(This book is currently under construction,hence new chapters as of 02/11/2019 as I work to complete the entire book. So if you get this notification it's best not to read this chapter out of nowhere if you're not reading the book. Thank you.)
Chapter 16– Fireline
The window boxes beneath the ledge outside smacked with rain falling domino fast by the time I had an idea for Dante's plate. He'd stayed. A quick rustle of spaghetti bolognese on my dish, and his was without doubt the simplest meal I'd ever created. And it wasn't spagbol.
Curious, he stood at the window leaning back, a bemused look to his eyes while his face ran the gamut of questions as to what I could possibly be laying at this table for his so-called dinner. Sitting in the middle of his plate under the light of the evening lamp, was a stem beer glass of liquor. Ta-dah. That was it. A bottle beside it too, for seconds. Never opened. The strongest bottle of liquor I owned, and only because it was a miscellaneous, and quite frankly irresponsible, Secret Santa gift one year. A little old now. Two years I'd say. Wasn't sure that was even old considering the dates on some wines. But this wasn't wine. This was some kick you into gear stuff.
It was supposed to be drunk neat in the smallest of shots. A toast to something or other, I think. Maybe a farewell to the departed. For that reason, in a split second it was supposed to make you feel alive. So here was to hoping it had the kind of kick it needed to satisfy a being like Dante. Maybe he could appreciate it even if it wasn't his usual kill-you-on-one-sip-alone drink. I was never going to drink this. I was keeping it more as a weapon one day if I ever needed to bash some poor misguided burglar's head in with it and forcefully chug it down that mistake he called a throat.
Dante scratched his eyebrow. "You know, last time I checked, a human's idea of dinner was edible."
I stood back. "And your idea of tasting was me."
"So why aren't you on the table instead? Since I don't have to eat I'm never full."
Because...I shifted a little when I remembered what soured everything. It wasn't lost on him.
"Right. That." His acknowledgement didn't stop there as, after a short pause, he said, "You must hate how much you're attracted to me."
"I'd have thought that about you." I doubt it was ideal.
"No actually, I don't hate it. That's what I hate."
"Because this attraction has lasted a little bit longer than usual for someone like you?"
"Because maybe the next time you can't look me in the eyes when I fuck you I'd be okay with that."
Dante came up to his set-up, face straight and voice stripped of niceties. "And what you said," he muttered. He nodded down at the table. "Pretty creative."
Settling down, I dipped into my spaghetti, but before I could take the first bite, Dante was downing his drink, draining it down his throat with a rain drop's speed. I blinked. Looking at it, he paused. Verdict?
"Weak."
My cutlery near clattered in shock. "You're kidding me."
"No." Empty glass firmly stamped on the table, although a secondary taste got his tongue and his brows raised in surprise. "Not bad though. Thank you, Ariel."
Oh, he said my name like that again. Like a place he visits often because he's so familiar with it. Like...I kept my head straight. And that thank you was sincere, too. I nodded his welcome and found my bites again.
It was easier to sit here and banter a bit after a hug that shook him up a little and had him talking like it never happened than say why it did. His need to hug me was a step too far. I noticed. A little more than just having sex. I guess he didn't want to lose sight of himself again. He had to remind himself of who he was. It seemed he couldn't afford to forget it, so he became resolute again.
This room, usually cosy, fell into the quiet details neither of us would say out loud where his thoughts were his and mine were mine. We neither shared however many we had or what they were. I wasn't sure he was down for talking. Not after what still hung over us. I ate in silence for a moment.
"If you're not a fallen angel, what are you?" I spoke into my food, tentative with how that came out and unsure he would answer.
Dante, my not so hard liquor to his mouth, took another speedy swallow because it was no where near his usual taste of human-death strong, and put the glass down.
"A demon," he replied.
"I know that."
"Apparently not."
"A demon who didn't fall to become one?" Still quiet, "How were you made if not like that?"
Dante sighed. "It's a long story."
"I have time." I rushed that out far too eager.
He dared a look after my abrupt response, almost taken by surprise as his hand froze over the bottle before he could lift it. Deciding against drinking it for now, he left it where it was, "I don't know if you have that kind of time but uh, to put it as simply as possible," he took a breath first. "I was born of a demon who was born of the First Fires."
As soon as he said that my heart sped up a teensy bit. It was weird. For the first time since finding out and this put the scare in my heart.
"Makes it real, doesn't it?" Dante said watching me. "All this hell on earth stuff."
Short answer? Yes.
There was no way to know what the First Fires meant unless he elaborated. There's no scripture on that, not that I knew of. Dante caught my eyes and I returned mine to my food for a moment. Just a sec and I'd be ready. I soon wondered if I'd ever be.
You know what? Stuff it. Instantly, I dropped my fork in my food. "Here, gimme that bottle."
But it was out of my reach before my fingers could flex around it. Dante drew it back hand-clutching quick.
"I'm not too keen on having you passed out or dead yet, Magpie. Give me half the chance and I might be if you try that again."
He wasn't having it one bit. He kept it from me. "Remember, you asked. Curious to know whether I fell out of the sky, wings on fire et al." He mocked the concept. At some point I'd imagined him like that and couldn't figure out how that wasn't his beginning.
Thinking about it, I took hold of my fork again, breathing long for a couple breaths before I got myself together again like Humpty Dumpty would pat me on the back.
"So," I said into my food, "you didn't then." Twirling several strands around my fork.
"Never even had wings."
Neither of us could tell how this would affect anything moving forward. In silence, we both sat, me to the sound of my carefully mulled-over mouthfuls, him to the sound of a pouring bottle.
I hesitated on what I should say next, repeatedly looking at him, which he clocked when he caught me doing it. So, on second thought, as he tired of my never-ending glances with no words, he put the bottle back down to get this over with like it was now or never.
"It was uh..." he wiped his mouth of the weak drink, "the first fire of Groundworld to sweep large swathes of land."
Holding my fork still, I froze on that word. "Groundworld?"
"That's what we call this place."
I stayed quiet for a moment when I realised what the conclusion was. "So...that means we'd call your place...'
"Underworld."
When Dante answered for me it was quick. No nonsense, no trepidation, just rip the plaster off, see what happens. There was no point holding it back now. It was too late.
I think he'd realised why I'd faltered from saying the word. It was no longer just some scary page ago in some book somewhere or an internet page away from a myth no one could prove. It was real. It was here. Sitting at my table. Looking like heaven. He must have sensed that I was too afraid to give his place a name. To give it an existence. Gosh, I could barely even say the word demon.
We didn't look at each other. I knew because I could see him in the reflected porcelain of his plate. There, his eyes kept down. I wondered if he was almost afraid to see my face now that was laid out between us.
After a pause reconciling myself with the reality that we were literally from two different worlds, "Is that where you originally lived? Where you're originally from? Like..." I had to pick my metaphorical balls back up. "Like in hell or something?"
He was done with has glass now. "If you think I live in Hell, I don't. Nobody lives in Hell. For starters if you're in Hell you're not living. Technically."
I didn't know why I couldn't get my food on my fork. It was like not being able to get past that one sentence on a page you're not taking in properly. I spoke while trying to focus "So was this the first fires of hell or..."
"The first fires of land." Dante took the bottle instead and downed it complete. He moved it aside. "That's where it all started. Right here on this side of the ground."
My eyes still on the bottle, I paused. My response only just made it out of a lengthy silence.
"I'm listening." And even then I didn't know I'd verbalised that thought until I'd stopped staring through the glass. His face formed into clarity.
"When the first fires raged," he started, "and was sweeping across the earth like a tide, word travelled of this great fire moving its way up consuming everything in its wake. During a drought, too. Everything, destroyed as it went. No one had ever seen anything like it. Apparently it was sparked by lightning.
A villager, tasked with keeping the fires from reaching her village, conjured a power that could get it under control, but the task was too great for the power she had. She could only do so much. But since it came from above it had to be ended below, so she cast the fires into the ground, asking the earth to swallow and confine it. To bury it under its rocks and crust and dirt. But there was a catch."
I hated catches. I looked at him but he didn't look back. When he did, I knew this was going to be bad.
"It became apparent that the only way it could be done was to ask the earth to swallow sin. All sin had to burn along with it. Bad, evil, sin-riddled people were rounded up and sacrificed, cast into the ground along with the fire. As much as the added power could get."
"Added?"
"She had to call upon a power greater than hers to make it happen," Dante said. "There's always a trade off. And when the trade was made it started out as it should have, rounding up all the right people, but then the power grew greedy and wanted more."
I swallowed when I realised what that meant.
"Every kind of human," I guessed, and watched him.
"Yes." Dante didn't shy away. "The more people the fire consumed the longer it stayed buried. That was the deal. All kinds of sin from every kind of person, not just the bad ones. All manner of people were in that fire."
I didn't want him to give me the time to imagine what every kind of human looked like. How big or how small, how scared or how fearless. How deserved or not. How loud the screams. The elderly. The children. I needed him to carry on real quick before I could picture anything.
But then I imagined it. Now it was in my head. I lowered my gaze to my plate as if my food could take up in my mind instead because that last part hit me in a way the other stuff hadn't. It was weird to continue eating after that. I toyed with my food instead. "And the villager?"
Dante didn't respond.
I looked up.
He made it seem so obvious. "She would've been given to the fires anyway."
Blinking, I stared. "You're joking me." My voice rose in disbelief.
He was so nonchalant. "She wasn't like the rest of them. You know how humans are. They can't get their heads around things that aren't the norm and here's this thing nobody understood, and you know what that does? That scares people. People like her scare others. She was tolerated until she became useful. Her life had always been under threat and she knew it. And here she was, given a chance to show that she could mean something, that she was the only person who could protect the place and keep the First Fires from destroying their land, crops, homes, and taking their lives in order to keep her own life when it was over. Here's this chance to live her life the way they never allowed her to before. Free. All on the condition she did what they asked. After being ostracised for pretty much her entire life she thought she might finally be accepted for something good. But they used her. Once accomplished, the villagers turned on her. Took it as an opportunity to burn what they couldn't understand. Called her a witch, cast her into the same ground to be swallowed by fire. The same one that took the others."
I wasn't sure I was hiding how horrified that made me. The way he told it...you could never be sure what he felt about it.
"Her soul, sin and power put in the fire among all the souls of composite human beings became the birth of the demon," he said. "She's the reason we exist. She brought about the first wave of us."
"Out of that, from under the world, we rose," he continued. "Born of evil, revenge, death, pride, resilience, fear, wrath, we embody it all. Everything that had to be disposed of and burned. All the dark bits humanity doesn't want to embrace, here we are. Encased in the beauty of human flesh is how we take form, you're not meant to see us coming, and within us lies a reflection of everything humans love to hate. We can be all of that and more without apology until it's time to mesh in with the rest of you. Then we have to play it all down like you all do. So, you want to know how we were made?" he asked, emotionally detached. "That's how."
I sat there, still as a gnome, taking in the gravity of everything he was, and none of it I could've ever convinced myself I'd truly been prepared for.
"That's all we are," he said. "Just fire burning for no good reason other than history."
There was a growing distance in how his words came out. Colder, more detached. As the story went on all feeling left and only the facts remained. For the first time ever I was glad I didn't know what to say. I let him say it all. All I had to do was listen. You could tell in his eyes that he'd driven further within himself, climbing into a secret hole his mind likely kept for times like these, like the cardboard boxes I'd make havens of as a kid.
"Sometimes I'd like a reason to burn that wasn't somebody else's," he finished. He said that on autopilot. Like that was his brain when he didn't think anyone was listening.
All I'd done since I'd stopped tinkering with my food was watch him. He was thoughtful as his mind appeared to sink with the idea of lacking a true purpose. Or lacking something to—
My heart leapt when his eyes hit mine as I thought of any number of reasons to burn. He never had to force a moment like that. It always hit me as unaware as it seemed to do him. It just...happened.
"Are you ever aware that you look at women like that?" Breathless. I was actually breathless. For fuck sake...
Because, he burns all right. With what, I didn't know. I only knew that was intense.
"Have you ever seen me look at other women that would tell you I look at them all the same way?" He didn't break sight.
"It can't just be me you look at like that." I was quiet. Couldn't tear my eyes away.
"I'm inclined to ask you what like that means but I'd say it's probably just something I do to you."
"Without realising that you do it?" I asked.
"Without realising that you notice."
I couldn't look away.
"Ariel," he began.
All the chatter in my brain slipped into whispers, quietly saying things I couldn't hear over a heart that beat louder.
"Kiss me." I blinked. Oh my gosh, what did I just say?
I broke gaze first. Talk about his being unapologetic. "Uh...so uh, you really weren't born of fallen angels," I scrambled to get that out Sonic fast. I worked to keep a focused head.
"No." He stared like he wasn't sure if he should answer that or the thing I said before it. "I was born of fallen people. Ariel, what you just said—"
"So the fallen from above thing is a myth then yeah?" I added quickly.
Blinking, he paused, knew I wouldn't let us backtrack, and went with it.
"No. They exist. We're not the same though, our lineage differs. See," he began, "Humans like you on this side of the ground come from bloodlines. We, under it, come from the firelines. They above us all come from the lightlines."
Oh. It suited them.
"Us firelines are such an abomination that when those winged pricks fall they're cast into the Underworld and cursed with turning into us. They sure are demons all right but us firelines—we don't claim them. Bit too righteous for me coming from where they come from. The lightlines, they're from Afterworld. Nothing to do with us. Sometimes they come down like it's a vacation and burn in hell for a bit. Noobs. They've got their own story so don't expect to see them here. You won't."
He forced himself to perk up, and with a deep breath he said, "there you go," as if the sun had just come out and the birds were singing in Mary Poppins technicoloured cartoon glory.
"So, you see, Magpie." He leaned forward, his focus intense. "I'm a bit of a monster. Born and bred," he added, leaning back. "And you brought me home."
Yeah. Because however many mistakes I've made I wasn't sure the compelling case of Dante Greco was one if them. "Because I should be afraid?"
He held my eyes, staring into the thought it became until he saw me about to respond and wouldn't allow me to because he rushed a breath and got up. The only sound came from his scraped chair and his hand scratching the back of his neck that didn't know what to do with itself.
The lamp light flickered a little and dimmed ever so, distracting me. Great. The bulb was definitely on its way out. Before I could push back from the table, answer him, and look for a replacement, I became distracted when Dante flexed his fist repeatedly before shielding it as he turned away. He even went to get his coat as if disguising it underneath.
It was in our shared silence that I acknowledged all the things I ever thought about him all the way to this point. At times I thought about him when I didn't know I was thinking at all. And then I wondered something. As he stood there, tinged with human sensibility, was he really what he thought he was?
"But good people burned too, right?"
He turned around. "What?"
I moved from the table. "People burned who shouldn't have. You said every kind of human was in that fire. That means good people too. Not just sin. But empathy. Understandi—"
He broke away. "I'm not those things."
"How do you know?"
"Because I don't know who I am if I'm those things."
I tried not to be fazed by how unflinching he became. "Vengeance corrupts, sure, and that's what the villager's legacy became, but if good people—innocent people—were cast into the fire under the world with everybody else, how do you know that little piece of humanity didn't make its way into you too?"
The challenge in his eyes met the challenge in mine, and for a moment he let that sink in, however deep it went.
"Don't you think I'd know what that feels like?"
"No actually. I don't think you would." A sadness sunk unexpectedly down my throat. "Maybe you don't recognise it. But how can you be expected to?"
"What do you think this is? A save a demon meeting? You think you can save me, Ariel, I'm not that person. I'm not looking for redemption 'cause who says something like fucking for pleasure is wrong?"
"It's not."
"Good. So you'd know not to try that saving me from myself routine."
It was hard not to have Nate pop into my head then, the gruff in his voice telling me how I like to do stuff like that, finding the redeemable humanity in people even when it couldn't be done because the idea was easier to swallow the reality of whoever they were.
"You can't be saved from something you've always been." I told him. "So maybe I don't have to do anything. Maybe there's a little bit of human goodness already there in you. You're just from a place with so much tunnel vision you can't even see it through all that fire and brimstone."
I didn't wait for a comeback. Time to find that light bulb. "And yeah," I said on my way. "Having sex for pleasure doesn't make you bad. In fact, it kind of makes you like the rest of us."
I mean, we fu(ked after all. Twice. And bad was most definitely not the word.
"No thanks."
I grinned for a split second at him not wanting to be like the rest of us as I pulled the drawers. One drawer down. Nothing in here.
"And you?" he asked.
I rifled through a second drawer and threw "what about me?" over my shoulder.
"Exactly," he replied coming up behind me. "What about you? Tell me."
No bulb in here. Frustrated, I shut the drawer and swung around. "Why should you care?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just know that I do. And that out of all the places I should be, I'm here. I guess because I'm interested. So tell me something. About you."
Why did he look at me like I mattered? Why did I want him to look at me like that for the rest of my life? What a weird thought. Instead, a little put out by it, I side-stepped him to get my head to act right, and he let me move aside, groaning as I passed by.
"I told you all that and you can't give me a single thing back?"
"Like what?"
"Okay..." He thought about it. "You don't wanna get personal. I can tell. Fair enough. I won't push you. So maybe, I don't know, start with who told you about me perhaps? How's about that? We've spent all this time hiding things from each other and you're still doing it."
Yeah, and I had good reason so, no, I wasn't doing this right now.
"Oh come on!" He almost came after me but stopped. I wasn't gunning for the door or anywhere close. I just needed to figure out how I was going to go about this. Everything. Me, Nate, all of it. I wasn't even sure why I was in the kitchen. I just needed a second of space.
"You don't understand." I gripped the edge of the basin in the kitchen.
"You're right." His voice not more than a couple yards away. "I don't. But you can change that. So change it."
I sighed, weighing it all up.
"Look," I said. "I appreciate you telling me—I do. Considering I been asking all this time and..."
By that point anything I had to say fell short of what he wanted to hear. Dante knew this conversation wasn't going anywhere. His groan was frustrated, his steps done with me. I turned to find him making his way into the living room and grabbing his coat. I knew when he picked it up, slid his phone from its pocket to the back of his trousers, and sighed harder than ever, the way it sunk into his bones, all down his body, that he figured no answers were coming. If he was leaving because he knew I was finding a way around his question, then he was right.
Holding his coat in one hand, he shook his head. "You know, Ariel, when someone shows you that they give a shit, it shouldn't be so hard to believe it." But he was at my door already. His hand on the door handle, he swung round. "Who are you protecting?"
I wondered if that was really what I was doing.
"It's obvious that's what this is," he said. "You think I'm going to hurt them?"
"What if they hurt you?" I asked.
"Me?" He managed to say that and chortle at the same time just as the light finally gave up and went out. I groaned inaudibly. It wasn't a complete blackout for all the street lamp was worth. A patch of street lit glow passed through my window and hit the wall, outlining furniture in highlights and shadows and making shapes of us both. I walked to my wall unit and pulled out a candle in a glass. At least I knew where that was.
"Sorry, hold that for me will you please?" I shoved my hand out behind me out of frustration as I felt him take it from my fingers as I continued to search further in the unit to light this thing. Just until I could find the bulb.
It wasn't him I was momentarily annoyed at. It was at knowing that, had I got up and sorted this sooner, I wouldn't be knocking away at things in the frigging dark like this looking for matches, or a cheap lighter or whatever the hell I could find and I'd actually have a bulb instead.
Storming over to the cabinet hidden in the patch of dark the street light couldn't hit, I swung it open and cursed. There had to be something around here. "Fuck sake," feeling around, "I can't find any matches."
The light came on from behind me, sparking to a glow. I shut the cabinet and turned over my shoulder. "How did you find..."
I'd never done a double-take so fast, looking into a light that didn't flame from the candle wick. Almost immediately the blood drained from my face. Stunned into temporary immobility, I stood, unblinking and rigid. I couldn't say a word for all the air trapped in my throat and my mind trying to marry my sight with my inability to make sense of what I was seeing.
He hadn't found the matches. The candle was on the table and powder dry. But there in Dante's hand sat a flame. Small, white, soft, wavered only for a second, then straightened. A misty diffused glow set its aura around the tapered point. It grew, steady and upright from his palm, but not by much. By enough to show that he was in control of it.
Finally, the flame was no longer his to hold, he blackened the candle wick with a pinch that gifted it a fire of its own. Slowly my living room glowed outward. Pretty and weirdly ethereal. Brighter and stronger than a normal flame would be and yet strangely no bigger. A perfect flame he burned just for me.