The Chronicles of a Young Antichrist

Quit Reflections

Spring break in Heaven was supposed to be peaceful. That was the official idea, anyway. In practice, placing eight-year-old Marcus Drago in the middle of one of Heaven's vast flowering fields with an archangel, a demon, and no adult supervision within screaming distance was less a peaceful afternoon and more a potentially historic incident just waiting for the paperwork.

To be fair, nothing had exploded yet.

The grass rolled away in impossible green waves beneath a sky so clear and blue it looked as if someone had polished eternity itself. Wildflowers in every imaginable color bobbed gently in the warm breeze, and the air carried the scent of honey, sunlight, fresh rain, and that soft golden warmth mortals spent lifetimes trying—and usually failing—to describe.

Marcus lay flat on his back, a blade of grass dangling from the corner of his mouth, his small red wings spread wide behind him like a scarlet blanket soaking up the sun. A few feet to his left sat Raphael, the Archangel of Healing, looking calm, gentle, holy, and permanently worried in that special way only angels assigned to Marcus duty ever achieved.

To his right lounged Gorgoth, a mountain of a demon who could probably bench-press a cathedral if sufficiently challenged. At the moment, Gorgoth wore a crown made entirely of daisies that Marcus had carefully placed on his head twenty minutes earlier. The demon was pretending not to notice.

"Don't move," Marcus said, still staring at the clouds.

"I haven't moved in six minutes," Gorgoth rumbled.

"Good. Princesses need posture."

Raphael made a small sound suspiciously close to a laugh. Gorgoth slowly turned his enormous head toward the angel.

"Not one word."

"I said nothing."

"You thought something."

"I am allowed private thoughts."

"You're an angel. You don't have private anything."

Marcus lifted his head and squinted critically at the daisy crown, apparently reconsidering the entire artistic direction of his creation. "Actually, I think he looks more like a queen."

Gorgoth closed his eyes in silent suffering. Raphael smiled serenely.

"A fair correction."

"I hate both of you," Gorgoth muttered.

"No, you don't," Marcus replied happily, dropping back into the grass.

And that was the problem.

No one really hated Marcus. They tried sometimes—especially demons with reputations to protect—but he made it nearly impossible. He was chaos with wings: loud, perpetually hungry, endlessly curious, and apparently convinced snacks constituted a basic celestial right. But he was also warm, bright, and ridiculously affectionate, the kind of child who would accidentally set a curtain on fire and then spend three hours apologizing to it.

Before they left, Simonetta had pulled both babysitters aside with the particular look of a mother who knew her son, loved her son, and harbored absolutely no illusions about him.

"He's starting to ask the big questions," she had warned, her fiery red hair catching the porch light like living flame. "Be gentle. Kid-friendly. Lucifer, his grandparents, and I will have the full talk with him when he's older. For now, just enough to satisfy that bottomless curiosity of his."

Raphael had nodded solemnly.

Gorgoth had nodded too.

Simonetta had continued looking specifically at Gorgoth.