Heaven and Hole

Heaven and Hole is a stand-alone story, but it features characters introduced in (the much shorter) Off The Shoulder. If you would like to know more about the main protagonists, and the world they inhabit, you might consider reading the earlier work first.

It was annoying not being able to fly, having to rely on your girlfriend to give you a ride all the time. A few of my erstwhile fiends and malignances had bat wings, but I was not similarly endowed. Bat wings would be fun. I could do that whooshing thing that humans always found so impressive when Lily unfurled her feathers. I could be more intimidating than my 5'1" stature generally allowed; OK 5'3" if you count the horns. Ah well, a girl couldn't have everything.

"You're sulking again, aren't you, Emma?"

Lily's voice was close to my ear and tickled. I quite like being tickled as a rule, but today it was irritating.

"No. It's just you're... you're chafing my armpits a bit. Why do you grip so? We should get a harness or something."

Lily laughed. Her tinkling, musical giggle. It was hard to be too annoyed when your partner's mirth was so mellifluous. But I still did my best, and my best was world class in this area.

"I thought harnesses were just for me," Lily commented innocently.

She had a point, I suppose. My girlfriend liked harnesses, and cuffs, and ropes. Much as I hated to admit it, Lily was stronger than me. She did have a fondness for being restrained. But no Earthly material could hold her captive for long, if she willed it otherwise. Or, at least, that was true when she was full of Divine Grace. Our friend and business partner, Andy, had kindly provided her with a top up before we left. He called it recharging his Tesla. Lily found it funny. Me rather less so. Though I couldn't really blame Andy for my current mood. Without Andy, Lily would have shuffled off her, supposedly immortal, coil long ago. And I was grateful. No, my grumpiness was about something else.

"Are we there yet?" I realized I sounded petulant, and didn't much care.

"Not long now, sweetie. Be a good demon and settle down for a bit, won't you? You are distracting me."

I was quiet for a while. The only noises were the whistling of the air as we sped through it, and the thumping, powerful beat of Lily's wings.

"It's just on the other side of that mountain, sweetheart. Not far to go now." Lily pointed, and I suddenly was very aware of how high up we were.

"Well, don't drop me!"

"Make your mind up, Emma! Am I holding you too tight or too loosely?"

"Both of course! Just focus on getting us there, OK?"

A few more thrusts of her wings and we passed the peak.

"Please return to your seats and fasten your belts for landing."

Andy's so-called sense of humor was rubbing off on Lily: she was so impressionable.

She dove like a falcon, swooping up at the last second to deposit us both gently on our feet.

"Thank you for flying with Lily Airways. We appreciate that you had options for this route. Well, there was walking, I guess."

Maybe hanging around humans too much was a bad idea. I glared at my beaming friend and harrumphed a little. They taught us that in demon Pre-K, or πρό-κ as it's properly called.

We had landed on a greensward, punctuated here and there by small groups of trees. Not far from us, on the crest of a slight rise, stood two figures.

I whispered in Lily's ear. "Well, we had better get this over with. Do you see who it is? We are either in deep shit, or something important is happening."

Lily and I walked up the slope. The two people were initially looking away from us, but both turned as we approached. My general modus operandi is to not give a fuck about anyone or anything, but this was different. I felt a lump in my throat, and a void in my stomach. Lily briefly squeezed my hand and then released it. My management chain had given our relationship grudging approval, but Lily's was another matter. She was a non-angel as far as they were concerned. Indeed, they had abandoned her to be an ex-angel. They probably found her continued existence an affront.

We reached them and stood silently. Not really sure of what to say.

Neither person was outwardly impressive, but I knew not to let appearances be my guide. The male was of indeterminate age. Something about him suggested an impossible teen beauty. He wouldn't have looked out of place in BTS, with his jet black hair and parchment white skin. His features somehow transcended human constructs like race. But his eyes... his eyes spoke of age. Not just age, of eternity. Oúriēl, the Angel of Repentance. As pitiless as any demon, and not a guy to be fucked with.

The female? Well, it was her. The Unholy of Unholies; Lucy herself. She could unmake me in an instant, scattering my essence to the furthest reaches of reality; maybe beyond. The Seductress of Man, or rather mostly Woman, it had to be said; Lucy had well-documented lesbian tendencies. Her hair color mirrored Oúriēl's, but her skin was pale pink-red and her eyes were black portals to the searing fire that burnt within.

It was unclear to me what such luminaries, or maybe tenebrinaries in Lucy's case, wanted with a third class demon and an ex-angel. I guessed we were about to find out.

The silence hung heavily. Both regarded us wordlessly, and with an air of, what seemed to be, distaste.

They say that Nature abhors a vacuum, but she's an amateur, I totally loathe one. I just couldn't help myself...

"So, who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?"

The reply was stentorian, and sounded as if from a great depth.

"Silence, worm!" bellowed my Mistress. The Daughter of Morning. The Mother of Lies. Apollyon and Abaddon.

"I say, Lucers!" Oúriēl chided her, "That's a bit rich, don't you think? I thought we agreed that we wanted to ask them for help. You could be a bit more polite."

I almost fell over. Oúriēl, that Oúriēl, was... English? And not just that, effete English. Eton and Oxford English. Received pronunciation English. Cucumber sandwiches English. What... the... actual... fuck?

Lucy seemed to gather herself. In the distance storm clouds brewed, laced with lightning.

Then she appeared to think better of it. "Whatever! I just can't bear attitude in the lower hierarchies. And I hated that fucking movie too."

I reflected that Lucy, at least, was American. Then, everyone knows that about Satan.

Lily had been silent, but now spoke, taking a more reasonable tone than I had. After what they had done to her, she seemed overly reasonable to me -- then I'm not an angel, fallen or otherwise.

"Hello, Your Eminences. We got your message, and here we are. What can we do to help?"

I wasn't going to let Lily pretend everything was cool, even if saying so risked instant vaporization. No one was going to take advantage of Lily, not while I was around. "Yeah, and also, why us? Particularly you, Oúriēl. You sent Lily to Earth to die. Why the sudden interest in us?"

Oúriēl looked at Lucy, who now seemed very occupied by her long, black nails. It appeared she was considering making a manicurist appointment.

Not receiving any support from his demonic counterpart, Oúriēl decided to press on. "Well, ladies. If I might say so, it is a matter of some delicacy that we wish to broach with you. We, um... Lucy and I, we... If I can put it this way, we wanted to, er... engage people with your, shall we say, specific, um... characteristics. Er..."

Oúriēl was not exactly exuding archangelic authority, or even much coherence.

Lucy rolled her eyes and had clearly had enough of his, rather painful, circumlocution. "What my friend is trying to say is that we need some dirty work done. We need it done by beings who understand Hell and the other place, but who are also wholly in the human world, not inter-realm visitors like us."

Lucy had still been examining her nails as she spoke, but now she turned to look at both of us.

The smile with which she favored us was enough to make me want my demon Mommy. "But also, beings who are expendable. Beings who realize this fact. Beings who will understand that they will very quickly be spent, if they ever breathe a word of this business to another entity. Get it?"

Lily and I both nodded quickly.

Lucy shifted her gaze to the disconsolate seraph next to her. "You are going to have to tell them, honey. Try to be a man about it, or the closest thing you can manage."

Oúriēl had been staring into the sky, giving off waves of discomfort, but Lucy's words appeared to bring him back from his reverie. "Right, but you called me 'honey'; was that wise, dearest?"

He really wasn't living up to his reputation. Maybe he just had a good publicist.

Lucy's anger was barely contained when she next spoke. "For fucks' sake! Just fucking tell them, or are you going to make me do it? Angels... ugh! Men... ugh! Male fucking angels... ugh!"

What was becoming increasingly plain was that Lily and I had front row seats for something approximating a marital dispute.

As ever, I couldn't keep quiet, no matter how imprudent. "So, are you two, like, fucking, or something?"

Lucy glared at me, flames springing up behind her eyes. I felt my body lift off the ground and my skin begin to burn.

Oúriēl put a hand on her shoulder, and the fire in Lucy's eyes dimmed a little. I had been high off the ground, now I fell with a crash. Wings, I really need wings!

"Now dearest. We seem to have revealed our little... ahem... secret. Perhaps I'll try again to take it from here."

Lucy walked off a short distance, muttering to herself about junior demons, men in general, and brimstone.

"Why don't we sit down here, and I'll try to explain. Sorry about Lucers, she has a temper, but she's really just a big pussy cat."

"One with preternaturally good hearing, honey." Lucy's deep voice drifted back to us from where she seemed to be deciding whether or not to disintegrate a mountain.

"Well, never mind about that." Oúriēl continued. "Thank you both for coming, it was good of you."

Lily sweetly said that it was no problem, and I grunted.

"You see, as you accurately surmised, dear Lucy and I are an item. It's a little tricky for both of us..."

He paused as a whumping sound, followed by crackling, drew our attention towards Lucy again.

"Don't worry about me, just doing a bit of pyro-therapy, please continue."

The smell of ashes drifted towards us from what used to be a coppice.

"OK, dear. Whatever you say."

Oúriēl turned back to us and decided to explain more. "When I say, 'a little tricky'..."

"We get it," I interjected, "you're English, I'll do some simultaneous translation. You mean it's totally fucked up and you both live in terror of being discovered. Right?"

"Well... that's not exactly how I would put it."

I looked at him, my head on one side, my best impression of an 'oh really' meme.

"OK. Just like that, Emma, just like that." This admission seemed to lift a weight off Oúriēl's shoulders, and he now spoke with less hesitation. Albeit with no immediate increase in directness. "Well, as you can imagine, I'm not really English. But I am rather fond of cricket. The crack of leather on willow. Cucumber in my Pimms..."

I knew I was right about the cucumber.

"...Play being called off for bad light at midday in July..."

Oúriēl's train of thought was interrupted by the sound of another dozen trees bursting into flame.

"Do get on with it, honey. I don't have all day."

"Quite so, dearest. Now where was I?"

Oúriēl closed his eyes and rubbed his brow for a second. "Oh yes. That's it. Well this has been going on for some time, millennia actually. She really is an awfully nice demon, once you get past the dismembering, and rivers of blood. I suppose we ended up being a little less careful than we might and..."

"And someone found out, and you want me and Lily -- well, let's be honest, me -- to murder them in a truly horrible way, right?"

My obvious eagerness got me a kick from Lily and a loud, "eeew!" It's hard being in a mixed relationship sometimes. I guessed this might be one more reason that Oúriēl and Lucy had chosen us.

"No. No, nothing like that. We weren't that careless. It's just, well..."

Lucy's voice floated back to us. "We had a baby, a daughter. You OK to keep going now, honey?"

As Oúriēl shouted "yes, dear", the sound of new combustion reached us on the breeze. "Indeed, we had a daughter. She has her Mommy's temper, but my eyes... anyway, I guess you don't need to know that."

The archangel collected himself. "So, it was... um... somewhat inconvenient. Lucy took a sabbatical to study... what was it again, dearest?"

"Not relevant, honey, it was impalement, impalement and dissection, with a rusty halberd, but really not relevant." Lucy was hidden by the crest of the rise, but a small cloud of smoke rose above it.

"Quite! We don't get many residential training classes in Heaven," he added somewhat sadly. "Oh well. So, anyway, she gave birth, but we obviously couldn't raise the child. In keeping with long-established protocol for quasi-deities, we decided to place her with a human family. If it was good enough for Zeus and Heracles... well that's another story, I suppose. Anyway, it seemed like a reasonable idea. And it worked for some time. Nineteen years to be precise. We visited often, not visibly of course, just to see how she was doing. She has no real knowledge of us, no understanding of who she really is.

And she seemed happy. Until..."

Here Oúriēl paused. "Well, I guess it's inevitable really, her mother's hot blood..."

"Way to blame the woman, honey. If you think I'm going down on you later..."

Another cloud of smoke appeared.

"Anyway... she met someone. An older someone, well not by my standards, but for humans. Not a problem, you'd think, we want her to be happy. The issue was the someone."

At this point, Lucy was suddenly with us again. She squatted cross-legged, tucking her long tail around her.

"Feeling better, dear?"

"Much better, burning makes me feel good."

"But we did discuss this before, carbon dioxide emissions and so on..."

A look from Lucy and Oúriēl abandoned his argument.

She then picked up the narrative. "Let me cut to the chase. In our opinion, the someone doesn't have Freya's best interests at heart. We named her Freya, it's a pretty name, right?"

Lily nodded enthusiastically. For once, I kept my counsel.

"We think that he is intending to use her. You see, he is a well-known occultist. Well maybe not in human circles, but he's got a bad name in both Hell and the other place. Oúriēl and I both think that he wants to use Freya. We aren't clear how, but -- even in the human vessel we poured her essence into -- she has powers. I'm, well, me. And her father isn't as wholly impotent as he appears to be today."

"Hardly impotent, why just this morning..."

"Too much information, honey. And for fuck's sake try to focus."

Suitably chastised, Oúriēl fell silent.

"The point is, that we are worried about two things. First, that this man, Nathan Raine is his name, will try to extort the two of us. Second, that he doesn't really care about us at all, but wants to use Freya's powers, or even to extract them."

To me, there seemed to me to be an obvious solution. "So, why not just vaporize him? You'd enjoy that."

"A few reasons. First, he is cunning and has woven protective spells around himself. Second... should I tell them honey?"

Oúriēl nodded.

"OK, I guess it's only fair. We managed to insert a spy into Raine's household. She was very informative for a while. Based on her findings, we strongly suspect that Raine has interlinked his fate with Freya's, that his death will lead to hers. Of course, Freya's essence is immortal, but, in human form, she is vulnerable. Third, even if we somehow get round those things, we understand that the spell he used also binds Freya to him emotionally and..."

Here the fires leapt up in Lucy's eyes again. Oúriēl put a hand on her knee and squeezed it. She leaned sideways and kissed him briefly. "...and... oh dear... and sexually. Our little girl..."

With this Lucy dissolved in tears. As a demon, it was heartbreaking to see the highest of our order crying. It would be humiliating for the least of us, but for her?

Oúriēl took over, his voice now more certain. His anger was also palpable, but he spoke in a calm and collected manner. "Neither of us have anything against sexual relations. We are not prudish parents, and she is of age. But the issue is consent. We very much fear that Freya's mind is not fully her own."

Lucy seemed to have recovered herself. Her tears evaporated into hot steam. But I caught her eye and, demon to demon, we shared an understanding. For me, it was Lily; for her, Freya. I got it.

She picked up the conversation. "So, what this bastard has done to her makes things difficult. But, as often is the case, his plans have a loophole. Something that the right type of beings might be able to exploit."

Again, I couldn't contain myself. "A thermal exhaust port, you mean."

Lucy smiled. "Now, that movie I liked. And yes, Emma, you are right. Because Raine's spells are using love as a vehicle, we are pretty sure that if either Freya, or Raine, falls in love with anyone else, the spell will be broken, or at least weakened."

Lily and I looked at each other and then spoke in unison. "So, who do you want us to fuck, him or her?"

It was Lucy and Oúriēl's turn to exchange glances before the archangel replied. "Well, either really. Use your discretion. Whichever seems more likely to work."

Lucy had an additional observation. "I'm sure either of the two of you would be a treat for Freya, but the spy also told us that Raine has a bit of a twins fetish. Now I know you aren't really twins, you just share the appearance of the human you used to be allocated to. But he doesn't know that."

I thought it might be helpful to recapitulate. "So you want us to seduce either the guy who is raping your daughter, or your daughter. And you thought of us because we are..."

Here I enumerated my fingers. "One. Fully in the human world, and thus able to pass for human. Two. Cognizant of Hell and the other place, as you put it. Three. Expendable. Four. Terrified of you, and thus likely to keep our mouths shut. And five. Potentially scratching Raine's twin itch. Do I have it right?"

Oúriēl's nod confirmed that I did. But Lucy had other ideas. "Also, how shall I put it? We hear that you have both had quite a lot of experience seducing humans of late. Did we hear wrong?"

I had no idea that our little escort agency was the talk of the Astral Plane, but I guess she had a point. "What I'm not getting is what's in it for me and Lily."

Lucy stared at me, her already arched brows lifting further. Her voice was sweet and reasonable as she spoke, though her words rather less so. "Well, there is the not being instantly vaporized for starters."

She paused and allowed herself a small chuckle. "I find it amusing how the lower ranks delude themselves that they have agency. Do as I ask, without question, or I have a new pit that I'm looking for a volunteer to trial."

Oúriēl gently intervened. "Now, dearest, we spoke about this. First the carrot, then the stick. Remember?"

Lucy glared, but let the archangel take over.

Oúriēl's brief flirtation with certainty of purpose had now clearly been overtaken by the celestial bureaucrat that he apparently was. "Well, I have a certain influence. For example, I could get Lily's expulsion revoked. Or... if you are happier here -- and to be honest that might be better for all involved -- I could see to it that her... problem... with a lack of Divine Grace was permanently resolved."