the blood of both is my limbo (two)
(aka the Angel!Robbe/Demon!Sander AU that no one asked for)
Summary: Robbe spends his entire human life in total disbelief of the whole heaven-hell-religion thing. Luckily for him, it turns out that being a genuinely kind and selfless agnostic is enough to grant him Angel status in the afterlife. Meanwhile, a series of horrific events forces Sander to make some reckless choices with unfortunate consequences…but when he’s turned into a Demon, he realizes that what happens after death is nothing like the story the church tells. AKA Skam Afterlife, because in this parallel universe Isak and Even meet in Purgatory and have to overcome the slight problem that one’s an angel and one’s a demon.
Part One
Also posted on the Archive
Fight Night’s heating up - in more ways than one.
“Hey! Sander!”
Sander’s trance was momentarily shattered; he turned his head and there beside him was Noor, Britt’s bruja friend. She was tiny but she was terrifying; every part of her looked like it had teeth. Sander thought that this was maybe not too far from the truth. He greeted her with that fiendish slice of a half smile, leaned down so they could kiss at the air beside each other’s cheeks.
“What’s up, Noor.”
“Oh, you know. Just spent the day inventing a counter-hex from scratch,” said Noor, all-suffering as she crossed her yellow eyes. “Moyo pissed some warlock off when he kept beating him at cards the other night, so the asshole cursed him. He’s been walking around with a thundercloud over his head for a day and a half. Literally. Soaked the bed through twice.”
Sander laughed out loud, but there was a piece of his mind still idly circling around the peculiar golden haze, attached, curious. “Better than any other reason for him to have soaked the bed.”
“Yes, well,” said Noor, and she smirked. “Annoying nonetheless. Where’s the crew sitting?”
Sander inclined his head to the back left, where he could dimly make out their little booth. “Corner over there. Listen, Noor, will you take this to Senne? I’m gonna go say hi to one of my friends really quick.”
“Of course,” said Noor, accepting the mug he handed her. “See you in a minute?”
“Yes,” said Sander, and he waited until she had turned to wend her graceful way through tables and creatures back to the group before he re-focused his attention back onto the shining mist.
It had moved; it was now closer to the stage, and if Sander squinted he thought he could see shadows moving within the shimmer. Fully concentrated now, he began pacing measuredly towards it, sipping habitually at his drink as he did so; the crowd near the arena was thickening but still that small space remained uninhabited. In his chest Sander could feel the call of it, the siren of power that he could not ignore, and he wanted so badly to know what was within the mist that he forgot about caution. Before he’d even realized what he was doing he was inches from where the air became saturated with glinting medal-gold and he was mesmerized.
“What are you,” he murmured, and as though they were listening to him the thousands and thousands of glitter-particles inside the fog seemed to freeze.
*
Within the refuge of the Shield, Jens seized Robbe’s forearm.
Robbe, who mentally was lightyears away observing the melting pot of dark supernatural beings surrounding them, twisted his head, halfway to speaking before Jens slapped a warm frantic hand over his mouth.
Don’t talk, rang out in his mind. Turn around. Slowly, for hell’s sake.
On an ordinary occasion, Robbe would have scolded Jens for using telepathy, but the urgency in his Elder’s thoughts and the unusual situation within which they found themselves that night gave him pause. He did as Jens asked, suddenly streaked through with adrenaline at the thought of what he might discover, and found himself face-to-face with an extravagant creature with alabaster skin to match his white-blonde hair and violent cardinal-red blood trickling from both eyes.
He was standing directly in front of Robbe and Jens, a concentrated expression on his face, licking absently at the ring spiked through his lower lip. He seemed thoroughly unbothered by the fact that his eyes were bleeding; Robbe had just enough time to wonder if that was an everyday sort of thing for him when Jens was thinking out loud again.
It can see the Shield.
That’s impossible, Robbe thought back, scornful, wondering distractedly why Jens had referred to the being as it and not he. Nothing can see the Shield.
Some things can.
Like what?
Jens looked sideways at him and his face was grave.
Every inhuman creature has an ability, he thought. Opposite creatures often have opposite abilities. So, tell me, little one. What’s the opposite of Shielding?
Sensing, thought Robbe, his brain sprinting, whirring. Maybe Seeing.
Yes, thought Jens, and his grip around Robbe’s wrist tightened. And what are you?
An angel, thought Robbe, and as he looked back at the ethereal being in front of him recognition slammed into him like the car that had ended his human life.
What’s the opposite of an angel?
Robbe swallowed. He had never seen one up close before, but the explanation made perfect sense: bloody eyes, corpse-white skin, black everywhere.
A demon.
*
Sander was half a second from stretching out a hand to twist his fingers through the sunshine air, see if it pushed back like the darkness in hell had shoved at him when he’d first been Changed, but just like that Senne was beside him, towering, calm as he always was, stern.
“What are you doing, Driesen?”
“I found it,” said Sander dreamily, still tranced-out. “I found the thing that I’m Sensing.”
Senne furrowed his brow. “What? Where?”
“There,” said Sander, vaguely, and he pointed. In doing so his fingertip barely brushed the outer perimeter of the mist and static crackled on his skin; all he wanted to do was step forward into it, see if it enveloped him, gilded him, too.
“I don’t see anything,” said Senne, but then he looked again and his expression changed. “Wait. This empty space?”
“It’s not empty,” said Sander. “There’s something there. The air is golden, Senne.”
Senne’s eyes darted from Sander’s eyes to the emptiness in front of them and something slammed down over his face like a sliding door. He grabbed Sander’s shoulder.
“We need to get away from this,” he hissed, “right now.”
In a dimmed sort of way Sander understood that he should hearken to Senne’s tone, his body language, his words, but it was not in his nature to feel fear; he had seen the worst, lived through the darkest of times, and he’d emerged on the other side as a fucking demon. The fact that Senne - a much older and more important demon than he - was expressing distress didn’t do as much as it should have to turn him back, and again he found himself warring the urge to bridge the gap.
Inside the Shield, Jens correctly interpreted Sander’s facial expression and made a decision.
Robbe. Enforce the Shield.
Robbe wrested his gaze from the blonde demon’s face. Enforcement required a brutal amount of strength and one hundred percent of his concentration, something he was not currently willing to give: he wanted nothing more than to study the creature before him, learn him, understand what demon looked like in corporeal form instead of in fantasy. But -
Do it. It’s going to try to reach in. I’ll help you.
Robbe hesitated and
outside the Shield Sander reached forward and
Jens stepped behind Robbe and pressed his torso flush to Robbe’s back and
just as Sander’s hand met the space where the air turned light Robbe pulled from Jens’s strength and with a visceral, audible growl of effort transformed the Shield from mist to steel.
Both Sander and Senne heard the noise he made; Sander’s palm met flat resistance and he recoiled in sharp shock. Senne grabbed him by the collar, yanked him back, and Sander’s stomach went hot with shame and recognition.
“Sander,” growled Senne in his ear, “what in fuck’s sake are you doing? Do you want the wrath of God to come down upon you? Get the fuck back.”
“What - “ Sander’s palm was tingling. “The wrath of - Senne, is that an angel?”
“Yes,” hissed Senne, as he hauled him away. “Yes, you idiot, what did you think a pocket of golden air in Lesser Purgatory would be? Are you hurt?”
“No,” said Sander, but he couldn’t stop looking stupefied over his shoulder back at the obviously marked space. “I’m fine. It didn’t - Senne, it didn’t seem like it was bad.”
“Driesen,” said Senne in total exasperation, “we’re bad. Angels are the literal polar opposite of everything we are. We’re not supposed to touch them. They aren’t for our kind.”
“But why?” Sander was not clear of mind. “Who the fuck says? Isn’t all that stuff about traditional human religion bullshit anyway?”
“Yes,” said Senne, hand clenching at the back of Sander’s neck, silver chains tangling in his fingers, “but that doesn’t change the hierarchy. They are light, we are dark. We protect the low realms, they protect the high. We rule the things that humans consider sin and they rule the things that humans consider virtue. We are not meant to mix with them. They think they’re superior to us.”
He stopped, pushed Sander back against the raised side of the stage, leaned in and licked a droplet of blood from Sander’s cheekbone. It was the one thing he knew to do that would bring Sander back to himself and sure enough his Fledgling’s scarlet eyes went immediately from daydream-distant to smack-awake.
“Senne, I’m sorry,” he said, low. “You’re right. We’re not meant for them.”
“It’s fine,” said Senne. His voice was gentle. “Angels can have quite the effect on someone who’s never seen them before, and for you to be able to Sense a Shield...that’s big stuff, Driesen.”
A luxuriant, lethal smirk cut its slow track across Sander’s mouth. “I have a good teacher.”
“Yeah, well,” said Senne, haughty. He searched Sander’s sharp beautiful face, shoved back against the urge to drink from his Fledgling’s bloodsource again, but Sander read his expression and swiped a teardrop of red from under his eye. Lifted his finger to Senne’s mouth and watched with satisfaction as his Maker sucked his skin clean, sighed raggedly, almost a groan.
“I’ll never understand why you don’t drink from humans more often,” said Sander, dripping with assurance. “Real blood is what does it for you.”
“Animal blood does what it needs to do,” said Senne. His violet eyes were feral. “Come on. Forget angels, okay? You had your introduction, now you need to focus on what’s really important.”
“Like watching you get turned on drinking from me?”
“Fuck yourself,” said Senne, eyes flashing, but it was half amusement. “First Blood is about to happen, and Eurydice is on.”
*
Robbe felt Jens grasp him around the waist, lift him bodily away from the stage into a more protected corner of the club, diving into shadows. He was shivering with the effort it had taken to throw up an Enforcement without proper preparation, teeth gritted hands fisted at his sides, and when Jens slid down against the side wall and pulled Robbe back between his legs he did not resist.
“Hey,” Jens crooned, voice a hot brush of air at Robbe’s ear, “come on, Robbe, you’re fine, I’ve got you. You were a fucking champion, kid. That was incredible.”
It wasn’t often that Jens called him by his first name and it pulled Robbe minimally back to himself; he managed to unclench his fists to clamp them on Jens’s knees, and his Elder slid hands under Robbe’s elbows so he could reach up and scratch through Robbe’s bedlam curls. His arms were so long that even from such an unnatural angle he could reach the crown of Robbe’s head with ease.
“I,” choked Robbe, tripping over the force of his own breath as he tried to re-center, all of him aware of the warmth of Jens’s body crowded against his own, “need a fucking drink.”
“Okay,” said Jens, amused. “I can make us look ordinary enough to pass as vampires or something for a little while if you want a break.”
“The irony of that sentence,” said Robbe, and Jens chuckled.
“Say the word.”
“Give me, like. Five minutes.” Robbe’s entire body felt like a wet towel, wrung for every last drop of water before being draped out to dry. “Enforcements without Charge take everything I’ve got, even with your help.”
“I know,” said Jens, and he sounded guilty. “I should have just Disguised us before we entered the LP so you wouldn’t have had to work so hard. But it’s Drinking Night AND Fight Night in one go and I thought the Shield would be safer.”
“It probably is,” said Robbe, sighing; he let his fluffy head tumble back onto Jens’s shoulder and nestled automatically. “But I mean, fuck it, right? At least two demons already know we’re here. If you Disguise us the whole corporeal mist giveaway disappears, and they have no idea we were even involved with it in the first place. Problem solved.”
“Ordinarily I’d say yeah,” said Jens, “but if that demon can Sense, then my Disguise won’t fully hide you from it. You get close, and it will know.”
Robbe looked back at him. Jens’s face was impossibly close and impossibly magnificent; Robbe could smell the alcohol he’d drunk in Greater Purgatory wafting from his soft, intermittent breath.
“Then I won’t get close.”
*
When Robbe had recharged enough to move Jens pulled them into a bathroom stall to work his magic; Robbe had always loved watching him while he was Casting, and tonight was no different. Jens was an absolute scholar at trickery and concealment, thought-play, stealth; he could be hovering a hairsbreadth from someone’s back and they wouldn’t have an inkling that he was there until he announced himself. Now he stood in front of the mirror and drew fingertip lines across his own face, dulling the shimmer of his skin to matte cream, darkening his hair and sharpening the edges of his wolf teeth until they passed easily as fangs. When he’d completed his own Disguise he performed the same ritual on Robbe, who could have cried with the relief that flooded upon taking his guard down: Shielding, after a while, became overwhelming.
“Next time we come to the LP,” said Robbe as he scrutinized himself in the mirror, “you’re doing this to begin with.”
“To be fair,” said Jens, just before he snapped his fingers and their reflections vanished from the mercurial surface before them. “You didn’t give me a lot of warning.”
When they re-emerged into the club the lights had blackened even further and both the tempo and the volume of the music had increased; the crowd seemed denser than it had moments before, but Robbe deduced that this was probably because they no longer had the luxury of the Shield to afford them a suitable berth. It was strange to realize that they were drawing stares now; even Disguised as vampires, both Robbe and Jens were preternaturally lovely. Jens certainly wielded the power to diminish their appearances, but vanity was his fatal flaw, and he almost never did.
“Beauty isn’t that unusual in our world,” he defended himself, when Robbe laughed at him about it. “Why should I try to hide that? Angels aren’t the only pretty things that exist in the Afterlife.”
Apparently, Robbe thought absently now as they made a space for themselves at the bar, demons could be pretty, too.
He tried not to look around. Attracting extra attention was likely to prove catastrophic, especially if Jens was correct and the blood-eyed demon could still Sense their presence. But it turned out that Robbe didn’t need to worry about unintentionally inviting anyone’s lingering attention – at least not for the time being – because at the exact moment the bored pixie bartender handed Jens and Robbe their drinks, Exitium exploded like an atomic bomb into ruckus noise.
“Here we go,” said Jens, and in the excitement of his tone Robbe could find balance between his insistence that Lesser Purgatory was nothing to write home about and the streak of interest that had belted through his eyes as they’d been discussing it. Robbe’s eyes found the stage; it had been empty not half a second before, but directly in its center now stood a tall, straight-spined man dressed as though he was fully prepared to lead a runway show for nineties-era Versace. His posture was impeccable and his eyes were lined thickly with sharp silver and kohl and he was one of the most luridly fascinating things Robbe had ever seen.
“Is that – ”
“Milan,” said Jens, with some fondness. “He’s half-sylph, half-elf, and he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Lower Purgatory.”
Onstage, the mesmerizing hybrid creature with the (extremely appropriate) name of an Italian city began to speak.
“I don’t think,” he said, in the tone of someone who fully understood that simply raising the volume of one’s voice was not the best way to command attention, “any of you filthy creatures are ready for this shit.”
And as the responding clamor of the crowd shrieked to a sudden crescendo, Robbe looked sideways at Jens and started to grin.
“It’s been a long time,” said Milan, smirking, clearly enjoying the collective enthrallment of the entire population of Exitium, “a very long time, I think. Since we’ve had Furies participating in Fight Night. But, theydies and gentlethem, hags and trolls, demons and dare I presume angels – ”
Robbe froze but Jens grinned; hissed sideways,
“He has no clue, he’s just being dramatic.”
“ – it’s been an even longer time since any of our lovely serpent-haired sisters have thrown their names into the pool.”
From the way the crowd rocked and screamed in response to his words Robbe understood that this was a gigantic occasion; again he looked to Jens for explanation but his Elder was already utilizing his telepathy to explain.
Gorgon fights are vicious. No one here can die, obviously, but they’re the most brutal of all creatures to participate in Fight Night. Furies are nearly as bad, that’s why it’s so crazy in here tonight, everyone wants a piece of the carnage.
Even you. Robbe was enjoying how much Jens was enjoying himself.
Even me. You picked a good night to force my hand.
Robbe smiled.
So what happens to the losers, then? Since they can’t die?
Jens licked at the new sharpness of his wolf teeth, twisted his mouth before he replied.
“They tap out,” he said out loud. “They get hurt badly, and they go somewhere to lick their wounds until they get a chance for redemption at next Fight Night. And the winner…the winner gets clout.”
Robbe searched his Elder’s face, thinking absently that the status of a Fight Night victory in the LP must equate to something like respect or fear or reverence, but then he stopped thinking at all because everything around them suddenly depleted into quiet and stillness and dark, the entire arena thrumming with ravenous anticipation. It felt like standing at the edge of a sheer cliff with toes pressed over the side and nothing to prevent the fall and Robbe was afire for it. He had no idea what was going to happen but he had never been more ready for anything in his entire existence.
He waited.
And then, when the hush was beginning to become maddeningly loud in the way that only unmitigated silence can manage, from the back corner of the stage where a curtained side entrance separated the patrons from the staff-only area of the club, there arose a steady, insidious hiss.
“Eurydice,” sang Milan, “please step into the light.”
And from out of the darkness emerged something darker.
*
“She’s perfect,” whispered Noor, and Senne and Sander grinned at each other.
Eurydice wasn’t what either one of them would have described as perfect – demons didn’t really believe in the word, used it as a taunt or derogatory term against the Son of God – but she was certainly commanding. One of the tallest Gorgons, her skin was a shade of mottled yellow-green akin to a fresh bruise, a direct clash with the garish coral pink of her pit vipers, and when she curled her upper lip in acknowledgement of the crowd jagged grey teeth showed. For a lesser Gorgon, she was positively terrifying.
“She could win this tournament,” said Senne casually, “if Medusa doesn’t show.”
“No way Raksha would let her fight,” said Noor, dismissing him. “She likes to keep her toys in pristine condition, and Medusa’s not exactly a looker to begin with.”
“Maybe Raksha has a newfound battle-scar kink,” said Sander. He was already nearly finished with his second drink; his close encounter with the unidentified angel had shaken him, and he didn’t know what to do to still his head but to slow his thought process with alcohol. It never worked as well as it had in his human body – demonic systems were designed to flush toxins much more effectively – but it was always enough to blunt the edges.
“I’d kill to see Medusa and Eurydice,” said Britt. “She’s the only lesser Gorgon that would stand a chance against any of the holy trinity. She doesn’t give a fuck.”
“She beat Stheno once,” said Senne, “ages ago. I was there, it was a madhouse. She lost a snake, but Stheno lost two, and the way she was screaming afterward…the stuff of nightmares.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Sander, his gaze tracking the kaleidoscopic gloom on the other half of the stage. “Nemesis is no pushover.”
And as though he had spoken her into existence she came forth.
Where Eurydice was furious color, constant movement and sound, Nemesis contradicted her in darkness and calm and silence. Wraithlike she strode slow and resolute across the stage, icicle eyes pinned fearless to Eurydice’s countenance, stating intent with every second she did not look away. Sander appreciated her attitude; if he’d have been placing bets that night he’d have staked on her with confidence. Eurydice liked to put on a show but Nemesis was unassuming in her presentation and somehow that felt more to him like victory. He’d never seen her fight, but he’d heard tales of her ruthlessness, and he was ready to witness it for himself.
Milan between them looked fully undaunted.
“My darling, my dear,” he said, casual like he was announcing the contestants of a beauty pageant and not addressing a deity and a Gorgon, “need I remind you of the rules?”
When Nemesis spoke it was like thunder cracking in the clouds. Her eyes never drifted from Eurydice’s face.
“I don’t forget.”
Eurydice jeered; her snakes were going mad for bloodlust.
“Nor I.”
“Excellent,” said Milan, and for the first time all night wicked interest sparked in his wide cunning eyes. “Then I’ll make myself scarce and let you two have at it.”
In a blink he had vanished; Sander spotted him instantly when he reappeared in the rafters above their heads, a smudge of yellow, overseeing restlessly from afar. Full-blooded sylphs commanded powerful magic of their own, but Milan’s mother had been a sea-elf, and with all that combined force channeling through him he was one of the most formidable beings in the LP; Sander could Sense him coming from miles away. Though Milan was not malicious by nature, he was known for ruining those who crossed him; there was a reason he had been appointed as head referee of Fight Night. If things got out of hand, he could regain control of the situation with one snap of his fingers, no droplet of sweat forming on his brow, he might have been a High Deity for the negligible effort he put forth to execute staggering feats of sorcery.
There was a beat in which Eurydice and Nemesis sized each other up; Nemesis might not have had snakes for hair but she did have literal talons and she unsheathed them now, flexing her fingers to shake them out. The pit vipers haloing Eurydice’s head reared cautiously, stretching to full length, glorious in their lethality, and when the first one struck it all became a muddle of vivid color and glinting steel. In immediate, urgent response, the crowd howled with cruel delight; Fight Night elicited the worst from Morals and Immorals both, and the presence of pitiless Gorgons in the melee only served to exacerbate their savagery.
From such a secluded corner it was impossible to see what was going on and without a thought for decorum Sander rose, placed one foot atop the table, hauled himself up so he could separate the whirling dervish of catastrophic movement. Ordinarily Senne would have chided him for standing on furniture – he could be gallingly lawful for a high-tier demon – but he was as absorbed in the battle as the rest of them and either didn’t notice or didn’t give a shit. Through the spotlit air onstage dark green liquid spurted and the crowd gave a surging howl of glee; Nemesis had drawn first blood.
Sander pushed up the sleeves of his jacket, denim dyed dark as the liner smudged around his eyes, gaze roaming unconsciously around the opposite side of the arena. He was looking, he knew, for the golden haze, but to his mild annoyance it was nowhere to be seen. He was wondering abstractedly if the angels had taken their leave from Exitium when the path of his gaze collided with a russet-haired being leaning up against the bar, and Sander forgot to think about anything else at all.
The being – who by all accounts could have passed for an exceptionally flawless member of the human species – was wearing a simple red crewneck and jeans, fringe tumbling sideways into his gigantic eyes as he observed the onstage kerfuffle, hypnotized. Corpse-pale skin and the fangs that spiked under his top lip suggested that he was a vampire, but Sander was excellent at guessing classifications, and that didn’t feel right at all. He was lithe and small and imperious, every bit of him exuding confidence as he sipped from the chalice in his hand, and never before in his existence had Sander been witness to such a striking creature as this. Reflexively he raised an arm to card his fingers back through his hair and as he did the boy’s intense gaze shifted away from the melee straight into Sander’s eyes.
Above them, unseen, unnoticed by everything else in the room, the sky shook itself out. In Sander’s ears a sudden drone whined and his stomach gave a lurching skydive swoop and for half a moment he mislaid the breath that he sometimes could not believe he still had. Again that heightened awareness slashed through him; again, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. The boy’s eyes were the strangest shade of gold, gold, gold, and there was something about him – something that Sander wanted to name but could not. He couldn’t tell if he was Sensing or reacting to the clear heat that kindled between them but he felt like he’d gone up in flames.
Unflinchingly the boy stared, face inscrutable and stone-frozen and brazen, as unafraid as Nemesis regarding Eurydice. His absolute lack of intimidation was not something Sander was accustomed to – as a human, he’d been revered for his beauty; as a mid-tier demon, let alone one who bled constantly from both eyes, his status commanded a great deal of automatic respect. In severe contrast to that fawning, fear-tinged admiration, however, this boy was observing him in the unaffected manner that one might use to watch a train pass by.
The unfamiliar feeling of being rendered ordinary by the nature of someone’s attention riled something long dormant in Sander’s chest. He could not equate the mildness in the boy’s eyes with the length of his gaze or the voltage that screamed hot through Sander’s skin; something was taking place here, but he didn’t have an inkling as to what it was. Onstage black and green blood was spraying with abandon now, both Eurydice and Nemesis roaring with vexed effort, but the combat felt planets away and all of Sander’s concentration was fixed upon bridging the space between himself and this unidentified splendid ethereal creature and proving that there was not a commonplace thing about him.
The boy was the first to cut eye contact, his attention snagged by the being beside him, a statuesque individual of equally astonishing beauty with skin only slightly less pale than his companion’s. Such a milky color looked strange against the sable of his hair and though he, too, showed fangs when he smiled, the errant, persistant thought that neither member of this enigmatic pair were vampires strayed again through Sander’s mind. He forced his focus back to the scuffle onstage; Nemesis had managed to behead one of Eurydice’s pit vipers and it looked as though his initial instinct to crown her as victor had been right.
Senne grabbed Sander’s ankle; apparently he had noticed his Fledgling’s relocation to the tabletop after all. He shouted over the din:
“How’s the view up there?”
Sander grinned down at him.
“Top-notch. Join me?”
And to Sander’s astonishment, Senne did, skipping lithely from the booth to stand beside him, moon-eyed and chill. He’d gone through three goblets of blood that night and this combined with the alcohol had made him loose at the limbs, undone the quick tension that lurked permanently just between his brows. Sander was positively delighted.
“You fucking rulebreaker.”
“This? You should have seen me in my Fledgling days,” said Senne, and when he beamed Sander saw where his teeth had stained cerise with ram-blood. He roped an arm around Sander’s shoulders, knocked the side of his head gently against Sander’s own, and the warmth that flooded the younger demon’s chest was sudden and strong: this was his most cherished being in all the infinite universes. No one had cared for him like Senne since his mother had died, and the knowledge that he was valued again, that someone worried about him, had changed him entirely.
“Yeah? You’d stand on all the tables then, eh?”
“Something like that,” said Senne, chuckling, and Sander was just about to entreat him to elaborate when ahead of them a rough, incensed shriek sliced the air. Nemesis had gone for the jugular again, and Eurydice had just narrowly escaped losing two of her snakes in one fight. The evasive maneuver she’d had to pull to save her viper had forced her off balance and Nemesis used the advantage to slam her to the ground, throw a leg on each side of her waist, pin both of the Eurydice’s hands down with her knees as she crooked an elbow over the thrashing Gorgon’s throat. It was a clever, cunning move: in positioning herself just so, Nemesis had ensured that Eurydice’s snakes couldn’t strike where they needed to.
Eurydice screamed again, blind with rage; she hadn’t lost an opening round of Fight Night in her existence, and the crowd could taste her fury. The talons on Nemesis’s free hand were curling and uncurling and her eyes were locked to the viper coiled dead center of Eurydice’s forehead and it was unmistakable what she was insinuating. Forfeit, or you lose another.
“Here we fucking go,” whispered Sander, and all of him was back in this, entranced, the not-vampire duo momentarily forgotten. Senne’s fingers tightened at the scruff of his neck; the sound of the crowd had reduced to a hornet hum, bated. So quiet was the club that Nemesis’s voice when she spoke sounded loud as a trumpet.
“Say it.”
Eurydice was vibrating with anger; chest heaving, she struggled, but Nemesis was larger and stronger than her in every sense and without the range of her pit vipers Eurydice’s force was heavily diminished.
“Or what.”
“Or I’ll cut them from your head one by one until there’s nothing left on your scalp but bloody stumps,” said Nemesis calmly, and her talons flashed.
Sander and Senne looked at each other, wide-eyed, brows elevated. Below them Britt and Noor had both risen to their feet and were standing with their hands over their mouths, not blinking, barely breathing, snake-charmed. In the rafters the canary blur that was Milan had increased its tempo of pacing and closure felt imminent. Sander said,
“Fuck,”
And his eyes automatically skipped over to search for that faultless enigma of a boy. Both he and his friend were watching the events upon the stage with centered intent, but the second Sander’s gaze came to rest upon his face, the boy glanced back at him as though Sander had shouted a name he didn’t know.
Yet.
“She didn’t come to play,” said Senne seriously, and Sander laughed; when his Elder spoke in modern-isms it never felt natural, but he appreciated Senne’s ability to adapt nonetheless.
Onstage, Eurydice hissed; there were a thousand insults in her eyes but she was nothing if not calculated and Nemesis had proved herself to be ruthless enough and she could not afford to lose another viper. She rolled her thin grey lips together, released a longsuffering sigh, set her teeth.
“Forfeit.”
The noise in the club absolutely detonated; on the opposite side of the stage, Robbe and Jens were howling, grabbing at each other’s hands wrists shoulders, caught up. Robbe’s face was flush with alcohol and Jens was more animated than Robbe had ever seen him and he couldn’t believe that this was the first time his Elder had ever permitted him to come to Lesser Purgatory.
“You asshole,” he yelled, “you’ve been keeping me from this!”
Jens grinned, guilty, letting his thin delicate-boned shoulders rise and fall. “It’s an occasion, Robbe. The LP isn’t like this every day. You have to pick the best times to come, and know when to avoid it at all costs.”
“So the first time you take me here, we not only see a Deity take out a Gorgon in ten minutes flat, but a demon almost discovers us and we have to use Shield Enforcement to hide from it,” said Robbe. He was still beaming and he felt the joy all the way in his fingertips. “You realize you’re creating a monster.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jens, and he slammed back his drink, amused. “I created you once, I can remake you whenever I please. We have time between the next round, you want another?”
“Jens Stoffels,” said Robbe, dramatic, mock-shocked. “Are you, my unbearably strict Elder, suggesting that I, your reckless Fledgling, participate in a third round of drinks with you tonight?”
(The first time they’d drank together, Robbe had expected to be affected by the alcohol in ways that he had been as a human – lowered inhibition, blurry edges, unsteady feet, word vomit, actual vomit, sudden crushing sadness, lust with a capital L – but instead he’d been filled with an indescribable lightness, a warmth in the hollow of his stomach, closer to what he’d describe as high than drunk. Jens had stopped him after one drink, insisted that he needed to get used to the way alcohol affected the angel infrastructure before he went any further, and Robbe had rolled his eyes at him.
“I know you’re my Elder,” he’d said, “but that doesn’t make you my mother.”
Jens had grinned at him, flicked his nose.
“Nah. But it does make me your wise, all-knowing superior, whose advice you should heed at all times because you are a baby angel and therefore still learning. Come on, little one, let’s go.”
Since then he hadn’t been much more relaxed; Robbe had incalculable amounts to learn about the ways of being an angel, and Drinking Night was never something on which they wasted much time. Jens taught him how to decompress in other ways, like swoop-diving through silk-soft clouds at daybreak, chasing an infinite horizon over seas of the most impossible blue color at sunset. There wasn’t much to decompress about, really; angels didn’t experience anxiety like humans did, because everything adapted a different meaning in the Afterlife. When overarching stressors like money and bills and health and mortality were removed from the larger picture, it was incredible how limitless one could feel.)
Jens huffed, rolled his eyes. “I was going to relax eventually, you know. Besides, you really proved yourself with that nuclear catastrophe, especially if Raphael is going easy on you. My little Fledgling is growing up.”
Robbe smacked him. “You’re insufferable.”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way,” said Jens, and he cupped Robbe’s chin in one soft long-fingered hand.
In the center of the arena, Milan had already cleared the blood from the floor with one lofty flick of his hand; Eurydice had vanished, limping away in wounded fury, her dead snake clutched in one shaking palm. Nemesis was slightly breathless but her face was saturated with a forbidding sort of satisfaction, teeth bared as she lifted her chin to stare around at the pulsating crowd, shine in her eyes as she listened to them chanting her name. She was the Goddess of Retribution, the personification of vengeance, and by her very nature she was not used to being adored.
Fortunately for her, on Fight Night, any creature that could best a Gorgon was not adored. They were idolized.
Milan held up her clammy hand, arched a perfectly sharp eyebrow, didn’t speak; he knew exactly how to work the crowd, had learned to play them like a dedicated violinist learns to make their instrument sing. Nemesis stood with her chest heaving and her eyes rifling the darkness and then, all of a sudden, she smiled.
As Milan conducted a brief, spirited interview Robbe let Jens lead him by the wrist to the bar, all the while keeping one eye open for the demon who sought him so relentlessly with that glowering red stare. Robbe didn’t think the demon knew what he was, that he was an angel, but his (Robbe refused to refer to him like Jens had, as an it) interest was brash and unmistakable, and it staggered Robbe to understand that he could not detect the nature of said interest. I won’t get close, he’d said to Jens, but he could not fully lie to himself and say that he wasn’t interested, too. When their eyes had clashed across the room Robbe had never felt anything like the ensuing impact; it was disruptive, shattering, a fault line fissure.
His stomach was still hot from it.
At any rate his vigilance was for nothing. The demon was nowhere within his line of sight; the dark man who had been standing beside him on the tabletop had vanished, too, and the crowd packing Exitium to its core was by now so thick that Robbe could not envision chancing upon either of them again. By the time he and Jens were pressed belly-first into the bar, laughing giddily as they called for their drinks, the entire encounter seemed far enough away that it might have been a reverie. He and Jens got pulled helplessly into a fevered First Blood discussion with a group of phantoms; two were in full support of Nemesis’s victory while the third was bemoaning the loss of Eurydice, whose viciousness had heretofore been unparalleled within the lower hierarchies of the draw. Jens was disputing hotly with the third phantom about whether or not Nemesis had violated a crucial rule by pulling at Eurydice’s hair (“that’s bullshit, isn’t it, because it’s not fucking hair for hell’s sake, it’s a snake”) and Robbe was standing back amused, sipping his fresh drink, when to his immediate left he felt movement. The vila standing next to him at the bar had vacated her space and it had instantly been filled by someone new.
A wrench in the air pressure; a coppery smell, it was almost as though Robbe had Warped, but his feet were solid on the ground beneath him and besides this feeling was all too familiar. He thought about what Jens had said, if you get too close, it will know, but there was nothing he could do about that now, was there.
He turned his head and there beside him, draped against the bar at an indolent cocksure angle, silver head tilted as he scrutinized Robbe with loud, loud, loud, interest, stood the red-eyed demon. He was still crying blood and he was still shockingly beautiful and the air in the club was, suddenly, not enough by half.
The demon smiled, an unhurried, wicked thing, and reached over to press his fingerprint onto the rim of Robbe’s glass. Up close he was dark, delicate, all black nails and smudgy eyeliner, thin ring of silver looped through his lower lip. His fingers were adorned heavily with metal and he exuded assurance and he felt like nothing but impossibility.
“Shouldn’t you be drinking blood?”
Then I won’t get too close.
Robbe swallowed.
“Shouldn’t you be bleeding it?”
Surprise flitted briefly across the demon’s chalk-white face; he chuckled and the sound was so low Robbe shouldn’t have heard it but he felt it like a scrape across his lower stomach. Around them the crowd roared in pleased low oblivion like within it nothing at all of interest was happening, like Robbe the Fledgling angel wasn’t talking back to a fucking demon.
“I do,” the demon said, one dark eyebrow bridging. The contrast to his platinum head was stark. “It just doesn’t look like this.”
He gestured to his face, to the evenly painted lines of red that poured steadily from his eyes, and smirked as he pressed in closer. Robbe’s blood was singing but he couldn’t tell if it was meant to warn or lure.
“What color do you bleed, then,” he said, gritting his teeth to stop his voice shaking. “Black?”
“That’s an interesting question with an interesting answer,” said the demon, flighty. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you what color I bleed if you tell me what you really are, not-vampire creature.”
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