Divinitus

The chandelier over the small round booth dripped slow tears of wax, turning the table’s puddle of light into a halo beneath it. Azz lounged into the curved leather, a possessive arm draped elegantly over the married couple who he fit neatly between.

“Another round?” he asked, looking once to either side.

The woman nodded eagerly, setting down her already lipstick stained glass. Her husband laughed in the manner of a man who wasn’t used to being this close to the centre of attention.

“As long as you’re pouring,” the man said. “What was this one called again?”

“Matins After Midnight,” Azz purred. He lifted the tiny silver spoon laid across the coupe and tapped it against the glass. The pale drink inside shimmered, catching the club’s colour-shifting lights. “Saint’s milk. Sinner’s honey. And a pinch of salt, lest we drown.”

“That’s… poetic,” the woman said, swelling under his arm like a tide. “Are you a poet?”

Azz laughed. “No, though a great many have blessed my doorstep” he replied, which was an answer not entirely false. “Sip.”

They did. The woman closed her eyes and hummed. The man swore softly, peering deeper into the glass.

“So, tell me something you want,” Azz said, rolling his head to glance between the two, like a pendulum choosing its favourite side. “Just something. We’ll see what the night can do with it.” He traced a lazy finger on each shoulder. The labyrinthian club hummed as the music swelled over the booth.

The woman’s eyes flicked to her husband; they had agreed, privately, to be honest tonight. “An adventure,” she said brightly. “Just us. No expectations.”

The man laughed, leaning closer to Azz. “Boring wish. I want a story. The kind I can’t tell anyone at the office, but something we can tell ourselves each night for the rest of our lives.”

“Oh, he’s the romantic,” Azz laughed, lulling his head towards the woman. He tipped the woman’s chin toward him with a knuckle and smiled close. “All right. An adventure and a story. Fortunately, you are in the company of the only person in this city able and willing to provide both.”

They giggled together as the booth lights quivered. Somewhere in the club, the faint sound of a bell could be heard, as if to announce something, though only Azz seemed to pay attention to it.

“Cousin,” he said, raising his head to no one yet.

A broad, dark skinned man entered through the main doors. It had been raining heavily for the last few hours, yet the man seemed impeccably kept. He shook his umbrella once though no drops dared fall. His suit was an Armani grey, though Azz was quietly disappointed at it being anything other than beige. The man carried himself straight towards the booth, moving through the crowds like a blade.

As the man settled at the edge of the booth, blocking out the lights from the dance floor, he spoke. “Asmodeus.” His voice seemed tuned as to be heard above any kind of music.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in, Michael,” Azz returned, warm and lazy, giving the couple a squeeze that caused them to giggle and look up. He looked at each of them as if they were co-conspirators instead of an audience. “Darlings, meet my dear cousin. Any family resemblance is merely chance I assure you.”

The woman’s mouth did a soft ‘oh’. Michael didn’t blink.

“Pleasure,” the man said, offering a hand he regretted offering before it was halfway out. Michael didn’t take it.

“Charmed,” Michael said. He did not sound charmed, though angels rarely did.

“Sit,” Azz said, patting the empty crescent of leather beside him. “We were discussing adventures and stories. You’re an excellent cautionary tale; stay for the vibe.”

“I am not here for the vibe,” Michael responded.

“No one truly is. The vibe is for them.” Azz tipped his chin to the crowd, then let his gaze linger on the angelic being. “Are you still abstaining from fun, or has your father’s PR department finally loosened the noose?”

“I have a message,” Michael said.

“Imagine,” Azz breathed, eyes bright. “Like a messenger. You certainly are committed to the bit. Why couldn’t they send your sister? Gabriel. I liked her. Haven’t seen her in some time.” His voice was coy and taunting. Michael scoffed under his breath.

The woman tried to bite back a laugh, then didn’t bother. The man looked between them, and both of them leaned closer into Azz, feeling the charge between the two barely kin.

“Deliver it, then,” Azz said, lifting a matchbook from the table, turning it idly between his fingers. “We promise to act appropriately impressed.”

Michael’s eyes settled on the matchbook, then on the slow flakes of wax descending from the chandelier. “You’ve consecrated this place?” he said, lifting a suspicious eyebrow.

“I merely signed the lease,” Azz smiled, theatrically opening his arms. “Pax et Tenerbris.”

Michael ignored the flourish. “There is a vessel. Marked in this district. The host is untrained and vulnerable.”

“Aren’t they all,” Azz said fondly.

Michael’s jaw flexed. “Our people are searching for it now. Under no circumstances are to interfere. If you come across them you are to inform us immediately. If you shelter what belongs to–”

“Papa?” Azz interrupted with a chuckle. He looked at the couple. “Have you ever noticed how certain relatives only call when they need something from you? The gall.”

“We get that all the time,” the man said confidently, looking at his wife.

Michael continued, patiently. “If you interfere, we will remove your protections. You know we can.”

Azz stood. “You can petition,” he corrected. “In case you forgot, I don’t answer to you. I answer to your dear, loving brother. And last I checked, he and your father are not on speaking terms.”

Michael smiled, uncharacteristically pleased that he got some sort of reaction. “Why do you insist on making everything theatrical?”

“Some of us are just born to entertain,” he twirled, turning to bow with a smile at the couple who were still enthralled. He lifted a match from the book, like a magician flourishing a card. Holding it in one hand, he snapped his fingers and the match immediately lit. He held the match so its heat grazed the rim of the woman’s glass.

Both gasped, delighted and a little in love with the puppetry of it all.

“You should see what he did with our wedding rings,” she blurted out to Michael, before remembering secrecy. “I mean, uh, nothing untoward.”

“Everything untoward,” Azz said, kissing her cheek as he sat back down. He took the man’s hand, turning the ring with his thumb and every nerve in the man’s arm lit up with a warm sweetness.

“You,” Michael said, “are an unwelcome hazard.”

“And you, dear cousin,” Azz said, “are interrupting my guests’ evening.”

The man felt a sudden surge of courage now that Azz was back sitting next to him. “What exactly are you warning him about?” he asked, then suddenly added, “Sir.”

Michael’s eyes never left Azz’s. “Something that would be kinder if you slept through it.”

The woman’s fingers dug into Azz’s thigh under the table, feeling a sudden unease in Michael’s words.

“There won’t be much sleeping tonight,” Azz said, giving the couple a reassuring squeeze and easing the mood. “There. Message successfully delivered.” He blew out the match that seemed to still be burning on nothing. “Now, cousin, why don’t you take a parting drink. It’s on the house.”

“I don’t drink,” Michael said.

“You don’t indulge, which is different.” Azz slid the untouched coupe toward him anyway. It stopped exactly where Michael’s hand would have been if he were the kind of creature that reached for such things. “Let me show my friends that even austere beings can be civilized.”

“The last time I accepted hospitality from your kind, Notre Dame almost burned to the ground.” Michael said.

“Beautiful day,” Azz said, reminiscing. “Everyone felt closer to Papa.”

“Stop performing,” Michael said, raising his voice slightly. “I am telling you this because I would rather they deal with it than you. Stay out of it.”

Azz tilted his head. “If heaven wanted me out of things, it should have done a better job at hiding them.” There was a long pause. “But fine. Besides, I’ve already got a couple of things to keep me busy tonight..” The couple giggled and blushed, pulling deeper into Azz’s chest.

“Consider yourself warned,” Michael said. “The vessel will be found tonight, then you can go back to…” He gestured his hand around the club.

“Consider yourself heard.”

Michael looked at the chandelier one last time. Then he straightened his tie, which had never once been crooked, and turned before striding towards the door.

Azz watched him go, smiling. “Family,” he said, turning to the couple, and clinked his glass to theirs. “Always so dramatic.”

† † †

The couple slept soundly tangled in the wine coloured silk sheets, their breathing synchronized in the way of people who'd shared something they'd spend years trying to articulate. Azz had left them an hour ago, maybe two. Time moved differently when you'd lived through enough of it to stop counting.

He stood on the balcony in nothing but black slacks, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He didn't need to smoke but the ritual of it pleased him. The way the ember glowed. The way the smoke curled and dissipated.

The city stretched below, a carpet of light and noise and sin. His city, in all the ways that mattered. Rain had scrubbed the streets clean earlier, but the filth always returned. It was reliable that way.

A scream cut through the ambient hum.

Azz didn't flinch. Screams were common in this district after midnight. Tourists who wandered too far from the neon. Deals gone wrong. Lovers, fighters, the desperate and the damned. He took another drag, eyes scanning the street below with the disinterest of a man who'd seen every variation of human suffering.

There. Three figures chasing a fourth. The pursued was smaller, stumbling in heels she clearly wasn't used to running in. The pursuers moved with the lazy confidence of predators who knew their prey was already caught.

"Not my problem," Azz murmured to the night.

The woman—girl, really, she couldn't be more than twenty-five—tripped. One of her heels snapped. She scrambled backward on the wet pavement, and even from twelve stories up, Azz could see the terror painted across her face.

He stubbed out the cigarette on the marble railing.

"Absolutely not my problem."

One of the men grabbed her arm. She screamed again, kicking out wildly. Her purse spilled across the ground, contents scattering like dice.

Azz sighed, the kind of sigh Atlas might have made before adjusting the world on his shoulders. "Bloody Michael and his timing."

He stepped off the balcony.

There was no fall, no rush of wind. One moment he was twelve stories up, the next he was stepping out of shadow at the mouth of the alley where they'd dragged her. The transition was seamless, reality bending around him like water around a stone.

"Gentlemen," he said pleasantly.

All three men spun. They were young, stupid, probably high on something that made them feel invincible. One had a knife. Another had a gun tucked into his waistband, visible and theatrical.

"Walk away, pretty boy," the one with the knife said. "This doesn't concern you."

The girl stared at Azz with wide, wet eyes. Her makeup was smeared, her dress torn at the shoulder. There was something about her face that made him pause. An innocence that didn't belong in this part of the city, at this time of night.

"See, that's where you're wrong," Azz said, stepping forward. His bare feet made no sound on the wet concrete. "Everything in this district concerns me. I'm particular about the ambiance, and you three are absolutely ruining it."

"Last chance," Gun-boy said, hand moving to his waistband.

Azz smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "No, love. That was yours."

He moved.

To the men, it must have looked like the world stuttered. One moment Azz was five feet away, the next he was between them, and the knife was clattering to the ground, and the man who'd held it was on his knees, clutching a wrist that bent at an angle wrists weren't meant to bend.

Gun-boy pulled his weapon. Azz caught his wrist mid-draw, twisted, and the gun fired into the ground. The sound was flat and dull, absorbed by the rain-slick buildings.

"Shhh," Azz whispered, and suddenly Gun-boy couldn't scream even though his arm was very much worth screaming about.

The third man ran. Smart. Azz let him go.

For just a moment Azz's shadow on the alley wall changed. It grew taller, broader, crowned with something that looked like ram horns. His eyes flashed red, twin horizontal coals in the darkness, and the temperature in the alley spiked like a furnace door had opened.

The woman saw it. Her eyes went wider, if that was possible.

Then Azz was just a man again, handsome and shirtless and sighing like he'd just finished a mildly inconvenient chore.

"Go," he told the two conscious men. "And if I see either of you near my club again, I'll make you wish eternity wasn’t so long."

They went, scrambling and sobbing.

Azz turned to the woman. She was pressed against the alley wall, trembling, one broken heel still on, the other bare foot cut and bleeding.

"You're all right now," he said, softening his voice. "They won't—"

She fainted.

"Of course," Azz muttered, catching her before she hit the ground. "Because why would anything tonight be simple?"

The moment his skin touched hers, the world lurched.

Pain—white-hot and ancient—lanced through his skull. His vision doubled, tripled, and suddenly he wasn't in an alley anymore. He was standing in a vast nothing, a void that stretched in all directions, and hanging in the centre of it was an eye.

Not a human eye. Not even a divine one, not really. It was too large, too bright, burning with a fire that predated stars. It saw everything—every sin, every secret, every small cruelty he'd ever committed across millennia of existence. It saw him, truly saw him, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Azz felt afraid.

The eye blinked.

The vision shattered.

Azz was back in the alley, on his knees, the woman cradled against his chest. His hands were shaking.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding," he breathed immediately looking into the sky. “You must really think you’re funny.”

He looked down at her. She was slight, delicate, with dark hair that fell in waves around a face that would've been at home in a Renaissance painting.

And absolutely, undeniably, the vessel Michael’s people were searching for.

"Cousin," Azz said to the empty air, "you are going to owe me for this."

He gathered her up and stepped back into the shadows.

† † †

Sara woke to sunlight and silk across her face.

For a long, disoriented moment, she didn't know where she was. The bed beneath her was the most comfortable thing she'd ever felt, the sheets cool and smooth as water. The ceiling above her was painted, actual frescoes of figures she didn't recognize dancing across plaster.

She sat up slowly. Her head ached, but not badly. Her dress was ruined, but someone had draped a robe—black, expensive—over the foot of the bed.

The room was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city, which glittered in morning light. There was art on the walls, real art, the kind she'd only seen in museums. A chandelier hung overhead, smaller than the one from last night but no less beautiful.

Last night.

The memory came back in fragments. The club. The men. Running. The alley. And then—

A man. Dark hair. Kind eyes. And for just a moment, something else behind them.

"You're awake."

Sara yelped, spinning.

He stood in the doorway, fully dressed now in a black shirt and slacks, holding a tray with coffee and pastries. He looked different in the daylight. But there was still something about him, something that made her skin prickle.

"I made breakfast," Azz said, setting the tray on the bedside table. "Well, I acquired breakfast. Cooking is beneath me."

Sara pulled the robe around herself, suddenly aware of how exposed she was. "Who are you?"

"Azz," he said, offering a small bow. "And you are in my home, which makes you my guest. Temporarily."

"What happened?" Sara's voice cracked. "Those men, they…"

"Are no longer of concern." His voice was gentle, almost kind. "You're safe. That's all that matters."

Sara looked at him, really looked at him, and felt something stir in her chest. Not fear, though she should have been afraid. Something else. Something that whispered to him.

"I saw something," she said quietly. "When you... Your shadow, it…"

"Tricks of the light I assure you," Azz interrupted smoothly. "The city plays havoc with perception after midnight. You were traumatized. The mind invents things."

But they both knew he was lying.

And somewhere, in the deep places where Sara's soul should have been complete, something ancient stirred and recognized him.

Azz felt it. That same burning eye, watching from behind her eyes, and he knew with absolute certainty that his peaceful, hedonistic exile had just come to a very permanent end.

"Drink your coffee," he said, smiling despite everything. "We have a great deal to discuss before they come to collect you."

Sara reached for the cup, her hand shaking slightly. “Who?”

“Why, the church of course.” Azz wondered if a certain someone had set him up on purpose.

The thought made him smile wider.

Family. Always so dramatic.