There But For The Grace (12 page)

“It wasn’t, merely an observation.” The look I got from the six-year-old was enough to peel paint. I scrubbed my face with my hand and huffed out a hard breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s killing me, being up here, jumping through hoops, trying to get to a point where I can get to him, get him
out.
It just feels like it’s all a game to… well not
you
specifically, but you guys—Immortals? Hell, I don’t even know what to call it or how to quantify it.”

“You are right to be impatient, Adelaide. Even we do not have all the answers. Merely a touch more insight into the situation than you.”

Miri shifted in her seat and watched me snatch a fry off my plate and dip it in my milkshake. It was like dipping your fries in a Frosty at Wendy’s. It was just a generally accepted thing that you did. Miri seemed intensely fascinated by it though.

“Is that good?” she asked.

I held out the fry to her, and she took it, biting into it, chocolate ice cream and all. She looked surprised, and I pushed my plate and my milkshake closer to her to share, despite the fact that I wasn’t exactly happy with what I was hearing out of either of them right this second.

“That seriously sounds like you guys have been intentionally slowing me down.”

“We have,” Miri said and happily got onto her knees in the booth to reach my plate and milkshake. She dipped another fry and ate it while I bored holes in her little cherubic face with my gaze. I was trying really hard not to punch the six-year-old. She met my eyes and smiled, and the feeling I had to do extreme violence faded into a dull roar.

“Sorry,” she said. “It really has been for the greater good. You see, by delaying you, we are giving you a better opportunity to meet and extract Tabbris.”

“Seriously, start talking. Get a little more detailed, because I don’t think I can take much more when it comes to the games.”

“You can, and you will, if you want to achieve the outcome you are after.”

Six-year-old 1, Addy 0.
Damn it. She had a point there, and I really needed to watch myself. I was constantly reminding myself at this point that this was
Death
and
War
incarnate that I was talking to here. They could and would bitchslap me into horrible dimensions of awful if I pissed them off, which really wasn’t my goal.

I was tired as fuck at this point, had been up for over a day, and wasn’t gaining any ground. It was bad enough spinning my wheels, but to be
told
I was spinning them and furthermore, to be told it was intentional on their part that I was doing it.
Oh, hell to the motherfucking no!
I wasn’t just running out of good graces—I was just plain out. I was getting more upset by the minute, but I set my teeth. It was okay to be upset, but it was never, ever, okay to show it. I figured it was a little late for that now, but still. I let War steal fries off my plate, let her help herself to my chocolate milkshake, and did my best to chew my burger in silence while I got a fucking grip. Miri looked me over and seemed to nod, satisfied. I arched a brow, and she smiled.

“I didn’t think you would be able to do it—to maintain control—and control is a very important thing to have in Hell, but it would seem that Tabbris has taught you well… or that I have perhaps underestimated you.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“You’re welcome, but don’t thank me just yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because, we are taking you into
Hell
, dear girl,” Azrael said. “And we don’t think you could possibly have a full appreciation of what that actually means.” He looked sad, and I empathized with him, I really did, but I’d like to think that I was a little more clued in than what either of
them
thought.

“You know, while Tab and I were hunting down the keys, Iaoel thought it would be a good tactic to,” I cleared my throat, “Show me things… as a method of deterrent. I, um, think I might have more of an idea about what to expect that you think, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t absolutely fucking terrified, but in the end, that doesn’t matter, does it?

“Tab stuck by me and did his best from the moment he walked into the situation, and he deserves no less out of me. I completely understand what I am walking into is going to be awful. The kind of thing that the stuff of nightmares takes one look at, declares ‘I’m out!’ and walks away. I get that; I really do. I also get that there probably isn’t anything I could say to convince you of that, but that’s okay. I’m on board. I’m going down there, and I’m going to try to get Tab out. That’s what’s what, and you’d best believe it.”

Azrael and Miri exchanged a look, and Miri sat back in her side of the booth, contemplating. She exchanged another look with Azrael, and it was like they were silently communicating or deliberating. Finally she looked into her lap and back up. She brought her little hands out from under the table, a shiny, nickel-plated .45 in each one. It definitely looked weird, because those hands shouldn’t have been able to hold guns like that, but I couldn’t let something like ‘physically impossible’ come into things after all I’d seen. She set them on the table between us.

“Take these, and holster them quickly.”

I blinked and snatched them off the table. They were heavier than they looked, and when I looked down, I had a black holster waiting for them along the outside of each thigh, I slid them home and swallowed in relief when I saw Tab’s knife now rode on the front of my belt, high on my waist. I gripped the knife handle, glad to still have it and resisted the urge to draw it a couple of times to get a feel for the new position.

“
Those
you can thank me for,” Miri said with a smile, a wicked little gleam in her pale icy eyes that definitely belied her Little-Miss-Innocent routine.

“Thank you,” I said, then followed up with, “Being an American Girl, I know the basics when it comes to firearms; point, safety off, shoot, but reloading is a little beyond me can you show me?”

“One, there is no safety, and two, do you honestly think that War would give you guns that needed reloading?”

“Point well taken. Magic guns. Got it.”

“Finish your meal, Addy. You need some rest and a good sleep before we make the journey.” Azrael chuckled as he told me what to do, taking any sting out of it. I ate the rest of my burger, and they bought this round. Who knew that Death had an AmEx?

***

When we’d left the diner and had gone up the block, it occurred to me that I didn’t really have any place to go to bunk down, but it didn’t really matter. Azrael had turned back into the more traditional looking ‘death’ and had reached out, touching my forehead and the next thing I knew I was coming awake in a field. The sun beat down on my face, but it wasn’t hot. The grass, long and waving in the slight wind, didn’t tickle where it touched. I sat up and an all too familiar voice said, “There she is!”

“What, you fucking lost me?” I groused and looked up at Gabriel in his male form. I felt my eyes widen before I could stop them and gave myself away, damn it. I could tell I gave myself away because his smile grew just that bit more brilliant. I mean, I’d seen him in his armor in visions before, and in the dark of Chernobyl, but this, in person under the sparkling light of day… Wow. I changed the subject really damned quick before he could latch onto it and try to embarrass me or worse.

“I feel like I should be stiff as fuck, but I’m not. How come?”

“Watch your language, mortal!” I looked past Gabriel to a glowering Michael and we both sort of ignored him.

“The ground in Heaven agrees with you? How should I know?” Gabriel, said. I refocused on him.

“Heaven?” I echoed, confused.

“Meh, the edge of the ground floor, but yeah.”

I crossed my eyes, and he laughed, dropping into a crouch beside me, which made his old-school Romanesque breastplate ride up nearly to his chin. He gripped the neck, pulling it down slightly, nonchalantly hanging his arms from the thing, and I tried really hard to focus on his pretty blue eyes framed by all that long, raven dark hair, rather than the coil and bunch of muscle beneath his pale skin burnished a light gold by the light. So he had arms to die for. Sue me.

“What the hell am I doing in Heaven?” I demanded, and Michael made to stride forward. Uriel and Raphael stepped in his way out of seemingly nowhere, and Gabriel grinned wider.

“As much as I love watching you get Mikey’s goat, knock it off, Doll. Just try to keep a lid on it until Azzy gets back.”

“This is serious, Gabriel. Wrong freaking realm! I’m supposed to go to Hell!”

Gabriel and Uriel both started to laugh at that, and I pushed myself to my feet, getting pretty upset by this point. Gabriel stood fluidly with me.

Once I was up, I froze. The grassland stretched out far in front of me, but was quickly laid to waste by a scarred, burned section, the ashes and cinders of which stretched far, gray and black under a stormy sky. I’d once seen pictures and YouTube videos of a volcano erupting somewhere in Sumatra. The ash formed thunderclouds shot through with red, and lightning cut through the clouds. It was surreal and terrifying and awe-inspiring, and it was exactly what the sky above the tableau in front of me looked like. The twisted iron fence that stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see jutted up from the ground and looked like any old cemetery gate, except much larger. Like taller than the Columbia tower, the tallest skyscraper in Seattle, and that bitch clocked in at nine hundred and sixty-seven feet.

“I don’t understand: why don’t they just go through the bars?”

“Doesn’t work that way.”

I looked behind me at the grasses that waved gently in the wind and went on forever and saw no pearly gates.

Gabriel chuckled, having a guess at what I was doing. “You’re alive, Baby. They aren’t going to be there, not to your eyes.”

I looked back towards the scarred lands and to a thin trailhead leading down into them. I frowned, realizing that the ground here was sloped. Gabriel stepped up beside me, almost shoulder to shoulder, and followed my gaze.

“You know why they call it ‘the pit’?” he asked. I shook my head, and he made a slightly exasperated sound. “Didn’t you pay attention at all in bible school?”

“I never went to bible school. Now cough it up. Give me the short version. I want to get going.”

“You shouldn’t be so eager,” Michael called, and I couldn’t help myself: I flipped him the bird. He scowled, but for whatever reason, he stayed put several paces away with Raphael and Uriel. Uriel didn’t bother to suppress his smile, but Raphael spoke to Michael in low and urgent tones that I wasn’t listening to. I was too focused on Gabriel and what he was saying.

“I would normally crack a joke about you spending at least five minutes in Hell for doing that but you’re probably about to spend a lot longer than five minutes. I want to say that I
hope
you do at any rate, but I really don’t. I don’t want any of this for you, Addy.”

Gabriel turned and took me gently by the shoulders, turning me away from the view down the slope, and Hell’s front gate. I looked up into his eyes and kind of marveled at his expression, which was the most somber and serious I’d ever seen it.

“Don’t,” I told him, warning in my tone.

“Adelaide…”

“
Don’t, Gabriel.
I need you to not do this, I need you to be the same loveable jackass you’ve been from the start, because if you stop, then I’m going to think that you think I can’t do this, and I need someone to fucking believe in me other than me. Just one person, and unfortunately you’re it, because the only other person that would or could believe in me is in there!” I pointed out towards Hell and took a deep breath. “And I need to go in there and get him, so please, don’t go all serious on me now.”

Gabriel forced a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his so-blue eyes, which were watered down with worry. “You think I’m loveable?” he asked, and I laughed a little.

“You have your moments,” I said with a nod.

His eyes warmed up to summer skies with his smile this time, and he cupped my cheek with one hand, grazing his thumb across my skin in a soft caress. I stopped breathing and wondered what the hell was up. He’d flirted before, sometimes mercilessly, but he’d never stepped a toe across the line into anything like this before. I waited, and he smiled a little wider when I didn’t rebuff him right away, apparently missing the fact that I wasn’t encouraging him either. Too many times I had secretly wished Tab would look at me, or touch me this way even after his little speech outside the diner in Seattle.

I did not come here to date you, or fall in love with you, or have any part in your life...

Those painful words echoed in the recesses of my mind even now, and I silently cursed Iaoel the fuck out for it. She redoubled her efforts, the image of Tab’s face ghosting over Gabriel’s even as his arm went around my back, pulling me a little closer to him. I didn’t resist him, instead focusing my efforts on beating back Iaoel, and I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it. If she pulled this shit in Hell I was toast! The thing was, if she pulled this shit in Hell
she
was toast too. I had no problem reminding her of that, but she kept trying. I realized that this may very well be a last-ditch effort on her part to try to keep me from going in, but instead, I sent a mean mental right hook in her direction and slammed the vault door in her pretty face. I was going, period! No one and nothing was going to stop me either.

“Do me a favor Addy?” Gabriel’s voice snapped me back into the physical world, and I found myself nodding mutely.

“When you see Tab,” he said, and I felt my ridged posture soften marginally. “Give him something for me?”

I nodded and forced the word out of my mouth, “W-what?”

Gabriel had begun a descent and suddenly was closer than he’d ever been, his lips brushed mine softly, gently, and I froze. I didn’t respond, didn’t kiss him back. I was too shocked. His kiss was electric, sending a shiver through me, but still I didn’t move, and when he flicked his tongue lightly against my lower lip, I just seized up more. He smiled a little sadly against my unresponsive mouth and drew back.