Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) (19 page)

A drunk demigod and drunker ex-demon sat at the corner of the table, all their earthly honor riding on a pending victory in an arm wrestling match. They didn’t even stop to look up as the angel passed into the room. 

“Who in the hell are you now?”

Ramiel swung about. Molly Dade’s minuscule frame on the couch swam under a crocheted throw, a plushy pillow, and a magazine. She looked like something from a movie in which a mad scientist’s experiments had gone terribly wrong, shrinking humans to three-quarter’s size, but leaving the surrounding furnishings unharmed. She stared up at him in a manner that suggested she was anything but impressed by his drop-dead gorgeous physique.

Not that that bothered Ramiel at all, of course.

“I’m Ram … Um, call me Ramon,” he quickly corrected, not sure if she already knew that or not. Her face showed no signs of recognition, at least. “I’m a friend of Riona’s. And Dee’s. And … well, I’m not a friend of the other one, but I’m bound by contract to acknowledge his existence.”

Placing her hands on her leg, Molly pushed herself to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the floor and placing the magazine on the coffee table. She reached down to the handle of her rolling oxygen tank as she began to shuffle toward the dining room. “Yeah, I’m not too hot on that goofball either.” There was enough gravel in her voice to pave three miles of the 80. “And what about the Barbie doll? You acknowledge that one by contract, too?”

Ramiel caught Persephone’s eyes. They both blushed. “Steph and I have an occasional exchange of … words.”

Molly shooed him with a wave of her hand. “Some company my daughter keeps. No wonder she never comes to visit. Where the hell is she anyway? Riona! RIONA FRANCINE DADE! You’re keeping your guests waiting. Get out here, or they’ll think I was an unfit mother, raising you to be so rude.”

Riona bustled into the dining room en route from the kitchen, her cheeks redder than beets. “Momma, there’s tons of other reasons you were unfit. Ram …”

“Ramon!” Persephone interjected, drawing everyone’s attention as she pushed the angel forward. “… has just arrived, Riona. I hope you don’t mind that I let him in.”

Let him in? Boy, did she ever …

He took the witch in his arms. Her floral scent mixed with something bold and about twenty-five proof. Drawing away, he examined her face, noticing how her pupils made her look like an anime princess and noting the beads of sweat dotting her brow.

“Thanks for coming! I was beginning to think you had bailed on us. How are you? Can I get you something to drink, Ronald? Um, Ryan. What … what was your name again?”

“Ramon,” Ramiel repeated.

“Ramon?” Riona repeated the number through a giggle, bitting her balled up first. She leaned in close to him and whispered, “Isn’t saying that’s your name telling a lie,
Ramon?
”

He matched her volume. “Not technically. I only told her to call me that, didn’t say it was my name. There’s a thousand roads around the truth.”
He turned to Jerry and Dee, who had just seemed to acknowledge his existence. “Sure you got anything left? Y’all look three sheets to the wind and six bottles toward the floor.”

Dee bounced up and assumed a posture more befitting of a Hollywood supersized gorilla scaling the Empire State building. “They’re tipsy, but I’m only drunk. No, wait! What I said, but the other way around.”

“Pfft! Don’t be silly,” Riona resumed, lurching to the right as she guided him to the table. “I only bought six bottles, and we have at least one bottle left.”

“
Had.”
Jerry thrust a purple-tinted wine flask into the air. “Dee and I just topped off. Sorry, Riona did you want me? I mean, more?”

“Easy there, Jer-Bear. You know I get frisky when I’m drunk. And you look …” Riona’s voice trailed off, but her eyes stayed hungrily fixed on the ex-demon. She clapped her hands and smiled. “I’ll go fetch the brandy.”

Ramiel’s eyes followed her as she scampered out of the room and into the kitchen. When he looked back to the table, he caught sight of Jerry, sitting in his chair, slowly traipsing his fingers over his collarbone.

The ex-demon shrugged when he noticed he had an audience. “What can I say? She’s right. Riona and booze … a very
sultry
mix.”

Molly, having finally achieved the table, tsked and threw her hands out to smack Jerry upside the head. “Don’t you have any respect for your elders, boy?”

As though her lashing had actually hurt, Jerry rubbed the side of his head. “I could say the same. I only have a few
thousand
years on you.”

“Bad news or good news?” Riona stumbled back into the room, a tall glass bottle barely concealed behind her.

“Bad news!” Dee’s fist pounded his fist.

That poor table wasn’t going to last the year at this rate.

“
Pllltp
!” A spray of spit flex from Riona’s mouth. “Fine. The bad news is, there’s no brandy. The good news is …” The bottle of incriminating liquid went up over her head. “… that I found the tequila!”

Riona lunged toward her seat at the end of the table as though breaking out in a spontaneous display of performance art. She didn’t sit in her chair as much as surrender to it as if forced at gunpoint. How they had managed to bring everything from the kitchen to the table without a major accident proved mysterious. Perhaps Persephone had helped.

Molly Dade grumbled something about Irish genetics and Riona’s ability to “get sauced” as she took a place next to Dee. After rolling her oxygen tank in to position, she reached out and slapped Dee square on the shoulder. The demigod looked more surprised than hurt, especially when Molly launched in to a screed about the evils of drinking and how he, as the most senior of the lot, should set a good example.

“I’m drinking away my pain. This isn’t a good example?” Dee laughed, putting his arm around Molly. 

The old woman looked away disgustedly but made no move to remove herself.

“Pain of what?” Persephone’s face showed sincere concern.

Dee’s eyes narrowed on his sister as she sat down between Riona and Jerry on the opposite side of the table. Too many gestures passed between them to be just a warning expression. Ramiel had always hated the Nephilim’s telepathic ability. Usually, however, they were kind enough not to go to radio silence with others in the room. Then again, Dee was drunk off his ass. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

“Oh, Dionysius.” Persephone’s head tilted to the side, a compassionate smile softening her features. “I’m so sorry.”

To everyone’s amazement, Molly began hitting herself in the side of the head.

“Momma, what the hell are you doing?” Riona rambled off.

Molly leaned in slightly. “Hearing aid battery must be going again.” She boxed her ears a few more times before adding, “Well, let’s get to it.”

Dee’s hand lashed out toward a bowl of steaming green beans, but Molly struck his mitts like a felon.

“After grace,” she admonished, looking expectantly around the table at the blank stares. “Fine, since it seems you’re all as much heathens as my daughter,
I’ll
say grace. Dear Lord,” she began, and though it was true that none of the others would ascribe the term practicing anything to themselves, they had enough proof of the divine to bow their heads respectfully.

Or maybe it was that they’d passed out; Ramiel couldn’t be sure.

“We ask you that you look down on our meal today and know that we give thanks for your blessings. You make our table and our hearts heavy with bounty. Thank you, dear God, for this beautiful meal, the health of those gathered here today, and for the ability for people to change. It is for that reason I can still have faith that you will show my errant daughter the truth of her transgressions and open her heart to recant her sins and live in your glory before she winds up burning in Hell forever and ever. Amen.”

He listened for lightning. There was none. He expected an earthquake. The ground stayed solid. Cracking an eye and looking at Riona, he at least thought he’d see a glare. What Ramiel actually observed, however, was far scarier and foreboding.

Riona.

Praying.

Her lips moved silently, her head still tilted down, her hands clasped before her on the table. Ramiel knew that some humans—while inebriated—found themselves in the midst of a religious experience, but this was astounding. By the time she opened her eyes a few minutes later, everyone was gaping at her. Except for Molly, who just observed with a look of joy clouded with arrogance.

“Amen,” Riona said at last. “Thanks, Momma. Before we go all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on this …” her hand motioned toward the platter in the middle of the table, “poor, deliciously-roasted bird, I want to say something. It’s the middle of December, so you’re probably all wondering why I decided on a Thanksgiving dinner.”

“It’s December?” Molly Dade crooned her head left and right, looking for confirmation.

“Yes, Momma, it is,” Riona said. She poured herself a fresh shot and held it out before her. A few drops trickled down the side of the glass when she had problems leveling it out. “Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about … someone who recently exited my life, and how I never had a chance to tell him before he left how much I appreciated him. Then I began thinking about how I never really tell
anyone
what I feel about them, I thought that has to stop. Because we just don’t know, do we, how much time God is going to give us? We don’t know when our number will be punched. I owe each of you a debt, and I don’t want to have it happen again, that I don’t get a chance to say it.”

Confusion filled Ramiel as Riona stopped, her elbow lowering to the table. He thought at first she was crying, until a laugh bleated from her reddened face.

“And I almost screwed this up!” she bellowed. “I thought I’d make you all a big dinner, and I couldn’t do it. Jerry cooked all this. Jerry saved it. Jerry saved …” The corners of Riona’s mouth dropped as her eyes fixed on the grinning ex-demon. “… me. Jerry saved me. I never said thank you, did I? Well, I’m saying it now. Thank you. I love you.”

At that, Ramiel felt slapped in the face. Had Jerry done it? Had he actually succeeded in wooing the witch? But just as quickly as his heart inflated at thinking the prophecy was coming true, Ramiel got gut punched as Riona held her glass up and saluted everyone at the table.

“I love all of you!” she declared before kicking back the tequila. She wiped her mouth off on her sleeve and slammed the cup down. “Now, let’s slice up this bird and go crazy! Where’s the knife?”

Molly surveyed the room confusedly. “Jerry? Who’s Jerry?

“I took it back to the kitchen,” Persephone piped in. “After I saw how … um,
spirited
you all were, I didn’t want any accidents to happen. I’ll go fetch it, but I think
Ramon
should carve.”

The witch jumped to her feet and, promptly, fell on her ass. She recovered quickly enough, but embarrassment warmed her cheeks. “No, I got … I got one in my bag.”

She stumbled across to a buffet table where her bag sat. A moment later, Riona pulled out an eight-inch silver blade mounted on a bejeweled hilt, sending a ripple of excitement through the room.

Persephone blanched, leaping back from the table as though realizing it was covered in snakes. “Holy fuck, where the hell did you get one of those?”

Riona examined the object in her hands with a furrowed brow. “What? It was my dad’s. And, oh yeah, Marc used it to kill himself. If it can slice up a priest, it can probably slice up some poultry. Who wants a leg?”

Molly’s eyebrows arched. “Marc? I thought he was Marc?” she asked, pointing to a confused and befuddled Jerry across the table.

Riona turned the knife point to the table and used the butt of the hilt to prop up her elbow. “Funny story, Momma.
That
isn’t Marc. It used to be Marc. You know that Jerry guy I raved to you about and thought was ‘the one’? Yup,
that’s him now.
Which reminds me … Good call, Momma. You always said the devil was going to come find me and drag me into Hell someday. I should have listened, ‘cause he tried. But Marc, who actually was ‘the one,’ as it turns out, killed himself to take my place. Oh, and here’s the kicker.” She broke out in a round of laughter that would have given a clown a conniption fit. “Marc was a Catholic priest, so he couldn’t have really been the one anyways. Didn’t keep my sorry ass from wanting him, though. So in the end, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Now seriously,” she readied the dagger in carving position, levitating it over a juicy, brown breast, “anybody for some dark meat?”

In a blink, Persephone had shot up, apologized to a groggy and utterly confused Dee, and high tailed it out.

“Riona, sheath thy blade!” Ramiel’s voice boomed, shaking the wine glasses and the guests. He couldn’t believe he was going all Angel of the Lord up in here, but this had to stop. Riona had no idea the danger she was putting them all in. “Thou shall not use that object for such profane purposes.”

“Profane?
Plpt!
” Riona waved the dagger tip in circles in the air. “I didn’t know Jerry could cook either, but I doubt the turkey tastes that bad.”

“Keystone!” This time he threw his aura out, letting his earthly persona take on the full radiance of his angelic soul. The sound of Molly’s breaths, shallow and quick, worried him, but he knew there was no other way. “That dagger is a holy weapon, forged in Heaven and imbued with the powers you cannot even begin to grasp. It is one of only seven ever made. It can kill that which by any other means cannot die. If you dare sink it into that butterball, I’m going have to go all Sodom and Gomorrah on your ass. Stop this immediately, and sheath your blade.”

“Blade?” She examined the object, not more than the length of her lower arm, with incredulity. “Oh, get real! How in the hell would my father get a hold of a weapon made in Heaven. Irish black market? Ebay?”

He crossed the table in a smack of light, framing himself directly in front of the witch, and placed his hands around the blade’s handle. Reaching down to where a sheath would be harnessed by any proud warrior, Ramiel summoned his own blade, alike in appearance to Riona’s with the exception of the pattern made by the jewels in its hilt. He drew it to eye level, letting her wide eyes take the sister weapons in all their glory. 

“One was issued to each of the revered archangels, including your father.”