Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) (20 page)

Chapter 22

Through the centuries, many a mortal had tried a hand at concocting a cure for intoxication; some sort of magical elixir that could, with a single sip, alleviate all the symptoms of the drunkard and bring about divine clarity. Nothing brewed in ignorance and delivered in hope could ever do the trick like what Ramiel had just said to Riona.

Holy. Fucking. God.

“An … An archangel?” She repeated the term through rapid breaths like it was the password to Aladdin’s cave. “That’s impossible. Revered angels don’t screw mortal women. You told me that, Ramiel. They don’t … Momma?”

Riona’s eyes flashed to her mother, expecting to see her baffled and confused and as useless to the moment as always. Instead, what she saw had the WTF stick taking another swing at Riona’s noggin. Her mother loomed, a banshee’s spirit in a pixie’s frame. Molly glared at Ramiel like he’d just taken the last piece of pie and licked the spoon before putting it in the Cool Whip.

“You!” Molly Dade bellowed, pounding her feeble fist on the table. The strength of her anger leaned vocal, and yet the bang of her hand on the wood made each of them suck air. “Are you the one putting all these nonsense ideas in my daughter’s head? Shame of the Lord! Falsifacator!”

Ramiel’s hands went up defensively. “Whoa there, Miss
Dade.
One, I bat for the other team. That is, I … I mean, I’m
sent
by Heaven. And two, I don’t think falsifacator is actually a word.”

Riona fell into her chair, her hands encircling her throat and clutching at it like someone else had already had the pleasure. “No, this can’t be. My dad is an angel? An
arch
angel? But Momma, what you told me about when I was born. An archangel kept you captive? He forced you to have a child against your will?” Suddenly, Riona’s eyes went steely. She jumped up and began pacing. “To hell with Hell. When I get through with the bunch of you archangel motherfuckers, y’all are going to be flying from cloud to cloud on rascals!”

Ramiel rolled his eyes. “Get real. I’m out of your league. Besides, there’s a technicality. Your father
was
an archangel. He’s … no longer with us.”

Had the air always been so thin? Was the house just hot because of all the cooking? She looked to Jerry, then to Dee, both of whom gawked at her like she was the bearded lady in a circus sideshow.

“Please, don’t look at me that way!” she begged, feeling the tears start to prick the corner of her eyes. “You’re supposed to be my pillars, but you’re making me feel like the foundation of everything I ever held as true is falling away.”

Dee’s voice was airy, rapturous. “Gets all poetical when she’s sauced, huh?”

But Jerry took the cue. A moment hadn’t passed when he’d pounced, throwing himself on the floor at her feet, putting his hands on her knees and his cheek against her thigh. “I’m here for you,” he pledged, his thumb working lazy circles along her kneecap. “We’ll get through this.”

Jerry. Sweet, sinful, pitiful Jerry … Perhaps he really did love her. Perhaps he really had embraced fully the human condition, once more embraced compassion and empathy.

Riona ran her fingers through his hair, then used the grip to coax his head up in her direction. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled, turned his face so he could kiss the palm of her hand. “This must be overwhelming. When
I
first figured it out, I didn’t know how to …
Owwww, shhhh……it
!”

Stock of tissue paper companies was bound to go up with this many bloody noses in the house. Who knew a babe could throw so many square-on haymakers? Though her knees might have declared a unilateral strike, Riona gathered her body and her chutzpah and rose to her feet, growling at the ball o’ Jerry on the floor. “You knew!?”

For a moment, he waffled, as though searching the invisible about him for some sort of sign of escape or suggestion. Then, resolution emboldened him. He straightened and sat up. “I figured it out when you were able to make yourself invisible. Mortals can’t do that, Riona. Not even demons can do that. Only angels can pull off the David Copperfield routine.”

“And you knew.” She repeated her charge against his innocence. “You knew. All this time when I’ve been reading half the night away and going to websites only trekkies freaks and federal investigators should visit, trying to figure out what that fucking knife meant, and you knew this whole time. And you never thought I might like to know. Like, ‘Hey, Riona, turns out that knife of your dad’s is actually an angelic weapon, so, you know, two plus two means that might make you bi-speciel’.”

“Of course not. Bi-speciel isn’t a word.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t have told you if I wanted to. I was bound, by none other than Big Boss himself. Herself. Whatever. Point being, he/she/it didn’t want me squealing anything to you.” 

Dee cleared his throat. “Didn’t want you squealing it to anyone, actually.”

Confused, both Jerry and Riona turned toward Dee. He continued, “If Jerry had gone back to Hell with that kind of intel, it would have been really valuable information for Lucifer.”

Molly snapped back to attention. “Lucifer? You mean, Satan? Oh, Saints and starfish, I’m surrounded by evil. Demons!”

“
Ex-
demon,” Jerry corrected again. “Why is it so hard for y’all to remember the ex? Everyone remembers it right fine whenever you call me Riona’s ex-boyfriend. And, no, Molly. I never went back to Hell after that.”

“Nope, he was resurrected,” Ramiel dared to declare aloud what they all were thinking. “Well, I guess we know why Big Boss rescued you, then. To keep Riona’s secret from your former master.”

Jerry waved through the air dismissively. “No, I’m pretty sure Lucifer figured that out when Riona said she got the blade from her father. I’m here because of the prophecy.” He turned to her and focused on her with an intensity that made her feel flush. “I love her. Forever. Completely.”

For years she remembered her lesson in school about the day Jesus got pissed and turned over the tables in the temple. She had often remembered that with a kind of removed fascination; that this man, supposed son of God but at the very least, a practitioner of patience, had gotten his ire to the top of his rage gauge. If a man like that could blow a gasket, what was she capable of?

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

Jerry and Ramiel struck out in an attempt to seize her as she bolted toward the door, but Dee intervened, blocking their path.

“No, she needs to cool off. Give her space.” Then he turned to her. “I know what it’s like, sweetheart. You take a while and let this sink in. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

Gratefully, she rolled up on her tippy-toes and kissed the demigod on the cheek. “You rock, Dee. My mother?”

He pushed her insistently towards the door. “I’ll take her home. Go.”

Pausing at the door to the entry, she turned around. Jerry had the good sense to sit his sorry ass at the table and mope in to his green bean casserole. The voice within her that told her to reach out for him died in the shadow of his latest betrayal. Riona grabbed her sweater from the coat rack by the door, and headed out in to the night.

A nephilim wasn’t a wiccan. Yes, they had the ability to perform certain magic, but not anywhere near the level of diversity like the chosen few amongst mortal men could. Thus, when Persephone’s beamer refused to turn over, like mortal men, her only recourse was to scream bloody murder at it as she surfed the net on her phone, trying to find the number of a tow service in the neighborhood.

“Holy shit!”

The knock on her window nearly made her immortal heart sport an impression of cardiac arrest. 

Riona Dade’s face, tight and twitching, held a set of begging eyes. No matter how irrational she knew the feeling was, Persephone felt herself recoil. With a cautious hand, she reached down and pushed the button to crack open the passenger side window.

“What?”

Riona’s head tilted. Persephone knew she had sounded a little gruff, but the witch didn’t know that she’d just given a Greek deity an anxiety attack.

“I have to get away from here,” Riona stated. “I saw your car, and I wondered if I can come with you? It’s so cold out here.”

As though to support that statement, the witch crossed her arms over her chest and quivered.

“Do you have the angelic blade?” Persephone asked. Riona shook her head. “You swear?”

“I promise. Ramiel still has it.”

Persephone pushed the lock/unlock button. Riona wasted no time in throwing open the door, plopping down in the seat, and cupping her hands over her mouth.

“How can you be an angel?” Persephone found herself saying. “You’re still so obviously mortal. Getting cold from all things, winter.”

“I’ll give you the 411 as soon as I have something new,” Riona returned. “Right now, you know about as much as I do. I don’t mean to be a backseat driver, but doesn’t the car usually drive better and heat up more when it’s on?”

In response, Persephone cranked the starter, letting the engine cough out its best arguments.

“Huh.” Riona bit the corner of her lip. A moment later, she flicked her chin in the direction of the hood as she held a hand out in front of her. “Try it again.”

And of course, because the Pure Souls needed even more reasons to be full of themselves, the beamer purred in response to the witch’s magical scratch.

“Okay, maybe part angel counts for something,” Persephone deadpanned. “Hopefully your powers aren’t limited to tickling the divine sparkplug.”

“Wished I’d known I could do that before I sold my Miata to the scrap yard.”

The beamer revved as Persephone shifted into gear. “Where to then, Keystone? All my knowledge of girl time is based on
Lifetime
movies
.
I think we’re supposed to either go to the spa or out for ice cream, but neither of those options really are making me giddy.”

“I was thinking the bar, myself,” Riona returned.

Checking her rearview mirror, Persephone felt the curl of a smile on her own face. “Lucky for us that I own one of those.”

When she’d thought she was going to be gone until morning, Persephone had given Chipper the day off. The dog had probably wasted no time in getting with one of his “lady friends,” as he liked to call the top-heavy and bottom-easy bimbos he preferred. Secretly, Persephone had hoped she could find a few minutes in the confines of the Pure Souls’ safe house to get a little nookie with Ramiel, but that bus was already halfway on the road to Wyoming with no plans of turning back.

Coldness slapped them both in the face when they entered the bar. Like their distant cousins, the angels, nephilim weren’t much injured by temperature or weather. Unlike them, however, she did have pipes that would freeze and cost a fortune to fix if Chipper kept turning the heat off instead of down when he took time off.

“Holy Herron! Have a seat. I’m going to go flip the furnace on.”

When she returned from the basement, Persephone found the witch laying out a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses, and had both topped off.

“Hope you don’t mind.” Riona shrugged abashedly. “I’ll pay for it of course.”

Persephone grabbed the shot glass closest to her and swigged the contents in a satisfying gulp. In the shadow of the burn, she gnashed her teeth and exhaled. “Don’t be silly. My treat. Believe me, I get the whole disappointment in being a victim of your family’s secrets thing. We’ve sort of perfected the practice over thousands of years.”

A smile flitted across the witch’s face as she ran a finger over the half-emptied shot glass’s rim.  “Guess that helps keep things in perspective. I only get a hundred years to be lied to and deceived.” Riona finished her own tequila in another tip. “Why did the dagger scare you, Steph?”

“Oh, so this isn’t an ‘I need to get plastered and forget’ thing. You’re performing recon.”

Riona shrugged. “I’m sick of being in the dark. Something about that dagger scared you. I don’t know shit from Shinola about some things, but I’m pretty sure if I have something that can make a goddess pee in her panties, there’s a story there.”

Persephone studied the witch’s expression. She could find no evidence of malice, no suggestion of contempt. Instead, there was sincerity and utter curiosity. Riona’s eyes focused on her like Persephone was about to tell her the outcome of an emergency surgery.  She drew in a deep breath, pushing her lungs to their very capacity.

“Let’s start there,” Persephone began. “Goddess. What does that term mean to you? After all, as a Pure Soul, you know inherently there is only one true divinity, though She’s represented in many forms.”

Riona appeared contemplative. She shrugged after a moment. “I don’t know. I spent most of my life as an atheist. I guess when I opened up to one possibility, I opened up to all of them. You tell me what it means.”

“Sure as hell doesn’t mean we’re infallible or omniscient. I got brothers who fuck up things like it’s their job and can’t tell a rice paddy from a Louisiana swamp. Now, as for Big Boss, I don’t know what to say. I’ve lived long enough to know that She’s the real thing, but I don’t know if that means She’s any better than us. Did She create my kind as an experiment? That would mean She didn’t know how we’d turn out, so all-knowing goes out the window. Did She make us as a test model? Well, trying to kill us off would mean She screws things up too.”

Riona crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, your kind? The gods?”

Persephone doled out two more shots. “You’ll need a drink first.” Riona obeyed. When she had cleared the second shot, Persephone settled herself on the stool. “We’re called nephilim. We came before humans. Well, we are human.
Physically,
that is
.
Genetically there’s not a great difference between mortal men and us.”

“But you’re immortal.” Riona stated the obvious.

“Temporarily, maybe. Actually, once upon a time, we were just as mortal as y’all are now. We grew, we screwed, we had babies and got gray hair. A bit slower though. And we carried magic in our veins, but not quite as extensive as what wiccans can do. Stronger, more concentrated. Like me. I can control the health of plants. Others, though … Their powers were a little more sought after, more useful. We began to abuse our powers as a people, and when the angels were sent to tell us we had to pull back in our outlandish shows of our abilities, we revolted against them.”

“Is that the great war everyone’s always going on about? The one that Lucifer and his cronies instigated?” Riona’s third shot went down without a fight.

“Wait, I’m getting there. Nephilim couldn’t match armies of angels in strength and power, of course, but it doesn’t mean the more eager of us didn’t try. My father was the one who negotiated our terms of defeat. The angels decided we’d been given a chance as a race. The punishment was great. The most precious thing in this world is a soul. Each of us had our chance to decide: save our souls and join the heavenly host, or remain on Earth forevermore with all our powers, but lose our souls. The angels now refer to it as the
raptu primus,
the first rapture.”

“So when you do die …” Persephone could see the look of understanding coming over Riona’s face.