CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Musical Chairs

 

THE BLADE DOESN’T make it to his skull.

It cracks hard against something.

Lucifer stands there, wincing. “Antlers. Really.”

Cason flicks his gaze upward. Sure enough, he sees the shadowy tangle of antlers rising from his brow. His head feels hot. He smells an animal musk.

He growls. With a twist of his head, he sends the blade spiraling away. It falls as just a hilt against the earth.

“A gift from your Daddy,” the Devil says with a snort.

Cason lunges forward, impaling the Devil on his antler spires. He roars—a sound in no way human but in all ways his own—and braces himself as he puts his back and neck into it, lifting Lucifer up off the ground.

“You know—” Lucifer says, voice hitching as he sinks down deeper on the horns. “You can’t—kill me—nnngh—like this.”

“I can keep you from the throne,” Cason snarls.

“Can you? Have you—urrrk—seen your son lately?”

Cason looks.

Barney.

Where is Barney?

Suddenly the child is on him. Crawling up his side like a bear cub scampering up a tree, the Devil’s blade in his hand. Cason pivots, tries to grab for his son—the child shrieks, that too an inhuman sound, and above them both the Devil coughs and cackles: “He’s my boy now—” Cough, hack. “I’ve got his mind. I’ve got his soul!”

The glass blade extends, swipe, swipe.

Pain lances down through Cason’s head like a jet of hot lava.

The Devil tumbles free, the horns still stuck inside him. Barney’s cut off the antlers at the base.

The child leaps free of his father.

It’s all going sideways.

The Devil laughs, staggers onto the first of the golden discs leading to the throne—

Cason moves to follow, but his own son stands in his way, the glass blade weaving in the air—

He can’t attack his own son.

Can’t do it.

He does that, the boy will fall. Maybe him, too. Down, down into the emptiness, into the golden wires, through the clouds and—where? Cason doesn’t know.

He can do only what he can do. Which is fall to his knees as the Devil takes the throne.

 

 

PSYCHE KNEELS IN the blood of the minister and pounds the earth; red flecks her cheeks and shirt as she does so.

Tundu sits against the pew, wheezing, rasping.

“I can’t do anything for you now,” she tells him.

“Help the boy,” he says, then spits blood in his hand.

She presses her forehead against the wet red puddle. Sticky. Warm.

She can feel him out there. Down through the closing channel. She can’t make it through, but maybe, just maybe—

Her mind can.

 

 

THE DEVIL SITS.

The glass throne roils. Dark plumes like ink fill the glass. The golden wires dangling beneath the glass throne turn red, then black, as white pulses of light travel their lengths, forming the wisps of glowing skulls. The Devil grins, begins picking antler and bone out of his bare chest.

He sees the boy keeping Cason at bay. Good child. Good little prince.

But then the boy’s head snaps up, and he wheels toward the Devil.

The young prince walks along the golden discs toward the throne.

Cason calls after his son. “Barney, noooo.” Bit of a whiner, that one.

Lucifer spins his finger in the air. “Little Prince. Turn back around and go cut off your Daddy’s head, will you? I’m tired of hearing his mewling.”

But the boy doesn’t turn around. He keeps coming.

This is awkward.

“No, no, I don’t want to play right now, little boy. Go. Go.” He feels power surging through him, suddenly—the divine awareness is electric. His mind leaves this place for just a moment, and he sees everything about all the worlds. The Seven Heavens and the Realms of Hell, Earth and Sky and Ocean, cosmic wormholes and twisting stars, eternal forests and impossible mazes. All the men and the mice, all the falcons and all the fish. All the fallen gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters.

He can change it all. He can remake the world in his image.

There’s a sound of a little cough in front of him. A throat clearing.

He opens his eyes, irritated at the interruption. There stands the boy.

He speaks in his voice. But also in another voice. A woman’s voice. Cupid’s bitch. Psyche.

“The throne is what you always wanted,” he/she says.

And he thinks to vaporize the child’s body with his mind, but he doesn’t get the chance.

The child swings the Devil’s own blade upward. Lightbringer cuts through the side of the glass throne and carves off a piece. A very sharp piece.

“What do you think you’re—”

The boy plunges the shard into the Devil’s throat.

 

 

HEAVEN SHUDDERS. THE red wires snap, hiss, shake as if in hurricane winds—all the dead angels suddenly sit up and moan, before again falling back down into torpor. Cason watches the events unfold—his son walking toward the throne, then carving off a piece of it to plunge into the Devil’s neck.

The Devil bursts into flames. He shakes and writhes, screaming. Cason runs, feet bounding across the discs as they tremble beneath him. He grabs his son, scoops him up just as the Devil’s flesh turns to magma.

It melts into the chair, and becomes part of the glass.

Again the wires go dark. The chair stops pulsing.

And Heaven is still.

“Daddy?” Barney asks.

Cason hugs him. The boy cries. Not a full-on sob: just the quiet whimpering of a very scared, very confused child.

But he sets the boy down. He tells him, “You cross over. You go on back. I’ll be right there. I promise. There’s... something I have to do first.”

Then he takes the sword from the child and gently urges him.

“Daddy, I don’t wanna.”

“You have to. Hurry. I’ll be there.”

Barney crosses over, crying. Cason calls for his son to be careful. And not to fall.

He sighs, holding the blade. The glass extends, the edge gleaming as blue fire flickers inside of it. He thinks to sit—knows he could—maybe even should. A little voice reminds him that he’s dead; genuine dead. This might be the only way to keep on going. And it would always let him stay in touch with his wife, his son. He could give them everything. He could give them the world on a platter.

He raises the blade above his head.

But then he realizes: it would be a gift, wouldn’t it? To be God. To have that power. Barney would grow up to be president. Alison would never die unless Cason allowed her to, and then they could rule this place—and all the worlds—together.

A perfect dream.

He’s never been a fan of perfect.

He cleaves the throne in twain.