It was here for Kelly as she passed.
Fury ripped through him, seeming to peel the skin from his muscles, muscles from his bones, pouring liquid fire through his distending veins. A roar of outraged grief bellowed from his lungs.
Thomas, who’d been exiting the car, dropped to his knees in abject terror.
The frustrated knocker in 216 pissed his pants as his heart skipped jerkily in his chest.
The clerk, just about to tally out for the end of his shift, fell face-forward over the register as a blood vessel burst in his head with deadly result.
In room 215, Carrie turned to look at the door, her hands going slack on Kelly’s throat. Terror whipped through her system but she misidentified the feeling as adrenalin. She grinned, not realizing her grin was a grimace of mortal fear–to herself, she was fearless. She strode to the door and yanked it open.
“OKAY MOTHERFUCKER YOU WANT TO GO LETS–”
She got the impression of something monstrous, with huge clawed hands and a bone encrusted head, hunched shoulders and rivers of burning blood flowing with a continuity that seemed endless as time itself. Then it was upon her, crashing into her like a freight train, tearing breath from her lungs. She was flat on her back, the beast over her. She looked up and into eyes burning with a fire that seemed somehow old, ancient, terrifying in its tenacity.
Finally, she knew fear. She blinked and the eyes were blue, the eyes of a man. His hands were going around her throat, and she knew fear. She blinked again and the eyes were burning pits and she didn’t want to see…didn’t want to see…she didn’t deserve this–!
Then the weight of him was gone and she sat up, choking and coughing. Holding her throat, she turned to look at the bed.
The man/monster put his hand to the lace binding Kelly’s hands and it crisped and fell away, leaving no mark upon her skin. Her hands fell lifelessly to the bed. The man/monster sat and gathered her body in his arms, holding her like a baby to his chest. He leaned over, crushing her to him. Enormous tears formed under the lashes of his closed eyes and poured like oil over his face and onto hers.
Black jealousy darkened Carrie’s features.
“She deserved it,” Carrie said, the words rasping out as she massaged her throat.
The man/monster on the bed paid her no heed. She coughed again.
“Fuck this,” she said, and got shakily to her feet. “I’m out of here, bitches.”
“Carrie.” The voice came from behind her, somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom. It echoed darkly against the tile.
Carrie’s features drew down again. In confusion. In anger. In fear.
“Carrie,” the voice said again. “Look what you did...you’ve saddened all of Heaven.”
Carrie turned to look at the bed and her eyes widened in surprise. A handful of people, ghostly but there, ringed the bed. As she watched, more figures appeared, seeming to coalesce from the white light that floated across the floor like ground fog.
The figures seemed made of the white light, their features monotone yet distinct enough that she could make out every eyelash, every pore of their shining skin. They each gazed upon the man/monster and the body of Kelly with somber faces but there was something more in their faces, an emotion that Carrie couldn’t identify.
“That’s love,” the voice said. Carrie turned sharply to the darkened bathroom doorway. “You don’t feel that one.”
A smirking gray cat sauntered from the shadowy bathroom. It sat and curled its tail around its forepaws.
“That’s why you don’t know it when you see it.” The cat didn’t open its mouth, but Carrie knew it was the cat that was talking; mocking her. She heard it in her mind.
“Fuck you, cat,” she said, her voice low with warning.
The cat’s tail twitched in amusement.
“Why don’t you come over here and make me?” It said into her mind and smirked again. “Scared of a little pussy?”
It winked.
Carrie threw herself at the cat and the she felt a shiver of alarm as the cat leaped toward her. The cat’s head connected with hers and she suddenly had a sensation of fullness, of something rudely shoved in. It reminded her vaguely of sex and then she was falling, falling through herself, pushed down and down into the back of her own consciousness.
Sitri sat up in Carrie’s body.
He grimaced at the smell and state of his clothing. He looked within to where the little hellion was trapped. Her tiny spark of consciousness was awash in lost despair. Sitri nodded his pleasure at her distress.
Then he turned to the bed.
The ghostly crowd still ringed the Devil and the girl. They moved like seaweed in a gentle current, almost like dancing as they started to fade. Sitri watched them dance and felt jealousy and love in equal measure. He’d not seen his kind in a very long time. He’d not been their kind for a very long time. Not since he’d followed Lucifer in his fall from Grace.
He looked between and through the Angels to locate the figures on the bed.
Lucifer still cradled Kelly’s body. His face and hers shone with his tears. He put his lips to hers and breathed out. His breath swirled hot and rich into her lungs and he placed his hand over her left breast. His hand warmed her even as the heat of life was leaving her body.
The fading Angels pushed forward and crowded before Lucifer, layering themselves one on the other like overlapping x-rays. Lucifer lifted his head, his eyes closed and breathed in, his mouth wide. The Angels floated into Lucifer and the Devil felt it again–what he hadn’t felt since the Fall.
He felt what it was to be Divine.
He bent to Kelly again and breathed out, bathing her in radiance, in liquid Angel light.
Kelly’s chest hitched and he felt the muffled thump of her heart under his hand. It thumped again as her breath left her.
She drew in another breath on her own.
Kelly opened her eyes.
The Devil was stunned all over by their deep emerald color, the glorious beauty they held, the Glory.
“Kelly,” he whispered. He traced a shaking hand down the curve of her face. “Kelly, it’s you. It was you all along.” He saw the truth in it even as the words crossed his lips. Had it not been for his interference on this Earth, Kelly would most likely have been killed.
Had been killed, really, until the Angels helped him intervene.
Kelly nodded.
“God told me you would save me,” she said and burst into tears of her own. They mingled with the Devil’s tears already on her face.
The Devil turned and looked at Sitri, his eyes a question.
Sitri stood in Carrie’s body and shrugged his shoulders, but his eyes had gone wide. Humans were not capable of hearing God’s voice. Or so it had always been.
What made this woman, this human, different? Why had God put the Devil, Himself on the Earth to save her?
What was she meant to do?
Sitri shook his head but couldn’t take his eyes from Kelly. Traces of the Angels presence seemed to glitter on and just above her. Each breath she took stirred the essence into cool, shimmering fireworks.
She was beautiful.
The Devil gathered her against him. He kissed each eye and each cheek. He kissed her forehead. He sat her up and held her as she steadied herself.
She put tentative fingers to her neck, to where Carrie’s knife had drawn a thin line of blood and where Carrie’s hands had squeezed and crushed. She turned to the Devil and lifted her chin.
“Is there a mark?” she asked, giving him her throat, vulnerable as a new lamb.
“No, no mark,” he said. He saw that even the surgery scars from her youth had been lifted. Her skin was unflawed.
She smiled at him.
He stood and put his hand out to her.
She saw past him to Carrie standing awkwardly at the end of the bed and alarm flashed into Kelly’s eyes and then was gone. She would have recognized the real Carrie from horrifying experience. She nodded and Sitri, dressed in Carrie’s body, nodded back.
Kelly stood and took the Devil’s hand.
A gray cat lay in a heap by the door, its tongue hanging from its mouth. Sitri bent to it and put his hand on the cat’s side to see if it still breathed. It did. Then it twitched, opened its eyes and sat up.
Sitri lifted it and stared into its face. The cat stared into his and then blinked. And then the cat blinked again, looking away. Just a cat, after all.
Sitri smiled and turned to Kelly.
“Want a cat?” he said and thrust the gray bundle toward her.
She reached out instinctively to keep the cat from tumbling to the ground. It put its paws over her shoulder and clung to her, head near her ear. She hugged it and a rough, out of practice purr started up in its chest.
The Devil opened the door, Kelly and Sitri behind him. It was much warmer and the sun hit him full force, blinding him momentarily. Then his eyes adjusted.
Kelly’s car sat right where she’d left it.
Thomas Evigan, however, was gone.
* * *
Sitri and the Devil sat in Kelly’s kitchen. The Devil had just looked in on her. She slept, untroubled. The gray cat lay on the bed between Kelly and the door, front paws tucked under his chest. But he did not sleep. It was as though he was keeping watch over his new mistress.
In the kitchen, the Devil let his eyes travel the length of Sitri. He still wore the pirate boots and ripped jeans, the vest and shrug. He had pulled his mass of greasy hair back and tied it in a rough knot: it looked almost like dreadlocks. It suited him, really, although as Sitri passed a hand across his hair, the Devil could tell he was missing the pompadour he’d had with the stylish old man.
“You should have let Kelly give you some clothes. You look like a Patron in your rended garments.”
Sitri laughed but the Devil merely smiled and even that was quickly gone.
“I’m going to turn her in,” Sitri said, smirking. “This time I can guarantee she’ll go to prison. I know exactly where the bodies are buried, so to speak, and of course I will confess to everything. Can you see me in women’s prison? It will be glorious! And she will suffer the whole time.” He looked at his own midsection, his voice rising as though he addressed a deaf person. “Hear that, darling? We’ll have years and years together, you and I!” He grinned and then leaned forward and sipped from a mug, and then he grimaced. “This is terrible,” he said, swirling the dark contents. Coffee grounds floated into view and out. “Why do they drink this? Self flagellation?”
The ghost of a smile flitted over the Devil’s features again and was gone just as quickly as the first time.
“How will I find him now, Sitri?” the Devil spoke into his own mug. His voice was low, despairing.
Sitri shook his head.
“I don’t know, Lucifer,” he said. “If I were him, I’d be as far away as I could get. How much time do you think you have left?”
The Devil consulted his instincts, trying to see. “I don’t know, but not much I don’t think. Not enough to start all over.” He shook his head. “Now he’ll have a long, fulfilling life. The unfairness of it just…” he shook his head again, once left, once right and sat back in his chair, pushing the mug away. “But no matter. It is His will.”
Sitri nodded and sighed, “His will be done.”
There was a knock on Kelly’s front door.
Sitri and the Devil looked at each other, Sitri’s eyebrows raised.
The Devil shrugged and stood.
He went to the door.
* * *
When Thomas Evigan had recovered himself in the parking lot at the motel, he’d gained his feet and crept to the door of room 215. He put his eye to the crack but could see very little at first–it was very dark inside. Thomas didn’t, couldn’t, see the Light or the Angels as they appeared one by one.
His eyes just didn’t work that way.
Carrie half lay, half sat on the floor, coughing and massaging her neck. Thomas followed the direction of her gaze. He saw the Devil on the bed cradling Kelly’s body. It was obvious that she was dead. That’s when it finally occurred to him to wonder what he’d put up in the bargain. What it was he now stood to lose. He became very afraid.
His attention turned to Carrie when she said: “She deserved it.”
Then: “Fuck this. I’m out of here, bitches.”
And then, very oddly: “Fuck you, cat.”
She’d turned away, facing the bathroom where the Devil’s cat sat staring at her. Thomas felt a surge of distaste at seeing the cat. Then Carrie and the cat leaped at each other.
From Thomas’ perspective, he saw the back of Carrie and the front of the cat. Its yellow eyes were glowing like lamps as it charged and then Thomas saw what he would remember for the rest of his life:
He saw something on the verge of emergence, something fiery and horrific. It was a demon’s face shimmering like a transparent mask just above the cat’s features. Carrie and the cat connected and for a brief instant, Thomas saw the entire demon, somehow snake-like, rat-like, crow-like suspended in mid-air. It was grinning furiously, hands/paws/claws extended, excitement lighting its features…then it disappeared.
Into Carrie.
Thomas had never seen anything more horrifying in his whole life.
He fled.
He ran first to the motel office, his mind overwhelmed by a panicked litany: the police the police will help I’m a taxpayer the police will help they have to I pay taxes they work for me–
A fat, dirty clerk was lying across the counter, blood dribbling from his nose. His eyes stared sightlessly at Thomas.
Now his mind picked up a new litany: the devil did that the devil killed him it was the devil the devil oh christ now what…
He backed out of the office and ran back to his car, digging in his pockets for his phone and keys. He couldn’t find either. He slapped all his pockets and slapped them again. He remembered the phone was in his jacket pocket at work. He remembered that the keys were in the ignition.
He slid behind the wheel, panting, his scalp tight and his sphincter even tighter. He keyed the engine to life and backed in a large semi-circle, getting the car nose-out to the highway. He saw a break in traffic and as he pulled out, he glanced in his rear view mirror.