Page 3 of The Devil You Know

His eyes widened in shock and he clutched his smarting cheek.

“Come on, hit me back. We need an excuse for the state of your clothes.”

“And you had to slap me? I could have just changed—”

“The teleportation point is back in the main building,” I pointed out.

“Right. And I’m sure someone is keeping tabs on everyone who crosses the barrier... But I’m not going to hit you! I will just... Here, let’s put some mud on your clothes.”

The angel was exceedingly gentle as his fingers smeared dirt over my clothes. It would not be as visible on my darker clothing as the stains on Michael’s white, but anyone who looked for confirmation of their theories of what likely happened would be lulled into complacency. After all, it was so much easier to believe that we had a scuffle than to accept Archangel Fucking Michael messed up his clothes by kneeling in front of me. The second hand embarrassment if that came to light would kill me.

Thus prepared, we returned for another round of negotiations. Nobody addressed the elephant in the room, but I noted with satisfaction the true reason the angel’s knees were dirty seemed to remain undiscovered. This time Michael took his job seriously and put his all into negotiating the deals.

And if he turned around a case I was sure I had in the bag even without him giving me any handicaps? Well, it was a pleasure to watch a master of craft at work.

Chapter 2

The next day, I circled over the small town on the outskirts of which the so-called Embassy laid. Michael was projecting his angelic power like a beacon, so it wasn’t hard to find him.

“You came!” he exclaimed when he saw me.

I crossed my arms and pulled my black wings around me like a cape. It crossed my mind to just leave him hanging, but I made a promise. Well, kind of; I left myself room to wriggle away if I needed to, but the sentiment of a promise was there despite all the ‘maybe’ and ‘I will consider’. So, I decided to show up and get this over with.

Michael invited me into a small house and fluttered around, checking something. Sigils, I gathered from the flares of light. Probably the promised insurance of our privacy.

“Right, that should do,” he said and turned to me, biting his lip. “Lucifer... I’m glad you showed up. This is time sensitive. And the matter is so... so important I don’t really have the words to explain it...”

“Better find some quick and get to the point.”

The angel took a long inhale and exhaled shakily.

“God bid me to get you to Heaven so that he can talk to you.”

Those words were like having a whole ocean dumped onto me. Immediately, I was drowning in questions, old hurts, discarded hopes. My thoughts moved sluggishly, as if I was underwater, my mind refusing to comprehend those words. God. God called for me. Was it good? Everything I hoped for? Or a nightmare? Was there... a chance?

But just as I thought I might reach the surface and see the sun, or the familiar twinkling of stars, I got dragged even deeper, into the murky waters of a vast trench of my mind.

You met with me only because God told you to do it, I thought, the realization somehow, impossibly, hurting more than being cast down from the Heaven. You did it only...

Here I was, stupidly naïve as always, hoping that all those gestures – the willingness to meet, the smiles, the tea – that they mattered. Came from Michael truly wanting to reconcile, to rebuild the bridge between us even if it was brick by brick and took millennia. But no, it was all pretense. The Archangel being a good, little worker bee for God.

I hated them both with so much passion it hurt.

“Fine. Lead me to God. I want to have a talk with him, too.”

Michael looked alarmed at whatever he saw in my expression, but he nodded and professed two flasks full of swirling magic.

“This will allow you to temporarily enter Heaven,” Michael explained.

“Why two?” I asked suspiciously.

“The second one is for me. For this to work you need to be... tethered... to me. The potion only creates the initial connection – I will need to infuse you with my power constantly to shield you from the harmful effects Heaven would usually have on the fallen.”

I had questions. Many questions. But I feared if I started following logic instead of bravado, I wouldn’t go through with it at all. So, I grabbed the potion and drank it in one long swallow. The angel followed quickly with his own concoction and stretched his hand out towards me.

I took it grudgingly, aware that to follow someone else’s teleportation you had to be touching them.

An instant later I was on my knees, chest heaving, surrounded by angelic power pressing against me from all directions. It felt a bit like being drunk but sober enough to be aware of what a shitty situation you were in.

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