Original x SPN -- Subtle Devil's Traps and Other Pinterest Crafts
Title: Subtle Devil's Traps and Other Pinterest Crafts
Fandom: SPN attacks Vincent & Co.
Characters/Pairing: Vincent/Maion!, with much Belial and Edward Blevins
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,118
Warnings: language (seriously), Belial being even more Belialish than usual
Prompt: All richelle2972 asked for was a Vincent/SPN crossover. The madness that resulted is entirely my own fault. XD
Summary: Maion has gone AWOL. Apparently Vincent is going to have to get the gang back together… by force.
Author's Note: I HOPE YOU LIKE IT, BB! ♥♥♥ And for anybody who has no idea what's going on, there's now a Vincent Catch-Up Post for your convenience. XD If you prefer to leap in and find out how friggin' freezing the water is the hard way, Vincent is a vampire, and I think the others all get explained. ^^;;
SUBLTE DEVIL’S TRAPS AND OTHER PINTEREST CRAFTS
When everything’s in order, Vincent texts Belial no more or less than the words “I have a proposition for you.”
He sets his phone down on the end table, folds his hands, and blinks.
When he’s done blinking, Belial is standing in his living room and beaming at him.
“You took off the wards and unblocked my number?” Belial gazes at him rapturously. “I knew you’d forgive me. You have such a big, black, cold heart-”
Vincent sighs, takes up the second glass of wine on the coffee table, and holds it out.
“It’s so sexy when you’re courteous,” Belial purrs, sashaying forward, reaching out, and-stopping short. “Oh, you little shit,” he says.
He doesn’t even bother looking upward, not that he’d probably be able to make out much more than a smear of the just-off-white Devil’s Trap painted on the ceiling. Vincent really has to give the Home Depot some credit for taking him seriously when he started asking questions about shades of white.
“I’m never going to forgive you,” he says, taking a sip of Belial’s wine for good measure. “You called me, and I quote, ‘a parasitic, psychopathic hypocrite no better than the creatures I hunt’.”
“I meant it fondly,” Belial says. “And fuck you anyway; you swore on your mother’s grave in 1921 that you’d never trap me.”
“I had my mother cremated,” Vincent says. “Where’s Maion?”
Belial’s lip had been curling for the next F-bomb, but that gives him pause. “What do you mean? Lolling around on a cloud plucking out harp melodies, I presume.”
“Right,” Vincent says, and he very, very carefully picks up the pressure-sprayer and heavy-duty gloves he purchased along with the paint. “This tank is full of holy water, and you are full of shit. Which shall we empty first?”
It’s difficult to tell exactly what Belial’s glaring at when his eyes shutter black like that, but since it’s either Vincent or the spray nozzle, it doesn’t make much difference. “I don’t know where he is, Duval.” Belial hesitates again, tilting his head. “Although… oh, yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
Vincent categorically will not give him the satisfaction of a wide-eyed “What?” Instead, he glowers.
“I will exchange my valuable information,” Belial says primly, “for threesome sex with you and the MIAngel. No, wait, for a blowjob from you right now, just in case he’s dead. On your knees, sonny-boy.” He grins toothily. “Not to be confused with sunny-boy, get it?”
Vincent pumps the tank and aims the pressurized spray directly at Belial’s groin.
When he lets up, Belial is on the carpet, writhing within the confines of the trap and steaming everywhere.
“So,” Vincent says. “About that valuable information.”
“I am going to fillet your soul,” Belial chokes out. “I am going to fricassee it. Sauté it. Slice it up into little tiny strips and put it in pasta with shrimp.”
“It’s your ass’s turn next,” Vincent says, swishing the water in the tank meaningfully.
“You love my ass,” Belial says, panting. “It’s beautifully formed. That’s most of why I’ve kept this meatsuit for going on two centuries; I’m careful with this thing.”
“Be that as it may,” Vincent says, “I’m more committed to the angel than I am to your ass. Start talking.”
“I know this probably comes as a shock,” Belial says, sprawling on his back in what looks to be sulking defeat, “but I was slightly disingenuous before. All I have is a rumor or two, but hearing that he’s gone missing slotted a few little pieces together.” He considers. “I hope the puzzle’s of a puppy.”
“Tell me,” Vincent says.
“You really don’t understand the principles of storytelling.”
“What did you hear?”
Belial pantomimes hanging himself with his necktie. “There’s some kind of subterranean structure we’ve been feeling vibrations from-nothing of ours. A relic’s gone missing from the Vatican, no details disclosed. I used to play Parcheesi with a couple of cherubs, but Ivan won’t answer my Facebook messages, and Marco hasn’t Tweeted anything in a month. And if your angel’s gone, too, maybe all those things are connected.”
Vincent realizes that his knuckles are white where he’s gripping the spray hose. “You don’t say.”
“I do, though.” Belial sits up, eyes bright, smile brighter, and holds his arms out for a hug. “So how’s about we kiss and make u-”
Vincent stands, pockets his phone, steps carefully around the circumference of the trap, and starts for his office.
“You can’t leave me here!” Belial cries.
“I can, though,” Vincent says.
“I’m going to flay you with a fucking apple-peeler and roast you on a fucking spit if you don’t get back here and let me out this fucking instant, you fucking flea!”
“À bientôt, asshole,” Vincent says, and he shuts the office door.
Tuning out the screeching, he massages at his temples a bit. He knows what he has to do now, but the inevitability makes the prospect even less pleasant.
He draws a deep breath, raises the phone, scrolls through his contacts, lets his thumb hover for a moment as the internal debate circles just once more, and then taps to dial.
The mean little bastard makes him wait four and a half rings.
“Let me guess,” Blevins says, “you’re sorry.”
“Yes,” Vincent says. “I am.”
“You’re not fucking sorry,” Blevins says. “You need something.”
“There’s a distinct possibility that I am also apologetic; I’m a talented multitaske-”
“You’re not apologetic. What you are is a dick.”
“Your instinctual tendency to act like a twelve-year-old is most of what obstructs our communication.”
Blevins hisses audibly through his teeth. “No, the way you treat me like a twelve-year-old despite the fact that I’ve saved your pasty ass more times than I can even keep track of is what obstructs our communication. And by ‘obstructs our communication’ I mean ‘makes you an insufferable, condescending piece of shit that I’m about to hang up on’.”
“Edward,” Vincent says, “it’s about Maion.”
“Oh, what the fuck about him? If he wants us to sit down with some ice cream and all hold hands and talk about our feelings again, he can go fuck himself.”
“No one knows where he is,” Vincent says. “Including the demon.”
Very distantly he hears “Ooh, that’s me!”
Blevins is quiet for a moment, and when he speaks he sounds much more civil and much less like a rampaging lunatic who uses his wolf brain far too often even when the moon isn’t full. “Did you ask politely?”
“I was unerringly decorous.”
“I’ll bet.”
“All he had to go on,” Vincent says, “is something underground-literally underground-and a relic that’s vanished from the Vatican. He claims a few cherubs have gone missing, too, though it sounded like they were of dubious moral character.”
“Yeah,” Blevins says. “We wouldn’t know anything about that. Y’know, I actually… there was something in the news-bad part of Sacramento, there was just this explosive white light in an alley somewhere. No real damage except scorch marks, and I thought… Grace, probably. Defensive, maybe.”
“Plausible,” Vincent says.
“Yeah,” Blevins says yet again, succinctly demonstrating the reason Vincent once told him that the English language was a vast ocean of connotative possibility, and his vocabulary was a plastic kiddie pool. “I’ll see if I can find more news stories that might be celestials getting into deep shit-you try to get into the Pope’s phonecalls. You speak Italian, right?”
“Pope Benedict XVI is German,” Vincent says.
“You speak everything,” Blevins says.
“Touché,” Vincent says. “Let me know if you find anything.”
“Yup,” Blevins says, which is almost a nice change from ‘yeah’. “Still fuckin’ pissed at you, by the way.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Vincent says, “I’ve called almost everyone I know an incompetent ass at one point or another. It’s practically an endearment.”
“Fuck your shit.”
“Talk to you soon.”
He hangs up and settles down to pursue the newest and most creative blasphemy yet.
As it turns out, he doesn’t quite arrive at the point of attempting to wire-tap the Pope. His perusal of the site describing the Vatican’s artifacts is enough, because it completes the puzzle image fairly conclusively.
For the record, the puzzle does not depict a puppy.
“The city council thinks it’s a power grid failure,” Blevins says, glancing up from the map to look at the street signs, as if Vincent has ever gotten lost in his afterlife. “Or at least that’s what they’ve told the press that they think. Obviously PG&E’s not over the moon about that; they’re saying it’s kids with firecrackers-and there have been a couple witnesses that said they saw people running away, only then the perps vanished.”
“We’re going into the sewers, aren’t we?” Vincent asks, easing the Bentley to a stop at a red light.
Blevins sighs feelingly. “Always.”
“Sounds like fun!” Belial pipes up from the backseat. “I hope there are mutated alligators!”
“I hope you die,” Blevins says-and, for once, Vincent couldn’t have put it better himself.
“Did you have to use a pink highlighter?” Vincent asks, semi-rhetorically, as he turns his flashlight downward again and examines the path sketched out through the labyrinth of pipes.
“It was the only one I had,” Blevins says.
“Why do you even have a pink highlighter?”
“It came in a set! I used all the others first!”
“It’s a left up here,” Vincent says.
“I know,” Blevins says. “I drew the fucking map.”
“I missed you guys,” Belial says contentedly. “You put the ‘funk’ in ‘dysfunctional’.”
Blevins wrinkles his nose. “That’s not how it’s-why did you let him out? We could’ve kept him like a genie or something.”
“I do look delectable in harem pants,” Belial says.
“They kidnapped an angel,” Vincent says. “I wasn’t about to stick my hand into that bonfire without backup.”
“You have no sense of adventure,” Belial says.
“And no sense of humor,” Blevins says.
Belial looks delighted. “And no sense of style!”
As soon as this is over, Vincent is going to push both of them into the sewer water and walk away.
Before Blevins can scrounge up another quip from the kiddie pool, however, they reach a wide iron door.
“This is right about where the weird seismic disturbances would have originated,” Blevins says slowly. “And it’s not on the map.”
“That sounds sufficiently ominous,” Vincent says. “Demon?”
Belial strolls over to consider the massive bolt securing the door and bounces on the balls of his feet. “I demand fellatio.”
“No.”
“Then I want to be wined and dined and supplied with a prostitute.”
“No.”
“I want a kiss from the angel. A French kiss.”
“Open the fucking door,” Vincent says, “or I’ll play you the tapes of Edward trying to learn to play the guitar.”
“Wh-you recorded that?” Blevins looks betrayed all over again; one of these days his face will stick that way.
“You’re bluffing,” Belial says, eyeing Vincent’s poker face.
“Try me,” Vincent says. “Seventeen hours of musical experimentation. And then it starts all over again.”
Belial stares at him for a long moment. “I think the reason I love you,” he says, “is that I hate you more than I can put into words. You’re evil. It’s… beautiful.”
“I’m flattered,” Vincent says. “Open the door.”
Belial blows him a kiss and then promptly melts the iron door to slag.
Vincent has always hated dwarves-they’re like little humanoid voles, except greedier, grimier, and uncouth.
But if Maion is still alive (oh, you miserable bastard of a God, if you’re anything more than a myth, you will have held tightly to that sliver of light, because he deserves to live), he’s been through enough without having to cope with the guilt of two dozen Grumpies slain on his behalf. Vincent aims for the kneecaps, mostly, as much as it’s possible to distinguish a kneecap on those stumpy legs. He perforates a palm or takes off a stubby finger whenever someone reaches for a weapon, and pretty shortly there’s dwarf blood everywhere, but no apparent fatalities.
“That’s nice,” Blevins says, peering at Vincent’s 92FS. “Is it new?”
“If I buy you a matching one,” Vincent says, “will you believe that I’m sorry?”
“Maybe,” Blevins says.
The concept of friendship Berettas is a bit subversive, but Vincent’s seen stranger.
“Can haz noms?” Belial asks hopefully, gazing at the nearest bleeding dwarf.
“No,” Vincent says. He crouches down and looks into the monster’s beady little eyes, settling the barrel of the gun beneath its chin. “My dear Dopey,” he says, “you have a golden opportunity to tell me where the angel is-one golden opportunity. And if he survives this experience, so do you. Does that sound fair?”
Dopey’s eyes widen until they’re a great deal less beady.
There’s a trapdoor, and a tunnel, and another vault door, and three more dwarves that Vincent leaves to Blevins and the very hungry demon, because-
Because Maion is chained to an upright operating table, and the modified hypodermic in his forearm is siphoning out something that glows white. Even the ring of holy fire can’t put any color in his face; his hair hangs listlessly, and there are deep red fingernail gouges around the needle, but by now his other arm dangles limp. At the commotion, though, he raises his head, and when his dull eyes focus on Vincent, they light.
It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible for something like Vincent-something damned-to love like this. It shouldn’t be possible, because the burst of feeling in his chest is fervent and illuminating and pure.
“You imbecile,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even shake. “Would you like to warn me in advance next time you try to get caught by the cast of ‘The Hobbit’?”
“I might have to cancel our date to see that,” Maion says-and his voice is so faint it’s barely audible over the clickings and hummings of the machine stealing his Grace. “I’m sorry; I know you were looking forward to it.”
Vincent steels himself, strides forward, and manages to scuff a gap through the holy oil without even setting his trouser leg on fire. Maion’s shoulders sag a little bit further, and Vincent steps forward and reaches for the needle.
“Don’t just pull it out!” Maion gasps at the last second, fumbling for Vincent’s wrist, which he misses by several inches.
“That’s what she said!” Belial sings from the back corner of the room.
“Grace isn’t a fluid,” Maion says, fumbling for the front of Vincent’s waistcoat this time, which makes for a much easier target. “It’s-the process is-complicated; it’s-they used some very-advanced-electromagnetics in combination with a few very old sigils, and they-it forces the Grace to solidify into a physical form. I’ll-bleed out. I can’t use it when it’s coalesced like this; it’s more powerful as photons, and more mutable, and I couldn’t heal myself with it, and it’d just be pouring out, and-”
Vincent kisses him to shut him up before he hurts himself worse. There’s a tiny trace of pink in each of Maion’s cheeks when they draw apart.
“I’m sorry,” Maion says. He swallows and blinks. “There hasn’t… been… anyone to talk to. They’re all dead, by the way.”
“I noticed,” Belial says of the pile of indistinct shapes that he’s been nudging at all this time. For a moment Vincent thinks he’s genuinely unhappy. “Marco owed me money, the little fucker.”
Blevins is sifting through blueprints on the table and kicking the nearest dwarf in the gut at intervals. “They were making a drill.”
“Using Grace as a power source, yes,” Maion says, and his eyes are clouding again. “Like biodiesel.”
“No,” Vincent says, “like murder.”
He crosses to the machine. Atop the scarred metal box lies the angel sword some Italian pilgrim stumbled on years ago, which the dwarves smuggled all the way to Sunshine State to scare cherubim into giving up their Grace.
Vincent takes it up, hefts it, and stabs it several times into the heart of the mechanism.
The machine makes a pitiable whirring noise and then goes silent. One of the dwarves is stupid enough to moan in dismay, and Vincent rewards him with a bullet in the other foot.
Maion watches the last few pulses of white light waver in the tubing and then crawl towards him and slip back into his vein. He bites his lip and slowly draws the long needle out; the puncture wound and the surrounding marks go searingly white and then smooth themselves down into unbroken skin.
Vincent tucks the angel sword into the back of his belt, holsters the Beretta, and moves over in time to slide his arm under Maion’s shoulder following the only-slightly-spiteful celestial obliteration of the various restraints.
“I’m all right,” Maion says, although he then proceeds to fist a hand in Vincent’s shirtfront. “It’s just you making me weak in the knees.”
“Isn’t he a catch?” Belial asks.
“Hey, man,” Blevins says, stepping on a dwarf en route to clap Maion gently on the available shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thank you,” Maion says, mustering a smile. “You should go see ‘The Hobbit’ with Vincent. We already have the tickets.”
“I’ll go!” Belial says. “We can sit in the back row and make out until people throw their drinks in our faces, and then we can tell them to burn in hell.”
The argument over whether or not this is an acceptable plan for the movie premiere takes them all the way up to the surface again. If the sewer smell clings to Vincent’s new Beretta, dwarf heads will roll.
“I need to go Up for a while,” Maion says, hugging Vincent’s arm around him. “I need to recuperate a lot of Grace, and…” His face pales a bit, but even here under the streetlamps it looks more natural now. “Warn them. That this can even happen.” He leans into Vincent’s shoulder and allows himself one deep sigh. “I was trying to save them, you know. I-surrendered myself. I thought… but they were prepared, evidently, for larger prey. I know it was foolish.” He peeks up at Vincent’s face. “Do you…?”
“Forgive you?” Vincent asks. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
And Maion grins, even though his legs are still quavering, and chirps, “Then I’ll see you later!”, and kisses Vincent’s cheek, and disappears.
“You guys are so fucking married,” Blevins says.
“Shut your miserable little mouth,” Vincent says, but it’s probably not terribly intimidating given that he’s smiling.
[SEQUEL]
Fandom: SPN attacks Vincent & Co.
Characters/Pairing: Vincent/Maion!, with much Belial and Edward Blevins
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,118
Warnings: language (seriously), Belial being even more Belialish than usual
Prompt: All richelle2972 asked for was a Vincent/SPN crossover. The madness that resulted is entirely my own fault. XD
Summary: Maion has gone AWOL. Apparently Vincent is going to have to get the gang back together… by force.
Author's Note: I HOPE YOU LIKE IT, BB! ♥♥♥ And for anybody who has no idea what's going on, there's now a Vincent Catch-Up Post for your convenience. XD If you prefer to leap in and find out how friggin' freezing the water is the hard way, Vincent is a vampire, and I think the others all get explained. ^^;;
SUBLTE DEVIL’S TRAPS AND OTHER PINTEREST CRAFTS
When everything’s in order, Vincent texts Belial no more or less than the words “I have a proposition for you.”
He sets his phone down on the end table, folds his hands, and blinks.
When he’s done blinking, Belial is standing in his living room and beaming at him.
“You took off the wards and unblocked my number?” Belial gazes at him rapturously. “I knew you’d forgive me. You have such a big, black, cold heart-”
Vincent sighs, takes up the second glass of wine on the coffee table, and holds it out.
“It’s so sexy when you’re courteous,” Belial purrs, sashaying forward, reaching out, and-stopping short. “Oh, you little shit,” he says.
He doesn’t even bother looking upward, not that he’d probably be able to make out much more than a smear of the just-off-white Devil’s Trap painted on the ceiling. Vincent really has to give the Home Depot some credit for taking him seriously when he started asking questions about shades of white.
“I’m never going to forgive you,” he says, taking a sip of Belial’s wine for good measure. “You called me, and I quote, ‘a parasitic, psychopathic hypocrite no better than the creatures I hunt’.”
“I meant it fondly,” Belial says. “And fuck you anyway; you swore on your mother’s grave in 1921 that you’d never trap me.”
“I had my mother cremated,” Vincent says. “Where’s Maion?”
Belial’s lip had been curling for the next F-bomb, but that gives him pause. “What do you mean? Lolling around on a cloud plucking out harp melodies, I presume.”
“Right,” Vincent says, and he very, very carefully picks up the pressure-sprayer and heavy-duty gloves he purchased along with the paint. “This tank is full of holy water, and you are full of shit. Which shall we empty first?”
It’s difficult to tell exactly what Belial’s glaring at when his eyes shutter black like that, but since it’s either Vincent or the spray nozzle, it doesn’t make much difference. “I don’t know where he is, Duval.” Belial hesitates again, tilting his head. “Although… oh, yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
Vincent categorically will not give him the satisfaction of a wide-eyed “What?” Instead, he glowers.
“I will exchange my valuable information,” Belial says primly, “for threesome sex with you and the MIAngel. No, wait, for a blowjob from you right now, just in case he’s dead. On your knees, sonny-boy.” He grins toothily. “Not to be confused with sunny-boy, get it?”
Vincent pumps the tank and aims the pressurized spray directly at Belial’s groin.
When he lets up, Belial is on the carpet, writhing within the confines of the trap and steaming everywhere.
“So,” Vincent says. “About that valuable information.”
“I am going to fillet your soul,” Belial chokes out. “I am going to fricassee it. Sauté it. Slice it up into little tiny strips and put it in pasta with shrimp.”
“It’s your ass’s turn next,” Vincent says, swishing the water in the tank meaningfully.
“You love my ass,” Belial says, panting. “It’s beautifully formed. That’s most of why I’ve kept this meatsuit for going on two centuries; I’m careful with this thing.”
“Be that as it may,” Vincent says, “I’m more committed to the angel than I am to your ass. Start talking.”
“I know this probably comes as a shock,” Belial says, sprawling on his back in what looks to be sulking defeat, “but I was slightly disingenuous before. All I have is a rumor or two, but hearing that he’s gone missing slotted a few little pieces together.” He considers. “I hope the puzzle’s of a puppy.”
“Tell me,” Vincent says.
“You really don’t understand the principles of storytelling.”
“What did you hear?”
Belial pantomimes hanging himself with his necktie. “There’s some kind of subterranean structure we’ve been feeling vibrations from-nothing of ours. A relic’s gone missing from the Vatican, no details disclosed. I used to play Parcheesi with a couple of cherubs, but Ivan won’t answer my Facebook messages, and Marco hasn’t Tweeted anything in a month. And if your angel’s gone, too, maybe all those things are connected.”
Vincent realizes that his knuckles are white where he’s gripping the spray hose. “You don’t say.”
“I do, though.” Belial sits up, eyes bright, smile brighter, and holds his arms out for a hug. “So how’s about we kiss and make u-”
Vincent stands, pockets his phone, steps carefully around the circumference of the trap, and starts for his office.
“You can’t leave me here!” Belial cries.
“I can, though,” Vincent says.
“I’m going to flay you with a fucking apple-peeler and roast you on a fucking spit if you don’t get back here and let me out this fucking instant, you fucking flea!”
“À bientôt, asshole,” Vincent says, and he shuts the office door.
Tuning out the screeching, he massages at his temples a bit. He knows what he has to do now, but the inevitability makes the prospect even less pleasant.
He draws a deep breath, raises the phone, scrolls through his contacts, lets his thumb hover for a moment as the internal debate circles just once more, and then taps to dial.
The mean little bastard makes him wait four and a half rings.
“Let me guess,” Blevins says, “you’re sorry.”
“Yes,” Vincent says. “I am.”
“You’re not fucking sorry,” Blevins says. “You need something.”
“There’s a distinct possibility that I am also apologetic; I’m a talented multitaske-”
“You’re not apologetic. What you are is a dick.”
“Your instinctual tendency to act like a twelve-year-old is most of what obstructs our communication.”
Blevins hisses audibly through his teeth. “No, the way you treat me like a twelve-year-old despite the fact that I’ve saved your pasty ass more times than I can even keep track of is what obstructs our communication. And by ‘obstructs our communication’ I mean ‘makes you an insufferable, condescending piece of shit that I’m about to hang up on’.”
“Edward,” Vincent says, “it’s about Maion.”
“Oh, what the fuck about him? If he wants us to sit down with some ice cream and all hold hands and talk about our feelings again, he can go fuck himself.”
“No one knows where he is,” Vincent says. “Including the demon.”
Very distantly he hears “Ooh, that’s me!”
Blevins is quiet for a moment, and when he speaks he sounds much more civil and much less like a rampaging lunatic who uses his wolf brain far too often even when the moon isn’t full. “Did you ask politely?”
“I was unerringly decorous.”
“I’ll bet.”
“All he had to go on,” Vincent says, “is something underground-literally underground-and a relic that’s vanished from the Vatican. He claims a few cherubs have gone missing, too, though it sounded like they were of dubious moral character.”
“Yeah,” Blevins says. “We wouldn’t know anything about that. Y’know, I actually… there was something in the news-bad part of Sacramento, there was just this explosive white light in an alley somewhere. No real damage except scorch marks, and I thought… Grace, probably. Defensive, maybe.”
“Plausible,” Vincent says.
“Yeah,” Blevins says yet again, succinctly demonstrating the reason Vincent once told him that the English language was a vast ocean of connotative possibility, and his vocabulary was a plastic kiddie pool. “I’ll see if I can find more news stories that might be celestials getting into deep shit-you try to get into the Pope’s phonecalls. You speak Italian, right?”
“Pope Benedict XVI is German,” Vincent says.
“You speak everything,” Blevins says.
“Touché,” Vincent says. “Let me know if you find anything.”
“Yup,” Blevins says, which is almost a nice change from ‘yeah’. “Still fuckin’ pissed at you, by the way.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Vincent says, “I’ve called almost everyone I know an incompetent ass at one point or another. It’s practically an endearment.”
“Fuck your shit.”
“Talk to you soon.”
He hangs up and settles down to pursue the newest and most creative blasphemy yet.
As it turns out, he doesn’t quite arrive at the point of attempting to wire-tap the Pope. His perusal of the site describing the Vatican’s artifacts is enough, because it completes the puzzle image fairly conclusively.
For the record, the puzzle does not depict a puppy.
“The city council thinks it’s a power grid failure,” Blevins says, glancing up from the map to look at the street signs, as if Vincent has ever gotten lost in his afterlife. “Or at least that’s what they’ve told the press that they think. Obviously PG&E’s not over the moon about that; they’re saying it’s kids with firecrackers-and there have been a couple witnesses that said they saw people running away, only then the perps vanished.”
“We’re going into the sewers, aren’t we?” Vincent asks, easing the Bentley to a stop at a red light.
Blevins sighs feelingly. “Always.”
“Sounds like fun!” Belial pipes up from the backseat. “I hope there are mutated alligators!”
“I hope you die,” Blevins says-and, for once, Vincent couldn’t have put it better himself.
“Did you have to use a pink highlighter?” Vincent asks, semi-rhetorically, as he turns his flashlight downward again and examines the path sketched out through the labyrinth of pipes.
“It was the only one I had,” Blevins says.
“Why do you even have a pink highlighter?”
“It came in a set! I used all the others first!”
“It’s a left up here,” Vincent says.
“I know,” Blevins says. “I drew the fucking map.”
“I missed you guys,” Belial says contentedly. “You put the ‘funk’ in ‘dysfunctional’.”
Blevins wrinkles his nose. “That’s not how it’s-why did you let him out? We could’ve kept him like a genie or something.”
“I do look delectable in harem pants,” Belial says.
“They kidnapped an angel,” Vincent says. “I wasn’t about to stick my hand into that bonfire without backup.”
“You have no sense of adventure,” Belial says.
“And no sense of humor,” Blevins says.
Belial looks delighted. “And no sense of style!”
As soon as this is over, Vincent is going to push both of them into the sewer water and walk away.
Before Blevins can scrounge up another quip from the kiddie pool, however, they reach a wide iron door.
“This is right about where the weird seismic disturbances would have originated,” Blevins says slowly. “And it’s not on the map.”
“That sounds sufficiently ominous,” Vincent says. “Demon?”
Belial strolls over to consider the massive bolt securing the door and bounces on the balls of his feet. “I demand fellatio.”
“No.”
“Then I want to be wined and dined and supplied with a prostitute.”
“No.”
“I want a kiss from the angel. A French kiss.”
“Open the fucking door,” Vincent says, “or I’ll play you the tapes of Edward trying to learn to play the guitar.”
“Wh-you recorded that?” Blevins looks betrayed all over again; one of these days his face will stick that way.
“You’re bluffing,” Belial says, eyeing Vincent’s poker face.
“Try me,” Vincent says. “Seventeen hours of musical experimentation. And then it starts all over again.”
Belial stares at him for a long moment. “I think the reason I love you,” he says, “is that I hate you more than I can put into words. You’re evil. It’s… beautiful.”
“I’m flattered,” Vincent says. “Open the door.”
Belial blows him a kiss and then promptly melts the iron door to slag.
Vincent has always hated dwarves-they’re like little humanoid voles, except greedier, grimier, and uncouth.
But if Maion is still alive (oh, you miserable bastard of a God, if you’re anything more than a myth, you will have held tightly to that sliver of light, because he deserves to live), he’s been through enough without having to cope with the guilt of two dozen Grumpies slain on his behalf. Vincent aims for the kneecaps, mostly, as much as it’s possible to distinguish a kneecap on those stumpy legs. He perforates a palm or takes off a stubby finger whenever someone reaches for a weapon, and pretty shortly there’s dwarf blood everywhere, but no apparent fatalities.
“That’s nice,” Blevins says, peering at Vincent’s 92FS. “Is it new?”
“If I buy you a matching one,” Vincent says, “will you believe that I’m sorry?”
“Maybe,” Blevins says.
The concept of friendship Berettas is a bit subversive, but Vincent’s seen stranger.
“Can haz noms?” Belial asks hopefully, gazing at the nearest bleeding dwarf.
“No,” Vincent says. He crouches down and looks into the monster’s beady little eyes, settling the barrel of the gun beneath its chin. “My dear Dopey,” he says, “you have a golden opportunity to tell me where the angel is-one golden opportunity. And if he survives this experience, so do you. Does that sound fair?”
Dopey’s eyes widen until they’re a great deal less beady.
There’s a trapdoor, and a tunnel, and another vault door, and three more dwarves that Vincent leaves to Blevins and the very hungry demon, because-
Because Maion is chained to an upright operating table, and the modified hypodermic in his forearm is siphoning out something that glows white. Even the ring of holy fire can’t put any color in his face; his hair hangs listlessly, and there are deep red fingernail gouges around the needle, but by now his other arm dangles limp. At the commotion, though, he raises his head, and when his dull eyes focus on Vincent, they light.
It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible for something like Vincent-something damned-to love like this. It shouldn’t be possible, because the burst of feeling in his chest is fervent and illuminating and pure.
“You imbecile,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even shake. “Would you like to warn me in advance next time you try to get caught by the cast of ‘The Hobbit’?”
“I might have to cancel our date to see that,” Maion says-and his voice is so faint it’s barely audible over the clickings and hummings of the machine stealing his Grace. “I’m sorry; I know you were looking forward to it.”
Vincent steels himself, strides forward, and manages to scuff a gap through the holy oil without even setting his trouser leg on fire. Maion’s shoulders sag a little bit further, and Vincent steps forward and reaches for the needle.
“Don’t just pull it out!” Maion gasps at the last second, fumbling for Vincent’s wrist, which he misses by several inches.
“That’s what she said!” Belial sings from the back corner of the room.
“Grace isn’t a fluid,” Maion says, fumbling for the front of Vincent’s waistcoat this time, which makes for a much easier target. “It’s-the process is-complicated; it’s-they used some very-advanced-electromagnetics in combination with a few very old sigils, and they-it forces the Grace to solidify into a physical form. I’ll-bleed out. I can’t use it when it’s coalesced like this; it’s more powerful as photons, and more mutable, and I couldn’t heal myself with it, and it’d just be pouring out, and-”
Vincent kisses him to shut him up before he hurts himself worse. There’s a tiny trace of pink in each of Maion’s cheeks when they draw apart.
“I’m sorry,” Maion says. He swallows and blinks. “There hasn’t… been… anyone to talk to. They’re all dead, by the way.”
“I noticed,” Belial says of the pile of indistinct shapes that he’s been nudging at all this time. For a moment Vincent thinks he’s genuinely unhappy. “Marco owed me money, the little fucker.”
Blevins is sifting through blueprints on the table and kicking the nearest dwarf in the gut at intervals. “They were making a drill.”
“Using Grace as a power source, yes,” Maion says, and his eyes are clouding again. “Like biodiesel.”
“No,” Vincent says, “like murder.”
He crosses to the machine. Atop the scarred metal box lies the angel sword some Italian pilgrim stumbled on years ago, which the dwarves smuggled all the way to Sunshine State to scare cherubim into giving up their Grace.
Vincent takes it up, hefts it, and stabs it several times into the heart of the mechanism.
The machine makes a pitiable whirring noise and then goes silent. One of the dwarves is stupid enough to moan in dismay, and Vincent rewards him with a bullet in the other foot.
Maion watches the last few pulses of white light waver in the tubing and then crawl towards him and slip back into his vein. He bites his lip and slowly draws the long needle out; the puncture wound and the surrounding marks go searingly white and then smooth themselves down into unbroken skin.
Vincent tucks the angel sword into the back of his belt, holsters the Beretta, and moves over in time to slide his arm under Maion’s shoulder following the only-slightly-spiteful celestial obliteration of the various restraints.
“I’m all right,” Maion says, although he then proceeds to fist a hand in Vincent’s shirtfront. “It’s just you making me weak in the knees.”
“Isn’t he a catch?” Belial asks.
“Hey, man,” Blevins says, stepping on a dwarf en route to clap Maion gently on the available shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thank you,” Maion says, mustering a smile. “You should go see ‘The Hobbit’ with Vincent. We already have the tickets.”
“I’ll go!” Belial says. “We can sit in the back row and make out until people throw their drinks in our faces, and then we can tell them to burn in hell.”
The argument over whether or not this is an acceptable plan for the movie premiere takes them all the way up to the surface again. If the sewer smell clings to Vincent’s new Beretta, dwarf heads will roll.
“I need to go Up for a while,” Maion says, hugging Vincent’s arm around him. “I need to recuperate a lot of Grace, and…” His face pales a bit, but even here under the streetlamps it looks more natural now. “Warn them. That this can even happen.” He leans into Vincent’s shoulder and allows himself one deep sigh. “I was trying to save them, you know. I-surrendered myself. I thought… but they were prepared, evidently, for larger prey. I know it was foolish.” He peeks up at Vincent’s face. “Do you…?”
“Forgive you?” Vincent asks. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
And Maion grins, even though his legs are still quavering, and chirps, “Then I’ll see you later!”, and kisses Vincent’s cheek, and disappears.
“You guys are so fucking married,” Blevins says.
“Shut your miserable little mouth,” Vincent says, but it’s probably not terribly intimidating given that he’s smiling.
[SEQUEL]