Page 88 of The Deer and the Dragon
Silas had his arms around me in a moment, hand under my head just before it smacked against the obsidian floor. He scooped me up, pressing me into chest and muscles and frankincense and spice as he relocated me to the couch, muttering a low string of agitated curses. I groaned against my own weakness, hating my stupid, swollen knees for failing me.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, voice low. “If you know, then you know. Don’t say it out loud.” I looked up at him, confusion widening my eyes. He still hadn’t released me, warm hand cupping the back of my head as his arm remained around me. He eased me to a seated position as he said, “Just nod if you understand.”
Though I’d spent some time with Fauna insulting my intelligence, I understood that wasn’t what was happening. He wasn’t questioning my ability to understand; he was asking whether I comprehended the gravity that my words might have. I nodded slowly, and as I did, he released me. He moved away, but only slightly. His knee bumped mine and I winced, hand flying to the goose-egg-size welts that decorated each kneecap from my collapse into Hell.
He frowned down at my outfit as if seeing it for the first time. His gaze went first to my knees, but I didn’t miss how they traveled up, snagging briefly before meeting my face. Even in the candlelight, I could see the blush creep into his cheeks.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “I just banged my knees when I…I don’t know. Jumped realms?”
His gold-brown brows bunched as he lifted a large hand. “May I?”
My lower lip lifted in a pout. He didn’t wait for an answer before his hand touched one knee, then the other. The warm, tingling sensation radiated from my joints through my body, filling me with a decadent, downright sinful pleasure as something far more indulgent than healing coursed through me. I nearly choked on it, eyes closing, lips parting in a gasp as the tingling ended. When I looked back at him in shock, his mouth was quirked up in a half-hearted smile.
“I’m glad I could make you feel…better.”
I swallowed. I wanted to be angry, but it was hard to feel anything through the haze of dopamine. I didn’t have to glance down to know that my breasts had pebbled against his nearly translucent shirt. I bit my lip, shaking the treacherous chemicals from my mind as I tried to look at him through the haze.
“Silas,” I meant to say seriously, but his name came out a bit too sensually. I coughed and didn’t miss the smile. “Silas,” I repeated, this time managing to lasso the gravity the situation required. “You called in the bargain. You have to tell me—”
“Minor entity.” He cut me off loudly as if speaking for the room to hear. “Made for an easy bargain. There’s been a job out west that a handful of the faithful have been petitioning us to take. I haven’t wanted to tackle it, as it’s below my rank—but their prayers have grown annoying. One pagan deity or the other is making the agriculture in this town thrive like it’s eighth century BC. I was made aware of it months ago, but I knew it would start shit with the Phoenicians. I thought it would be easier to make Hell take the hit. It’s a small gig,” he said, voice a little too heavy as he landed on the final sentence. His eyes burned into mine, begging me to understand.
My lashes fluttered rapidly.
I did. He was announcing for the listening walls—whetherHeaven, Hell, or all the realms, that he and Caliban had a low-level bargain to deal with a minor pest problem. His raised tone rang a curious note. I had no idea whether or not he was telling the truth, but he clearly wanted to be heard.
But…the Phoenicians? I knew the pantheon as the bad guys from Sunday school stories. Could an angel really be talking about the Canaanites, the Philistines, Carthage, and the cut-and-dry biblical antagonists around the Euphrates?
I reached my hand toward where his rested on his knee, wrapping my fingers around the top of his hand and squeezing for emphasis as I asked, “Did you really?”
He flared his eyes in warning. His tone changed, lifting his pitch to an arrogance I hadn’t heard before. His gaze remained unchanged, golden gravity fixed on mine as he said, “If you think he can’t handle a Phoenician nuisance, then perhaps Hell’s lost its touch. It’s just outside of the town of Bellfield. Typical deal: idyllic town seems too good to be true because it is. Be my guest if you think he needs backup. Tell Hell thanks for squashing our cockroaches so we don’t have to get involved.”
Cockroach. I knew how Heaven felt about this pantheon in particular.
My mind flashed to horrible thoughts, feelings, and pictures of Sunday school. I was flung immediately into the memory of a scratchy dress and a cold, metal folding chair, surrounded by other children. The teacher used a flip book to illustrate the very graphic retelling of the Canaanite religion of the Old Testament that had been Yahweh’s main rival. The teacher had laughed as she had shown cartoon images of a scene so violent and horrifying that I’d mentally buried it until I began unpacking religious traumas on my therapist’s couch.
She’d told us about the infamous competition between Yahweh and Baal.
She started the story on the smiling, kindly face of Yahweh’s favorite prophet, Elijah. In the next picture, hepointed an accusatory finger as he issued a challenge to prove Yahweh’s superiority over Baal’s. They would both sacrifice a bull on an altar, but they would not light a fire themselves. Instead, the priests and prophets would pray to their respective gods, and the winner would burn the sacrifice.
The next pictures had been so red. Drawings of large, dead cows, of pools of blood, of knives and gashes in the arms of strange men. Baal’s priests had cut and harmed themselves, mutilating themselves in humility while they begged for his intercession. They were things children weren’t meant to see.
The Sunday school story told that, though they’d prayed day and night, nothing happened.
The teacher’s eyes had twinkled with victory as the story had taken a turn. She’d flipped the pictures to show the room crowded with children in their nicest church clothes the next scene in the story. In an act of showmanship, Elijah had asked the people to fill barrels full of water and soak the altar until the wood, the bull, and the trench were so saturated that it would be impossible for a fire to burn. When Elijah had prayed, Yahweh had answered, consuming the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the water until nothing but ash remained. Then, he blessed the land with rain.
When I’d asked my parents why God had stopped doing miracles, they’d raised their hand as if to hit me for such a heretical question. Working through their tempers, my mom had explained that He did miracles all the time—they just didn’t get written down anymore, since the Bible was finished.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear that, thousands of years later, Heaven and the Phoenicians continued to hate one another. But it left a much bigger question in its place. When it came to Heaven and its enemies and allies, the Phoenicians may as well have been Hell.
Traumatic memory had snatched me from the present. I thought of the fires consuming the water-soaked bull in the story as the flickering candles drew me back.
I realized my hand was still on Silas’s in the same momentit took him to turn his palm upward, snatching my wrist before I could pull away. He pulled me in. His free hand brushed a strand of hair away from my face as he drew unbearably close, reminding me of the serotonin that had gushed through unspeakable parts of me at his touch only moments before. For a terrifying moment, I thought he might kiss me. He left his free hand on my cheek, lips brushing my ear as he whispered, “I did you a favor. I don’t know how long he’ll be there before others find out. Look to the Wild Prairie Rose. Get to him first.”
He pulled from my ear and planted a gentle kiss on my cheekbone as if it had been his intent all along. Heat radiated from the place where his mouth had met my face, and this time I had no one to blame but myself for the tell-tale way my body responded below the flimsy cloth. He noticed, too.
Silas squeezed my hand and stood. He looked to where the poppet had tumbled near the far wall, then back to me before saying, “Keep it on you. You know…should you need me.” With a confusingly charming wink, a flash of white light, and the barest edges of residual glitter, he was gone.
