“When Cronus does Armageddon, he likes to get it right.” I took my hand off the wheel, trying not to be greedy as Leo continued to weave the car around two more approaching ones. “Damning absolutely everyone, living or dead. Good or bad. Human or pa?en, and that means Thor the Indestructible too. If he’s ever sober enough to realize it.” That last thought gave me an idea, and moments later Griffin and Zeke had tossed a deadweight Thor out of the car. He tumbled across the street behind us and was wedged under the front of the cruiser as it hit him dead on. That stopped them. Thor was a big guy. A truck or SUV might have made it over him, but not a low-slung cop car. Right before both the car, lights flashing and siren screaming, and Thor disappeared in the distance behind us, I saw the beer can that remained clutched in his hand. He had one true love, but he was wholly devoted to it. You had to admire the dedication.
“It’s nice to know he’s good for something besides stalking a women’s volleyball team and single-handedly supporting the Internet porn industry,” Leo said, seemingly without remorse for letting us turn his foster brother into a speed bump. It did solve two problems at once. It stopped the cop car, and we managed to get rid of Thor. If he were sober, he would choose self-destruction over helping Leo, and if he was passed out or drunk, he wouldn’t be any use. We’d been beyond blessed he’d been helpful at the museum. It had been a long shot, but with the limited time we had left, our only shot. As Leo had once said, Fortune rarely favors the fucked, but there were exceptions.
“You’re sure he’s not dead?” Griffin asked. “I think one of the tires went over his head.”
“Unfortunately I’m sure. That won’t give him a headache, much less kill him.” Leo had us on the I-10 in twenty minutes and heading home. Only then would he pull over and switch places with me. He had hogged the car chase, short though it was, but I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have given one of those up either. As I took over the driving, Leo took a much-deserved nap. Zeke was only minutes behind him. He had been Tasered, which was a good excuse, but he didn’t require one. Zeke was a napping fool, one after my own heart.
“He didn’t need me to tell him what to do.”
It was an hour later when Griffin spoke those words. It didn’t surprise me he was the only one other than I who was awake. When you’d been in a coma, that was nap enough for a while. “With the museum guards?” I said as I lowered the radio volume. “No, he didn’t. Zeke’s come a long way in the past few months, if you don’t count blowing up houses.”
“He has. He knows why he is the way he is. Before he never knew whom to blame except himself. Now he knows better. Finding out what he was helps him deal with who he is.” Griffin exhaled. “I find out what I was and I can’t deal at all.”
“If it had been the other way around, would you have held that against Zeke?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, of course not, so I shouldn’t hold it against myself. But it isn’t that easy, is it?” He was slumped in the corner of the seat Thor had occupied before being unceremoniously rolled out. I couldn’t see much of him in the rearview mirror. Shadows within shadows. At that moment, it would’ve been the same in broad daylight.
“Nothing worthwhile is easy, but remember, angels have only ever fallen. You’re the single one who has ever risen up. That makes you damn special whether you want to see it or not. For one moment you had all the memories of who you once were and you still turned your back on Hell. You chose who you are now, a life that might be shorter, a life without all the power, a life of doing good instead of destroying it. I keep saying you aren’t that demon and you’re not, but I have to give him credit. That demon made that choice with you. To stay you and to never be what he was again. In a way, he gave his life to let you live. Maybe we both shouldn’t think of ex-demon as an insult. Maybe we should see that only makes what he did that much more extraordinary.”
The shadows moved and the tone lightened. “You think I’m extraordinary?”
“Sugar, ordinary you are not. If you were, do you think I’d have spent so many years babying you?”
“Is that what that was? I thought you were whipping me into shape Spartan style. . . . Shit! Watch out!”
I jerked my attention from the mirror to what was in front of me, easily visible in the car’s headlights—too easily. It was the Apocalypse, wearing that same inside-out T-shirt, same new jeans, and with the same eyes that were abandoned wells littered with bones of the doomed and the damned. He was standing on the road fifty feet ahead of me. I had less than half a second to decide which would be worse: to swerve off the road and most likely flip the car or to hit him head-on. I chose head-on. That was the unknown. I might do some damage; I might not, but rolling the car was guaranteed injuries. This was an old car with no airbags and the seat belts were questionable at best. I had to make a choice, and I did.