“Aaaahhh!”

The pain was too intense. Maggie couldn’t bear much more. Veylo stood at the end of her bed, gazing eagerly down at her pussy, where she imagined her bloody baby’s head was ripping through.

“Come on,” Veylo said, “That’s it. You’re almost there.”

Tears rushed off her crimson face. Another immortal stood by Veylo, but Maggie didn’t recognize him. He was nearly as tall as Craetis, his white higherling wings stretched out beside him. Whoever he was, he sure wasn’t helping her any.

“Fuck you all! Fuck you all to Hell!”

The pain inside her increased so sharply that she couldn’t help but scream again.

“He’s here!” Veylo announced.

He? she thought. It’s a boy?

She tossed about, disoriented, her body overwhelmed, depleted.

The moment her mom had tried to prevent from happening had arrived.

Veylo held up what appeared to her to be a bloody ball of yarn, and in her delirium, she thought that was what it might have been.

“He’s beautiful!” Veylo exclaimed.

She thought of the boy with the crossword puzzles.

A wailing sound filled the air.

Is that my baby? Maggie wondered. Is that him?

A thought stirred in her mind, one she was ashamed of thinking: I want him so bad.

“A whore isn’t fit to be a mother!” echoed through Maggie’s thoughts. But she could prove her mom wrong. If only she had the chance.

It didn’t matter. They were going to take him away from her. If she didn’t do something, they were going to rip him from her life forever.

What can I do?

She didn’t have strength. She didn’t have energy. She didn’t have will. All she had was the pain that surged through her. The pain in her body, and the pain of knowing she was about to lose something precious…something wonderful…something that she only now understood the value of.

“There, there,” Veylo cooed, rocking the bloody yarn back and forth.

No. He’s mine.

The door behind him burst open and Kinzer ran in.

***

Kinzer stood in the doorway, two swords gripped in his hands, fury in his eyes. Maggie was lying on the bed, her pelvis dripping with blood. But Kinzer only noticed her for a moment as his attention drew to a higherling standing beside Veylo. And in that moment, all his rage, all the hate that he had for the Raze, vanished.

“Ubba—da—ga—” He stuttered nonsense. He couldn’t process a thought. “Janka?” he finally managed.

Janka stood there, silent. With wide, blue eyes, set below those all-too-familiar bushy eyebrows, he stared at Kinzer with that deep, powerful, immortal stare. Kinzer’s thoughts wheeled back to that horrible day when he’d watched Veylo and the Raze beat and torture him…when he thought they’d killed him.

How was he alive? Unfortunately, despite all his confusion, he already knew the answer to his question.

“All this time,” he said, “you’ve been working with the Raze?”

“Not exactly accurate,” Veylo said. The baby continued throwing a fit in his arms. “He was a spy, like you, but the Almighty discovered that Janka was working against Him, so He gave him an ultimatum. He could either work with us to maintain his position in Heaven, or forever be banished to Hell.”

“But, I saw Craetis and Veylo—”

Veylo smirked. “A clever performance, don’t you think? The Leader’s Allies, you included, needed to believe that Janka was dead so they wouldn’t know that he was the one delivering names to the Almighty. If anyone knew that he was the one squealing, they would’ve run before we had time to catch all the traitors. As long as they believed that we’d discovered his treachery, they’d believe it was an isolated incident…that they were safe. That’s why we had time to catch Donna and Krimson.”

As Veylo spoke, Kinzer’s gaze remained fixed on Janka. “So you outed me and the other Leader’s Allies because you were trying to maintain your position in Heaven?”

Janka’s expression didn’t change.

A fire stirred in Kinzer’s chest. “I think you owe me some answers!”

Janka took a deep breath. Kinzer knew what he was doing. He’d seen him like that so many times before. He was massaging a most perfect response into place, unwilling to speak before he’d devised something to articulate his exact intent.

“I did what I had to do.”

His response bewildered Kinzer. That was it?

“What you had to do?” Kinzer asked. “You were willing to sacrifice Donna and Krimson and Fie and Dedrus and Treycore…and me, rather than yourself?”

“I’m not proud!” he barked, a pink shade washing over his immortally pale flesh.

“But you still did it.”

“Kinzer, I—”

The fire in Kinzer’s chest exploded, as if Janka’s words had just fanned its flames. “And you never thought you could come to me for help?”

“You were too committed to the cause. I couldn’t trust you.”

Those words were like a sword through Kinzer’s heart.

“Committed to the cause?” he asked. “The only reason I was a part of the cause was because of you. Because I loved you. Because I wanted to be with you.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“I don’t think you understand how many shits I don’t give. How could you side with them? After all that they’ve done? After all that the Almighty’s done?”

“Because at the end of the day,” Veylo said, stroking his finger across the baby, “Janka has, and always will be, a coward who doesn’t want to lose the luxurious life he has in Heaven…just like the rest of us.”

A tear formed in Kinzer’s eye. His mind reeled with memories of the past few days.

A horrifying realization hit him.

“It was you,” he said. “You were the Tracker…you tracked me to get to Dedrus and Treycore…to get to Maggie.”

The guilty look in Janka’s eyes was the only confirmation Kinzer needed.

Janka reached out and touched Kinzer’s shoulder. Kinzer yanked it out of his grasp.

“Don’t you fucking touch me!” he shouted. “I don’t know who I thought you were, but you’re not the Janka I fell in love with.”

“I am. I promise. I just couldn’t—”

“No! The Janka I loved never could have done something like this to his friends…to me.”

“Kinzer, please!”

“You watched them clip me. They took my wings. My gift. Veylo tried to make me a sex slave. Did you know that?”

Janka hesitated. He nodded.

“And you were okay with me being raped and fucked to death?”

A loud cry echoed from the hall. Kinzer knew who it was. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there, but hearing him tore him up inside.

“Do you hear that?” he asked. “That’s a helpless mortal. He doesn’t have anything to do with this. He’s never hurt anyone, and you let your sick friends terrorize him.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

The tear in Kinzer’s eye rushed down his cheek. “I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to take a moment and acknowledge the terrible immortal that you really are and the horrible things that you’ve done.”

“Don’t be so hard on him,” Veylo said. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve come around.”

“What?”

“Kinzer,” Janka said, “you’re so much stronger than we realized. Stronger than I realized. Even without your wings…without your powers…you destroyed a Morarke. Do you have any idea how miraculous that is? We never imagined that you would have been able to do that by yourself, but you have. Join us, and we can restore not only your wings and gift, but also your place in Heaven.”

Kinzer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After all he’d just said, how could Janka ever believe that he’d side with him?

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked. “What makes you think I’d ever want to be in Heaven?”

“Kinzer,” Janka said, “I know you can’t possibly forgive me right now, but give it time, and we can have all the love that we had before. Come to Heaven and be with me.”

The rage that fueled Kinzer dissipated as it was steadily replaced with wild confusion.

“After all I’ve seen you go through,” Janka continued, “after all I’ve seen you endure, I know now that you are the one I want to spend an eternity with.”

Kinzer’s eyes glazed over, as if he was trapped in Janka’s spell all over again.

“Help us. With the Christ—”

“The Christ?” Kinzer asked. He was even more confused than before.

“Yes. Before we faked my death, I told Dedrus that this child was the Antichrist. I had to. The Council was too close to discovering the truth. If they believed it was the Antichrist, the Almighty would never be implicated, and the Council would come after the Leader. But I hadn’t realized that Dedrus would take matters into his own hands. That’s how this whole mess began. If he would have just let the Council take care of it, the Leader would have been punished, and we would have taken the Christ to a safe place to be born.”

“That’s the Christ?”

“Yes,” Janka replied.

“Fuuuucckkkk,” the half-conscious Maggie moaned.

“And now that he’s here,” Janka continued, “soon the Almighty’s work will be carried out, and all that will be left is Heaven…where we can be together forever. Don’t you want that?”

Kinzer looked away from Janka as he contemplated all that he was saying.

“See,” Janka continued. “You’re thinking about it. It means that a part of you still loves me. You still want to be with me.”

Tears slid down Kinzer’s face. He rushed to conceal his vulnerability with his hands.

Janka grabbed his wrist and pulled him close. Kinzer dropped Dedrus’s sword, but clung desperately to his own.

“Look in these eyes, Kinzer. I love you, and I can see that you love me. You know there’s only one thing you can do.”

They stared into each other’s eyes, as they had done so many times before. Kinzer’s face twitched, his muscles spasming, reflecting the emotional war that waged within him. But the war was easily won. He knew what he had to do if he ever stood a chance at being happy.

“I’ll be with you,” Kinzer said, his gaze still lost in Janka’s.

Janka smiled. He wrapped his arm around Kinzer and pulled him close. Their lips locked. Kinzer lost himself in their embrace. He felt his palms across Janka’s rigid back, recalling many nights of pleasure and pain. He caressed his fingertips through Janka’s feathers. He bathed in Janka’s hot breath, delighted in how the tip of Janka’s nose felt on his face. What he would have given to spend eternity in that moment…a moment where he allowed himself to forget all that Janka had done…a moment where he could pretend that he and Janka were still together and in love and that everything was just as it should be.

Kinzer relished in the fantasy…the lie. And then he let his mind and body be overtaken by what he knew he had to do.

“Ah!”

Janka pulled out of their embrace, reared his head back, and unleashed a blood-curdling cry. Blood sprayed across his feathers as Kinzer’s sword slipped through the bone in his wing.

With his free hand, Kinzer snatched the wing. He shoved Janka against the wall.

Janka continued screaming out. Kinzer pressed his lips against his ear and whispered, “Go to Heaven, you evil fuck!”

He pressed an ever-so-gentle kiss on his cheek and flipped around just as Veylo was approaching him, sword-first, from behind.

Kinzer dropped Janka’s wing and clashed his sword against Veylo’s.

Veylo eyed the baby Christ in his arm.

“You’re at quite a disadvantage,” Kinzer observed.

“You haven’t won,” Veylo said. “Not even close.”

Veylo struck Kinzer’s sword with an intensity that knocked him back. As Kinzer recovered from the blow, Veylo whipped around and raced toward a wall-sized window stretched across the side of the room.

Kinzer chased behind.

Approaching the window, Veylo’s wings wrapped around his body, surrounding him and the baby in a ball of feathers, as Dedrus had done for Kinzer and Maggie.

CRASH!

Shards of glass filled the air.

“Fuck!” Kinzer exclaimed, halting at the edge of the window.

Veylo’s wings stretched out, glistening in the sunlight as he soared between two neighboring buildings.

Kinzer knew he couldn’t get to Veylo, but he still had to deal with the now-wounded Janka. He whirled back around.

Janka was gone!

A path of blood led to the door, which was now swinging back and forth.

Kinzer rushed out. He followed a trail of blood down the hall until he heard an ear-piercing cry.

Kid!

***

Treycore wiggled in Craetis’s grip. He had to get free. He had to save Kid.

“Daddy, stop!” Kid screamed, his voice cracking. “Daddy, please. It hurts!”

Sweat and tears rushed down his face, which was locked in a horrified expression, one that left Treycore wondering what sort horrors from Kid’s past were tormenting him, raping his soul. The blaggovite coiled its tail around Kid’s arm. Drool rushed from the corner of his mouth. His tears turned red.

“Kid!” Treycore called.

Kid’s scream faded. His eyelids flitted open. A film of blood laced the whites around his pupils.

Impossible, Treycore thought. No immortal had ever been able to retain consciousness or slip from a blaggovite’s control. So surely Kid wouldn’t be able to.

Mika gasped. “How is he—?”

“There must be something wrong with the blaggovite,” Craetis insisted.

Kid stared into Treycore’s eyes. Tears curved through Treycore’s dimples. He couldn’t lose him. Not like that. He wanted to spend Kid’s life with him. He wanted to spend an eternity with him. And yet, time was being cruelly ripped from them by that fucking cunt.

“I love you,” Treycore said.

If he was going to lose him, he at least wanted him to know how he felt.

Kid gritted his teeth, as if enduring immense pain. “I…love…”

Vera snatched the blaggovite’s tail, digging her nails into its flesh. Kid’s eyes sealed shut. He squealed and leapt onto the desk. His arms flailed about, like he was trying to crawl across it, but he fell face-forward, his cheek sliding across his own vomit.

The door to the office burst open. A sword sliced through Craetis's neck. Flurries of red rushed across Treycore’s back, painting the floor as Craetis’s flat face went soaring through the air and landed beside Vera on the desk.

Kinzer stood in the doorway, a sword in hand. Blood streamed down his face and drenched his shirt. Deter and Mika rushed for the door. Another quick swing of Kinzer’s sword and Mika's and Deter's heads dropped to Kinzer’s feet, bathing the floor in red.

“It's over, bitch,” Kinzer said, staring Vera down.

“So it is,” she said, arching her eyebrow and taking a step toward Kid.

“Get away from him!” Treycore shouted as he scrambled to his feet, his wrists still bound behind him.

He knew what she was going to do—what she felt she had to do. And he wasn’t going to lose his Kid. Not like that.

“Stop her!”

“I guess I'll just take this with me,” she said, stroking the back of her palm across Kid’s cheek.

“No!” Treycore charged at her.

She winked. “See you in Hell.” And with that, she and Kid vanished.

Treycore froze, paralyzed by the terror of having lost the only thing in the universe that ever truly mattered to him.

***

“Hey,” Kinzer said.

Maggie started to come to. She didn’t look much better than she had when he’d found her in the hospital. Her red, swollen eyes were like rubies in her shriveled skull. Her hair looked as if it’d just been pried from a garbage disposal. It‘d been several hours since she’d birthed the Christ. Kinzer and Treycore had tended to her injuries, stitched her rips, and taken her to the nearest hotel. Kinzer had been waiting attentively for her to stir, and she finally had.

“Feeling better?” Kinzer asked, a pleasant smile spread across his face.

“I feel like a wolf chewed its way out of my vagina!” she barked.

Kinzer’s smile widened.

“I don’t know what you’re fucking cheery about! I just had a baby that’s gonna wipe out humanity.”

“Just happy to see that you’re okay.”

“Okay?” she asked. “I may never walk again, but other than that, I guess you can call it okay.”

“Anything I can get for you?”

“I don’t think you immortals really get this concept, but I’ll tell you exactly what you better fucking get me…right now! You ready? You need to write this down?”

Kinzer listened carefully, awaiting specific instructions.

“Pain…killers!”

He giggled.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing. Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back without them. And I’m talking the good stuff. You bring back some Advil or Tylenol, and I’ll make you wish you weren’t immortal.”

Kinzer grabbed his wallet and headed for the door. As he opened it, he flashed a glance back at Maggie.

Her head fell into her folded arms. Her blonde locks trembled at her shoulders as her body convulsed, as if she had a fever. Sniffles and sobs filled the room.

“Why?” she muttered, seemingly to a deity that Kinzer knew couldn’t hear her.

He stepped through the doorway and closed the door, granting her the privacy she deserved.

Footsteps caught his attention. Treycore was coming from his room down the hall, a determined glare in his eyes.

“Where are you going?” Kinzer asked.

Treycore dashed past him, tossing a duffel bag over his shoulder and continuing to the door. “You know where I’m going!”

Kinzer slipped past him and jumped in his path.

“Get out of my fucking way.” Treycore shoved Kinzer against the wall.

“Treycore, we need your help. We have to stop the Christ and keep Veylo from reaching the actual Antichrist.”

The door creaked open as Treycore started out. “You are more than capable of handling this shit,” he muttered.

“Treycore, please!”

Kinzer’s plea stopped Treycore. He stepped back into the hall, allowing the door to close. “Right now, Kid’s with that sick cunt.”

“She’s probably already killed him.”

“If I thought that was true, I’d be relieved. But you know he’s not because you know her. You know what she’ll do to him. I have to get to Hell and stop—”

“You really think an angel is just going to be able to slip into Hell unnoticed?”

“I’ve done it before.”

They stared each other down.

“Before all this,” Treycore continued, “if you’d known Janka was trapped in Heaven, what would you have done?”

Kinzer reflected on Treycore’s hypothetical, and try as he might to convince himself that he would’ve given up, he knew better. He stepped to Treycore and set his hand on his shoulder. “I understand. If you save him—”

“When I save him,” Treycore said, “I’ll bring him back and we’ll take out these bastards together.”

Kinzer wrapped his arms around Treycore.

“Now,” Treycore said, “you get that fiery bitch well and track those motherfuckers down.”

Kinzer smirked. “Yes, sir.”

They walked side-by-side to the door. Kinzer let Treycore out.

“You gonna be okay?” Treycore asked.

“Of course,” Kinzer said with a smile.

“Take care.” Treycore’s face was etched with concern.

Funny remark, Kinzer thought, for the higherling who’s on his way to Hell.

“You, too.”

Treycore dashed to the sidewalk, hurrying toward his new quest.

Across the street, a condemned gas station captured Kinzer’s attention. An ‘Open’ sign slanted across the graffiti-covered entrance. Behind the gas station, kudzu draped around a wooded area. Beyond that, the sun set in a sea of red and purple.

Kinzer’s eyes filled with tears. He leaned against the doorframe, sliding to his knees as his thoughts drifted back to the creatures he’d loved. He imagined Dedrus’s chuckle when they’d nearly collapsed in the motel shower. It took him back to their playful years in Heaven and Hell, when they’d loved and laughed together. His thoughts shifted to Janka—to those sincere, blue eyes. He’d trusted him more than any other, yet Janka was the one who’d betrayed him the most. Musing on these creatures, who had once filled him with such joy and ecstasy, could now only bring him sadness and pain.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…