Sunset ^beta

Lute bit back a scream as her knuckles crunched against the steel-reinforced face of the tackling dummy. Skin split, and golden blood splattered the warm metal.

Gold blood. Gold like his. Gold like hers. Gold—that bitch didn’t deserve to have gold inside her.

Lute pulled her hand back, flexed it. It was agony—sharp, grinding. She had long reached her limit, but it wasn’t enough. She needed her right hand to be on par with her left.

“You should’ve found a way to ditch both arms,” Adam drawled from where he was lounging on a nearby bench. “Maybe two upgrades would’ve gotten you that promotion.”

“I’m done for today. I have to stop,” Lute panted, cradling her broken hand. “I can’t. . . I can’t push it anymore. It’s not getting any stronger. This isn’t working.”

Adam scoffed and turned his eyes away. She almost begged him to look at her again.

“Throwing in the towel over a few bruises? Tch, no wonder I’m dead. My lieutenant’s a fucking pussy.”

Lute hated herself for the tears that sprang up in her eyes. She wiped them away before he could see and faced the tackling dummy once more. These dummies weren’t built to be punching bags, but then again, neither was the spawn of a fallen seraphim.

She needed to be stronger. She needed to be ready.

The next time she came face to face with Vaggie—that worthless, demon-fucking, cunt-sucking traitor—she wanted to be able to break her one-eyed skull open with one punch, and not with her prosthetic hand. She wanted to feel hot blood fill her glove, wanted to feel bone splinter, wanted to split her knuckles on something that mattered.

The first tear fell in anticipation of the pain she was about to inflict on herself. With a furious shout, she drew her fist back and slammed it into the dummy’s featureless face.

Her vision went white. She fell to her knees on the gravelly ground of the training yard. Tears dripped onto her bloody hand as she cradled it against her chest, dripped onto her strong metal hand, her false hand, the gleaming gold limb that was the reward of her failure.

“Please,” she whispered. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Adam. “Please, I can’t do it anymore. Just let me go to an aid center, and then—”

“Pussy.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Adam slung himself off the bench and sauntered over. He bent down, and the mouth of his mask twisted up in a mean sneer as he said, “No wonder my limpdick son was able to rein you in so easy. A fucking imp could run right over you. ‘Does no one know who they’re dealing with’? Yeah, edgelord, they know, and I don’t see any of them shaking in their boots.”

“I’m trying,” Lute said weakly. She was ashamed at the way her voice trembled.

“Not very hard. All talk, no fucking walk.”

“They won’t let me. He wouldn’t let me!”

“Oh, yeah, my bad, I forgot about General Doormat. Real fucking respectable of you to kneel down and nuzzle his balls the second he puts on his helmet. As if he could ever come close to my level.”

A choked, guttural whine escaped her. Lute shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to hold back more tears.

Pathetic. Fucking pathetic.

“I’m not,” she whispered.

Hideous faces flashed across her mind: an X-ed out eye, a hooked nose, an arrogant glare; cherry cheeks on porcelain skin, a thick blond mane that always seemed to be moving slightly without the aid of a breeze, like it was alive; an elfish face, like a doll’s face, the face of the father of corruption, a near-human façade of beauty concealing the mangled, monstrous creature he had become.

They all thought Lute was weak. How could they not? Twice now, she’d failed to avenge Adam in any capacity. They no longer feared her. Why should they?

“What’s that?” Adam prompted. He leaned down and cupped an ear as if he couldn’t hear everything she said, everything she thought and felt. “Couldn’t hear it over the sound of you being a pathetic fucking dog.”

“I am not. Pathetic,” Lute growled. At last she raised her head, so he could see that she meant it.

“Oh, really? You’re not?”

“I’m not!”

“Prove it!”

Lute lunged to her feet with a roar and threw her fist—her metal one—into the dummy’s chest with all her might.

There was a tremendous crunch as the dummy’s chest caved in, a screech as it tore free from its anchor. It flew across the training yard, burning a track through the ground, and smashed into the wall at the opposite end.

Lute stood there, her chest heaving, sweat soaking through the coarse fabric of her training tunic. The yard was silent but for the whisper of a clear night breeze. She and Adam were the only ones there; the few other exorcists who trained at night had taken to avoiding her lately.

Adam applauded, slow and condescending. With a smirk, he said, “Not bad, tits. When you can land a hit like that with your real hand, maybe you’ll be slightly more intimidating than a cherub.”

Lute’s heart sank. She glared down at her metal hand, hating it, hating herself for needing it, hating herself for liking it.

Pussy. Cripple. Useless. Worthless. Weak. Pathetic. Fucking pathetic.

“Lute?”

At the sound of the intruding voice, Lute’s eye twitched, and her feathers stiffened. Her anger rose from a simmer to a boil.

Emily alighted on the ground behind her, a cautious distance away. Even if she hadn’t spoken, the flutter of her six wings gave her away.

“Ugh, this bitch,” Adam grumbled, rolling his eyes.

Lute agreed completely, but she couldn’t say that. Emily would probably whine to Sera about her attitude. Seeing as Sera was now fully subservient to Emily and her pet snake, that wouldn’t end well.

Lute wanted to scream, wanted to rage, wanted to punch into Emily’s chest and squeeze her bleeding heart until it stilled, but she couldn’t. She had to play nice—for now. She took a deep breath, fixed her face into as neutral an expression as she could manage, and turned to face her.

“Seraphim,” she said through gritted teeth. She assumed proper posture and gave a curt nod, as if she had any semblance of respect for this apologistic, doe-eyed waif.

“Lute. Hi. Sorry to interrupt your, uh. . . training,” Emily said with a very obviously forced smile. Her eyes darted across the training yard, following the steaming track the tackling dummy had forged through the ground.

“Yeah, sure, you’re sorry. Fucking lame,” Adam ranted, flapping around behind Emily and making faces at her. Lute had to consciously remind herself that only she could see him.

With a tight-lipped smile, she said, “You’re not interrupting at all, Your Highness. I was just wrapping up.”

“Oh, good. That’s good.”

Silence fell. A few times, Emily started to speak, but shut her mouth. She was timid, for such a superior being. It was a stark reminder that her rank was entirely unearned, just like Abel’s.

“Can I help you, Your Highness?” Lute finally prompted. Whatever Emily wanted, they had better just get it over with. Lute didn’t want to stand there staring at her round, freckled face, with her superficial beauty and shallow innocence, any longer than she had to.

The reminder worked, and Emily stirred out of her timid daze.

“Right, yes! I was just with Abel—Saint Peter and I are helping him get settled in his new quarters—and I had to take off, so he asked if I could swing by and give you some papers.”

It was criminally disrespectful for Abel to ask such a lowly favor of a seraphim, but Lute kept that to herself as Emily pulled a holomail tube from her sleeve and handed it over. Lute clicked the pinkie-sized device to project the enclosed documents, and pretended to read them while Emily continued, “He made a draft of the upcoming schedule—training hours, patrol rotations, all that jazz—but you know the troops better than he does, so he wants you to look it over. He said to come up to his office and meet with him whenever you get a chance. Speaking of meetings, are you going on the retreat this weekend?”

“What retreat?”

“The exorcists’ retreat? He announced it this afternoon? He did mention you’ve been out and about today, so I suppose you might’ve missed it.” Emily was trying very hard to live up to her angel-of-joy schtick as she excitedly rambled, “I helped him plan a retreat for the exorcists, so you guys will get to do all sorts of fun bonding activities this weekend! He really wants to get to know the girls, and he wants you to help him. You and Adam were close, so we’re hoping this’ll seal the whole passing-the-torch deal.”

Lute stared at her. Her metal hand, already clenched in a fist, tightened until the holomail tube snapped in her grip. Emily watched with wide eyes as a dusting of tiny parts drifted to the ground.

“A retreat,” Lute repeated flatly.

Adam came into view, pacing behind Emily, and cackled, “Oh, I see. This is, like, the opposite of a funeral. My fuckass loser son is gonna toast to his daddy and the cushy promotion he inherited, and then he’s gonna see which girl makes the best fleshlight. And the seraphim helped organize this bullshit? Wow. They’re not even trying to be subtle.”

Emily balked at the rage that Lute knew was showing on her face. Even if she’d wanted to hide it, she didn’t think she could.

In the month following Adam’s death, he became something of a scapegoat for the exterminations so Sera didn’t have to take all the heat herself. It was easy enough to spin the story against him, since he wasn’t around to defend himself.

This retreat wasn’t meant to help Abel bond with the exorcists—not that such attempts were likely to work, since Lute had been discretely sowing seeds of truth among her fellow soldiers whenever and wherever she found an opportunity. No, the goal of this “retreat” was to solidify his father’s posthumous pariah status, and to close the door on the First Man once and for all. After this weekend, the gullible, glaze-eyed lambs that made up Heaven’s population would never be bothered to think of him again. Everyone would officially move on, and the First Man would become a dark stain of shame, survived only by the dry, dusty history books that no one read.

Lute knew the requisite mourning period was over for everyone except her, but it was a fresh punch to the gut to be reminded of how quickly even the most devout angels had cast Adam aside.

But she couldn’t say any of that. Emily wouldn’t listen; she wouldn’t understand. No one would.

“Is that all?” Lute ground out at last. It was a Herculean feat to keep her voice level, to ignore the itch of violence in her golden claws. She wanted to lunge at Emily and gouge those big purple eyes from their sockets. But she couldn’t, so she didn’t.

Emily seemed relieved that Lute didn’t take the bait. Lute hoped that would be the end of it, but to her dismay, Emily wasn’t done.

“He’s worried about you, Lute. You’re his lieutenant now. He wants to trust you, and he wants you to trust him, and. . . I’m worried about you, too.”

She braved a few steps closer and went on, “Look, the last few months have been crazy for everyone, especially with what just happened in Hell, with that Vox guy. If you need to talk about any of it. . .”

Lute scoffed. She turned away, unable to look at her any longer. Emily persisted, “I mean it, Lute. I know how you must be feeling right now—”

“You don’t.”

Lute didn’t mean to let the words slip out. Emily blanched at her harsh tone, but didn’t back down. She looked like she was actively repressing the urge to argue as she took a deep breath and flexed her hands.

“I do know, Lute.” She turned slightly to show off her prosthetic wing. That wound had been entirely her own doing, but she clearly thought it was on the same level as Lute’s arm. Lute recalled the exposed bones and singed feathers, and wished she’d lost all six wings.

Emily reached out to take Lute’s hands, either ignoring or not noticing the way she flinched, and said with saccharine sympathy, “We’re all still processing, but this is Heaven. There’s someone for everyone to talk to.”

Her gaze flicked down. Her face dipped into a frown, which turned to a look of alarm. She gasped and clutched Lute’s right hand, lifted her broken knuckles into the light. Lute’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, and she tried to pull her hand away.

“It’s fine, it's nothing. I was about to head to an aid center.”

“Lute, your hand! Oh, stars, I was so busy yapping, I didn’t even notice, I’m so sorry! Here, I can fix it.”

“I said it’s fucking fine,” Lute snapped, but her protests were in vain.

Emily cupped her fingers in both hands, and her palms glowed with magic. Lute winced as her knuckle bones realigned, crackling and popping, and torn skin knitted itself shut.

She tensed when she became aware of Emily’s flowery scent, filling her nose like perfume. It was the smell of all things soft and sugary, as sickly-sweet as the rest of her. Lute sometimes noticed it in court, but had never been exposed to it so closely, for so long. It made her want to vomit.

“Wow. I just. . . wow,” Adam laughed dryly. He was behind her now; she could feel him leering over her shoulder. “You need little miss sugar tits to kiss your boo-boos? Do you need her to tuck you in and read you a bedtime story, too? She probably would, if you asked. Hell, she’d probably climb into bed with you, if you were extra polite. Hey, what do you think seraphim pussy tastes like?”

Lute ripped her hand from Emily’s grasp and staggered away—away from her, away from Adam, away from all of it.

“Don’t touch me!” she burst out. She grew furious at herself when her voice warbled and cracked. It made her want to break her hand again, but she knew Emily would repair it, because she didn’t fucking understand. No one did.

Soft, warm hands alighted on her shoulders, held her fast even when she tried to squirm away.

“I’m trying to help you.”

Her hands were soft, soft like the rest of her. Lute wanted to seize her perfect hands, tie them down, break them, bite them.

Weak. Fucking pathetic soft bitch. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

“I don’t want your fucking help.”

“Lute, please, will you look at me? I’m only trying to—”

Lute finally did look at her, and she was radiant. It wasn’t fair. Emily was here, in Heaven, glowing like the stars, and Adam was gone, and it wasn’t fucking fair.

Her palm struck Emily’s face with a sound like a whipcrack. Emily reeled back in shock, clutching her cheek. Lute knew she should lose her hand for raising it against a seraphim, but she didn’t care. A part of her hoped it would happen.

She didn’t wait for Emily to recover her wits. She seized the front of her gown, yanked her forward, and crushed her lips in a hard, angry kiss.

Emily let out a muffled squeak of surprise. Her delicate hands fluttered to Lute’s shoulders, and she could’ve easily pushed her away, but she didn’t. Lute squeezed her eyes shut and angled her face to get closer. She grabbed a fistful of Emily’s thick, downy hair and twisted it at the roots to hold her still.

It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but those seconds seemed to encapsulate a brief eternity. Emily’s mouth tasted good, and she smelled even better, and Lute didn’t have the wherewithal to be ashamed when a quiet groan of need escaped her.

In those few seconds, she couldn’t hear Adam at all. She couldn’t sense him anywhere around her. The whole world seemed to disappear.

She pulled back and shoved Emily away. Her stomach was turning. Her hand trembled as she wiped her lips on the back of it. The bitch just stared at her, mouth hanging open like she was expecting another kiss, this time with tongue. A yellow blush bloomed in her round cheeks.

“Holy fucking shit!” Adam was in the stands now, spectating with a set of binoculars. Lute wanted to shrink into her boots as he threw his head back and laughed.

Her anger gave way to mortification. The moment replayed in her head, over and over. What the fuck was she thinking? Moreover, why didn’t Emily stop her? Even if unholy urges occasionally overcame lesser angels in fits of emotion, surely a seraphim knew better, knew to shut that shit down before it got out of hand.

Lute was unable to put a name to her scrambled feelings until Adam chortled, “You pitiful fucking dyke! Who could’ve seen that coming?”

“No, I’m not. . . I would never. . .” Lute whispered, falling back a step.

Emily lifted a hand, touched her fingers to her lips. To Lute’s deepening horror, a shy smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh. I didn’t know you were. . .” Emily trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air. The humiliation somehow got worse when she giggled breathlessly and said, “I wasn’t ready, I’ve never. . . you could’ve warned me.”

Adam let out a bark of laughter. The harsh sound made Lute flinch.

“Holy fuck, she’s actually into it! She’s a lezzy slut just like you! God, that’s fucking hilarious. Who knew those wet fantasies of yours would ever come close to true?”

Lute didn’t want to think about those fantasies, the ones she sometimes turned to as backup when her Adam-centric fantasies weren’t enough. It wasn’t safe to think about those things outside the privacy of her bed, outside of a dark room and a locked door. Just the mention of it made her sick with shame.

It had been a while since she'd had a chance to indulge in those fantasies. She didn't dare consider it, with Adam constantly hovering around her. It was probably for the best.

Was this Emily’s angle? Was this the real reason she’d come to the yard tonight, knowing Lute was alone, because none of the exorcists had the balls to train with her anymore? Was she trying to catch her in a moment of weakness? Was this her way of infecting Lute with her misplaced demonic sympathies?

The two faces she hated most darted across her mind again: that whore Vaggie (she apparently went by Vaggi now, as if that was any better), and Charlie fucking Morningstar.

Every aspect of their “love” was fucking vile. Lute was not like them. She wouldn’t, couldn’t be like them.

Emily tentatively reached out to touch her arm.

“Lute—”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Lute spat, swatting her hand away. She put every ounce of vitriol she could muster into her voice, and found immense satisfaction in the way Emily’s face crumpled with hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Emily mumbled. She stepped back, wringing her hands. “I just. . . I thought—”

“You should go. I'm sure you’ve got lots of important seraphim things to do.” Lute strode to the bench and drank a swig of water. She sneered over her shoulder and added, “You’re a lot more useful in Hell than you are up here, you know.”

Emily’s eyes glistened. She was noticeably holding back tears as she whispered a goodnight and flew away. Lute watched her until she disappeared from sight.

Emily was one of those angels who was more comfortable in the air than on the ground, yet Lute had never managed to get a proper look up her skirt. It was odd, and a little irritating.

“Whoa, girlie. Better get that gay-ass train of thought back on the right track,” Adam said. There was a distinct note of warning in his tone.

“Stop saying that. I’m not,” Lute blurted. Now that she was alone, she could finally confront him—not that she had much to say. She could never be truly angry at him, and they both knew it. He was dead; it wasn’t fair to hold him responsible for her unclean thoughts.

“Not exclusively, maybe, but a half-rusted sword is still a rusty piece of shit. You’re really not much better than Vaggie, are you? At least she knows where she belongs.”

Lute’s face burned, and her fists clenched. The shame was back, clawing at her insides, hot and hurtful. She knew it was deserved, but she wished there was no cause for it.

Training no longer held any appeal, so she left the yard. She went straight to her room and fell into bed without bothering to wash or change. She fell into a restless sleep, face-down on a pillow damp with tears, with the ghost of Emily’s soft, flowery scent tickling her nose.