someone to watch over me

But she did not take his hand, and a jolt of guilt – unfounded, surely; all he’d done was taking whippings so that the two of them could reunite – shook him, curling his fingers into his palm and letting his hand swing lamely at his side. Abel was not sure he quite understood her hesitation, but then again he had been far too optimistic in coming across the fence. He was a foreign presence here; humans stuck together, as evidenced by the prior chaos that had ensued at the prison, and he was very obviously not one of them. 

His hand fell to his ribs once more; the feeling of unbelonging made his heart thump, and it ached deep within the ravines that cut his ribs. Junia’s Evangeline was an ethereal being, starlight trapped in human skin; he could see it now, shadowed visage painted bright by Junia’s accounts. Abel wanted so desperately for her to like him, for he liked her already, by proxy. But she was so hesitant. 

And it was not until she spoke that he understood. 

Abel had never wanted to make anyone feel guilt for what had happened to him; he’d said time and time again that he would have taken the punishment a million times over, for he knew that it was for a greater cause. To think that she, a human, should feel guilty for this was outrageous; it would be akin to blaming the angels for the Fall. “You are no more responsible than I,” he quickly answered, fingers twitching at his sides, for he wished so desperately to hold her hand, to assure her that it was alright. 

“You protected Junia, when I could not,” Abel implored, though he was not sure what his comfort could truly do for her now, not when even she did not believe it, “I told her to stay, asked her; she came to the fence on the very first afternoon that I was put upon the post. I begged her to stay – I would not have done that if I’d not thought that with you was where Junia belonged. It was not your fault, Evangeline; guilt is unneeded here. There is nothing to forgive – no transgressions that need be confessed. It’s alright. I’m here, aren’t !?” The last was said with a halfhearted laugh, shrugging lamely, for he hadn’t the slightest idea how to comfort her, or if it was even his place. 

“I came here to thank you for taking care of her. I love Junia – she loves you, and it’s clear that you care for her dearly as well. I can appreciate that more than words can express.”

Her Guardian Angel, her confessor, her savior; smiling down on her no matter what sins she confessed, who had lifted her up on angel wings and taken her to a better place. Who, even after everything, is still the source of all her strength, as she was in heaven. Who has never seemed to blame Evangeline for anything, even when Evangeline blamed herself. 

She had never hoped that she could find that utter acceptance from one angel, and she’s shocked anew to receive it from a second. She, who has always been so terribly unworthy: so many mistakes she’s made, so much time she’s wasted, so much she has to make up for. Every day, she questions why she has survived. And every day, despite the often terrible strangeness of life after the apparent end of the Holy War, she wonders why she’s received the blessings she has: her life, when so many have died, but most of all—Junia.  

Junia who, by the grace of this angel, was allowed to be at Evangeline’s side, no matter how short a time. Surely he is a blessing, too.

And, all at once, it seems even more terrible that the morning at the prison had gone the way it had, that it had ended with the fence between them once again. It had ended Abel’s torment, but it also strips his suffering of its meaning—he suffered so Junia and Evangeline could be together, and now they are not. The demons won. The demons always win.

She feels terribly guilty, then, but for something different: for not taking his hand, for the look that she’s put on his face. His words are absolution she had not expected to receive, and her overwhelming gratitude makes her tongue sit clumsily in her mouth—what could she possibly say to show him how grateful and humbled she is by his forgiveness, how in awe she is of his grace. She doesn’t know, and so she can only settle for what little she has at her disposal: “Thank you,” she says, her words thick with held back emotion, the stifled urge to cry happy tears. “Thank you so much I—I don’t know what to say.”

And she holds out her hand. 

“How are you—how did you cross the fence? If you need a place to hide, I think Junia would vouch for my spare room.”

In her construction, fate had dubbed her a piece of irony. He gave her a guardian named Eden, sent her to a place called Paradise, made her the daughter of the man who sent Lucifer to hell, the daughter who could not fight, Lucifer’s prisoner, his soldier and servant, bound and gagged. Fate gave with one hand what it took away with the other. It gave her a decade’s worth of happiness, lavender infused tea parties on the lawn, a storybook world, laughter that never ceased. Then, in sixty seconds, it took it all away - it took him all away. Once, she would have argued that the pain of losing her Father was the worst, that nothing after could compare to having your one constant torn, for no good reason (or so it had appeared). Now, she realized she had played herself as a fool. There was a fate wore. Far worse. 

Indeed, it was her life.

The world was hers to look at, but never to touch. It was hers to scream at but her mouth never opened. She was but a mere observer, a shadow of the girl she had once been. Fate made a cruel mistress - chipping away and putting darkness where brightness had once stood. They took a freedom fighter and made her a soldier, draped in a cloak of red - hands tainted by the deed done in her name. And all the while, that voice laughed - to the captive audience of simply one. A mere solider in an Empire, but in her mind, they ruled supreme. Words of power, of agency, of control - they held no meaning for her now. Her mind was a prison and she the chained mute.

Autumn had fallen quickly, leaves tumbling to the floor - no one around to rake them up. As a child, her Father would enlist her in the all day task of piling them up, pretending that they weren’t going to honour their age old tradition, not this year. But, sure as not, at the end of each day, he caught her eye, picked her up and tossed her in. It had been the feeling of flight, the feeling of freedom, the feeling of living. Now, she only had memories to sustain her, a poor comparison for the real thing. Once, she had been alive, now, she was a mere memory of the girl she had once been. 

To her sides, red Xs lined the doors - marking out the victims that would fall in the days yet to come. Somewhere, deep inside, she felt herself shudder, the movement never translating in reality. She could think, but she could not do. Sliced and diced open, Leviathan would make monsters of them all, enslave them, pollute their minds with the presence of an other. She had glimpsed them, fair hair and youthful locks, the marks of civilians, not soldiers. Claire wanted to help them, they wanted to laugh, to welcome new comrades to their ranks, to relish in her misery. They thought her sorrow made her weak. They were wrong. It made her strong. 

A gust of wind, footsteps at her side and suddenly, she knew she was not alone. Altering her position and turning her head, blue iris’s settled upon the approaching figure. Claire willed herself into process, into the light. It was a gamble, never a question of when she would speak, but who. “It happened quickly. The Xs. They’re not messing around.”

She feels like she should have been able to save herself from this. Hasn’t she been good? Hasn’t she kept her head down and given smiles to demons when she passed them in the street, putting on her best actress’ face while inside her heart quivered? She’s too quiet to be a threat, if that is indeed what that X means. 

Her love for Junia is a candle, hidden inside her chest. She cannot tell who knows or doesn’t know, if the commotion in her home the morning they lost Junia but regained Stella was noted by the demons, if they now know that Evangeline is not as complacent as she pretends, that for one Angel she would risk it all. She doesn’t know, but she’s afraid that they might.

How often she thinks it: I don’t know. She wakes in the morning and she tries to ignore the X on her door and she tries to go about a routine she’d set out when life in Paradise had been strange and discomfiting but not as terrifying as it often is now but it weighs on her, all the things she does not now. How can she hope to fight? How can she hope to help Junia, and all the other angels besides?

Likewise, she does not know what to make of Paradise’s most recent arrivals. Nor, she thinks, does the rest of the town. But some questions feel too big for her to answer. In this war, she is still nothing more than a pawn. While others fight, Evangeline only goes where she is led and does what she’s told. She had not made her mind up, whether to speak to Claire or not, but when Claire speaks first her mind is made up for her: to deliberately ignore the woman would be a statement much too strong for Evangeline to make. She speaks when she is spoken to. 

Swallowing around her trepidation, she tugs the sleeves of her sweater over her palms as she steps closer, a gesture both childlike and nervous, as she asks a question that feels far too bold. “Do you know what  they mean?”

Junia had lost Stella among all the commotion, but her thoughts were too preoccupied to worry overmuch about her safety, only assured that she would be able to escape. Right now, Junia’s thoughts turned to another human: Evangeline. Going into this morning’s exchange, Junia hadn’t allowed herself to have any doubts. She refused to create any fuel for a self-fulfilling prophecy, and thus had remained unrealistically optimistic. However, even her cloak of optimism could not shroud the pain of being separated from her love, and in a brief moment of panic and fear and desperation the two of them had decided on a meet up point, in case everything went awry.

Even now, as she desperately dodged wings and turned corners with only the harsh sounds of her breathing for company, Junia was not sure what their meeting would do. She wanted to think that it was so the two of them could escape together, make sure the other was safe. However, as she neared the hallway that now held empty cells, a sick churning began in her stomach. It felt like she was running towards some sort of precipice, yet she didn’t slow her pace–she could not. 

Turning the corner, she gasped a breath as she saw Evangeline up ahead, seemingly unscathed, but she would not feel better until she was closer, until she could be sure. Junia slowed down just enough to avoid crashing into the human, but instead landed against her, wrapping her arms around Evangeline in a quick embrace. Unbidden, tears appeared in her eyes, but she blinked them away just as fast. She would not believe this was goodbye. “Are you okay?” Junia asked, pulling away slightly, worry marring her brow. “It has all gotten quite chaotic. I–I don’t know if we’ll make it out.” The words, tripped off her tongue as accidentally as those tears had sprung in her eyes. Surrounded by shadows, metal bars, and blood-stained floors, it seemed futile to remain optimistic.

It was all a blur: Adelaide, and a feeling of betrayal. The sick feeling in her stomach when Holly let her know that one of Adelaide’s guns was missing, the terrible image those words had conjured up—an image that she still can’t shake, of a woman she admires pointing a gun at the angel she loves. The plan had been formed without her input, she’d quickly bit her tongue on her half-formed protests when it became obvious that Junia was willing to go along.

How she hated the idea of letting Junia out of her sight, after knowing what it was like to have her close. She’d wanted so badly to go with Adelaide and Isabella and Junia, that way she’d know that her Angel had one person who valued her safety above all others, who would not see any harm befall her. But Evangeline’s small voice was lost among the human plotters, louder and more assertive than she, and so she went into the tunnels, but not without a lingering goodbye and a promise: she and Junia would meet up on the other side.

Evangeline would know that Junia had made it to safety, because she would bring her there herself. Yesterday, she would have said that she trusted Adelaide with the task, but after this morning’s event, she is no longer sure that’s true.

And so she waits. And as she waits, her stomach feels leaden, her heart heavy, as it has since she watched Junia bound and being lead away from her. The only thing that can lift her spirits is Junia’s safe arrival, and when the Angel wraps her arms around her Evangeline returns in kind and just stands there, wasting precious moments she’s unsure they have to spare, but unable to make herself step away.

“I’m okay,” she confirms, drawing strength from her Angel’s presence. Junia seems worried and uncertain, but that only means that Evangeline must be strong—stronger than she’s ever been, stronger than she could ever be, were she only being strong for herself. She grasps Junia’s hand, squeezing it once in both of hers before using it to tug her forwards, back towards the tunnels to Paradise. “We will,” she says, willing hervoice to be steady, willing them both to believe it. “We’ll make it back, and I’ll hide you, and we’ll—we’ll be okay.”

But then the next best thing emerged from the darkness, blonde and glowing like every fantasy that Junia had painted for him in the silence of night and in secret whispers. She was angelic in her humanity, barely illuminated by a flickering streetlight above; this was Evangeline, no doubt. She fit every description Junia had ever painted, and Junia had never been wrong before. 

Abel took a tentative step forward, half convinced that she was simply some sort of specter, created by the nighttime to lure him further away from the street and into the darkness. But bracing his healing ribs with a tentative hand, he stepped forward, peering at her shadowed figure with wonder and muted anticipation; was he really to meet the fabled Evangeline after all this time? 

“That’s – that’s me, yes,” Abel nodded, hesitating a safe distance from her, for he would have rushed to any others that he knew better; the last thing he wanted to do was frighten her away from him. If Dominic had been right, there were enough humans who wished to do him in; if this was some artful recreation of Junia’s Evangeline to lure him into a trap, he refused to run directly into it. But, oh, how he wished to see the storied angelic creature up close. Anything and anyone worth being loved that dearly by his wonderful Junia was surely something spectacular to behold. 

And so he stepped forward again, into the pool of light in which she stood. 

“Are you…” he took a deep breath, fully steeled for the specter to come crashing down, or perhaps to awaken in his cell, a dream proven false, “are you Evangeline?” The question hung in the air between them, and he immediately knew it to be true, stepping forward once more to reach for her hand, though his fingers hovered tentatively between them, for the last thing he wanted to do was frighten her with enthusiasm. 

“Oh, how I’ve wanted to meet you.”

But mankind has often trembled to look upon angels, and Evangeline again remembers why: her humanity seems so flawed next to his divinity. She had watched him gracefully martyred and felt terribly frail in comparison. She knows that she is weak, in body and in spirit. She knows there is much that she cannot endure.

He presses a hand to his ribs: a moment of weakness that should be not be there, a moment of pain that Evangeline’s silence has made her a party to, and Evangeline feels a quiver in her knees and in her palms, a sudden urge to kneel and pray for forgiveness.

But he does not look like divine retribution, like an avenging angel here to make Evangeline answer for her sins. Instead, he appears as Stella and others have painted him, he appears as Evangeline has thought him from afar—he appears kind.“That’s me,” she murmurs, and the words feel pulled out of her, like they’re uttered without thought. It feels involuntary: like there’s nothing she can do but answer an angel’s call.

She does not know how he can look upon her so kindly. She does not know how she will be able to look upon herself, after meeting him, after truly beholding him for the first time.

His next words, uttered with such warmth; his outstretched hand—they confuse her utterly. “Me?” She asks, all her incredulity and guilt poured into one syllable. She cannot bring herself to take his hand. She feels far too unworthy. “But I—it’s my fault. What was done to you. I stood by and watched it happen because I wanted—” to be with Junia, to keep her close, to keep her safe, even when the price became terrible, her thoughts are poison, a swirling whirlwind, and she makes this angel with a kind face her confessional “—there’s no excusing it. You may not have had a choice, but I did, and I chose to do nothing. I’m so—I’m so sorry. I don’t know how you can look at me.”

Didn’t she realize that he was above her?

Her voice in his ears makes him hit the wood hard enough for it to splinter. The anger inside of his stomach feels like gasoline has been poured over the top of it and now the blows are hard enough to break bone. Skin was tearing and blood was dripping– it made him feel like something, something more than broken. “You want to go inside? Fine. I’ll move.” He steps to the side and yanks the door open for her motioning her inside. “Go for it. I’ll wait.”

She doesn’t understand how Dominic can do this to himself. And as he continues to rain blows on the door to their shared home, leaving dark red smears over the X painted there, she understands less and less. Her stomach seems to twist with every thud of his fists against wood, and her eyes well up with tears that she doesn’t want to let fall—how useless they are, how weak, how Dominic will mock her for them, but she can’t seem to keep them down. 

She doesn’t understand, she thinks it is the door that has upset him.

“I want you stop!” She cries, her voice coming out too loud, too high, too shrill. She wants to be calm in these moments, wants to be rational and persuasive, wants to be a pillar of strength. She isn’t. Her heart is too exposed and vulnerable on her sleeve, and it trembles and breaks at the slightest upset.

But what she can do is stand in the threshold, arms braced on either side of the open doorframe, preventing him from closing it and going back to his self-punishment. “Is it the X?” she presses, in the moment’s silence, hoping that her trembling chin isn’t something he notices. “We can wash it off together. I can help. You don’t have to—do this.”

When the electricity binding the door shut clicked off in a sudden lack of buzz in the air, Abel was already on his feet. Two days of relief from whipping – no matter how distraught he was that Junia was back and Stella was gone – had made him much stronger. Perhaps it was the foreign sensation of anger that he had failed to keep Junia on the other side of the fence, but he simply could not sit still. Anger, disappointment, and determination; Abel was a smart man, despite his timid stature. He knew what the lack of electricity meant; he knew that the fence would suffer just as easily, that he could draw close to the chain link without fear of electrocution. 

And so across the yard he hastened, darting from shadow to shadow; he could hardly feel the brittleness of his ribs, the freshly forming scars upon his back. Quickly, without any hesitation, he leapt to the gate, heart stopping and throat clenching for he expected, for the slightest moment, that the fence would come on again just as his fingers latched around the handle and gave it a great pull. Were he aloud, he might have screamed, with eyes closed and teeth clenched, but with a silent plea, he threw himself against the gate, the cool, dead, metal, and fell through the flimsy latch, into Paradise. It was strange, how weak the fence was without the electricity to keep it alive. 

And it was even stranger that he was afraid to be here. Abel scrambled to his feet, hastening forward and into the trees before he could lose his resolve. He could see the lights of the town in the distance, despite how close he felt to fainting. Over and over he told himself not to look back, not to regret; if he looked back, his resolve surely would be lost. Raphael would be proud of him for taking such a chance – but speaking to, and of, Raphael would be a hurdle all in itself, for Abel could think only of how he had tried to run. A second time abandoned; he would have been much happier had he succeeded. 

He was startled by the sudden change of terrain; grass to pavement beneath his feet. Abel felt horribly small in comparison to the buildings that towered over him, foreign and mismatched. He came to a stop in the middle of the road, tugging absently at his blood-stained shirt; the diner he recognized, simply becuase Stella had talked of it at such length. The houses he had seen from his window. But everything else was so foreign that he didn’t know where to start. And he could only imagine how he looked; a rather small, rather timid angel in the middle of the street, unsure of whether he wanted to be found, or if he wanted to simply disappear. 

She came back to her house in Paradise, Junia still hidden inside. She had lost track of how many people knew, but still, none of them had told. The next day, she had hid, hoping beyond hope that she could avoid being taken across the fence again, made to witness the same sight. Part of her knew that she wouldn’t break, that no matter how many times they made her look, made her watch, she would not be the one to give up Junia, to let the fence come between them again.

That did not make watching easy. It only made her feel more monstrous.

How many had suffered, so Evangeline could keep her Angel close? Abel, punished for every day Junia walked free. Stella—so strong, so kind—held on the wrong side of the fence for every day Junia was.  

And Evangeline had never even spoken to him. The angel that Stella spoke of so highly, with the boyish face and gentle eyes. She had never asked him if he would bear his torment for Junia’s sake, she had only sentenced him, an angel, to his fate, sealed her lips tight and forced him to bear it. She had never thanked him for it, either. 

Junia is back on the other side of the fence, now. And while Evangeline would trade those days for nothing, she prays for forgiveness at night, now. But her prayers, as they have been since coming to Paradise, are hollow. They feel unanswered, unheard. Heaven, which once had seemed so close to her, feels very far away.

And then—a figure in the shadows, as though her guilt has conjured him. 

“Abel?” She asks, aghast, as though she can’t believe that she hasn’t imagined his presence. For first words, they seem unbefitting, but she has no others to offer up.

He hadn’t been outside in two days and nothing had left his mouth that wasn’t a grunt or a groan. The residents of his home probably would have thought he was a ghost if they didn’t know he lived there. Dominic went out of his way to ignore any and everything that came towards him. No food entered into his body– it wasn’t like he could eat anything anyway. There was something horrible stuck inside of his mouth that left a taste he’d never experienced before. His attention was split between figuring out how to get the taste out of his mouth and figuring out what to do with some of the tools he’d taken from one of the demons during the rescue attempt. 

When the sun rose on the third day, he headed outside to clear his head and upon closing the door he was greeted to the sight of a big red X. Numerous thoughts ran through his mind about what it could be, but there was only one that won out. They were reminding him of what he had done, reminding him of the taste in his mouth, they were reminding him of his failures. He couldn’t even save one girl– Stella– the only person in this whole fucking city that might have meant something to him. Why did he care so much? Why did the universe seem intent on taking every fucking thing in the world away from him? Why couldn’t he kill a single fucking demon? Anger boiled up his stomach, licking at his sides, licking at everything it could find. He bit down on his tongue in order to replace the taste of failure with blood. Pale were clenched tight before they went flying towards the door in a punch. One turned to two, two to three and so on and so on. 

Goddamn it.

Blood was starting to seep through to the door from his knuckles, but it didn’t matter, nothing could stop him from his task. Either the door would give or his hands would. There were footsteps nearby, but he didn’t stop. “Fuck off,” he screams half to the door and half to the person who was drawing close. “Can’t you see when people are fucking busy?”

She had gone to him for help, when she’d needed someone, when Adelaide had locked herself and a gun in with Junia—when Evangeline had been panicked, and guilty, and much too frail to break the door down herself. And so she owes it to him to worry about him, too, even as she worries about so many others: about Abel, about Stella, about Junia. 

She’d gone to the fence, separating them once more, in vain hopes of seeing her, the X on their door nearly unnoticed when she’d left with such a singular goal in mind. She’s surprised to see that it is what’s captured Dominic, what’s caused him to emerge from his self-imposed exile, and she can’t help but flinch when he yells.

—but she’s made of sterner stuff than that, or she wants to be, and so she does as she always does, when it comes to him: she tries. Tries to get through to him, tries not to let him push or scare her away. 

“Let me help,” she entreats. “It’s my house, too. And Dominic—” she gasps softly, when she gets a closer look, “your hands. You’re bleeding.”

So she searches. 

Delilah combs through every vacant space, every secluded area. The kinds of places spiders might nestle and build their webs; the places where creatures of darkness thrived. They had moved the humans to those corners, forced them into separation and paranoia. Little by little, they are encouraging the human beings to their side. Forging them into night creatures. 

Delilah walks to those empty spaces, not minding the time it takes. It consumes her day, it consumes her energy, it consumes her thoughts. 

Then music splits her concentration. 

It is a song she somehow knows, words familiar as they are unfamiliar; a vague sense of recognition within her that exemplifies just how blurry her prior years have been. How blindly she has been living since Samson. Since her own death. Everything after is a mess of suppressed pain and projected arrogance, plays at torturous malice and grabs at attaining a semblance of a human life once more ( that was why she had curled her hands around throats, plunged her soul within unsuspecting bodies until she tore them apart from within ). 

That is where she knows it from, alright. A memory better put off than embraced. A woman with a strong, boisterous tone and a luxe house and two estranged husbands and the eyes of America on her. A once-glorious actress made into an old woman, withered by age. Delilah put the nails in the coffin, and did so with drama. An extravagant end. From her perspective, it was a gift. A star not subjected to simply aging – and not like wine, but spoiled meat – until the world forgot her entirely. A star extinguished with an explosion rather than a fizzle. 

The voice she hears now is without the profundity of the old woman’s, but it is lovely. Nostalgic. Pulled from another time, delivered to Delilah in a curious combination. The cheeky brightness of the song is replaced instead with desperate hope; the kind clung to with white-knuckles, rather than held against one’s chest. Delilah listens silently for a while longer. She has always loved music. She can almost feel the hold of the viol beneath her fingers. As the woman sings, notes throb in her ears. Strings vibrate. She is consumed by an ache. 

Suddenly, the music clips off. Delilah sits a moment in quiet, leaning back upon her sharp heels. After a moment, she projects her voice out into open air. 

“Cock-eyed optimism doesn’t seem to be suiting you,” she purrs from her place around the bend. 

She’s left with nothing from that life now, besides a head full of old songs and a sense that she’s wasted her time, that she’d always been looking towards the wrong light.

In Paradise, she walks with her chin tucked to her chest. She sees demons and sometimes she musters up a smile for them—an actress’ smile, a liar’s smile—but more often than not she keeps her chin tucked to her chest. She makes herself small, and hopes that they don’t notice her. If she’s quiet, if she doesn’t cause any trouble, if she never complains, then surely they must leave her alone.

It’s grown worse now that she’s hiding an angel in her home. She feels paranoid at all moments, guilty at all moments—but her love is stronger than her fear, and she will do nothing to betray Junia.

But the thought is there, paranoid and restless, always at the back of her mind: they know. A demon interrupts her tremulous singing, and she almost jumps out of her skin. —and then, on the heels of her suddenly rabbiting thoughts is another—this demon knows South Pacific. It seems so absurd, so human, that she almost thinks she’d laugh if she had room for it around her heart in her throat. 

She freezes, like she’s been caught doing something wrong, like helpless prey hoping it would hide her from a predator’s sight. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, forces herself to breathe—one, two—and when she opens them again, craning her neck to catch a better glimpse of who’s interrupted her.

“No, I guess not,” she agrees, because she doesn’t have it in her disagree. “But I thought I’d give it a try.”

She turned to look at the human again, taking a deep breath of air to completely inflate her lungs. The stench of death had disappeared, or more likely, Eve was just so used to it that she didn’t notice it any more. After some time (whether it was hours or minutes, Eve didn’t know) in the dim light, struggling was no longer necessary to see. All along the corridor all Eve coculd see were doors and ornate handles. “Looks like he keeps the interesting stuff locked away.”

It all feels too big to her, too complicated. She’s read her bible, spent months pouring over its onionskin pages, but she’s no theologian. All she knows, truly, is right here and right now: and that is that the demons are monsters, and Eve is not. And that’s good enough for her.

“Thank you,” she smiles, feeling how surreal it is to be complimented by an angel. “It, uh, it means ‘good news.’ Though I don’t really know if I have any, I’m just as lost as you are, I think.”

Holly feels like she’s been blindfolded, her hands reaching out to feel something - anything because her vision had been impaired. And hopefully, no one had been lurking behind her with bad intentions. The thought almost causing a shiver to run down her spine. 

“… I can’t see anything either,” Holly responded, stepping closer to the stranger’s voice, “.. I’d rather take being trapped in a moving vehicle than stuck in darkness. No horror story ends well for people in our situation.” 

But then, she supposes she’ll have to wait and see tomorrow, when she can talk to Adelaide or Stella. Maybe she’s just too stupid and small and afraid to see the bigger picture—and, well, she can’t see much of anything right now.

“Well,” she says, trying to force some cheer into her voice—it should work (it only does a little bit), she’s an actress, after all. “At least we have each other.”

One step closer, and her outstretched hand bumps against Holly’s shoulder. And she’s relieved at it, no longer quite as alone in the darkness, but she still doesn’t know where to go from here.

“I… Well.” Stella shrugged a little, looking back down at the grass. “Obviously I believe that they’re, you know, real. Like physically here. And I believe that they’re…something else.” Something not human. “I’m just not sure that I buy that they’re angels. Like. The angels, from the Bible with the trumpets and the Scripture and all.”

Turning her eyes to the prison, she studied it carefully. The sun glinted off the rooftops and Stella thought of the structure nearby, the manor, where they had been just the other day. Where there were demons, in a war against the angels. And caught between it all, in the middle of it all, were them. The humans. A faction unto themselves. “I guess I’m just not ready to believe all of that. Not yet.”

If she ever pauses to think about them—her parents, all of her so-called friends, the true friends she’d made in rehab, her classmates in community college—it’s like, for a moment, she’s paralyzed. Like the world has thrown itself right off its axis. All she has to do is look around Paradise’s idyllic streets and see how tiny it is, allow the thought it: so we’re the only ones left.

And why should Evangeline have been spared? She’s nothing special. She’s never been the best at anything, never been particularly smart or strong or good. There’s only one thing she has that no one else does: Junia’s favor. And maybe it’s that grace that saved her, maybe that is her purpose—because there has to be a purpose. There has to be some meaning to this, some reason why Evangeline is here and so many are not. She has to make it be so.

There’s injustice everywhere. Committed against the humans, yes, but even more so against the angels. They’re natural companions, now, partners in the face of the demon’s cruelty. They have to help each other. It’s the only way Evangeline can see for either of them to be helped at all. “I guess I have to believe, now more than ever, because otherwise all this is just—awful. Even more awful. Do you know what I mean?”