to my front, wrapping her arms around my waist and resting her cheek against my bare chest.
“And before you ask, this is all you get,” Deyva said.
I stood there, frozen for a moment, before sinking into the hug, squeezing my arms around her too, nestling my face down between her warm horns. It was awkward and comfortable at the same time. It wasn’t grinding against Zach in a shabby little bedroom, and it wasn’t a rage-fueled kiss on a battlefield, and it certainly wasn’t getting my brain sucked out through my dick by a hungry succubus.
But it was nice enough. For a hug.
“Oh.”
Zach stiffened as he turned and found me behind him. It was dark, and the air was thick and cold and smelled of ash.
“Your patrol partner...Davis, I think, he’s ill. I offered to take his place,” I said.
Zach frowned at me, brow furrowing, and glanced around as if he was waiting for someone else to appear and relieve him of this duty. Of me.
“Kais was in prayer with a few families and Stavros—”
“Alright, fine,” Zach snapped. “There’s nothing to see anyway, the smog is too thick. Something could be ten yards past the gate and we wouldn’t know.”
“I’d probably hear it or smell it. Angels have especially strong senses,” I said. So strong, I could hear the faint growl he tried to stifle as he turned away and started marching along the edge of the gate. “Zach—”
“Hey, Az? How about we don’t?” he tossed over his shoulder.
“I understand that you’re angry,” I started, jogging to catch up with his quick pace.
“Oh, cool, you understand.”
Ugh. Humans were so in love with their sarcasm, weren’t they? As if they’d invented it.
“I betrayed your trust.”
“Yeah. You did. And you fucked off during an attack, one where you told us we could depend on you. And you shit-talked Deyva when you were here to drag her back to Hell. And you said all this stuff about—about how great I was, and how I shone with God’s light, and that must’ve been bullshit, right? Because He’s...He’s not watching us? He’s not waiting for us to win, is He? So that means—”
Fuck. I should’ve let Deyva bite my dick off after all.
“Zach, I—Okay, I had a falling out with the Almighty, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean you don’t shine with His light,” I said, grabbing Zach’s arm, only for him to rip it away from me again. Fair enough.
He glared at me, his eyes eerily reflecting the smog beyond me over the gate, distorted in the two different shades of his irises. “Don’t suck up to me, you’re not going to fool me like that again.”
I sighed and rolled my shoulders. Deyva’s attention to my wing earlier in the morning, or maybe her gift of the hug, had already done a world of good for me.
“You are special,” I continued. “To this town. To your friends, to—to Deyva. And to me.”
Zach scoffed, and shook his head. “Honestly, I think...I’m really pissed at you because of how easy it was for me to believe you. I was getting a savior complex and I...well, I was wrong about a lot of stuff.”
“Well, I was being a pompous dickhead. But I wasn’t just encouraging you because I wanted to deceive you. I do believe in you,” I said gently.
Zach seemed to ignore me, his gaze alert and carefully checking every gate post, scanning through the town and then back into the smog.
“I was wrong about the succubus too,” I said.
“Yeah, you were,” Zach said quickly, and at last I got a glimpse of his smile. It was due to her, not me, but it lit up his expression so beautifully that I really didn’t care. “Is it...it’s true? All that stuff about her being created before Adam and Eve?”
I opened my mouth, about to crack the Adam and Eve myth wide open, and then shut it again. Zach probably wasn’t ready for that blow.
“Yes.”
“And God really cast her out because…”
“Well, God’s children are notoriously willful. When Deyva’s kind and the angels began to form unions that revolved around each other rather than the Holy family, yes, those unions were forcibly fractured.”
“And Deyva was one of them? So there’s an angel out there missing her?”
I blinked at Zach and then realized he was being sincere. He genuinely thought Heaven was a small infrastructure and I would’ve known his succubus.
“That’s her story to tell, I guess,” I said, evasively, watching him frown. “For the record though, many angels