Chapter 24
Ashmedai
Ashmedai had never felt so helpless in his life. Kneeling in Daniel’s blood, he did his best to cradle Nicolas while he sobbed himself sick.
Everyone stood solemnly around them. Ira looked stricken, leaning heavily on Wolf. Julian was crying silently, one hand over his mouth while his shoulders shook.
Talon was the first to find his voice. “The kids. We still need to find the kids.”
“I’ll go,” Luke said hollowly.
“Not alone,” Malachi added.
“No more dark souls,” Ashmedai told them. “The paladins are all dead.”
“Good. Come on, Mal,” Luke said, taking his hand and tugging him along.
Ashmedai ignored them as they passed, focused on the heaving shoulders of his beloved human.
They’d talked about exactly this happening.
It was one of Nicolas’s greatest fears. Ashmedai didn’t know how to comfort him through this kind of loss.
He’d never cared about anything to this degree, never had a family he might mourn if he lost them.
Your brother is my brother, he’d said. Daniel was meant to be his family.
He was one of the few humans who didn’t treat him with fear or disgust. He’d accepted Ashmedai as Nicolas’s partner with no reservations.
They were meant to be family, but Daniel had been taken from them too soon.
Now their family was incomplete, and Ashmedai would never see that future realized.
An ache he didn’t recognize burned in his chest. Was this grief? It was nowhere near as acute as Nicolas’s, but he felt it nonetheless. He’d liked Daniel, and now he was gone. And because he was a good person, he wouldn’t go to Hell. Ashmedai would never see his bright soul again.
“Nic-las,” he croaked, giving him a tug.
Nicolas pushed himself upright only to flop against him, burying his face in his neck. He smelled like Daniel’s blood. His sobs were quieter now, his body too exhausted to continue.
“Oh no,” a small voice said, and Ashmedai turned his head.
The Alvarez kids hovered on either side of Luke. Like Nicolas, they had dark, curly hair and light brown skin. Their clothes were dirty and ripped in places. The girl’s longer hair was in tangles, and the boy’s eyes were red-rimmed. They both looked like they hadn’t slept in days.
“Oh, thank God you’re safe,” Alex said, darting over and pulling them both in for a hug.
“What happened?” the girl asked, staring at the body. “Who is that?”
“He’s… a friend,” Luke said. “He was helping us find you. His name is—was… Daniel.”
Nicolas whimpered at that, and Ashmedai felt a surge of protectiveness, tightening his arms around him.
“We should go,” he said. The kids were free, and he wanted to take Nicolas home.
Nicolas lifted his head sharply. His eyes were swollen and red. “We can’t leave him.”
“We won’t,” Julian said firmly. “We would never.”
“Come, my light.” Ashmedai stood, helping Nicolas to his feet as he went.
Valac scooped Daniel into his arms. Ashmedai wondered what they would do with him. What was the human custom for the dead?
He kept Nicolas tucked under his arm as they all trailed back up the stairs and out of the factory. It was the same route they’d taken to breach the building, but the mood was far more subdued. Instead of hopeful and strong, they were shell-shocked and grief-stricken.
When they got outside in the fresh, sea-salty air, Nicolas stopped, turning to wrap his arms around Ashmedai. His breaths were slow and deep, like he was breathing him in, and Ashmedai hugged him tight.
“What can I do?” he asked softly.
Nicolas shook his head. “Just stay by my side. That’s enough.”
“Of course. Always.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Talon said kindly, “but we need to know what you want us to do with the body.”
Nicolas shuddered.
“We have people who can handle any questions about the circumstances of his death, if you’d like him buried somewhere. There’s a halfling mortician at one of the hospitals, in fact. Or, if you’d rather, we can cremate him.”
“Cremate?” Ashmedai asked.
“Burn the body,” Talon explained. “Some humans choose to do this and keep the ashes in what’s called an urn.”
“No, no,” Nicolas said. He turned to face the others but kept one arm snugly around Ashmedai’s waist. “I don’t want him cremated. I don’t—want him turned to ashes. I’d rather he be buried, but I don’t have a cemetery in mind or anything. Our family is buried at the guild.”
“There’s a nice city cemetery a few blocks from my house,” Nathan said. “It’s quiet there.”
Nicolas nodded mechanically. “That sounds fine.”
“We’ll take care of it then,” Alex promised. “Why don’t you let Ashmedai take you home? Wash off that blood, get some rest. We’ll call you before they bury him.”
Nicolas’s chin wobbled, but no more tears fell. “Okay,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
“Nic,” Julian said, stepping closer. He threw his arms around Nicolas’s neck, and a moment later Nicolas returned the embrace, ducking his head as his shoulders shook again.
“I’m so sorry. He was like a brother to me, too,” Julian wept.
“I can’t believe it. If you need anything at all, call me, okay? Please?”
Nicolas nodded into the crook of his neck.
They parted with hitching breaths and wet faces. Nicolas folded himself back under Ashmedai’s arm, staring at Daniel’s limp form in Valac’s arms.
“Come,” Ashmedai said. “Home.”
They appeared in Nicolas’s darkened bathroom. Ashmedai turned on the light, and Nicolas squinted, ducking his head. He turned on the shower, and soon enough steam billowed out from behind the curtain.
Ashmedai approached him slowly. “All pain has an end,” he said as he peeled Nicolas’s blood-soaked shirt off. It was everywhere, matted in his curly hair and streaked on his face. Nicolas’s hands shook as he undressed Ashmedai.
When they were both naked, Ashmedai guided him under the spray of the hot shower and stepped behind him, curling around him and letting the hot water wash away the stains of the night. Pink swirled down the drain, and neither of them bothered to reach for the soap yet. They were in no hurry.
Nicolas’s devastated screams echoed in his memory, and Ashmedai suppressed a shudder. He never wanted to hear Nicolas sound like that again. His palm pressed flat against Nicolas’s chest, taking comfort in the pulse of his heart and the steady inhale-exhale of his breaths.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Nicolas finally said, hollowly.
“Nor do I,” Ashmedai confessed. He paused, considering. “What would Danny want you to do?”
He was certain Daniel would want him to do whatever it took to make Nicolas happy and help him through this dark time. He just didn’t know how to do that.
“He’d want…” Nicolas sighed. “He’d want me to stick to the plan. Join the Sentinels, fight the good fight, spend eternity with you. Those are the things that would make me happy, and that’s still true even though he’s… not here.” Nicolas quivered.
A shameful little curl of delight went through Ashmedai at that, tempered by the sadness that permeated them both. “Those things would still make you happy?”
Nicolas turned his head to smile at him. It was weak, but real. “Yeah. Especially that last one.”
Ashmedai leaned in for a soft kiss. “I am glad. I want that, too.”
Nicolas turned in his arms and rested his head against Ashmedai’s shoulder. “I knew spending eternity with you would mean having to say goodbye to him one day. I just didn’t think it would be so soon. We were supposed to have more time. He should’ve been allowed to grow old.”
“Yes, he should.”
Barely whispering, he said, “He was all the family I had left.”
“I know. I am so sorry we lost him, my light.” Human lives were so fleeting.
He’d never had to grapple with losing someone he cared about.
How could Daniel be there one minute and gone the next?
His body remained, but he was no longer in it.
It didn’t seem right. Why couldn’t they just go and get the soul and put it back where it belonged?
He sighed. It didn’t work like that, and he knew it.
Nicolas’s breath hitched. “Just tell me it’ll all be okay. Tell me we’ll get through this.”
“It will all be okay. We will get through this. One step at a time.” He picked up the bottle of shampoo. “Starting with this.”
Ashmedai had never attended a funeral. He didn’t even know what it was until Nicolas explained it.
When humans buried their dead, they said kind words about the deceased, reminisced about his life, and prayed that his soul would find peace in the afterlife.
It sounded nice, though he begrudged the idea that Daniel would go somewhere Ashmedai wasn’t welcome.
It was also, as he learned, unusual for a funeral to be held at night, but since the halflings were in charge of this, they were able to do it whenever and however they wanted.
Nicolas said he didn’t want Ashmedai or any of the others to feel uncomfortable in the sunlight at the grave, so he elected to wait until nightfall.
An LED lantern sat beside the marker as they lowered the casket into the ground.
Everyone was in attendance, wearing their finest suits. The demons all looked appropriately somber, because this death had hit all of the humans hard. Nicolas and Julian might have known Daniel the best, but they’d all felt the grim reality of his death.
Nathan cleared his throat. “While there would normally be a preacher in attendance at a graveside service like this, we obviously couldn’t have one here with us tonight, so would anyone like to say a few words?”
Nicolas straightened as though preparing to bear the responsibility of the moment, but Julian stepped forward first, patting Nicolas’s shoulder with a weak smile.
“I actually expected this, so I prepared something, if that’s okay with you?”
Nicolas sagged with relief. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Julian smiled. “I’ll avoid any Bible passages for present company’s sake.
I just wanted to say a few words about Danny.
” He cleared his throat. “Daniel Joaquin Garcia was one of my best friends. We were in the same preschool class, and the moment he shared his crayons with me, we were bonded for life.” Julian chuckled.
“Graduating together was one of the best days of my life. Being in Nic’s squad together, we became real family.
Daniel partnered with me during patrols, asked how I was after each encounter with a demon.
Hell, he even brought me soup when I was sick.
Daniel really made me feel like I belonged.
“I took Daniel with me when I went to tour my first house. It needed a lot of work, and I was on the fence about buying. He was the one who talked me into it. ‘It’s got good bones,’ he told me.
‘We’ll all help you turn it into a home, you’ll see.
’ And they did. They all helped me remodel the place from the ground up.
The others in our squad… They didn’t have our backs when the time came.
But Danny never faltered. He knew what he stood for, and he never wavered, not even when people he called friends condemned him for it.
He was honorable, and loyal, and the best damn friend anyone could’ve asked for.
” Julian’s voice wavered, and he impatiently swiped a tear from his cheek.
“And the world’s a little bit darker without him in it.
He will be… very missed, but I’m glad we got to have at least a little time with him. ”
Nicolas nodded, looking miserable.
They didn’t stay to watch the casket get lowered into the ground, but before they left, Nicolas approached it, bracing his hands on the section where Daniel’s head would be.
“Bye, little brother,” he whispered, one thumb stroking the polished wood. “I’ll hold you in my heart always.”
After a few more moments of silence, they turned as a group to go.
The sky above them brightened inexplicably. They all stopped, raising their faces to the night sky as a streak of light traveled across the indigo blanket. It was far too big and low to be a shooting star, and the color seemed wrong. It was too golden.
“What the hell was that?” Malachi asked.
“A shooting star?” Nathan guessed.
“Never seen a shooting star like that,” Luke said.
When Ashmedai noticed Nicolas had paused, he stopped. Nicolas was looking at Ira, on the other side of the casket, who was frowning at it as though trying to solve a puzzle. Shaking his head, he looked away—and met Nicolas’s eyes.
“What is it?” Nicolas asked, calling the others’ attention back to them.
Ira gave him a pursed smile. “It’s not important right now. Julian mentioned gathering at his place. We should go.”
Nicolas turned away blankly, apparently unwilling to press. Ashmedai looked at Wolf, who shrugged one shoulder. He didn’t know what was going on with Ira, either.
They would find out eventually, one way or another. Time stopped for no one, even those frozen in it.