AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Remember that other author's note, dear Hedonists? The one I wrote way back at the beginning of this story, before we all started on Casey's crazy little journey? If you skipped it, you might want to go back and take a look before you read on, because if it was referring to any chapter, this was definitely one of them. Just a small warning ;-)

*

'You're looking for the horns, aren't you?' Ethan said, one eyebrow raised, brushing off my gawping stare with a shrug. 'It's okay, it's only natural.' He ruffled his hair, parting it near the front with his fingers. 'See? Nothing there, I promise. You also won't find any Devil's hooves or a forked tail for that matter, although you're more than welcome to look for the tail.'

He shot me a brash grin, but then looked away quickly, a self-conscious flush rising to his cheeks.

'Why did you tell me that?' I said. My mouth was stunned-dry. I wanted to pick up the bottle and take a drink but was afraid he'd see my hand shaking.

'About the tail?'

'About the book. About your parents.'

The paper angel remained on the table in front of me. I hadn't touched it. Couldn't.

He rolled his eyes. 'Right, so is this where you tell me I'm spinning you another yarn?'

'No. What I meant was, you didn't need to tell me that. You could have lied about the book.'

'You asked me, and I told you. Do you want me to lie to you, Casey?'

He slipped off the stool, collecting both bowls and moving over to the basin, where he turned on the tap and attacked them with hot water. He was scowling, heavy lines furrowing his forehead, his lips pursed together. Before the basin was even half full, he turned off the tap and spun to face me.

'What is it with you, eh?' he said, glaring. 'You didn't believe me when I told you that you were being hunted by Angels and you demanded I tell you the truth, even though I already was and then when you do believe that I'm telling you the truth about something – which you asked to know, as you so rightly pointed out – suddenly you're saying I shouldn't have told you!'

'That's not what I'm saying at all,' I snapped, jumping down from the stool.

The anger flared bright and furious, not just because of his reaction but because I didn't want this. I didn't want to be at loggerheads with him, not when I knew it must have taken a lot for him to tell me, and not when I could see something beyond his anger, like he'd just picked at a scab and suddenly remembered how he got the injury in the first place.

Taking a few deep breaths, I tried again, taking a few steps towards him.

'What I was trying to say, in my not-so-skilled way – because believe it or not, I'm not that great with people either unless I've had a little bump of something to get me going – is that I'm assuming that this is another one of those things you don't really talk to anyone about, and not just on account of you hibernating all these years.' I edged closer. 'You don't like talking about it, because it makes you think of them, and you don't like thinking about them. Not now they're gone.' 

I was mere inches from him now, attempting to calm him, to make him realise I wasn't doubting him, because surprisingly, I wasn't. As crazy and as far-fetched as it might have sounded, I did believe him. Sober and lucid, I believed it all. What else could I do when he'd just dragged me through some dimensional worm-hole so far away from everything I knew, and dropped me in an apartment where the beauty of Rome was right outside the window?

His shoulders relaxed a little, the hard lines on his forehead fading, his mouth softening at the edges, but whatever he was thinking, the guard shot back up just as quickly as he'd let it down and he clenched his fists into balls and moved away from me. Grabbing his cigarettes, which he'd left on the arm of the sofa, he took one and lit it, throwing the pack and the lighter back down. Taking a drag, he blew a stream of smoke to one side, his agitated gaze flickering to me.

'Good at doling out therapy but not so great at hearing it yourself, am I right?'

'Is that what you think I'm doing?' I laughed bitterly. 'From the look on your face and the story you've told me, I doubt there's a therapist in the whole world qualified to deal with your problems.'

It was cold and harsh, and I didn't mean it. I really didn't. As soon as the words came tumbling out, I wanted to grab them, pull them back in, shove them down my spiteful throat until I choked.

Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, Ethan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and took another drag, all the time not looking at me.

'Ethan, look, I'm sor...' I began.

'You're not going to say sorry, are you?' he cut in, glancing over, his eyes widening. 'Fuck, Casey. Don't say sorry for that. I threw a punch, you threw one back. It's okay. Besides, you're probably right. What would a therapist say about me, I wonder? Abandonment issues? Borderline alcohol dependent? Misanthropic tendencies?' He shook his head and chuckled. 'Yeah, they'd probably have a field day with me.'

'And I'd probably keep them occupied for their rest of their career,' I said.

'Are we having a competition here on which of us is the most fucked-up?' he said, with a smirk. 'Because I distinctly remember telling you I'm the son of Lucifer and I'm not sure you're going to be able to top that.'

If I closed my eyes then, I knew I'd feel snowflakes on my face and the soft touch of Mr. Tumnus' hand in mine. I knew I'd see the birds in flight. I knew I'd see Maggie's face, her slick grey skin, her eyes half-closed, the needle still hanging from her arm.

'You win,' I said, with a half-smile.

Retreating from the weight of his gaze, I went back towards the table and grabbed two bottles, returning to hand one to him, which he took, offering a smile of his own.

'You're doing nothing to help my borderline alcohol dependency, you know?'

I slumped down onto the chair opposite, pulling my legs up underneath me. 'Do you really expect the woman who's spent the last few years as high as a kite to discourage you from anything?'

'Ah, fair point,' he said. 'Cheers.'

He raised his bottle, and I did the same. Swallowing down a mouthful of beer, I settled back into the chair, letting the silence linger between us. I had a ton of questions. Of course, I did. But the silence was okay. It felt okay. It made me realise that I'd gotten so used to the noise in my life that I couldn't remember what it had been like without it. Maybe I never had lived without it.

It was Ethan that finally broke the spell of silence that bound us.

'You know, when I told Berith that I was putting myself out of the game, he said that it would drive me mad. I remembered his words, thought about it a lot actually. How he said that being alone would be the one thing that would kill me, not the Angels, not Blake, not my own selfish desire to run headlong into any dangerous mishap I might get myself into. He said that, being left with nothing but my own memories, I'd do nothing every day but think of them and that slowly, but surely, I'd go insane from it all.'

He stubbed out the last of his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table.

'If I did send myself mad, it was probably from watching too many terrible bloody movies with B-list stars who were so wooden you could practically whittle a park bench out of them, they were that shit. But I didn't go mad from my memories of them because I rarely gave them a second thought. Is that bad? To not think of the two people who you loved most in the world?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know. I guess it depends on why you didn't think about them? If you loved them, you loved them. Surely that's enough?'

'It felt enough,' he said, softly, chewing on his lower lip. 'I've thought about them more since I resurfaced, than I ever did when I was in exile. In fact, I can't fucking avoid thinking about them. It's like they're there, all the time, like I'm being haunted everywhere I go. I even went back to one of their homes - they lived in Cairo for a time - and I went there expecting to see them. I mean, how fucking stupid is that? I went down to Bulaq where my father used to eat bread and figs with the merchants, sitting around tables, telling jokes and stories and watching the ships come into port. I went to the Khan el-Khalili, where my mother used to love wandering the narrow streets and alleys, picking up treasures and trinkets, running her fingers over the most beautiful fabrics you've ever seen. I went to those places and you know what I found? Nothing but ghosts.'

He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank, smiling grimly afterwards. 'That night, I came back to London and I got drunker than I had in a long time. I drank until I threw up, and then I drank some more until I passed out. Being on my own, in my own place, it was easier because I could forget. Up here, in your world – in their world – I'm reminded of them everywhere I go. I hear their voices. I hear their laughter. I feel my mother's arms around me. I feel the touch of my father's hand, ruffling my hair. I see their ghosts, but I don't see them, and I can't bear it.'

His face was hard, unyielding, and I could see the mask from here, the one he wore to hide it all, the one he wore to pretend, but it couldn't hide the tone of his voice, or the way his grip tightened around the neck of the bottle.

'What do you mean by their world? Did they always live here?'

'Your world was their world. My father fell in love with it from the very beginning and it became his downfall, quite literally. He saw the beauty in everything, even in mankind, despite their obvious failings,' he said, his voice tinged with a sardonic edge.

'You don't agree with him.'

'How can I when mankind was so willing to believe the worst about him? The Devil? Satan? Father of Lies? I mean, fuck, that was the best one, wasn't it? When all he ever did was tell the truth? Father of fucking Lies.' His face twisted bitterly. 'Mankind took what the Angels sold to them and bought it. All of it. Hook, line and fucking sinker. And what's worse is that they peddled those lies, they elaborated on them, embellished them with their own little plot twists, and then they turned him into the enemy, when all the time it's the creatures they're putting their trust in who are lying to them. I can't put my faith in mankind in the way he did because they never put their faith in him.'

He put down the bottle and picked up the cigarettes again, taking one and lighting it. 'Of course, if my mother was still here, I'd probably get a slap across the face for that one. And for these.' He gestured to the cigarette he was holding and took a drag. 'To be fair, she'd slap me for a lot of things, but mostly for not being a big fan of mankind.'

'Because she agreed with your father?'

'She had to. She was human, after all.' He winked. 'Well, she was until he decided he couldn't be without her. Through him, she became changed. More.'

'A Demon?' I asked.

He tapped the cigarette on the side of the ashtray. 'Humans can't become Demons, only Angels can. No, my father gave her a gift, one that he stole from them. You see, in their vault, the Angels keep all manner of shady things. Some people think they're real and have spent lifetimes searching for them. Most think they're nothing but myths and legends. These things have been woven into stories over time, until you think well, that just can't be true, can it? If you start investigating the possibility that it might not be fiction, the trail will lead you down so many paths, that you'll have no idea which one to take and get so totally lost that in the end you just admit defeat. You accept that it's a story and nothing more. This is what the Angels do. This is their truth.'

I stared at him, enthralled. 'So, what did your father steal?'

Ethan grinned, a look of pure smugness making his eyes glint almost mischievously. 'He stole the Grail, of course.'

'What?' I dropped my feet to the floor, shifting in the chair until I was sitting right on the edge, clutching my knees like a child anticipating the end of the story. 'The Holy Grail? He stole the Holy Grail?'

'Oh, for fuck's sake, there's nothing Holy about it, trust me. That part is bullshit.'

Finishing the cigarette, he stubbed it out and leant back on the sofa, nursing the bottle of beer in his lap.

'The idea that the Grail contained the blood of Christ was nothing but a marketing campaign for the Angels. Whoso drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. Of course, that was their way of telling mankind, you guys stick with us and everything will be a-fucking-okay, no fiery pits of Hell for you, but a long beautiful eternity in the Heavens where you can ride unicorns every day and everyone looks like a Victoria's Secret model, but there really was some truth to it, just not what the stories told you. It's not eternal life, but it does gift a power like no other. Meanwhile, mankind decided that it really was nothing but a story, and the real Grail sat protected inside the Angels' vault, until my father broke in and stole it right from under their noses.'

'But what is it? If it's not the blood of Christ, what does the Grail hold?'

'The blood of an Angel. The first of us all. The first to be slain,' he said. 'The blood, which can't be destroyed because it was from the First, was collected and hidden in the vault, in fear that should mankind ever discover it, they would have the key to the Angels' life-force and would raise themselves up to challenge the Angels' rule. They can't have mankind becoming all-powerful. After all, who will the Angels govern if you all become like them? They limit your life spans because it's the only way they can keep you under control.'

'Fuck.' I took a swig of drink, then another. My head was spinning, a maelstrom of excitement and fear and sheer exhilaration. 'And your mother drank the blood of the First?'

'Yeah, she did.' He nodded. 'It changed her, allowed her to stay with my father, to live with him through the centuries, not ageing in the same way she would have if she had remained human.'

'And where is the Grail now?'

Ethan sniffed, his gaze drifting towards the window. 'Back in the vault. They took it, along with the book, when they killed them.'

'The Angels killed your parents?'

'Only Angels can kill other Angels, or those who've drank the blood of the First and like I said, the blood doesn't grant eternal life, just the false promise of one.' He exhaled wearily, leaning his head back and staring up at the ceiling. 'They systematically hunted them down, and my parents, so blindly in love with this world, grew careless, choosing to linger here longer than they should have. They were caught and slaughtered. And yet the threat of the Devil lives on. My father is long gone, but the Angels have kept the story of him alive to subjugate and suppress and conquer.'

Everything began clicking into place then. The Angels. His parents. It was like watching someone cracking open a safe, hitting each number of the code in turn, getting closer and closer to their goal, except this safe didn't contain any treasure. Just a dark and horrible truth.

'Holy shit,' I gasped, feeling my stomach flip. 'The last Cherubim that came down. You said it came for a disciple. It came for your parents, didn't it? That's why it was here?'

He raised the bottle again in mock-tribute. 'Give that girl a gold star.'

I said nothing for a moment. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, shrouding the city in violet and orange hues that made it look even more like a painting in a gallery. Somewhere out there, hidden in another world under the Vatican, were secrets mankind could only dream about. So much power kept under wraps. Truth buried beneath the ruins of Rome. The whole idea of it was like a movie plot and fuck, yes, it sent goose-bumps over my skin to think about it, but I could see that Ethan hated being here. He bore it like a physical pain, it haunted his eyes, his face, his whole demeanour, and despite my initial joy at being here, suddenly Rome didn't seem to hold as much allure. It felt dark and foreboding, like everything out there was just a mirage – nothing but a cruel trick in the centre of a wasteland.

'What was he really like? Your father? Who was he?'

The corner of Ethan's mouth turned up into a smile, but I saw nothing but sadness there, and almost wished I hadn't asked.

'He was a good father,' Ethan said, softly. 'Does it surprise you that should be the first thing I say about the infamous Lucifer?'

'Not really,' I said after a while. 'He was your dad, after all.'

A scowl darkened his face, his nose wrinkling, seemingly unconvinced by my response.

'Hmm, yeah, I guess. But he was a good father. The best. He was my teacher, my supporter, my friend, my guide, my hero. He was kind and patient and compassionate and courageous and fierce – so fucking fierce – and he was everything I wanted to be. Everything I should have been. His strength of mind and tenacity was something to be admired. And he was so hopeful. All the time he was hopeful for change, he never stopped believing in it. Not once. Not when they laughed at his questions and treated him like a joke. Not when they started to worry about his persistence and tried to silence him. Not when they exiled him from the Council and banished him. Not even when they spread their lies and damned him forever.'

'He was a member of the Council? He was one of them?'

'Yeah, before they lost their way. Before they became so corrupted by power that nothing mattered but retaining that power,' he said. 'In the beginning, he even agreed with them, but it was different then. Back then it was about guidance, about showing mankind the way, about using their power for good, but they soon realised that humans were learning too much, too quickly. Mankind's evolutionary advances surprised them. In their arrogance, they never saw it coming. They thought of you all as nothing but dull-headed creatures, too stupid, too slow, too weak, to ever become a threat, but a threat you all became. They knew they couldn't stop what was going on in here.'

He tapped at his forehead.

'They couldn't prevent you from thinking and inventing and creating. They couldn't halt your progress, but they could enslave your souls and by that I don't mean what you think I mean. I'm not talking about your eternal souls and where they go when you die, that's just utter bollocks, I'm talking about your hearts and your loyalty and your faith. They needed you to believe in them, they needed you to shape your lives around something that made you realise your limits, because what enslaves more than believing you're not the one that holds the power?'

He stood up, and walked over to the window, sipping at his beer as he looked out at the city view.

I wondered what he saw out there, what memories he envisioned, what ghosts it conjured.

'My father grew uncomfortable with their plans and tried to reason with them,' Ethan said, his eyes sweeping over the church steeples and domes that rose tall against the darkening skyline. 'He was convinced discourse and counsel would help change their minds, because that was the way things worked then. It was a democracy, or at least, he thought it was, he believed in it and he believed in them.'

He drank, swallowed and wiped his mouth, the anger evident in his expression.

'And all the while they were conspiring against him, alarmed at his success in gathering others to his cause, because he was good at that – I mean, really fucking good at it – not because he was a deceiver, as they later painted him to be, but because he spoke reason and truth and he spoke it from his heart. Soon, others began to doubt as he did, others began to question. Finally, he spoke to Uriel and Raphael and together they planned to petition the Council, only when the day arrived, and he opened his mouth to speak, he did it alone. Uriel and Raphael, loyal to Michael, betrayed my father and he was accused of planning to overthrow the Council in an attempt to put himself in place of the First.'

'After that, he was cast out, marked with fire so that all who saw him would know of his betrayal and cower at the judgement of the Angels. With him, he took all those that believed in him, Berith being one of them, Rosier another, amongst many others. This shook the Council, because they had never realised that so many of their kind would choose to doubt their grand plan and so they set about discrediting Lucifer in the worst way possible. They turned him into a villain, spreading lie upon lie, recruiting mankind to their cause. They whispered into the ears of mad prophets, who in turn wrote stories about him. Holy men preached eternal damnation for all those that followed him. He became the Devil, a winged serpent who wished to bring about the downfall of mankind, who wished to see the Heavens and the Holy Father burn in the fires of Hell. They made everyone believe that he sought to blacken your souls with evil, that he sought death and destruction and chaos when all he ever sought was the truth.'

Draining the rest of the bottle, he put it down onto the table and immediately picked up another, opening it and drinking at a rate even I was alarmed at. I could drink, I mean, I could really drink, but I'd long since replaced the buzz of alcohol with the buzz of any pill I could shove down my throat and any powder I could inhale up my nostrils. Ethan reminded me of me before the drugs came into my life. Desperate nights of binge-drinking. Daring myself to push the limits - just one more, one more and I'll be done, I'll stop, I will - followed by expelling those limits into a toilet bowl and staring at myself in the mirror afterwards, seeing the bloodshot eyes and burst blood vessels snaking under my skin and just not caring enough to not do it again.

'You believe me, don't you?' he said suddenly, his eyes imploring me from across the room. He looked so different then, so unlike the Ethan I had come to know, like I was staring at him but seeing a much younger version, the one who longed for the embrace of his mother and getting his hair ruffled by his father.

He wanted me to believe him. He needed me to. And I did.

'Yeah, I believe you,' I said, dragging my gaze away from his, biting my lip as I looked down at the bottle in my hands. 'I do...'

'But what?' he said. 'But what, Casey?'

Stalking over, he sat on the edge of the coffee table right in front of me, lifting my chin and forcing me to look at him. A desperation tinged his eyes, his mask slipping to reveal a vulnerability that made me swallow hard. My head was starting to hurt again. The drugs buried deep in my pocket burned against my thigh.

Grabbing his wrist, I lowered his hand from my face as I leant forward, our knees almost touching across the divide.

'I do believe you, Ethan. I do. There's just something I don't understand and from everything you've told me, from everything I've experienced and seen for my own eyes, it still doesn't make any sense.'

'What's that?'

I took a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts which seemed intent on whirling around my head and battering the inside of my skull until I could barely think straight.

'Where is God in all of this? If the Angels are so bad, if they are so corrupted by power and have manipulated mankind to their own cause, why hasn't He done something? Surely, He sees this? Surely, He knows what they have done and how they have lied in His name? Why has He allowed this to happen?'

Ethan blinked, his mouth dropping open as he snatched back his hand as if my touch had scalded him.

'God?' he said. 'Fuck, Casey, all this time and I thought you'd been listening. I'd thought you'd been hearing me. I thought you understood.'

'Then make me understand.'

He glared at me with a coldness that slipped straight into my veins.

'You want to understand? You want to really understand? Then forget everything you know. Rip it apart, put it back together inside out and upside down and just then, and only then, you might come close to understanding just how fucked up this world is that you're living in. You say that you believe me, but you're blind. They've blinded you. They've blinded you all, because you still believe their lie.'

'What lie?' I said.

'I'm taking about the biggest lie this world has ever been told, Casey. A lie so huge, so solid, so believable that religions have been moulded around it. Beliefs. Cultures. Countries. People are governed by it, ruled by it. Every single day people shape their lives and the lives of those around them based on nothing but a lie. You educate your children to believe the lie. You force them to bend to its power. Throughout history, people have been persecuted, tortured, slaughtered, all based on a lie. People have waged wars because of it. Died because of it.'

Grabbing my arm, he yanked me to my feet, dragging me across the room until we reached the window.

'Ethan, stop!' I yelped, trying to free myself from his grip but he just held on tighter, forcing me to look out through the glass.

'What do you think is out there, huh? he said, jabbing a finger at the skies above the city. 'Because I can tell you what's out there and it's not what you think it is. They slaughtered the First and then they took control of everything. There's no supreme being. No Almighty. Just them, manipulating everyone and everything just the way they want it all to be.'

He pulled me closer.

'You want a God, Casey? Well then, they're your gods. Them. The Angels. And they're the only gods this world has ever had.'