Beckett rolls his eyes. “You’re my brother. Not my fucking therapist.”
“You’re right. Therapists get paid.” Remington looks back at me, pulling a face. “But I’m afraid I can’t just fling myself at a horde of demons, even for a lovely angel like yourself. So how about we make a fair trade? I’ll help you out, and you’ll owe me a favor.”
“She’s fallen, Remi. She can’t get you anything from Above.”
“Not right now, maybe, but the fallen can redeem themselves. I’m sure stopping a bunch of demons from terrorizing New York will get you major points with Above. And you’d love to get back home. So really, everyone wins, don’t they?”
Remington sounds like he truly wants to help me, like his heart is in the right place.
I can’t tell if it’s real or just a part of his sinful charm.
Ugh. I’m so out of my depth here.
I look over at Beckett, as if he’ll help me, but the cocky man just raises an eyebrow at me.
Yup. I’m on my own here.
I don’t know why I even bothered looking at him. Maybe because he’s the first sin I met and because he patched me up after I almost died, I feel a weird impulse to trust him. To look to him for guidance as I try to navigate this strange new landscape. But the truth is, it’s not me and him against the world. Just because he decided to do the right thing and close a portal to Hell, it doesn’t mean he’ll choose the side of good all the time.
But that’s my job—to make him become that guy. To make all of them become that guy. I’m starting to realize just what a difficult task this is going to be, and I groan inwardly.
Then I look back at Remington.
Shoot. What choice do I really have? I need to convince him to fight on our side, the side of good and right. I need to redeem him. To do that, I need him to be with me, I need to spend time with him. Which means I need him helping us. And to do that… I have to agree to this deal.
I take a deep breath and smile at the beautiful man with the red-brown hair. “All right. Deal.”
He holds out his hand, and we shake on it. I don’t feel any different as we do. No feeling of power or magic surges over me to seal our vow or anything. I’m not sure if that’s reassuring or not.
This isn’t according to my plan, but I can’t allow that portal to re-open. And now I have a second sin on my side, so… this is good, right?
Right?
Oof.
Chapter Eleven
Trinity
We have to drive far outside of the city to find Sloth, or Phoenix, the name he prefers to go by. Remington is all smiles and joviality as we get into Beckett’s car, while Beckett seems annoyed.
Remington lets me take the front passenger seat, and I admire the nature we start to encounter as we get farther away from New York. It’s stunning out here. The human realm is so beautiful, honestly. I love that about it. Even though I miss home, Earth is really lovely, and I wish I’d spent more of my time here traveling and appreciating all there is to see. The mountains, the forests, the Grand Canyon.
The drive out is quiet. Remington will hum snatches of songs here and there, but Beckett forbids him from turning on the radio, giving him the kind of glare I’m pretty sure he also gives to underlings who try to have thoughts of their own.
It’s hard to make conversation with someone if you’re in the front seat and they’re in the back seat, and besides, I’m not sure it would be smart to talk to him. Not after he… I’m not sure if I can say that he tricked me into making that deal, necessarily. I’m not sure how much of what Remington was doing was conscious. It felt like some of it was subconscious, just a part of his nature, and I don’t know how much I can blame him for that.
Stop making excuses for him, I remind myself. He’s a sin, and so is Beckett. They’re the opposite of what you stand for.
As we drive, I can’t help but wonder what the relationship between these two is. What the relationship is between all seven of the brothers, actually. They’re not related in the traditional sense. They aren’t biologically related, and none of them grew up together. They were created fully formed, so to speak. But they’ve been around each other for millennia, and they clearly have some kind of rapport with each other.
How do they all feel about each other?
Beckett seems to be somewhat fond of Remington, but also easily irritated by him. Remington, on the other hand, seems to genuinely care for Beckett. Is it just his tricks again? Or is it real? I feel like down is up and up is down, and I have no way of making my world fit right again.
We end up on a small road that leads deep into the forest—two lanes, trees all around us. Beckett’s not checking a GPS or anything, so he must know where we’re going by heart, but I can’t see any road signs or anything to mark our way. We’re truly in the boondocks.
The car slows down, and we turn onto a lane leading into the forest. It’s one of those little roads that’s so perfectly hidden, you have to know it’s there before you make the turn or you’ll drive right past it.
We’re really in the thick of the woods now, and I notice that the silence in the car has shifted. Remington still seems fine in the back seat, humming to himself, but Beckett’s more… not tense like he’s angry, but more like he’s concentrating.
“The car… What are you doing with the car?” I ask. The vehicle is slowing down and moving from side to side, like a weaving snake.
“I’m avoiding the land mines,” Beckett says shortly.
“Land mines?”
“Phoenix doesn’t like visitors,” Remington explains, perfectly relaxed. “But he doesn’t want to have to bother chasing them off.”
Right, because he’s Sloth. “So he plants land mines?”
“Not everywhere. Otherwise his deliveries couldn’t make it to the house. But they’re placed at strategic points so that if you don’t know about them… kaboom.”
“I need you two to be quiet. I’m concentrating.”
We subside into silence as Beckett carefully maneuvers the car until we hit a point where the trees part, and I see a clearing with a massive—well, I hesitate to call it a fortress, but that’s sure what it seems like. It’s a very fancy mansion, if the mansion had a bunch of insane extra security tacked onto it after construction was completed.
There are concrete walls added onto the actual walls of the house, security cameras, all the works. If I was a criminal, I’d take one look at that place and decide “no thank you.”
The security cameras follow us as we pull up. Beckett rolls to a stop, opens his window, and leans out of it, pulling open a panel hidden in a tree. I wouldn’t have even thought of something like that. This all must’ve cost a fortune to set up. How much time did this guy have on his hands? And how much money? Quite a lot of both, obviously.
I wonder how he got so wealthy. Remington and Beckett both have jobs, but I don’t know what Phoenix does for a living. The idea of Sloth doing anything for a living at all strikes me as kind of the opposite of what he’s supposed to stand for.
Beckett punches in a code onto the panel’s keypad. I can’t see anything happen, but I hear the sounds of what seems to be some kind of machinery shutting down. I’m not sure that I even want to know what defense systems Beckett just deactivated by punching in the right key code.