Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(66)
I sat on the mat beside Niko, leaning against him. My ribs were screaming from the exertion, but they weren’t my concern at the moment. I’d white-knuckled my way through worse. Nik needed me there and visibly alive rather than stumbling around the kitchen looking for pain pills. I could’ve tried to pull him with me, but from the set to his shoulders, moving wasn’t part of his plan. Breathing was barely part of it. I wasn’t the only one white-knuckling it, but while I’d gone through worse than cracked ribs, Niko hadn’t gone through worse than this. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see a short blond ponytail instead of a long braid, see a smaller frame, see eyes and a face that hadn’t yet mastered the art of hiding emotion that could be used against him.
Niko looked much younger than twenty-seven right now. Younger and older and the misery and recriminations of twelve years ago so plain on his face that I glared at Goodfellow and Ishiah each time they started to glance at him. This was private and they had to be here, but they didn’t have to see this. He’d recover . . . and he would recover . . . at his own pace. He didn’t need them watching him like a lab experiment while he did it. Sympathy would make him feel only . . . lesser. Niko had stood firmly on his own two feet mentally before he could do it physically. He wouldn’t be grateful to know someone saw him stumble.
“That whole ‘peris are the seed behind the myth that became angels,’ that was all bullshit?” I went on. I’d thought Robin lied as tricksters do, but that he’d never lied to us, nothing big at any rate. Well, he had and it was huge.
“It’s only half a lie really.” Robin was back on the couch with Ishiah. “Peris aren’t angels . . . anymore. Peris are retired angels with most of their heavenly powers stripped away. They’re expatriates if you will. They’ve gone native. Earth is their home, not Heaven. So when you asked me if that first peri you saw was an angel I wasn’t technically lying.”
“You’re a trickster. Jesus, take credit for it already, gloat, and go on. I’m used to watching your other victims be mortified. Why should I be any different?” And the other paien hadn’t told me there were angels in addition to peris or where peris came from because I’d never asked. They assumed I knew. They knew, everyone knew. Why would they think anything else when it came to me?
“It’s not like that,” Robin protested, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Although six years is a good record, and the fact you didn’t even try to find out from anyone else because you found me that trustworthy while knowing I’m a trickster, that is rather priceless—” An elbow, and a sharp one if his wince was anything to go by, hit him in the ribs. “But that’s neither here nor there. I didn’t lie to simply amuse myself. Think, Cal. Think how young you were when you came to New York, the kid who thought he was a monster, the worst one in the world next to the Auphe. Your self-loathing was epic. Your angst astronomical. The whole emo-thing . . . well, it was a cultural trend and I won’t go there. But if I’d told you that angels did exist, then you would’ve wanted to know about Heaven and then you would’ve asked about Hell. I knew precisely what you would think after that.”
He was on the money, no doubt. Six years ago I’d have known there was a Hell. I’d have also known I was destined for it—no way out. “You’re right.” I leaned harder against Nik who hadn’t said a word about any of this. I was beginning to worry. Shit, I was already worried. “I’d have thought I was on the Hell-express for sure.”
“And now?” he asked, the curiosity plain in the inquisitive tilt of his head.
I gave him a black smile. “Hell? Let them lock the doors. They couldn’t f*cking survive my ass.”
“Out of curiosity, where do paien go as apparently you’re here to tell us Jack is an angel gone rogue and he cares nothing about paien souls?” It was Nik and better yet it was Nik with a pertinent Nik-style question and an instinctual leap that would be spooky if true. What the hell was I thinking: sinners, Bible, wicked, whores and thieves, raising the dead, judgmental ass—Jack was an angel all right.
“There are hundreds of paien heavens, fewer hells though—we’re not quite so condemning. For every paien race there is at least one heaven if not ten or twelve. Anything you can imagine is out there.”
I didn’t ask Goodfellow about Auphe Heaven and Hell. I imagined they were one and the same. If all you know is murder and torture, then you can’t comprehend wrong and if you can’t imagine wrong, you can’t conceive of a punishment for it. That didn’t mean I wanted to go to wherever dead Auphe went. Whatever they considered Heaven, I knew I’d consider Hell five times over. For the time being I let that go and waited on the Jack-the-angel question.
Ishiah’s wings had disappeared once he’d sat down, but now, as they always did when he was annoyed, pissed, unsettled, conflicted—you name it—they’d reappeared. “Once Robin found out from you about the human followers mentioning praying and Heaven and put that together with Jack teleporting and raising the dead, he knew it had to be an angel, a particular angel. Pyriel. He’s one of the angels responsible for examining the souls for purity in Heaven. He’s also one of the very few angels and the only one missing that is entrusted with the power to raise the dead.”
“That fits Jack. Judging all over the place and a fan of zombies, but what do you mean missing? Doesn’t someone keep track of that? Like, I don’t know, God?” I asked with caustic disbelief. Was heavenly bureaucracy truly that bad? Angels disappeared in the paperwork of it all?