03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil (20 page)

I felt the cool cotton of her shirt against my fingers and tightened my hand into a fist, letting her and Michael’s combined weight jerk me toward the ledge, refusing to let go as we all three tumbled over the edge.

Chapter Twenty-six

I felt a rough jerk as I clung to Hannah’s pajama top. The jolt shifted Michael’s grip and his arms flung out beside him. The millisecond after he let go of Hannah, I stared into his icy-blue eyes, watching him for that brief moment between being there, falling to his death, and then a brilliant explosion of white light that filled the street below me, the blast rattling the windows of the hospital, swallowing him and the spear both.

There was a loud screech and then, as my vision cleared, I saw Malachi and his legion pouring into the streets, herding the mob in front of him. “Good sign,” Malachi called out and I looked over to see him floating next to me. “Very subtle.”

“Yeah, you know me.” I smirked, still dangling. “The queen of discretion.”

“Well at least you’re not delusional enough to consider yourself the queen of portion control,” Jesus said as I pulled Hannah closer, wrapping her in my arms. “Dad help me, you’ve got to lay off the Ho-Hos, Faith.”

“Oh shut up and heave!”

“I’m doing my best!” Jesus said again, “but you aren’t exactly made of sunshine and sugar, now are you, lard ass?”

“Hold on,” Matt yelled and then I heard the scrape of two more people pulling themselves onto the ledge. Two more hands grabbed me and pulled, while another pair took Hannah from my arms.

“Is she—” I scrambled back onto the hospital’s roof and looked at Tolliver, who was cradling the small girl in his arms. “I didn’t think. I grabbed her and I didn’t mean to hurt—”

“She’s fine.” He smiled, relief evident in his eyes. Which would have been totally out of place but hey, even demons have a soft spot when it comes to kids. “She’s perfectly fine.”

“So does that mean I’m not the Angel of Death? I got my powers back and everything so I assumed…”

“Oh, you’re the Angel of Death, all right.” Jesus touched my shoulder and I felt Matt wrap around me from behind, his arms tight around my waist and his nose burrowed in my hair. “It’s something you can learn to control. What did you tell me before? It’s not what happens to you that turns you into the person you are. It’s what you do afterward? It’s all about intentions. Intentions are everything. They’re what matter.”

“Until you start killing people with a single touch,” I said. “Then your intentions won’t get you a bucket full of imp shit. So how am I managing to do this?”

“You’re not,” J said. “I am. One of those super duper special powers that makes me, well me. Before the whole angels on Earth thing I was doing a bit of research and it turns out I can help muzzle your powers for short periods of time. So enjoy it while you can.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find some way for you to learn how to control it on your own,” Tolliver said his eyes bright. “Dad and I were talking with Malachi, and your dread demon thinks that the old Angel of Death might be able to help. He owes Mal a favor apparently.”

“The original Angel of Death owes Mal a favor?” I snorted. “You’re joking, right?”

“Not even a little,” Tolliver said and then shifted Hannah into a more comfortable position in his arms. “We’re going to find a way to make sure you can handle the job and live your life. After all, you just shot to the top of my babysitter list with that whole ninja-spear move you pulled.”

“Great. Just what I wanted, diaper duty. But I have one question. Are you crying?”

“Crying?” Tolliver sniffed. “Please. I’m the Archdemon of Gluttony. I don’t cry, even if my little sister did manage to single handedly save the world.”

“I had a bit of help.” I smiled at him, and he winked. “Not that you couldn’t have helped a bit sooner or anything because come on, last-minute saves…you totally learned that from those action movies you’re so into.”

“Shut up, you, and give me back my wife.” His eyes were bright and he was grinning like an idiot.

“Gladly.” I slipped the necklace off, handing it to him.

He wrapped his free hand around the stone and the air next to him started to shimmer and bend. There was a quiet pop and Lisa and Hope wavered into a solid shape, sort of fuzzy at the edges but more real than not.

Tolliver passed Hannah over to J and swiped his hand along the front of their bubble, releasing my sister and my best friend back into the world. “I can’t believe you locked us in a bubble in—” Hope stopped.

“Faith?” Lisa was staring at me with wide, perceptive eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I smiled at her, my lips tight so that they didn’t shake as we all shifted and stared out over the city from our perch. “I’m fine but it’s been a bit of a long day.”

“I can see that,” she said quietly as she looked out over the city. The demons below had managed to round people up and were somehow glamouring them into complaisance. Everywhere, things had sort of stopped as people looked at each other, shaking their heads.

A large, angry-looking female demon with black scales and flaming-red wings and hair hovered over the top of the ambulance I’d watched the woman on before and held her hands out, shooing the people away. En masse they began to stumble home and the sirens blared in the distance as rescue workers were finally able to get through to us.

“This is the way the world ends,” J said. “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

“Not today.” I took his hand, squeezing it. “We made sure of that.”

“Right,” Hope said, watching the crowds below. “What do we do now? I’m actually sort of hungry. Now that the end isn’t near and all, I could seriously murder a sandwich.”

“We should get married.” I nudged Matt’s shoulder with my own, leaning against him.

“What?” His eyes widened and I couldn’t help smiling at the stunned look on his face. “You want to do what now?”

“We should get married,” I repeated. “Right now. While J is holding onto my super-killing powers.”

“Now?” He stepped back a little. “Are you sure you want to do it now? Today’s been pretty stressful and I know that you’ve been through a lot. I don’t want you to do something because of the adrenaline and the excitement and—”

“I love you. I want to spend the rest of eternity with you. No questions asked. No second thoughts. Afterward, we can go for sandwiches or something.”

“Are you sure? I know you said yes when I proposed but are you really sure?”

“If this would have truly been the end of the world,” I said and immediately felt stupid for the fact that I was starting to cry, “the only thing I would have regretted was that I wasn’t going to get the chance to wake up tomorrow with you.”

“Okay but that doesn’t mean—”

“Matt! Say yes already.”

“Yes.”

“Well you better let me get Mom and Dad, at least,” Tolliver said. “After all, Dad missed you stopping an angelic invasion. If he misses your wedding, we’re never going to hear the end of it.”

“Get Mal while you’re at it,” I said.

“While you’re down there tell him he better not have gone from kissing Faith’s admin to hitting on my sister again. I mean it. He may be a bad-ass dread demon, but my sister is off-limits,” Matt said.

“Oh, no worries, your sister and Aurelia are both locked in…” I froze. How did I tell him? Or her? She’s trusted me to watch after her father and instead I’d let him die. “Matt?”

“Yeah?” He looked down at me and his eyes were dark.

“Your dad didn’t make it.”

“I know, he’s considered missing but if he were alive he’d—”

“No, he made it to the hospital. We had him and I sent Mary Beth and Aurelia behind the fire doors in the PICU so that I could treat him without her being in there with it being her dad and all.”

“It’s okay.” Matt pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me.

“He died trying to protect me,” I whispered and even if it wasn’t 100 percent true that he’d been on his feet and fighting, I couldn’t help thinking it was how he’d want to be remembered. “He let Michael destroy him to save me. I’m so sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay. Let’s not think about Dad right now. He wouldn’t want to ruin our wedding by making everyone cry.”

“You mean he wouldn’t have tried to sing at our reception?”

“I didn’t say that,” Matt said, “but he’d have only done it because of how much he loved you.”

“Us,” I corrected. “How much he loved us.”

“What is this I hear about a rooftop wedding?” Mal’s voice broke in and I watched as he hovered over the side of the building, a filthy, rumpled Phil Stavlinski clinging to his waist.

“Hannah?” The man launched himself off Malachi and rushed over to Jesus, his arms outstretched.

“She’s okay.” J handed her over gently. “She’s going to be perfectly fine. Trust me.”

“Who are you?” Phil looked at J skeptically.

“Captain Stavlinski?” I smiled. “Have I introduced you to my cousin?”

“Don’t tell me. Please, for the sake of my mental sanity, don’t tell me.” The man shook his head.

“No problem,” J said and then put his hand on Phil’s shoulder and the man’s shoulders slumped into complete relaxation. “Be at peace, Captain Philip Charles Stavlinski. May you always be at peace.”

“Very subtle, Son.” My Uncle laughed. He was standing with Mom, Dad, and Tolliver next to an open phase portal.

“Oh great,” Phil said. “Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any weirder.”

“It’s okay,” I said and dropped my head against Matt’s chest. “Over time you sort of get used to it.”

“Right.” The Alpha clapped His hands together and focused on me. “What’s this I hear about a wedding?”

“Hold on,” Harold said and floated up through the roof below us. “Hold on one second! Stop the wedding!”

“What?” I glared at him.

“Five minutes.” He held his hands out in front of him. “Give me five minutes.”

“For what?” Matt asked.

“No idea.” I shook my head as Harold sunk back into the hospital.

“All floors,” Harold said over the tinny speaker that had been attached to the roof. He was broadcasting to everyone in the hospital. “This is a Code Green. I repeat we have a code green on all floors.”

“Code Green?” Matt asked.

“It’s the all clear sign. Code Green means that everyone can come back out.”

“Code Green for all floors,” Harold said again. “All available staff should report immediately to the roof. I repeat, all available staff should report immediately to the roof.”

“Harold,” I said as he popped up next to me.

“What? You saved all our skins. You can at least let us all wish you well when you get married.”

“Or we could wait,” Mom said. “Surely there are other places we can do this? I can call Antje and I’m sure she’ll give us a deal. Plus, I need time to get my coven sisters here to help with the blessings. We’ll need weeks at least to prepare.”

“Mom.” I looked at her and tried my best to put a don’t mess with me right now look on my face.

“Faith this is a big—”

“Roisin, darling,” Dad said.

“What?”

“Shut up.” Dad smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “The girl did just save a major metropolitan area. I think she can plan her own wedding.”

“Thanks,” I mouthed and he nodded.

“No problem.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder, ensuring she couldn’t move.

I stood there, watching as people started trickling onto the roof, looking stunned and a little shell-shocked from the night they’d lived through.

“Is it over?” Tanya asked, rubbing a hand over her eyes as she looked out at the destruction below us. “Is it all over?”

“Yeah.” I smiled at her. “It’s all over.”

“So why are we on the roof?”

“Dearly beloved,” the Alpha said, stepping in front of Matt and I with His hands outspread. “We are gathered here at the beginning of a new day. As the darkness of last night fades, and the light returns to us, we have come together to wed this rather insane, but exceptionally brave, young woman and this equally idiotic young man together in holy matrimony.”

“That’s rather rude,” someone in the back said and I couldn’t help glancing up at Matt and smiling.

“If anyone has any impending medical emergencies, notices about the continuation of the some form of the Apocalypse, or other objections to why these two should not be married…” The Alpha smiled at me. “Do us all a favor and keep them to yourselves.

“Now, do you, Faith Anne Bettincourt, take this man to be your husband as long as you both shall live?”

“Absolutely.” I smiled at Matt and he beamed at me in return.

“Do you Matthe—”

“No questions asked. I’ll love her till the end of the world and beyond.”

“Well then,” the Alpha said. “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”

As the sun slipped fully into the sky, Matt pressed his lips to mine and, for the first time in my life, I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Epilogue

“So when you said the original Angel of Death was willing to help me out…” I looked over at Malachi, sitting on the deck of the house we were staying in, wearing nothing but a pair of black board shorts covered in bright red, scampering devils. “I didn’t think you meant that it was going to be on my honeymoon.”

“I figured sooner rather than later.” Malachi shrugged and took a drink of his beer.

“Mal, it’s my honeymoon. No offense, but I really didn’t want to spend it with you.”

“Well I don’t particularly want to be here, either,” the demon said. “Aurelia and I are in the let’s see who can freak the other one out more with weird sex moves stage of reconciling. And instead of being in Pittsburgh, finding out how flexible all that yoga makes her, I’m here in Los Angeles with you while you learn to control your powers.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to admit I’m sort of surprised about that part.”

“He’s a talent agent. Where else is he going to live?”

“That’s another thing—the archdemon who invented the position of Death is working as a high-end Hollywood agent?”

“It’s really not that much of a stretch if you think about it.” Malachi took another drink of his beer and smirked.

“A lot of my former job skills have come in handy,” the demon in question said as he made his way onto the deck, using his foot to close the sliding door behind him. “You’d be surprised. And, the weather is a definite plus. I’ll never understand why your father chose Pittsburgh. All that cold. Why he chose to live somewhere like that just baffles me.

“Anyway.” He handed me a margarita and then set a small cage with a hamster inside it on the deck beside us before taking the chaise lounge next to mine. He pushed one artfully sculpted blond curl behind his ear and gazed at me with a pair of silvery-green eyes that would have been mesmerizing if it weren’t for the fact I knew how evil the depths that lurked beneath could be. “When is your new husband getting back from his run?”

“How long has he been gone?” I looked down at my watch. “About an hour? He should be back in about five minutes.”

“Great!” Death smiled, his overly white teeth almost shining. “That gives us enough time for a short lesson before the two of you go do some sightseeing.”

“Right.” I took a sip of my drink. “So what are we going to work on today? Proper ways of handling confused souls?”

“Boring,” Mal said and then snapped his fingers, making a small screen appear in the air in front of him.

“Well what do you suggest then? You were the one who came up with this as an idea for my honeymoon, after all.”

“I was multitasking,” Malachi said as he began flicking his finger along the screen, changing channels with each swish. “Ooh, porn!”

“No.” I said. “No porn. I don’t want to try to concentrate while you’re watching some dirty movie.”

“Fine.” Mal sighed and flicked the screen again, landing on a news channel this time.

“Today, the president visited the city of Pittsburgh for the first time since the attacks of last week,” a peppy newscaster said on Malachi’s screen and we all focused on it. “While the CDC has yet to isolate the chemical compound that was released in the city and affected the population, they have said definitively that the city is safe for inhabitants. I repeat, whatever was released inside the city, has dissipated and the CDC has reported that the effects of the drug are not contagious.”

“I can’t believe that people are buying the story that terrorists blew up the city and released biological weapons that caused mass hallucinations in everyone present,” I said.

“They had to believe something.” Death shrugged.

“Militant vegans who don’t want to pay taxes?” I shook my head.

“Mortals,” Mal said dismissively and then flicked to another channel—this one showing what looked like a rather involved Mexican soap opera—at least if the weeping women and the screaming were any indication.

“Right.” Death clapped his hands and shifted so that he was sitting facing me instead of Mal and the television. “If we could maybe get back to the lesson?”

“Sure.” I took another sip of my drink. “What were you thinking? More procedure stuff? Pet deaths, perhaps?”

“I was thinking we could switch topics.” Death smiled at me, his eyes sparkling with red flames. “How do you feel about power surrogacy?”

“Surrogacy? What do you mean surrogacy? Like paying someone else to get pregnant to breed a new Angel of Death?”

“Don’t be silly.” Death picked up the hamster cage and sat it on the chaise lounge beside me. “Meet Ignatius. Your power surrogate.”

“My what?”

“Your power surrogate. I’m going to teach you how to transfer your power, temporarily, to Ignatius. That will allow you to move about in the mortal world while Ignatius stays in his cage, guarding your powers.”

“You want me to use a hamster as a temporary Angel of Death? Seriously?”

“Of course. He’s small, he’s portable, and the power surges keep him alive for far longer than his normal life span. After all, how else would I keep your standard, garden-variety hamster alive since the Garden of Eden?”

“Really?”

“You want to know the best part? Ignatius is virtually undetectable with your powers. If you’re attacked, no one is going to get him because no one ever thinks about the hamster. After all, he’s a hamster.”

“That’s genius.”

“I always thought so.” Death lifted the tiny brown-and-white hamster out of his cage and gave him a brief stroke. “Now, ready to give him some juice?”

“Sure.” I took the hamster from him and cradled the tiny fuzz ball inside my hands. “
So hit me with it. How do Iggy and I bond?
”

“Ignatius,” Death said.

“Whatever.” I shrugged and heard Malachi snort.

“Now.” Death pointedly ignored Malachi and glared at me instead. “Just like we practiced on your first day here. Close your eyes, find your power, and then pull it back into yourself. Touch your own aura.”

“Touch my own aura,” I mumbled as I let my eyes slide shut. Concentrating, I reached out with my mind and, even though I felt stupid admitting it, I could sense my powers ebbing and flowing around me. It was like static electricity all along my skin, sending off a million shockwaves all at once that I’d never bothered to notice before.

“Pull it back into yourself. Imagine it’s a piece of cloth surrounding you and fold the cloth of your powers back into you. Gather it into your heart.”

“Right, my powers are a cloth.”

“They’re like a warm blanket. Gather them tight around you.”

“They’re a warm, cloth blanket.” I tried to pull my powers back inside myself but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Because, no matter what Death said, it wasn’t like cloth or a blanket or anything else you could touch with your fingers. It was more like something attached to your liver. Something that moved with your breath and was connected near your belly button.

I tightened my stomach like I was putting on a pair of size-six capris after a long winter of hibernating in baggy sweatpants. The power around me seemed to waver. Maybe that was it. It wasn’t a cloth for me, it was sort of like my own personal extra layer of gut fat. I wrinkled my nose at the thought.

“Concentrate on your powers. Think of nothing else besides those powers. Breathe through your powers.”

Breathe. There was an idea. In the one ill-fated yoga class that Lisa had dragged me to right after we’d become roommates, they had talked about breathing. In through your nose, belly soft. I couldn’t pronounce whatever it was the yoga-teacher lady had called it and I wasn’t flexible enough to bend myself like a pretzel so I’d never been back, but the breathing hadn’t been too hard. I gave an experimental yoga-like breath and felt a jolt as my powers swept up my nose with a burn similar to soda in your nasal passages. Another breath, another feeling of Coke-like dark power seeping into my nose and down the back of my throat in an odd, burning tingle.

“Good,” Death said encouragingly, his voice low. “Pull your powers back into your body. Not too fast, a nice, steady rhythm that you can keep control of.”

I took another breath in and felt more of my powers trickling into my body in a slow, steady stream. Four breaths later I felt like I had a balloon full of Coca-Cola in my stomach that was sitting on my bladder but I couldn’t feel any of the static racing along the length of my arms.

“How do you feel?” Death asked.

“Like I have to pee,” I said, and I heard Mal laugh again.

“That’s normal in the beginning. Now what you need to remember is that the power isn’t a real presence. There is nothing physically manifested inside your body or in your bladder for that matter. The feelings will pass,” Death said.

“Unless you really do have to pee,” Malachi said.

“Malachi, please, let my student concentrate.”

“Yeah, let me concentrate.” I stuck my tongue out but kept my eyes closed and my mind focused on holding that ball of squishy magic inside me.

“Now,” Death continued in his deep, hypnotic voice, soothing me as he spoke. “What I want you to do is I want you to go inside yourself again. Imagine that you can feel around inside your body and grab that knot of power. Grab that knot and smash it down, press against it, make it a tiny kernel of power. Just as strong as the knot you’re carrying, but much smaller. Imagine that your power is a walnut you could drop into a purse.”

“Faith doesn’t need to shrink her power down to the size of a walnut to get it in her purse,” Mal said. “Have you seen the bag she carries? She could hide the Titanic in that thing and not break a sweat.”

“Ignore him,” Death said his voice light with humor. “He’s not important.”

“I’ve known that for years.” I said, trying to keep my focus on my little balloon of deadly power.

“Now squash that power down into something I could hide in my trouser pocket.”

I focused my mind and imagined that I could get into myself. That I had another set of arms that weren’t real, like shadow arms that went inside of me and take hold of all the death and the ugliness that I’d forced down into that little ball. I grabbed the power between those two not-real hands and pressed, pushing on it like you would an aluminum soda can. I pressed and I pushed with my mind, feeling the power condensing down to a hard rock the size of an egg.

“Good,” Death said when I sighed and used my real hand to swipe at the sweat that had formed off my forehead. “You have it smashed down?”

“I think so.”

Death took my hand. “Now, here’s the hard part.”

“That wasn’t the hard part?”

“Imagine that the tiny knot of power you’re now carrying is traveling up the back of your spine. The power is traveling up your spine and it’s going to come to rest at the back of your neck, right where the spine meets with the skull.”

“So the power to kill someone with one touch is going to lodge in the back of my brain like some sort of cancerous growth? Perfect. Just what I need. The power to kill with one touch and brain cancer all at the same time.”

“It’s not a tumor,” Death said.

“Oh man, say it again.” The dread demon howled with laughter. “The accent is all wrong but it’s the most hilarious line in movie history.”

“Oh, sweet Alpha, save me,” Death said and then I heard him chuckle. “Only you would think of Kindergarten Cop at a time like this.”

“At least it’s not a tumor,” I said and then started to giggle, keeping a stranglehold on my powers. “So there’s something at least.”

“No, it’s not a tumor,” Death said his voice a dead-on impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Now, please lodge the power to kill with one touch in the back of your head so we can go on about our day.”

“Fine, fine.” I slowly started to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, letting the nasty little egg of death slide up my spine with each inhale. Once it had nestled into the back of my skull, inside my brain like a weird sort of awareness. It didn’t hurt. It felt odd. Like the traces of a headache after you’ve taken something for it.

“Now,” Death said. “Open your eyes.”

I let my eyes flutter open and looked at the man sitting cross-legged in front of me on the floor. “You feel in control now, don’t you?” he asked.

“I do. I feel good. I feel like I can handle this.”

“Great.” He pulled a hamster cage out from behind him and put it down in front of me. “Touch Ignatius.”

“What?” I scooted backward.

“Come along, pick Ignatius up and give him a cuddle. He’s a very friendly boy. Very social. So come along, make friends.”

“I don’t—”

“Pick up the hamster, Bettincourt, you wimp.”

“Fine. Fine, you don’t have to be mean about it.” I snatched the hamster up out of the cage where he’d been running in his little wheel o’ death during our meditation session. “I don’t see what the big deal is. I didn’t want to hur…”

I looked down at the tiny creature snuggled into my right hand while my left stroked along its back. “Oh shit.”

“Don’t freak,” Death said hurriedly. “Keep breathing. Your power is contained and cannot hurt you or Ignatius. As long as you remain calm the two of you are fine. You’re fine.”

“Yeah,” I said and nodded weakly, running my finger along the hamster’s back. “I’m fine. Iggy is fine. We’re cool.”

“Ignatius. And if you’re ready we can continue,” Death said.

“Continue?” I looked up from the hamster in my hands at Death. “What do you mean continue?”

“Close your eyes,” Death said. “Then just like you moved your power from your stomach to the base of your skull, take that power and let it travel down your arms and into your fingers. Imagine watching it slide from you and into Ignatius.”

I did exactly as Death instructed and closed my eyes, imagining a blue-black knot of power traveling down my arms and up into the tiny hamster feet resting on my hands. Iggy let out a muffled squeak and I opened my eyes. I felt lighter somehow. Like there was nothing inside of me that could do harm. “So did I do it?”

“I think that would be an unabashed yes.” Death nodded toward my hands, and I looked down to see that Iggy had sprouted little black wings and two flea-sized black horns. He flapped his wings lazily and lifted off of my hands as a little black tail sprouted out of his hind end.