Gabriel pulled his wings around his shoulders, trying to block the chill that crept into his bones. The damp and the cold still got to him, sliding past the feathers of his wings, the leather and quilting of his letterman jacket, the wool of his sweater, the cotton Henley under that. Like a persistent and unwanted lover, the clammy hands of Brickport's late autumn air intruded through each layer of his clothing to steal the warmth of his skin.
He'd only been in Brickport for a few months. He'd adjust. Eventually.
After completing his business degree a year ahead of schedule, he'd signed up to study abroad. He'd wanted a minor in Communications, and was almost immediately offered a position in the Communication Technology program in Northern Iathghlas University at Brickport.
The program was respected. The faculty published intriguing and fresh explorations of the power of the media. And (most importantly) Brickport was about three thousand miles away from his family and the state college that he'd been sentenced to.
Of course, he'd known about the anti-demon legislation, and the Struggles. Gabriel read the news. He was interested in mass communication. The headlines from that part of the world were written in the blood of schoolchildren and activists, pensioners and priests.
He'd heard about the killings. The bombings and the unrest.
But, an ocean away, it hadn't seemed particularly dangerous. How could he call himself a man of God if he didn't trust that God to care for him?
Most of the victims were demons, anyways. Gabriel was an angel. Besides that, he was from the United States of Dominion. A foreigner. This was just not his problem.
Until it was. Until some psychopath got it into his (or her, Gabriel amended) mind to blow up the university chemistry lab, with a respected and tenured professor of statistics inside.
With the university shut down, and his parents reassured with a bunch of information that was TECHNICALLY true, Gabriel had been free to explore Brickport over the last three days.
Probably not the wisest idea. Tensions between the angels and demons were running hot. A group of angel-supremacists pointed the finger at a group of demons' rights activists. Some angels in the government (and even in the higher rungs of the university ladder) were trying to leverage the bombing for their own gain-mostly more sanctions against the demons of Brickport and all of Northern Iathghlas. Most of them championed the idea of removing all demons from the university.
He'd seen one of the demons' rights activists (his classmate, Beelzebub) speaking about the bombing on the nightly news. He addressed a small crowd of like-minded angels and demons outside a pub that Gabriel frequented, the Dancing Jenny. It was one of the few pubs that didn't turn the demons away. A small garden bloomed behind Beelzebub, bouquets left for the late Professor Agnes Nutter, dead in the blast.
Also behind Beelzebub, the letters "I-T-C-H" were splashed across tavern wall in lurid orange spraypaint. The first letter of the word had been scrubbed into a smeary blob, but it didn't take a genius to guess what it had been.
Gabriel knew Beelzebub from the two classes that they shared. 19th Century Angelican Literature, and Theophilosophy. He was a quiet, studious demon. Slight. Pale. A Dickens orphan of a boy, blue eyes wary of shadows and strangers. Beelzebub tended to wear suits to class. Or rather, a suit. Gabriel didn't know if it was the same suit, or if he just had several identical ones. Black jacket, black vest, black tie, white shirt, black pinstripe pants. A long woolen greatcoat (which might have been black once, but was now charcoal) nearly swallowed him.
The boy was wingless. Most demons were, outside of the States. (But most of the demons in the US were mongrel mixes of angel and demon. The demons from home were less...demonic...in their appearance. In general, the biggest difference between angels and demons in Dominion was in their wings. The angels had white wings, and the demons were more colorful.)
Now, after the terrible explosion of a lab and a professor, Beelzebub was calling for an official investigation into the allegations of demon involvement. "We have nothing to hide," he said.
His voice was soft flannel wrapped around a lead pipe. Gabriel had been in Northern Iathghlas long enough to recognize elocution classes. Besides which, he'd encountered Beelzebub once before classes started, so he'd accidentally witnessed the demon speak with his real voice.
In public, Beelzebub always spoke as posh as you please.
"And, further," the demon continued, in his steady and pedantic cadence, "the Order of Lucifer would like to see an investigation into the group that made these horrible allegations against us. Nobody has more to gain from a smear campaign against the demons of Brickport than the Soldiers of Purity."
The people that Beelzebub addressed cheered. They sang, angel and demon voices entwining, "Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling..."
The news cut away then, and the spray-haired angel reporter had the gall to call the song and solidarity a precursor to riot. Gabriel had clicked the news off and started walking.
For the last three days, besides eating and sleeping, he'd walked. No destination in particular. Just walking past the brick rowhouses, the brick tentaments, down the brick streets, past the brick factory, through the great brick tunnels that allowed the trains to move the bricks through the hills.
Walking as he'd walked in his first few days in Northern Iathghlas, when he hadn't known a soul, and longed to befriend the whole of Brickport.
On his second day in Brickport, Gabriel had come across the apartment building that housed almost all of the demons that worked and studied on campus. There, he'd seen Beelzebub for the first time.
He'd stopped to try and get his bearings. He was, by his own estimate, a block off of campus. There wasn't a street sign to be seen. There had not been a street sign since he'd turned off of Port Street and entered a neighborhood that he would eventually know as the demon quarter.
An auburn-haired demon with very fair skin (skin that looked nearly blue-green in its undertones) steered a dead pickup truck. Her companions, one angel and one demon (wingless, with skin that seemed to change from blue-black to the ochre of the setting sun as he moved), pushed the failing truck into the parking lot for a grubby-looking apartment complex. The rotting wooden sign named it "Campus View".
"C'mon boys, we're nearly there," she called out, and laughed. The sun danced on the fish scales that peppered her nose and cheeks. "Vroom, vroom. Beep, beep, bitches!"
Both of the boys rolled their eyes, and shoved harder.
A red-haired demon, with gleaming black wings, directed them to an empty parking spot.
"That's good. Stop. Stop!"
Gabriel saw Beelzebub, though he did not yet know the demon's name, sitting on the bottom step of the grim-looking apartment building. At the time, Gabriel had thought him to be a child. He was holding a scuffed metal toolbox. Same greatcoat, but this was the singular time that Gabriel saw him outside of a suit. He wore a black mechanic's onesie.
"Oy!" Beelzebub called out. "Doesn'ay tha radio work, at leas'?"
In lieu of a reply, the girl clicked on the radio. Bono began to sing about Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
"Some'at cheerful at least," Beelzebub said, screwing his face up in distaste.
The girl obliged him and Kevin Rowland began to implore Eileen to take that red dress off.
The red-haired demon hooted and then sang along as he pulled up the hood of the ancient truck. Beelzebub brought him the toolbox, then climbed on the bumper and disappeared from Gabriel's sight.
He heard the girl pull the parking brake before hopping out. She and the other boys joined Beelzebub and his friend. They were all singing now, as they began to clunk around under the hood.
That memory was burned into Gabriel's mind. The group of them seemed happy. Poor, but happy.
It was the only time he'd ever see Beelzebub smile.
The next day, he'd scheduled his classes with an amiable professor, a fellow named Sandalphon. His office was full of colorful, leather-bound books that Gabriel had never read, and a collection of interesting puzzles. Everything from two bent nails that could be separated with the right magical twist, to complicated carved ivory and jade balls that broke into pieces and required steady hands and great patience to put back together.
There were photos, too. Professor Sandalphon astride a monster of a motorbike. On stage with some friends (he played electric harp, and a few other stringed instruments). In his workshop, holding up the wooden puzzle that sat beside the photo. At a table draped with swags, shaking another angel's hand and accepting a blue ribbon for brewing.
He was amiable, chatting with Gabriel about the States, about Northern Iathghlas, about the history of Brickport. About music and philosophy and food and all manner of things.
He'd recommended a few courses that eventually proved to be terrific, and he made sure that all of Gabriel's classes were easy walking distance from each other. He also recommended a Bible study group and a group for angels who were studying abroad. He'd enjoyed both, since he'd been in Brickport. It gave him some sense of community, and a few good contacts.
Professor Sandalphon eventually signed off on Gabriel's courseload. The pen was an elegant fountain pen, made of wood with gold fixtures.
"That's a nice pen," Gabriel said.
"Isn't it?" Professor Sandalphon agreed. "I made it. Here, take a look."
It began to rain through the sunshine as Dr. Sandalphon handed Gabriel his pen. This was the kind of weather that Gabriel's grandfather called, "the Devil beating his wife." Sunshowers were supposed to be warnings.
"Look at that," Professor Sandalphon said, waving a big hand at the window. "That's the end of the summer, my boy. Get ready for the cold, because it's coming."
"I will, sir."
Gabriel left the office in a happy mood. It felt good to have an important professor believe in him and want him to succeed.
Just outside the office, the child from the apartment complex waited on a bench. His feet didn't quite reach the ground, and when he looked up at Gabriel, the fluorescents caught his blue eyes. They gleamed like polished glass.
Those eyes, wide and wary, were ridiculously lovely. Gabriel gave the boy a slight nod before stepping into the stairwell and then out into rain that cut through his clothes like icy knives.