “You are going to come home one day and you are going to take over the family business. It’s what you were created for, and it’s going to happen sooner or later. This is non-negotiable, Nicky. You can’t run from this.”

“Maybe,” I said, rubbing my eyes and snotty nose. “But not now. Not yet. I need time.” I swallowed hard. “I’m not ready.”

He stood up, brushing imaginary debris off his slacks. He looked, if not pleased, then at least resolved. Probably he knew if he tried to drag me to hell I’d punch him in the nose again and ruin his beautiful suit. “It’s a good thing I sent you a partner, then. Things are going to get pretty rough for you from here on out, just so you know.”

I opened my mouth, closed it. I said, “What partner?”

He didn’t answer, which was pretty typical of my dad. He’s like a Chinese proverbial question that answers its own question, but doesn’t answer anything at all. “A little fatherly advice, son: it gets worse the longer you stay here among the humans. It makes it harder to do what needs doing when you finally go home. You can become very attached to these . . . creatures, believe me.”

I was trembling too much to get to my feet so I just sat there, staring up at my old man. I still hated him, but I knew he was probably right. “What happened to Peter?” I asked.

Dad looked interested.

“Is Peter with you?” I said, dreading the answer.

He considered that. “Well, that’s for you to find out one day, isn’t it?” He looked over at the big hole in the ground that I had dug. “What are you going to do about Jack in the Box there?”

I knew I would get no more answers from him. The bastard. I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Billie did this. She’s part of the Arcana, right?”

“Yes.”

“So if I free the angels, destroy their second hearts, then her power will be undermined. Diminished.”

“Maybe.” He gave me a shrewd look. “But I think you just want to kill those angels.”

I sat there huddling, feeling cold and miserable and alone. I remembered huddling a lot in big cold orphanages and juvie halls all over Bensonhurst and Brighton Beach. Back then, I used to dream about who my father might be. I used to pretend he was a famous astronaut or a fireman, a secret agent or someone running from the mafia. I used to believe that he would come for me one day and tell me everything was all right, that he was safe, that he could take care of me now. But he never came. Not until I was
useful
to him. “They’re soldiers,” I told him. “I don’t want them to suffer like this. I wouldn’t want
anyone
to suffer like this. It isn’t fair.”

My dad smirked in a knowing way, raised his hand, and opened a door in the thin mountain air. I couldn’t see much beyond a shadowy, ever-shifting darkness, but I could hear things—base things, suffering things, sexual things—things that human beings have no business hearing. “You know, I think you’re right, Nicky. You’re
not
ready . . . but you will be soon.” Still smiling, he reached into his breast pocket and tossed me his pack of Dunhills. “You’re a prince. Get some better cigarettes, will you?”

He disappeared into the void.

I lit a Dunhill and smoked it down before approaching the hole in the ground again.
By then, night had turned the woods into a velvety blackness full of swarming things. I turned the flashlights on and aimed them at the hole in the ground. I thought maybe I had imagined everything, but the angel was still there, still desiccated and helpless, staring up at me with pleading blue eyes. Its tongue moved like a dirty worm in its mouth, but it had no jaw to formulate any words. I wondered what it would say to me if it could speak. My horror had been replaced with a terrible, abiding sadness.

“I’m really sorry, friend,” I told it. I wondered, absently and rather uselessly, if it was a Seraph or a Cherub, not that such a thing mattered much now, I supposed. “I know you probably don’t think much of me, but I’d like to be a friend to you tonight. I’d like to help you along to . . . where ever you guys go back to.”

I reached into my boot and pulled loose my athame. It had been a gift from Morgana. It was made entirely of silver with glyphs cut into the blade on both sides. My athame isn’t magical—at least, no more than I am. It has no sordid history that I’m aware of. It isn’t blessed or cursed. It’s just a knife I use in rituals, when I feel the need to initiate them. But tonight I was going to do things with it that good witches never do.

I leaned over the angel and placed my hand on its sunken, skeletal chest. I positioned the blade of the knife over its belly, where its holy second heart still beat. “Sorry,” I told it and cut deftly down, very fast. The knife sliced right through the body like it was made of papier-mâché. Within seconds I had the cavity open and I could see all the angel’s alien organs pulsing like jellied jewels inside of it. Had I still been horrified, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. But I was tired. I kept thinking about my father, what he’d said about my inescapable fate, how my life was not my own. I just wanted this to end.

I grasped the shining, warm, fluttering heart in my hand like a little bird and sliced it loose. The heart began to disintegrate almost before I had it out of the cavity of the angel’s chest. The pale eyes fluttered in the once-beautiful, demolished face. The rest of the angel followed, sweetening with decay and then crystallizing so quickly I held nothing but a handful of shining white ash within seconds.

Looking over the ground, I realized I had five more plots to go. I felt numbed, outraged, terrified, and enraged all at once. It gave me energy, if nothing else. I climbed to my feet, picked up the shovel, and began to dig.

I learned many things about Billie as I uncovered each of her victims. She generally worked on the extremities first. But sometimes it was specific organs she wanted, the eyes or the tongue, for instance. Sometimes arms and legs were severed and then stacked neatly alongside the angel for later consumption. It was obvious she visited the angel graveyard frequently, that she was trying to extend the life of the creatures she had captured, farm them for as much meat and power as she could, sort of like her own little herd of magical cattle. There was an evil genius at play in all she did. Some of the angels could speak. Most had nothing to say to me. Most looked grateful or simply relieved. I apologized to each one. I cut into each shrunken chest, cut away each frantic, shining white jelly heart, waited until each angel had gone to absolute dust before I moved on to the next. I was efficient, methodical, and, above all, precise.

My formerly un-magical athame steadily grew hotter in my hands the more I used it to help the angels move on. I was either blessing it or cursing it with the work I was doing. In the end I found I had to wrap my dad’s handkerchief around the hilt just to do the work that needed to be done. I didn’t know if what I was doing was good or bad. I just knew it had to be done.

It seemed to take all night, and by the end of it I was covered in dirt, sweat and nightmares. I had thrown up twice more in the course of the night’s activities, yet I counted that a small victory. It meant I hadn’t turned into the cold-hearted bastard that was my father.

I had done all I could for now. I had stolen away Billie’s power, and any power she had absorbed would likely not be enough to do anything spectacular.

My cell phone rang, though the number on the LCD display was unfamiliar to me. “Englebrecht,” I said, sounding tired and shaken.

There was a pause. And then Morgana’s voice said clearly over the line, “Nick . . . help me . . . ”

The phone went dead in my ear. I looked at it.

I roared. And then I pulverized it against the nearest tree.

I raced out of the hollow of trees, shining one of the flashlights as I went along. I was scrambling up the ridge when something hissed out of the trees. I immediately turned sideways to make myself a smaller target, but I wasn’t fast enough, and in the near perfect dark I couldn’t orient myself or determine where the attack was coming from. Then a knife suddenly appeared in my left shoulder, spun me around, and then I was skidding and falling down the ridge, bumping over rocks and snagging my clothes on sharp branches. I grunted and landed hard on my back in the creek at the base of the ridge.

I gasped, thrashing in the cold water. I sat up and the pain in my shoulder was immediate and intense, like someone was jabbing a hot coal into my wound. I scrabbled at the hilt of the knife, trying to pull it out, but when my hand encountered it I screamed compulsively. I thought it must be magical, likely an athame designed specifically to hurt angels, which demons and daemons are, when you got right down to it. I let it go. I scrabbled around in the dirt, but my flashlight had bounced away when I landed in the creek and was busily illuminating a ragged pear tree in all its end-of-season glory, a halo of night insects buzzing through the light. That was worth fuck-all to me.

I grunted as I tried to find purchase through all the blinding, crippling pain. I had to get up the ridge and to my car. I had to get home, had to save Morgana. I’d sooner be dead and damned than let what happened to Peter happen to her, or to Josh . . . .

Ahead, I could hear the faint swish of dried leaves as someone descended the ridge with a lot more grace than I had. Someone laughed, not an evil sound but a joyous one. It was the sound of someone very close to victory.

I had a decision to make in that moment. I could go for the light or the gun. Visions of Peter flickered through my brain like a horror movie that wouldn’t let go. I decided that faced with an angel-eater out to get me, I’d rather be armed with a handgun than a flashlight. I turned, wriggling the huge handgun out of my jeans with my right hand—my left was like a big chunk of lifeless meat attached to me—and took blind aim from my position on the ground.

The first muzzle flash illuminated the terrible, holy visage of Billie descending, dressed in a white ceremonial robe—skin glowing like a ghost, pale hair writhing. She fell upon me seconds later, her face twisted in lust and determination. The second blast made her scream and fall back. It also made me grin in devilish delight.

I had hit her!

But seconds later I heard the scuffle of feet as Billie regained her balance. A strange, bioluminescence seemed to fill the black forest with its ghostlight. It took the form of a woman—a winged woman. Four wings, faintly glowing. It illuminated the gunshot I had put in her shoulder—a burning black hole as big as my fist that was even now beginning to close up.

“Morgana . . . ” I said, almost screaming with the burning pain in my own shoulder—a shoulder that wasn’t healing nearly fast enough, certainly not like Billie’s wound. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Billie said in exactly Morgana’s throaty voice. “Just some glamour.” She pulled out a cell phone and tossed it on the ground between us. “You are so easy, Little Horn . . . and you call yourself a
witch
.” Billie spread her wings and they pulsed with a light similar to the full moon, a light that made me shirk.

I realized, belatedly and with some terror, that I was an injured daemon lying on the ground in the dark with what appeared to be a soldier angel charging me. I tried to summon a shield, a door . . . but my mind was a jumbled mess of fear and pain. The athame in my shoulder ached and pulsed like someone was thrusting a hot knife in and out, so distracting that all I could do was concentrate on escape. With a grunt, I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet, determined to duck into the hollow again in an effort to conceal myself amidst the trees, but the moment I was up, the whole world began to sway dangerously and my legs buckled and I collapsed like a wounded water buffalo amidst the weeds. The athame seemed to be sucking all the strength right out of my limbs. Christ, I really hated angel magic. With my strength ebbing, I tried to raise the gun, my last defense, but no sooner was my arm up, Billie was upon me, her weight bearing me to earth.