God's Gone AWOL

[4] Idiots Getting Drunk

Atticus didn't like pop music –even when it was being performed by the greatest musician across all four realms: the archangel of music himself, Lucy Feral.

Most of the time, Atticus turned up his nose whenever he heard the obnoxious tones of modern music. Everything in pop music felt like it always followed the exact same four chords, repeating over and over and over until the listener felt physically sick. The singers always sounded like they were whining and complaining about their own romantic misfortunes. With the added metallic buzz of auto-tune, and the cheap back-track produced by a computer instead of actual musicians, none of the songs Atticus had ever listened to were even the slightest bit bearable. Which was why he stuck to lonesome cello music.

And yet, the music Lucifer was producing was different. Although it used the standard, fast-paced bpm, looped the same eight bars without any variation, and generally had a lack of serious effort put into it, the shape of the sound itself was different than anything Atticus had encountered in the modern world. Between the notes, he could hear traces of the ancient music of humanity, when rhythm and dance were in their earliest and purest stages —the songs so old that nobody could remember who came up with them. But the music also reflected newer elements, from the time of Bach to Xian Xinghai. Even though nobody else in the room realized it, the sounds Lucy was producing were beyond a genius level.

And beneath everything, Atticus recognized one very specific style of music. A style that was never really experienced anywhere in the Earthly realm. It was, of course, modelled after the ethereal and dizzying music of Heaven. Those sweet, unending sonatas written before the dawn of life itself would never change. He never thought it was possible to recreate such sounds using mortal instruments, but Lucy somehow managed to do it.

Of course he could do it. Lucifer was the archangel who invented music in the first place. In this particular line of expertise, there wasn't a single thing that he couldn't do.

—Except actually make it enjoyable to Atticus' ears, apparently.

At the moment, they were mid-concert. Lucy was Elton John-ing his heart out on the piano, bashing the keys and singing into the microphone with a wicked amount of energy, while a crew of backup dancers and singers surrounded him with a hurricane of sound and movement. Lights were flashing, the audience was cheering, and Atticus was dying on the inside. It was less about the music, and more about the over-stimulation of it all. But Lucy looked happy, and the audience looked happy. Even Bentley looked somewhat happy, so he couldn't leave and he couldn't complain.

Hidden safely in the shelter of the wings, the two watched the scene play out. Atticus glanced at the one beside him. She was smiling gently, tapping her foot along with the music. Her red eyes were half closed and at ease. Ever since she had come back, they had been doing a lot of running around, hiding, fighting, bantering, –the usual. This was one of the first times she had actually relaxed in front of him. It was a sight so rare that the angel let his eyes wander over her figure for a moment before he finally allowed himself to speak.

"If someone had told me a week ago that I would be here beside you, watching a concert performed live by Lucifer himself..." He trailed off.

"You would have thought they were batshit insane?" Bentley offered.

"I would have told them: 'I look forward to it!'," he said with a smile.

Though the music and the crowd were both spectacularly loud, the wings of the auditorium did a surprisingly good job of neutralizing the sound. It also helped that both Atticus and Bentley had much better hearing than any other type of living creature on Earth. So even with the commotion ringing up to the rafters, they could carry out a perfectly legible conversation with each other.