Chapter Text
Vaggie staggered to the wall and leaned heavily against it, panting hard. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. Her fingers were cramped and her palms were slick, making it a struggle to hold onto her spear. She was lightheaded despite only training for an hour, but an hour marked significant improvement from where she’d been two weeks ago.
She’d slept through most of that miserable first day in the palace, waking only to escape vague, shadowy nightmares. She ached all over and was nauseous with vertigo even when laying perfectly still, and any amount of light was too bright. By the time night fell, every breath she drew was a raspy wheeze, and she had resigned herself to the fact that if she didn’t starve into a coma and get killed, the very air would suffocate her. Maybe that would be a mercy.
The next morning, she’d woken up shaky and sore, but much more lucid. With the true excuse that she’d left some personal effects behind on Extermination Day, she convinced Charlie to take her back to the alley where she’d rescued her. She almost cried with relief when she found that, by some miracle, her armor and spear remained untouched where she’d hastily stashed them. Charlie had loaned her a bag to carry her things, so she packed up her uniform with an assortment of trinkets and trash scattered around the alley that could hopefully pass for her cover story. Her uniform was too recognizable to wear, but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it for some rotten demon to find. There was no way to hide the spear, so she pretended she’d found it by happenstance. Charlie ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the weapon, marveled at the fact that the post-extermination looters had missed it, and with only a little trepidation permitted Vaggie to bring it back to the palace.
The next few days brought more sickness and vomiting. Having her spear back provided a sense of security, but that feeling subsided as her strength deteriorated. Every waking hour was more exhausting than the last. It got to the point that she couldn’t be out of bed for more than twenty minutes without collapsing. Charlie fed her increasingly bland things in smaller and smaller portions, but nothing stayed down for long.
On day four, when Vaggie managed to wash down a few dry crackers with a swig of water, the nausea she'd come to expect came and went without incident. It was the first bit of food that had stayed in her stomach. Charlie was delighted, and Razzle and Dazzle immediately tried to shove a full meal down her throat, but Vaggie managed to talk them out of it. She couldn’t risk sabotaging this victory, however meager it might be.
Over the next three days, she ate more, and her condition improved. Her portions were still small, and some foods her stomach still wouldn’t tolerate, but she was making progress. She got used to the rancid tasting water, and although the air quality didn’t improve, breathing started to come easier. A clean scar formed over her gouged eye. The wounds on her back stopped hurting except for the occasional phantom ache. She doubted she would ever fully get over the loss of her wings, but at least the pain had lessened. Just as Charlie had predicted, she was acclimating.
Forcing herself to get up and move around was challenging at first. One lap up and down the length of the hallway left her winded, but she made it a routine. Whenever she was awake, she would pace the hall, climb the stairs, and stretch her aching muscles. When that got easier, she incorporated the sit-ups and push-ups that had been second-nature in Heaven, and slowly, her strength returned.
At her request, Charlie showed her where the palace's library was, and it was there that Vaggie started to spend most of her time. At first, her only goal was to learn as much as she could about Hell, as much as she needed to survive, but that wasn’t all the library offered. On her second trip, she discovered a private study room. Based on the layer of dust coating the books and furniture, it wasn’t used often. She pushed the furniture up against the walls to clear a space, then started training with her spear.
Like every other step in her exercise regimen, it was challenging at first. The spear was heavy in her unsteady hands. Every few minutes, she had to take a break to avoid passing out. She was weaker than she would’ve liked, but gradually getting stronger.
She couldn’t wait around for Charlie to drop the nice act. She’d have to strike out on her own sooner or later, and when that happened, she needed to be ready. She had to be able to defend and provide for herself.
Now, after two weeks in Hell, her confidence had grown. Charlie was still playing the generous host. Vaggie didn’t know how much longer that would last, but she would take advantage of it while she had it. Every morning, they ate breakfast together, and then Charlie would leave to do whatever demon princesses did and Vaggie would go to the library to train. As far as Charlie knew, she was just reading, and Vaggie hoped to keep it that way. The minute Charlie sensed a threat she would strike, and Vaggie would never get a chance to escape. The longer her improved health and combat skills remained a secret, the better.
She idly studied her spear as she reflected on the past two weeks. After taking a minute to catch her breath, she straightened, moved to the center of the room, and crouched down into a fighting stance. The spots where her wings should have been twinged, but the pain was no longer an impairment. It anchored her, cleared her head. That burn was a good sign. It meant the exercise was working.
Muscle memory kicked in as she swung the spear, twirled it, stabbed it at invisible opponents. She leaped and dodged and rolled. She spun on her toes with practiced grace. It was like a dance—a dance her body knew well, as each step followed the next with hardly a conscious thought. Her bedridden recovery period might've taken a physical toll, but her instincts were still very much alive.
After a few minutes, she stopped for another break, but her hackles raised when she felt someone watching her. She whipped around, automatically lifting the spear in anticipation of an attack. She froze when she saw Charlie standing in the doorway of the study room, gaping at her. Her one-eyed black cat, KeeKee, was cradled in her arms.
KeeKee had kept out of sight for the first week or so of Vaggie’s stay. Vaggie didn’t even know Charlie had a pet until she woke up one morning with a fluffy black loaf perched on her chest.
“Oh, uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Charlie stammered. Her cheeks were flushed, and her rustling hair was more lively than usual. She gave KeeKee a squeeze, which KeeKee didn’t seem to appreciate.
Vaggie remembered she was pointing a spear at the Princess of Hell and quickly lowered it. She straightened and gave a curt nod.
“It’s okay. I was going to stop soon, anyway.”
“You don’t have to. You, uh. . . you handle that thing pretty well.”
Nervous sweat clammed up on the back of Vaggie’s neck.
“Yeah, I’ve been working on it.” Realizing a better explanation would be needed if she didn’t want to give herself away, she cleared her throat and said, “When I was alive, my family owned a small sugarcane farm. My siblings and I helped with most of the field work. I know how to handle a few tools.”
“No kidding. You look like you’re feeling a lot better, too. Are you? Feeling better, I mean?”
Where had this awkwardness come from?
Vaggie knew the answer immediately. This was the first time Charlie had seen evidence that keeping Vaggie might come with dangers, and she was now struggling to reconfigure her friendly act. Vaggie could practically see the gears turning: should she drop the façade now, or drag it on a bit longer? Was Vaggie onto her, or just training to get her strength back up? Would Vaggie be more fun to torture with higher stamina, or would it be safer to shut down the threat before it got out of control?
Vaggie could kill her first. Charlie was powerful, but she’d made the mistake of letting an exorcist live. Vaggie imagined leaping at the princess, plunging the spear into her heart, watching her glamour dissolve and listening to her screech fowl demon curses. She could do it. Right here and now, Vaggie could eliminate one of the central pillars of demon royalty. Perhaps a heroic final act like that would be enough to redeem her in Heaven’s eyes.
No, she thought, shutting down that idea before it could go further. Too easy to fail with a direct attack. I’m still playing her game; I have to wait for her to make the first move. She realized her hands had automatically shifted to a throwing grip on her spear, and she relaxed her hold.
Charlie, meanwhile, rambled on undeterred. It was unclear whether she knew Vaggie had just seriously considered the merits of killing her.
“I only ask because I. . . I mean, I just want to know that you’re alright. You had such a rough time last week. I’ve never heard of a soul having that much difficulty. I’m glad you’re feeling better, and looking better. Not that you don’t look good normally. You do, you always look good. But you look healthier, is what I mean. You’re very. . . athletic.”
“That’s a kind observation,” Vaggie said dryly. A smile played on her lips. Had it been genuine, Charlie’s flustered stammering might've been endearing. Vaggie couldn’t decide if it was a brilliant performance or an incompetent one.
“Well, I’m always happy to observe you,” Charlie chuckled, pushing some hair behind her ear. She paused, and her face tightened with embarrassment. In a quiet, strained voice, she said, “That came out weird.”
“Little bit.”
Charlie stared at her a moment longer—a bit too long—then moved out of the doorway and nodded over her shoulder, to where Vaggie had set up her research table.
“By the way, I noticed you were looking into the history of Pentagram City. Are you actually interested? A lot of sinners aren’t.”
“Yeah. I actually have some questions I’ve been wanting to ask you. Maybe you could—”
“Oh my gosh, I would love to! I’ll answer whatever questions you have!”
Vaggie was a bit taken aback by Charlie’s enthusiasm, but didn’t waste the opportunity. They went to her research table together, where stacks of books waited beside some loose sheets of paper. Vaggie had been taking notes on things that seemed important, but she now folded the paper and tucked it between a pair of books so Charlie wouldn’t get suspicious—assuming she hadn’t already read the notes and figured out what Vaggie was doing.
They sat down, and Charlie eagerly scooched her chair closer. KeeKee hopped out of her arms and trotted away. Charlie watched her go, then slapped her hands on her knees and prompted, “So, what did you want to know?”
The exorcists studied updated maps of the Pride Ring before every extermination, with special emphasis on Pentagram City, but there was undoubtedly a lot of local know-how that they were missing out on. Vaggie couldn’t straight up ask for a detailed blueprint of the city, but if she was too vague, she wouldn’t get any valuable information.
“I was wondering about the different districts,” she said at last, opening a book to a map of the city.
“Oh, this map’s outdated. This place grows so fast, and businesses come and go all the time, so we have to draw up a new one every year. How about I grab the most recent edition?”
“Sure, that would be great.” Vaggie turned away to hide her embarrassment. She felt stupid for not considering that. The mutable layout was one of the most dangerous things about Hell’s big cities.
Charlie opened a portal into another room, grabbed a map off a desk, and spread it out on the table. She dismissed the portal with a wave of her hand. Vaggie paid close attention as she went through Pride's nine circles, the cities within those circles, and the districts within those cities. She listed their respective populations, which Overlords controlled which areas, who was in conflict with who, and the economic statuses associated with each territory. Partway through, Vaggie sacrificed subtlety for diligence and pulled out her notes to keep track of important names and locations; she wouldn’t have remembered half of it otherwise. Charlie gave her an odd look, but didn’t question her notetaking.
Once they’d covered the broad strokes, they elected to take a break, and Charlie summoned Razzle and Dazzle for snacks. The pair did as commanded, bringing up a tray of appetizers and some sort of sparkling juice, but they refused to bring it into the library. Charlie and Vaggie were forced to move to a study room across the hall that didn’t have a strict no-food-or-drinks rule.
As they ate, Charlie prompted, “You said you grew up on a farm?”
“Yup.”
“Where? What was it like?”
Vaggie took a small, careful sip of her juice. The benefit of a week of bedrest was that she’d had time to think, and she’d devoted that time to coming up with a human backstory. As long as she kept certain details vague, she was confident it would be believed. It was based on the life of a real soul, after all.
Exclusive companionships had always been prevalent among angels, even in the old days before Eden. When humans brought their culture to Heaven, those relationships came to be equated with romance. The exorcists were the first Heavenborn to explore the sexual nature of romantic relationships, since unlike all other Heavenborn classes, they were made with human-based anatomy (at Adam’s request). That included sexual organs and active hormones. Romances weren’t discouraged for Heavenborn, but sexual relations were heavily frowned on. It wasn’t natural for angels; it was a learned behavior. As such, it was the understood norm that any and all sexual activities were to remain private.
Vaggie had only ever had two relationships. The first was with another angel, but the second was with an ascended soul, a Salvadoran woman named Ana. She was softspoken but observant, and what little she said carried enough weight that everyone around her stopped to listen. Vaggie was utterly entranced by her—by her voice, her beauty, her soothing aura, but most of all by her stories.
Before Ana, what little Vaggie knew of Earth came second-hand from Adam or the exorcists’ schooling. Ana had been all around the world in her human life, had met all sorts of people and survived shocking situations. When she and Vaggie were together, they would lay awake in bed for hours every night, and Vaggie would listen in wonder to her stories. Ana told her all about her family, the farm where she grew up, and even taught her Spanish. She also divulged the painful and tragic story of her youngest sister, Sofia, who left the farm to make a name for herself in the city. She instead wound up broke and destitute, and sold everything she had—including her body—to survive. She was eventually killed, and her mutilated corpse was found in a sewage pipe.
Vaggie had to justify why she was in Hell, so she’d borrowed several details from Sofia’s life, mixed with embellishments from Ana’s. Drawing from their respective stories, she'd crafted a story of her own, and recited it for Charlie now. She gave a rough synopsis, then went into a series of carefully rehearsed anecdotes. She began with her childhood in El Salvador—using Ana’s place as the oldest of seven kids—and then recalled her experience of immigrating to the United States for higher education, where she smoothed out her English. She graduated and moved to Los Angelos with high hopes, but through a set of sudden unfortunate circumstances, her budding career took a nosedive. That, along with the high cost of living, left her with nothing. She did shameful things to survive, armed robbery and burglary and muggings, and eventually resorted to prostitution. She finished with her tragic murder on the merciless streets of Southern California.
She delivered each part of the story with all the appropriate emotion and grimness. When she finished, she looked up to see Charlie with her hands clutched against her chest and tears rolling down her pale face.
“You went through all of that, and then got dumped in the middle of an extermination?” she cried. She seized Vaggie’s hands, looking more distressed than Vaggie had ever seen her. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what to say, Vaggie. Is that your real name, or a nickname? No, don’t tell me, it’s not my business. Everyone changes their names when they come here. I don’t blame you for wanting a clean slate. Oh, I’m so sorry!”
She pulled Vaggie into a tight hug and sobbed against her shoulder.
Vaggie’s heart plummeted. She had thought her story was convincing, but clearly, Charlie didn’t buy it for one second. This over-the-top reaction was so cartoonish and forced, it couldn’t possibly be anything but a subliminal message: she knew Vaggie was lying. She knew the truth. This was a stark reminder that she was just toying with her, probably ten steps ahead of everything she said or did. She had likely already known that Vaggie was training with her spear, too, and just feigned ignorance for the sake of dragging out this pointless farce. Being the Princess of Hell must be boring, if she had no better hobbies.
“It’s okay,” Vaggie forced out, giving Charlie a small pat on the back. “I’m, uh. . . I’m over it.”
With some urging, Charlie pulled back, wiping her eyes and sniffling. She halfheartedly poked through the books, then turned her glistening eyes to Vaggie and said, “I want you to know you’re safe here, and as long as you need a place to stay, you can stay.”
Vaggie hesitated before responding.
“I wouldn’t want to impose. I can probably—”
“You’re not imposing. It’s kind of nice, actually. I haven’t had any guests stay here in a while.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Vaggie nibbled the snacks, sipped her juice, and pretended to read. She was acutely aware of the way Charlie’s eyes kept sliding back to her, as if drawn by some unseen magnetic force. When Vaggie risked a glance up, she saw that Charlie’s gaze was locked on her chest (her current shirt accentuated the outline of her breasts). Charlie noticed that Vaggie had noticed and hastily looked away, burying her nose in a book, cheeks burning. Her eyes darted back, though, and Vaggie shuddered at the lust she saw in them.
Charlie was lusting for her. Of course. She had been lusting since the first day, and it was getting harder to ignore.
The first thing Vaggie felt was fear, followed by disgust, but then she considered the situation with a bit more depth. Maybe she could use Charlie’s demonic urges to her advantage. If she made this cat-and-mouse game enjoyable, maybe that would convince Charlie to let it continue. Vaggie could postpone her torturous death until she had accrued the resources to make her escape.
But seducing a demon. . . that was about as sinful as it got.
Vaggie wasn’t a virgin. Sex had been a factor in both of her past romances. But that was about love, intimacy, deep emotions expressed through physical passion. She’d found more gratification in pleasing her partners than in her own sexual pleasure, and both partners had felt the same way.
Lust was selfish, harmful overindulgence of sex, devoid of intimacy. Lust was the realm of demons.
She could encourage Charlie’s unhidden interest; she could even meet it with a reciprocation. But did an end that wasn’t even guaranteed really justify these means? It was wrong. It was sinful.
Maybe she didn’t have to let it go all the way. She could give enough to bait Charlie, but not enough to completely debase herself. It wasn’t like she had a better plan.
Whatever it takes to survive.
“Charlie,” she said, breaking the silence. She scooted closer, until their knees touched. She pointedly let her gaze linger on Charlie’s lips before meeting her eyes.
“Yes?” Charlie asked. Her breath hitched. She scooted forward as well, closing the distance.
“I want to thank you again—really thank you. I died at the end of the worst part of my life, and I woke up in Hell in the middle of a bloodbath. Then you found me. You’ve been so good to me, more than anyone ever has. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. So, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Charlie murmured. She sounded like she was only half-paying attention. She leaned in, her breath heavy and her eyes lidded, and Vaggie’s stomach flipped in anticipation.
This was it. Once she crossed this boundary, there would be no going back.
Without giving herself time to reconsider, she shut her eyes and pressed her mouth to Charlie’s. It was more forceful than intended, eliciting a squeak of surprise, but Charlie was quick to reciprocate, cupping Vaggie’s face and leaning in. Her lips were warm and surprisingly soft. She tasted like the bubbly juice she'd been drinking.
Vaggie’s gut churned in revulsion—at Charlie, at herself, at all of Hell. This was so wrong, but the fact that it wasn’t overtly unpleasant made it worse. She almost would've preferred it if she was forced to kiss a hideous, lipless monster. With Charlie’s beautiful glamour it bordered on agony, because it almost felt real. Vaggie could just as easily be kissing another angel.
Vaggie pulled away first. Fear struck her when she saw that Charlie’s fangs had lengthened and her yellow eyes had turned red. Her pupils were visibly dilated as she stared down at Vaggie.
Charlie moved forward to kiss her again, and Vaggie was seriously considering punching her when the door opened and Razzle—or was it Dazzle?—flew into the room. He was oblivious to the fact that they were mid-kiss as he gathered up dishes and said something to Charlie in that weird chattering language.
“Shit, I’ve got a meeting to get to,” Charlie muttered. Her demonic features reverted to normal, and she hopped out of her seat. She straightened her clothes, flashed Vaggie a tiny smile, and said, “This shouldn't take long. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go. . . mi casa es su casa.”
“Ah, bien, muy bien,” Vaggie commended. Charlie looked pleased.
With one last longing glance, Charlie left the room, Razzle trailing behind her. It was only then that Vaggie became aware of her trembling legs and pounding heart. She slumped down in her chair, letting her breath go in one loud whoosh.
She had seen a glimpse of the real Charlie, the demon that lurked under that charming exterior, and it terrified her. She was supposed to seduce that? Surely there were better, less dangerous, less shameful ways to stay alive. Surely Charlie would respect her boundaries, at least superficially, to keep up the act. Surely this wasn’t the only card Vaggie had left to play.
Worst of all, on the fringes of her repulsion loomed a much darker feeling: desire. That kiss had almost felt good, and that frightened her more than even Charlie’s demon eyes had. Charlie was blatantly using some sort of demonic lust magic to instill those traitorous feelings in her heart. At this rate, Vaggie might even start having sexual fantasies about her!
She had to be more careful next time. She couldn’t just plunge in like that. She was walking the narrow edge of a slippery slope, and once Charlie got her claws in her, there would be no escape. She had to stay strong. She had to resist.
Not another moment could be wasted, she decided. Whenever she wasn’t with Charlie, she had to be learning, planning, or training. She couldn’t let her guard down again—not a little bit, not even for a moment. With that determination fresh in her mind, she went back to the library, took up her spear, and resumed her exercises.