The city stretches out before me. From the roof of The Saint, the traffic-choked streets are nothing more than streaks of red and white light, racing towards their destination at an irritated crawl. Street lamps illuminate the insect-sized humans going about their night.

If more sirens screech through the night than usual as the local law enforcement futilely tries to subdue this sudden epidemic of unnaturally strong, rage-filled criminals prowling the streets, it certainly doesn’t have much of an effect on the crowds. I’m not surprised. Nero and his fiddle might have been a myth but the brothels and taverns were still packed when Rome burned. Two thousand years and beyond trading the town crier for Twitter, nothing has changed.

And somewhere, down in the thick of all of it, is Grace.

Her presence tugs at me, a persistent throb in the depths of my brain reminding me that I can send her away but not truly banish her.

I take a long pull from the bottle of whiskey in my hand. I’d returned after a day of fruitless searching for Uriel. A few days ago, the advances of the bartender pouring my drink, his fingers lingering over mine just a bit longer than necessary as he handed me the glass, would have been a welcome diversion. The cocktail waitress who sidled up next to me with a white dress clinging to her generous curves could have rounded out the trio nicely.

Instead, I found myself gritting my teeth and ignoring them, the very desires I had reveled in grating on my nerves until I grabbed the bottle of whiskey in front of me and stalked away.

The door to the roof was shut tight, but a quick twist of the knob snapped the locking mechanism, and a flight of stairs later, here I am, a dozen stories above the city, caught between Heaven and the muck of the world.

Humanity isn’t the only thing that doesn’t change, it seems.

Tilting my head back to gaze at the cloudless night sky, the darkness broken by pinpricks of the stars I lit so many eons ago, I glower at the blackness.

"I bet you think this is hilarious. I come up here to clean up YOUR MESS, and this happens." I tip back the bottle, taking another swig and coming up empty, envying the weak mortal constitution for the first time. Getting blackout drunk unquestionably has an appeal, especially now.

“I bet you’re up there enjoying your cosmic fucking gag reel at all of our expense,” I spit, the bottle dangling limply from my fingers as I rail at the skies. “I could have killed Michael. Your precious, always obedient lap dog. You sit back and let Uriel slaughter his way through your own bloodline, and you do nothing!” I fling the bottle over the side, taking a tiny bit of satisfaction in the sudden blare of car horns as it shatters on the streets below.

“I don’t know why I expected anything else from you. You have a habit of martyring your children to whatever cause you deem worthy, whether they consent or not.”

The skies stay silent, the only movement from the blinking lights of a plane descending towards the airport.

“You did this. You put her in my path so that I could watch her die.”

I hear the soft whoosh of displaced air behind me and turn to see Michael, his wings such a brilliant white they glow.

But not nearly as bright as mine once did.

If Michael heard my tirade, he chooses not to comment.

"Nothing. He's gone to ground," Michael says, looking irritated at the fruitless search that requires him to still be in my presence. "He'll let the city slip into chaos and wait for the girl to surface before he makes a move." Michael steps closer to me warily, vanishing his wings in the half-second between strides. "I know you have her stashed somewhere, Lucifer. Where is she?"

I exhale slowly, turning my back to Michael and returning my gaze out to the city.

“I don't know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe whatever you want about me. That should be easy enough for you.” I reach out across the bond just enough to let the faint pulse of her life reassure me before adding, “I won’t make her a part of this. Dear old Dad has taken enough from her already.”

I don’t need to be facing Michael to see the righteous indignation across his face at my suggestion that our Father is responsible for the city’s current predicament. “Our Father didn’t order this Lucifer,” Michael states with the assurance of a true believer. “Uriel chose to do this.”

The zealots always were my favorites down in Hell.

I round on Michael, and something in my face makes him take a step back. “Choice.” I mock. “The next thing you’ll be saying is that he exercised his free will. Uriel always was a slow learner, wasn’t he?” I take another step forward, but this time Michael holds his ground. We stand eye to eye under the unfeeling gaze of Heaven, and I’m just begging for an excuse to make my brother bleed.

Of course, there are so many ways to damage. I should know. I invented most of them.

"You and I though, we're different than Uriel. Neither of us ever doubted who we were." I tilt my head to the side, fixing Michael with an inquisitive look as I make the first cut. "Though you did have your little detour in Phoenicia all those years ago, didn't you?" Michael flinches but doesn’t move, anger blazing in his eyes as I poke at the old wound.

Time to rip it open then.

“And how is dear Elissa? It’s been some time since I spoke with her. I’m sure you’ve checked up on her over the years. Tell me, does she still despise you?”

I only have the tick of Michael’s jaw as a warning, but I still easily dodge his punch.

“Temper temper. What would Dad say if he saw his sons fighting?”

“You’re an ass.”

“No, I’m just honest.” I shift back on my heels, watching Michael warring internally with his urge to try for another punch and his strange desire to keep whatever tentative peace he can.

The momentary amusement of antagonizing my brother doesn’t manage to lift my mood for long, and I pivot on my heel and walk back to the edge of the building, leaving Michael standing in the middle of the roof.

“Leave.”

Filtered up a dozen stories, the noises of the city are muffled. Even the constant drone of mortal desire and sin that buzzes in my ears like an annoying insect is quieter. But the soft sound of the air displacing when Michael unfurls his wings and leaves me alone never comes.

"What do you think Uriel will do to her if he finds her first?" Michael's boots crunch on the loose gravel scattered across the tar, walking to the edge to peer over the side to the city below. "You think I don't remember what it's like to be forced to choose between one of them and my duty?"

"Duty," I jeer, the word tasting foul in my mouth. "Do you think I give a damn about duty?" I fling my arm outward, gesturing at the masses below us. "I don't create evil. I punish it. You know that." In my peripheral vision, I see Michael cock his head in confusion, looking almost like he’s seeing me for the first time. "I didn't come here to put a stop to this for Heaven. And honestly, it's not even for Hell. It's for them."

I lean on the railing, staring straight down at the grey pavement twelve floors below, the whispers of LustGreedWrath rising towards me like smoke. “I understand them. He created them and then set them adrift in this world. Our Father might be perfectly happy to wash his hands of his creations, but I’m not. Not anymore.”

“You’ve changed, brother.”

"A few thousand years gives you time to think." I glance over at Michael and see that his eyebrows have taken up permanent residence in his hairline, his utter shock over my apparently sudden change of heart written all over his countenance.

“It’s probably best that you ended it now. You couldn’t very well bring a living human with you back to Hell.”

I bristle at Michael's assumption. The truth is until Grace had innocently mentioned it the concept of staying had never occurred to me. The plan had started off so simple – sample the local flavor, kill my brother, restore the natural order, and return to Hell.

But Grace’s words planted a seed. And Michael’s statement that of course, I’m going back forces me to confront what she already knew.

I don’t want to return to year upon year of blood and screams and misery. Hell can run without me. Let the Fallen and the demons have at it. I just want to be free.

“Who says I have any intention of going back?”

Michael sputters, “But you have to go back!” with such vehemence that it’s almost comical. Pity I’m not in the jovial mood.

“I have to go back?” I demand. “Or what? I’ll be punished? Please enlighten me as to what retribution Father will bring on me that’s worse than Hell!”

Michael holds his tongue for longer than I expect before saying, “Hell needs a guardian.”

“Are you volunteering? Because I think there’s a permanent vacancy coming open.” When Michael opens his mouth to argue again, I say one word, my voice low and dangerous as I reach the end of my patience.

“Leave.”

Incredibly enough, he does. I hear the whisper of his flight feathers across the air as he leaves me alone with my thoughts, the edges of the sky just starting to lighten with the coming dawn.

Most angels, Fallen or otherwise, would resent a task as insultingly simplistic as staking out a human's house, but Phenex has never been one to follow the beaten path. The address Lucifer provided looks no different than every other house nearby, the goldenrod yellow door the only thing differentiating it from the other long, low shotgun houses on the street.

A large ginger cat naps on the front porch, its eyes opening to warily watch Phenex as he ascends the stairs to the door. It meows softly in greeting before closing its green eyes, unmistakably finding Phenex unworthy of attention.

The old lock gives way quickly under Phenex’s hand, the pieces of the bolt rattling inside the door as Phenex enters, pulling it shut behind him.

When a quick sweep of the small house reveals that Phenex is its lone occupant, his natural curiosity quickly takes over. "What is it about this girl that has Lucifer so infatuated?" he murmurs.

The house is sparsely decorated, the walls bare beyond a few paintings hung haphazardly in the living room. The largest dominates the back wall, and from a few feet away the entire canvas appears to be painted black. As Phenex draws closer the early morning light filters in from the shuttered window and catches on streaks of charcoal grey and paler shades of smoke. The fallen angel scrutinizes the canvas, and the whorls of darkness finally coalesce into a massive set of jet black wings, drops of iridescence in the paint making them appear to glow from within.

Hidden in the bottom corner of the canvas, added as an afterthought below the tip of the right flight feather are the initials MC.

Phenex moves deeper into the house, wrinkling his nose at the wilted vase of white daisies next to the sink, the long crack in the glass cutting the window above in two. He crosses the threshold of the bedroom, idly noting the drawers gaping open, clothes spilling out onto the scarred wooden floors as though she had packed quickly.

Tucked into the large mirror above the dresser is a faded photo of a blonde woman nearly the image of Grace leaning against a red Jeep. She’s laughing, her head thrown back with abandon, delight radiating off her. Phenex plucks the photo from its home, squinting at the worn paper, trying to reconcile that this wild, happy creature had born the girl he had met.

Maybe that's what keeps drawing Lucifer to her. Hidden deep within both of them is the memory of joy before it had been buried by the weight of their lives. And their choices. "It always comes back to free will," Phenex mutters, adding the pang at the loss of Lucifer's friendship to his endless litany of regrets.

Shaking his head at the sentimentality, Phenex exits the room, heading back to the living room and the lumpy looking couch by the window. If he’s stuck waiting here for Uriel to show up, he hopes they at least had cable.

A soft scrape on the floor behind him is the only warning. Without bothering to look back, Phenex drops to a crouch, Uriel’s blade whipping over his head close enough for the breeze to ruffle his pale hair.

Any triumph is short-lived. Uriel recovers from his miss quickly, backhanding Phenex with his free hand, the force knocking him into the coffee table. The glass top shatters under his weight.

Phenex rolls off the pile of rubble, narrowly escaping Uriel's blade as it slams down into the center of the table. He darts back, trying to keep some distance between himself and the larger angel.

The last time Phenex laid eyes upon Uriel was long before the Fall. Of the Archangels, only Lucifer bothered to interact with lower level seraphim like Phenex, the rest preferring to keep their own company, but the hazy memories Phenex has of Uriel guarding the gates of Eden with his flaming sword can’t compare to the madness in his eyes now.

Uriel’s bulky form is nearly as tall as Michael, with broad shoulders and a mane of dusty brown hair hanging to his shoulders, the ends rough as though he had hacked them off with his blade. He probably had.

While most angels on Earth at least make a cursory attempt to match their clothing to the current century, Uriel dresses in the same style of rough-spun robes he had worn in Heaven.

A quip about his fashion sense dies in Phenex's throat at the sight of Uriel's eyes. Far different than the haughty superiority of Michael or the tightly coiled wrath of Lucifer, Uriel's glimmer with the calm surety of a heretic staring down a blaze with a smile. Michael is right. He’s completely insane.

There had been rumors sifting through Hell for years of an unknown angel, powerful and pitiless as any demon, who demands repentance before he cuts you down.

And if your repentance doesn’t please him, the cuts are slow.

Phenex had laughed at the rumors. More often than not, demons are as bad as humans when it comes to making up frightening stories about the boogeyman in the closet.

Phenex isn’t laughing now.

“This world was pure once,” Uriel’s voice is low and gravely from disuse. “I don’t know what’s worse, the stink of the humans and their petty lusts or the filth of the Fallen that choose to wallow with them.” Uriel circles Phenex, cutting him off from escaping through the door or windows.

"If anyone could use some time in the thick of humanity, it's you," Phenex taunts. "Might yank that angelic stick out of your ass." Uriel lunges forward. Phenex leaps back, but not far enough. The blade slams into his side; the Heaven forged metal burning like acid.

Phenex's knees buckle, and Uriel wrenches the blade from him. He crashes gracelessly to the floor, coughing wetly as his body rejects the touch of the weapon.

Uriel kneels beside him, the rough brown fabric of his robes sopping up the blood already starting to pool beneath the smaller angel.

"I know who you are," Uriel says, his larger hand grabbing a fistful of Phenex's hair and hauling him up. "The pretty one who trails behind Lucifer like a pet, begging for his scraps while dreaming of Heaven." Uriel leans closer, and under the metallic tang of blood, Phenex can smell the warm earth of Eden still clinging to his skin. "We laugh at you."

Uriel releases him, and Phenex crumples to the ground, the vibrant red stain across his pale suit growing as he struggles to rise, preparing himself for Uriel's killing blow.

“You’re not worth the effort,” Uriel sneers, the sound of his boots fading as he walks out the door.