“Oh God,” she moaned. “The demons on the street.” But that only made sense. If she needed a warrior angel, she needed demons for him to fight. She needed him to save her. Keeping her eyes shut tight, she pushed forward, shuddering to touch what felt like solid flesh. In her mind, she could still see him so clearly. “I’m losing it,” she said. “I’m finally losing it.”
“Kelsey, you’re not, I swear,” he said. “All of it was real, I promise. Look at me.”
She made herself open her eyes. He was standing in front of her, an angel, as solid as the kitchen cabinets all around her, as solid as her own flesh. Everything she had found so beautiful about him was intensified, brought to full perfection in the glow of golden wings. Just looking at him, she felt a rush of joy, a fix of madness like a drug. But it was all a dream, a projection of insanity.
“You’re not real,” she told him. “You’re a delusion.” Just like her mama, she had a mind that liked to play practical jokes. Just like she had always promised, now that Jake had gone, Mama had sent her an angel.
“Kelsey, I promise you, I am.” He looked confused. “Of course I am.” He took her hand and pressed it to his naked chest. She could feel the heat of his flesh and the powerful beat of his heart. But she had seen such solid dreams before.
She looked up into his eyes, brilliant, burning blue. “Do you love me, Asher?”
He looked as sad and broken as she felt, the perfect, mad reflection of her heart. “I do.” He bent and brushed a kiss over her forehead. “I have fallen.”
From a real man, the words would have sounded glib. From her make-believe angel, they crushed her broken heart. For one sweet, fleeting, impossible moment, she pressed herself against him, let herself feel the full length of his body. So easy, she thought, savoring the warmth of him, feeling golden wings folded over her, strong arms cradling her close. Letting go would be so easy, letting the delusion have her. She had been thinking only days ago that she wanted to die. What better way to go? She could
let herself forget everything real, forget to eat, forget to feel the cold. She could stay with her angel forever. She heard him sigh, felt the rustle of his wings.
But then she thought of Jake, the real Jake, the man who had fought so hard to save her, fought death to stay with her so he could protect her from this madness, protect her from herself. “I won’t let it get you,” he had promised, holding her tight beside her mother’s grave. “I’ll scare the boogeyman away.”
“Asher,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “You have to leave me.” She had wrapped her arms around him; now she made herself let him go. “You have to go away and never come back.”
“Kelsey?” She felt him touching her face, willing her to look at him. She thought of her mother, the words she had used. “I don’t understand.”
“Leave me,” she said, pulling back from him, her eyes still closed, tears pouring down her face. “In Christ’s sweet name, begone.”
She heard him gasp, then a rush of violent wind. In a single moment, all the light and warmth in the world seemed to be gone. She couldn’t feel him anymore. She was shivering, abandoned in the dark. She opened her eyes, and he was gone.
She slumped down to the floor and let the tears come.
The Devil You Know
As soon as Kelsey said, “Begone,” Asher felt a rush of wind like a tornado lifting him off his feet and hauling him backward away from her. He had cast out hundreds of demons in his life; now suddenly he knew just how they’d felt. He was jerked straight through the wall of her apartment, down the hall, and through the wall of the building, shards of wood and plaster and metal and glass shattering around him without a sound. In Kelsey’s world, the walls were intact, but in the new plane her words had created, everything was falling apart. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the snowy street outside, then he was moving too fast to see anything but streaks of color.
He came to a stop in another world of dull gray concrete and dim winter light—a city in the space between. The space between worlds encompassed many smaller pockets like this. It was constantly growing and contracting, constantly changing. The urban landscape was a double for Kelsey’s city on the mortal plane, but it was a very different place. Kelsey had cast him away from her the same way any mortal with the faith and will to do it could cast out a demon. Because he was an angel, she couldn’t banish him to Hell or deny him access to the mortal plane. If he wanted, he could go anywhere on Earth…except her presence.
“No,” he said out loud, refusing to believe it. He willed himself back to Earth, back to the city, and found himself in front of his own apartment building. He closed his eyes, listening to the babble of voices all around him. He focused his angel senses, going deeper than sound, searching for Kelsey, the feel of her, the sure knowledge of her living presence in the world. As a seraph, he should have been able to pinpoint any mortal soul on the planet.
But Kelsey was gone.
Heart pounding, he went to the broken phone booth on the corner. The phone book hung in tatters, but a simple act of will brought it back together, the atoms that had made it once rushing back together from miles around, the newly remade pages rustling like feathered wings. He found the number, Jacob Marlowe at Kelsey’s address. The receiver on the phone had been torn off long ago, but he used his power to make it grow out of the frayed wires like an exotic bloom. He punched in the number, waiting, feeling the connection as it reached out, snaking through the earth and back into the air. Then the receiver shattered in his hand, sparks flying, a pandemonium of gibberish and laughter coming through the speaker as it melted in his grip.
Without thinking, he roared in frustration, and the phone booth exploded around him. Glass and twisted metal flew in every direction, this time for real in the physical world. A nearby chain link fence peeled back like a candy wrapper from its metal frame. A deep crack opened up in the sidewalk under his feet and snaked its way out into the street. He fought to control himself, fists clenched tight, and he could feel hot blood pounding in his temples, a very human rage. Eyes closed, he heard footsteps coming toward him and a mocking laugh.
“Your master’s truth, Asher,” Lucifer said. “You are so perfectly fucked.” His brother was in human guise again, leaning against what was left of the fence. “I love this girl.” His mortal costume melted away, leaving the massive dark shape that was his true demonic form. His limbs and torso were as perfect in shape as Asher’s, but his skin was crusted over with glossy, greenish-black scales, and his folded wings were leathery and tattered. A long, thick, spiked tail grew out of his back and writhed over the ground like a snake, and his feet were cloven hooves. His eyes glowed blue and orange like embers at the center of a furnace, and his hands were curled, the fingers tipped with lethal claws. In this form he was invisible to mortals, but dark, forbidding clouds began to gather in the sky above them. Asher shed his mortal skin as well, glowing as white as Lucifer was dark, his burnished golden wings outspread. “Very impressive,” the Fallen One said. “You’d look awesome on a Christmas tree.”
Asher raised his hand, slamming energy straight into the demon’s chest, knocking him back and sending him flying. He landed hard in a nearby vacant lot and skidded backward, leaving a steaming trail in the snow before crumpling like a wounded bat, his broken-looking wings cloaking him completely for a moment as his body flopped without grace. The gathering clouds split open with a blinding flash of lightning.
“Perfect!” Lucifer said, his laughter echoing the thunder. “What better way to save your girlfriend than to have it all over now?” He moved closer, circling, as lightning flashed again, and icy rain began to fall. “Destroy me, and Kelsey will be safe.”
“No,” Asher said, his hands shaking with fury and sudden fear. If he were to battle his opposite here, the entire mortal plane might be destroyed.
“Use your power to surround her,” the demon went on. “Split this world apart. She’s in her apartment right now, bawling her eyes out. Let her live while all the others die; take this world as your kingdom—I’ll give it to you as a present.” He was close now; the raindrops steamed on his burning skin. “What hope does the mortal plane have if the Evening Star has fallen?”
Asher looked into his brother’s burning eyes. “I have not fallen,” he said. “I will not fall.”
“Of course you will.” The demon’s breath was rank with the stench of burning flesh. “You won’t even need my help. You’ll fall and take her with you.”
“I won’t,” Asher said. “I will keep her safe.”