Gabriel nodded and followed the feral colony of hellcats deeper into Heaven, his bloody scepter slung over his shoulder as he walked.
Shem slipped the toe of his boot under the handle of the scythe and kicked it up into the air, catching it deftly before sliding up beside me.
The adrenaline that had been keeping me upright bled away, and I suddenly felt weak on my feet. Shemhazai wrapped an arm around my shoulders, steadying me.
“It’s okay, Lilith. It’s over. You can rest now.”
I stumbled away from him, making my way back toward Ramel’s corpse. I got halfway to him before I collapsed to my hands and knees. Ignoring the bone-shattering pain in my hands, I crawled through the clouds to his side with tears streaming down my cheeks.
Shem followed me and knelt on his other side. He pursed his lips as I wept over my dead husband.
“Lilith.” I glanced up at my cat demon, and he reached out across Ramel’s body, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I told you I was going to fix this. When are you going to learn to trust me?”
“How can you fix this, Shemhazai?” I choked. “Even I can’t bring back animmortal soul.”
Shem’s mouth cocked up at the side, and his too-green eyes settled on something over my shoulder again. I twisted around, looking for whatever it was he was staring at, but I still couldn’t see anything.
“No. You can’t bring him back, Lilith,” Shem confirmed, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest. “But I bet you the God of Creation can.”
“You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, says the cat, although I am more equal than you.”
—THE CAT’S SONG, MARGE PIERCEY
“Acat’s eyes are the windows to the soul.”
Those were the first words Lilith had said to me after she changed me. Staring at the flicker of the spirit that clung to her, I finally understood what she had meant.
I could see Ramel’s essence, clinging to her for dear fucking life, resisting whatever pull there was that was calling him to pass on.
Stubborn fucking bastard.I smirked, but I kept what I was sensing to myself for the time being. The hope that lit in her eyes when I told her I suspected we could use Yahweh’s magic to get Ramel back made my heart squeeze in my chest. I really hoped I wasn’t about to crush her, especially after I had finally seemed to have earned her trust back.
Ramel’s body was the first problem I needed to sort out. I had to get the arrows out of him before we tried anything. His soul wouldn’t stay in his body for long with those abhorrent things piercing his chest.
In two swift swipes, I gripped each arrowhead and yanked them clean out of my friend’s body, dragging the feathered end through him so as not to cause more damagethan necessary. I scowled at the bloodied shafts, tossing them away from me in disgust.
So many immortal lives had been wasted today, all because Yahweh couldn’t fucking let things go. He was going to pay for it, maybe for eternity.
“How did you get the Soul Sorter to stop? I thought Art foiled our plans to get the stores to shut down for renovations?” Lilith asked, and I gave her a smirk and a shrug.
“I blew a bunch of them up.”
She gaped at me. “Shemhazai!” Her eyes widened with worry. “But… how? And how will we get the Soul Sorter back up and running? We need it to work, or we won’t be able to reincarnate humans.”
I shrugged, not really fucking caring all that much. “I planted a bunch of idea seeds in the human Voodoo staff. Sara blew up the store we used to work at.” I smiled at the thought, imagining little Sara blowing up a restaurant still amused the shit out of me.
“Shemhazai!” Lilith tried to scold me again, but even I could tell her heart wasn’t all that into it. If I hadn’t done what I did, we may have never been able to subdue Yahweh.
I shrugged. “Earth is overpopulated. If birth rates drop for a bit while we figure out how to manage things without Yahweh, so be it. The risk was worth the reward.” I looked out over the now thoroughly tainted heavenscape to where Gabriel was diligently nailing Yahweh to the cross.
“Is that Hypnos?” I asked, suddenly realizing there was still a god hanging from the second cross on the podium in the distance.
Lilith nodded. “Yes. I tried to get Ramel to free him, but he… he didn’t seem interested in anything other than getting me out.” I glanced back at her, frowning as she tenderly stroked the face of her dead husband. The massive holes in her hands were still bleeding, and the sight of them made me angry all over again. My little queen deserved so much fucking better. I was going to make sure she got what she deserved. She had been so brave and strong, but I could tell she was still beating herself up over the night’s events.
“I distracted him. I told him that I loved him, and that’s when he got shot,” she admitted, sounding so broken. I found myself scanning her body to make sure she didn’t have anything sharp on her. If she tried to harm herself after all this, I was going to lose it.
I frowned as Ramel’s soul shimmered behind her as if he were trying to soothe the tenseness from her shoulders. She didn’t seem to be able to feel him at all, but he was there. I let out an involuntary chuckle.
Even if I couldn’t get him back in his body, there was something amusing about the fact that his stubborn ass seemed determined to continue to stalk her, even in death.
