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Everything Shax owned fit into a single duffle bag with room left over. It took him all of fifteen minutes to pack up his life. The vodka ran out around noon, and he had spent the last several hours watching Hinndal’s body while sobering up. The compulsion to find her returned with the force of a tidal wave.
The last sliver of sun disappeared, and a cool breeze blew through the stuffy motel room, though all the windows and doors were closed. Hinndal’s body faded to gray dust, carried on the breeze into the world. It was done.
Shax stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. The bedside lamp glinted off something on the floor. Dread filled his guts as he took a step closer. A tarnished silver coin with worn edges had replaced Hinndal’s body. The portrait of a Roman emperor—he could not remember which one—was barely discernible.
Son of a bitch. He’d last seen the coin when he had dropped it into a busker’s open guitar case in Nashville about a month ago. A month before that, he had tossed it into a fountain in Philadelphia. Shax had rid himself of the coin many times since bouncing it off the head of an alligator and watching it sink beneath the waters of the Everglades on the day of the Second Fall.
The coin had graced many palms in its day, passed along from mint to merchant to farmer and back again until ending up in the hand of an apostle, along with twenty-nine of its fellows. On Lucifer’s orders, Shax had posed as a priest and took the silver pieces from Judas moments before the man had hung himself in shame.
He picked up the coin from the floor of his cheap motel room, and his skin crawled. After two thousand years, the coin bore the stain of the Prince of Hell’s rage and envy. Whispering the name of the victim to a coin, Lucifer would give it to Shax. Each name became a murmur in his mind until the target was dead. Only once he’d completed the mission was Shax able to enjoy a measure of peace. At least until Lucifer needed his services again, and the Devil always had need of his services.
Trying to get rid of the coin was a fool’s task. It would merely return to him, over and over again, until she was dead. He had wanted nothing more than to be forgotten by angels, demons, and fate after failing to kill her once. The compulsion to find her since had nearly driven him insane. His duty awaited, and chances were she would kill him.
Shax clutched the coin tightly, closed his eyes, and whispered her name.
“Kheone.”
Between one breath and the next, the world spun around him, and cold enveloped him. Shax opened his eyes and stared at a two-story building across a quiet street. Its tan bricks glowed golden in the fading light, the porch in deep shadow. Lamps flicked on. The coin never dropped him where his target could detect him, but she was somewhere in that building.
Sliding the coin into his pocket, Shax dropped his mental shield for an instant. A golden thread of awareness drifted through the frigid twilight and to a window on the first floor. There was Kheone. But he sensed something else, too, a larger presence. On the second floor, a pulsating ball of red-orange hostility roiled. His guard snapped up, and he hurried off. He would know that feeling anywhere. An archangel waited in the building, and there was only one on the face of the Earth. Fuck.
He didn’t even possess an appropriate weapon to confront an angel, let alone the Archangel Michael. Attempting his mission would be dangerous enough as it was, and dealing with the archangel only complicated things. If he wanted to live, he needed to come up with a plan.
He also needed a place to stay out of winter’s cold, a place he could drink himself into indifference. Finding her, being so close, set his teeth on edge. Picking up his pace, Shax passed a sign that read Hurst University and crossed a busy street, putting distance between himself and the angels.
The drugs and alcohol he had taken earlier were long metabolized, and the voice in his head was at full volume. Its orders echoed through his mind, urging him back the way he’d come. Twitching and swearing at no one in particular, he drew suspicious frowns from others on the street. If he wasn’t careful, somebody was going to call the cops, a pain in the ass he did not need. Another reason to find a place to stay.
Shax had taken what precautions he could, wiping Hinndal’s cell phone and tossing it into the Mississippi River, but he couldn’t do the same for his own. He would be lost without it. Aeshma wasn’t one to allow a minion to wander off unsupervised for long. With any luck, the duke would assume Hinndal had run. With even more luck, when someone came looking for Hinndal, there would be no trace of him.
He rubbed his face, wishing for a cup of tequila or a shot of coffee. Or something. Instead, he pulled out his phone and looked up the closest, cheapest motel. He turned up the collar of his jacket and strode through the darkening city. The stars shimmered in the heavens. Only a year ago, thousands of winged bodies, angels and demons alike, had filled the sky. They tumbled through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, streaked through the stars, and plummeted to their doom. Some fell faster, some slower, and some winked out of existence.
Shax scraped his hair out of his face, tugging hard at it, hoping the pain would dull the memory. It didn’t work. Up ahead was a liquor store. Tequila was perfect for forgetting, and he needed to forget tonight. She was so very close. He ducked in.
The memories would not leave him alone. A jumbled mess of light and sound and panic allowed the few solid sensations to stand out. The warm, vibrating handle of his dagger as it slipped from his fingers. The piercing sound of a horn. The Gate to Hell crumbling to dust with a roar, and Heaven’s Gate following suit an instant later, the flash of it dazzling him. Terror ripping through his guts.
He hurried to the first motel on the list. He put half his cash down to reserve a room for the week. The room he’d rented was as run-down as the lobby, but the sheets and towels were clean. He chucked his duffle bag into the closet and hid the rest of the money under the mattress.
Shax unscrewed the lid of the tequila bottle and took a swig, rushing to forget her lithe body pressed into his as the force of the explosion pushed them through the barrier between the celestial realms and the mortal one. He had lost his grip on the angel, her wings on fire as she drifted away. His own leathery wings blazed, the agony of it forcing him into unconsciousness, but not before a scream ripped from him. He had never been certain whether it was due to the pain or the despair.
Another gulp burned down his throat. Certainly not the best tequila he’d ever had, but all it needed to do was dull his memories of the Second Fall. At the very least, the tequila made him care less. The biting edge of the liquor distracted him from all the problems in front of him.
When he finally confronted the angel, she would likely kill him on the spot, never giving him a chance to explain himself. Only in his dreams did she forgive him. In his nightmares, she turned him over to Lucifer.
Another few shots and he could forget for a little while. The night was long, and the bottle was full.