Chapter
Forty-nine
Jim was going to fucking do it. With the dagger over his head and hatred screaming in his soul, he was going to fucking stab Devina—and not just once. He was going to Hannibal Lecter her into pieces, hack at her until there was nothing left but a pool of her evil blood and shit that looked like the inside of a fucking sausage.
With her locked in his grip, everything came back to him, and it was a slide show of gruesome and sad—starting with his mother on that farmhouse kitchen floor and ending with him and Adrian and Eddie fighting to rip something out of Sissy’s pure body. And everything, all of it, could be traced back to this evil of this demon, all the bloodshed and the suffering, even some of his own—
From out of nowhere, the image of Sissy’s face appeared and blocked out everything else. He saw her walking over to him from that elevator, getting up in his grille, yelling back at him.
There hadn’t been anger in her eyes.
It had been terror.
Jim shook his head like that would clear it and tried to get back to business. But that mind’s eye picture of her wouldn’t fade, almost as if it had been placed there by some other source.
And oh, God, her lips were moving. She was talking to him, telling him things that made no fucking sense, that went against everything he knew about the way the war worked and what his job was.
“Do it,” Devina growled. “Just fucking get this over with, will you! You fucking pussy!”
Jim recommitted to the program, rearing his shoulder back—
I want you safe more than I care about Devina getting what she deserves!
Gritting his teeth, Jim fought against Sissy’s voice in his head, trying to get around it and do what was right, what was proper—
“Stab me, you sonofabitch!”
Jim snapped. With every ounce of strength he had, he . . .
...spun Devina around once, twice . . . three times, and slung her away from him, sending her careening across the concrete floors, her high heels catching the light and flashing, the clattering of her footfalls echoing all around.
“You can’t have me!” he screamed at her. “You can’t have them!”
And then shit went slow-mo.
In a series of events that he no doubt was going to remember for the rest of his immortal life, Devina lost her balance and this time couldn’t recover, her body falling backward, arms pinwheeling, brunette hair waving around as she traveled across the concrete floor on the verge of landing on her ass.
Except that wasn’t where she ended up.
From the one dark corner in the basement, like they were thieves smuggling a painting out of a museum, Eddie, Adrian, and Sissy came into view. They were all on a hustle, the three of them racing across the floor with Devina’s mirror hefted up in their communal hold.
It was the hole in one that saved all of humanity.
In spite of the fact that there were acres of floor space for Devina to yard-sale on, whole great stretches of no-big-deal, she tap-danced backward right into the ugly, pitted glass of the mirror, her body shattering the surface, the impact blowing open a suck zone that put that portal the bunch of them had opened up in the parlor in the shade.
He would never forget Devina’s expression as she realized what had happened. The shock and horror were the kind of payback he would have been overjoyed with—except for the fact that the instant she was pulled in, something inside of him lurched . . . then got its own pull on.
The center of his chest was yanked forward from his spine, and he felt as though his rib cage were going to blow open. And yet the mirror didn’t want him.
Only that part of Devina that was in him.
His torso bowed back so hard, he was sure he was going to snap in half, and he levitated off the ground. Just as he was about to pass out from the pain—
Snap!
Like a rubber band, the foreign substance shot free of him and hit the air, the black cloud of bees exactly what had come out of Sissy’s metaphysical incision. And he wasn’t the only one who lost something.
As he fell to his knees, he was terrified about Sissy or the angels getting sucked in, but the mirror wanted to claim only Devina—and that was why Ad jerked and spasmed, grimacing in pain, his body twitching as he lost his grip and levitated and—
The evil left him as well, the cloud forming in front of his chest and then breaking free to enter the swirling black vacuum.
As Jim struggled to stay conscious, he became aware of a strange sound over and above the howling of the broken mirror—and that was when he realized that the bureaus had begun to move, doing an about-face on a oner.
“Stand behind the mirror,” Jim yelled at them. “Get out of the way!”
Eddie disappeared and then came back into view as he grabbed Ad from where the guy had fallen, and Sissy, too. Then Jim couldn’t see them anymore.
All he could do was pray.
And his prayers were answered.
Everything in the basement got dragged into the void, all the clocks and the knives, the collection of metal pieces, the clothes and shoes and makeup, the bed . . . every object that Devina had bought or taken went along with her, her essence having tainted everything that was around her. Weakened by the fight, all Jim could do was watch in awe at a sight too monumental to comprehend or explain, like something out of a dream where what you witnessed was possible only because it wasn’t real.
Except this was actually happening.
With each object consumed, black flames licked out of the suck zone like the mirror was enjoying a good meal, wood and fabric and metal disappearing. The last thing to go was the frame of the mirror. And as with all of the things that went before it, the four sides disappeared into the vortex and then there was a sonic boom.
A cosmic burp, as it were.
And that was how, in the last round of the Creator’s war . . . Jim saved the world.
As Sissy’s ears popped with twin bursts of pain, the enormous boom! that ripped through the basement shocked her stupid for a moment. But then that cleared and she opened her eyes and . . .
It was empty.
The whole basement was nothing but floor space, the concrete floor bare of even a covering of dust. Except for Jim.
He was a mile away, it seemed, slumped on his knees, one hand planted as if he could barely hold himself up.
“Jim!” She scrambled to her feet. “Jim . . .”
He held his free arm out to her, and when she got to him, she didn’t know who was holding on harder.
“You saved me,” he said into her hair. “You saved me.”
“No, I—”
“It was you, all you. I saw you and you were talking to me and . . .” Like there were too many words stuck in his throat, too many things to say, he just kissed her deeply, and—
“Holy shit!”
Both of them jerked back and looked over at Eddie and Adrian. Ad was getting to his feet slowly, both hands out like he expected to have to catch himself from falling over at any moment.
“Holy . . . motherfucker.”
He began to move his body all around, arms and legs going this way and that—and for a moment, she had no idea what he was doing. Then she realized . . . he was hitting the Running Man?
“Oh, my God, he’s lost his mind,” she whispered, thinking three exorcisms in as many days was a little bit much. Even by their standards.
“I’m cured! I’m cured!”
With a quick shift, Ad bolted across the floor, did some cartwheels, pulled some kung fu moves, looked like he was going to try a split—only to think better of that one.
“I can see!” He ran over to them, jabbing his own finger toward his now-clear eye. “I can see! It took what I took from Matthias—the injuries went with the Devina shit!”
“Oh, my God,” Jim breathed. “That’s . . . awesome!”
“I know, right? And you know what thiiiiiiiis meeeeeans! Hellllllllo, ladies.”
Sissy had to duck her head into Jim’s pec as Ad’s hips rolled up and back and then he broke away and ran around again.
“Unbelievable,” Jim said with a laugh. “We win the war, and all he cares about is the fact that he gets his love life back.”
Sissy tilted in her man’s arms and looked over his head. “Your halo’s gone.”
“Really?” He patted at the airspace above his skull. “Guess this really is over.”
“You did it.”
“No, we did it. I was going to kill her, I really was . . . but all I could see was you. All I could hear was your voice. Without that? God only knows what would have happened.”
Eddie came over and smiled. Then offered his palm to Jim. “Well done. I’m proud of you.”
Jim grunted and got to his feet, taking her with him. And then he accepted what was offered. “I couldn’t have done it alone.”
“You got that right,” Ad said as he cha-cha’d over, one hand on his flat belly, the other held up at a right angle. “But I gotta say . . . it ain’t been no pleasure.”
Ad didn’t offer a palm. Instead, he grabbed Jim and hugged him hard. “But I wouldn’t have wanted to do this with anyone else.”
Sissy’s eyes got watery as Jim clapped his friend on the back. “That’s a two-way street, buddy.”
As they separated, Ad cleared his throat like he was flushing the emotion out of himself. Then he pointed both his thumbs to his chest and said, “Who’s got two thumbs and is about to be laid? This guy.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “You know, we don’t have to—”
Ad’s stare got shrewd. “I can find you a redhead. You knooooow how much you like a good ginger.”
Eddie’s brows went up into his forehead and he gave the waistband of his jeans a tug. “I, ah . . .”
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t want some if you could get it.”
There was some shuffling. A little throat clearing. And then Eddie’s libido apparently made up his mind. Glancing over at Jim, the angel said, “Well, here are the car keys. You guys okay to go home?”
“I think I can handle it,” Jim said dryly.
“Good. That’s good.”
There was a long moment between the three men, as if there were too much to say even if they had all night to talk.
“Go,” Jim whispered roughly. “Enjoy yourselves. You deserve it.”
“Don’t leave without saying good-bye,” Ad said.
“You have my word.”
And then the angels were gone, disappearing into thin air.
Jim put his arm around her waist, and the two of them fell into a stroll across the emptiness, their footfalls echoing all around. “You hungry?”
She had to laugh. “I don’t know. I can’t . . . everything is almost too much.”
“I have an idea.”
“And what might that be?” She craned her neck to look up at his face. “Something along the lines of what Adrian is so excited about?”
“Well, yeah.” Her man blushed. “But, ah, something else first.”
“Pizza.”
“No. I was thinking . . . how ’bout you get on the back of my bike and we, ah, go riding?”
Sissy leaned into his strength and laughed. “That’s a line from a Prince song, you know that?”
“Is it?”
“Yes. And my answer . . . is yes.”
Over by the elevators, he pushed the up button, and she had to frown.
“There was someone like me here, wasn’t there. Someone sacrificed to protect her mirror.”
“Yes, there was.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“I took care of the remains as I came in. And I’m going to make sure that he’s taken care of.”
Part of her felt like she should help that process. The other half . . . she wasn’t sure she could handle seeing what she herself had looked like.
But she wasn’t a wimp. Damn it, she needed to help whoever it—
“Sissy.” Jim took her hands and put them on his chest. “Let me deal with him, all right. You don’t need to see that. Besides, I have to believe he’s free now.”
“Can you find that out for sure?”
“Yes, I promise. But we won the war so I’d imagine that anyone righteous goes to Heaven. It’s the only thing that’s fair.”
“Just . . . find out for sure.”
“I give you my word.”
Sissy exhaled as the doors opened and the two of them stepped in together. There was a mirror mounted on the wall, encased in a stainless-steel frame. Leaning into the glass, she saw . . . no halo.
It truly was over.
“Will you stay with me?” she heard herself ask roughly. “Will you . . . I mean, I can’t go to Heaven, right, and I don’t want to be here alone.”
As they began to rise, Jim turned her in his arms and stared down at her, brushing her hair back from her face.
“I love you,” he said. “So where else would I be than with you for eternity?”
Putting her arms around his neck, she smiled and teared up at the same time. “That . . . sounds like Heaven to me.”