Chapter 2, pp 20-23

Another demon’s grin crinkled the skin around his eyes as he turned to walk down the alley opposite the direction Andy had gone. They came out on Vine Street at the old Star Factory. A sign promised storage units in the near future, but the future was ten years coming so far.

“We could wait in there,” Finsternis suggested.

“In there? There are spiders in there, I know it.”

Finsternis stopped and stared at her. “Spiders? You are the daughter of the Grand General himself and you are afraid of spiders?”

Lucia stared right back at him. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Finsternis sighed. “Where are we going then?”

“Down by the river-“ across from the mission with the big “Jesus Saves” sign. Lucia groaned. Everywhere and everyone was a danger to her now. Places that once promised safety couldn’t be more dangerous. “We are not fucking going into the spider factory.”

This time she got Finsternis’ low chuckle, somehow delivered without  showing any teeth. “What was that?”

“Oh, right, that wouldn’t work on you. Fine, let’s find a way in.” They walked around to the side facing the river before they found a broken window missing a board. “Would it have worked on Andy?” Lucia asked as Finsternis crawled through.

“Hmmm?” A purple flare of light lit up the window. Lucia stuck her head in to see a small ball of purple light hovering over Finsternis’ head, lighting a circle twenty feet around him, casting odd, attenuated shadows in all the wrong directions. Lucia blinked away sudden dizziness.

He gestured to her and she clambered through the window. Broken glass crunched under her sandals. They were on the factory floor and huge metal shapes reared up out of the darkness like monuments to some forgotten religion, a broken, capitalist Stonehenge, perhaps. Lucia didn’t know what had been produced at the Star Factory, it had been closed by the time she moved to Scranton, and what she could see of the rusting machinery by demonfire was no help at all.

She could see the cobwebs, though, massive gobs of them, stretching dozens of feet in places. How big were the spiders in here, how numerous? She shivered and stepped closer to Finsternis.

“Would it have worked on Andy?” Lucia asked again, desperate to hear Finsternis’ voice.

He walked deeper into the factory, away from windows that would display the unnatural light. Lucia shuffled carefully after him, afraid of shoving her exposed toes into a web or a pile of glass.

“Yes, your powers of persuasion would work against the average true believer, but they would be aware of it and remember it, and you, later. It would not work against agents of Yhwh or the truly devoted.” He paused. “Stay away from Catholic priests, Little Light. The Ritual of Exorcism wouldn’t banish you, but it would . . . contain you.”

They came to the innermost point of the factory floor and stopped. A firepit had been constructed here and moldering couches and loveseats surrounded it. It didn’t surprise Lucia that people lived here, homelessness was a serious problem in Scranton that had only gotten worse since the economy collapsed. She only hoped they didn’t come back in the next two hours. Homeowners called the police when they found trespassers in their homes, the homeless tended to get immediately violent. Lucia couldn’t blame them, but she didn’t want to choose between being hurt and hurting a desperate squatter.

“Exorcisms work?” Lucia was surprised. Clearly, demons had no need or ability to possess humans, they had their own bodies. In fact, she thought that maybe her own powers of persuasion explained possession stories. The ones that weren’t explained by mental illness or epilepsy, that is.

Finsternis shrugged and sat down on an orange and avocado plaid couch. Lucia sat across from him on a burgundy velvet loveseat very much like the one that sat, unused, for over fifty years in her grandmother’s living room. The velvet on this loveseat was rubbed bare and covered in stains and burn marks, but once it had been a fine piece of furniture, no doubt much loved by a young married couple just starting their climb up the ladder of the American Dream. Lucia stroked one arm of the chair gently and wondered what had happened that it had ended up as part of a homeless encampment in a decaying, abandoned factory.

The demon fire floated delicately to land in the firepit where it immediately began imitating real fire. The misplaced, attenuated shadows danced merrily, leaving Lucia nauseated.

“Well, if properly performed by a qualified exorcist, yes, an exorcism can banish a demon from this plane. I am told it is quite painful.” Finsternis’ eyes glowed in the eerie light.

Lucia considered this. She was now playing by a completely new set of rules in a world she hadn’t known existed, and she’d rather learn the rules in advance rather than by being caught up in them or killed by them. She didn’t think Finsternis was being deliberately difficult, it just didn’t seem to occur to him everything Lucia didn’t know. “Doesn’t an exorcism include Psalms?”

Finsternis shrugged.

Lucia pulled her iPad from her bag and turned it on. She’d won it in an online giveaway, and gladly paid the $15 per month for 3G access, and she was never happier about that than she was today. She tilted the screen at Finsternis. “It does, see? Psalm 53. So why didn’t Psalms work for Andy?”

Finsternis made an offended noise. “Is Andy a qualified exorcist to put any power into a translation of a translation of the original Hebrew? What do humans expect?”

Lucia glared at him. “Humans don’t have the benefit of knowing what the truth is. We muddle along, confused and lonely, and around every corner is another con man who will tell you the one and only truly true truth, different from all the other truly true truths and if you don’t get it right, you’ll burn forever in Hell.”

Silence stretched between them, mocked them from the odd, half-formed shadows of the demon’s unnatural fire.

“There are no fires that consume in Hell,” Finsternis said softly. “And no damned souls, either. Children laugh and play in the eternal twilight, all the children Yhwh wants to destroy.”

Now Lucia had her answer. Finsternis had no love for Lucifer, he seemed to resent the Grand General, in fact, and he varied between amused and annoyed when it came to Lucia, so she had wondered why he was helping her at all. Demon children laughing and playing hadn’t occurred to her at all, but it was a reason Lucia trusted. She had never felt much of a connection to another human being, for now obvious reasons, but children deserved her best effort at stopping the Apocalypse. She’d read Revelation and she couldn’t think of a single child who deserved to live through that, human or demon.

“The angels don’t have children, do they?” she asked.

Finsternis shook his head. “No, they do not. Yhwh makes the angels, each one more perfect than the last. What Lucifer and the others do, with humans, is considered an abomination by the angels, a perversion like a human-“ he paused “engaging in relations with a dog.”

Lucia thought about it for a moment. Lucifer hadn’t looked much different from her at all, not so much that that analogy seemed apt. “So what does that make me?”

Finsternis’ lips twisted. “A sick joke that ought to die.” He reached out a hand to her, then withdrew it. “No demon would see it that way. For one thing, you are not responsible for your existence.”

“Oh, that makes me feel better. I’m just the universe’s rape baby to be pitied and talked about behind her back, but don’t let the children play with her, she might be contagious!” All her life, that had been the story. Churches were eager to hear her mother’s “inspiring pro-life story”, eager to see the child that her mother had so bravely birthed, and completely unwilling to allow their children to play with her, as if being the child of a rape were some sort of contagious disease their own children might catch.

“Little Light-“

Lucia stood up and walked to the edge of the ring of couches so Finsternis couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. No matter how hard she tried to pretend it didn’t bother her, a lifetime of rejection, of being on the outside looking in, of being an object lesson rather than a person had left its mark on her. “Don’t “little light” me! I will do my best to save Hell’s children, though what the fuck that will be, I have no idea, but don’t lie to me and don’t patronize me.”

“I am not-“

“Hey! Who are you? Get out of my-“

Lucia turned to face whoever had interrupted them, but before she could get more than a quick look, enough to see a deeply lined face, an untrimmed grey beard and far more layers than were necessary on a warm morning in May, Finsternis had leaped over the firepit and the couches in one fluid movement to land between her and the intruder, whose last sentence ended in a strangled yelp of surprise. Finsternis reached toward him, hands wreathed in lavender fire, and Lucia yelled.

“Stop!”

Demon and human froze and looked at her with matching expressions of surprise. “We’re in your home, aren’t we?” Lucia asked.

The man nodded, dark eyes wide, and stepped back from Finsternis. “What are you?”

At that, Lucia and Finsternis shared a glance, and Finsternis bared his teeth. A true believer, it seemed, just come from breakfast at the soup kitchen.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Lucia. She had enough trouble believing it herself. She gestured at Finsternis. He raised one eyebrow. Put out your hands, she mouthed. He shook his head.

The man responded with a sarcastic laugh. “Lady, you have no idea what I’d believe.” He walked around Finsternis, several feet out his reach, and sat down on the velvet loveseat. “Well, sit down. I’m Joe, by the way.” He noticed the iPad on the cushion next to him, reached out to touch it, then withdrew his hand and tucked it into his sleeve.

Lucia sat down opposite Joe on the orange and avocado couch. They both looked at Finsternis, teeth still bared, hands still wreathed in unnatural flames. “I’m Lucia, this is Finsternis. Finsternis, quit being rude and sit down.”

“Are you out of your mind, Lucia? He can see us for what we are. He is a true believer and a danger to us both- and to all the little children you claim to care so much for.” Angry, Finsternis’ voice took on an eerie, multitoned quality that left Joe visibly shaking.

“Stop it right now. I am not killing some poor homeless man for the great crime of seeing us,” responded Lucia, matching Finsternis’ glare with all the Daughter of the Grand General she could muster, hoping to distract him from the obvious, that she had no way of stopping him if he was determined to kill Joe.

Lavender fire darkened to a deep, royal purple and spread up Finsternis’ arms. “There is a price to be paid for winning, Nephalim, it must be paid again and again and it is always paid in blood. That is the game as Yhwh created it, we are merely players.”

“Then we won’t win,” Lucia said calmly. She couldn’t explain it, but it was as if Finsternis were pulling her anger from her, and the more enraged he became, the calmer she became in turn.

“What?!” Black flames exploded up and down Finsternis’ frame, leaving him an avatar of fire, only his violet eyes recognizable. He pointed at Joe and Lucia leaped between them, watching with little interest as nearly black fire stopped inches away from her to pour off in either direction, scorching the couches.

“I will not sacrifice all the Egyptian firstborns to prove my might, order the Amekelite children bashed against rocks or kill all the world to destroy a few nephalim who didn’t ask to be born. I will not do it. I will not become Yhwh. And if becoming Yhwh is the only way to win, then I will lose.” Lucia held his gaze, ignoring the fire, the trembling man behind her, everything except Finsternis’s amethyst eyes. The flames faded to lavender and retreated to his hands, though his fangs remained bared. “Finsternis, has playing the game by Yhwh’s rules ever worked before? For anyone?”

Finsternis closed his eyes and sighed, the flames winking out, all of them, plunging the factory into darkness, save for his eyes, glowing in the gloom.

Chapter 2, pp 16-19

They arrived at the main branch of the Scranton Public Library, a marble and granite Gothic monstrosity that looked like nothing so much as a set piece in a particularly clichéd vampire movie. The car sped off before Lucia had a chance to shut the door.

Finsternis studied the building quizzically. “You work here?”

“No, I work two blocks that way. I just didn’t want that freak knowing where I work.” Lucia shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. I doubt I can fit stopping Revelation around my work schedule.”

“Not unless the hours are particularly flexible,” replied Finsternis, his eyes crinkled in what Lucia realized was a demon’s smile. It made sense. Most creatures with fangs didn’t bare them to communicate friendliness. She remembered his almost literally ear-to-ear grin on the rooftop. He hadn’t been grinning, he’d been baring his fangs at his enemies.

“So, angels don’t have senses of humor, demons do, are you guys opposites in everything?”

Finsternis nodded. “Yes, that is what I what I was trying to say before you interrupted me with doughnuts. Everything in this universe has its opposite. Must have its opposite. In creating angels, Yhwh created demons, just as creating Heaven created Hell. He did not intend to create us or our realm, but he did.”

They stopped in front of a tall brick building with four white pillars stretching from the roof to the ground. Despite the grandiosity of the pillars, the building showed obvious signs of neglect, peeling paint, crumbling bricks, rusting iron railings.

“I can see why they don’t pay you much,” observed Finsternis.

“Psh. Wait until nine o’clock and see what cars roll up. Better yet, if we had time, we could take a tour of the partners’ homes. Then you’d see what they spend their money on.”

Finsternis raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, a trick Lucia envied. “And when the building falls down upon them, will their riches cushion them?”

Lucia stepped onto the first stair and Finsternis grabbed her wrist. Testing her theory, she bared her teeth at him and he jerked back, letting go of her wrist. “We need to work on this touching thing, Finsternis.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “ ‘Personal space’ is not a demon concept. That sort of thing is for angels.”

“Remind me not to attend any parties in Hell. Anyway, what’s up?” She looked around. At 6:30, the only people around were residents from the shelter across the street making their way to the soup kitchen around the corner. The partners of the law firm had made it very clear that a shelter would only be tolerated if it didn’t impact them at all. Residents who so much as looked at the law office were blacklisted. There was no danger there.

Finsternis looked up at the second floor then shook his head irritably. “There is a true believer in there. You need to be careful.”

Lucia looked up at the building. She didn’t feel any spiders, but she did feel something now that he mentioned it, like wearing an itchy wool sweater just under her skin. “A true believer?”

“One of Yhwh’s faithful. Not an agent, not searching for you, but they will recognize you for what you are, or at least as not being human, if they see you,” Finsternis explained, frowning at the windows.

“Andy, has to be. Andy’s office is all the way in the back, Doris’ is in the front. I’ll go in, get my check and get out. There’s no real reason for Andy to be out front, anyway.”

“There are other ways to get money, you know,” Finsternis growled. His voice had a quality to it in his agitation that was particularly inhuman and entirely unlike his usual smooth tenor. It reminded Lucia of coyotes wailing in the desert.

“I’m not stealing from people if that’s what you mean. I may be the daughter of Satan, but I’m not a thief!”

At that, Finsternis did growl, a low, throaty rumble that made the hair on Lucia’s arms stand on end. He stared at her as if attempting to crush her skull with the force of his gaze, then bowed slightly and said, “Hell’s grace to you, Daughter of the Morningstar.”

It had the sound of something formal, but Lucia had no idea how to respond, so she went with the one good piece of advice her mother had ever given her. “Thank you, Finsternis.”

It seemed to satisfy him and he walked away, melting into the shadows of the alley next to the building. Literally melting. Every part of him touched by shadow became it, until only a slight purple glint the height of his eyes remained. “Why does he get all the cool stuff?”

Lucia called Doris to open the door, then thought about Andy while she waited. Everyone at work called him “Mr. Rogers” behind his back. Ned Flanders on the outside and the Grand Inquisitor on the inside, the snide nickname was unfair to the real Mr. Rogers. Perversely, Lucia felt more comfortable with Andy than with her more liberal coworkers. He felt like home.

Andy had been thrilled to meet Lucia- “Your story changed my life!”- until it occurred to him to wonder why she wasn’t the dutiful wife of a preacher or on the Evangelical talk tour herself. After that, he either ignored her or questioned the state of her salvation.  No question about that now, thought Lucia.

As she followed Doris up the stairs, the woman refused to carry checks out of her office, another thought hit Lucia, leaving her breathless. How many true believers were there? The way she was raised, real Christians were few and far between, but was her family right? The lower Hill Section was almost exclusively Hasidic Jews, could anyone who wore black wool head to toe in mid-August not be a true believer?

What about the Catholics? One block down, the Cathedral swelled with the faithful for noon Mass every day despite the complete lack of parking. Wouldn’t at least some of those people qualify as true believers? And the Muslims, a small but growing population, the women dressed in hijab and occasionally full burqas despite the weight of public sentiment against them, surely they were true believers.

Lucia was holding back a panic attack by the time they reached Doris’ office, cursing the necessity of making small talk with Doris, who was perfectly capable of refusing to give Lucia her check until nine. She’d been surprised that Doris had agreed to give up the check early at all. Fortunately, a conversation with Doris was a matter of nodding every so often, because Lucia was too busy trying to gauge the intensity of the itch just under her skin to pay much attention.

Last night may have begun with Lucia becoming an entirely different species, but she was still the same person and that person was nervous at best, not brave. With Finsternis around, it was easy to stay calm. He was a demon who could disappear and set fires with his mind. As long as he was at her side, it was easy for Lucia to stay focused on her immediate goal and forget about being nervous.

            Stuck in Doris’ office, listening to her go on about- camping?- waiting for Andy to decide he needed company had Lucia ready to crawl out of her own skin.

            “You got somewhere to be, Lucy?” asked Doris, holding the check just out of Lucia’s reach. Doris always changed Lucia’s name to Lucy. You ain’t no eye-talian, she had declared, you’re American. Lucia hated it and she was sure that was the only reason Doris called her that.

            “Just give me the fucking check, Doris!” Lucia snapped, then slapped her hand over her mouth in wide-eyed horror. What was wrong with her today? And what was wrong with Doris? She was completely motionless, holding the check out to Lucia, her face curiously slack. For a moment, Lucia thought Doris had had a stroke. Past 80, in poor health and with a temper that would rival a grizzly bear caught in a trap, no one in the office could understand why Doris hadn’t had a stroke yet.

            “Persuasive. I’m persuasive.” Lucia took her check out of Doris’ outstretched hand.

            Doris shook her head slightly and sat at her desk, ignoring Lucia, who stared at her, waiting to see if Doris would recover. Then she heard footsteps from the back of the building and left.

            “Hey! Who are you? What are you?”

Andy. He was still fifty feet away from her, but he’d seen Lucia and what he was seeing wasn’t a mousy, brown haired human.

Lucia ducked her head back into Doris’ office. “Doris! You haven’t seen me today. I’m just a stranger asking for directions.” With that, Lucia ran down the steps, out the door and into the alley.

“Finsternis? We have to go,” Lucia hissed, frantically searching the gloom for him.

She saw a glint of purple then shiny white fangs an inch from her face. “What now?”

“Andy. I have no idea what he saw-“

Finsternis pulled Lucia up against him, put a hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear, “Deal with it.” Up close, he smelled like summer- salt water and woodsmoke, fresh cut grass and five minutes before a storm.

Lucia watched Andy walk into the alley, increasingly nervous as he moved further into the shadows. At one point he looked directly at her and paused, but then he moved on. Lucia was sure she was done for when he started reciting the 23^rd Psalm. The Bible was, in many churches her mother had spoken at, nothing more than a series of verbal talismins against demons. Any random verse would do in a pinch, but the 23^rd Psalm was better than garlic against a vampire.

Nothing happened. Andy’s gaze swept over them again as his lips moved silently along the verse Lucia couldn’t stop herself from reciting- Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me- and then he walked out of the alley and into the sunlight without a backwards glance.

“Why do you get all of the cool abilities?” asked Lucia when Finsternis finally let her go.

Chapter 2, Pages 12-16

Chapter 2

            Lucia woke up to a beautiful sunrise, the clouds a celebration of orange and pink, the birds singing, and despite the chill in the air, she wasn’t cold. In fact, whatever she was lying on was delightfully warm, though not soft at all.

            “Good morning, Lucia.” She jumped up and looked down at Finsternis, lying in the grass wearing a black button down shirt missing one sleeve. He didn’t seem at all uncomfortable laying on cold, wet grass, and the loss of one sleeve seemed a bold fashion statement.

            “What are you?”

            He rose to kneeling in front of her leg to check the wound. “A demon, of course. What else would I be?” Finsternis removed the makeshift bandage, one sleeve of his button down tied around his t-shirt, and poked at Lucia’s thigh.

            She yelped, then realized it didn’t hurt. She looked at her thigh and saw that all that remained of what had been a deep gash at least two inches wide was a thin, pink line. “Satan wasn’t kidding.”

“Certainly not. Lucifer has no sense of humor.” Finsternis stood up and held the bloody t-shirt and sleeve in his outstretched hands. With no fanfare at all, they burst into purple flames and burnt to ash in the space of a few heartbeats. He brushed off his hands and looked at her expectantly.

“That was amazing!” Lucia clapped her hands together. That was exactly what she wanted to be able to do.

Finsternis gave her a quizzical look. “That? A newborn could do that.”

“A newborn? I though demons were fallen ang-“ The forsythia next to her burst into purple flame. Even less than a foot away, the flames were without heat, though they were consuming the bush somehow. “Stop that. I’m sorry, I was raised human. I was human until last night. If I make a mistake, correct me, don’t try to set me on fire!”

Finsternis looked abashed and the flames disappeared as suddenly as they had erupted. “I apologize.”

Something about the way he said it, the look in his eyes, made Lucia realize that she had accidentally hit on the truth. “You really were trying to set me on fire! And you failed?”

He ran a hand through his hair. In the gloaming light, Lucia could see that his hair was a very dark purple, not black. “I forgot about nephalim. It has been a long time since I have been around one.”

“Forgot what about us?”

“You are beyond difficult, you cannot hold your tongues and you are virtually immune to the abilities of demons and angels.”

Ignoring the rather unflattering description, Lucia focused on the last bit of information. “That’s good, right? Being immune to angels, I mean.”

Finsternis shrugged. “You aren’t immune to the agents of Yhwh and that is what’s after us.”

“So why am I immune to angels and demons? I mean, I’m half angel myself, apparently.”

“Heaven and Hell are not on the same,” he paused, “English isn’t the best language for this discussion, you know. Heaven and Hell are not in the same universe as this place.” He gestured about him. “They are . . . subuniverses, I suppose, created by Yhwh. Heaven is His place to live and observe and Hell is a consequence. We ca-“

“Consequence? Hell is a consequence?” Lucia wasn’t sure she’d heard right. It was too early and she needed coffee. She picked up her bag and purse, then looked at her pants. They were covered in dried blood. She couldn’t walk into the Krispy Kreme like this. “Turn around, please.”

Finsternis looked around, surprised. “Why? What do you sense?”

“Nothing, I’m just not providing a striptease for free.” Lucia pointed to her pants and waved the dress in her hand. It was probably too cold for it at the beginning of May, but the soft cotton sundress, with its pretty flower print and floaty skirt was her favorite article of clothing.

Finsternis turned around. “To answer your question, Yhwh created Heaven and angels, in indirectly Hell and demons, and was responsible for man, but is not the creator of the universe. That existed before. The universe has one guiding principle: everything has its opposite. Up quarks have down quarks, electrons have protons, matter has antimatter.

“A being of sufficient power can create what he wishes to his own specifications using the intrinsic forces of this universe-“

“I’m done and I need coffee.” Lucia picked up her bags, paused. “I’m sorry for being so rude. I have idea what’s wrong with me.”

Finsternis chuckled. “For one thing, you’re nephalim, for another, it takes a good deal of energy to heal like that. You must be starving. Which way?”

Lucia pointed toward the rising sun, then paused. “Yeah, it must be-“ she walked around to the other side of the yard, “right here. Oh, look- the doughnuts are hot! Hurry!”

“Is that good?”

“What, hot glazed doughnuts? That’s a reason to live.”

They stepped inside and Lucia stopped abruptly, Finsternis bumping into her. “Shit!” she hissed. “We have to go!”

“Why?” He was sniffing at the air, a smile spreading across his face. It was quite delightful, but Lucia didn’t give in to her suddenly discovered hunger.

“Hello? You’re purple, I’m red? You’ve noticed this, right?” She glanced at the cashier, who smiled politely.

Finsternis chuckled again, and turned her toward the counter. “Humans see what they expect to see. We’re a nice looking pair of humans, nothing more.”

Lucia walked to the counter. At this time of day, the wave of delivery drivers was gone and the office workers weren’t awake yet. There were only a few people eating at tables and reading papers or phones.

“What would you like this morning?” asked the cashier, giving no evidence that she noticed Finsternis’ purple eyes or missing sleeve or Lucia’s red eyes and pointed ears, though those were probably hidden in her newly long, thick curls.

“Can I have a dozen hot doughnuts?” Lucia had to swallow away the sudden watering of her mouth. “And a large coffee, leave room for lots of milk, please.” She turned to Finsternis. “What would you like?”

The cashier did a double take at that.

“Oh, it’s my turn to buy for the office,” Lucia explained.

“Oh, of course,” said the cashier.

“I’ll have the same,” said Finsternis. “I may as well do something nice for the office, too, right?”

“Okay, two dozen hot doughnuts, two large coffees, plenty of room for cream. That’ll be-”

“You don’t have to leave room for cream in mine, Kristi,” interrupted Finsternis, proving that he could read English, “I take mine black.”

“Of course you do,” murmured Lucia. “How much was that?”

Kristi was staring at Finsternis with naked lust, something Lucia found enraging for some reason. “How much?” she asked sharply.

“Oh, uh, $19.06.”

Lucia handed over her last $20, grateful it was payday. While they waited for their doughnuts, she pulled out her cell phone and called the office. “Doris? Yeah, it’s Lucia. Can I pick up my check now? I have an appointment at lunch, so I need to put it into the ATM before work. If that’s all right with you, that is. Okay, I should be there around-“ she checked the clock on the wall “seven. Yeah, I’ll call when I get there.”

Kristi came back with their doughnuts and coffees and Finsternis followed Lucia to the coffee prep station. He watched with amusement as she turned her coffee beige with milk and poured eight sugars in after it. “You don’t really like coffee, do you?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, coffee purists unite. Over there okay?” she pointed at a table near the door, away from the others.

“As long as we can eat this, I do not care, my dear.”

They sat at the table and dug into the hot, fluffy doughnuts covered in hot, dripping glaze. After his first bite, Finsternis’ eyes went wide, then rolled back in pure pleasure. Lucia was too busy letting hot doughnut melt on her tongue to pay much attention. She much preferred Dunkin Donuts for coffee, especially iced coffee, her favorite, but Krispy Kreme’s hot glazed doughnuts were the best doughnuts ever made. Fancy fillings and icings were meaningless next to the hot, sweet fluffiness of a fresh-from-the-fryer glazed doughnut.

What finally brought Lucia back was reaching down for another doughnut and her hand hitting the bottom of the box instead. She looked at it, mystified. She didn’t just eat twelve doughnuts in- she checked the clock- three minutes, did she? She looked across the table to find Finsternis looking at her sadly. “They are all gone.”

“Wow. Yeah, they are. Well, we still have our coffees and places to go, so let’s get there.” She picked up her coffee, closed the empty box and picked it up, along with her bags. Finsternis copied her and followed.

“Where are we going?”

“I just spent my last twenty. I need to go to my work and pick up my check from Doris. She gets in at like five am and leaves at ten. I told her I’m busy at lunch and I need to get my check early and put it into the ATM. I guess she’s in a good mood, because she actually said yes,” Lucia explained. “Then we have to find some place to hide until nine, when we can go to the pawn shop and I can cash it.”

“You don’t like banks?”

They passed the trash can outside and Lucia stuffed her box inside, followed by Finsternis. “I went to Liberty College for two years. It was the only college my mother would let me go to. Every year, I had to fill out all this paperwork for grants and such. Mostly, my mother did it all and had me sign everything when she was done.” Lucia sipped her coffee. “I should have wondered why she was being so nice.

“By that time, without me to drag along, my mother’s speaking career had dried up. She was a nasty, bitter woman who couldn’t be bothered to be nice to the little people, and by then, the little people had moved up and were the big people. The money was gone, so she got a bunch of student loans in my name and never told me about them. I tried to dispute it all, but I did sign the forms. Anyway, I had a bank account, but the loan companies froze the accounts. So no banks for me.”

Finsternis nodded. “What speaking career did your mother have?”

“Oh, your boss raped her, or so she says,” Lucia replied. It didn’t happen so much now that she was older, but growing up, everyone knew her as “the rape baby”. There was no getting away from it, her mother told anyone who would listen- and pay for the privilege. She had written two bestsellers on the subject of Lucia’s conception. She had learned to bring it up before anyone else did, to act like it didn’t matter to her, though it did. Other children could say that their fathers were pastors or cooks or car salesmen, while hers was a rapist, nothing more. Though Lucia had long suspected that Tanny Harris had passed off a forbidden premarital adventure as a rape, she certainly hadn’t been up to arguing the point as a child, and as an adult, she knew there was no purpose in arguing. She was the rape baby and her mother was the saint who raised her instead of having an abortion.

“He’s not my boss,” Finsternis growled.

“So why are you-“

“Hey, you need a ride?” A black Honda Civic had pulled up next to them, the only occupant a man in his late 30s in a white Budweiser t-shirt that had seen better days and jeans. Aviator glasses covered his eyes, a straggly beard half of his face, and shaggy brown hair drooped over the glasses.

Normally, Lucia wouldn’t even consider such an offer. He might as well have a neon sign flashing “RAPIST” over his car, but today she was a nephalim in the company of a demon.

“Sure, we could use a ride. You going downtown?”

The driver looked over and started, seeming to notice Finsternis for the first time. “Uh, yeah, I didn’t mean both of you . . .”

Lucia had had enough. Last night and now this? “You know what? Fuck you. Just give us a ride downtown and shut the fuck up about it.”

“Okay.” Lucia stared at him. It was hard to tell with the glasses and the beard, but his face had a curiously slack quality to it all of a sudden.

“Get in the car, little Light, unless you actually want to walk there,” advised Finsternis, opening the rear door.

“Um, yeah, sure.”

“Where to?” asked the driver, his voice oddly hollow.

“The library on North Washington,” replied Lucia, watching the driver carefully. He seemed to be in some sort of trance, though his driving was unaffected. His breathing was that of a man deeply asleep, but his quick reaction to being cut off by a white pickup truck proved that he was quite awake. Lucia turned to see if Finsternis knew what was wrong with the man, but he put one elegant finger in front of his lips. His fingernails were the same colour as his hair, a purple so dark it looked black when not in direct sunlight.

Lucia wondered what other people- humans- saw when they looked at Finsternis. The cashier at Krispy Kreme had clearly seen only a handsome man. Finsternis was handsome, in a sly sort of way, when he wasn’t displaying a jaw full of fangs. Even with his mouth closed, he was obviously not human to Lucia, and it was hard to imagine what everyone else was seeing when they looked at him. Finsternis’ face was a touch too symmetrical, his skin too perfect, his eyes a little too large, his cheekbones a little too high. Any one feature, on its own, could have belonged to a human, but together they screamed, “I am not human” and Lucia found it hard to believe nobody else could hear it.

Then again, Scranton was not the sort of place where waist-length red curls and red eyes would go unremarked, and nobody had appeared to notice anything unusual about Lucia yet.

End Chapter 1

Lucifer turned and looked at his shadow, glowered at it until the wings disappeared. They seemed to fight him on it. Lucia suddenly thought of a puppy whining at punishment it didn’t understand. She shook her head, but the sound lingered in the air, though Lucifer’s shadow was entirely gone.

“What was that?”

Lucifer turned, too quickly, nothing was that quick, and for a moment his eyes, corneas and all, were flames made of the sort of darkness found only in caves where the sun never reaches. Then he blinked, for the first time, Lucia realized, and they were utterly normal eyes again. In an entirely inhuman face.

“It’s not easy for me to manifest on this plane. I am forbidden it by Yhwh, after all,” he explained, his face settling into something somewhat less human than before. It was the first time Lucia had ever heard “Yhwh” pronounced exactly as it was spelled- without any vowels. Which was more than a little odd, considering that Hebrew did have vowel sounds, they just weren’t written down.

“So, correctly pronouncing the name of God actually does cause Him to manifest?”

For a moment, Lucifer was a caricature of sly. Lucia wondered if he actually felt human emotions or if he just imitated them, poorly. “It does rather attract His attention, which I’d rather not at the moment.”

Lucia sat down across from him, her suspicion and terror replaced with fascination. “Why now? Why does God want to end it all now? And why do you care what He does?”

Lucifer sighed, a sound so weary Lucia could only imagine the millennia behind it. He ran a hand through his hair and looked, for the first time, human. He was still beautiful beyond measure, but the unnatural perfection had disappeared, leaving behind slight wrinkles around his eyes, the barest hint of sagging at the jaw line. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his shoulders drooped. More theatre? Which was real, the inhuman monster with black flames for eyes or the dignified, if very weary, middle-aged man? Neither?

“I assume you’ve read Paradise Lost and the Inferno?” Lucia nodded. “Well, then, the War in Heaven, the sin of my pride, my insatiable jealousy of the inferior creations my master loved best.” He grinned without joy. “Forget all that. The truth is both far less grand and far less flattering to our creator.

“I don’t have much time, so I’ll stick to the short version. Yhwh did create us both, the angels first, the humans second. We angels were made perfect, or at least as close to perfect as anything could be. Humans were-“ Lucifer paused, his eyes focused far beyond Lucia. “Humans couldn’t be left alone. He learned that after the Garden of Eden incident, which is not at all what you’ve heard.”

He raised a hand to forestall the inevitable question. “Time. Tick tock. Not in our favor. Anyway, in order for humans to do whatever it is Yhwh wants them to do- and no, I have no idea what that is- he needs to direct them individually. That is where we parted ways.”

Lucia frowned. It wasn’t that she disbelieved his story, who was she to argue history with Satan, but it didn’t make sense, didn’t mesh with what she knew. “What about free will? What do you mean by ‘directed’?”

“Oh, individual humans do have free will. That’s part of the goal, actually. However, in the course of exercising free will, some humans happen upon what Yhwh wants of them. These humans must be allowed to do what they intend to do to bring about Yhwh’s plan, but in order for that to happen, other humans must be stopped.”

It was the way Lucifer said “stopped” with such cold finality. “Wait. Just- wait. God’s plan? You mean the way some people have the easiest time ever and some people just get shit on by life from the moment they’re born? That?” It made perfect sense, and it was so . . . evil, evil was the only word for it.

Lucifer’s smile was sad. “Yes. Some humans have to suffer so that others will fulfill His plan. It’s just so cruel. Why this one and not that one? Why not just tell them what the plan is, give them some sort of hint, anything to stop it? This one, not that one, this child gets raped, that mother gets beaten to death and that man wins the lottery. I just couldn’t bear it after a while. So I tried to make him stop.”

“You tried to stop God? You tried to stop an omnipotent, omniscient being? I’m surprised you’re here at all- He’s not omnipotent or omniscient, is He?” Lucia realized just how much “knowledge” she was going to have to forget.

“No, He’s neither omnipotent nor omniscient, but He is powerful enough in comparison to humans that the distinction doesn’t matter. As to your other question, why end the world now, it has to do with what I have been able to accomplish.

“I have been able to protect some humans from the consequences of God’s Plan and seduce others away from it-“

“Job!” Lucia exclaimed.

“What?”

“Job. That was you testing your ability to defy Yhwh, mess with his Plan, right?” Lucia asked.

“Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t able to do much for poor Job, or his family, but I did learn enough to be able to help others. The secret is subtlety. This world, all the people in it, is a chaos system. You know what a chaos system is, right?” Lucia nodded. She didn’t mention that her knowledge of chaos systems came directly from Jurassic Park. “It’s impossible for even Yhwh to keep track of every part of a chaos system simultaneously, so He doesn’t. He monitors trends instead.

“As long as I keep my actions subtle, just a tiny nudge here, a little tug there, He can’t catch me at it. One or two humans protected or kept off the path would seem like nothing in the grand scheme of things, but over time, it adds up.”

“So you’ve managed to ensure that His plan can’t be fulfilled, He’s figured it out and now He’s ending it all, Revelation style?” Lucia summed it up for him.

Lucifer gave her a wry look. “Well, you certainly didn’t get that from me.”

“Get what?”

“Pithyness. You are correct. The events of Revelation, the Apocalypse, are about to occur. If you don’t stop it, this world will end in a little over seven years.”

“But how do I stop the Apocalypse? I mean, you’re Satan, an angel, and you can’t do it, I’m just me,” said Lucia, her voice a whisper at the end. She couldn’t even manage to move out of Southside to somewhere safer, how could she save the world?

A finger under her chin lifted her head up. Lucifer’s touch was impossibly hot and skin-bitingly cold at once. Lucia wondered what he looked like wherever it was he belonged. He cupped her chin with her hand and laid his other over the top of her head. She bit back a whine of pain and ruthlessly beat back the question of how he ever had sex with her mother. Picturing Tanny Harris having sex was worse than the burning, freezing pain of Lucifer’s touch.

Lucia would have screamed at what Lucifer did next if she had could have breathed. Ever nerve in her body was pure pain, her bones crunching- not at all the sound in movies- her tendons snapping, her muscles spasming, her eyes, she was sure, were melting, and then- nothing. The pain ended so abruptly she was left swaying and gasping, clutching at Satan’s shirt.

“What, what was that?” she finally got out, the words feeling as unfamiliar as if she’d never spoken English before.

He took her hands and guided her to a chair. His touch no longer hurt, it just left a mild tingling on her skin. “I’ve been hiding you, remember? Keeping you human, or as human as I could. I removed it. You are nephalim now.”

Lucia laughed, held one hand out in front of her and examined it. It looked the same, from the winter-chewed cuticles on her fingers to the beginnings of wrinkles around the knuckles. Now that the endorphin rush was passing, she felt the same, too. She turned quickly to look behind her.

“No wings?”

Lucifer sighed. “What is it with my children and wings? You all ask that.”

“All? I have brothers and sisters?” Lucia was delighted. She’d always wanted a sister, maybe a brother. She’d seen sisters and brothers together and despite the bickering there was always a closeness, an acceptance and love, she envied.

“Not currently alive, no. I make sure to have one child living at all times, for just such occasions as these. You’re only the second one I’ve had to awaken.”

“Oh. So what did I get?” He had mentioned setting bullies ablaze, pyrokinesis would be almost as good as siblings.

“Well, you are much more resistant to damage than the average human, you heal significantly faster,” Lucifer counted the modifications on his fingers. “You are immune to disease and resistant to radiation, though not completely immune, so don’t go exploring Chernobyl.” He paused.

“Anything fun?”

“Fun?”

“You know, like pyrokinesis or stopping time or flying or something.” Immunity to disease would certainly be useful during flu season, but it wasn’t really what Lucia was expecting from being the daughter of Satan.

“You watch too much TV,” he replied huffily.

“Yhwh flooded the whole damn world to kill the nephalim because they were somewhat resistant to radiation?”

Lucifer sighed again, ran a hand through his hair. “He didn’t flood the entire world, just the area around Judea and any nephalim would be potentially dangerous to His plans. Nephalim just won’t obey. But yes, you do have two abilities in your favor.”

“What is it?” Tick tock before, but now he couldn’t spit it out?

“You can affect random chance in your favor and you are, well, I suppose ‘persuasive’ is the word.” Lucifer was suddenly quite fascinated by the cuff of his shirt.

“What does that mean, affect random chance? Should I move to Vegas?”

“You are just the soul of pithy, aren’t you?” Lucifer smiled brightly. “That and you should probably be very careful what you say from now on.” He turned away from her. “I cannot stay much longer and neither can you. Yhwh has already noticed what I just did, I guarantee it.”

Lucia stared at him in disbelief. “That’s it? Here’s some craptastic abilities that wouldn’t get me sidekick status in the Marvel universe, go stop the Apocalypse, see you later?”

It was too late. Lucifer had already begun to dim, pulling the shadows of the room with him.

“Wait! Couldn’t I have that?” Lucia had so many questions, a lifetime of them, and now her father was leaving.

He paused for a moment, a man shaped piece of perfect darkness in a now blinding room. “I’ll send help. The agents of Yhwh are on there way, just get out of her-“ He was gone. The room bobbled, straight lines curving, curves impossibly sharp, corners warped, then everything snapped back to normal, leaving Lucia blinking away nausea.

She sighed. Send help? She wasn’t waiting around for it. “Well, God helps those who help themselves, hopefully Satan does, too.”

            Lucia turned off the coffee pot, put the mugs in the sink and, grabbing her purse and her environmentally friendly cloth shopping bag, a giveaway from a local store on Earth Day, walked to the bedroom. Her coworkers made comments sometimes, but she certainly wouldn’t leave anything of value, like her iPad, at her house. There was a reason she didn’t own a TV. Junkies weren’t stopped by deadbolts any more than Lucifer had been. So she already had most of what she owned on her. A few more outfits, her other pair of shoes, various toiletries, and she was done. Lucia said a mournful goodbye to her blowdryer and straightening iron. They wouldn’t fit and weren’t as important as underwear or toothpaste, but she didn’t look forward to the inevitable frizz.

            “What the hell?” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair, which had been dark brown and straightened last time she looked, was now a mass of brilliant red curls, shot through with gold streaks, down her back. And her eyes were red. “Oh, that’s subtle. No one will notice that at all . . .” She had pulled her hair back to examine her eyes only to uncover newly pointed ears.  “Unbelievable.”

            Lucia stared at her new reflection, pondering whether or not she had gained a cup size and how creepy was that considering her father had done it, though he was Satan, so maybe that lessened the creepy factor, when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She turned around, fully expecting to see someone right behind her, but there was nothing. Nevertheless, a chill ran up her back and down her arms, leaving her fingers trembling.

            “I am not sticking around to see what that’s all about,” Lucia thought, picked up her purse and her bag and walked to the front door. She was almost touching the doorknob, her fingers an inch away, when she suddenly had the impression that the doorknob was a spider. A big, hairy spider. A wiggling, big, hairy spider possibly covered in goo. She just couldn’t bring herself to touch it, no matter how much she knew the doorknob was not a spider.

            “Right. He could have mentioned that. Or I’m just insane. Which would explain a lot, really.” Lucia was almost certain that what she was feeling was the “agents of Yhwh” stopping by. Big, spidery agents of Yhwh, covered in goo.

            Yielding to the impression that the entire living room was now made of big hairy spiders covered in goo, Lucia retreated to the bedroom, in the back of her small apartment. Unfortunately, her apartment was on the third floor and the only exit was the gooey spider door. “’Resistant to damage’,” muttered Lucia, biting her lip as she thought. Below her bedroom window was a one story garage. It would be a two story drop, but that was only one more story than the average human could hope to jump without serious injury. Twice the distance, to be exact, but she had to leave and the front door wasn’t an option.

            The creeping feeling had spread into the bedroom and Lucia was certain whoever or whatever was after her was at the front door. “Fuck it.” She tried to open the window, but the wood of the frame was swollen with humidity and it opened half an inch and then stuck. She could fit her fingers under it, but not anything else.

            The windows all over the building stuck like this any time it rained. It was bad enough in the stifling heat of a rainy summer day, but Lucia was half wild with the unshakable belief that the entire room was made of big, gooey, wiggling spiders, so she did what anyone arachnophobic person obsessed with comics and action movies would do, she backed up and jumped right through the glass. As the glass shattered, Lucia had a moment of perfect clarity in which she realized that her window, being over 100 years old, was not made of shatterproof glass, then she was falling, driving all thoughts of advancements in safety technology out of her mind.

            Just before she hit the roof of the garage she noticed a man standing there, dressed all in black, long black hair blowing in the wind, gaping up at her. She had time to think that it was odd that she hadn’t noticed him before and then she crashed into him.

            For a moment, everything went black as Lucia struggled to breathe. She had landed stomach first onto the man’s crooked knee, her face in his crotch. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t broken anything, but she couldn’t get enough air to even roll away from what had to be the most singularly embarrassing position to meet someone from.

            “You just had the wind knocked out of you, come along, in a short moment you will be fine,” he said, pulling her up until she was face to face with him- and laying pressed up against his body. As she gasped for air, she noticed that he had purple eyes and fangs.

            “Are- you- okay?” She managed to asked in between convincing her lungs that breathing still remained a good idea.

            He smiled, far too broadly, almost literally ear to ear, exposing more shiny, white fangs. “It would take more than that to harm me.” He glanced up at the broken window and the smile dropped off his face. “Though I’m quite sure they will be happy to bring more than that.” He stood up, pulling Lucia with him. She pushed away from him, tottering to the side, but staying upright.

            “Hey, let me help you.” He reached out a hand and Lucia stepped back and waved her arms around her.

            “Personal space, please stay out of it.” She picked up her purse and bag and stumbled to the edge of the roof. After the last jump, this didn’t look so bad. She hopped down, quickly followed by purple-eyed man.

            “I’m here to help you, you know,” he said, clearly aggrieved.

            Lucia trotted past the apartment building behind hers, nervous at being funneled down a three foot wide space littered with trash between two apartment buildings. Well, one apartment building and a crack house to be precise. There was no overwhelming sense of spiders or goo coming from the street ahead of her, so she stepped out onto the sidewalk confidently.

            The purple eyed man grabbed her arm, pulled her back into the shadows and up against his body and whispered, “Careful! We need to-“

            Without thinking, Lucia slammed on heel down onto his instep while simultaneously hitting him in the stomach with an elbow and twisting out of his grasp. He let go and hopped back, glaring at her. Before he could speak, she hissed, “Personal fucking space!” She pointed at the crack house, an otherwise unremarkable moldering Victorian home. “That is a crack house. If we go running by, all the junkies and their dealers will want to know what we’re running from. They may get insistent about knowing what we’re running from. We don’t want that sort of attention. Now shut up and follow me, just keep about two feet away from me.”

            Lucia didn’t bother to see if he was following her or still trying to argue the point or plotting to kill her, she just turned and walked out onto the sidewalk as if it were any other day and she needed something from the corner store.

            “But-“

            “Later!”

            She strode down the street, surreptitiously picking shards of glass out of her hair and then she noticed it. It was a lovely Spring night, sun just setting, air still arm and the streets were empty. There should have drug dealers casually pretending to wait for nothing, prostitutes rather obviously waiting for something, junkies looking to score and residents enjoying the few remaining minutes of twilight before barricading themselves in their apartments. That she and the purple eyed man were alone was eerie.

            She began cutting into alleys and back yards at random, reasoning that if she didn’t know where she was going, neither would Yhwh’s agents. It wasn’t like she had any idea where she was going. The Martz bus station in Center City would provide a way out of town, but one day before payday she didn’t have any money and she was willing to bet her companion didn’t have any ID. Still, Center City seemed the best goal, at least she could stop by work in the morning and pick up her paycheck, if nothing else.

            Two blocks away from her apartment, the tingling at the back of her neck disappeared and people were out and about- but avoiding the two blocks surrounding Lucia’s apartment absolutely and without seeming to realize it. They would reach an invisible barrier and simply turn aside, not seeming to notice that they had changed their direction, their goals, completely. Nobody witnessing it, and people did, seemed to find anything odd in it.

            Lucia wondered if this had ever happened to her and realized that it could have happened a thousand times before, and judging from the looks on everyone’s faces, she wouldn’t have noticed or remembered a thing.

            Nobody seemed to notice Lucia’s newly red eyes or pointed ears, or her companion’s purple eyes and fangs. She watched eyes quickly scan her face and move away, displaying neither interest nor alarm. South Side wasn’t the place to question other people’s fashion choices, but it wasn’t Manhattan, either. A couple sporting impossibly colored eyes, pointed ears and fangs should have elicited double takes if nothing else, but judging by the lack of reaction, both Lucia and her companion were as normal as could be.

            Eventually they reached the bridge over the Lackawanna River between South Side and the Hill Section, one of two bridges connecting South Side to the rest of Scranton. Lucia stopped in the backyard of a condemned apartment building, hiding behind untrimmed forsythia that stretched ten feet tall, not exactly eager to step out over the span, even under the cover of darkness. It didn’t seem too likely that Yhwh’s agents would automatically assume she had no way out of town besides the bus, but maybe they did. If they did, all they had to do was watch this bridge and the Central Scranton Expressway bridge to catch her.

            A throbbing pain above her right knee caught Lucia’s attention as she watched the bridge and tried to feel as far as she could for spiders. She looked down and gasped. A piece of glass the size of her hand was sticking out of her thigh, blood dripping off of it. Her blood. She sat down on the grass heavily, lightheaded.

            “I tried to tell you.” Lucia started when her companion spoke. He had given up even trying an hour ago. He knelt down on one knee and paused. Lucia nodded her head, then regretted it as the world spun. He pulled of his black button down shirt and set it down on the ground next to her, then he removed the black t-shirt beneath it and held it in his hands.

            “Is that some sort of uniform?” asked Lucia. Her voice sounded odd in her ears, far away.

            He glanced at her, his eyes almost glowing in the filtered light of a street lamp. “What?” He grabbed the piece of glass and pulled it out in one quick motion, immediately pressing his t-shirt down on the wound.

            “Ow!” Lucia resisted the urge to lay down. It wouldn’t be good. He had the sort of sculpted muscles she’d only seen on movies stars. Wouldn’t be good at all. “Your black . . . my dad dresses like that . . . wha’s your name?”

            “Finsternis.” He pulled her bag over to him, never letting the pressure up on her wound. “You have anything to eat or drink in here?”

            “Ga’r’ade . . . b’ue!” Lucia managed. She giggled. She sounded drunk for some reason. She wondered if she could even get drunk anymore. Not that she wanted to, but still . . .

            “Take this.” Finsternis handed her the Gatorade bottle. Lucia took it with one hand and stared at it, unable to divine its significance. “Drink it, Little Light.”

            Lucia drank it, or at least some of it, most of it ended up pouring down her neck and over her chest. She decided that there was no time like the present to take a nap and closed her eyes.