In the End Read Free

“Yes, I'm well aware of all that. Everyone in Rielat keeps complaining about the souls That Man stole from us when he went and did his thing. The lava pits just haven't been the same since the Spanish Inquisition, either, or so say the demons of the lower circles. Not like those sorts of places are to my taste. Sorry, didn't catch that?” He paused. “Only in the best bar in Dis; where else would I hear gossip like that? Can't mix a drink to save their souls, but they do up a pretty good blooming onion. Also deep-fried whatever-you-give-them on Fridays. Get it? Fry-days?” He paused again. “No, I'm sorry, but they don't like me to have role models from That Side, you know what I mean? ...Hello?” He gave the phone an odd look and, returned his attention to the television and hung up without giving the phone another glance: The cute weatherperson was cheerily reporting that there was an 86% chance of rain. His besotted smile grew brighter has he heard a crash of thunder and the beginnings of wet, tapping fingertips upon the windows.
    ***
    The rain had pattered invitingly for over an hour before he decided to go out for a walk in it. It had hissed in gentle gusts on the tiny balcony just outside his bedroom, and it had burbled to him from the empty window box that he had bought filled with colorful blooms, then promptly had forgotten about. Lucien, helpless when it came to such persuasive weather, hadn't spared a thought for the early-fall temperatures, or the possibility that he could drown in such a downpour-- instead, once the rain convinced him to come play, he strode out into the gray afternoon with nothing but the clothes on his back and a vague sense of glee for such good weather.
    Dusk had fallen since he left, though he couldn't tell through the storm. Street lamps lit the falling drops silver, and, when each of them hit the pavement, the drops shattered into a million pieces like chips of diamond.
    A stranger, stranded under the narrow overhang of a building and dolefully wondering when the rain would stop, saw him first as only a hunched silhouette meandering along the sidewalk in the driving rain.
    “ No, come on,” Lucien was saying to the half-drowned creature he held in his arms, smiling though his teeth chattered and his arms shivered, though his dark hair hung and curled into his eyes and trickled icy rainwater down the back of his neck. “Kitty, I'm not that wet, and whatever you think, I can't be wetter than you.” The cat wriggled, not quite trying to get away, but certainly protesting this bruising of his pride by the indignity of being carried and cooed at. “Who belongs to you, kitty?” An overcoated couple, scurrying past under a shabby umbrella, glanced at the Fallen, puzzled by this odd man. “I've always wanted a cat,” Lucien continued, oblivious, “ever since I saw them in Egypt a few thousand years ago when they sent me with Fallen Prince Sitri's entourage to fetch Prince Belial and the Prince Lightbringer back. They were there on vacation,” he explained to the cat, “or Prince Lightbringer was, and Prince Belial was along because Prince Lightbringer told him to. Anyway, they were sitting in the sunshine on the steps on a temple of Bastet when we found them, and I hadn't finished manifesting to this plane-- Hell on the nerves, let me tell you: It's worse than a gallon of coffee on an empty stomach. Anyway, the crowd of us were there, convincing the Lightbringer to come back to Dis, when one of the priestesses walked by with a basket of kittens.” The cat in his arms glanced up at him, and in the cat's eyes, Lucien saw the golden sun, glaring upon miles of sand that swept towards the temple. He saw the light glinting painfully off a wide, gold Egyptian collar that draped across Prince Lightbringer's chest and shoulders, and the Prince's dead-straight platinum hair spilling over sandstone steps. He saw the memories of how the silver eyes of the Adversary had bored into his heart,