the seventh day

*

mother doesn't know where love has gone
she says it must be youth that keeps us feeling strong
i see it in a face that's turned to ice
and when she smiles she shows the lines of sacrifice

and now i know what they're sayin'
as our sun begins to fade:
that we made our love on wasteland
and through the barricades

- spandau ballet, "through the barricades"

*

Rachel had never really known what to think of his Uncle Raziel's study. Really, Rachel had never even known what to think of his Uncle Raziel, that relative of tenuous connection whom his mother insisted was tied to the family through her great grandmother, or grandfather, someone. Rachel had never been particularly good keeping their family tree straight, genealogy not being his particular forte. If he was worried someone might be related in some unforeseen way to their rambling family hedgerow, his rule primary was not to jump into the sack with them (not that he'd really been given many opportunities to put this philosophy into practice -- it was mostly there for his peace of mind). While this was not the most complicated of principles, he saw good use out of it, and all other societal niceties be damned.

What was perhaps most unsettling about Raziel -- to Rachel's mind at least -- was how queer things were down in his basement study -- which had been known as 'the Hermitage' for longer than Rachel could remember. Rachel was not easily spooked, as is requisite in a boy who has spoken for and spoken to the dead since he could toddle and makes his living guiding lost souls and slinging zombies into walls. He had spent uncountable hours in this study as a child, endlessly pestering its tenant with questions concerning the gory pasts of his parents and their kind in general. He knew the old, musty smell, like grass molding white or purple, kept too long from the light. He knew the line of weirdly fascinating dustmites that danced on warm days up a helix to the small basement window, drawing the room twain like a dissection line. He knew the horrible, twisted little skeleton Raziel kept in a case on the far wall. He knew the rows of eldritch, decrepit manuscripts along the near wall, knew that some of them screamed like children when opened. He knew the pen and cage where animals were kept when fresh blood was required for the marks of a particularly complex circle. He knew the great, dark book -- Axis Arcanum -- that lay hinged on a stand, fed by IV, an ever-changing bag of hemoglobin its flesh and bread. He knew all of these things. They were familiar to him and had been for time out of mind. All of this was Raziel.

In the end, what was perhaps most unsettling about Raziel was that Rachel knew all of these things and still loved and respected the thin-lipped library-tyrant. His mother would have laughed and said 'Famiglia.' His sister would have said 'imperium in imperio.' The uncle-by-association in question would have said 'such allowances are only for blood.' Rachel said 'Goddamnit,' and called it even.

It was still too early. He was rubbing gritty sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand as he slouched against a shelf of books that would screamed like butchered children if provoked. The other members of the gathering seemed wide awake, almost manic awake, as if they'd had too much coffee; his mother was pacing small, tight circles, head bent, arms folded behind her, like Einstein visiting the nativity; Eden was rearranging small clay figures into positions fit only for the most dubious of underground SoHo publications, his tongue curled at the corner of his mouth as if his business was of an inestimable importance; Rachel did not really want to spend too long considering what after effects Eden's worry doll playing would have on the people they knew. It was enough of a stone settling in his stomach that Raziel was so used to Eden meddling among his things that he no longer even registered disturbance.

Raziel was on his knees on the large flat piece of shale that he kept for his circles, a mink brush dipped in the blood of a white mule laying the extended pattern that would serve as both his conduit and his sanctuary space while he queried. Only Duriel kept still, tight and piston-bound, eyes shifting in a controlled fashion from his wife to the man he had considered friend and associate for years that numbered longer than the histories of any of the major world religions. He alone was a presence of potential energy. In response to all of this, Rachel slouched and was glad that he always slept in his trousers. It spared him the embarrassment of showing up at a secret society meeting in pajamas, even after his mother had gently closed her fingers over his shoulder and shaken him awake in the watery hours that preceded dawn.

Raziel has something he wants us to see, she had said.

His mother was a woman he had never been able to deny, whatever Freudian things his sister had to say about that, so there he was: without breakfast, without coffee, without a morning shower. He probably smelled like something that had been rotting too long in a charnal yard. His stomach snarled like a menstrual wolverine to punctuate. His mother stopped her pacing to give him a gentle look, a bare smile that surfaced for only a moment, but she did not comment.

His uncle Eden, however, looked him over tip-to-tail and then made a noise in the back of his throat that was reserved for extreme amusement with regard to the mentally handicapped. He jumbled the little clay figures so that one of them was doing something to another that wasn't really legal in any country, not even Thailand, and then congratulated himself on it. As always, the angel of death was the only one who looked sedentary, as if he belonged to the space. Eden Ardith would look settled on an Aztec altar. It wasn't so for everyone; the Hermitage, especially in times like these. It could be oppressive and twist something along the bottom of your lungs in slow dread. It had been so even in the old days when there had been a grim-faced, dark-haired toddler in the corner painstakingly coloring with fat crayons a picture labeled my Father And dred Kthlu. Eden apparently determined to be as helpful as possible in making his adopted nephew feel at home. This boiled down to harassment.

"Christ, Rach, you look like you've been on the booze all night."

In response, Rachel snorted and shoved his hands deeply into his pockets, feeling for seams, "I only wish. The only shit I've been drinking is that crap they've got at the hospital. It tastes like plumber's helper. God knows it could use some perking up, but what am I supposed to do, smuggle in a hip flask? Christ, pop, I dunno how you managed to drink that shit for years and years -- "

"By smuggling in a hip flask, I'm sure," his mother's smile was inconsistent, distracted, preoccupied. It flickered like low-watt florescent light and then was gone, "Your father has always kept an excellent vintage of cognac in the cabinet,” she paused and shared a telegraph moment with her husband, a movement of eyes in the soft hush, “Even before we were married."

"Well, shit," was all Rachel had to say about that. He took comfort in the fact that he thought for sure his father had stopped practicing under the influence the same day he'd stopped being one of the Lords of Hell.

Raziel, who was lacing in the longhand styling of his angelic name into a particularly complex angle of the circle, chuckled in the back of his throat without looking up from his artistry and figuring, "The boy can at least be taught. Really Duriel, I had almost given up on him. He may still make an acceptable successor yet,'" pronounced the librarian in an amused fashion.

"Raziel, I find that comment less than appropriate -- " that was his mother again, turning in the corner by that palsied little skeleton to pace back towards them.

"Concern yourself with your own children, Raziel," came the low declaration from the past Lord of Pain, "The way my children choose to conduct their business is none of yours."

"'Specially cos Raz's kids are all retarded," piped up the still-helpful voice of Uncle Eden. "That'll teach him to keep shaggin' Sandals when she's in the third trimester. Fucks up the sproggins something fierce,” he shifted suddenly, “Are you done yet? You don't have to caress the fuckin' circle like a lover."

Raziel gave the angel of death one steady eye for the barest fraction of a moment and then was back at his pattern, dipping his brush in the fresh blush of blood dark, "The fact that you hold such opinions again underscores why your contributions to the group include 'chainsmoking' and 'spotless glassware,'" he waved his free hand in an indolently aggravated way, the same motion he had used for years to point out the bareness of his brandy glass. The gesture was so similar that Demi had already opened a low drawer in something that might have been a writing desk in a kinder setting and had recovered a bottle and a lead crystal snifter. Raziel heard what she was at and waved her off again, "Not necessary, Jerusalem Rose. I don't drink during queries, although I see why you think I might be driven to. Just keep your monkey out of my business and things should proceed appropriately."

"I am not Dem-dem's monkey," her monkey protested, much in the same way another such monkey had once danced on Deus' shoulder in aggravation. "I'm her bloody gremlin, and thank you very fuckin' much for noticin' my talents with spotless glassware, Gabriel can't bloody remove a water stain to save her life."

Gabriel took a deep and long-suffering breath and bit her first knuckle as a coping mechanism, swatting at Eden in a half-hearted manner. Raziel did not respond, too caught up in laying the last even sine curves to his pattern. His circle finished -- the work signed -- he sealed his jar of mule blood and put it back in the small cold cabinet that in other basements might have been reserved for brewskis. His brush went into the sink to soak, staining pooled water rose, and he turned inside his circle to face his audience, the youngest attendant in specific.

"Standard provisos are in force," he said evenly, "That means: look into the higher reaches of the circle at your own liability, I am not responsible for death, maiming, or madness that may result from this query. If the voices get to you, it is sometimes best to simply leave the room. My wife may have tea and cookies waiting upstairs for the -- faint of heart," his smile twitched again, lean and dangerous, "If you make any attempt to break my circle, you will be dealt with, and not kindly. Those are the rules of my house, abide by them as is your contract as guests."

His mother ducked her head and spoke softly, "While under your protection, we are subject to your rule."

The other two men gave similar responses, and Rachel was left with all eyes on him, expectant, waiting. He shifted uncomfortably, having not expected to be brought under binding contract with the former Lord of Blood in the wee hours of the morning at his mother's behest. His eyes shifted from Eden, who looked equally displeased at being under Raziel's ward, chewing on the end of a cigarette as if he desperately wanted to light it, to his father, whose eyes were narrow and stony. His mother gently cleared her throat and he cursed quietly, but not without gusto.

"Yeah. Whatever. Shit. I'm subject to your rules."

With this last shift of responsibility, Raziel turned on his heel and settled comfortably in his circle, his back to his audience as he raised one solitary finger, "Also, I demand silence. You speak only if spoken to, and not before." There was no response to this, so Raziel simply leaned forward, his fingertips tracing complex patterns over the lines of the blood that dissected the cool, blue slate. The temperature in the room dropped until Rachel shivered in the thin fabric of his worn tee shirt and could see his breath mist out in front of his face. He understood this. It was to be expected when dealing with spirits not of the prime material plane. He got it frequently enough in his own line, when particularly heavy spirits settled themselves on his shoulders and demanded comeuppance. What he was not prepared for was the strange spectrum shift that crept upon them all, coloring everything ultraviolent, ultraviolet, too white, too sharp, too pale death belly. It was red-shift. It was beyond-shift. He swallowed and could taste the cold salt in his mouth, like mercury or alkalide.

Raziel's voice was calm, rising and falling like beats of a pulse, the celebrant at a dark mass, "I have called you out by the names given, wheel-center, idiot-king, mindless, senseless, mindful, everything in nothing. You answer by contract, for as long as I hold my circle. Is that acceptable?"

There was a horrible shiver, like fireants crawling up Rachel's spine, and he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes as hard as he could, but then the dizzy wail of monstrous flutes consumed his conscious.

The answer was horrific, droning, like an old vibration coming off a rubber tube that should have long gone to dust, aching in Rachel's molars, counter-harmony to those wretched flutes.

"That is acceptable. Ask your questions, harbormaster."

Raziel took one dark silk-smooth stone and placed it in front of him in the circle, like a bead swung on an abacus. Then he folded his hands under his chin, lace-fingered and thoughtful.

"You are following the state of he who is Unnamed."

This was a statement and not a question. There was an increase in tempo of the horrid flutes, an aggravated whine, like brakes squealing smoke-death. The awful droned vibration pitched upward, climbing over itself like a tower of insects, army ants, a queen, a house built of her flabby, amorphous flesh.

"The doings of mortal men are little concern to us, harbormaster."

Raziel was not cowed. He instead calmly tapped at the pitch stone in front of him and repeated himself.

"You are following the state of he who is Unnamed."

There was a hiss, and the smell was rot beyond rot, sulfur-death-bubbled-cosmic-bile. Finally, the monstrous buzzing answered, called down, shown its place in the parlor of the harbormaster.

"We are aware of the situation, yes."

"And what are your thoughts, Iil-Shangoth?"

Pitching and reeling as if enraged to be called out by given name in front of those who did not call to the Gulf, it screamed, a spiral drone that climbed so high it might have shattered glass or souls, if not for the still drying blood of the slate-borne summoning circle.

"We are waiting, harbormaster. We are waiting, and we are singing the praises of corpse worms that glut and stain your feeble tapestry. The key is ours and the gate will be ours. The Unnamed is dead, Yigar will be dead at the hands of one of your own, and then we will come through the gate again and bring up our own on the blasted stone. We know the green, harbormaster. We have our own. Ial Shub-Niggurath, the black goat with a thousand young! Our only despair is that you will be white ash lost among the white ash, so we cannot crack your bones and paint ourselves with your marrow -- "

Raziel let one hand flutter absently over his head.

"That will be all, Iil-Shangoth."

But the angry squeal continued, rising in pitch and vibration so that the whole room seemed to sing with it.

"We are coming, harbormaster, and you will not be there to hold the gate, because you will be ash, black ash, white ash -- perhaps we will gather your ash together and call you out of nothing, just to break your spine forever along the music of the center -- "

Raziel sighed, apparently long used to hearing such tirades and there was a crisp sound, not unlike a gunshot, as he snapped his fingers.

"You are dismissed."

And with that, the cloudy, terrible thing that had been in the room with them was gone, the spectrum was recognizable, the temperature above freezing. Rachel sagged against the bookcase and for the first time in his life wanted a cigarette. Raziel stood and dusted the knees of his robe, making use of a fine bristled broom to sweep his circle slate clean. He turned it on its pivot and left it leaning innocuously against the wall. He folded his hands into his sleeves and turned to face them, the pale light of the morning streaming in the high window behind him.

"Such is the testimony of Iil-Shangoth. Take it as you will."

From the corner where he remained, motionless as granite, Duriel snorted, "Of course it must be truthful. After all, what possible motivation could a monstrous outer being have to lie?"

Raziel gave Duriel a look that might, in gentler times, have been accompanied by a girlish giggle and a cupcake push as the master-librarian fluttered his eyelashes and said Oh, you. As it was, the librarian only chuckled dryly, "Of course, the Lord of Subtlety cuts to the heart of the matter. Iil-Shangoth, is to be trusted by no means, but notice how excitable it was. Mark my words: they are watching, and they never watch unless it is something worth seeing."

“Shub-Niggurath,” Gabriel said softly, eyes rolling back slightly as she shuddered.

Rachel swore again, colorfully and across several romance languages.

"This is really happening, isn't it?"

"I am afraid it is, Rachel Eisenreich," his sometime uncle-cousin answered, moving to settle ponderously, a bundle of robes and matchsticks in a heavy cushioned chair. He closed his eyes for a moment and the weight seemed to settle deeply in all of them, "Which is why we all need a drink. Gabriel, brandy all around."

"Motherfucking shit."

*

It was a pea soup morning. There was a sort of stillness - perhaps in the wake of elder things - that made everybody in the house slow to wake up, Eden quiet in his cup-rattling in making breakfast, a sort of pall and mute muffling over everybody's conversations. London rose to the occasion, and rained. There was a soft constant pitter-patter on the windows. The city was being washed clean.

There was the sort of weird, unreal touch of being woken up too late, a settled-in breakfast-is-dinner feeling - the lights on, and the hoover on, and everything still too dark and quiet: the world muffled, as if under a pillow. The television was kept on the BBC, and everybody patently ignored it when the shortening segments for Buboe's health status came on.

It was not a good place for a butterfly, even a d00mbutterfly. Yet, there she was, in the kitchen, fluttering around ceaselessly, doing horrible things to innocent slices of bread and prodding occasionally at a rice cooker. Orfiel was nowhere in sight - possibly with Gabriel - and so the kitchen belonged to the Maiden of Meanness, wholly and fully. Everything was dull and sodden and depressing.

The sight of Mia Naaktgeboren was a common one, generally eating cream cheese and celery sticks in the days of her misbegotten youth, or crying copiously, which was later in the days of her misbegotten youth, or both - she had started messing around in the Eisenreich kitchen before she could toddle. Even she was coated matte by the all-encompassing grey.

It took a lot to grey Madam Butterfly.

But even the coffee was grey, possibly because of some unknowable chemical change that the butterfly had wrought upon it through the judicious and thoughtful addition of substances that were perhaps not meant to be added to coffee, except in the darkest culinary corners of the mind Naaktgeboren. Rachel sat with his heavy boots tucked up and into the rungs of the walnut breakfast chair, stirring at his grey coffee half-heartedly with the wrong end of his spoon and in deep consideration of the preceding events of the morning. It was an inevitable series of events then, that led unerringly to him unhooking a leg and kicking his chair back thoughtfully before turning his attention to Madam Mim.

"Too bad Jibs and Azrael can't claim coma to bail them out of having to eat whatever crap you're stirring up. I bet you're making rice sandwiches again."

"My rice sandwiches are awesome, Puppet," the would-be one-winged angel said calmly, putting a plastic container of something that looked slightly dark and horrible in the microwave and thumbing buttons with a disinterested nonchalance. "And you're eating it too, so keep in mind there is always a time to add arsenic. Besides, after that cafeteria food? I am Iron Chef Gravy. I think Poppa Duriel used evil miasma on that cafeteria accidentally years ago to subtly cause pain and it hasn't worn off. You have five seconds to tell me if you want pickle on your sandwich, this is a hostage situation, five four three two - "

"Pickle is fine," he grunted at the last moment, tilting his cup as if unwilling to plumb the mysteries of its murky depths, "Anyway, not like it could possibly make things worse." He paused for a long moment and then absently added, "On the sandwich, I mean. Peanut butter and beet, probably. And I think you're right about the cafeteria. Or maybe it's just got a natural repugnance all its own: the artesian well of shit. That coffee they've got? It's like the eighth wonder of suck. Someone should give them a prize for it."

"I gave a sample to Liwet and he says he doesn't actually think it's coffee,” she offered, the paragon of scientific inquiry, “It's like. Caffeine and pure distilled sadness of humanity. And the sandwiches are cheese and tomato and ham, I hope you die." The horrible mysterious microwave stuff was taken out; the rice poured into a thermos and what appeared to be black bean sauce dumped on top of it. Shaktiel always ate like a spider queen. Two hungry spider queens. "I'm coming too because you'll just tell Buboe stupid stuff about radio transmission static and fighting Lord Satan or something."

He stood up abruptly and ran his hand through his hair as if he were feeling back for bobby pins, razor blades, or garroting wire someone might have hidden in it and then shook his head, "Are you sure you want to go out in the rain, Freddy Kreugar? I hear it's bad for butterflies. You might melt, like the Wicked Witch of the West."

The tangerine-haired menace-ballerina snapped her head up to look at him, suddenly charmed, "Are you worried? You're worried! This is a first! This is so cute! I want a camera, I want a camera nine million times. You are so chivalrous. You have turned from Goofus to mighty Gallant. Delita to Ramsus. Finally you can make God with your own two hands. I'm sorry about the serial rape,” she paused for a moment to consider, “Well, no, I'm not."

It did not take an excess of movement for Rachel to close the space between them and clamp a twitching hand over her mouth, "Watch what you say and how loud you say it, Ganon, or I'll forget that domestic violence is against my gentle nature." He held her there for about seventeen seconds, long enough to come to the conclusion that it really wasn't doing much as a threat, and then he let out a disgruntled and long-suffering sigh, dropping her in favor of a celery stick, which he swiped from a plate and munched dolorously.

"I hope a killer bee stings you and you die," Shaktiel said, though she had to fan herself a bit. Sometimes you had to take what you could get for amorous or romantic overtures from your non-consensual boyfriend. And it had been a long seventeen seconds. "Are we driving in with Doc Eisenreich? Is Mama Demi going? If she's not, I so call shotgun, unless we're carpooling, in which case I drive."

The food was zipped away into a small satchel, and she gave a little flutter en pointe in her trainers. "Jack says he might come to the hospital today, too, he's back from Angola. Or somewhere. I don't know where Repha goes, he's always off collecting retards called Haer'Dalis or something. He won't be there long, the nurses always file restraining orders. He complains all the time, but Mum's always, 'Well, so did your last two wives,' so that's that. Just giving you the heads up. Pass me that thermos, it's got the actual coffee in it."

He fetched the thermos of coffee as ordered, finishing off the last of his celery stick as he leaned in the doorway and looked not unlike a younger and more surly John Wayne, "Oh good. What a perfect way to make my day complete. Why not invite Yoms too and have her bring a bucket of singing and dancing spiders or something? It'll be a regular family romp." He swallowed and then shrugged, "They're gone. Mum left me the keys to the rover. It's just you and me, Starscream."

The angel of butterflies noticed the similarity to John Wayne. Then she parsed what he had actually said, and a horrible expression came over her face; it made a part of his stomach boil in an unsettling way. "You mean... we're alone in the house together?"

Rachel realized his mistake almost immediately and his brows seemed to converge down in an angry point of no return, "We are going to the hospital," he said definitively, "We are leaving in five minutes, with or without your horrible bean paste, White Fang. Don't think I won't leave you here, and don't think I won't lock you in a cupboard if I find your activities suspicious. We're due to sit and we're going to be there on time." He turned suddenly and left the room and there was the sound of some rummaging behind the piano, "Have you seen my guitar? The acoustic."

"In the case, behind the Chantilly side-table," She didn't even bother grumbling; d00mbutterflies could bide their time. Besides, her mentor was safely on her side when it came to absent partners and the unbearable chastity of being. Shaktiel checked the bags one more time; everything present and accounted for, including the Boost bar just in case Buboe woke up. "I think Eden was disinfecting it or something, it smells like lemons, Arcee. Chuck me the key, I think we're ready."

The key jingled in his pocket as he rounded the corner, guitar slung over his shoulder and coffee thermos under one arm, as if he were on an expedition to the antarctic to deliver rock and roll to culture-starved penguins. He stopped suddenly and shoved one hand into his pocket, as if to dig out the key, "I hope you know, I'm only letting you drive so I have time to think."

He was not quick enough, and she was scrabbling in his pocket for the keys before he could finish, fishing them out like a terrible prize. Butterflies had no regard for personal space. "That's going to take longer than a fifteen-minute commute with your brain cells, Puppet."

"I do still have time to lock you in a cupboard," he warned.

"You are bold, but are you daring?" she asked, an expectant shift from one foot to the other.

"You'll know for sure once you're beating on the inside door of the hall coat closet, won't you?" he returned, squirming away from her questing hands. He took the assortment of questionable lunch options away from her started toward the door, "Come on, Tinkersmell. We'll be late otherwise."

They had a date to keep.

*

It was a hard question. It was a much harder question than 'how do I dispose of these contaminated foodstuffs' which had been easy enough and hadn't even involved holy water. All he'd had to do was press the soft-sacked containers on his unsuspecting sister and they'd been accepted without thought. Of course, Rachel wasn't absolutely positive they'd cause abdominal distress. He hadn't eaten anything solely prepared by Shaktiel for some years after a disastrous incident involving curried chicken. Maybe she'd improved. He hoped, if only for his own well-being, that she had. She'd cry if he didn't eat, and if there was one thing that disturbed Rachel more than gastronomical abuse, it was a woman in tears -- even if that woman was Shaktiel. Maybe especially if that woman was Shaktiel. He didn't like to dwell too long on that derivation. There was something wrong with him.

He liked to pretend his hard question was any number of other things, like what to get his mother for her birthday, which was swiftly approaching, or what songs to play that an eight year old boy would like. Shaktiel had bitched and fussed when he'd sung 'Hot Cross Buns' and then 'Baa Baa Black Sheep,' reminding with a none-too-gentle tug on his pony tail that his audience wasn't preschool aged any more. Then he'd thought about what songs he'd liked especially when he was eight years old and occupied himself by singing the bloodiest ballads he knew, mostly about hangings and final charges and murder down by the river. The butterfly apparently approved this selection, because she did not offer any disparaging commentary. He shifted uncomfortably in a chair that was too small for him and sang another verse about wild roses and where they grew.

Shaktiel blew air out of the corner of her mouth, breezing up the hair that had fallen into her eyes, and carefully rifled through her boarded and bagged comic books, pausing weightily over an issue of the Fantasitc Four where the Sue Storm did not spend the entire comic tied up and at the feet of Doctor Doom – why had she even brought that one, anyway? She frowned.

“You know, if all else fails, we can just give Unicron, or whoever is up there in the clouds, a Pokemon exchange and cash in Yoyo to get Buboe back. It's not like anyone would miss Yoyo.”

He didn't answer immediately because it was almost tempting enough to believe. Yomvael was Yomvael, and no one could argue with that. Finally, he shook his head, “Don't say that. You'd miss her. Anyone we lost would be missed, even Princess Pattycake 666. Don't wish for shit like that.”

She wrinkled her nose, “I'd miss her like I'd miss cancer.” She retorted, but then lapsed into pained silence.

Rachel didn't like to think about his hard question, so he tried to distract himself with other, less difficult questions.

"Where are you spending Christmas?" he asked abruptly, then a stumble of tied together cords took him into an Irish revolutionary song, one brick-solid boot crossed over the other at his ankle as he studied the formless white of the hospital bedsheets. The kid was like a little duckling mummy. He didn't like mummies. They gave him the creeps. He firmly believed in ashes to ashes and dust to dust, not salt-and-vacuum-sealed.

Shaktiel listened for a while about Easter Sunday and bloody valentines, and about the English and what the Irish would do to a decapitated Ulsterman. Buboe would probably appreciate it. He would probably make the face. The face. What she didn't say aloud was that Rachel - even if he was Rachel - had a beautiful singing voice, like Mama Demi's only obviously with testosterone involved, and The Highwayman had had nurses stopping to titter in a badly territorial way. She would shatter their hearts in the moonlight ten times; Duriel would know where the bodies could be dumped. It was only fair, really.

"Mama Demi's, where else," she said. "I'm going to be in Moscow at the time, actually, but I'm flying down for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. You'll probably show up on Boxing Day just to spite me." She made a mental note to stay Boxing Day, now that he thought she wouldn't be there. "I'm dancing Demeter again in Ange, wig and everything, I wish your mum didn't have so much hair. Mee's in the Royal Philharmonic, though. There'll be a Berzukov, everybody likes that. Cecil, is Buboe going to be alive at Christmas?"

His answer was a long time coming. This was one of the hard questions, "Well, I guess that depends, doesn't it?" He paused again for a long while, listening to the ramble of high roads and low roads and who would be in Scotland afore, "On what you mean by 'alive'."

She put her elbows on the arm of the horrible plastic chair and leaned her face in her hands, watching the little blond expectantly. He had a buzz cut by now, soft little cropped milky-golden hair. "This is a three way black-and-white scenario, Puppet. This isn't alive. Dead isn't alive. If he's not at least sucking up Weetabix and opening his presents by Christmas -- even if he's in a wheelchair or something -- then it's not alive. If I knew it was going to be like this, if this is all there is -- this is no kind of life. He doesn't deserve this. We don't deserve this. Nobody can grieve. It makes me feel kind of dead inside. Dead and angry. I mean, Metatron was in a coma for years and years and years, but that was different. He's Cosmo-tard-king of the world. Why isn't Buboe getting better?"

Rachel stopped playing abruptly and set his guitar aside, moving to stand at the window, where the rain still slipped down the glass, the light coming in watery and frosted. He looked down at the guitar pick for a long time, then tucked it away in his pocket.

"He," and here he seemed to struggle for some moments over what was appropriate for him to say -- what was expected he would say -- what was needed that he say. In the end, he could fish up nothing and finished impotently, tired frustration built into his voice, "can't. I didn't want to believe this was real. I never wanted to believe any of this was real. I kept hoping -- “ He didn't really need to say what he kept hoping. It's what they all had hoped, the last torch they all carried, which had slowly gutted out.

The butterfly didn't question how he knew, or even that he knew so surely; just looked at Buboe, rather hopeless, much differently than when she was helpfully telling him about why Cyclops dated Jean Grey. "But it can't end like this. It can't. It's not, it's not equal, it's not weighted exchange. Mama Gabriel always taught me that the Dark had the Creeping Dark, but the Light was every single one of us, you know? How come we all can't do something? Why aren't we trying to do something? I mean, shit, what if we all sat around doing the Care Bear Stare, or, or whatever - "

He laid the pads of his fingers out along the cool glass and then flexed the muscles in hand, thinking of making a fist and putting it through plate glass, thinking of how little that would help anything, especially if his hand was all bandaged up when --

Well, when all their time ran out.

"You want a miracle? Maybe we should pray for one -- or maybe that's what we've been doing this whole time. But I've never heard of anybody being raised from the dead. I don't think this is fucking supposed to be fair. Not a truck. Not a goddamned truck. Maybe that's why the Creep failed the first time. Didn't know our secret weakness was getting hit by fucking trucks. He's dead, Mia. He isn't even breathing. That's the goddamned respirator. It's not something I ever wanted to be true – the consequences of the real world. Chicken pox, cancer, gang shootings, lorries, that shit isn't supposed to matter to us. We're us."

There was the sudden scrape of the chair legs, and then the weight of her against his back, leaning into it and facing Buboe as she squeezed her eyes shut and desperately wanted to grind out the consequences under the heel of her treadless cross-trainer. "It's too mundane. It's too unfair. We brought back Lucifer Morningstar, El Fallen Extraordinaire, and now we can't do crap? That's pretty dead, isn't it? I mean, they don't call it 'Final Death' for nothing, right? He's only eight! Da always said there was a second God for children. Or maybe that was Fried Green Tomatoes." She knew she was babbling. She couldn't say it in a thousand words, even if she used two thousand. "But - I mean - shit, why do we bother, what's the point? What did we do that was so karmically unfair to get trucks?"

She sucked in a deep breath, and blew it out like a train.

"If this is another Balder thing I'm going to be so pissed." She balled her fists up angrily and wanted some tangible enemy to juggle combo, someone besides Thomas Kincaide to kill for fifty experience points. It wouldn't be satisfying just by itself. It wouldn't be right-putting enough. There was not enough of Thomas Kincaide to answer for this. She tried to swallow, but there was a hard lump rising in her throat like she might be sick from all of this, the hurting and the vulnerability, “And I'm afraid, Monteron. It hurts so much, and I keep thinking: what if something happens to someone else? There are plenty of trucks in London, always too many ways to die – what if something happens to Mama-Demi or even stupid Repha – and if that wasn't enough, you go out looking for things that kill people. Anything could happen, right now, tomorrow, in a few days. I'm afraid of the telephone. Do you understand that, Rachel? I'm afraid of the telephone. If this is what being people is like, then I don't want to be people.”

"I dunno what to tell you, except that I think we're born to be who we are, people or otherwise. Nobody lives forever," he answered honestly, leaning forward and bracing himself against the sill, as if he were still eight and blowing condensation pictures on the glass, as if everything could still be solved so simply by the titanic all-saving figures of his childhood: Mother, Father, Raziel, even Eden -- "Maybe we should stop believing in karma. Maybe this is the final burnt stick underlining 'There is no master plan.' Maybe everything that happens is just some shitty accident and all we're here to do is sop up the messes," he stopped again and shook his head, a pivot of his forehead against the wet transfer of glass, "I can't do anything -- I can't do anything except what I don't want to do, but I have to do what needs to be done. It's family," he finished helplessly, without any other way to explain.

"That's what Mum says, it's not cyclical, or if it's cyclical, it's stopped being cyclical - it doesn't have to go in circles. If he - now that he's - gone, dead, it's the last go." The other angel hugged herself, boneless against him, shifting when he shifted. "And I feel so selfish, you know? Because I'm scared for him, but I'm scared for me, and I think I'm more scared for me. And you. And everyone. Because he's gone and he doesn't have to worry any more, but it's kind of like: if you don't kill your shadow and you go on to fight Ganon, you're shit out of luck. And something's going to happen, isn't it? Are you going to do it even if you don't want to, Squall? Do you think you can do it?"

"I'm not a coward," his answer was brutal and raw, "Just because I didn't go to Normandy or didn't garrote babies or go to war, it doesn't mean I'm a fucking kid. All this shit that always happens, it doesn't matter if it's peace or war or whatever. God, living is a goddamned mess. I bet they didn't figure this scenario into their peace accords," he laughed and it was brief and humorless, another pent-up claw of unspent anger, "When it comes time, don't think I won't be able to do."

"Can you kill Jibs?" It was an insanely soft hush. It was not a disbelieving question. It was can you make toast, only it was can you kill your sister.

"When we get to that point," he spoke very soberly, "I don't think there'll be room for any more choices. I have responsibilities, Mia. I'll take care of them." It was just a slight shift of weight, he could have just been resettling against the glass of the window, one hand bracing, the other turned over, palm offered against her hip. He didn't say anything else.

"I'm terrified, Puppet," she said abruptly, after long moments of ill quiet. "I don't like it. Make it stop. Make him get better. Use zombie tiger voodoo. It's not war any more and I hate it."

"You don't think I would if I could?" his temper was rising again, hard to keep in check at such a desperate time, and he was again considering putting his fist through plate glass, but settled on gripping her hipbone hard through her slacks, "You don't think I wouldn't do anything if I thought it would help? That's my nephew," he stopped again and shifted his weight to his shoulder, running a hand through his hair futilely, "It's at times like these that we're supposed to be able to do something. That's who we are. We do things. I think all at once everything got too complicated. I don't like it being complicated. In the jungle, it's not complicated. In the churchyard, it's not complicated. I do what I'm meant to do. Everything fits together like it should. I know my place. Here -- I don't know if I know it any more. I don't know if any of them know their places in this, not my mum, not my dad, not even Jibs and Azrael."

"You know," Shaktiel said, quite thoughtfully and gently and uncharacteristically, "the only one who knows who's doing what is Buboe, and we're just trying to insert ourselves into the broken bottle. There's nothing for us. We've reached 21. We're going over. If we win we lose. If we lose we lose. There's nothing you or I or Mama Demi or Poppa Duriel can do to stop that. Do we - do we just give up? I'm not good at waiting and you're even worse. You can't put a bullet through this one, Rachel."

"I can't," he agreed mirthlessly, "I don't even have my revolver on me. They won't let me into the hospital with it," he added, as if she needed this fact explained, "Besides baby, I don't think we're going to have that long to wait. What's gonna happen is gonna happen soon. They're already talking about pulling the plug. We're already into overtime."

"This sucks," she complained bitterly, and she curled into him like a worm, a leech, a remora. Parasitic, “It's stupid and horrible, like when Optimus Prime died. It's not fair. Nothing's fair. Things don't happen this way. It's like the end of a John Carpenter movie, when zombies eat the world, and you go out chewing the last of your popcorn and are supposed to be all keyed up for a tumble in the back of a car, except you're not because nothing is right with the world because zombies have eaten it.”

He elbowed her in the back as gently as he could manage and shook his head, “No zombie meltdowns on my watch. I'd never be able to live it down.” He closed his own eyes and spent a reflective moment, “And Optimus Prime came back. Don't forget that, flutterbrain. He came back,” he insisted, as if insisting could make it true in reality as well as fiction, on a drizzly evening as well as on a Saturday morning, “Even though I didn't really understand that storyline as a kid -- “

But she refused to be waylaid by false cheering. This was the hurricane party of their lives, "There's not even any opposing team. It's like Az is kicking drop goals into the other goalposts. And there's no ref. It's you, isn't it? And Poppa Duriel? And Eden? You better do it. You have to. I'd rather a messed-up world than none at all. Win. Because I don't care how many times Gabriel waited, I'm going to be there watching in reserve, and being messy chunks is bad for my complexion."

He sighed, desperately attempting a calm, "You are such a dumbass. Okay. Sure. If I say it, will that make you feel better? Whatever you want."

"Say it. If you don't, I'll bring an air hooter and use it when it starts happening. Swing looooow. Sweet chaaaaaariot."

He turned sideways awkwardly, throwing his back against the wall so that he could look at the kid. The jolt sent Shaktiel against his near shoulder. Not that she really fell, it was more of a slump and all the lights were going out as he absently clamped his hand over her mouth again.

"Jesus Christ, they'll throw us out for disturbing the peace. Or the sick. Or something. You want it? You've got my word."

The d00mbutterfly nodded, content, even in her horrifically awkward position. Slightly muffled, too, through his hand. "You're a shitty liar, Puppet. But I think it's totally cute how you promise things to me even when you think you might just get your ass whipped, or die in the attempt, or get made into Sue gumbo with me watching. It is ro-man-tic. I promise I'll avenge you. Buboe will wake up all full of our star-crossed love."

He rolled his eyes and dumped her against the window, "Yeah, whatever."

"But if you die,” she insisted, yanking hard on the collar of his shirt like it was a leash, “I'm going to cry so much I die of dehydration. Not of a broken heart. Mama Gabriel says anybody who dies of a broken heart should be punched in the face."

"They should, she's right," he agreed, "It's too embarrassing otherwise. And I don't think we need that sorry state of affairs at the end, my mom punching my girlfriend in the face over everybody's carcasses like Horatio or something. So I'll try to arrange it so that I don't die. For your convenience," he snorted.

She radiated smug like Chernobyl radiated radiation, practically hopping with glee. Shaktiel glowed. You could probably cook things on her. She was delighted and seemed honestly happy. "You called me your girlfriend, Sue! In front of Buboe! Do I get your class ring and are we going steady? I'm so excited. I think I just gained three excitement points. I am thrilled. You can't die now, I have to gloat."

He coughed, suddenly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do with himself now that he'd actually said -- "How about my Class Punch-in-the-Kidneys instead? Come on. We've been over here for too long. We should get back and eat some of that horrible bean paste. And I'll sing some more about massacres."

Unfortunately, with her usual policy of no consent, she reached up to kiss him firmly on the mouth to use up pure girlfriend kinetic energy. "I knew my awesome homemaking skills would do it. I have been taking lessons with Mama Demi. You are all, 'I am wowed by Malefacent's cooking madness, also her boobs,' and so that is why I am in like flint. Or. Should I say. In like registered partner. Let's go eat lunch and you can sing about Bannockburn or something and then we'll look at magazines about home ownership. I think we should have a secret dungeon. A secret dungeon. Boyfriend."

He put his hand on her head and ruffled her hair in a way more becoming someone greeting his five-year-old niece, then shoved his hands in his pockets and answered absently, "Yeah, let's do that," he paused, and then mouthed almost against her ear, “In the mean time, don't cross any streets.”

“Trucks don't hit me,” she announced, as if she had recently rolled in truck-repellent, “I hit trucks.”

He shrugged, and put his hands into his pockets, “Truck hits you, you hit truck, it doesn't really matter. The end result is exactly the same: smashed butterfly.”

“I like this new Conscientious and Protective You,” she decided, tugging on his arm once before turning to gather her thermoses and food sacks and ornamenting him like a Christmas tree covered over in coffee and cellophane, “Your mastery points in boyfriend go up. You are worried about me!” she crowed triumphantly, “Twice in one day, even.”

He rolled his eyes and again shrugged, which he knew was usually an inadequate defense against the rising tide of the prima ballerina, “I just know that if you got smashed all green and yellow butterfly guts over somebody's windscreen, somebody would find some way to blame me for it. I'm just looking out for my own interests.” He looked at the kid over Shaktiel's head. All there seemed to be these days were hard lines and hard questions.

Shaktiel made a noise in the back of her throat as if she had her own ideas on exactly what Rachel's interests were. She had another important detail to share, “I've heard that trucks sometimes maraud. In houses. I'm staying over at Mama Demi's tonight. For everyone's safety, you understand.”

He was only half listening to her expound on her considerable knowledge of traffic laws and warfare when he suddenly transferred his attention from the limp bundle on the bed to the halo of tangerine strawberry hair with a critical look and a raised eyebrow that he had inherited whole cloth from his father.

“Because butterflies are the natural enemies of trucks? I don't know where you get your information, but I'm not going to argue.”

“Good,” she seemed satisfied, and nodded so that the wispy hair around her face bounced with the force of her declaration.

“You know,” he said conversationally, as he turned toward the door, “The couch downstairs sucks.” It was something he felt she had a right to know, putting herself on the line for their protection against marauding trucks.

She didn't miss a beat, "Maybe I could protect you from marauding trucks on a sleeping bag on your floor. Also I could resuscitate you if you stopped breathing. That happens," she said, and it did, really, but mostly to boys six months or younger, "Two thousand people die each year from spider bites."

“You just made that up,” he said skeptically as she saw to the zipping and containment of his acoustic guitar.

“No, it's true. I read it in the World Book of Really True Facts.”

“Well then, I guess you had better stick pretty close to protect me from spider bites,” he conceded as she helped him shoulder his guitar, confident, and more than faintly smug, “Because you're the only one I'm used to having in my bed.”

“You know, when Buboe wakes up, I hope he tells everyone that you hit on me nine thousand times while we were supposed to be babysitting in a wholesome way,” Shaktiel said, although she was clearly internally torn from the pressing need to be snappy and her building desire to be cuddled violently.

Rachel was not threatened at all, and instead looked calm and nonplussed. “Nobody would believe it.”

“I dunno. I can be very tearful and innocent,” she insisted, circling him with a friendly and demure smile that would have looked at home on a great white. She took advantage of the situation to take him by the hand, tugging it out of his pocket in an authoritarian way, and lead him out of the room with the too-warm machine-hummed air. She didn't even notice her brother in the corridor, arguing with a nurse ("That's where yer wrong, totty, legal action's when I put my hand up your dress, innit, law's on my side, ha") and ready to sit his shift.

Rachel chuckled deep in the back of his throat and did not look back into the hospital room, simply shook his head and explained, “You've got nothing on me.” His face then twisted into a the sort of horrified grimace one might expect to see on a boy who has just been caught peeing in the middle of his mother's parlor, and in front of the Ladies' Aid Society, at that. It was a look Shaktiel knew so well, that she immediately choked and sputtered.

“On purpose!” she laughed madly, too loud and too long, “You do it on purpose. I knew it!”

He shifted his guitar to one side and slapped her butt in what he felt was a very affectionate way, gripping her hipbone and pulling her against his hip as they walked. She hung on his arm as they went down to the cafeteria, still giggling hysterically, in a way that was surely unbecoming a prima ballerina. Somehow, imminent death made everything clearer, sharper, neater, in order. She didn't have to worry now. Things would be taken care of; or they wouldn't, and that was all right, too. She still had Buboe's boost bar, and he was going to get it. And next time she would make rice sandwiches.

It was the hurricane party of their lives, but there was time for another round.

*

It was still strange to her, how all the pieces fell together even-edged, like an Eastern-Orthodox mosaic, gold leaf sky and woodcut lines that cut the dark corners of the living room and squared off the corners of her holy ground. It was all coming together, like connected constellation dots who showed their sign only from the right angle; the umbilicus, axis mundi, the belly of the world. She could not dance in expectancy at Foucault's Pendulum, but she did have her own way of knowing, of affirming what she felt in the purple bulge of her liver.

She'd started at it before Azrael had managed to fumble the keys back into his pocket, or parse the contents of those sacks of offered food. She'd moved light footed through the dim of the blinded space, from the kitchen to the bath, turning all of the faucets on to a slow trickle-drip. It helped her think, the pebble drop of the water. It ran, a constancy and an inconsistency at once: an unmapped fractal pattern. It was the ultimate dispel. Running water held no enchantment.

He did not ask her what she was doing, simply stood back and watched, and then helped her when she went to move the sofa against the wall, stopping once to run her hands gently over the glass which housed Amborotubus clarkei. So the time passed, and before the clock had struck another hour she had filled all the saucers and teacups in the house with votive candles, beeswax and tealights in jars all in a jumbled circle around the perimeter of her living room, a red line around the spotty hardwood, climbing the low shelves and the brick around the hearth. The world flickered, a dim mystery, and in that mystery Jibreel stripped off her clothing and went to wash herself.

Azrael sat on the toilet and watched her dutifully scrub herself, her hair all in a pile on the top of her head, held by too many pins, his hand on the lip of the porcelain. She had fallen deep into the well of her mind, and he watched her quietly, both kin and mystified. When she felt clean she put on a robe and went to sit in her circle of candles and spread a pile of books around her thighs and ankles. Azrael sat behind her and slowly took the pins out of her hair, one at a time.

Apocryphon in Greek and Latin, Pentateuch, Septugaint, Vulgate, Hebrew, Aramaic, Apocalypses, Revelations, Gospels, Epistles, Jeremiah, Isaiah, the writing was on the wall and she was such that she could read it. She read quietly, on her knees, one finger light above the line so as not to smudge the ink, but so she could follow the line of the text against the line in her heart. There were Sufi texts under the pearl of her ankle. She leaned her head back into his hands and read.

“'The one who is not with me is against me, and the one who does not gather with me scatters,'” she spoke softly, feeling his fingers in her braids, loosening the rope of their tangle. They braided through her hair like comb picks, massaging out the tangles, until her hair was one long riverwater spill in his palms and he could smell the juniper of her shampoo.

"'The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste,'" her lover murmured, almost in caress, as if he could take his own black oil Exxon spill of hair and wash her feet with it. Another pin, another coil, faintly curly from the heavy weight of being pinned up on Jibreel's hot little head. Sometimes he still saw her as a child. Which was even worse, now. He remembered her schoolyard braids; he remembered taking down her schoolyard braids. "I and thee are one. I and thee and he are one."

And she said, "The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so," her fingers slipped slowly over velum, her head bowed, drinking in the flicker-warmth of the burning wax, wandering through languages dead and unspoken. The corner of her mouth trembled as she raised a finger to her lips, "As for you, be as sly as snakes and as simple as doves."

"And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven." He did not bother reading over her shoulder, as her fingers read, his voice a dull murnurous warm haunt in her ear.

"I am glad that it is you," she began very softly, leaning against him like a little animal all strung loose, "It could not be anyone else. It could never be."

"If it wasn't," he whispered back, "I'd be out of a job."

"If it wasn't," she agreed, level and deep as sawdust, "I'd be out of myself."

"We could flip hamburgers. Or move to Michigan. You could be a soccer mom, and Buboe could play Saturday football."

"What?" she asked, a quiver of something that had once been a laugh in her voice as she spread her arms and let them fall to rest on open manuscripts, palms up and wide, straining, "And give up all of this?"

"Maybe we're a little badly suited for it," he agreed, comfortably, hands spanning her waist, her hair all waterfall-loose. "Imagine the neighborhood barbecues and Baptist churches."

"I can see it now," she said comfortably, still as the earth, "It would be 'And what does your husband do?' and then I'd say, quite genteel, 'Why, he's the Angel of the Apocalypse. Repent now or suffer forever eternal damnation, for the dragon has come to kill the Whore of Babylon.' And then I'd give them my banana pudding recipe. I'd have one, you know. Even if I had to look it up specifically for that purpose."

She could feel him shaking behind her, quelled-up laughter into her skinny little shoulder as he held her as tightly as he possibly could. When Azrael was very sure there were no traces of it left in his voice - and there almost weren't - he said, "Well, maybe if we moved to Alabama."

"It's against the law," was her serious answer, "It must be against the law for the Angel of the Apocalypse to live in Alabama. I've read it somewhere. It's in one of these texts," she wriggled her fingers in a distracted fashion, as if to indicate the full contents of her collection, "I'm afraid your contingencies have all been thwarted, Domine. It's this, or it's nothing."

"But it would be perfect. After you managed to alienate them all, I'd introduce Buboe, and say 'This is my son, and also my second cousin coincidentally,' and they'd all come flooding back understandingly. Why aren't you as up on your theology as I am, columba?"

"You are the expert," she admitted curling against him, "I am just meant to bear cups and to herald. Perhaps it was never meant for me to mother your child, in Alabama or elsewhere."

"The fact is, I meant for you to marry me and mother my child," her lover said in ominous tones, "so whoever else meant anything different is God or Pazriel, and neither of those matter. And you gave yourself to me. And you gave him to me. You are not your mother's daughter, Jibreel. You are yourself."

She closed her eyes and listened to the slow trickle-drip of a faucet in a far room, “You have given me that, Azrael. You and no one else.” She hummed the first few bars to what might have been a hymn, “'On the eighth day at the sixth hour there shall be a sweet and tender voice in heaven from the east. Then shall that angel be revealed which hath power over the holy angels: and all the angels shall go forth with him, sitting upon chariots of the clouds of mine holy Father, rejoicing and running upon the air beneath the heaven to deliver the elect that have believed in me. And they shall rejoice that the destruction of this world hath come.' And so shall I. All I want is you, Azrael. That's all, in the end, and it is the end now, isn't it?” It was strange listening to her voice echoing off the walls as if the world was hollow.

"It's the end," he agreed, quiet and firm, as if the earth had finally candleflamed and he was ready to pluck it. "It's close to the end now. I used to wonder if it was the end before, but it was my own selfishness, because you weren't with me. And now you're with me, so it's the end. I could not do it with anybody else. I don't think I was ever meant to do it alone. Not just a catalyst, but - you. I think I was waiting for you. You were one of the signs."

Azrael pushed her hair forward to spill across her shoulders, scraping away gently from her hairline, breathing her in. "Do you regret anything? I mean - I find myself regretting, and that's such a mortal thing to do."

She cocked her head slightly so that her neck was a white line to bird bones of her collar and the slight swell of her breasts in her supplicant's robe.

"If I regret, what is it that I choose to regret? Do I go through my life piecemeal and pick out the bits that conflict, even though those pieces are the foundation stones of myself? I want to regret. I probably should regret, but I can't regret. If I regret, then there is no halfway. There is no picking and choosing. If I regret I must regret everything, and I don't regret myself, te Deum, and I don't regret you, and I don't regret our child. If this is the way things are to be, then I will accept them and be happy I was given the chance and the choice to do so," she blinked slowly and smiled very faintly, "You never had to take my hand, El Elyon."

"But if I didn't," he said, "I wouldn't have been myself. I loved you every time I saw you. I loved you when you were a small child. Is that wrong?"

"On this rock I shall build my church," she said quietly, wistfully, because easier days had come before, "I will be your rock, Azrael, always and happily. If it is in your nature to love me, then that makes my heart full, because I have never thought that animals should fight their natures," her eyes shifted over the flickering candle patterns that flashed over the walls and then came to rest on her beetle terrarium, "But rather, embrace their roles. If there was no need for Apocalypse, then there would be no Apocalypse."

"Amen," he answered, hands folded over the back of her neck as if it might have been the silver rim of a blood chalice.

And it was so.

*