Before she died, I fought with my sister through the divider of a bathroom stall. It wasn't exactly the place I would've picked to have a final heart-to-heart, had I a choice. We didn't even resolve the crux of the issue at hand, just stomped out of the toilets mad.
I tried to convince Chichi to write on her memorial tablet, “She left this world doing what she loved: bitching at her little brother.” My father is still convinced the callous suggestion was drug or pain induced.
Adelaide was to blame. She always was when things went wrong on the streets. Walker and her boys had been playing peekaboo with Midori Group since the two of us were in middle school. When Chichi was in charge, Walker was just a teenage nuisance. But unchecked weeds tend to grow roots that run deeper than poison can reach them.
When I took over for Chichi as Midori Group's president at only twenty-five, Walker tried to schmooze her way into my good graces, and I let her have her head for a time. But she got greedy. She tried playing games. She took businesses that weren't hers to take. She upset other crews in town. She made poor financial decisions and alienated some of our richer clients. She killed one too many grifters with name tags on them and made for bad business. She was rotten product, and I knew better.
When I broke things off with her West Riders just to save face under the underground's microscope, Walker called foul and swore a vendetta against my family. I'd made her a pariah by her accounting, but it seemed to me she'd done that to herself by stepping on all the wrong tools and pissing in all the wrong pools.
I thought she was all talk.
She pulled the wool over my eyes, and I let her like a lamb to the slaughter. Just months after telling her I couldn't trust her not to blow up her own supply houses, she told me she'd changed. She wanted to reconcile, pay fealty. Maybe together, we could work to improve her reputation among the fold and make amends.
I'm a sucker for a comeback kid.
I ate that redemption bullshit up.
My sister, Kazumi, smelled the pile from a mile away, but she insisted on going with me anyway. I thought she was going as backup, or maybe a witness. Maybe she'd been planning to use the meeting to insert herself back into the underbelly of our wealth, using it as an excuse to tattle on me. (“Look at what your son has done to your group! You should've appointed me like Haha-we wanted!” to imasu.)
But the meeting to play cards and craft a collaboration escalated into a game of rock-paper-minigun, and I got caught trying to run with scissors with my pants around my ankles. Kazumi had warned me about an insider—that they were closer than we could've ever imagined—but I hadn't gotten proof out of her in the end.
There were knots in the floor, kill windows disguised as worn-down infrastructure. In the smoky haze of that backroom, Adelaide found out how hard and how easy it was to kill a couple Devereaux scions.
Kazu was shot in the neck. She died within minutes.
I almost followed her across the river, but instead woke up in the Devereaux family hospital with a heartbroken Chancery explaining the dirty details before my father took over the lecture.
They spoke of the outcome in shifts, talking until I faded out, then picking back up where they left off when I was conscious again.
Walker had taken a chunk out of our territory; a ten-mile swath of restaurants, banks, and retailers that had been under Midori control since the fifties. Of the five Devereauxs to hold the title of President in the group, I was the first one to ever lose us ground.
Peace, my ass. I was a fucking fool.
I wanted to retaliate–reciprocate with an all-out firefight, but my father talked me down from war. I couldn't physically stand; could barely even breathe. I had six surgeries ahead of me. Six. Yet, I wanted blood, and I wanted it yesterday. It seemed like the only way I'd be able to move–if I wanted to stay in control–was to bide my time and wait for an opportunity to strike, but I had to strike.
One bullet clipped my sister and killed her in a handful of moments. Walker's little brother, Teddy, had punched eleven holes into me from collarbone down to right knee, but I had to be the one that carried on. Me. I, the naive idiot that believed in second chances and unicorns, had led my family and my group into that mess… and gotten tougher-than-diamonds-Kazumi killed for all my wishful thinking.
Chichi-we said I could blame myself, or I could blame Adelaide, but my sister and I had always been overachievers.
I did both.
Which was how, after nine months in the hospital (punctuated at the end by a doomed assassination attempt by one of Walker's Riders), I was begrudgingly secluded somewhere in the Northwest at a secret lakeside cabin to presumably finish healing… in body, if not in mind.
Chichi had put me, a whole grown-ass person, in time out while he came out of retirement to run Midori in my place.
He'd seen me off with an ultimatum: “I'm not burying another child before year-end, Kouji. Stay at the lake. Fish, fight, fuck. I don't care. Just keep your ear to the ground and stay off the West Riders’ radar–No, shut it. I'm not finished. Until you can hold a pistol without shaking, you're under lock and board. It's for your own good.”
“For the good of Midori, you mean,” I said, making sounds chewed up by gravel and sand.
My father rolled his eyes as I motioned at Chancery for us to leave, but he hesitated before bending down to help me out of my chair. I resented it a little, that he looked to my father for approval first. Chichi said, “That too.” When we got to the doorway, he added in Creole, “Kouji! For the love of God, listen to Chancery.”
I didn't answer, just gave him an incredulous eyebrow raise as if to demand, When have I not listened?
Chancery smiled back at my father, but his nose scrunched up along with his eyes as if to say, I'd have better luck commanding the weather, but thanks for the ego boost, Other Dad.
Remus Chancery was my second in command, an extension of my will, and my best friend. He also mothered me like he was practicing for the yet-to-be-established Matrimony Olympics.
I would listen to Chancery, and I would even do what he suggested when it was reasonable.
Though, to be transparent, how I judge the reasonability of his suggestions often depends on my mood, the day, and whether he's already lectured me about something decidedly unreasonable–like getting eight hours of sleep or something. In this economy? F'geddabouddit.
“You're not President where we're going,” Chancery warned me as he pushed his belongings into an overhead bin. “Solberg and Bardo are already there waiting. You're back to being Boss for the foreseeable future. How's it feel?”
I grunted in response. I was honestly relieved by the distinction, if made a little restless. Being just another middleweight Midori underling–just another boss in a sea of bosses again–was like getting back to basics… It was a chance to reaffirm the relationship I had with my inner circle and myself.
Or at least that's what I told myself to avoid feeling sorry instead.
My sister was dead, two out of three of my enforcers were buried, and I was going to be living in exile until I could weigh in at over a hundred pounds. I was thirty years old and had already mourned two wives and a son and wasn't looking forward to any repeat performances of those tragedies.
I'd found a swatch of gray hair growing at my temple just that very morning. I was bone and sinew and pain–the mummy-like remains of a once physically powerful pharaoh.
It was prime time to start feeling sorry for myself.
I managed to keep it at bay until we got to the house and Bardo and Chancery had to carry me up the steps to my suite. Then, left in sudden solitude for the first time in months, it all crashed down on me like the yoke of a pillory, and I broke down.
My fucking life was over.
The “cabin” was fine. It was beautiful and spacious and had all the things a caged bird could sing about. Even the property was well groomed and well stocked.
But the weather was fridged and unwelcoming. The pine forest around the lake was oppressive and looked the same in every direction. The lake itself was completely frozen and looked like the black and blue marbled floor of a prison you might see in Hell.
I could hear a pack of wolves at night that Chancery and the boys swore weren't real.
Bardo snored. Solberg pissed on the guest bathroom's floor. When I got moody, Chancery treated me to withering glares to mask the truth that, when he thought I wasn't looking, the looks were more often pitying, worried, or exasperated.
The lakehouse was fifty miles from town, off the grid, roomy, and luxurious. It was warm, safe, and secure.
It was suffocating.
I was planning to crawl right out of my own skin even before my father's witch showed up. And after Madame Zahra Lavelle arrived? It was anyone's bet which of us would survive the winter without being deboned.
My money was on Lavelle. It wasn't that she was a survivor. No. She was a cockroach. And she at least got to leave after she was done bequeathing her gifts.
Chancery made the two of us sit in full view of everyone else so neither of us would be tempted to murder. Joke's on him. I can barely sit up straight. I said over clasped hands, “My father sent you here for a reason. Why not finish up and get lost?”
“You don't believe in my magic. So, I need to craft sympathetic wards instead. They'll require your hair and fingernails, and the saliva of all your subordinates. Unless of course you'd like to contribute your own body fluids instead.” The parlor smelled like formaldehyde. I didn’t wonder why. Madame Lavelle was there when I'd been born—had probably been there when Chichi-we had been born. She had to be two centuries young and not a single fucking day older.
Her skin was like rawhide, leathery in some spots, ironclad in others. She was draped in her usual finery. A three-piece maroon suit and sensible black shoes. Her hair was pulled back into a brunette bun. Her makeup was conservative.
She didn't come off as a blue-collar witch or a crystal mommy. I'd always seen her as the professional con-woman preying off almost three generations of Devereauxs. But Bardo called her the GILF Dominatrix once and I haven't been able to unhear it since.
I tugged at my hair and came away with several loose strands. I sprinkled them on the coffee table in front of us before putting my teeth to my nails. Chancery made a sound of protest, but before he said anything, Lavelle laughed heartily and started carefully sweeping up the garbage with a happy curve to her thin, harsh mouth. “You're still a mouthy little fuck, but you are by far my favorite Devereaux.”
I held up a finger as Solberg put a hand on his pistol. He was relatively new compared to the rest of my circle and had only ever been exposed to Lavelle in the past through small, incidental doses. He didn't know Lavelle was full of more shit than spite. He glanced around at the others to follow their cues from that point on and I lowered my hands. Good. Not a complete idiot.
Lavelle said, “You've got a sorcerer of Solomon on your tail. Not sure how Adelaide convinced such a paragon to play pawn in this tiff between mortals, but such is Heaven's will—mysterious. Since your guardian angel was killed several months ago, I'll bid for another guardian from the other side. If you're lucky and God favors you, you'll get a cherub.” By her tone, she had as much faith in me as I did her god. She stood up then and I stood as well, slow and steady. She waited until I had her eye again before she flashed me a bloodthirsty grin. “If you're not, you'll at least still receive all my thoughts and prayers.”
“Joy,” I grunted.
Chancery asked, “How do you know his guardian angel was killed? I didn't even know he had one.” He seemed more derisive than curious, like asking for more information would allow him to catch her in a lie.
“Everyone is born with one,” Lavelle replied boredly. “All three of you boys still have your birth-assigned powers that are.” She made a point to stare at Chancery with a secret little tilt to her mouth. “They are usually very nearly impossible to kill.” Then she gestured at me. “Except in strange cases like Kouji here. He's been through three guardian angels in as many decades and the fates still have no idea what to do about him.” Her smile was savage. “My advice to the other side? Pitch this assignment to another troublemaker. Hopefully the negative energies will cancel each other out.”
I crossed my arms. “Is that all Chichi-we wanted you to do for me? Matchmake me with another useless sycophant who won't even bother to save the right Devereaux when it comes down to a choice?”
“Boss,” Bardo stated. When I looked at him, he said evenly, “The lady came all the way from the Vudons in BC at the President's last-minute request.”
I sighed. He was right. And I wasn't too proud to snub him for it. “Thank you for your time, Madame Lavelle.”
She grinned at me. “I for one look forward to seeing who they cast down.”
“Cast down?” Chancery muttered.
Bardo escorted a silent Lavelle out.
Solberg was still looking around the room like he could catch a glimpse of some divine protector if he just glanced away fast enough. Little did he know that, outside times of peril, guardians resided in their charges’ hearts.
Chancery was the last to leave. He sat down next to me and huffed a laugh. “She's a quack.”
“If she keeps other quacks scared of us, that's all that matters.”
“Three guardians though? How's she come up with this shit?” He chuckled and asked, “Even if it turns out to be real… How the hell do you kill a guardian angel?”
I didn't tell him that I only believed in half the nonsense Lavelle peddled. After getting my morals and my sense of righteousness stomped into the mud by Adelaide, my core belief in the goodness at the heart of Mankind was basically shattered.
But I believe in evil.
And I believe in good.
I'd seen what a guardian angel could do… and I'd seen what could destroy them. I sat back into the cushions and put my arm against my head. “Thanks to some old wise guys, humans have dominion over the jinn. But then demons were purpose built to conquer humans. Angels were made to combat demons… It's like ro-sham-bo. So, what kills guardians? Genies.”
Chancery humored me after a chuckle. “Why are genies after you, Boss?”
I lowered my arm to wink at him. “I tricked a jinn into giving me more wishes than was fair. It's not enough that Adelaide wants a piece of me. A whole flight of ifrit want a taste of me too. My soul is doomed to be a chit in some larger game.”
My humor was more existential than gallows-flavored this time, but that alone put Chancery in a better mood. He beamed at me. “Let's hope the heavens give you more than Cupid then.” He went to pat my leg, but then remembered my wounds, and sighed instead. “I'll help Solberg with dinner. Get a nap in.”
I grunted. What else was there to do?
21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSsxm1xMapi
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21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj5UaBlTX5A
Of his two-thousand years, naught by thirty of them had ever mattered.
Those that mattered not were made of atar and ash, a blandness of red and black. It was an existence so far from what he'd been made to receive that it may as well be consigned to history as to the pit… where all discarded things were meant to be fed.
He had long ago given up wondering why his penance never seemed to end. He had served a purpose. But he had not received glory or honor as promised, only pity and pain and indifference.
The indifference to his suffering was the worst, not because he did not know for whom he suffered, but because he did not know why he still willingly suffered for them.
Six chains of wrought-atar bound him to his living prison, fed by molten metal that sang as it flowed, lulling its occupant into trancelike states as it intravenously fed whatever pitiful creature it was tortured to wed.
But the blood was not singing anymore.
He couldn't believe the silence. The silence was akin to oblivion, and yet… if he waited, he could almost still hear its call… and wondered if its echo would ever leave him.
The chains disengaged from his bones, but he didn't immediately fall free. Normally, the bindings embedded in their sister limbs would slip free of their fleshy sleeves when unbound, but he had been so long rooted to the wall that pieces of him went with them as they pulled away, scattering a pittance of blood upon the floor amid all the icor, like an offering to his warden.
It took him precious moments to find his feet, but he knew if he didn't hurry, then someone might realize they'd made a mistake and put him back.
Iskariot, a voice whispered behind him. Turning, he was met with no one, save a gathering of faceless attendants, so like children coming to beg his attention.
The communal desire was there, the desire to move in concert with their shapes, as he once had two millennia ago when he was part of a Kingdom and had attendants of his own that would clean his pin feathers and polish his scales. But he had not been one of the flock since the death of his born charge.
He drew his khopesh and was genuinely surprised it answered his call, body thrumming with long untapped power. His molten core had already begun to heat and burn, spinning to generate his cosmic fold in the universe—the thing that allowed him to change his shape, fly, and fight.
All was in order. Not atrophied as he'd once feared, but latent, ripe, and free.
Fury came first, followed by the satisfaction that he could feel anything at all. He didn't strike out at the fledglings. His grievance was not with them, but the whole of the Holy Host and its baleful hierarchy.
Instead, he sheathed the blade inside himself and stretched out his wings, feeling muscle and sinew reform to accommodate the reach.
When he'd lost his charge, he'd been but a sapling. Now, he was a mighty world tree, with roots that reached down into the underside.
He would not be uprooted again.
“A summons remains unfulfilled,” the warden's voice rang out, scattering the fledglings like a peeling bell in the red gloom. “You will be given a chance to attend, Hound. Orders from below. They did not say to give you a fighting chance. You will return here, should you fail. I suspect you will.”
The dredges and foot-kissers of the Host around him all bowed their heads and wings, exposing their joints or cores, as determined by rank and pedigree.
He had neither.
Save to beg for a single soul under Heaven's watch, he would never kneel again.
“We will keep your place vacant.”
ns 15.158.61.5da2
