Cassie's Corpse

Chapter 8

"You know," Rowland said as I pulled into the driveway, wiping his nose with his sleeve, "I'm not scared of him."
I glanced at him disbelievingly. "Rowland, I am a timeless multidimensional Angel and I am scared of Nicolai. Do no tell me you are not afraid, lest you disrespect the power Nicolai, and I, to some degree, wield."
He sighed, sinking back into his seat and slinging his seatbelt to the side. "Sorry. I just mean I'm not as afraid as I should be, given the circumstances. It just all seems so...surreal. Like it couldn't possibly happen. Like you're not even real, just Cassie playing one of her morbid games."
"That," I said, yanking the keys out of the ignition and dropping them into his hand, "is one of your biggest faults. Not you, personally, of course. Monsters are everywhere, Rowland, and whether you believe in them or not is irrelevant. I could still go up to an atheist and kill them. Lack of faith does not equal lack of danger. Most people are either arrogantly stupid or stupidly arrogant, and they think that evil things couldn't possibly be going on around them, but they are. Everywhere. To be frank with you, maybe it's a good thing the majority of your species is so spectacularly oblivious, because if they saw the truth the whole planet would probably tip into chaos."
He grinned at me then. "It already has, my dear."
"The quicker you accept it," I said to him, a note of warning in my voice, "the quicker you figure out how to stay alive. We are never safe. Nobody is ever safe."
"Well," he said, blinking, "that's a bit of a pessimistic viewpoint to-"
I slammed my hand against the dash. "God damn it, old man, get it through your head.
Stop fooling around and listen. The moment you start to become a liability is the moment I lock you in a closet and fight Nicolai off myself. We don't even have the illusion of religion to protect us anymore, so stop acting like my mere presence is a good omen."
"But Heaven-"
"I am Heaven-sent and Hell-bent, don't you understand?"
He was silent for a moment, and I began to feel guilty for being so harsh, but I couldn't deal with it. Heaven was not a fix-all for every bad thing in this world.
"I understand," he said quietly. He lifted his head to look at me. "You know, Varielle, humans tend to think of good as white and bad as black. Opposing forces, if you will. And I am finally beginning to think that maybe we got it wrong."
I said nothing as I helped him out of the car and up the steps. I was sick of Heaven, of Earth, of fighting. I could give in to Nicolai and let myself become numb, but this family wouldn't let me.
This damn family, and their damn love, and my damn optimism. The stupid little things like books and Reese's music and Rowland's pathetic attempts at trying to be funny. Despite my doom-and-gloom speech to Rowland, I still had hope. And hope was a pesky little fucker that dug its nails in tighter when I tried to shake it off.
There was a note on the fridge saying that
Reese had taken Anna to the doctor, there was a pot roast in the oven, and cookies on the counter. Which meant we were alone, with Nicolai, because I knew without a doubt that he was watching.
Rowland and I sat on the couch under a heavy blanket. We were watching some horror-movie marathon on TV that I knew Cassie would have liked. I think he was trying to cling to some semblance of normalcy.
"So," Rowland said as some poor girl got ripped in half on screen, "how do we stop him?"
"No idea."
A long pause. "Pardon my French, but we're fucked."
I nodded.
"Do we have any options?"
"A few. I cannot leave my vessel. One, Nicolai is much more powerful than me now that I've fallen and am not tied to my home."
"Heaven?"
"Don't call it Heaven anymore."
"But how do you draw power from it?"
I shrugged. "Honestly, I know as little as you do. We, the Angels, that is, aren't as powerful as we'd like to believe. We're just another product of the Universe. God tricked us. In short, I have no fucking clue. And, reason number two, me leaving this body would send out energy that all of Heaven...that all of my home would pick up on. And unless you want millions of us, whatever the fuck we are, raining down on you, I'd not leave my vessel. I could leave, run away, but I don't know that Nicolai would follow."
"He told me he likes it here," Rowland said grimly. "He likes the lake, the silence."
I shuddered. "I could give in to him. I could become like him. The Angels wouldn't be able to pick up on that, just another bad force mixed in with the rest. Then he would leave you alone."
"Absolutely not." Rowland crossed his arms, his mouth set in a firm line. "You're family. And I don't let my family members become pets for a psycho demon. Even the extra-terrestrial family members."
I had to admire his protectiveness, his assurance that I was in fact One Of Them, but deep down inside I think we both knew it was a lie. There was something darker here, and it wasn't just Nicolai.
There was darkness everywhere and I could not escape it.