Rob Thurman: Grimrose path

I didn't want to see that.

True or not, I didn't let Eli see it. "Where's your whip? You can't rob a desert tomb without a whip."

The smile shaded into something almost affectionate, if death itself could be said to have that softer emotion. "You're right. There is so much you can't do properly without a whip, Trixa-of-my-heart, you couldn't begin to believe it." He laid a hand over my own heart as Zeke and Leo growled behind me, but stayed put. They knew if I needed help, I'd ask for it. "You took out a Titan. First Solomon and now this. You keep getting more and more entertaining. I haven't had this much damn fun in centuries. I take my hat off to you."

He did. He disappeared, but the hat stayed behind, falling to the dirt beneath. I picked it up and put it on, giving the brim my own flick of my finger. "Here's for staying entertaining." He was still going to try and kill me someday; that was a given. That day wasn't this day though. This day was good.

My optimism was renewed. Life wasn't always sweet or true, but it was now.

Sweeter than sugar.

Spilt milk, it couldn't be undone. That's what they said. They were wrong. Anna was proof of that. No good deed went unpunished. They said that too. That could be one they managed to get right.

I was in Leo's guest room, with my brother's picture. Curled up in the covers, I watched the play of light on the wall. I had a lot to think about: arranging for Trixsta to be rebuilt, getting used to the fact I actually had a home, being human… a trickster, yes, but a human one for the time being. Those were big things, enormous in my life. Then there was Leo and my excuse that we were too much alike, but he was the same as a home-something I wasn't supposed to want. I was told not to want. Shape-shifters were raised to change more than our appearances. Ours was a culture of the ephemeral. We moved from shape to shape, place to place, person to person.

We were the wind. That's the way the story went as long as any of us could remember. Who was I to change it?

Me. I was me. When had I let anyone tell me what to do? Except for my mama. I groaned and yanked the covers higher. These, especially Mama, were all things I wasn't going to solve overnight. It was going to take time, a few days, maybe a trip to Valhalla. There was time.

Once I got something wrapped up. That good deed coming back to bite me in the ass. I'd known Azrael would hold a grudge against me, Zeke, and Griffin. I'd known it from our first meeting. He couldn't bear that we lived; he couldn't tolerate our existence. He couldn't tolerate Zeke for rejecting Heaven and Griffin and me for who we were. Griffin, an abomination. Me, a mouthy abomination who consorted with his former superior. I did think the mouthy part was what had gotten to him most. I knew he'd start with me. It was only a matter of time. I had thought he'd wait at least a few nights, but patience and pride often trip up each other. He'd only waited hours. I believed Eligos was a better Angel of Death, the finest predators had infinite patience. Azrael had none.

"I see you, Azrael," I said quietly, staying on my side with the covers pulled up beneath my chin. Every little boy and girl believed their sheets and blanket could be armor against the monsters in the dark. Wouldn't it be nice if that were true? "You think death has never come for me in the night before? That I wouldn't recognize it?"

He stepped out of the corner, although his wings and his hair stayed part of the darkness. His eyes I could see. They didn't look any different than a demon's. "Your kind did this, nearly destroyed us all. Who are you to think you can walk away from that? Who are you to think you do not deserve punishment?"

Cronus had been paien, but that didn't make him my kind. He hadn't been anyone's kind in the whole of reality. Azrael knew that, but it was a good excuse to do to me what the Angel of Death was meant to do. If Cronus hadn't been paien, Heaven's own would've found another justification for what curled dark within him. Demons killed with a hot passion and Azrael killed with a cold satisfaction. Hot or cold, they both enjoyed their work far too much not to let it spread. Work, hobby, life. They lived to kill. Azrael wasn't Eligos, but that didn't mean he wasn't good at what he did, only that he wasn't the best. Now that I was human, it didn't take the best to kill me. It didn't take much at all, I'd discovered.

"Are you going to hide under the covers like a child?" Azrael stepped closer. "It wouldn't make a difference if you were. I have pity for no one, least of all you."

No, he had pity for no one, certainly not for me. It made it easy to have no pity for him in return.

"Eligos was right. You can't begin to fill his shoes," I said with a dose of contempt Azrael would find difficult to swallow and impossible not to react to. Releasing my hold on the covers, I shifted onto my back. As Griffin had risen, I thought it was time for an angel to fall. "And you're not half as smart as you think you are. You're certainly not half as smart as I am."

He was on me then, without a word. It was the same when he impaled himself on the sword I pulled from beneath the sheets. Not the Lethe sword, as that was gone, but Leo had let me borrow a nice steel one. Heavy and brutal in battle, those Norse roots couldn't be denied. "Heaven must be so disappointed in you." I looked up into the cold, sculpted face that hung above me and found nothing worth saving. "I know I am, and I know they are too."

They were the other angels who appeared out of the corner. Four more archangels, and they'd brought Ishiah with them, the only one still right with Heaven that I trusted. I'd told him Azrael would be coming, and he'd told others. Azrael had helped to save Heaven, but he'd done it without risking his own life-only the lives of his brothers. It was his way, self-serving, which I didn't think had gone unnoticed in the past. I thought his was a reckoning that was a long time coming, the battle the final straw. It helped as well that Ishiah had dropped a word in the right ears, pointed out that while Azrael had helped to sacrifice others in the service of Heaven, in the end I was the one who had destroyed Cronus. Killing me, that lowered Azrael to paien behavior… or worse, the demonic kind. Azrael had rank, but he had no friends among his fellow archangels, ones with the most will on high. With that will, they could make decisions Azrael wasn't going to like.

"You don't deserve to live," he hissed. "Life is wasted on the filth that is you."

"Is that any way to be?" I tsked. "You deserve to live, Azrael, for all time, but I don't think you're going to like it."

The hands of the other archangels fastened onto his arms as he reached for my throat. They pulled him up and off the sword. I dropped the weapon to the floor; I waggled my fingers at him in a mocking good-bye. "Send me a postcard from Down Under, that is if Eligos doesn't eat you." It didn't take the best to kill me anymore, but you at least had to be good. Azrael didn't meet either definition of the word.

The angels left, taking Azrael with them… Ishiah too, although I assumed they'd drop him someplace nicer, such as home back in New York. Other angels, Ishiah had assured me when I'd told him what Azrael would do, had been watching over Zeke and Griffin, as little as they'd liked it. That was Heaven's problem, not mine. If I saved reality, including their feathered asses, they owed me one. Keeping my boys safe had been that one. At least it had turned out to be only one night under the crystal eyes of Heaven's guardians. Trying to sleep knowing they were hanging around… It was worse than sneaking in past curfew when you had a mama with a hand quick to swat trickster butt.

Long-gone days.

I hit the pillows to plump them up and watched as Leo came out of his closet, leaving his shotgun behind. I trusted Ishiah… some, but trust or not, it was always smart to have a backup plan.