Tadeo scoffed, then stepped toward the tent.“Keep watch of what?The cactus?Get some sleep instead.We should all fit in the tent, but leave the middle section to the angel because that’s the most cushioned part.Are you hungry?I have another taco in my bag and a stove if you want to heat it.”
The soldier waved a hand.“I’m just tired.How early are we waking?”
“Dawn.”
Dina dipped his head and crawled into the tent, the rocky ground barely cushioned by the thin lower fabric, even though Tadeo had thrown some blankets inside.Without another word, the angel laid down, pulling his knees a little closer to himself because he was too tall for the flimsy little home he’d have for a few hours.There were times all he could do was breathe out nervously, realize how far from Heaven he truly was and how much his life had changed after a hundred million years of stagnation.His star was quiet today, but he sent him a loving prayer, then allowed his eyes to flutter shut.His wings ached beneath his skin.
Outside, Dina heard:
“No, dawn is fine.We’re really going to Hell?Really, really?”
“Yes.”
“Pfft.To be honest, I still don’t believe in Heaven or Hell or God even if angels are real — but I’m willing to look.Hey, don’t make that face at me.You should be excited,güey.You’re going to be the first saint that goes to Hell.”
CHAPTER16
The anti-Christ, the soldier, and the angel arrived at the coast within a day and a half, a few hours before sunset.Sparse vendors were scattered along the stretch of sand and rock, but Tadeo guided his Azteca mare away from them, away from the beach.He headed toward the tiny town adjacent to it, to meet with his aunt and uncle who ran a small convenience store.Dina had been, gently, ordered to stray behind, on the sidewalk, but Dante had been unshakable.All throughout the ride, he’d been pressed awkwardly to Tadeo’s back, occasionally bumping his head into the anti-Christ’s hat every instance that the horse jostled about too much.When the aunt asked who the green-jacketed man at the patio was, as Tadeo set some belongings down in the living area and thanked his relatives for taking care of them — the anti-Christ sighed, then grumbled, “Some weird man who is following me.”Tadeo hadn’t thought that Dante would hear, but he noticed a sulk on the soldier’s face that remained even after he, Tadeo, and Dina finally headed to the beach, now on foot.
Whistling low, Dante stared at the horizon, dark sunglasses over his eyes, standing between the angel and Tadeo, his combat boots some steps away from murky blue water climbing up the shore.His voice was rather tight: “What now?”However much they hadn’t spoken of it, the phantom pain of bullets and an amputated hand hung between him and Tadeo like wet clothes on a wire.“We’re not going to swim out there, are we?”
“I’m not sure,” Tadeo admitted.“We got here later than I hoped.It might be a better idea to go back to my family and sleep, but Joana’s already pissed at me.”The air was cool; the waves were a lullaby.
“Who’s that?Girlfriend?”
“She’s a lesbian,” Tadeo answered, “and she’s more of my boss.”Without elaborating, he turned to the angel nearby.Dina’s dark hair was tangling with the wind, and his eyes were distant.Time after time, Tadeo would catch the angel’s lips shaping into words never uttered, like he were speaking silently to something, maybe himself, maybe God.“Dina?”Tadeo called.“Do you know what we should do from here?”The angel’s gaze remained empty, his lips parted — an expression unchanging as if he hadn’t heard.At that, the anti-Christ furrowed his brow.
“Alright,” said Dante, then adjusted his jacket and trekked down the slope toward the tide lapping at the sand.
“What are you doing?”Tadeo walked after him without thinking, dry sand crunching beneath his boots before sharp splashes sounded below.Instantly, the sea began to claw up his ankle, and once it reached his jeans, it seeped through in such cold that he instantly shivered.“Shit—” Dante trudged through the water quicker, even as it began to rise to his knees, his thighs.“Hey!What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m just walking.”Dante reached for his sunglasses, tugged them off, then folded them at the collar of his shirt.“It’s cold as fuck.”
“Yeah,” Tadeo sighed harshly.“It is.”Just as the soldier slowed his movements, water having reached his waist, the anti-Christ halted his steps, feeling the tide rock against his thighs.Around them, it was quiet — just the hissing of the wind and some distant seagulls.Turning back, Tadeo stared at the desolate beach and the angel still standing at the shore, looking ahead, toward the setting sun.The haze in his eyes remained, as did the slight moving of his lips, almost as if he were lowly singing now in between the whirls of the ocean.Saliva balled in his throat — Tadeo remembered how his father used to sing beneath his breath, the words less like lyrics and more like a comforting chant.
Rolling the tension from his shoulders, Tadeo turned back to the soldier and called: “Dante!Come back here!We should wait.”Shockingly, Dante did stop, though with a stumble; then, he tilted his head back at Tadeo, though his face was twisted in confusion.“What’s wrong?”Dark brows tugged together in response.“What is it?”The soldier’s mouth parted, but it wasn’t Dante that answered.
Behind him, Tadeo heard Dina say, voice soft: “It’s in the water.”
Tadeo’s face was turning to see the angel, halfway there, when there was a sudden thump against the ground beneath his feet, then a ripple of the murky blue surface, like they were all standing on a dead heart that suddenly beat again.A gasp skittered from between his lips.Then, Dante was looking perplexed once more; then, his body jerked, in place, then to the left, then diagonally downward, making him stagger.A flicker of panic passed over his features before Dante, abruptly, flailed and was yanked down with such force that all the water around him shot up high and sharp.In an instant, the soldier’s body disappeared beneath the surface, and it didn’t come back up, not a second later, nor three seconds later, not a hint of him.
“Dante!”Tadeo managed to yell now, throwing one foot before the other, trudging through the sea with all his strength to move quicker than any real human could.Not even bubbles of air dribbled up the ocean that Dante had been pulled under.With no other recourse, the anti-Christ tried to look back again: “Dina, something took—” The angel was staring at him with wide, silver eyes.Then — “Agh!”— a thousand hands came over Tadeo’s legs, fingers gripping the fabric of his pants before tearing through to tangle with his skin.A mouth opened to scream, but he didn’t have the chance — as he was wrenched down into heavy, crushing icy water that soon rushed past his lips as his body was dragged deeper into the open sea.He threw out an arm, then another, willing bone and feather to jut out from his body in a burst of pain, blood.A redness, sprawling out like ink on parchment.His eyes blinked, blinked, bleeding out all the salt water until Tadeo could see clearer.As if in response, the monstrous hands on his legs were becoming one, becoming a single limb attempting to crush his lower half.It was a slimy limb, scaled — it was like the body of a fish or a serpent, and the anti-Christ finally saw exactly what he felt.
A sea serpent of blue-green scales and a head the size of three men standing on each other’s shoulders.On a long-snouted face, bulging eyes were darker than the ocean floor, a mouth was wide enough for several thin tongues to hang out, fluttering like streamers in the wind.Spirals of its body crowded all of the constrained Tadeo’s surroundings, and he was held in place by one such spiral.
Lungs fully filling now of scorching water — he saw another coil, this one around the body of Dante, who was slumped in its hold.A third coil was still broken up into several appendages — not unlike the multitude of limbs, or what had felt to be so, that initially seized Tadeo; they grappled a struggling Dina, one wing fluttering uselessly, the other one crushed in the hold.The angel’s panic was less than the soldier’s — his face more confused, almost hurt, as if he’d been betrayed.‘What is this?’thought the anti-Christ.Except he already knew.It was a sea monster.
In the Book of Job — Tadeo remembered clearer than anything — a line read, ‘Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook?’Skull full of water, choking on every drop of it, he saw how flames still managed to trickle from the monster’s nostrils in dark red.‘Will it keep begging you for mercy?Will it speak to you with gentle words?’The coils of the Leviathan’s body moved like gears, and if it weren’t for the rocks at the sea floor beneath them inching and inching past them — Tadeo wouldn’t realize the monster was moving, bringing the three of them somewhere, in a direction almost certainly opposite the shore.But how to be sure?‘Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering.’
The sea was too empty, no fish, no great mammals.The ground spared a few specs of sand to blow past, as if dust in breeze, but Tadeo couldn’t catch a glimpse of even crabs or critters.Each breath brought a barrage of salt into his mouth, but he could not die — ‘I’ve already died,’ — and neither could an angel, Tadeo was sure, but the soldier in the hold of the Leviathan was scarily still, head dipped forward.Gritting his teeth — Tadeo didn’t want him dead, no matter how much Dante had shot at him before.He’d already had his revenge, and he didn’t allow for collateral damage.Tadeo hacked on the water some more then twisted one way, the left, trying to shout in exertion, in pain as limbs sprouted, then retracted, from his joints erratically.But it was to no avail, and the water was growing heavier on their bodies, and all their world was growing darker.
‘Nothing on earth is its equal—’ Tadeo’s heart was as frantic as his body, tearing through his skin and clothing, gushing crimson out of him, but he was reduced to feeble kicks.‘A creature without fear.’It had been many years since Tadeo had felt terror like this.So recently, the anti-Christ had decimated dozens of soldiers and their tanks.‘I’ve never had an equal to fight,’ he realized.‘Not since I turned into this.’
The Leviathan, abruptly, dipped its head, plummeted with all of its body, taking the angel, the anti-Christ, and the human with it.Hard, they rammed into the ground, and Tadeo shouted out when he slammed into the seafloor.Thrashing, he tried to lift his head, but he was being wholly dragged against the rocks, each one digging into his side, his head.Once again, he was choking up on water, and his head felt light in between all the thumps of pain.Dina’s voice sounded — yells and shouts for Tadeo, but they were muffled.He could hardly see now — the surface a dim glow far above.‘Like Heaven.’He could remember the light he saw when he’d died, the flicker at the end of the tunnel.
Weak, Tadeo almost didn’t notice when the ground took on a decline, and he felt as if he were traveling down a slide.Squinting, Tadeo could only feel the now many rocks that were striking against him and make out the shape of what might’ve been a giant dark maw of stone.Like a cave mouth.The Leviathan slithered inside, turned like a shadow, and the soldier — surely dead by now — was pulled in first, then the angel who was looking at Tadeo in desperation.Then, finally, Tadeo felt himself reeled into pitch darkness.Shaking, shuddering — the water instantly became cooler, and almost denser, and though he struggled to see, he noticed a ceiling coming over him, hanging down rock icicles like teeth.The ceiling, in fact, was approaching rapidly, and the floor kept trailing downward.Uselessly, Tadeo jerked a little, but as the cave closed in around him, more and more until he could feel it crushing the Leviathan’s body and his own together.He turned his head, shut his eyes, gasped and gagged on water.
‘I can’t move,’ he wanted to scream, limbs crushing against his sides.‘I can’t breathe.’His organs felt squeezed too, and the cave was tightening so much around him that he was even losing his ability to struggle.‘I can’t move.’It was so dark.‘I can’t move.’Was he still going deeper?His legs were uncomfortably pressed together.He couldn’t even turn his head anymore.Black, in every direction.Some muffled sounds.Dina was gone, was quiet.Dante was dead.‘I can’t move.’Not even the room to shiver.‘It’s so dark.’He couldn’t move.‘My ribs—’ When he tried to breathe, his shoulders, his chest, scraped the walls.
