I was not vain. I never chose cookie-cutter beauty. I chose to be different, exotic, wild, and everything most people saw every day on separate people but combined into one unforgettable whole. Why have a boring vanilla wafer when you can have a chocolate chip-peanut butter-coconut-caramel cookie? Vain. Hardly. But disrespectful, that I was and claimed with pleasure. “Why not? That’s what it was. Why let a perfectly good word go unused because your kind used it once and capitalized it first?”
An Exodus it had been too—seventy years ago in New York City. Eden House New York had still existed and angels and demons were everywhere. Angels had been ordering their Eden House human soldiers to wipe the demons clean from the city, but that wasn’t going to happen—they didn’t have the numbers and angels rarely fought these days when they had their humans to do it for them. The demons were determined to take out Eden House and have one helluva good time in the process. No one knew what made each side take a stand there. There were hundreds of cities worldwide and they had a presence in all of them. Why was each side determined to make New York theirs and theirs only? I doubt they knew themselves. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a reason, only egos and idiocy.
Seventy years ago those egos and idiocy blew up. It became so blatant that people were starting to notice—even oblivious people living in their mundane, no-surprises-left-in-the-world existences. They began to question. They began to look—they saw miracles and horrors, and while it was written off to religious hysteria for a few weeks, someone else noticed too—noticed the danger.
We did. The pa?en.
There were plenty of us in New York. An aware human population was the last thing we needed. Our numbers were dropping as the years spooled out and if humans found out about angels and demons living among them, how long would it be until they found out about us? How long would we last if they did?
We hadn’t waited to find out. I hooked an arm with Ishiah and led him over to Leo. “You damn sure missed out, Leo. They bussed in all the pa?en in the tristate area and some of us came from even farther to get in on the action. We steel-toed their asses out of the city like Adam and Eve out of paradise. Nearly every pa?en species alive came together. It was unprecedented.” I smiled, warm and happy at the memory. “Every demon who dared poke his head aboveground to shake the sulfur off his scaly feet, we killed. We caught every Eden Houser alive, kept some of the badder of us from eating them, tied them up, and put them on those same buses we rode in on. Sent them out. And after they’d seen us, not a one came back.” Only the head of each Eden House knew about the pa?en kind—vamps, weres, tricksters, revenants, on and on. The soldiers didn’t know. Demons were enough for them to handle, their bosses thought, and thought right. They not only didn’t return, but a few ended up seeking mental health care . . . of the inpatient-hospital kind. Pretty white coats that tied in the back. Demons they could take, but us? That drove them over the edge. Please. Crybaby candyasses.
And since then, neither angel nor demon has shown a molting feather or scaly ass in New York City.
“It was like Mardi Gras.” I leaned against Ishiah’s shoulder. By his expression, he had memories less fond of the experience. “Beads, bondage, and breasts. Wolves Gone Wild. And when those girls flash eight of those honeydews at the guys, they get a whole mess of beads.”
Leo did look regretful on missing that, but he focused in on Ishiah instead of dwelling on what might have been. “And how did your ex-pigeon son of a bitch with allegiance to no one manage to stay in the city? Obviously he did or he’d be pissed off at you, not contemplating fornication. Isn’t that what your type calls it?” Leo grinned darkly. “Fornication.”
“I’m not contemplating fornication with Trixa,” Ishiah said evenly—a little too evenly, a little too sure. I wasn’t vain, but I wasn’t dead either. Give a girl some validation. “I fornicate elsewhere.” He folded his arms, already on the defense, and I was suddenly more curious than insulted. “The same elsewhere, the same someone, in fact, that convinced your kind to let me stay in New York. I don’t call it fornication anymore.” He presented the information as if it were a secret handshake or a cop’s badge, and it was. We were brothers, comrades, or, damn, practically in-laws.
“You’re sleeping with Robin?” I said in disbelief.
“Goodfellow? You’re screwing a puck? Worse yet, that one?” Leo was even less disbelieving and did a good imitation of being disgusted—which would be solely because he couldn’t keep up with a puck. Few could, verbally, criminally, or sexually, and no one in the world could keep up with Robin Goodfellow. Ishiah called me the vain one; he had his nerve. Robin was vanity walking . . . granted walking practically on three legs, rather than two, but vanity was vanity—well deserved or not.
Leo wasn’t done. “He’s a walking, talking dick....”