Chapter 25
Nicolas
Since no one had cooked, Julian ordered pizza and had it delivered to his and Valac’s house.
It smelled divine, but Nicolas couldn’t stomach the thought of eating anything right now.
The surreality of being back here after the last time, when they’d all been filled with such hope for the future, felt like lead in his gut.
His eyes were dry, but his grief was a ball and chain around his neck.
It would take him time to adjust to the weight of it.
He didn’t talk, but no one seemed to expect him to. The conversation rose and fell around him, and his one constant was Ashmedai, taking his meager weight like a rock. He didn’t know how he would have survived any of this without Ashmedai.
Maybe Ira was right. Maybe it was fate that brought them together. Perhaps God had recognized that Nicolas needed someone special to stand by his side.
His eyes found Ira, sitting on the sofa across from him and picking at a piece of pizza crust. He hadn’t eaten much, although none of them seemed to have their full appetites right now.
Ira looked up, whether by happenstance or something more, and offered Nicolas a small, knowing smile.
“Ask.” He sounded resigned.
The rest of the room went quiet.
Nicolas took a moment, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer, but he already knew he would ask anyway. “Did you know it would happen?”
Ira sighed. “No. And that’s the strange thing.”
“Why is that strange? Prophets don’t see everything,” Nicolas said. “Could you have just missed seeing that part?”
Ira’s brows drew together, and his head tilted thoughtfully. “No. The strange thing is that… everything I’ve ever seen has come to pass—until now.”
“What do you mean?”
Ira spoke slowly, each word measured. “There are things I saw in Daniel’s future that can’t come to pass now that he’s gone. That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve never had a vision that didn’t come true. How can it be that Daniel was killed and his future cut short—the future I saw him have?”
Talon inhaled sharply, hesitated, then said, “There are ways for a human soul to come back. They just wouldn’t be human anymore.”
Ira shook his head. “Daniel would have to go to Hell for that, and it would take centuries for him to return. Ashmedai, did he have a dark soul? Would he have gone to Hell?”
Ashmedai rumbled out a low, unhappy growl. “No. He had a bright soul. He was not bound for Hell.”
Nicolas barked out a raspy laugh. “I don’t know whether to be happy about that or not now.”
Ashmedai tugged him closer. “Agreed. I could have seen him again if he’d gone there. He’s out of my reach, though.”
Talon asked, “But the future you saw was recent?”
Ira nodded. “Yes. There are things that should have happened with him here. I don’t know what that means.
If this has changed, how much more will change?
Will all of the things I saw where he was present be different now?
Will his death change the outcome of every moment he was going to be involved in? ”
“I suppose we won’t know until we reach those moments,” Talon said. “Or if you have a vision that implies things are changing.”
Nicolas could barely wrap his head around it all. “What would it mean, if things were changing? Could the future have been predestined… but now it’s not?”
“I, for one, would be happy if the future was less predetermined,” Shadrach declared, casting Isaac a fond look.
“While I do appreciate that it led me to Isaac, I don’t like the idea that all my actions over my long life were already destined to lead me in one direction.
The unpredictability of possibility is what makes life worth living. ”
“I don’t know what it would mean,” Ira answered. “It’s unprecedented. I’m flying as blind as the rest of you right now. I don’t know if any of my old visions are still accurate, and I won’t know until, like Talon said, we reach those points in time.”
“Then we just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Nathan said. “Watch each other’s backs and wait for a sign.”
“And declare war on the paladins,” Talon added.
Nathan sighed gustily.
“We’ve got the kids back. It’s time I sent that official warning.” His body was relaxed, one arm thrown around the back of the sofa behind Alex’s shoulders, but his black eyes held a dark, hungry gleam.
“This might be unwise, given how uncertain things are right now,” Nathan suggested.
“No, we should do it,” Nicolas said, and everyone stopped to look at him.
“They’re only going to get worse if we don’t take a stand.
They kidnapped minors to blackmail you into doing what they wanted.
They whip their own people in the courtyard for any little infraction.
Somebody has to stop them. We’re the only ones who can.
” He met Talon’s eyes. “So send the message. Let the good ones abandon ship, and then we’ll sink any who remain. ”
Talon inclined his head. “Good man.”
Talon didn’t send the message that night, which was a more respectful deference for Daniel’s death and Nicolas’s feelings than he’d expected from the prickly leviathan.
Instead, they made a plan to meet the next day at Talon and Alex’s temporary apartment above In Extremis, right above Ashmedai’s.
It seemed only right that they should all be together when they sent the message.
“Okay,” Talon said when the last of them, Julian and Valac, arrived. He laid a piece of notebook paper on the kitchen island and looked around the room. “This is what I’m going to send.”
Nathan stretched a hand toward it. “May I?”
Talon handed it over with a lopsided smile, and Nathan read silently. Nicolas studied his face, tracking the way his brows rose and his lips pursed.
“What’s it say?” Luke asked.
Nathan read, “To the Paladin Guild of Los Angeles, this is the demon, Talon. Your commander has left us no choice. From this moment forth, every member who stands with Commander Sloan will receive no mercy. Any who wish to avoid bloodshed should turn in their rings and leave the guild. Those who do so will be no enemy of ours. The Sentinels will help any who need it. We are Commander Sloan’s enemy, but we don’t have to be yours.
Leave the corruption of the guild and Sloan’s leadership behind, or prepare for war. The choice is yours.”
“Ooh,” Malachi murmured giddily. “Very dramatic.”
“Yes, well, we are declaring war,” Talon said. “It needs an appropriate amount of gravitas.”
“It sounds fine to me,” Julian said.
“Me, too,” Nicolas agreed.
One by one, they all agreed—some more reluctantly than others—and then waited in silence while Talon typed in all the phone numbers, copied the message, and hit send.
When it was over, he set his phone down on the marble island, the moment weighted by what they’d just done.
“I’ve never been to war before,” Storm finally said.
“Skirmishes,” Shadrach said thoughtfully, “never a war.”
“Pirate skirmishes?” Isaac asked, grinning.
“Pirates?” Malachi repeated. “You were a fucking pirate?”
“No, not at all. No idea what he’s referring to,” Shadrach deadpanned.
“I don’t want to know what the two of you roleplay in the bedroom,” Storm drawled.
“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” Shadrach teased. “But the bottle of rum is my—”
Talon’s phone vibrated, and everyone stopped to stare at it.
“I didn’t really expect a response,” Talon said, nonplussed.
“Well, what’s it say?” Malachi asked.
Talon unlocked his phone with a swipe of his finger. “‘Is this for real?’” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that deserves a response.”
But then his phone vibrated again. And again. And again.
Too curious to resist, Nicolas leaned over to read the messages as they appeared. His hair brushed Alex’s, who shot him a conspiratorial half-smile.
You can’t be serious.
Reporting this now.
What do we do?
Forwarding to my captain.
God help us.
God help THEM. We’ll crush them.
They have POWERS.
Remember people, even if this is true, it’s coming from a demon. You can’t trust anything they say.
“Congratulations,” Alex said, kissing Talon’s cheek, “you’ve created a giant group chat with a bunch of paladins.”
Talon’s lip curled in disgust, but it faded when he chased Alex’s lips as though helpless to resist.
Nicolas glanced back at Ashmedai, a silent, comforting presence at his back. His hooded head tilted at the attention, and a clawed hand flattened on his stomach, drawing him back against Ashmedai’s chest.
Julian cleared his throat then, looking cagey. He looked up at Valac, gave him a nudge, and said, “Tell them now.”
Valac looked uncertain. “Are you sure? There has been so much going on…”
“Yeah. I think they need to know.”
“Need to know what?” Nathan asked, sounding tired.
Valac sighed, glowing violet eyes finding Nicolas’s.
“Last night, I attempted to enter Purgatory. It’s not unheard of for a good soul to wander there if they had unfinished business on Earth.
Julian told me a little about the relationship Daniel shared with you, and I thought there was a chance that he might consider his time here unfinished, because he’d left you behind. ”
Nicolas’s throat clogged.
“You attempted,” Ashmedai repeated. “You were unsuccessful?”
Valac inclined his head. “Yes. I was unable to open a gate to Purgatory at all. It was impassable.”
No one spoke as they all digested that.
“The hell does that mean?” Malachi finally asked. “Has that ever happened before?”
“No,” Valac answered. “It’s unprecedented. For the first time in my existence, I cannot enter Hell. We are all cut off from it. I have no way of contacting my superior, Astaroth, or anyone else in the underworld.”
“If Daniel is in Purgatory,” Nicolas croaked, “you can’t get to him.”
“That’s right.”
“How long would he wander for, without intervention?”
“It’s difficult to say. There are creatures who wander Purgatory, reapers, who guide lost souls to their destined afterlife.
If he’s particularly stubborn, he might resist them for a time, but…
” He shook his head. “I can’t know for sure.
Perhaps he isn’t even there. You have Ashmedai—and the rest of us.
Maybe knowing that was enough for Daniel to find peace. ”
“He couldn’t come back, anyway,” Talon said, uncharacteristically soft. “Human souls can’t cross back over, remember?”
“No,” Valac agreed, “he can’t. But I’d hoped I could find him nonetheless, if only to help him find that peace myself.”
Nicolas felt like a fragile pane of glass. “Thank you for trying.” His voice broke.
“But the question remains,” Wolf said. “Why are the gates shut?”
“Not for anything good.” Talon folded his arms. “Maybe they’re trying to keep something in. Lots of demons want out of Hell.”
“Not many can actually get out, though,” Shadrach added.
“Remember that thing with the possessors last year? The closest they could get to escaping was with those pills the kalmach, Amon, made. And they were still unsuccessful. What could possibly be trying to escape that would make them shut down every avenue in and out of Hell?”
“Nothing good, I suspect,” Luke said.
“Whatever it is, we’ll handle it,” Talon said with a sigh.
Ira nodded decisively. “Together.”
“Together,” Nicolas echoed with the others, soft but genuine. They weren’t family like Daniel was, but maybe they didn’t have to be.