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.

Chapter 3 - Demonic PoV

            Finsternis stared at Lucia. He had been wrong about her. He had seen her as just another nephalim, inexplicably female, too weak to do what must be done. Oh, Lucia had looked glorious flying out of a shattered window, scarlet curls fluttering like the flowers on a flame tree, crimson eyes wide. He’d always found the red demons, coloured like fires that actually burned, to be the most attractive, and Finsternis had to admit he was still fighting an urge to bury his fingers in Lucia’s hair, to do things that would make her eyes go wide.

            But she was too human, too damaged by savages who thought nothing of eating their young’s souls. Finsternis didn’t hate humans, he disdained them. No demon would let another starve or freeze or suffer, not for one moment. Purple demons did not hate orange demons- or reds or yellows or blues or greens, for that matter. Male demons did not see females as lesser. Humans were even more vile than they accused demons of being.

Lucia was another Judas, Finsternis had assumed, to be manipulated into doing what was necessary because he lacked the courage to do it himself. Now he wished for another Judas, because this was worse.

            Save the Horsemen from their appointed fates? This was madness. They were soldiers in a war and Lucia wanted to have a nice chat with the enemy’s greatest weapons. It was like feeling pity for a nuclear bomb. The Grand General’s children were always beyond frustrating, but Lucia was in a class by herself.

            And there she was all narrow-eyed, clenched jaw challenge, ready to fight Finsternis but not the Horsemen. There was something indefinably demon about her, but only an angel’s child could be this stubbornly stupid.

            The demonry in general accepted the angels in their midst, arrogantly striding about in pockets of space among the rainbow clusters of demons. Finsternis, however, hated the angels, hated their frosty perfection, their overweening pride. Allied angels were a necessity, nothing more, to be tolerated as they looked down their perfect noses at everything not them.

            The Grand General was the worst of the lot, arrogant pervert that he was. He and his ilk used human women, not for pleasure, but to thumb their noses at the creator. It would be one thing for Finsternis to bite into soft, pale skin . . .

            Finsternis shook his head. Being alone, separated from the demonry didn’t usually affect him this way, not so quickly anyway. Surely that was the problem, the way his thoughts kept wrapping around to a nephalim. Lucifer’s crazy daughter, no less. Finsternis was chosen for these missions because he could go months or even years out of Hell without collapsing into a limp rag of loneliness. Finsternis was an oddity, even for a purple.

            He bit back a sigh. This was not going to be quick. He had spent two years protecting and manipulating Judas. If Finsternis was falling lonely already, he wouldn’t make it two months.

            “Fine. We will try it your way. It will not work, but we will try it.” Lucia’s jaw unclenched, her eyes opened. “But, we must do some things my way, as well.”

            “What?” She crossed her arms and regarded him sternly.

            “I am not walking the Earth to find the Horsemen. You are going to persuade a rich human to give you money,” Finsternis did understand her aversion to stealing, at least from the poor, “and persuade whomever you have to in order to get us on a plane. Agreed?”

            She rolled her eyes, but assented. “Fine. It’s .  . .” She looked at the human, who was playing with the iPad again.

            He looked up. “8:20. And you don’t need a plane. At least not for Famine. Look, Santalvo’s based in White Plains. That’s about two hours by car.”

            As wildly irritating as the true believer’s presence was- Finsternis felt like he was wearing clothes made of barbed needles- he was turning out to be quite useful. Of course, that was life with the Grand General’s children. They turned chance on its side. The people had attributed such events to the presence of the Messiah, but it was Judas who caused a stack of falling bricks to land spelling out יהוה.

            Admirably, Lucia did not dither once she made a decision. She picked up her things, stuffed her iPad in her bag and stood up. “C’mon, Finsternis, we have a dark alley to hide in.”

            Finsternis stood up immediately. Hiding in shadows meant soft, cool, sweet-smelling skin pressed up against- He bit down on his tongue, hard, his fangs biting deeply. Any time he let his thoughts wander, it seemed, they would wander right under Lucia’s dress. He needed to get himself under control. If any demon knew what he was thinking, he would never live down the shame. A nephalim!

            Lucia was holding a keyring with a single key on it out to the human. “Take it. I need access to the internet, or I’d give you the iPad. But this is for my apartment. 1351 Cedar Ave, apartment 5. It’s paid up for another three weeks, with water, gas and electric. I can’t go back, you may as well enjoy it.”

            The human smiled for a moment, the sadly shook his head. “If I leave here for three weeks, it’ll be somebody else’s place and I’ll have to find another squat,” he explained.

            “Oh.” Lucia looked so dejected at not being able to help the man, Finsternis acted without thinking. He spread out his arms, pulled Hell’s Infinite Inferno into himself, just a tiny fraction, but more than most demons could handle.

            The fire filled Finsternis, surpassed him, consumed him. As always, it was a struggle to remember what he wanted, that he wanted anything at all besides the pleasure and the pain, the fundamental force itself.

            Wresting control, he passed the flames around and about the true believer, enjoying the human’s abject terror, then wound the flames- now the puce and ashen colours of the human’s soul- over the entrances to the factory. After every door and window was wreathed in flames the colour of a broken heart, Finsternis let go, allowed the inferno to snap back to Hell, the passage leaving him bereft and snappish.

            “What was that?” asked Lucia, wide-eyed. The human just stared and shivered.

            “A barrier. No human but this one can enter this place now. An angel or a demon could,” he squinted at the residue, visible only to him, “with difficulty, but your friend here can spend three weeks bathing and sleeping on a bed and no one will steal his ‘squat’.”

            Lucia smiled in the human way, then quickly pulled her lips straight, an unexpected gesture that surprised Finsternis, but not nearly as much as her quick, light hug. Shame. He’d work on feeling it just as soon as the feel of her skin wore off.

            They left the factory and Finsternis sighed with relief. Away from the true believer, the irritation subsided and he felt more himself, more in control. The shadows of the alley pulled him in. Lucia had called it an ability, but his relationship with shadows was an affinity. Demons were beings of darkness as angels were beings of light. Finsternis didn’t do anything at all when he entered shadows, the shadows themselves were drawn to him, sought him out, pulled him in. As long as Lucia was close enough to him, the shadows welcomed her, too.

            He stood as close as he could to Lucia without touching her. It was like trying to keep apart a magnet and iron filings. Nephalim, he reminded himself. Nephalim, Lucifer’s daughter, full, red lips she had a habit of biting when thinking . . .

            “He’s here,” whispered Lucia as a steel grey Mercedes pulled up.

            “Who?”

            “My boss. All those early mornings, work lunches and late nights unpaid, he owes me. This does not qualify as stealing.”

            A pleasant looking man in his mid 60s got out of the car. A thin grey combover failed to cover the crown of his head, a small potbelly strained his faded blue oxford shirt, and downturned blue eyes peered warily from behind thick tortoiseshell glasses.

            To a human, Gil Landry would have appeared to be a kindly grandfather, not the face of evil, but Finsternis saw with more than his eyes. To Finsternis, Gil was eaten through by greed and callousness, twisted by the feeling that somewhere someone was getting something that Gil could have, should have, had.

            “Hey, Gil!” Lucia strode from the shadows.

            “Oh, hello, Lucia. How are-“

            Lucia cut him off. “You’re fucking giving me five thousand dollars and your car.”

            Being half angel, the color of Lucia’s soul was hidden from Finsternis, but he could see it when she persuaded someone. At the same moment Gil’s face went curiously slack the sickly greens and yellows of his soul went the same brilliant red as Lucia’s eyes and hair, shot through with gold. It was, without a doubt, the oddest color for a half angel, but Finsternis had never seen a female nephalim before, either.

            Gil handed her his car keys, then paused. “Write me a fucking check for $5,000, Gil.”

            Finsternis could have told Lucia it was not necessary to use obscenities while persuading, but it was amusing to listen to her pronounce obscenities with such precision in that soft, high voice.

            Gil handed her the check and walked into the building without a backwards glance. Lucia turned to Finsternis. “I’m hoping you know how to drive?”

            Finsternis rolled his eyes. Satan’s children were never the most practical of weapons. “Since the Model T, Little Light.” He took the keys.

End Chapter 2, pp 24-27

“He is a bastard, ain’t He, the good Lord?” said Joe. “Proved it enough to me these last ten years. Can you turn the light back on? Little weird, just your demon eyes, all red and purple, in the dark.”

Lilac fire roared in the firepit, casting bleak light that abruptly ended outside of the circle of couches. “Has there ever been a human born that knew when to quit?” asked Finsternis irritably.

“If I knew when to quit, I’d’a killed myself ten years ago. I ain’t exactly livin’ the dream here, ya know,” replied Joe calmly, retaking his  seat on the velvet loveseat. He gestured at the iPad. “iPad?”

“Yeah. If you want to check your email or something, go ahead.” Lucia sat on a couch the exact colour of Pepto-Bismol and patted the seat next to her, scratching at her right calf with the other hand. Finsternis rolled his eyes, but sat next to her, jumped a little when she took his hand in hers. She rubbed at her left shoulder ineffectively, unable to reach the itch.

“Thanks. The library’s a bitch about the 30 minute rule. Well, if you look like me, anyway.” He picked up the iPad. “So, what’d I do  to deserve a couple of demons in my humble abode?”

“Nothing,” snapped Finsternis. Joe looked up at Finsternis curiously, then returned his attention to the iPad.

Lucia glared at Finsternis, unable to figure out what was the matter with him. He’d been polite and talkative with her, now he appeared to have given up blinking altogether and his voice retained an otherworldly tone. What was his problem with Joe? She scratched at her arm. Frustratingly, the itch was under the skin, too deep to reach, like a wool sweater under her skin. “You’re much more sensitive to true believers than I am, aren’t you? Sitting here must be driving you crazy.”

“Yes. He is dangerous, even if you refuse to see it.” The flames in the firepit flared and deepened. Lucia had to wonder what Hell looked like, filled with demons whose every mood affected the fires. Were all the flames purple, or did different demons produce different colours? If it were the case that colours were unique to individuals, then Hell would be the most beautiful place she could imagine.

“All you feel is belief in Yhwh, right?”

“Hey, when I open up the Twitter app it goes right to this LuciaDarkness person. Is there a way to switch it to mine?” Joe asked.

“Oh, yeah, just go to Twitter from the internet app, Safari, and sign in from there. The Twitter app is set up for mine,” Lucia explained.

“The homeless guy is on Twitter,” said Finsternis.

Lucia shrugged. “Who isn’t? Anyway, all you feel is belief in Yhwh, right? I mean, you don’t feel how they feel about Yhwh, do you?”

Finsternis opened his mouth to speak, shut it and shook his head slightly. “I am not a mind reader, no, but what difference would it make how he feels about Yhwh? He believes, truly believes, isn’t that enough?”

Lucia turned to Joe. “Hey, Joe, how’s the good Lord been treating you?”

Joe handed Lucia her iPad and pulled a bottle out from under the layers of clothing. Lucia thought it might be Irish Rose, which was one step below drinking paint thinner. He opened the bottle, sucked down alcohol for a few seconds, only stopping when he gagged. “The good Lord? He killed my wife and my daughter. Car accident. My wife was taking McKayla to daycare and she hit a patch of ice, couldn’t stop the car, and then, well,” he shook the bottle, sending oily amber liquid sloshing. “Do I really need to tell you the rest?”

Murders were virtually unheard of in Scranton, so tragic accidents were heavily reported. Lucia remembered when Joe’s wife and daughter died, the picture of a mangled white Honda Civic covering most of the front page. She remembered the pictures of Joe, who, despite his heavily lined face and grey beard, couldn’t possibly be over forty, holding back tears at the funeral.

“He believes, Finsternis, but he has no more love for Yhwh than you do,” explained Lucia.

“What are you two doing here, anyway?” asked Joe. He took another drink.

“He’s a demon. I’m the daughter of Satan. I need to stop the Apocalypse from happening and he’s helping me out with that.”

“Oh.” Joe considered that for a moment, then guzzled the rest of the alcohol. “How are you going to do that from here?”

Lucia looked at Finsternis. “How are we going to do that, Finsternis?”

Finsternis shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you need to stop the Horsemen and the Messiah. That will stop the Apocalypse.”

“The Messiah? How am I supposed to stop Jesus?”

“Oh, it’s not Jesus this time, it’s someone else. Besides, Judas was able to stop Jesus, and he was no more powerful than you. Although he was not afraid of spiders,” Finsternis explained.

“That makes no sense,” said Joe. “Jesus was God. Although I could buy Judas as the son of Satan.”

“No, it does make sense. Jesus wasn’t officially raised to the status of divine until the Council of Nicea, approximately 300 years after his crucifixion.” Lucia looked at Finsternis, who nodded in agreement.

“What?” Joe asked, clearly struggling through an alcohol haze.

“The messiah is a Jewish concept that does not require divinity. The prophesied messiah is a man, nothing more. The early converts to Christianity, all of whom were Jewish, had no problem accepting Jesus, the man, as the messiah. However, the general population at the time, in that part of world, worshipped the Roman pantheon of gods. These gods frequently had children by humans, children who were part god and had, well, superpowers.

“The pagans at the time were unimpressed by a human messiah, so, in order to make Jesus more attractive to the pagans, the Council of Nicea rejected all the gospels and writings that showed Jesus as a man, in favor of gospels that presented Jesus as divine.” Lucia paused. Joe was staring at her blankly. “Didn’t you ever wonder why only four of the twelve apostles wrote about Jesus? I mean, he was the son of god, the other eight didn’t have anything to say about that?”

“Huh, I never thought about that,” replied Joe.

“1,700 years since the Council of Nicea, most people don’t. Everyone seems to think the Bible was delivered straight from Heaven by Archangels. That’s not true. There were many writings about Jesus in the 300 years after his death, including the gospels of all 12 apostles, and many of them were contradictory. The Council of Nicea was formed to create one authoritative book concerning one agreed-upon narrative: that Jesus was God made man,” explained Lucia.

“There was a Gospel of Judas?” asked Joe.

“Supposedly. It’s not like the Council carefully filed away the texts they rejected,” Lucia said. She turned to Finsternis, who looked somewhat less murderous, and asked, “So, we have to stop the Messiah, but what about the Horsemen? Are they humans, too?”

“Yes, Pestilence, War and Famine are. Likely they do not even know what they are yet. They may never know. They are guided into place by Yhwh’s plan, herded like cattle for the slaughter. Famine will spread starvation, Disease will spread plague, War will spread violence without meaning to or knowing why. We must stop them.”

“What about Death?”

“Death is-“ Finsternis muttered something incomprehensible, a mixture of a hyena’s bark and a wolverine’s growl. “A problem for later.”

“So, the first three Horsemen could be anyone, anywhere?” Lucia sagged back against the filthy couch. 6,500,000,000 people on the planet and she was looking for three of them. She’d thought it would be impossible if the Horsemen were famous people, world leaders perhaps. Three random humans unaware of their role in the Apocalypse was just as bad. At least famous people would be easy to find. Hard to kill, but easy to find. Now, she was faced with finding three Joes in all the world without any place to start.

“Famine, huh? What about those Santalmo people?” asked Joe.

Lucia sat up. “The genetically modified food company!”

“Why would you suspect a food company of creating Famine?” asked Finsternis.

“Santalmo engineers its seed to germinate only once. With normal produce, like corn, a farmer can reserve a certain amount of the harvest to plant the next year. Produce grown from Santalmo seed won’t grow again next year. You have to keep buying seed from Santalmo year after year.

“Santalmo says that cross pollination isn’t possible, but there are rumors that in places like Mexico, poor countries, the cross pollination happens anyway, though, and farmers who reserved some of their harvest to plant again next year end up growing nothing at all,” explained Lucia.

“That’s gotta be Famine,” agreed Joe.

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Lucia.

“What?” asked Finsternis and Joe together.

“I’m willing to believe the executives in charge of Santalmo are greedy bastards willing to starve people who can’t pay for more seed year after year, but I don’t believe the researchers employed by Santalmo area,” she said.

“Why not? Scientists ain’t saints. Look at that one guy, the Nazi doctor, um, mangle, mongol?” interrupted Joe.

“Mengele. Josef Mengele. Sure, but look at Oppenheimer.”

“Who?” asked Joe.

“He worked on the Manhattan Project, creating the atomic bomb during World War II. He was shocked and appalled by what his research ended up being used for. A lot of the Manhattan Project researchers were. The project was spread across forty different facilities. Very few people knew what the end goal was. They just worked on their little piece of the puzzle, happy to be aiding the war effort. After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer became a crusader against atomic weapons. It destroyed his career. I bet Famine is another Oppenheimer. After all, the purpose of genetically modified food is to make disease resistant crops that produce more food, not to starve poor people” asserted Lucia.

“Then why make the plants die after one generation?” asked Finsternis.

“My guess is an abundance of caution. They weren’t positive the genetically modified plants were safe, so they didn’t want them spreading into other people’s fields. They obviously didn’t anticipate the cross pollinization. So you see, I don’t have to kill anyone at all!”

Lucia beamed at him and Finsternis spat something that sounded like a flock of penguins torturing a herd of cats and dropped his head into his heads.

Joe rubbed at his ears and asked, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Lucia shrugged. She’d thought so. Convincing the Horsemen to give up what was making them Horsemen, to stop the blind march to Hiroshima was a lot better than murdering them from her point of view. They were no more to blame for being Horsemen than she was for being a nephalim. Finsternis’ shoulders began to shake.

“Finsternis? Finsternis, what’s the matter?” For all Lucia knew, demons did this five times a day, every day, or he was dying. “Did I say something?”

Finsternis threw back his head and roared with laughter. The fire flared a rich blend of fuschia and violet.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“You . . . you are worse than Judas. And he loved the Messiah! Can you imagine, the son of Yhwh’s greatest enemy, born only to defeat Him, the best of friends with Yhwh’s champion? And you, you are worse! You seek to win a war without harming a hair on anyone’s head.”

“And you seek to bring about peace through slaughter! Which one of us is truly ridiculous?” Lucia shot back. “Hey, I have an idea, let’s get Pestilence to make Superebolaswineaids and kill everyone on the planet. After all, if everyone’s dead, the apocalypse has nowhere to go!”