47 Little One

Lily

“You look weird. Did the holiday sauce turn out bad?” Sharkie asked over breakfast.

“Hollandaise sauce,” Lily corrected absently, frowning as she tried to pinpoint the source of the off feeling she’d woken up too early with. “And no, the sauce turned out perfect, good job.”

“Thanks, Mom. So, why do you have that funny look on your face?”

Fuzzy warmth suffused Lily at her new title. It had only been a few days since the first time, but she didn’t think she’d ever tire of hearing it.

“I just feel…weird.”

“Like bad weird or excited weird?” Sharkie’s question was muffled by a mouthful of eggs Benedict.

“Just weird-weird. I dunno. How are the eggs?”

“Good this time.”

Lily winced. She was pretty sure she’d used half the eggs in their realm of Paradise as practice, but she’d finally figured out how to properly poach a fucking egg.

Small victories. She chose to treasure each one.

They finished breakfast, Carlton whisking away the dishes before Lily could even reach to clear them. Having abandoned that particular battle with the house, she threw a quick “thanks, dude” in the direction of the ceiling and patted the nearest cupboard, then stretched to loosen up her unusually tight shoulders.

“You want fancy cocoa today?” Lily asked as Sharkie set up her laptop.

“Actually, can I try the salted caramel latte?”

Lily quit stretching. Sharkie’s eyes were bright and expectant.

“Please? Eleven-ish is totally grown up enough for a latte. Or at least to try one.”

It was true. Once she’d started growing, Sharkie’d seemed to make up for lost time, shooting up faster than a mortal kid would have. Lily’s research in the Universal Library had confirmed that her physical growth had more to do with her mental and emotional growth than anything and had no set timeline. Sharkie’s preference of attending school in Hell most of the time accommodated this, as she got to move around to different classrooms based on her learning needs, like all the other students. Today was a weekend and she’d been planning a day-long movie marathon and gaming session.

Sharkie’s grin went impish. “It’s not like it’ll kill me.”

Lily laughed. “Fair point. Alright, one small salted caramel latte coming your way. Anything else?”

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks, Mom!”

Lily blew her a kiss—which Sharkie pretended to be knocked sideways by—and headed for the door. The sword and belt Bel had given her hung on the weapons rack that had appeared when Bel had basically moved in. She brushed her fingers over the hilt of his “casual sword” before lifting hers off the pegs. She buckled it around her waist slowly, taking in the way the light seemed especially golden as it dappled through the windows, gilding the entryway in a way that was newly striking, and slanting one perfect beam on the myriad pictures that adorned the walls.

The picture of her and her brothers no longer sent bolts of pain through her chest every time she saw it, just the fond ache of love that had nowhere to go. The idea of seeing them on MortalTube was still too painful, but she saw the picture for what it was: an impossible gift memorializing a precious memory. One that no longer hung alone, surrounded now by more than a dozen pictures of various sizes.

A shot of her, Sharkie, and Max from behind, silhouetted in the open doorway the day they’d played in the rain, Sharkie’s head on her shoulder, the pair of them wrapped in blankets, with soaking wet hair and steaming mugs, watching the rain pour down.

Lily and Bel tangled together on the couch the morning of their first kiss, before it had happened, still asleep and utterly peaceful.

The three of them, plus Max, in the library the day Bel had needed their fussing, the whole scene looking like a cozy renaissance painting.

A picture of her parents smiling on a sunny beach. She’d cried the day it had appeared. Their relationships had been complicated, but she still missed them.

Max on his back in the living room, basking in a particularly good sunbeam, legs completely stretched out to get the most out of the sun’s heat.

Lily and Sharkie sitting in front of the TV playing Mario Kart , Lily with her head in her hands after getting blue-shelled at the last minute, while Sharkie leaped into the air with manic glee.

Lily, Bel, and Sharkie on the couch in their pajamas, all with different face masks on, watching a movie.

Bel in the new gym, shirtless and deliciously sweaty, holding a weight in one hand while he took a picture with his phone of Lily on the treadmill, who was not-so-subtly taking pictures of him.

She finished buckling on the belt and smiled at the collection of memories, marveling at how far she’d come in the Afterlife. A growing part of her wondered how far she could go.

Mulling that over, she reached for the door and paused, her sense of unease swelling up like a tide.

“Sharkie?” she called, heading back into the kitchen.

“Yeah?” Sharkie said, looking up in confusion as Lily stuck her head into the kitchen.

“I know you’re already planning on staying home today, but seriously, don’t leave Paradise at all until I get back. Okay?”

“Why? Is it your weird thing?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what it is, but I just need you to promise to stay in Paradise. I can’t explain why, but I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, bug.” Lily let a thread of steel into her tone. “Can you please promise me that you’ll stay here?”

Sharkie’s eyes rounded. “I promise,” she said quietly, then again with more conviction. “I promise.”

“Atta girl. Thank you.” Lily winked, even though the light gesture required more effort than usual. “Be back soon.”

Bel

Bel heaved in as much air as he could, half staggering from the command tent as every fiber of muscle screamed at him. The attack had flooded them. Thousands had died. Not just from the demonic forces, but from the collective mass of their Universal army, something he was grimly thankful for, though thankful seemed like the wrong word.

He had to make the best of the worst situation, he supposed.

In the days since the first wave of gegony and enemy soldiers crashed into them, he’d slept perhaps a total of ten hours. Broken, patchy, restless sleep, quick naps when he made it back to camp to give his reports, collaborate on tactics and strategies, and take a few minutes of a break from swinging his sword or axe.

He and his soldiers were tired, but they were holding. And it was time to go hold some more.

He left his sword in its sheath for the moment, hoping his hand might relax a bit from the claw it had frozen into after too many hours of gripping a weapon. As he walked back to the legion he’d be fighting with, he took stock of his body, cataloging aches and pains, factoring them into how he would need to adjust and compensate his fighting style to remain as deadly as possible and not make a stupid mistake. He did a double take at the familiar figure that caught the corner of his eye.

“What the fuck are you doing here? You should be in bed!” he snarled at Asmodeus as he limped towards him, wings wrapped tightly against his back with bloody bandages.

“I should be dead,” Asmodeus rasped. The swelling around his eyes had gone down enough for his glare to be potent. “But I’m not. So, from one general to another, fuck you. Let’s save the fighting for the real enemy.”

Asmodeus was, unfortunately, every bit as stubborn as him, so Bel bit his tongue and let it go, knowing he would have done the same thing. Had done the same thing. On multiple occasions.

Bel briefed him as they walked, and Asmodeus split off to find his own soldiers, bumping his shoulder against Bel’s before he left. Bel watched his cousin walk away, shredded wings half healed and wrapped up like mummies, every movement visibly taking more effort. But Asmodeus’s head was high, and his mind was sharp.

Universe protect you, Azzy. And if that’s not enough firepower to do the job, I’ll ask your wife.

A different fierce woman flashed into his mind, the image so clear and vivid, for a moment he wondered if it was a hallucination.

Lily.

She could probably march her way across the battlefield and level one of her looks at the enemy. And if that wasn’t enough, she’d give them a lashing with her gloriously sharp tongue and have them whimpering within minutes. Then she’d grab him by the front of his pants and tow him home, where she would dunk him in a bath, feed him, and tuck him into bed before marching up to the Universe itself and giving it a piece of her mind.

Fuck, he missed her, but he swallowed it down, pushing it aside with every step towards the curse of battle.

* * *

His world devolved into a nightmare of spraying blood and spit and venom and mud. His movements were automatic as he parried a strike and struck a blow of his own, then spun and drove his blade through the neck of a creature as tall as he was and bristling with needlelike spikes. Its overlarge mouth gurgled helplessly, hands with too many joints scrabbling at its throat. Bel didn’t pause for even a second, ripping his blade free to twist and engage a new opponent.

Strike. Stab. Dodge. Parry.

Blood, not his own, was a bitter tang over his tongue. Something tried to take a chunk out of his leg. He bashed its skull in with the edge of his shield.

He couldn’t feel individual rivulets of sweat any more. It soaked the padded clothing under his armor. His boots squelched, almost ankle-deep in gore and mud. There was no respite from any of it anywhere. Camp was a distant memory.

A pack of small, dog-like creatures leaped on the soldier next to him. Her scream as she went down turned into a wet rasp as one of them ripped out her throat, tendons and ligaments stretching and snapping amongst spurts of vivid blood.

With a roar, Bel cleared the pack away with his blade, one of his strikes sending a creature shrieking through the air, where it landed on the pike of a distant soldier. The female demon’s pink eyes were wide and panicked beneath her helmet, gloved hand fluttering over the gaping hole where her throat had been, lips covered in her own blood, silently forming one word over and over.

Please.

Bel locked eyes with her for only a second, but that second stretched into eternity.

Please.

He raised his sword over her. Mercy seldom seemed merciful on the battlefield.

The female demon’s hand left her throat to point behind him. He swung blindly—judging the rush of air, the angle of her finger, the pounding thud of approaching footsteps—and scored a deep slash down the side of a rampaging gegony. It wailed, sounding entirely too much like his baby sister, and flinched, spinning towards its injured side as if it couldn’t understand what had happened. Taking advantage of the distraction, Bel half chopped through the back of its stubby neck, and the thing collapsed into a twitching pile.

There was a momentary lull, and he spun back to the female demon—one of his soldiers—who lay motionless, pink eyes dull and fixed, staring into an eternity that only she could see. Her hand, the one she’d pointed to save him, lay limply in the mud.

Bel crouched. Her fallen sword made a sucking sound as he pulled it out of the mud and lay it on her chest, then he lifted the hand that had saved him and rested it over the hilt.

He dipped his head and stood, a distant roaring heralding the coming end of the momentary lull. Something tickled at the back of his mind as he stared at the dead gegony. Something odd.

Several other soldiers frowned at it as well, looking up as he approached and making room for him.

“Sir, am I crazy or is that one…small?”

Bel studied the thing grimly. It was small. It didn’t stand nearly as tall as the other gegony he’d seen. Its skin was paler, less knobby, and it only had a couple rows of teeth instead of several.

Then he realized. “It’s young.”

Every soldier who’d heard him cranked their head around to stare.

“That means they must be running out of the full-sized ones,” someone said.

Something on the hindquarters drew his attention—dark, streaked marks that looked almost…charred. Like it had been intentionally burned.

Tortured? Why the fuck would the other Universe, or whoever was in charge of their forces, torture the young of their own creatures?

The answer came to him in a shrieking roar that had a layer he’d never heard to it. Grief and desperation and rage .

What fought with a fierceness unmatched by any force in any known Universe?

Parents protecting their children.

Bel bellowed orders, reforming the line and turning just in time to see the unbroken line of fully adult gegony charging toward them, wailing for all of their murdered offspring.

Overrun. They would be overrun—

The world devolved into a new nightmare, this time with bodies and body parts flung through the air like confetti as the gegony tore into them. Lungs screamed for oxygen. Muscles reacted and moved without conscious thought. Boots slipped in mud. Lines of pain opened up all over his body.

One gegony was killed. Then another. Bel was nearly knocked to the ground by the upper half of a soldier after a gegony had flung it aside. He regained his footing, spinning to face the source of the corpse.

A gegony nosed at the body of the little one, a high-pitched keening noise filling the air when the little one didn’t respond. The parent threw its head back, vertical maw splitting wide as it screamed its loss.

A volley of arrows arched over Bel’s shoulder, burying themselves in the exposed throat and chest, the scream shifting into a pained roar as the thing spun. Bel saw what was going to happen, and despite the fact that he was dripping sweat, he went ice cold.

It happened in slow motion. The gegony lunged directly at them, directly at him . The vertically slit jaws were wide open, something that the typical battle-hardened gegony never did, as it revealed one of their greatest weaknesses. Rows and rows of hooked, razor-sharp teeth set into a bloody mouth came right at him. He knew the press of soldiers behind him, beside him, their swords and spears all aimed for that same vulnerable target.

Bel rammed his sword down its throat just before the powerful jaws clamped around his entire body, one last blinding burst of pain and regret and love for his little family. His Lily.

Then everything was gone.