7

The Ruin of Souls

Ella knew she'd be in trouble.

If she were caught sneaking back into the convent this late at night, there'd be an expulsion. She'd be kicked out as St. Catherine's science teacher and as a (granted late-in-life) novitiate. But she had her failings. After everything with Pete and with then trying to make things work with Carol, but it all falling apart with her inability to open up, it was not celibacy that was hard to keep.

At all.

But she was and had always been into fandom and tech. Communal life didn't allow for her to nominally be up after nine p.m., since the morning prayers and meditation started at five a.m. Yet, Ella needed more than just the quiet isolation after she'd finished grading papers and returned to her cell. She needed something a bit more.

So, she'd made a deal with one of her middle brothers, César, to keep a laptop and a TV at his place a few blocks from the school and convent. When she felt too alone or when something she wanted to catch up with premiered on TV, she snuck to his apartment and to her modest room there and indulged.

It was the one concession to her old life, a life of Wobbletube and Trek conventions, of a private life and not one of contemplation and service with fifteen other sisters in Christ. But a week ago, the Mother Superior had caught her sneaking back in near dawn. Ella had come up with an excuse of thinking she'd heard noises in the school Cathedral, the stone building connecting the convent grounds eventually to the school itself. It was also where mandatory mass services for the students were held twice a week.

The Mother Superior hadn't seemed to buy it, but she hadn't been able to prove Ella wrong either.

This time, it was closer to three, the dead of night, and she'd sworn she wouldn't get so lost in what she was doing at César's, but then she'd meant to watch just the one episode of the new Lord of the Rings show and not three. Next thing she'd known, she'd woken up under a knit blanket on her bed and with her clock glowing 2:30 in harsh, digital numbers. She'd bolted upright and hurried back across the modest Detroit neighborhood and to St. Catherine's before anyone found that she'd be skipping out again.

But as she slipped into the backdoor of St. Catherine's, Ella heard a low, mournful sound. Something that sounded like tears but also didn't quite. She frowned because the sound was wrong somehow, more than pained…something abnormal. But it was haunting either way. She was a nun-or soon would be finally-and she'd always promised to help others. The cathedral was supposed to stay locked after two a.m., but if some poor, unhouse soul had come in to get out of the cold.

It meant more to help whoever sounded in so much pain than to even risk Sister Baudelaire's wrath.

The low moan sounded again, ricocheting off the stone of the high, gothic arches, and a chill ran up her spine. Something was wrong, but someone was hurt, and that outweighed her own fears. Even after Pete, even after feeling lost her last couple of years in L.A. when Chloe and Lucifer had moved on and Dan had been dead, Ella Lopez helped people. It was how she slept at night.

It was how she tried to reckon with the darkness in her, and the creepy way her brain worked. The angles she saw and plans of death, almost like Rube Goldberg patterns in her mind…there just had to be an outlet for it.

She wasn't a forensic tech anymore, but she could still help…still try…and even if she was scared, she was going to try.

Ella put the hood over her head in case any of the other nuns or the Sister Baudelaire found her. She never went out in her vestments, but it would be odd being spied in jeans and a sweatshirt either way since it was too late for anyone to be about.

But that noise…

Ella walked closer and winced a bit as the noise grew louder. While it was clearly crying, it didn't sound always quite human, which was insane. It occasionally had a sharp whine to it that couldn't be normal. But after seeing a ghost most of her life and thinking that for a while her former co-worker was actually the Devil (though when she'd finally cracked at Maze's wedding, Chloe had denied it, and Lucifer had slipped out of the hall), Ella had seen or thought she'd seen weirder things.

As she made her way up the nave to the altar, she finally discerned a large, hulking shape huddling over the first pew, the one closest to the baptismal fount. She was right at least that it was an unhoused person, one probably coming in to get out of the snow on a cold, Detroit night. She stopped and settled herself in the pew behind him-there was no way someone that big was a she-and picked up a copy of the Bible to set on her lap. Ella took in a deep breath, gathering strength from the Big Guy, and letting her hand stray over her cross necklace.

"Are you okay? We're technically closed, but I know a shelter nearby. I can walk you over," Ella started.

She moved around a bit, reached into her jeans pocket, and pulled out her wallet. She maybe had forty bucks in there, but even if it wasn't much, this poor man needed it far more than she did.

"Lost."

The words were rough, a low rumble. The echoed against the stone even louder than the whines. It rankled in her gut, but he was hurt. The list in his posture told her as much, as did the torn and-holy crap-singed cloak over him.

"Well, you're at St. Catherine's, and my name is Ella Lopez. I'm here to help."

She didn't set a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, both because of the way he listed, she figured it might hurt him worse and because she had no permission. Instead, she set both hands on the Bible on her lap and gripped it tighter.

"Are you hurt? Do you think I need to get you to a hospital instead?"

He shook his head and the cloak moved too, billowing out behind him. "I don't remember."

"What?" She asked, her throat going dry. "Anything? Were you mugged? Did you hit your head."

There was a long pause and final a rumble again before a terse answer.

"No."

"No what? You don't remember anything or you do remember being hit on the head at least? Head trauma can be really bad. I can call an Uber and get you to the emergency room."

She hopped up then and walked around the side of the pew separating them, to make sure she faced him. Ella had been polite before but if he had a head injury, she could at least get an idea of how bad before she called for an ambulance or at least helped him get to the ER discreetly. She wasn't a doctor or a nurse, but she'd been a forensic tech long enough to know a wide range of head injuries when she saw them.

"I need to see," she said, scooting closer to him.

He kept the cloak curled up tightly around him and shrank back from her. Between the darkness of the cathedral and the way the cloak wrapped around him, she couldn't make anything of his features out.

"No."

"If you don't remember who you are, then you're hurt. You need a doctor." She wouldn't let him sit here and possibly bleed to death after a mugging.

Ella lunged forward and yanked hard on the cloak. She must have shocked him with her lunge because he was larger than her by far, and normally, there was no way she'd have a hope of pulling the fabric from him if he'd had a chance to yank back. But she had the element of surprise and the cloth came off.

And there, in the dim light of the candles at the altar, Ella gasped.

"Oh no."

She took a step back and couldn't stop from staring in horror at the being in front of her. He wasn't hurt or bleeding, but he clearly wasn't from the street either. From any street. At best, he was another vision like Rae Rae, but instead of a ghost…

…Fuck when had she started seeing demons?

Because there was nothing else he could be.

The being backed away from her and held up his hands. They were covered in thick, shaggy fur, dark as midnight. Worse, they seemed twisted up with four gnarled fingers each that ended in thick claws, like a mix of a human hand and wolf's paw. Most of him had a canine look about him from the dense fur covering his body to the prognathic jut of his nose. It wasn't a full snout, but it wasn't a human mouth either. As he whimpered before her and held his hands up in defeat, she could catch glimpses of his open mouth, one rimmed with long, sharpened fangs. His ears were halfway up his head and pointy too.

As Ella regarded him, the gears in her brain grinding to a stop from fear and confusion, she even noticed the stumps behind his shoulders. They would have been wings, long and dark and covered in feathers as black as coal.

Would have.

But they were chopped off before the wing wrist and the feathers left were dull and dried out, limp and greying. There were great bald patches on the stumps and the right one was at least six inches longer than the left one. Each had bone that jutted from the poorly healed skin there. It wasn't weeping or infected, but it had healed barely if at all.

She bit her lip hard to keep herself from screaming. She couldn't do it. Because whatever this was, it wasn't here any more than Rae Rae had ever been. If she freaked out now, then the Mother Superior would come and throw her out on her ass. And she was too old and tired to start a third career all over again.

"I'm really that crazy," she said, hissing when she realized she'd bitten her lip enough to draw blood.

Ella turned to hurry from the cathedral and to her cell. She had two hours before her alarm would sound and her sophomores had a huge test on the periodic table. Even if her brain was going crazier than normal, she couldn't give in.

Couldn't.

But as she turned, her lip dripping with blood, the demon was just there.

She yipped then and soon clamped her mouth shut, making sure to shove her hands over her mouth after. Maybe if she were lucky Mother Superior hadn't heard her.

Please Big Guy, for once…

The demon regarded her and, for the first time, she saw his eyes. They were the most normal part of him. They were a dark, soulful brown that belied a keener intelligence than she'd realized. They were set in a wolfish face, one bisected by a nasty, curved scar, but they were so very human eyes. Oddly wounded, and it made her relax and her heart stop hammering.

He turned to the nearest pew and picked up a couple of the sheets of paper from the tablet passed out to get new address information from parishoners each week. Then, he handed them delicately to her.

"You're hurt."

She blinked at him. "Uh, thanks?"

Ella took the paper and held it to her lower lip. Her breath was shallow, but she wasn't as scared as she had been, at least not of him. She was more terrified for herself. It had been over a year since she'd last seen Rae Rae, and for once, she really did think she'd gotten better. Was sane.

Ella should have known better.

"Lost," he said again, a low growl that made his broad chest rumble.

Ella frowned and handed him back his cloak. "I'm sorry I took that. I…I thought you were hurt."

She watched as he settled the cloak over himself and the torn tweed (of all things) of his ragged pants. Her eyes again went to the wounded wing stumps, and her mind started working again. Because demons had usually been angels before, the Fallen.

And he clearly had wings that had been slashed from him.

"Are you…" She blinked at him. The craziest idea in her head. "Are you the Devil?"

The eyes before her for a second flickered from dark, coffee brown to gold so bright and awesome that she had to fight the urge to get to her knees in worship. That one thing about him didn't feel demonic, but the rest of him surely was.

"No," he said. "Father left. I lost to Sam."

"Sam?" she asked, not sure she knew that angel name.

Probably an angel name. What did she know? This demon couldn't be real but, then again, in all the time she'd known Rae Rae, the ghost had never handed her anything. This being had. It made him real. Didn't it?

He nodded. "Lost to Sam; he took the wings. My life was supposed to go instead." The demon took in a deep breath as if speaking cost him. Ella wasn't sure it didn't. "Then, I don't remember, and I was brought here."

"Who brought you?" she asked quietly.

"The one with the gos," he said.

She had no idea what that meant, and she wasn't sure the fallen angel before her knew either, not truly.

Ella crumpled up the paper and shoved it in her jeans pocket. Her lip was tender but was no longer bleeding. He'd helped her. Granted, she'd done the damage to herself, but the demon had been concerned. Had helped. It was a sign to her that not only was he real and really tangible, unlike Rae Rae, but that maybe as insane as it sounded, she could trust him not to hurt her.

Taking in a deep breath, she stepped forward and set a hand on his left forearm. It was as shaggy as the rest of him and malformed, like the limb hadn't decided if it wanted to be humanish or canine. It was some imperfect amalgamation of both.

"Cómo se llama? Do you have a name?"

The demon quirked his head, his ears twitching back and forth as he thought. "Michael," he croaked.

Ella crossed herself with her free hand. She couldn't have heard him right, or he had to be confused. Michael was the Big Guy's Sword. This couldn't be right at all.

"I don't understand."

He huffed a little and rolled his eyes. Then, he took a step back and pointed to her first. "Ella."

She nodded. "Yup, got it in one."

Then, he pointed his massive, clawed hand to himself. "Michael."

She gaped at him, confused on how the Prince of Heaven could do anything to clearly get kicked out or why he was here with her. "I…oh jeez."

"Michael," he said again, stretching the word out roughly as he spoke again.

Ella looked at her phone and it was creeping close to four a.m. There was no point in asking Michael if he had a place to go. Clearly, he didn't. And there wasn't enough time to figure out who the 'one with gos' was. But she had an idea.

Stepping forward again, she grasped his massive paw in her hands. He let her, and hshe was glad he did. "Michael, follow me."

Ella looked down at his legs, bent at an odd angle at the knees. He walked with an unsteady gait but he could walk. She led him patiently to a door behind the altar. "Can you climb? It's just a lot of winding steps, but come with me. I don't think anyone has checked or maintenance the bell tower in a year. We'll…God, I'll find something better. I just need to think on it."

He quirked his head at her and then looked between her and the open door leading to the tightly twisting stone staircase. He was so tall that he had to bend over almost double to do it, but after what felt like hours, she had him up to the tower. There wasn't much there but whoever had been in charge of maintenance before cutbacks had a small cot, a table, and a deck of cards and a few other things there to rest on his breaks.

It wasn't much, but it was better than the street or letting a fallen angel run loose. Besides, he'd been confused and tried to help her. Let her lead him, pardon the pun, like a puppy to the cot in the tower. She didn't think he deserved to be thrown out to the cold, especially where if someone else found him, they might hurt him or worse.

Sighing, she reached up and patted his shoulder or as close as she could get to the left one. "I'll be back after breakfast. I'll bring you food…if you eat?"

He frowned at her or his maw did the closest equivalent, down turning a bit. "Hungry."

"Good," she said. "I'll get you something. Not sure what angels eat, but I'll try. Well, demons?"

Michael sat on the cot, which wobbled but didn't crack under his massive size. "Michael."

She nodded and couldn't help but tear up at such gentle, brown eyes. Ones that still sparked with some awareness underneath. She'd help him. She'd help him remember whatever happened and how he ended up like this. Because Ella was pretty sure this time she wasn't crazy, and also pretty sure that Saint Michael didn't deserve this.

Which what a to-do list: morning contemplation, convent chores, grade tests, and then save the Prince of Heaven.

Sure-easy peasy, lemon squeazy.