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The dude in the alley, he was royalty, too, but of another sort. A demon prince. There are tons of those, governing every sin, vice, and earthly nuisance imaginable, but this guy was one of the big guns. Now, you’d think that the Prince of Sloth, someone who rules the domain of laziness and inertia, wouldn’t be very dangerous. But that’s where you’d be wrong. A demon is a demon is a demon, and the princes were the worst of them all.
“Well, keep me posted, then,” Belphegor said. “Just know that I had nothing do with those four that attacked you. That’s not my style. And need I repeat myself, Mason Albrecht? We’re friends.” He grinned openly. “Trust me.”
“Tough proposition,” I said. “Now, if there’s nothing else you want to talk about, I’m just going to – ”
I heard it first. Belphegor clearly heard it too, one of his ears pricking up at the first few sounds of popping. I knew what that meant. It was a bunch of mages teleporting into existence, probably an advance team of Wings from the Lorica sent to investigate. I flicked my wrist, the golden sword in my hand vanishing as it returned to the Vestments. Then I cursed under my breath, my feet already taking me towards the mouth of the alley.
Belphegor ran, too, keeping pace with me. I scowled at him, knowing full well that he had more than enough power to simply teleport to safety.
“Why don’t you just magic your way out of here?” I grunted as my feet beat a steady rhythm on the pavement. “Would be the easiest way to avoid the Lorica.”
Belphegor took a great gulping breath as he ran, his grin huge as he lifted his head to the sky. “Oh, I’m not escaping with you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m just here for a running start.”
I panted as I struggled to keep sprinting. Belphegor’s shoes clicked as he hopped off the ground, striking the pavement one last time. Then he soared up into the sky as a pair of huge, leathery wings burst from his back, tearing his hoodie to shreds. He turned his head over his shoulders just long enough to wink at me, then flapped his wings, disappearing up and away behind the clouds.
Fucking show-off.
4
The princes were bad news, at least based on the three that I’d already met. Yet in a way, the Lorica was even worse for me. They were the council of mages responsible for governing all of North America, keeping tabs on supernatural activity within what everyone liked to refer to as the arcane underground.
For the most part, paranormals agreed to uphold the Veil, an unofficial pact of concealing our nature from humanity for the safety of everyone involved. The world of magic and the occult was one that the normals were never, ever supposed to know about, even though it was intermingled and layered with their own.
What made it worse was how the Lorica had a headquarters right in the heart of Valero, making it an even bigger pain in the butt to avoid them. Valero, California was a weird little hotbed of supernatural activity. A lot of the gods – yes, the same ones from ancient myths and legends – liked to keep tethers and portals to their own dimensions within the city.
I’d met a few of them through my old friends, and these gods – entities, as all the most powerful of supernaturals were known – weren’t the kind of people I’d love to hang out with. Entities were like that. Fickle, frequently cruel, and prone to popping up whenever the hell they damn pleased.
Angels weren’t exempt from that kind of behavior, either. But at least this particular angel, the one sitting on my apartment’s window sill, didn’t want me dead. He was holding a newspaper up to his face, a golden pen in one hand as he perused the classifieds section.
“I didn’t think anyone read the newspaper anymore,” I said.
His eyes kept darting left and right as he scanned the ads. The pen dipped every now and again, scratching a quick circle around this listing or another. I cocked an eyebrow, clearing my throat when he didn’t acknowledge me.
“Raziel? Hey. Raziel. Buddy. I’m talking here.”
“Hmm, right,” he grunted, his eyes flitting momentarily upwards to connect with mine. “Just looking for things you can do for work. There are so many options here, Mason. Have you considered becoming a doctor? I hear there’s good money in that.”
I sighed, pouring two cups of coffee from the pot, its aroma drifting up into my nostrils and tickling the back of my brain. It didn’t even matter to me that it was just instant granules and hot water. We all have problems, and mine was having, like, no money left.
“Listen,” I said, offering him one of the cups, which he accepted after clenching his pen between his teeth. “It’s really strange to me how you can be one of the smartest people I know, yet you have zero idea of how many years it’s going to take anyone to go through medical school. I mean, I’ll be out on the street in a week. Two weeks, tops. We need a miracle. Wink.”
I actually did wink. I mean, I thought it’d help.
Raziel frowned, tucked his pen into his breast pocket, and set down the newspaper. “As I’ve said many, many times now, that’s not how it works. I can’t just snap my fingers and make miracles.”
I sipped my coffee, then grimaced – out of milk, damn it. “I wish you could. We need the money.” I glanced over my shoulder, then cocked my head towards the living room. I leaned closer to Raziel, lowering my voice. “Or you could miracle this guy right out of my life.”
Raziel made a face as he tutted disapprovingly, then made an even screwier face when he sampled his coffee. “This is dreadful. We need to get you out of this situation.” He lifted his arm and threw one delicately manicured finger towards the living room. “And that boy,” he whispered, “needs to carry his weight around here.”
“That’s the problem,” I said, sighing. “That’s not a boy. That’s a fully grown man in there, and he can’t even hold down a delivery job.”
We exchanged glances, then headed towards the sound of unbridled snoring, to where Florian was sleeping – still sleeping at four in the afternoon – on my ratty couch. My lips pulled back, arranging my mouth into a sneer. I never sneered, but with Florian, it was just impossible to hold back.
He was snoozing away, mouth open and snoring like a chainsaw on a tree stump. Sort of a relevant analogy, considering how Florian physically had a bunch of tree-like attributes: nut brown skin, hair in curls as tight as little vines and tendrils, and the sort of powerful, knotted build you’d expect from a sequoia, if a sequoia took the shape of a really, really lazy human being.
Florian slept with one arm draped across his eyes and over his head, the other tucked under his makeshift blanket. I say makeshift because that was at least one area where I couldn’t com
plain. He preferred to sleep under a duvet of his own making, one that he crafted out of natural materials magically conjured at our window’s planter box. Sometimes it was a fluffy sheet of moss. This time it was a carpet of leaves. Not gonna lie, it looked comfy as hell.
