I didn’t try to change his mind. In my life and my occupation I’d learned that you can change behaviors, with the right kind of motivation, but you can rarely change minds. Logic was useless. My natural optimism had taken a beating from reality more than enough to learn that while truth and facts were nice thoughts, they required a reasonable medium to take root. Angels weren’t often reasonable. It would be easier to pry the six-pack out of a NASCAR fan’s hand than to change an angel’s mind. “Did you want something, Angel of Death? Was Ishiah wrong in thinking you could do what needs to be done? Killing is easy for you, but leading—is that out of your depth?”
“I can do both, easily. You should remember that.” His wings, often an indicator of an angel’s mood, stayed flat. They hadn’t been disturbed, although I’d told a tiny white lie and said they were. Azrael was right. I should remember he had no problem with killing, certainly no emotion attached to the act. Which was worse? To kill out of cold arrogance or to kill out of a hunger for violence? Angels and demons, if you asked me, the only difference was location. “I came to see if it was worth it. If we had a genuine chance or if all of this has been trickster talk and trickster ego. Liars, thieves, you hold nothing to be sacred and true, including your word.”
“I always keep my word. There are plenty who would tell you that. They’d have to crawl out of their unfortunately early graves to do it, but they could tell you.” I hefted the sword again. “This is a win-win for everyone, Azrael. Try to keep that thought in your tiny parakeet brain. We all stand together or we all fall, and that fall will make Lucifer’s seem like a trip to the ice cream store. Just do your part and we might make it. Think how Heaven will look at you”—I nudged—“with adoration and admiration. They’ll love your ass, put it up on a pedestal.” As Lucifer’s followers had once done to him. “You’ll be the hero of Heaven.” It did sound better than hit man of Heaven, but Azrael was not interested in heroics. He wasn’t made that way. He was interested in saving his own life though and that would have to do.
“If you fail us, I shall kill you before Cronus has a chance,” he promised.
“If I fail, trust me, death will be the least of my worries,” I said. This time the wings did spread, because he knew—he knew, at least, that was true. For everyone. Killing didn’t cause an emotional flicker, but thinking of how Cronus would make the rest of existence an endless damnation that Hell could never begin to dream of or match—that ruffled Azrael and good.
“Then do not fail.” He was gone before I could make sure Ishiah had given him the right time and place. It didn’t matter. I knew he had. Ishiah was thoroughly dependable and one of the exceptions that proved the rule about changing minds. Ishiah wouldn’t let me down. I didn’t know how he had been made, but it was far from the template of Azrael. Ishiah could kill, most likely had killed, but he would feel it and I thought he would regret it, whether it was justified or not. That made him a better person than I was.
“One tentative RSVP from Heaven,” Leo said. “Now what about Hell?”
“That’s going to be a roll of the dice. Cronus needs only one more demon. I’m hoping that’s not because he caught Eli peeking out of Hell and took his wings. Without Eli, we’re pretty well screwed.” I put the sword down on the couch. It magnified the weave of the material beneath it. “He’s the only high-level demon I know. . . .”
“Since you killed the others,” he interrupted.
That was unfair. How was I supposed to know I’d need one or two later on? You didn’t keep around a rabid dog on the off chance that Hollywood would call you to make Cujo 2, Wrath of the Motherpupper. “He’s the only one I know,” I went on, “and of all the ones I have known, the only one silver-tongued enough to have a hope at getting us what we needed. Not many demons could deliver up Hell itself.”
“Maybe not even Eligos.”
“Maybe not.” I shook my head. There was no point in worrying about it as there was nothing we could do about it. “We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed.”
“You don’t think that no matter how this ends, Heaven and Hell are going to think we didn’t do our share?” he asked, knocking once against the wall in punctuation.
“They have a trickster and a god playing on the team. What more could they want?” I knew what I wanted. Païen kind as far from Cronus as they could get. Cronus was the sole remaining Titan. The others, like him, couldn’t be killed . . . except by their own hand. Only a Titan was powerful enough to kill a Titan and they’d all eventually done just that, but to themselves. All that unending power, it led nowhere but to insanity. The other Titans had turned that insanity inward and died of it. Cronus was the only one who had turned it outward, which was apparently the ticket to escaping suicide. Unfortunately, outward also equaled homicide. Two “cides” to every story, but with a Titan the story was always a horror. I didn’t want our kind near that horror. We were too few as it was.
“I don’t know. Perhaps a functional trickster and god?” Leo said with a wry lift of his eyebrows.
“Picky, picky, picky.” I narrowed my eyes as the raven tattoo on his chest appeared to move when he shifted positions. “Why don’t you put on a shirt, Captain Kirk? Or are you going to try distracting Cronus by having him put dollar bills in your pants?”
“Oh, now you notice. It’s the end of the world and suddenly you can see. It’s good to know what it takes. Next time we shower together, I’ll arrange an Armageddon.” He turned and headed back to the bedroom. That was serious talk from someone who had at one point and could again in the future when his powers returned. You had to feel flattered when someone was ready to end the world for a romp in the shower. Or that might just be me.
Yes, it probably was just me. I didn’t mind.
You took your fantasies where you could get them.
Chapter 16
We skipped lunch at the diner. While I would’ve liked to have my potential last meal there, it was too close to Trixsta, or what was left of it. I didn’t want the boys to see it, and I didn’t want to see it either. It was best to fight on an empty stomach anyway. When there’s a possibility someone plans on stringing you up by your own intestines, it’s much less messy. Or a more mundane penetrating wound to the abdomen . . . Did you honestly want someone looking at the ground at your feet and asking if that was biscuits and gravy pouring out of the gaping hole in your stomach? No, that sort of thing took you right off your game.
Before we got into yet another stolen car, I had to ask Griffin a question. It wasn’t one I wanted to ask, but it was part of the plan, the most important part. If he said no, I wouldn’t blame him, except I knew he wouldn’t say that. I also knew who would, and I respected him all the more for doing it.
“No fucking way,” Zeke said. I hadn’t seen him angry with me before. That made this the first time and it was memorable. He was doing it up right. Green eyes were always among the most beautiful, I thought, and yet they could turn hard in an instant, the deepest and coldest of ice, merciless as a riptide. “No fucking way you are putting a bull’s-eye on Griffin’s chest. You’re not singling him out to that goddamn freak. We can all face Cronus, but you’re not dangling Griffin like a piece of meat for an alligator.”
“Zeke, it’s not like that,” Griffin countered.
“Griffin, it is like that.” I had put the sword in the car and now stood, hip against the metallic blue of the SUV, a four-wheel-drive felony. “Don’t think it’s no different than Zeke playing demon bait when you’re on the hunt, because it is. If Cronus gets to you, you won’t be able to fight him off and we won’t be able to pull you back. He’s not a demon. If he touches you, it’s over.” For Griffin and for us all.