Blood twined round his fingers as he stood in the pocket of space, that he shared with the inert body, gushing. The people he knew, prized, foregathered steps away. Horror was white in many of their bodies. But the one thing orthodox in their faces? Helena's grey eyes narrowed at the scene, her air of revulsion spreading afield. Disgust. Kallista turned away from him, hate apprehending her once soft features. Disgust. Mikkel's eyes enlarged at him and the body, ponds of azure no longer shy to lambast. Disgust. Adona curled her upper lip, nose raised. Disgust. Ezekiel stared at him, golden eyes voicing words he wished to yell.
"This, is what you deserve."
With a sudden breath sucked in, Luka was jogged from his sleep. Again, the brunet thought. He looked to his left, as fingers cradled the arm on his stomach for solace. Mammon's eyes flapped open at his irregular breaths, and instantly knew what had betided him.
"It happened again...huh?" he rasped, arms programmed to clinch him. The raven-haired pecked his forehead, fingers unsnarling the knots of his head.
"Yeah..."
Like incisors sunk into ripe apples, that dream never left him—rather her body. Hours, days, months, seasons; they would all pass, and now he arose in July, but his mind would forever remain in that day. During the light hours, Luka could find peace from the sun, yet at night, it seemed that the moon could but give him that clemency.
That burning feeling, was fanned when he came under the eyes of the archangels, in the Court of Choiruo. A place for the unruly, and anarchic—a place he never, thought he would be. Luka was put on a circular stand, a four-pointed star beneath him. Empty seats wound along the tall ceiling, white columns sourcing below. Seven mighty pedestals, fluted gold and presenting biblical images, environed him. Ezekiel, was beside his father's column and stared at him with open eyes, as the seven acclaimed angels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Jophiel, Camael and Zadkiel—perched before him.
Robes of red, blue, gold and purple silk draped over their broad shoulders. Aureate halos shone behind their heads. Both the cherub, and the throne, looked like children compared to their lofty stature—even their wings could shade thousands.
"Luka of Isaac," a deep voice, Michael's, announced. It echoed throughout the court, and his tingling ears. Luka bowed his head and wings instantly, as if the weight of his voice amassed at his skull. "You have been summoned before our Lord, tell us why."
The brunet could feel a broiling heat on his scalp, but a comfort it was. "I...have killed a mortal, when my purpose is to protect."
Words in a language he could not understand, were thrown around him.
"Action is shadowed by reason. Tell us why you did it, child." It was Raphael, eyes an idyllic navy with galaxies expanding in them, and brown hair flowing to his shoulders. Silent children played at his sandalled feet.
"Her words...provoked me greatly. I couldn't handle them anymore, and my powers...went out of control."
"A throne is a prestigious rank, they know control well, so I believe," Uriel began, his silver hair short. "Tell us of the mortal's behaviour, Luka."
"Of a demon. There is no doubt in my being that she was possessed." Although Luka had seen Uriel as second to his father, his eyes, homely, were downcast. At present, he was his judge. "She boasted a blood bloom, that she said Zalgiur gave to her."
Copious amounts of words caromed. The cherub pottered around the starred platform, a scarlet cushion manifesting on his forearms with the deceased flower of portent.
"She had knowledge of things she shouldn't have had."
Gabriel, began with a sigh—the feathers of his wing awoke, as did the red strands of his hair. "Tell us what she spoke of."
"Shiloh...how she is my mother."
The albino halted himself at Zadkiel's brushed pedestal, his quilled wings flinching with disquiet. Luka hadn't already known? He thought.
"And...how she abandoned Heaven, for a demon. I have no recollection of it."
All set of glowing eyes took aim at Michael, even Ezekiel's.
"What is the meaning of this?" Uriel bellowed at his brother, but the King, placidly smiled at all six of his siblings.
"Patience," Jophiel drawled. Her paradigm of beauty explicit in the blonde, flowered hair that graced the cream marble ground, and amethyst eyes. "I have hope that our brother has a reasonable explanation."
The auburn-haired Camael, nodded in agreement, his magnetite eyes lifting from the throne and to Michael. "Brother?"
"In the name of God, I ask you all to leave. I shall deal with this, and speak of it to you at a later time."
The angels each vanished faster than locusts could devastate societies. The pedestal of Michael retrenched, and Luka could, at long last, espy him. Blond hair curled behind his ears, and golden eyes stared at the fretful throne, by some means coruscating brighter than Uriel's. A maroon cloak he wore, with a golden clasp and a brown bible in hand.
Now that the King had preceded Luka, in all his might, every question he had seemed to fleece him.
"Be not afraid, little throne. I simply wish to speak to you alone." How could that statement hold support, when a sharpened spear trod behind him. "It is true you have no recollection, I saw to it."
"But, why? Do I not deserve to know who my true mother is?"
"It was a request, by your father Luka."
The brunet's brows snapped together. He couldn't understand why his father would ask of such a thing.
"Although centuries had passed, you were still distraught by the war. Your mother was a power, slaying those fallen who tried to climb up to Heaven," the King verbalised, his footsteps quiet so as not to divert.
Luka gulped—he knew what he was going to say next. "But, she fell in love with one..."
"I see, that is what she said." Michael twisted around on his heels, perplexity dimming the sun of his halo. "Your mother was pulled down by the damned. Love is out of the question."
"But Leilani-"
"A fabrication, she does not exist. It appears that the memory of your mother overlapped with her image."
A gnawing pain took to the sides of his head. Nothing he harkened to, could be made sense of. "What about...my father?"
"Like you, he grew distraught at the loss of his wife, and so he went down there to find her but perished in battle."
A wooden railing materialised as the throne's palms fell down.
"I know well, that this is troubling to the core, but it will all make sense soon Luka."
Those sealing words managed to turn his stomach to tumbleweed every time he thought about it. What had the King known that he didn't? What else was the King hiding from him?
Luka dipped the slice of cheese pizza into the garlic sauce, as the raven-haired threw a potato wedge into his mouth. A crunch ensued, forewarning the throne of his unwavering stare. "So I was thinkin'..."
"Yeah?"
"We go back to Weißstein for a bit."
The brunet looked up at him, but flashing memories that name brought back bedimmed his face. He set down the half-eaten slice, and stirred the sauce with a wedge. "Okay...but why so suddenly?"
"Vick called. Said Sol's birthday is on the fourth an' he wants us to visit."
"How is she?"
"She's gettin' better, baby," Mammon answered. "I know you beat yourself over what happened to her, but she wouldn' be alive if it wasn't for you."
"I know." Luka exhaled, sadness rising in his throat once the breath left. He let his head fall on the raven-haired's lap, lifting his legs upon the beige couch. "You're coming too right?"
"'Course. I wouldn't let you go on your own. That town brings back bad memories for me too..." He pushed a chip into the throne's mouth.
"What do we get her though?"
Mammon gave a shrug of his bare shoulders whilst he continued to eat. "You knew her better than me, baby. 'Still can't believe Marie gave you a job there."
The brunet laughed, his fingers toying with the grey strings of his joggers. "It wasn't bad! I liked working there!"
"What's so fun about puttin' paint on shelves? You could put your paint on me instead..."
"Mammon!"
"Don't deny the fact that you want me, baby. You're tryna' take my pants off me!"
Luka's fingers drew back immediately, rallying above his rubescent face. "It's not like that!"
"Oh, but it is baby," the raven-haired whispered as he pulled his hands away, pressing a chaste kiss against his revealing forehead.
The couple, perforce, had become closer in core. It was a formosity, truly. To behold how their hands began to cast into each other, how their lips affixed without struggle, how their bodies fit over when they slumbered. Who would have known, that the love between demon and angel, could be so pure?
"You know Sol and Vick started datin'?"
The brunet's eyes distended, albeit a scrap of him wondered of that strange scenario. "Really? They'd always fight when I saw them together."
"Kinda' like us." Mammon extended his arm to place the blue box of chips down on the round coffee table. "You know, I didn' hate you when I first met you."
Luka haled his fingertip along his embossed torso. "You didn't? I always thought you did."
"Nah, there was somethin' different about you. I know it sounds cliché as hell, but...it feels like we were always meant to be." The raven-haired's palm detained his waist.
"You're so cute sometimes. Now, it's my turn!" The aerial lightbulb gleamed on the throne's grin, as cupid's arrow did on the raven-haired's eyes. "I was so angry...when I first heard that I was becoming your guardian angel. I always thought...God was punishing me, but now, I realised that you're my blessing from him..."
"A demon as your blessing?" Mammon chuckled. "God works in weird ways, huh?"
"Yeah!" Luka sat upright on his lap, his arms ringing the demon's neck. "He let me find true love, where I thought hatred lived."
"You know what we should do?" Mammon's cold palms roved beneath the oversized brown shirt, his fingertips bestrewing items of heat.
The brunet mused his ferrous eyes. Such husky words like that, could not purl an innocent picture in his mind. "What?..."
"We start packin'," he purred, propelling Luka to the couch cushion before rising, and seizing the cardboard box of wedges—a reward for rewiring his core.
"Seriously?!"
"What did you think I was gonna' say?"
Speedily, he looked down at the treen floor with shame and employed his mind to polishing off the last slice. Lord, help him. The throne could hardly abide his teasing, and Mammon knew that well. He thrust the breaded crust in his mouth, stealing across the achromic sitting room to the palatial corridor. Despite having moved to a new city of beginnings, Trier, months previous, their apartment hadn't changed—akin to the red and orange tulips settled on the round dining table.
"Her birthday's in a week...must we pack so early?" Luka questioned, his side against the doorframe as the raven-haired pulled a black luggage out from the high wardrobe shelf.
"We haven' been there in months." He relinquished the luggage on the teddy fleece duvet, light from the window above greeting its new companion. "Don't you wanna' take some time to explore the places we left behind?"
"I suppose..."
This, haply, was a good thing—Luka could paint over the harrowing thoughts, with the yellow memories of encounters. No matter how much the throne loathed that town, and his being there, it was the borehole of their love.
Mammon hurled a heap of clothes at him from the mirrored wardrobe, a grin being swept across his face. "Get to packin', baby."