“See you soon, Lucifer,” he said, his voice a whisper, and disappeared down the hall.
The Devil leaned close to Kelly’s face, studying her features. He wondered briefly the same thing Sitri had asked: what is she meant to do? And then the question dropped from his mind. He found he didn’t care; he only cared that she was still in the world. Her presence alone eased the burden of The Litany, even if it meant she kept just one other person from joining it.
He stood straight again. He could feel the cold creeping over him, the despairing and lonely time of the Transition. But he could bear it. And he could bear his role in Hell. Until God, Himself made His own final Judgment.
He reached one faint hand out and laid it over hers.
“Love you, Kelly,” he thought, and was gone.
* * *
In Philadelphia, a woman exiting the movie theater screamed as a body appeared on the sidewalk before her. Her husband, who’d stooped to tie his shoe, did not see the body appear, but he looked up in shock at his wife’s scream. Then he saw the situation and calmed. He stood and put an arm around his wife’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, hon, relax. I’ll call the cops,” he said and keyed his phone to life.
“You…you didn’t see…?” she asked, her hands twisting against themselves at the level of her breasts.
“Yes, I see him, honey, what’s wrong with–hello? Yes, I need to report a body…”
His wife fainted.
* * *
In Kelly’s bedroom the phone rang. She struggled up to her elbow, feeling groggy and confused, unaware of what woke her. A sudden gust of wind blew her curtains in, and thunder rumbled somewhere close by. The setting sun struggled past the gathering storm clouds and everything seemed licked by its orange fire. She’d slept the day away.
The phone rang again.
Kelly picked it up.
“Hello?” she said.
“Ma’am, my name is Sergeant Angela Ortiz and I’m calling from the Philadelphia Police Department? Are you Ms. Kelly Anders?”
Static erupted on the line as lightning struck somewhere between her and Philadelphia.
“Yes,” Kelly said, her voice faint. She strained to hear voices from the kitchen, hoping for the rumble of two demons passing the time, but she heard nothing. Her house was as still and silent as it had ever been.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid I have some bad news…it’s about your brother…”
Thunder rumbled again and then the Heavens opened. Rain poured down as if thrown from buckets and Kelly had a flash of memory from childhood: one of her friends telling her that every time you committed a sin, the Angels cried. That was what made the rain.
She sat up and faced the window, the phone dropping from her hand. Sergeant Ortiz’s voice became far away, shot through with static.
Rain blew in, spattering warmly across her cheeks, like tears.
Kelly joined the Angels in their sorrow.
BOOK SIX
The Devil’s Gift
The Litany snapped and twisted its bilious horrors through the Devil’s consciousness as ever it had done…the thieves and murderers, torturers and liars all made themselves known from their places on Earth as they went about the trivial, empty lives they led and that would amount to nothing, in the end.
When they passed on from their useless existences, they tumbled into Hell, where the Devil knew to expect them. He rolled out the red carpet of Hell’s fire and punished them all, never with judgment, never favoring one over the other; he punished all equally. He blew great gouts of flame from his own running blood, burning and burning the damned who were without the hope of clemency, because none had ever sought clemency in honesty nor in their hearts.
It was as God, Himself, decreed it should be. And so it was.
Since his return to Hell, a new strain ran through The Litany and it was a shining thread of purest white. It coursed smoothly even as the others twined and twisted amongst each other like a frenzy of snakes bent on destruction. Its presence alone calmed the Devil’s sleep and eased the burden of The Litany on his waking mind.
This, too, was as God, Himself, decreed it.
The Devil knew that this thread, this cooling string of information that flowed so easily within and without The Litany, was God’s gift to him; it was the Devil’s reward.
And what was his reward?
It was Kelly’s life.
Kelly’s life hummed past, calm and content, singular and without complication–the antithesis to the bulk of The Litany. He was aware of her, year by human year, and his love hummed along with her even if it was only a tune he hummed to himself.
How fast is our time on Earth compared to the timeless burning in Hell, the endless conflagration that all sinners will suffer until the end of this world. How quickly our lives must fly by in the Devil’s consciousness, as he stays bent to the work that is his own punishment for the sins he has committed. Sins for which atonement may some day be granted, because the Devil, Himself, does ask for clemency and he does so from the depths of his honest heart.
However quickly it came and went, the Devil knew that Kelly’s shining thread would sustain him miraculously even beyond the reach of its grasp…and he was able to content himself with it.
It was as He decreed it.
EPILOGUE
Rosie drove with one hand tight to the steering wheel and cupped her midsection protectively with the other. Snow fell so thickly that the tracks of her tires faded to ghostly nothingness within moments of her passage. Her headlights illuminated the swirl of bright white flakes that hung like a dense lace curtain in front of her car.
It was the worst storm the East Coast had ever seen and Rosie drove through it in labor.
Joey was supposed to be with her, but he’d gotten stuck at the hospital; he was a nurse and because of the sudden storm, his entire shift was being held over. During their frantic exchange on the phone, he’d offered to come to her apartment to pick her up, but it would have been forty minutes to get to her and then back to the hospital. She told him she’d meet him at the hospital instead. She was barely having contractions and would have herself there in twenty minutes anyway; no problem.
Now she wished she had him here with her. Her twenty-minute drive had already lasted fifty and she wasn’t even certain how much farther she had to go. She couldn’t see anything.
Joey had become very dear to her in a short space of time. They’d met at the hospital when she’d come to visit a girl she worked with, Sandy, who had pneumonia. Rosie had just found out that morning that she was nine weeks pregnant. She couldn’t believe she’d been so dense as to not notice the changes in her body but she supposed she hadn’t really wanted to know.
She’d been sitting in the waiting room after a nurse had shooed her from Sandy’s room to adjust something with her tubes. Rosie stared blankly at the light green wall and then all at once, she’d been crying. Sobbing, actually.
The nurse poked his head into the waiting room.
“All clear, you can go–” He’d been next to her in a second, patting her back. “She’s gonna be okay. I know…all the tubes and stuff…scary, right? But honestly…she’s fine. You’ve got nothing to worry about!”
Rosie looked up, hitching in a breath and he’d smiled and grabbed a box of tissues from the end table and sat next to her.
“Here you go. Clean up.” He smiled again, his mild brown eyes warm and friendly. “Feel better? Sometimes you feel better after you cry…chemicals or something. I read that somewhere.”
She nodded, blowing her nose.
“I read that, too.” Her voice was shaky with exhausted tears. “Makes you wonder about people who never cry. Are they just jam-packed with those crappy chemicals or what?”
“Gosh, I don’t know, I never thought about that part of it.” He said and tilted his head thoughtfully. “Are you and Sandy best friends? She really is going to be okay, you know. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.” He placed his right hand unconsciously over his heart and she fell for him a little bit, even though she already knew he’d never fall for her. Girls weren’t his type, she surmised. “I’m Joey, by the way, Joey Antoinella.”
“I’m Rosie and it’s nice to meet you, Joey, but I’m afraid I’m not crying about Sandy…I mean, I feel terrible for her…but, I’m really crying for myself.” She smiled and more tears lined up to take their suicide slide, but she sniffed them back. “That’s really rotten, isn’t it?”
He ignored her last question entirely.
“What’s wrong?” He looked at her with such heartfelt concern that–even though she hadn’t intended to–she told him about being pregnant. The concern never left his face; it was obvious that it was something she wasn’t happy about.
He took her to the hospital cafeteria and they sat over cups of coffee and she told him her story. She had no idea at the time that coffee with Joey would become a weekly ritual, and one that she looked forward to more than she looked forward to anything else in her life, lately. He was just so comforting.
She told him about being new to the area, no family or real friends; even Sandy was just someone she knew from work. The only reason she’d been the one at the hospital that day was because she’d been elected to drop off the card and flowers that were from everyone in the factory.
“Joey, I’m only nineteen and my job is…” She laughed and shook her head. “I mean, it’s barely a job, you know? It barely pays for anything. How can I afford this baby?”
He’d offered options: go home to her family (she had none, really, just an aunt somewhere who she didn’t even know), contact the father for money (she’d balked at this; wouldn’t talk about the father at all), and finally he’d offered for her to come live with him.
Rosie had been surprised, but not completely surprised. She and Joey got along so well right from the start, that, if she believed in such things, she’d have said they knew each other in a past life.
He said maybe she could go back to school, start with some online courses; he’d help with the baby.
“You know,” he said, “I have three little brothers and two little sisters…I’m really good with babies!”
For Rosie, Joey was the best thing that could have happened to her. He was, quite literally, the answer to her prayers. So it had been decided that Rosie would move in with Joey once the baby came. It even coincided pretty well with the end of the lease at her current apartment.
She’d felt extremely lucky and in the last three months of her pregnancy, had even come to anticipate it with cautious happiness.
Now, squinting into the storm, trying to see beyond the lace patchwork of falling snow, she rubbed her stomach, reassuring the baby, reassuring herself. Everything would be fine; she’d be at the hospital any minute now. No problem. No worries.
She felt the nose of her car dip and a flutter of panic stirred in her and then the car was nose down, accelerating, falling into the storm. She slammed her feet onto the brake, but could get no purchase as her car bumped roughly down a snowy embankment. She realized what was happening seconds too late. She’d driven right off the road.
The gully at the bottom of the embankment was full of water and her car cracked through two inches of ice and slid down, slowing, sinking, the water coming to just above the bottom of the door before it finally stopped.
The car stalled out.
With shaking hands, Rosie tried to start the engine. The tired and helpless rrrr rrrr rrrr told her it was not going to start, but she keyed it and keyed it again, her breath pulling into her chest in panicked gasps as she sobbed in frustration.
She abruptly let go of the key and sat back. Her hands went around her stomach. It calmed her instantly.
“It’s okay, baby, I’m going to get us out of here,” she said, her voice a whisper. “It’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got you, mamma’s here.” It was the first time she’d referred to herself that way and it steadied her even more.
She struggled her door open but it wouldn’t go far; it was held in place by the ice on the pond. She pushed harder, grunting, and felt it give a little. She turned in the seat as well as she could and pushed again with all the force as she could muster. The door swung open as the ice cracked apart and she felt a surge of joy. It was quickly shunted aside as she felt hot wetness flood her thighs and bottom…peed myself? she thought, but then realized: her water just broke.
A contraction of stunning intensity hardened her middle and she cried out, bending over herself as much as the steering wheel would allow. An overwhelming need to push came over her but she knew she mustn’t. The baby can’t come now. It just can’t.
As if in defiance of her panicked thoughts, another contraction hit, making her feel as though her entire midsection had suddenly become somehow more affected by gravity. Everything felt pulled down; the pressure was breathtaking.
She struggled to turn, to get her feet out the door. She dipped them down into the icy water and it felt as though her feet and ankles were burning and then they quickly numbed. She struggled forward, keeping the car on her left, going toward the rear of it. She couldn’t see beyond her own outstretched arm, the snow was too heavy, but she knew the embankment was behind her somewhere.
She just had to get back up it.
She was as far as the trunk and clear of the water when another contraction hit, bending her almost double. She went to her knees, groaning, the snow soft as a blanket below her. She longed to lie down in its fluffy softness; it would cool the fever that seemed to have gripped up her insides. But she knew she couldn’t. If she laid down, she’d never get back up. She couldn’t do that to the baby.
She pushed herself up, panting.
“I’ll make a deal with you, okay baby?” She put one hand under her belly and the other hand out and she moved away from the car, her foot reaching the incline of the embankment. “You don’t come right this second and I’ll get us out of this.” She huffed out a small chuckle. “Okay, sweetie? We got a deal?”
She’d been making her way shakily up the slope, one foot at a time, keeping one arm out, reaching for little handholds. The grass under the snow made it slippery as a ski slope. Her hand was numb. She couldn’t judge how far she’d gone or how much farther she had to go. Snow pelted her face and she seemed to feel each flake as a burning, stinging piece of ice. She wanted to sit down. Another contraction hit and she felt a black wave of despair…she wasn’t going to make it. She was too tired and the bank was too steep, too slippery.