I knelt beside the big beast. "I'm so glad you've not gone crazy like the rest of them," I said in a baby voice. Jellybean stopped gnawing on his steak and cocked his ears at me. His tail wagged, slapping against the refrigerator. "Did you hunt yourself some dinner? That's a good boy." I rubbed his head and he resumed his big treat for being a good doggy.
"Can we send him to Mary?" I asked. "I don't like him being here alone, but if he goes back to Abaddon, we might lose him."
Lucifer stared at me.
"What?" I asked.
"I forget sometimes what a softie you are at heart," he said. "You love that big dog, don't you?"
"Of course I do." I gave him another head rub and spoke to Jellybean again. "Don't I? You big wubby-wub."
"Come on, JB," Michael said. "Let's go see if Mary needs a guard dog."
Jellybean finished his steak then walked to Michael. He sat beside him like the goodest good boy and they both disappeared. "Meet you at the River," Michael said before blinking out of the kitchen.
"Anybody need to do anything before we go?" I asked.
Lucifer and Gabriel shook their heads. They'd both have to hold on tight to me to get into the River plane. Gabe couldn't get in at all without me, and Luc didn't have the magic to do it.
"Here we go." We clasped hands, and I pictured where we needed to go. We'd have to start at the beginning and work our way down until we found Vincent's soul. There was no other option.
As we moved from one plane to another, all three of us spread our wings.
The River's plane was tiny compared to the size of souls that ran through it. There was enough space above them to hover and fly, but if someone came here without wings—like Mary—they'd have to wade through the souls, walking amongst them.
And that was an unsettling experience. Walking through the River meant walkingthroughthe souls, and when passing through, their memories inundated us. We'd see whatever they were seeing at the moment, and it was never happy. We'd all tried it once, the curiosity too much to contain.
I was pretty sure nobody had ever tried it twice. I'd jumped out of the River as fast as I could get my wings spread when I tried it.
"Look for a soul of grays and browns. Very dark black, and red. He's done some horrible things on Earth. And of course, you're looking for an angel's soul."
They shined brighter than humans. Even with the coloring, Vincent's should've stood out like a beacon.
Unfortunately, though the River of the Damned was contained in a narrow plane, it was incredibly long. We had a lot of flying to do.
Michael caught up to us after a little while. "Mary is keeping Jellybean for us. Surprisingly enough, she loved him. And he went nuts over her. She was feeding him treats when I left."
I smiled. At least that was one bit of good news in this horrible day...week...month? How long had it been? I'd lost all track.
Our job of finding Vincent was bleak, to begin with, but every few minutes, we'd see a soul that burned a bit brighter than the rest. We couldn't be sure it wasn't Vincent, so we had to stop and check.
The first one was the hardest. "Go ahead," I said. "Someone see if it's him." No way did I want to touch that soul. It floated very slowly as other souls passed it by. That meant it had more bad memories to relive than most of the other souls. It burned brightly, too, meaning it could've been Vincent.
"You're the Queen, you do it," Gabriel said. He held his hands close to his chest and his wings beat hard, keeping him as high in the air as the realm allowed. He truly hated being here, more than the rest of us. But he had a tendency to be empathetic, so the pain in the air that was a passing thought to me was a physical reaction for him.
"I think someone else should do the honors," I said gently. "Luc?"
He spread his hands out as his black wings beat slowly behind him. "No magic. I'm not sure I'd even be able to see if it's him."
Michael grimaced and hid behind Gabe.
"Ack." I waved my hands at them. "You're a bunch of babies." They talked a big game, but when push came to shove, they were like a child running from a spider.
I hovered over the soul and touched the tip of my finger to its aura. It was sticky, like tar. Ugh. The evilest souls felt like that. Thick and gloppy. The purest were light and like touching a spring rain.
I was thrown into a memory, and even though I only touched him with the tip of my finger, it sucked me in completely.
In my head, I knew I wasn't literally there. But the memory was so vivid it wasn't easy to keep a grasp on reality. I looked around.
