Page 9 of Blaze of Our Lives

“We’re wasting time,” I told him. “Lost time is never found again.”

“Benjamin Franklin,” he said, naming the quoter. “However, what’s the definition of lost or wasted time?”

He had me there.

He went on. “To lose patience is to lose the battle.”

The Demon played the quote game as well as Sean, Man-mom, Uncle Joe and me. He’d quoted Gandhi. Fine. He won this round. He was older, smarter and he loved me. I was no dummy. If I couldn’t beat him, I would join him.

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop,” I shot back.

Abaddon grinned. “Confucius.”

We would get the party started when it was time for the party to start.

CHAPTER THREE

I was sure that the food had been produced by magic. Tim had whipped up something that should be outlawed. I knew for a fact I didn’t have hotdogs, cream of mushroom soup, animal crackers, Maraschino cherries, or pickled carrots in my pantry. The combination was gag-inducing. The only people eating were Candy Vargo and Tim. Everyone else had politely passed.

“While we wait for Gideon and Lilith to come back in, tell me about the Higher Power, please,” I said. “Explain to me how It’s different from God.”

Candy Vargo pushed her clean plate aside, burped and popped a toothpick into her mouth. “God’s a human thing,” she explained.

“So, the Bible isn’t true?” I asked.

“You wanna take this one, Angel?” Candy asked Cher.

“You betcha,” she replied, taking a swig off her wine cooler then dabbing at her mouth with a Versace hanky. “Plenty of truth in it. Plenty of untruths. You know when you play telephone?”

I nodded.

“Well, that’s kinda how it came to be. Short version, in my opinion, is this—stories got told and passed on repeatedly over the years—some got embellished, some got forgotten. Then they decided to write it all down in what would be recognized as a dead language today,” Cher explained.

“Oh yes!” Tim said, pausing his note taking. “It was eventually translated by men into Latin then later into other languages.”

“Men who might or might not have had different agendas,” Charlie explained. “Basically, the game of telephone continued.”

“Women were not involved,” Heather added, pointedly. “Therefore, Immortals tend to look at the Bible as a collection of stories that make an attempt to lead humankind to do good.”

“But them fuckers have taken the bits and the pieces that support their own beliefs. Bottom line is that God is love. Period. If all the fuckbuckets in the world would just abide by that they’d be a whole lot better off,” Candy said flatly.

“So, God is real?” I pressed, confused.

The Keeper of Fate shrugged. “Depends on what you wanna believe, Badass. Many bloody wars amongst the humans have been fought in the name of religion. Some ain’t never gonna end. Not real fucking sure if that’s what God would have intended.”

“Not helping,” I said.

She shrugged. “Not trying to. Some questions have no answers. Some have millions of answers. Faith is a choice.”

Abaddon hadn’t said a word. He was very good at listening.

“Moving on,” I stated. It felt like I was getting nowhere fast. I’d deal with what was directly in front of me. “The Higher Power. Explain.”

To my relief, Abaddon decided to join the discussion. He was less cryptic than the others. “The Higher Power is more of an entity than a being—an elusive light. Smoke and mirrors—danger, love and wickedness personified. Not something to be questioned or called on. The Universe is neither black nor white. It’s gray. The Higher Power could also be considered gray.”

So much for being not cryptic. I squinted at him. “There’s a problem.”

He raised a brow and waited.

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