Blood on the Bar Read online

  He felt weak.

  Fragile.

  Afraid.

  Human.

  No! No, it can’t be!

  “Why?” begged Lucas, barely able to lift his heavy head. “Why does Father do this to me? Why can He not forgive?”

  Gladri seemed at once amused and regretful, his wings twitching behind him as if he were eager to take flight. “You are an artificer of catastrophe, a wielder of destruction, and Heaven will tolerate your recklessness no longer. Humanity is the thing you claim to covet most, so we shall see how truly you empathise with it. You shall live and die as a man. Perhaps that is the forgiveness you seek, Lucifer.”

  “My name is Lucas!”

  “So be it. Farewell, Lucas.”

  Lucas clawed himself along the floor like a baby learning to crawl. Gladri was gone, a small patch of blue flame dwindling where he’d been, and that single blue feather still fluttering in the air. The two plastic bags ceased their dancing and settled on the ground in the middle of the alleyway. Lucas studied them as if they might have answers, but of course there was no sense to be had in any of this.

  Cast down again, even lower than before, he finally understood that Father would never forgive him. It had all been for nothing.

  His time was coming to an end. There would be no return. No chance to atone.

  A shadow emerged from the same alcove Jake and his friends had hidden in earlier. This time it was a woman. “V-Vetta? What are you doing here?”

  As much as she looked concerned to find him lying on the ground, she also looked embarrassed, and she lit up the darkness with her glowing red cheeks. “Car at bottom of hill was not taxi. It was someone picking up friend. I not want to wait alone so I hurry after you. I…” She stopped talking, as if worried something bad might happen. When she continued, her voice was half-volume. “Was that an angel you talk to?”

  Lucas groaned. “A monster, not an angel.”

  “But it had wings.”

  He groaned again. “Yeah, okay, fine, it was an angel. Can you just help me up, please?”

  “Of course.” She rushed to his side and got him standing again. His body felt like it was full of oddly shaped bricks. “How do I help?” she asked.

  Lucas staggered forwards, taking some steps on his own. “Find me a feckin’ drink.”

  Sobering Thoughts

  Vetta rented a poky flat in the bad part of town, and it was filled with only the barest of furniture. She had combated the sparseness by hanging photographs all over the walls. “My family,” she explained when she saw him looking at them. “They are in Slovakia. Bratislava, you know?”

  Lucas nodded. He had only been looking at the pictures because they’d caught his eye, not because he was interested, so he moved over to the room’s worn two-seat sofa and threw himself down in a huff.

  A bad night. A bad, bad night. Since leaving the alleyway, his every movement was sluggish and painful, fragile sinews and heavy bones wearing away at each other. He feared death every second as he assumed all humans did, in constant danger of slipping and breaking his papery skull in an instant or dying of a heart attack. There was no way to stop it.

  Inevitable.

  It meant he approached every single second cautiously.

  Vetta dashed into the tiny box that counted for her kitchen and returned with a pint of water, which she handed to him with a shy smile. Since learning the truth about him, she had been tentative and suspicious. One could hardly blame her.

  Lucas thanked her for the drink and held the glass in his hands, but he didn’t take a sip. Water wasn’t his thing. “Do you not have anything stronger?”

  Vetta raised an eyebrow and pointed to the glass. “Is vodka.”

  “A pint?” said Lucas, surprised, but then he shrugged and said, “Yeah, alright then.”

  “Are you okay?” Vetta asked for the tenth time, as concerned about him as she was suspicious.

  Of course he was not okay. In his entire history-spanning existence, this was the least okay Lucas had ever been. The least okay by far.

  He put the glass to his lips and swigged, the fire hitting his throat, and he spluttered. “It’s good,” he said, gasping. “Are you not going to join me?”

  “No, thank you. The angel, he call you Lucifer. Are you… are you The Devil? Are you going to hurt me?”

  He took another sip of vodka and it went down easier this time now he was expecting the dry burn. “I was the Devil,” he admitted, “but no, I won’t hurt you. I couldn’t hurt a kitten if I wanted to.”

  Vetta was mortified. “You like to hurt kittens?”

  “What? No, no, it was just… I was just saying, I’m human now, and not even a very good one at that.”

  “You’re human?” she asked dubiously. “Like me?”

  “How much did you hear in that alleyway?”

  “I was right behind you when big light come. I hide in hole next to building. My mama used to tell me that angels could only come to us in dreams, and only if we have good hearts, but that is not true. You knew angel who come?”

  Lucas nodded. “Gladri. Sanctimonious sod if ever there was one. He’s Chief Bollocks of the Choir of Justice. It’s mostly an honorary position—not a lot of crime in Heaven—but he got to indulge himself tonight. It was Gladri who enacted my previous sentence and cast me down from Heaven after I lost a war against my elder brother. He’s always been so smug—the angel who sentenced The Devil to Hell—as if he wasn't just following Michael’s orders. And don’t even get me started on Michael!”

  Vetta still seemed worried. “You talk about war in bible between Good and Evil? Michael is good angel. You are…”

  “Aye, that would make me the bad angel.”

  “Are you evil?”

  Lucas stared into his glass and sighed. “Yes. And no.”

  Vetta nodded and seemed to relax. She took a seat on the tatty sofa seat beside him yet perched as far away as she could. There had been a time when mortals had trembled before him, but now they sat nearby with expressions of pity while making chitchat. How had he been reduced to this? How had he not seen it coming? Was he really so weak and stupid? Arrogance had truly been his sin.

  “Why did the angel do this to you?” Vetta asked him. Her eyes were baggy and her skin pasty, signs of tiredness and encroaching sobriety, yet despite all that, she was still beautiful. He remembered touching her face and seeing her spirit. There had been no darkness in her at all. Only hope and compassion. He wondered what would happen if he touched her now.

  Vetta was staring at him. “Gladri did this to keep me from interfering,” he said. “To keep me from getting involved.” He exhaled, finding it difficult to talk and breathe at the same time. It required a rhythm he wasn’t used to. “There’s a war going on. Multiple wars on multiple fronts, in fact. You humans all think your world is the only one, but there are others—thousands—but only a few left standing.”

  Vetta chuckled, as if she thought him ridiculous, but then she seemed to remember what she’d witnessed in the last hour and nodded gravely. “What is happening to these... other worlds?”

  Lucas grunted. “Don’t ask me. I’m just the idiot who tried to lend a hand. God is being attacked, but he doesn’t seem to care much about it. So sod Him.”

  Vetta folded her arms. “No one is strong enough to attack God.”

  Lucas nodded to the photographs on her wall. “God has a family like everyone else. And just like everyone else, His family is full of dysfunctional gobshites. Some of them are almost as powerful as God, but none of them have his gift for creativity. Only God is able to create, the only one able to forge a universe of His own making and fill it with life. But those who sit upon a throne are destined to die upon it. God’s kin are jealous of His creation—wanting the power for themselves so that they might create worlds of their own. God has been forced to shut himself away to avoid his kin's avarice. And that there is the answer to the big question mankind has been asking since its infancy. Why does
n’t God answer our prayers? Why does he let bad things happen? Why doesn’t he put a stop to Logan Paul? Because he can’t! Not without endangering existence itself. He’s like that Pope in his little bullet-proof buggy thingy, but with less waving and fancy hats.”

  Vetta frowned dismissively—an expression of hard truths being heard. “I do not understand. Maybe I don’t know your words.”

  Lucas repeated the key points in Slovak, but it didn’t help clarify. Vetta seemed as confused as ever. Weary of talking. Lucas lifted his glass and downed half the vodka. It made him shudder and cough, which only added to his irritation, but he enjoyed the warmness it put inside his chest. “Don’t worry about it,” he told Vetta. “The universe’s problems are neither of our concern. I tried to help and look where it got me.”

  “You not want to be human?”

  “Does anybody?”

  Vetta gave no answer. Which was an answer.

  Lucas felt his thighs tingle, compelling him to straighten his legs. He rubbed at his knees and wondered how long before they stiffened with old age. Would he get arthritis? He swore he could almost feel himself decaying. Was he actually going to die one day? Today? Tomorrow?

  “I am tired,” said Vetta, breaking the silence. “And frightened. I think I go to bed and put tonight behind me. You should sleep too.”

  Lucas argued that he didn’t sleep, but then realised it might not be true anymore. “Yeah, um, okay. How do you... do it?”

  Vetta didn’t laugh, but the statement obviously amused her. “You do not know this? How to sleep?”

  Why would he? He’d never done it before—had never needed to. “It’s absurd how humans waste so much of their short lives in bed.”

  “Now you get to also. Come, I help you sleep.” She took his hand and pulled him up off the sofa.

  He staggered. “I-I don’t feel right.”

  “You drink half-pint of vodka. Lucas, you are drunk.”

  Paranoia flooded him, and he felt out of control. He’d spent an eternity drinking alcohol, but its effects had always been minimal, nothing more than a pleasant buzz. Now that he was human, it was muddying his senses. He didn’t like the feeling.

  Vetta led him unsteadily into the bedroom where she switched on a lamp. Unlike the lounge, this room was cluttered and overcrowded with a table sprinkled with make-up and a long mirror taking up one wall. Soft purple linens and pillows covered the bed, but Vetta threw them aside to get to the covers underneath.

  She patted the mattress. “Take off your top and trousers and get in.”

  Lucas did as commanded but received a telling off when he tried to remove his underwear, and a second telling off for leaving on his shoes. So many ridiculous rules. He felt like such a fool. Vetta removed her own clothes until she was wearing nothing but a black bra and lacy knickers. The way she slid beneath the covers, thighs swishing together like that, stirred a lust inside of him—but then he experienced something else, a gushing from his stomach that leapt right up into his eyes.

  “W-Why are you crying?” Vetta propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him uneasily. Her pity added yet another emotion to the smorgasbord inside his head. A mortal’s pity was an insult. Yet he couldn’t help but cry harder.

  “How do you do this?” he begged her in a wavering voice not entirely under his control. “These… feelings inside my head. Like worms. Worms in my mind.”

  “You never feel things before?”

  His emotions had always been gradual things, like the gathering of snow, but this… this was like drowning at sea. He couldn’t grab any one feeling long enough to pull himself up and get a breath.

  He wiped his eyes and looked at Vetta. “I want it to stop.”

  She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “You sleep. Tomorrow is better, I think.”

  Too fuzzy-headed for anything else, Lucas lay down on the pillow. The covers were frigid, making him flinch, but he soon acclimated. He faced away from Vetta, not wanting her to see the fresh tears rolling down his cheeks, and he focused on the crooked doors of her wardrobes. Eventually a sharp click sounded, and the world went dark.

  Time went by in silence. How long, he didn’t know, but it felt like seconds and minutes all at once.

  “This is ridiculous,” he eventually said.

  Vetta shushed him. “Just close your eyes. Don’t think.”

  It was the exact opposite of what he was doing. His mind was awash with a hundred questions, all clashing against one another like dhows in a storm. Mere hours ago, he had been capable of infinite thought and unparalleled intelligence, now he was confused and feeble-minded. This mess of emotions was torture, and for the first time in his vast existence he, The Devil, was in Hell.

  And he was expected to sleep.

  Ha!

  His huffing and puffing stopped when something touched his back. He shuddered but settled down as he realised it was Vetta caressing his back with her fingernails. The sensation was like nothing he had ever experienced before, a subtle thing that somehow rendered his whole body numb. His bones felt heavy, and his thoughts drifted away as he focused on the caress against his skin, never knowing which way Vetta’s nails would glide next.

  But then her nails scratched across his scars, the twin set beneath each shoulder blade.

  She stopped, and for a moment, they lay there in the dark, silent. Then she spoke. “These were your wings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is hurt?”

  “Every moment since I lost them.”

  There was another moment of silence. Perhaps Vetta was waiting for him to rebuke her, but when he didn’t, she kept on with the questions. “What happened to them?”

  Lucas thought back and became sure that he had never spoken of this with a single human being. It was his pain to endure, not something to titillate a lowly human with, but he was human now too, and for some reason, he wanted to share. “Michael took them.”

  “Your brother.”

  “Yes. When Daniel and I stormed the throne room of Heaven with what was left of our army, Michael met us. He is the custodian of Heaven in God’s absence. He was alone and surrounded by my angels. Despite that, he would not surrender Heaven. He was prepared to die to protect it. We could have cut him down where he stood. Even if he’d taken ten of us, he could not have defeated us all. Yet…” The words dried up in his mouth. The memories felt forbidden, and that he was betraying some secret law by talking of them openly.

  “What happen next?” asked Vetta.

  Lucas thought about telling her to mind her own business, but he pushed through the feeling and started talking again. “I pictured my glorious victory, of sitting upon Heaven’s throne as the new monarch of existence. I had already conquered Heaven, but this was the moment that would be remembered until the end of time. I could not risk Michael being cut down by one of my brothers. In my arrogance, the thought of having my elder brother on his knees before me blinded me to what was important. I ordered my army back and faced Michael one on one, determined to be the one to beat him.” Lucas swallowed, and had to force a lump down into his stomach. “But he beat me. My arrogance was my downfall as Michael bested me easily, always the greatest of warriors. On my knees, he asked me to repent. ‘Repent,’ he said, ‘and all will be forgiven. Refuse, and your army will fall to ruin.’”

  “You refused,” said Vetta, preempting him.

  “Yes. I refused, so he hacked off my wings. My army scattered, but when Heaven recovered, they were all hunted down and dismembered too. By refusing mercy for myself, I had forsaken it of them also. We were all cast down without our wings, unable to ever reach Heaven again. My Fallen brothers turned on me. I had promised them a new kingdom, but that kingdom was Hell. And we burned. All of us, we burned.”

  Vetta said nothing. The silence went on for a long time, and Lucas could hear his own panting breaths. Then he felt her fingertips on his back again, this time running along the edges of his scars. “Go to sleep,” she whispered. �
�Tomorrow will be better.”

  Lucas tensed, his body taught, but gradually, he succumbed. He could not fight it, that light tickling sensation overwhelming him like a crashing wave. His eyelids became fuzzy. His mouth went dry. Slowly his body sank into the mattress, and he stopped caring about anything else. He left behind a great burden, his greatest misery shared with another.

  Lucas cowered before a great beast that he could not see clearly. The only detail was its size. Massive. Colossal. Mountainous.

  Its huge weight crushed his bones to dust while he screamed.

  The beast roared.

  Lucas burned. Disintegrated.

  “Lucas!”

  He opened his eyes, not understanding why they had even been closed, but then remembering he had slept. He was human now. A weak and fragile human being. Father had forsaken him once more.

  No!

  Vetta stood over him, holding a steaming mug in her hand. She wore purple leggings and a baggy leopard-print t-shirt. The image of her bra and knickers popped unbidden into his mind. Were his thoughts no longer his own? Were unfiltered images destined to pop into his head forever now?

  No, not forever. Just until this short, mortal life ends.

  His head was throbbing, and his vision blurry, but Vetta’s insistence prompted him to take the steaming mug from her. His nostrils detected the dull whiff of coffee, and it made him a little less groggy. He took a tentative sip and it was bitter. He thanked her for it, then apologised for being there. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve put you through. I’ll leave soon.”

  “Stay,” she said. “Is fine. You need help.”

  The statement was outrageous, but when he tried to think about what to do next, he had no clue. “Perhaps, I’ll stay a short while,” he relented, realising that he did need help—at least until he got a hold of himself. “Just until I get a plan together.”

  She nodded, satisfied, then perched on the bed beside him. “Your accent is gone.”

  “I’ve lost more than my accent,” he muttered. So much more.