Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Mercy
No plan. No backup. No hope.
But at least I can breathe through the flies pelting my face as I walk across the piazza.
I must be halfway to the obelisk monument by now, but all I see apart from flames along the sword is black. I don’t think I’m going in the wrong direction.
Keeping my eyes sharp, I lift the sword like a visor before my stole-wrapped face.
The flames repel the swarm a little, clearing my view enough to see cobblestones a few paces ahead.
But with each step forward, the flies grow thicker and larger, the buzzing louder, and the air more congested.
The darkness between each bug flows, reminding me of the ribbons of shadow attached beneath Cisco’s tattoos.
I push the thought aside and keep going.
The next wave of buzzing carries voices raised in an argument.
“You stole everything from me!”
“I just wanted to protect you!”
A third voice slides through the buzzing and lands right against my ear. “This is all your f—”
I whirl with my sword, and the voice stops as if cut off mid word by a hand clamped over a mouth.
My eyes narrow at the darkness. Those final words sounded familiar in the way the first lot wasn’t.
I recognize the cadence too. I spent the first third of my life learning it, the last two unlearning it, and this morning, in a room smelling of bleach, I finally stopped flinching from it.
Hannah admitted to messing with my mind. This is obviously another ploy.
A prickling warning of evil vibrates up the sword.
“Nothing else to add, Mom?” I shout, still scanning the darkness, trying to lock onto the demonic entity. “Or should I call you Beelzebub?”
When no answer comes, I strengthen my grip on the sword. Flames flare as if fueled by my resolve.
“Typical,” I mutter and keep walking. Pretty sure every demon I’ve met so far is a coward.
One more step. Another. A third. Every inch closer to the storm’s center where the marked siblings are only solidifies my resolve.
Until the wind suddenly fades. My hair drops against my sweaty neck. The stupid sunflower dress stops billowing and hangs limply against my legs. Ahead of me, the wall of shadowy flies peels apart like the Red Sea for Moses.
Goosebumps race up my bare arms. Evil, evil, evil.
I sense it coming at me from a clean path cutting straight ahead into the heart of the dark storm.
I glimpse Cisco’s tattooed arms as he gesticulates in argument—same way he’s often done with me.
The rest of his body is hidden by the corridor’s black wall on my right.
On the left, I see smaller, feminine arms covered in leather, gesturing just as passionately. Hannah.
“You stole everything from me!” Her high-pitched voice tunnels to me, clear as day.
“I just wanted to protect you!” Cisco bellows back.
Evil, evil, evil.
Before I take a single step forward, a youth appears and blocks my way.
It’s the same figure I glimpsed from the basilica’s steps.
Up close, he is even more weirdly perfect.
It’s unsettling. Pale, slicked back hair.
Waxen skin. His vintage clothes belong in a funeral-home museum.
Flies crawl along the seams of his woolen jacket, along the collar, and then up the shell of one ear.
They’re unhurried as if grooming something they love rather than foraging for food.
The most frightening part of the youth is his eyes—black orbs that seem both solid and empty at once. A single fly crawls out of one and down his waxy, pre-pubescent cheekbone.
The best way to ignore demon princes begging for attention is to ignore them completely. I tug Bianchi’s purple stole up over my nose and mouth, step around the figure, and then continue walking.
The boy falls into step beside me, hands in his pockets, matching my strides.
“Hannah left you too early,” he croons with a sigh. “She missed the best part.” A pause. A glance at my sword. “You. On fire.”
Something cold slithers down my spine, spurring me forward. Any doubt I had that this is Beelzebub evaporates. I sensed something in the air around Hannah in the room she’d taken me to, but going by his words, he stayed and watched me after she left.
“You forgave yourself,” he continues, purring the words. “Finally. For twenty years I watched you flinch at your own reflection and then this morning, in that ugly little room, you stopped.” The corpse-smooth face turns to me, delighted. “Well played. I confess, I think I actually applauded.”
I stop. It takes every ounce of self-control to battle my instincts to look sideways at him, to slice my sword through his face in a fit of righteous anger. My whole life I wanted someone to look at me and be proud, and here it comes, from a dead-eyed boy who smells of rotten meat.
Is this a joke?
Is it reverse psychology?
Whatever it is, I don’t have time for it, so file the wrongness away and keep moving.
“You know what your mother never understood?” Beelzebub drifts ahead of me now, walking backward, so those two holes stay zeroed in on my face.
“She thought you ruined what you touch. Said you push people away. She was so wrong, though, wasn’t she?
You’re the only one who actually finishes things. ” He smiles. “It’s a gift.”
“Are you always this chatty?” My voice is muffled but loud through the stole. “Or is this a special occasion?”
Beelzebub’s smile doesn’t move, and neither does he. It’s either run into him, or I have to stop too.
“Wait.” I raise my brows as I grind to a halt. “Are you trying to be friends with me or something? Is that what this is?” I gesture between us. “This . . . sycophantic business?”
Again, no answer. Just a thousand thoughts calculating in those empty eyes.
“I hope not,” I add with a scoff. “Because I’ve already got one Prince of Hell bestie.
Sure, he drinks and smokes too much. And he’s a little emotional, crying over croissants and all that.
” I sidestep Beelzebub as if he’s an afterthought, my lips kicking up.
“But he still had more presence than you.”
“Asmodeus.” He falls in line beside me again. “He does love a soft landing. Croissants. Blankets. A deranged moth for company.” A small, fond tut. “But only those desperate to be seen need presence.” Two voids settle on me. “I gave that up a long time ago.”
“Great. I love a riddle.”
His chuckle seems real, boyish and carefree.
“The cursed apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He gives a little shrug, half to himself. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that two of my brothers have fallen to your little sisterhood.”
“Pretty sure that’s not what it means.”
“Pestilence, and then War,” he continues. The waxy skin on his cheeks lifts, bunching in a parody of a smile. “The third is being born, right here, right now, at the end of this path. And then . . .” He spreads his small pale hands. “Then I ride.”
Wait . . . is he saying he’s actually Famine? Or is he saying that whatever’s left of Cisco or Hannah, whoever is the original Saint or Sinner, Beelzebub will control them.
It doesn’t really matter.
“Not if I stop you first,” I grind out.
“You won’t have to,” the demon prince goes on before I can answer.
“Oh yes, you’ll reach them. But when you get there, you’ll find only two mercies are left in all the world.
Kill him, and carry him the way you carry your father.
” He pauses for a beat, self-satisfied smile still frozen as if the wax hardened that way.
“Or kill her. And watch him look at you for the rest of your life the way he used to look at me.”
“How about I just kill you now?” I pivot and swing the sword, putting my whole body into it. The flaming edge should rip him open from hip to shoulder, but the blade sails right through as if he’s made of smoke.
He laughs, and flies explode from his mouth, spilling up and out to join the storm surrounding us.
I shield myself with the sword. When I look again, the boy is already fading.
“I’m not really here,” he says. “Not yet. That’s the point, piccola. It’s why you lose either way. But for me? It’s a win-win regardless.”
His form completely redistributes into the swarm until all I see are black swarming walls and the clear path ahead.
Fuck this shit. Fuck the things he’s saying. Fuck that my soul is afraid he’s true.
Gritting my teeth, I lock onto the open heart of the storm and run until the corridor spits me out at the center on the steps of the obelisk.
The world goes still.
Two figures still can’t seem to hear or see me despite being only a few feet away.
Everything in me wants to lunge for Cisco, but my training locks my knees. Assess before you enter a kill box. Who is the angel, who is the devil? I force myself to take a few steady breaths, and to really look at him, but looking is its own kind of dying.
His shirt is in ruins and sticking to his skin in patches that can only be blood.
The collar is open, buttons ripped off to the sternum, and his shadows are peeling off his skin and reaching for Hannah.
But the worst of it—Cisco’s usually warm, sun-kissed olive skin is gray.
Like dead-gray, wrung-out, and hollow-cheeked.
He’s a man with nothing left in the tank and somehow still running.
I’ve seen him hungry. I’ve seen him feed on sin.
I’ve never seen this scraped-empty thing wearing his face.
And across from him, Hannah is dressed in all black but full of life. Her severe bob whips in a wind that doesn’t reach me. Her chin is up, and her shoulders are squared in triumph.
Except.
For half a second her expression isn’t victorious at all. It’s the one I saw in the food warehouse, the one I felt sorry for. She doesn’t look like a devil. She just looks torn, tired, and like someone who wants to be loved. Then the expression is gone, and she’s just my enemy again.
Neither of them notices me. I’m nothing but a flickering blur at the edge of their war.
Fuck.
My gaze ping-pongs between them. Which one? Who do I save, and who do I . . . ?
Their voices rise again, repeating the same words I heard while deep inside the dark corridor. It’s as if no time passed, and I’m now witnessing the very words and who is speaking them.
Cisco roars at Hannah, “You stole everything from me!”
And she—spine straight, tears streaming down her face—shouts back, “I just wanted to protect you.”