Chapter Text
Vaggie squeezed Charlie’s waist and bucked up into her. They moved in sync, Charlie bouncing on the strap-on, Vaggie grinding her hips up to boost her momentum. The smooth pink shaft of the toy, slick with perspiration and lube, pumped in and out of Charlie’s hole with a slew of wet, filthy noises.
Charlie cried out and rode faster. Her movement became rough, erratic, driven by a fervor that bordered on desperation. Vaggie reached up to fondle her breasts and breathed, “You’re so beautiful.”
“Please. Please, I’m so close, please,” Charlie whimpered.
“I know you are,” Vaggie said. Her hands roamed over Charlie’s body with dazed reverence. “Come for me, honey.”
“I love you,” Charlie gasped. Her legs trembled and her eyes rolled as she climaxed on the toy. “I love you so much.”
Vaggie didn’t stop moving until Charlie had ridden out her orgasm. When Charlie drifted down from her high, she climbed off of Vaggie, panting, and flopped down on the bed beside her. Vaggie unclipped the strap on, wriggled her legs out of the harness, and tossed it aside. The toy left a wet smear on the blankets, but they could worry about that later.
Once Charlie caught her breath, she turned onto her side and fingered through Vaggie’s bangs. Her cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes sparkled. She always looked so lovely in the afterglow of good sex.
With a tired smile, she said, “That was really great.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” Vaggie replied. She leaned up on one elbow and pressed a kiss to Charlie’s mouth.
Neither of them brought up the I-love-you. It wasn’t a unique occurrence. Charlie said it every other night, it seemed, but only in the heat of passion. She had yet to ask after a reciprocation.
They showered, changed, and turned in for the night. The sex had been a good distraction, particularly for Charlie. In her words, she was always a bit restless the night before an extermination.
Charlie slept soundly with her head resting on Vaggie’s chest, but Vaggie didn’t sleep. She didn’t try, since she knew it would be impossible. When she wasn’t running through the steps of her plan in her head, she was reliving the last six months.
Six months sharing a bed with the Princess of Hell—six months since she’d thrown out the last of her dignity. She’d grown numb to the shame by now. She no longer held back, instead indulged every ounce of the sick, sinful want that had infected her mind and body. She kissed Charlie harder than she’d ever kissed Yris or Ana, touched her in more ways than she’d ever touched either of her past lovers. She now actively chased her orgasms, welcoming those few seconds of weightless pleasure, because it was the closest thing to an escape she would ever find in that palace.
Humans had a term for it, or at least one that came close: Stockholm Syndrome.
She couldn’t bring herself to hate Charlie anymore, and she didn’t have the will to try. The only person she could hate was herself.
Maybe this had been Charlie’s plan all along: to let Vaggie wear herself down trying to out-deceive her, then swoop in to have her way with what was left. If that was the game, she’d played it brilliantly. But at long last, the torment was about to come to an end. Just a few hours ahead of them loomed Extermination Day.
Vaggie had survived a full year in Hell. That revelation came with none of the joy she might’ve anticipated a few months ago. Her determination was rotted by paralyzing anxiety. She had one goal, and until she reached it, she couldn’t afford the luxury of happiness, or even hope. If she allowed herself to feel those things now, and she ended up failing, it would crush her. When she got back to Heaven, she would be free to feel all the things she’d bottled up in the last twelve months, but until then, she had to stay focused.
The next morning brought chaos as every staff member clocked in to help lock down the palace, whether they were scheduled to work or not. Every one of them had a spot reserved in the royal bunker to wait out the next twelve hours. The extermination started at 8:00 sharp, so they had little time to prepare.
Charlie was particularly anxious to get Vaggie into the bunker. Most of the staff were Hellborn, but Vaggie wasn’t, so as far as Charlie was concerned, she was a target. Because of this, Vaggie went out of her way to avoid Charlie. She helped servants lock the windows and hide the valuables. She helped them get their families settled in their designated spots in the bunker. She helped organize and distribute supplies. Every excuse she could use to stall, she used, so that she would be one of the last ones inside.
At 7:59, the alarms sounded, a chorus of wailing sirens that could be heard all across Pentagram City. On every street, traffic slowed to a crushing halt. The roads were clogged to bursting, made impassable by the volume of sinners looking for a safe place to hunker down and Hellborn trying to leave Pride. When they heard the sirens, they abandoned their cars and ran.
The bunker doors—three feet thick, lined with angelic steel, and engraved with powerful wards—began to slide shut. The wheeled mechanisms in the walls groaned under the doors’ colossal weight.
Vaggie watched them carefully, gauging their speed, calculating when to run. If she was short by even a fraction of a second, she would be trapped in the bunker or crushed between the doors. Timing was everything.
Not yet. . . almost. . . now.
She bolted past Charlie, vaulted over Razzle and Dazzle’s heads, and sprinted for the shrinking exit. Charlie screamed her name, but she didn’t stop, didn’t dare look back. She squeezed between the doors and made it through to the other side right as they were threatening to crush her.
The doors slammed shut. A veil of magic materialized, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, sealing the bunker. Vaggie was left to her own devices. From here on, it was all or nothing.
Vaggie ran up to her room and grabbed her spear. She left her emergency bag tucked behind the dresser. Whether she succeeded or failed tonight, she wouldn’t need it. She put on a long coat, pulled up the hood to shadow her face, and fled the palace.
The streets were chaos. It wasn’t unfamiliar, but Vaggie had never seen it from the ground, from the perspective of the prey. All around her, sinners were cut down by holy blades, and Hellborn were crushed by demolished buildings or struck by flying debris. As Vaggie turned into an alleyway to escape the brunt of the carnage, she narrowly avoided a body hurtling towards the ground. It splattered on impact like a ripe melon, spraying viscera across the sidewalk. High overhead, Vaggie thought she recognized Andromeda’s gleeful laughter.
She navigated through side streets and empty buildings, conjuring a mental map of the city. She veered away from the majority of the noise, but followed isolated screams. She needed to find an exorcist alone, on the ground, someone she could talk to on equal footing.
When she broke into one abandoned house, she heard clattering and followed it to the attic. When she opened the door, she was ambushed by a large, barrel-chested sinner with beady eyes and curled ram horns. He grabbed her spear and whipped her into the air with it, flinging her against the wall. Vaggie's spear was ripped from her hands, and the sinner kicked it away before she could grab it. Her eye widened when she saw that he had an angelic weapon of his own, a mace.
Adam had never been the most organized of commanding officers. There was always a small percentage of weapons left behind after each extermination, since the exorcists all carried backups and Adam didn’t enforce thorough inventory checks. They could get new ones from the smiths at any time, he reasoned. Now, Vaggie silently cursed him for his idiocy.
The sinner pounded a meaty fist against his chest and roared, “My fucking hiding spot! Not yours!”
He swung the mace, and Vaggie rolled out of the way. It slammed down right where her head had been, splintering the floorboards. It lodged in place there, and the time it took the sinner to rip it out was all the time Vaggie needed to get back on her feet. She grabbed her spear and plunged it into the back of his leg. He fell to his knees with a howl of pain.
Vaggie ripped the spear free, grabbed him by the collar, and flung him towards the window. His own momentum carried him through it in his struggle to regain his balance, and a cloud of shattered glass followed him to the ground.
Vaggie rushed to the windowsill. The sinner tried to rise, but an exorcist rocketed down from the air and landed on top of him. Vaggie heard his back break, and he screamed. He was silenced when the exorcist stabbed one of her serrated daggers through the back of his neck, severing his spine.
Those daggers, that helmet. . . Vaggie knew this exorcist.
“Leah!” she cried, her voice cracking with emotion.
The exorcist startled and whipped around, raising her daggers in anticipation of a fight. Vaggie dropped her spear to the ground and clambered down the side of the house. She fell part of the way and landed rough on her side. She grunted when she felt something in her shoulder pop, but gritted her teeth through the pain and hauled herself to her feet. She staggered over, stopped about ten feet away, and gasped, “Leah, it’s me.”
She couldn’t believe her good luck. Leah was one of the most honorable angels she knew. She was strong, compassionate, and a steadfast friend. Vaggie had just as often sat beside her in the mess hall as stood back-to-back with her in battle.
She spotted the exact moment Leah recognized her. The eyes of her mask went wide with shock, and the digital smile flipped to a frown. She pulled her helmet off and shook her snowy white hair free.
“Vaggie?” she said hesitantly. She didn’t sound like she believed what she was seeing.
“Yes.” A smile broke out on Vaggie’s face, her first real smile in over a year. Relieved laughter bubbled out of her, high and breathless. She stumbled forward, but stopped when Leah tensed and gripped her daggers tighter. Vaggie gulped and said, “We have to talk.”
Leah’s sharp yellow eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
Did she know everything that happened a year ago? She must. Did everyone know? It didn’t matter, Vaggie quickly decided. If she could get just one angel on her side—especially an angel like Leah—the rest would have to listen. They would understand; they had to.
“I want to come back,” she blurted. She’d rehearsed versions of this speech in the days leading up, but all that preparation was forgotten in an instant. Tears sprang in her eye, and she said the first words that came to mind unfiltered. “Please, just give me a second chance. I want to come home.”
“You made your choice.”
“I know, but it was the wrong choice. I see that now. If I could go back and undo it, I would, but I can’t. Please, just take me to Adam. Let me talk to him. He’ll listen, I know he will. Please.”
She dropped her spear and moved forward, hands raised in surrender. Leah held her daggers at the ready, but didn’t attack. Vaggie dropped to her knees and grasped the bottom of Leah’s skirt, clung to it with trembling hands.
The next words she spoke were in Enochian. It was the mother tongue of Heaven, the oldest spoken language in creation. It was a language all Heavenborn angels instinctively knew—a language only Heavenborn angels knew. The holiest of ascended souls could never learn or understand it, nor could any other creature.
“Mercy, sister.”
Leah’s glare softened. Anguish lanced across her face. She opened her mouth to speak, and hope sparked in Vaggie’s heart. But before Leah could say anything, a loud, grating voice cut through the air.
“Kill them all! Don’t lose one of them!”
It was Lute. She wasn’t anywhere in view, but she was nearby, maybe almost on top of them. Vaggie looked desperately up at Leah, silently pleading.
All trace of warmth disappeared from Leah’s face. Her eyes hardened, and her hands tightened on her daggers.
In Enochian, she spat, “I have no mercy for traitors.”
Vaggie anticipated the attack a second too late. She managed to block the first dagger, but the second one plunged hilt-deep into her side.
Her plan dissolved. Her mission ceased to matter. Nothing mattered except the sensation of a blade digging between her ribs and hot blood soaking her shirt.
Vaggie screamed and lunged away, ripping herself free from Leah’s dagger. When Leah attempted to stab her again, Vaggie launched herself towards her spear, seized it, and swept it through the air in a wide arc. The flat side of the blade caught Leah in the chest, knocking her aside, giving Vaggie a few precious seconds to escape.
She ran.
She stumbled every few steps, clutching her ribs in hopes that enough pressure would staunch the wound. All around her, the world burned. People screamed and died. Angels circled overhead like vultures, swooping down on whichever unlucky target caught their eye.
Vaggie pulled her hood up and buttoned her coat to hide her glowing gold blood. Before long, though, it soaked through. Her hands were covered in it. It dripped a trail behind her, trickled down the shaft of the spear as she ran. She couldn’t go back to the palace like this. Charlie would see what she was, and the harmony they'd come to have would be shattered.
The blood kept flowing. When Lute wounded her a year ago, it had stopped within a few minutes. Why wasn’t it stopping now?
As Vaggie passed through a dark, narrow alley, her vision blurred, and she lost all control of her legs. She fell, catching herself on all fours. She couldn’t get back up, so she crawled. When she couldn’t do that anymore, she rolled onto her side and just lay there, struggling for breath. She coughed, and when she reached up to wipe some spit from her mouth, her hand came away bloody.
The bleeding wasn’t going to stop this time, she realized. Leah’s knife had struck something vital. Drop by drop, breath by heaving breath, she was dying. Only a miracle could save her now.
A miracle. . . or a last resort.
Her eye flew open. She forced her leaden limbs to move, to push herself upright. She had completely forgotten about her Plan Z. How had she forgotten?
There was one angel she could still contact—the one angel who, until this moment, was the last person in all creation she wanted to contact.
Having no other materials available, she dipped her fingers in her blood and spread it across the ground, drawing a messy circle. It took her failing brain a minute to recall the correct sigils, but she did, and drew them accordingly. Soon, she had a streaky summoning circle. Vaggie bent over on her knees, touched her forehead to the ground, and prayed.
“I call upon Elder Cynthaeis. I call upon she who forged my body and breathed divine life into me. I call upon my angelic maker, she who created me to serve God. Please, Maker, answer me. I—” Her words were cut short as she coughed up a yellow clot. It splattered on the pavement between her hands.
Tears rolled down her face. She gulped and pleaded, “I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ve never called on you. I’ve never bothered you. Since the day you brought us to life, you didn’t want anything to do with us, and I’ve always respected that. But please, Maker, I need you now, I. . . I have no one else. Please, answer me.”
There was no answer. There was nothing but the sound of a city being slaughtered.
She choked on more blood. She pounded a fist on the ground and hoarsely yelled, “Damnit, Cynthaeis, I know you can hear me! Please! Just this once, please!”
No answer. Not so much as a whisper on the breeze. Her maker had abandoned her like everyone else. In hindsight, Vaggie didn’t know why she’d expected anything different.
The last dash of her strength gave out, and she collapsed. Her eye slid shut. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move. Hopefully Charlie wouldn’t be the one to find her body tomorrow. She didn’t need that grief.
She was cold, so cold. She was slipping, falling, falling. . .
And then she wasn’t.
Vaggie opened her eye. The old wounds were unchanged, but the new one was gone. She lifted her shirt and found that not even a scar was left behind, as if it had never happened. She looked around, bewildered.
She was nowhere. On all sides, stretching in all directions, was dark nothingness. Her feet were steady when she stood up, but if there was a floor, it was beyond her ability to perceive it.
“I could have made you indestructible. I knew how. I had done it before, with the first army. But Adam didn’t want indestructible; he wanted human. So that’s what I gave him.”
She hadn’t heard that voice in years. It was a cold, gravelly timbre with a distinct air of authority. A mix of emotions coursed through her: relief, sadness, resentment, confusion.
Vaggie spun in search of the voice as it went on, “I was also in favor of programming you all to be like-minded drones. Enough agency to make quick decisions on the battlefield, but not enough to put your obedience into question. But that wasn’t human enough, either. What Adam wants, Adam gets. He always was a stupid, arrogant creature, as much in Heaven as in Eden. Humanity was doomed from the beginning. Why we didn't just sterilize Earth and start over somewhere else, I'll never know."
Vaggie turned around one last time, and there she was. Her maker stood no more than ten feet away, glowering down at her. For so many different reasons, Vaggie wanted to burst into ugly tears right then and there.
Cynthaeis looked exactly as she remembered. She was tall, easily more than double Vaggie’s height. She resembled a dragon, but not a dragon like Razzle and Dazzle. Hers was closer to the look of an Earth lizard, with her blunt snout and pebbly gray skin. Four pupilless silver eyes glittered beneath a hard, ridged brow. More eyes lined either side of her long neck and both of her curved, ox-like horns. Her skeletal fingers were each close to two feet long, with pale webbing stretched between them. Most striking of all was her silvery plumage; a thick mane of it covered her head and neck like a ruffled collar and filled out her four long wings. Twin feather-tipped tails stretched behind her, swaying lightly from side to side.
Layered white robes shrouded her body, secured at her waist with an ornamented belt. The overly large bell sleeves ended at her elbows, and a skintight underlayer wrapped her arms all the way to her wrists.
When humans first began to populate Heaven, they brought aspects of their cultures with them, one commonality being the emphasis on sex separation. Not all human languages were strictly gendered, but many were.
Angels didn’t reproduce sexually. They were made, not born. They had no basis for the concept of “gender” that humans had. But over the centuries, it became the norm for individual angels to adopt an established gender identity, one of many changes made to accommodate souls.
Cynthaeis was one of the few who didn’t openly declare any human-based identity, but when souls tentatively started referring to her as female, she didn’t correct them, so it stuck. She probably wouldn’t have cared any more or less had she been labeled male. There was nothing feminine or masculine about her by any human standards, but nor could she be accurately described as androgynous. She was an angel, one of the oldest angels in Heaven, and she refused to present herself as anything but.
Vaggie stared at Cynthaeis, and Cynthaeis stared back.
“Maker,” Vaggie breathed.
“Offspring.”
For years, Vaggie had planned how she would confront Cynthaeis, what she would say to her in what order, but now that they were face-to-face, she couldn’t think of a single thing. At last, she dumbly stated, “You healed me.”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Is that all you summoned me for?”
Indignation arose, but Vaggie tamped it down. Now was not the time.
“Where are we?” she asked, staring at the nothingness around them.
“A void-space. I own several. Did Adam not teach you about those? Don’t answer that. Of course he didn’t. Think of this as a sort of. . . pocket. It may be the only place we can safely talk.”
“I need your help,” Vaggie blurted.
“I gathered that.” Cynthaeis nodded to where her wound used to be. Her tone was callous, matter-of-fact. An old, familiar anger simmering in the depths of Vaggie’s heart was stoked to life.
“You hate me. You hate all of us. Why did you save me?”
“What little I feel for you isn't strong enough to constitute hate.”
“Whatever! Why did you do it?”
“Retirement isn’t the luxury vacation I was told it would be. One can only do so much needlepoint before the tedium sets in.”
Millennia ago, in the prime of her career, Cynthaeis was known as the greatest bioengineer in Heaven’s ranks. She had a seat on the high court, cultivated life on thousands of worlds, and even helped with the Eden project. She was also said to have mentored Lucifer for a time.
After the Fall and the spawning of Hell, she was commissioned to build an army. It was expected to be her crowning achievement. Instead, on the day she gave the exorcists life and presented them to Heaven, she declared them a disgrace and publicly disowned them. She pawned them off on Adam, who had co-led the project, to raise and train as he saw fit.
Over the next several decades, she pulled out of one committee after another, stepped down from the various departments where she worked, ceased all involvement in politics, and eventually announced her retirement. She was the first and only elder to ever do so. She moved to a private sphere on the outskirts of Heaven with a single attendant as company, and was never seen in public again. She was confirmed to still exist every few weeks, when her attendant traveled to the city for books, craft supplies, and groceries. Over time, her name faded into obscurity.
Vaggie wasn’t interested in an ego-driven lecture. She didn’t need her maker’s judgement; she needed her help.
“I need you to get me back into Heaven,” she said.
Cynthaeis’s gray eyes hardened.
“No.”
“Yes.” Vaggie braved a step forward. “I’ve never asked you for anything before, and I’ll never ask for anything else after this, I swear. You’ll never have to see me again if you don’t want to. But if you vouch for me before the court, they’ll let me back in. They have to. You could restore my halo right now if you wanted to, I know you could! If you just talk to Adam, I’m sure—”
“Adam was never interested in what I had to say, and he won’t be now. Not to mention, I no longer have any influence over the courts, so my favor would gain you nothing. No.”
Vaggie clenched her fists and ground out, “Please.”
“No.”
“I made one mistake! One stupid mistake!” she cried. “I would take it back if I could!”
“Would you? It seems like you’ve settled in well enough with the princess.” Cynthaeis cocked her head. Those silver eyes bored into Vaggie, reading her like no one else could. After a moment she said, more of a statement than a question, “You love her.”
Vaggie’s brave front cracked. She ran forward and fell to her knees, just as she had with Leah. She grabbed the front of Cynthaeis’s robes and gasped, “She made me! I didn’t want to, but she made me! It’ll go away once I’m out of Hell, I know it will. What she made me feel isn’t real. I just want a second chance. Please, Cynthaeis, I can’t ask anyone else. You’re all I have left.”
Cynthaeis stared down at her for a long time. Her expression was unreadable. When she spoke, the subject change caught Vaggie off-guard.
“There was another army before you and your sisters. Did you know that?”
Vaggie swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. All the exorcists knew about the first army. The “rough draft army,” as Adam called it.
Cynthaeis wrested her robes from Vaggie’s grip and paced across the empty darkness. “It was before Adam was given creative control over the project. They were mine, mine alone. It took me twenty years to build them all because I wouldn’t let another angel touch them. A great and terrible force they were, frightening to behold. An army of indestructible warriors, one million strong—an army worthy of Heaven.”
She paused and looked down at Vaggie. There was a note of accusation in her tone as she posed, “Do you know what Adam said when I presented my army to him? The pinnacle of my career, the culmination of my abilities? He said, ‘I don’t like it. Make something else.’”
Vaggie felt sick. She already knew where this story was going, but she didn’t interrupt. She had nothing to say.
Cynthaeis resumed pacing and went on, “I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them, so I stored them in a void-space. Then I went back to the drawing board. I was forced to defer to Adam’s choices in every step of the project, from the numbers of our army to the design of the soldiers. I had a vision, and that imbecilic primate ignored it at every turn. Do you know how much of my vision ended up in the final product?”
Vaggie knew the answer. Everyone knew the answer.
Cynthaeis narrowed her eyes, and a hiss ripped through her teeth. “None. The Heavenly Host was meant to be my greatest creation. Instead, I ended up with you—my greatest shame.”
“I know,” Vaggie said hollowly. She didn’t try to hide the bitterness in her voice. “You care more about a bunch of dead angels than you ever did about us.”
“They are not dead. They’re less than that,” Cynthaeis snapped. Her face tightened, and for a moment, her expression was of the deepest despair Vaggie had ever seen. Her voice was thick with grief as she finished, “They never lived.”
Vaggie had rarely ever spared a thought for the rough draft soldiers. When she did, all she felt for them was resentment. Heaven’s indestructible army was doomed to remain a pile of lifeless shells, cast off into the infinite dark, taking with them whatever love Cynthaeis might’ve had for Vaggie and her sisters.
Cynthaeis stopped in front of her. She shut her eyes and drew a deep breath, and Vaggie felt the buzz of magic in the air.
Suddenly, Cynthaeis changed. Her scales dulled and her skin sagged. Deep lines transformed her face into a gaunt mask. Her plumage lost its shine, and pale gray peppered her feathers. She had been wearing a glamour, Vaggie realized, to hide her sickly appearance.
Vaggie gaped up at her. She didn’t understand.
“You’re different.”
“I’m mortal.” Cynthaeis said the word with such disgust, Vaggie couldn’t help recoiling.
That volatile mix of emotions ripped through her heart again. All Heavenborn angels, from the lowest-ranking cherub to the High Seraphim, were immortal. What Cynthaeis was claiming shouldn’t be possible. Angels didn’t age.
“How is this. . . when did you. . .” Vaggie stammered.
“Angels don’t just retire, Vaggie,” Cynthaeis said with a roll of her eyes. It was the first time Vaggie could recall ever hearing her say her name (it was no secret that Cynthaeis despised the names Adam gave the exorcists). “I am not seraphim. I can only create so much. I am powerful, but all power has limits. Giving life to an entire army was my limit.”
The full implications slowly sank in. Vaggie’s stomach turned.
“How long do you have?”
“Years. Maybe another century or two, if I avoid exerting myself.” Cynthaeis’s lip curled with unhidden disdain. “I knew what it would cost me to build an army, and I was ready to pay that cost. I would have gladly traded eternity to bring my vision to life. Instead, I traded it for you.”
Vaggie slumped down and shut her eyes. She was so tired. Her sisters had betrayed her, she’d just learned that her maker was mortal and dying, and all she wanted was to go home.
“Please, Cynthaeis,” she begged, trying one final time. “I know I’m not what you wanted, but you’re still my maker. Please.”
“Do you think any amount of ‘please’ will change the answer I’ve repeatedly given you?”
“I don’t have to be a soldier anymore. I could live with you, away from everyone else. I won’t cause any problems that way.”
“I fear we would only compound each other’s misery. No, Vaggie. I cannot, and will not, facilitate your return to Heaven. What you’re asking is the one thing I can’t give you.”
Vaggie shot to her feet, her anger rushing back full force, now tinged with panic.
“You’ve never given me anything! Not once! Do you remember the day you woke us up? I remember it. You were the first thing I saw, the first thing any of us saw. We loved you. I loved you, Cynthaeis! You were everything, and then you were gone! And you left us with him! You never gave us a single damn thing! You—”
Cynthaeis lunged forward with a snarl, grabbing Vaggie by the face and all but lifting her off the ground. Her claws dug into Vaggie’s skin. Her feathers flared and her wings lifted menacingly, making her look twice her normal size. Her halo blazed with searing white light.
“I gave you life!” she roared, baring her teeth. Her voice boomed across the void-space like thunder. “I sacrificed my immortality for you! For all of Heaven!”
For half a second, Vaggie thought Cynthaeis might kill her, but she didn’t. All at once, Cynthaeis’s rage died. She released Vaggie and stepped back. Her shoulders slumped and her wings drooped. In that moment, she looked her age—her real age. An ancient weariness hung in her voice as she said, “I’ve given enough.”
Vaggie threw herself forward, reaching for her maker with one last desperate plea, only to fall face-first onto hard pavement. She was back in the alley, with the screams of dying sinners ricocheting off the surrounding rooftops. Her blood trail had disappeared. Even the summoning circle was gone, leaving only a charred ring behind.
Vaggie grabbed her spear and scrambled to her feet. She didn’t have time to process everything that just happened. She was still in Hell, and as far as her sisters were concerned, she was fair game. There was nothing in the rulebook about sparing fallen angels.
She ran for her life.
Reevaluate your priorities. You’re being hunted. Find a place to hide and wait it out.
She needed a hiding spot. She leaped over fallen bodies and ducked under eaves, searching for an opening, any nook or cranny she could hide in. Eventually, she stumbled upon the doors to someone’s wine cellar. She yanked them open and dashed down the stairs. She heard feet pounding behind her and turned in time to see a sinner trying to follow.
“Let me in!” he begged. “We can both fit! Just—”
Vaggie lunged with a guttural yell, stabbing the spear through his gut. She kicked him off of it and shut the doors. Hopefully, any exorcists passing by would see his body and assume the area had been swept.
Vaggie got to the bottom of the stairs and backed away from the doors, but whipped around at the sound of shuffling bodies deeper in the cellar. She stormed over to a pile of barrels, hefting her spear, and found a succubus and incubus huddled in the corner. They wept and clung to each other.
It was everyone for themselves. Vaggie couldn’t let them live, no more than she could’ve let that sinner live. She was deciding which one to kill first when she caught a glimpse of yet another person on the far side of the room. She turned, ready to face them, too, but froze when she realized it was her reflection, distorted in a broken, dusty mirror.
Her face was haggard, her hair matted, her clothes splashed with demon blood. She looked like a feral animal. She looked like a sinner.
She stared down at the two demons. They were openly sobbing now, begging incoherently for her not to kill them. After a moment of deliberation, Vaggie retreated across the cellar and perched at the foot of the stairs.
“Stay over there, and we won’t have a problem,” she growled, pointing her spear at them in an unveiled threat. They nodded frantically and hugged each other tighter.
With that, Vaggie turned her focus to the doors. Not for one second did she let herself relax. She remained vigilant for hours, jumping at every close sound, tensing in anticipation whenever she heard someone pass by. At one point, the incubus had to piss, and went to the opposite corner of the cellar to do so. Vaggie watched him like a hawk the whole time, then marched him back to his friend’s side at spearpoint.
Her hands were cramping and her eye was bloodshot when, at long last, she heard the familiar blast of the horn signaling the exorcists to fall back.
“It’s over,” she declared.
The succubus nervously asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Let’s just give it a few more minutes.” Many exorcists made a habit of picking off stragglers on their way back to the portal, even after the horn had been blown. It wouldn’t be truly safe until they’d all gone back to Heaven.
Vaggie waited until she could wait no longer. She ditched the cellar, leaving the two demons to their own devices. She wandered through the streets, aimless and alone. She wondered if she should return to the palace. Was the bunker open now? Was Charlie out looking for her? Was she angry that Vaggie had defied her? Would this be the turning point in their relationship? Was the game over?
A group of sinners cornered her down a side street. Looters. Two went for the spear while the other three attempted to grab her. Vaggie killed them one by one, letting her instincts lead, only half-aware of each agile move. When it was over, five fresh bodies surrounded her. She moved on.
Clouds rolled in on a foul-smelling wind, and it began to rain. It was acid rain, steaming on the pavement and sizzling on the bodies that littered the street. It burned holes through Vaggie’s clothes wherever it touched, so she took shelter under the overhang of a restaurant roof. The space between the wall of the building and a graffitied dumpster was well protected, so she crouched down in there. It wasn’t comfortable, and she wouldn’t be able to react quickly if she was attacked, but she was tired, so tired.
The steady patter of raindrops on the tin roof slowed, then stopped. The rainclouds drifted away, leaving a cloying, acidic mist in their wake. Vaggie squeezed out from behind the dumpster and moved on again.
A limo slowed to a stop beside her as she was stumbling down the main drag. She didn’t know where she was anymore, and she didn’t care that she was in full view for anyone to take a shot at. Let them come. What did she have to lose?
“Vaggie!”
Charlie’s voice pulled her from her stupor, and she sluggishly turned around. Razzle and Dazzle waited beside the limo, and there was Charlie running towards her. Her eyes were wide and her face was white as a sheet.
“Charlie,” Vaggie mumbled. Her knees buckled as Charlie reached her, and she collapsed into her arms. Her strength was gone, her will was gone, but it was okay, because Charlie’s arms were around her, and she was carrying her to the car, where she would be safe, safe at last.
Once the doors were shut and they were on the road, the dam broke. Vaggie’s face crumpled and the first tear fell. A shudder passed through her, doubling her over.
“They didn’t listen,” she said. Her voice cracked. “I just wanted them to forgive me, but they didn’t. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t listen.”
“I know,” Charlie murmured, putting an arm around Vaggie’s shoulders.
Vaggie had never felt smaller than she did in that moment. A loud sob escaped her, and she leaned against Charlie, buried her face in her jacket.
“I want to go home,” she whispered. She broke down completely, sobbing and clinging to Charlie’s shirt. “I just want to go home.”
“I know. We’re going home now. It's okay, I’m taking you home. It’s going to be okay.”
Vaggie didn’t know what she meant by that. She had no home now. She had nothing.