“It’s too late now.”
“That’s why I’m having you.Because it’s too late for me.For you and I.”
Satan shut his eyes and the heat of pleasure bloomed in his gut, leaning further against, into, the mouth that he refused to admit he’d been made for.He’d molded himself for other mouths.His body was no longer one of prophecy or fate.It was liberation, freedom.He was pride and death and uprooted love.But he couldn’t resist the draw of the other’s imperfect suckles, his desperate, frantic drinking.
Pressing forward as much as he could, bridge of his nose pressing to Satan’s pelvis, Michael fluttered his eyes shut, clutched Satan’s waist tight, almost enough to crush.He ground the devil against him harshly, as if forcing him, as if this wasn’t a willing offering that Satan would never confess to.‘It’s too late for us.You’re right of that.’He dipped his head, wrestled against the bindings, wished he could do more than arch his back and feel it torn out from him.Biting down hard on his lip, the devil tried still to crush the pretty moans that had granted him nations, that had ruled Hell.
Gasping, shudders of pleasure rattling the chains, Satan felt the archangel grapple him closer, as close, as deep, as he could.Trying, hopelessly, to pull the devil’s entire body into his mouth, to savor, to eat.To be eaten like Christ at his supper, feeling death on his shoulders.And Michael choked, either on tears or the devil’s dribbling end.He drank like it was only the devil that could save him.
Satan could only remain there, supported by Michael’s hand and Michael’s chains.Panting, legs shivering, the heat in his stomach aching.“Michael,” he whispered.“Michael.”Broken, soft, no war left in it.Lucifer’s voice.
As if man hearing God, Michael lifted his face with desperate, adoring eyes, mouth leaking sin.He rose weak, trailed his hands upward on Satan’s body.When he kissed Lucifer, it was hungry, grieving.Their lips molded perfect, then broke — pressing hard enough to shatter where they locked to ensure their mouth would never fit against each other again.‘It’s better to be broken than to be made for you.’It was better to be dead than to live without loving, without hating, without the other.
CHAPTER30
Hours after texting his commanders that he was still alive, Dante received a response.From the coast, after taking the phone Tadeo had handed to him, Dante had messaged that he was still with the suspect, and that if his mother was still alive, he would tell them how to kill Tadeo.Part of it had ultimately been impulse and fear, imagining his mother killed while Dante was missing in Hell.Now, however, grunting as he kicked through the rubble with the anti-Christ, he hesitated before reading the messages on his phone.‘She’s alive,’ with an image attached, and ‘What did you find out about him?’His gaze flickered over to Tadeo.
Among the mountains of rubble they stood over, the anti-Christ was rummaging through the blocks of cement — pieces of wall, pieces of ceiling — with clawed hands.Bone and blood were piled neatly nearby, the jigsaw remnants of someone who’d died wearing jeans and a t-shirt.His brows were furrowed, sweat dribbling down.The stars above had long quieted their screams, but the young man’s face cringed in pain as if they still wailed.‘He’s a monster,’ thought the soldier, trying to tell himself he’d done the right thing, ‘but a human one.’Then, Dante glanced at his amputation.‘But maybe a human is worse.’He couldn’t return to soldier duties one-handed, and maybe his superiors would go back on every promise and kill both him and his mother.But what one thing was certain — the state was holding his mother — and one was not — that maybe all of this, that betraying the stupid, idiot Tadeo, who had saved Dante from Hell, was for nothing.
Turning away, retrieving the phone of Tadeo’s aunt out of his pocket, he texted: ‘Destroy him all at once, and he won’t be able to heal.Get him with an airstrike.Or maybe a good grenade.It has to be all at once.’In the end, he had no choice.He’d never had a choice in his entire life.But Tadeo had.He could have refused to release the Watchers.He could have never killed soldiers.He should have never been a Beast.
“What…” Tadeo began, voice gruff, exhausted, as if he’d read the mind of Dante, who hurried to slip the phone back into the back of his pants.“What the fuck happened?”He looked around them warily, then seemingly cursed, shook his head, took some steps toward the road.“Come on.We’ve been here for hours and nothing.”Dante moved with him, and when the soldier reached, touched Tadeo’s arm, the anti-Christ tensed and jerked away.“Don’t touch me.”
Ignoring that, Dante simply lifted his hand, held it in the air almost as if he were presenting a calming palm to a rabid animal.“My guess is that it came from the other side.”Babylon.“They were always talking about striking the criminal bases here.Maybe they finally got our permission.”
“Did that restaurant look like a criminal base to you?!”Tadeo, suddenly, almost shrilly, replied, but then his cheeks flushed at the sight of the soldier’s frigid, unemotional expression.“We don’t have the time to deal with this— These states and theirpolitics— The end of the world is at stake, and all the powerful men only think of their war and their wallets.”Dante snorted, and instead of answering to that, Tadeo turned on his heel, hurrying toward the Azteca mare nibbling on grass beside the road.
Dante, again, followed but maintained greater distance this time — betrayal weighing his feet for reasons he couldn’t fathom.He supposed he hated Tadeo, hated being here, wanted his damn hand back.Reaching the mare, he saw the anti-Christ climb onto the horse, scoot forward, wordlessly offering the soldier the room to sit.And Dante had to bite down another noise of amusement.With his only hand, he gripped the saddle, then hoisted himself up onto it.As he did, he looked forward, and his breath caught.“God.What the fuck is all that?”
There were spheres looming at the height of skyscrapers, low enough to shadow the town — like molten rock, their bodies coursed with reds, yellows, and oranges; there were dozens, each the size of a plane’s wingspan.
“They’re,” Tadeo whispered, “on the other side too.”In Babylon — seemingly concentrated over the city center of sparse towers among stout buildings.“But look, they—” Now, without thinking, he reached and gripped Dante’s forearm with tense urgency, using his other hand to point.“They have faces.”The soldier could only squint — wondering now if Tadeo might have superhuman eyesight in his body’s repository of divinity — to see the detailed fiery pulses on the looming creatures, and he saw some blinking, some tearing open mouths.“And that— Is that a tongue?”Like a solar flare, a stream of light twirled to flick at the air, almost hungrily at all the people below.
“If that’s a tongue,” Dante said levelly, “then that one has three, four tongues.I don’t like that.”
“I don’t think anyone would,” Tadeo said.
“Really?Not even you?It could be your twin,” Dante joked, then shoved the other’s hand off him, which made Tadeo jump, likely realizing what he’d been doing — touching Dante, after telling Dante not to touch him.“Are we riding back now?”
Tadeo was quiet for a moment, then he murmured, “I know that you’re still hiding from the other soldiers, but we can try to find you a car or a bus heading south.I know that you want to see your mother.”Tapping the mare delicately with his foot, the anti-Christ began the trip forward.
Dante hesitated.“Are you telling me to go see my mother before the world ends?”Then, he murmured, “If you didn’t release the Watchers, maybe it wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Tadeo sighed harshly to both statements.“The Watchers aren’t mentioned in Revelation.This shouldn’t be part of the end.”But Tadeo wasn’t mentioned in Revelation either, and he’d begun to worry about the degree of metaphor they were working with.If anything could mean anything, then what did apocalypse actually entail?“But I’m not stupid either.”
“Are you sure?”
Tadeo scoffed.“Dina told me to have faith, but— Look, I’ll admit that it’s not easy to, right now.”
“All I know is that these Watchers aren’t all there in the head,güey; they don’t look like they care about helping people.And I don’t think Dina has been very clear about what they’re supposed to do.”Dante, as soon as Tadeo made a shameful noise in agreement, added: “I told you: I met demons down there in Hell, and they were all crazy, but none of them were like Dina.I don’t think you can blame his weird behavior on being an angel or even a demon in disguise.I think he’s being secretive.”
Tadeo remembered the devil, at the end of the road, smiling wide, his eyes shining gold.‘Except the devil wasn’t on Dina’s side.So whose side could Dina be on?Good or evil?’“If not to save the world, though, why would Dina do all this?I don’t think he’s working for evil.I really don’t?—”
“When I was in Hell,” Dante continued, “the demons told me that the Watchers were chained for marrying humans and having kids with them.The angels captured them, but the demons helped.Satan and God worked together."At that, Tadeo furrowed his brow, even more so when Dante pressed up against Tadeo, a pistol in the soldier’s waistband digging into the anti-Christ’s lower back.Tadeo had handed the gun to him when they retrieved his clothes; he’d done it fearlessly, knowing he was immune to bullets, but he began to rethink the decision.“And why would an angel want the world to be saved?Don’t you think that, if anyone wants the world to be saved, it would be the devil?”
Tadeo swallowed, then he whispered, “Stop touching me.Stop pressing your body against me.”The devil had told Tadeo to end the world with him; Dina had told Tadeo to save the world with him.Who was lying?Could it be both of them?
Grunting, Dante leaned away but kept talking: “Tell me how the story ends, how the world ends.I don’t know it that well.”
