Page 23 of The Halo & the Heathen
What I’ve done has left cracks in the veil that separates heaven and hell.
“They’ll close themselves up soon,” he says, “but no one’s done that since Lucifer fell.”
I look at the halo in my hand. “I was never going to get to heaven on my own.”
“No one ever does.” He pulls me to him with gentle fingers and kisses me.
“What now?” I ask, tears still welling in my eyes.
He wipes away the tears that fall. “Now you have to return what you took and we both have to beg forgiveness for our sins.”
He doesn’t release me as his wings and tail push him to standing, and I melt into his arms as he carries me back across the burning wastes.
Vulture demons circle overhead and tortured souls try to climb out of their pits up to us.
Both scream for him to give me to them. To play… or flay… or even just to gnaw on.
He doesn’t acknowledge them.
He doesn’t take me back to the vault either. He flies us—in little hopping bursts, climbing up the side of the cathedral—to the Devil’s throne room.
A purple dress, similar to the one Skye picked out, falls down my body before he sets me on my own two feet again.
Unlike heaven, there are people here.
The two women I saw dancing.
They’re stained like me. I don’t have to guess what they are to the creatures with them.
The one painted gold sits beside an angel—one with black wings, cloaked in gold to hide their many eyes. And the woman whispering in Lucifer’s ear is as red as a cartoon devil.
“You should have gone home months ago, Iona.” The Devil’s goat-like muzzle twitches. “I did not expect the Nameless to hide a mortal from me. Nor did I expect that he would give you the means and opportunity to steal what is mine.”
He looks up at my demon. “How long have you guarded my halo?”
“From the day it broke, when you fell.”
The Devil’s gaze returns to me. “And he betrayed me, for you.”
The red woman next to him snorts. “Stop pretending like you’re going to punish either of them. Shebrokeheaven. That’s worth losing your halo for three days.”
Three days.
I don’t know why knowing how long it took to climb the staircase makes my exhausted limbs heavier.
My demon leans close and whispers, “Keres is the Devil’s dame, and Zuriel belongs to her sister, Thea.”
“What was so important that you were willing to defy hell itself?” the Devil asks, coming down from his throne to glare at me.
There’s no reason to lie anymore. “I came to steal your halo and exchange it for a miracle.”
“God doesn’t perform miracles,” the Devil looks down at me with eyes full of pupils.
I shrink back against my demon.
“Humans do.” He laughs—just a barked breath of a sound—and then glances at the red woman behind him. “It’s funny how easily your kind can forget that.”
“I killed her,” I say. “God is dead.”
