Chapter 4, pp 31-34

Lucia awoke from muddy nightmares of fleeing from unseen horrors down dark corridors to a feeling of crushing dread. Her heart was racing and she felt as if she were trying to breathe Jello. She was in a car for reasons she couldn’t remember and she stared at the scenery whipping by in confusion while she struggled to breathe.

“Are you well?”

Finsternis! She looked over to see him driving the car with the casual ease of a professional race car driver- and the speed of one, the speedometer topping 120 miles per hour. Lucia checked her seat belt and hoped demons had good reflexes. “What-“ she choked out around the terror in her throat. The fear had lessened, but only to the point where she felt as if she were breathing water instead of Jello, and her heart still felt like it was going to burst at any moment.

Finsternis pointed up. “Angels. They passed over us a moment ago and continued northeast,” he explained grimly.

“What’s wrong? If they passed over us, they didn’t find us.” She paused to consider the still near overwhelming dread, her racing heart, the feeling of water in her lungs. “Is that what caused this panic attack? I haven’t had one of these in years.” So long, in fact, that Lucia seemed to have lost the trick of controlling them. It had taken a good deal of counseling and practice, but she had, at one point, been able to cut off panic attacks as they started without drugs.

Finsternis turned his head to consider her. “You are half angel yourself, why would angels, even a full flight led by one of the archangels, cause you fear?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer. In fact, he seemed to be asking the question of himself.

“Which archangel?” Lucia was trying to keep him talking, to give herself something to think about other than the panic attack.

“Uriel, I think.”

“Is that bad?” She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She sipped some of the melted ice left over from her iced coffee.

“What, Uriel? I certainly would not invite him to a party. Terribly ill mannered sorts, the archangels,” replied Finsternis.

“You know what I mean. Is a full flight of angels led by an archangel a bad thing for us?”

“Yes, Little Light, that is bad. Very bad. I could defeat Uriel myself, I believe, but not Uriel and a full flight.” He paused. “What is more worrisome is that Gabriel ordered  a full flight led by an archangel out in the open this early in the game.”

“Well, Yhwh did have to flood the whole world to get rid of more than one of us,” Lucia said distractedly. She was trying very hard to control her heart rate, but she’d lost the trick of controlling an autonomic function while not paying too much attention to the panic causing the problem in the first place.

Finsternis growled. “He did not flood the whole world, He flooded a portion of the Levant, and only because the Morningstar overplayed his hand.

“Oh. So I couldn’t defeat an angel?”

Finsternis laughed for an insultingly long time. “No, no you could not,” he responded between chuckles.

“So why am I so damned important then?”

“You are a thing that should not be. Therefore, you are outside of prophecy. Unlike any of us, any demon, any angel, your fate is not already written. You can change things. You and only you,” he explained.

Lucia entirely forgot her panic thinking about that. “But wait, if I’m the only one without a predestined fate, then you do have a predestined fate.”

“Surely,” Finsternis agreed.

Lucia rolled her eyes. “If your predestined fate is to assist me, then my fate has to be predestined, too, idiot!”

“No, as long as I am with you, following your designs, I step outside of my fate. For a time. Do not call me names,” he warned.

“Sorry. But if you are, right now, outside of fate, then you can change things, too. It’s not just me.” Lucia really did not want to be alone in saving the world from a vengeful god. That was just way too much pressure.

Finsternis raised one elegantly arched eyebrow. “I suppose, but it really is dependent upon you.”

“Then why isn’t Gabriel himself after me with every archangel?”

“He would have to find you first. Beyond that, Aranjul, Osiris and Judas were not really successes for our side. They did prevent the Apocalypses of their times, but they also set in motion events that made each successive Apocalypse more likely. You are a threat, but if history is a guide for the future, you are not that much of a threat. Why Heaven seems to feel differently is beyond me.”

“Yeah, I always felt Judas should have been worshipped as the savior. Without his betrayal, Jesus was just another rabbi,” said Lucia.

Finsternis smiled. “In that case, worship me as the savior.”

“It wasn’t Judas and his thirty pieces of silver?” Lucia had so much to ask Finsternis about history, she wasn’t sure where to start.

“It was, after a year of manipulation on my part. You have no idea how much Judas loved the Messiah.” He looked at Lucia. “If you fall in love with the Messiah, I will slap you,” he warned seriously.

“Slap me and I’ll slap you back- with a chainsaw,” replied Lucia just as seriously.

“What, before a formal engagement? Do you want that sort of reputation?”

Lucia laughed. “Why do I live on Earth?”

“Poor planning on your part, to be sure.”

They hit traffic outside of Nyack and Lucia felt panic rising again. Nyack was about 10 miles from White Plains, if she remembered correctly, and most of that distance was a bridge. Bridges made Lucia nervous to begin with, but with angels hunting them from above? There wouldn’t be any escape from a bridge.

“Um, Finsternis? Is this a good idea?”

“What? Stopping Famine?”

“No. Going over the bridge with angels flying around. If they find us on the bridge, we won’t be able to get away.”

“How would they find us?” asked Finsternis.

“They can’t? But you can feel angels. I can feel angels.”

“I have no idea why you can sense angels. The others could not. Demons can sense angels, and other demons, but angels cannot sense demons or other angels. Opposites, remember? Angels can only sense a demon who is actively channeling Hell’s Inferno. As long as I do not use the Eternal Fire, they have no way of knowing we are here,” Finsternis explained.

“So why were they flying over us?” They were on the bridge. Lucia took in the endless horizon all around them with wide eyes and then fixed her gaze on Finsternis’ profile, studying his overly muscled jaw and sensuously curved lips.

“This is not the first time we have fought the Apocalypse. As soon as I channeled the Inferno in Scranton, demons spread out for hundreds of miles began sending up flares. Gabriel will be running the flights ragged trying to pin them all down.”

Lucia studied the slant of his nose, the sweep of his right eyebrow. “They won’t get hurt, will they?” She didn’t want some poor demon getting caught by the horror that woke her up.

Finsternis snorted. “They had better not. We do train them, you know.”

“Actually, I don’t. Until yesterday-“ was it really yesterday? Being human and blissfully unaware of the truth seemed as far away as the first grade. “I thought demons were fairy tales made up to scare the disobedient and the credulous.”

Finsternis snarled, exposing shiny white fangs. “A good many things laid at the feet of the demonry were done by the angels on Yhwh’s direct orders. We are not the monsters of legend.”

“I know,” said Lucia softly. Finsternis had already proven himself kinder than any man in her life. “You love them, your people.”

He nodded. “Yes. Misbegotten, we are, but even if I could choose, I would be nothing else.” They sat in silence for a few moments, then Finsternis asked, “What is the plan? We are almost to Santalmo.”

Lucia shrugged. She looked at the clock. 10:15. “Well, we’ve got five thousand dollars, minus gas and coffe, so first we’re going shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“My plan is to walk into Santalmo, find Famine and convince him not to do whatever it is he’s about to do. I think it will help matters if we don’t look like we lost a battle with fashion.”

“We do not have to pose for the cover of a magazine, Lucia. Simply persuade our way in and do your convincing or kill him,” Finsternis retorted.

Lucia sighed. Of course he was going to be difficult about shopping. “Are the Horsemen like true believers? Will he see us as we are?”

“Yes, and you cannot persuade him, not using your nephalim ability. I have no idea how persuasive you can be otherwise.”

“Sure you do. I persuaded you to let me try to save the Horsemen, didn’t I?”

Finsternis rolled his eyes. “Yes, you did. Shopping though?”

“Famine will see us as we are, which means he’ll see you with one sleeve missing and me in a faded sundress and beat up sandals. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Lucia demon-smiled at him innocently.

“Well, it cannot hurt, I suppose. You do not have to buy me anything. There is a demon in the area. I will trade shirts with him.”

Lucia turned her head and smiled with her lips. If she was going to die, she’d do so in an Ann Taylor dress and bangin’ new sandals. And maybe a new pair of earrings. Accessories complete a look, after all.