Chapter 30
Pounding at the front door broke through my angry wails.
“Go away!” I screamed. I laced bloody fingers through my hair, barely feeling the sting as the sticky coating pulled a few strands from the root, and pressed my palms into my eyes.
I was being overrun by the past, bombarded by the present, and absolutely terrified as to how it would all piece together the future.
Boom, boom, boom!
“Open this door, girl!”
The doorknob jiggled violently against the lock.
Fire erupted inside and a voice I didn't recognize from myself bellowed, “I said go the hell away!”
I covered my ears as the pounding persisted, each beat of their fists driving me closer to a complete, psychotic blackout.
And then, I froze.
“Jesus,” I ground out. “Do. Not.”
If cats could sneer, he did.
My one million pound demon cat jumped onto the entryway table, reached out…
“I am warning you cat.
…with one steady paw and, after a couple of pats, flipped the deadbolt.
“You sunnuva—”
The door burst open and I was across the room in an instant, that same knife finding its home in my palm once more. I was either going to kill the cat or whomever he’d just let through the door.
Jesus yowled and scurried out of the way. Some rational part of me long since tucked away knew that if either of us made it out alive, he’d make me pay for this.
A blurry figure took a single step toward me, but I was already there, arm pulled back and positioned to land a killing blow with a war car cry on my lips.
I went in to strike and the intruder immediately deflected the blow with one smooth swipe of the arm to redirect my attack, using my momentum to send me crashing into the door behind them.
Newton’s First Law of Motion; one.
Dany; zero.
Stars danced behind my vision as I gathered myself to turn and continue the assault.
I was short lived, though.
A surprisingly strong pair of hands gripped both sides of my head and twisted, setting loose a sickening crack to ring through the air.
Before I blacked out, I heard one of my favorite voices speak from above my crumbled body.
“Coullion.”
***
A quiet hum invaded the stirring darkness of sleep.
“Folks say she was crazy and that may be. She sits in the swamp by an old dead tree.”
I flexed my fingers and groaned against the stiffness in my neck and shoulders.
“Je vous aime beaucoup bayou baby.”
It was no easy task to open my eyes. I blinked against the dried tears crusting my lashes together and, when I could lift my hands, rubbed it away with my fists.
“Barb?” My voice was scratchy, roughened by the desert taking up residence in my throat and the thousand pound weight compressing my lungs.
“‘Bout damn time, stupid girl.”
I lifted my head as far as, what I was remembering now, my broken neck would allow. “Are you sitting on me?”
A deep, grumbling purr vibrated my chest in answer.
“Ugh,” I sighed, genuine, relief seeping through my body. “ I’m so glad you’re not dead buddy.”
“Pfft. As if you would be the one to kill Jesus,” Barb grumbled.
“Don’t be so disrespectful,” I said, even though it came out as a wheeze. “He gave his life so people like you could be happy or some shit, and look how you pay him back.”
Barb stood up, her footsteps shuffling as she mumbled obscenities under her breath.
I let my head fall backward and smile.
When she came back, she shoved a pillow under my head.
“Barbara? Did you snap my neck?“
“Is the sun slowly crashing into the Earth?
“Uhhh… yes?” I answered, hesitantly, unsure what the point of her question was.
“Look at that. One obvious answer for two stupid questions.” As usual, Barb was more than willing to slap me with the point.
“I wasn’t in the mood to deal with your tantrum.
Figured it would be the quickest way to shut you up.
” I could hear her rummaging through my kitchen cabinets, followed by the refrigerator and freezer.
She came back with a kitchen towel and ice, draped both over my swollen neck, and sat back down beside me on the floor.
She was taking care of me and it made me want to cry all over again.
I closed my eyes and asked quietly, “Why are you here?”
“Because it’s clear your mother never taught you a damn thing. So now I’ve been forced to intervene.”
“I’m almost positive that all of the parenting books say you have to let kids self soothe when they have fits.”
Barb's weathered lips thinned, and the look in her eyes told me she was less than amused. It was a classic Barb response. What followed after it, though…
I’ve never seen before.
“I’ve known that boy longer than he’s known himself.” Her voice was low and solemn, and she rubbed her thumbnail with one anxious finger. “I’ve cheered him for the highest of highs, and with him mourned his greatest low.”
We were both silent for a handful of resounding heartbeats. My breath quickened as my muddled brain tried to rearrange the last thirty years into something that made sense.
That boy.
Not that man. Not that monster. Boy.
“Lucifer was always different from his brothers. He found more whimsy in life than they did. The others stomped around like mechanical brutes incapable of operating outside of their programming. And,” she sighed,” I suppose that was the point.
The angels were beings of divinity, placed under God’s rule to live, if you ask me, a purposeless life. ”
I said, “That’s kind of harsh, Barb.” When what I really wanted to ask was how the fuck she knew all of this? Was she not just another demon, another Unwanted, like me?
“The truth always is, coullion.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Nothing belongs to them; not their choices, their heavenly home, or even their bodies. Each moment of existence was determined long before birth written in— ”
“Archives,” I interrupted. “I know. Luci told me.”
“You cannot write in an archive, stupid girl. You write in books which are then put into an archive.”
“Ohhh my God save me the lecture,” I groaned.
“If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for him, Barb, you can forget it.
Setting up an elaborate scheme just to get rid of me was a choice he was definitely allowed to make.
And did, mind you.” The pain of this betrayal ached in my abdomen all over again.
Rather than answer, she ignored me and continued. “Lucifer stumbled upon God’s blueprints for the humans and it was the catalyst for his change.”
“Yeah, he was jealous as fuck. Told me that too.”
“You do not understand, Dany,” she scolded.
“He should not have been capable of change. The angels were created to serve under God, carrying out his will down to the last letter of command. Lucifer was an anomaly.” Her voice had become wondrous, like a doctor on the brink of discovery.
“His brain chemistry began to mutate. Now when God gave an order, suddenly Lucifer could ask himself ‘why?’ rather than carrying it out mindlessly.” Barb’s eyes lit up as she talked, and it was clear that her mind was no longer in the room with me.
“I urged God to see the beauty in what he was becoming, but all he saw was the destruction.”
“Do you mean that God knew Lucifer was going to rebel?”
“Meh, depends on who you ask.” She answered with a dismissive wave.
“I don’t know the true power of God, but what I do know is that were he capable of seeing everything, he never would have made Lucifer to start with.
Lucifer was a test to his strength and cunning.
Why do you think he made a race of mindless idiots? ”
“Men? I ask myself that every day.”
“Angels, girl, angels.”
I set up slowly and pushed my palm against my forehead to help the spinning.
“How do you know all of this Barb? Did you and Luci have one too many margaritas? Or was this like a post sex conversation? Ew, actually, scratch that,” I grumbled. “I do not want to imagine you reverse cowgirl on the Hellhound—”
I let out a surprise, muffled scream, as Barb pinched the tip of my tongue and held a blade near my lips. “Interrupt me again, coullion, and I’ll hang your tongue on my Christmas tree.”
“Okay, okay!” I cried out, hands raised in supplication.
Barb let go of me and stabbed the tip of the knife into the wooden floor. The same one I gutted Lucifer with earlier.
After one long, impatient sigh, Barb started again with her most shocking revelation yet.
“I was God‘s scribe. I filled millions of books full of history, both what was done and what would come. And, it was I who caught Lucifer gazing upon the blueprints for God‘s newest creatures. He begged me not to tell his father, and I promised that I wouldn’t. I kept a close eye on him after that, though, because it dawned on me that I didn’t remember recording that interaction in any of his books.
So on my next trip to the archives, I went to Lucifer‘s section and, as I thought, him stumbling upon God‘s plans was not written in his future. Not only that, but I found that his future was no longer written. Thousands of empty books sat on his shelves. Books that I recall writing, but do not remember their words.” Barb caught my attention then, her eyes fixed on me with an intensity that left me with little choice but to lean in and hang on every word.
“With one single act, Lucifer had erased his future and began anew. It was marvelous.”
My stomach did a slow, ugly flip. Lucifer, going off the script on purpose, burning down his own future because he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to.
That was chaos I understood in my bones.
Part of me wanted to be sick, and part of me wanted to stand up and clap, because of course the man who’d rewritten my ending had started by shredding his own.
And if he could erase thousands of books with one choice…
what the hell did that mean for the story he was trying to write with me?