Chapter One
Of all the Gin Joints in all the World
The El Dorado is dark and smokey, not that the dim lighting bothers Michael much. He may no longer have his wings—one of Father's punishments for his plotting, would that dear old Dad had taken his power over Fear too, but that would have been too much to hope for-but his senses are as acute as they'd ever been. Sharp as since the literal dawn of time.
Perhaps a pity as the casino is old, one of the oldest in Reno, with its garish neon out front and collection of down and out regulars. The smell inside is not exactly pleasant.
He's been casing this place for a week, but he'll have to move on eventually. People notice when he plays poker too long, when he wins too many hands. It's easy though, and a way to earn nice sums of money. Michael makes his opponents fear that they're losing, amps up their anxiety over the hands their dealt, and low and behold, a guy with a straight flush is bowing out and pushing his chips Michael's way. That much "luck" got him kicked out of Vegas first, but if he moves from casino to casino more regularly here, he can make it work. Eventually, he'll have to push forward somewhere else. East Coast maybe? He hasn't been to New York since the 1960s, but he could maybe stretch out there, see Atlantic City.
He nods to the bar tender, who, after a week, knows that Michael just takes a shot of Vodka, neat. He sits at the bar, not without some effort to wrestle his way onto the stool and damn his weak side even now, as he picks the shot up with his good hand. Michael's halfway through his drink when a woman sits down next to him at the crowded bar. He figures it's an accident, brought on only by the fact there's no other place to sit here on a Friday night. No one ever nears him if they can help it.
Would that he could help it, but he picks out fears the same way his brother picks out desires. Yes, asking for them gets it all direct, makes the process simpler. But deep down, he knows his twin can decipher others' desires much without asking by now. Honestly, with the way Samael is living temptation, half the time once humans see him, they just want him. Michael wishes often-story of his immortal life-that he could tamp down the way he increases human and Celestial anxieties alike, the way his very presence just sets people on edge, even if the humans have no idea why. They know enough to know he's wrong, so they give him a wide berth, and he lets them. He might be exiled to this one plane, which isn't so much of a punishment as Father's other parting shot—and he's oh so sure both brothers felt that this little hiccup was fitting and suggested it-but even if he's stuck on Earth, Michael doesn't have to stretch himself to win friends and influence people.
And with the anxiety and flat out fear he provokes as well as the wrongness he radiates, Michael doesn't exactly win popularity contests. He wins poker, and that along with his fake papers and an itinerant life is enough to keep him moving. Toward what, he's not sure, but away from Los Angeles, that's for damn sure.
He and Samael and Amenadiel might not be fighting now. (Translation: he got his ass kicked and Dad levied the punishment.) However, he has no interest in being in their town, taking their leftovers, or in watching Samael apparently paroled from his sentence-for doing the right thing just once mind-hold court over his loyal and adoring public.
He'd rather let Father inflict a dozen more creative and annoying punishments on him than watch that.
However, Michael's not used to another person even this close to him. He sighs and sips his drink again. Turning to the dark, wavy-haired brunette, he stills when he recognizes her-the huge eyes and the tiny frame, even now-it's Ella Lopez, the forensic scientist from Samael's precinct. What on earth is she doing here? It's almost eight hours from Los Angeles, and he'd barely met her, only seen her for that one case he worked.
She never figured into his plans.
She hadn't known and understanding Samael as he did and his twin's tendency to omit important truths (but oh he never lies directly, at least, not quite), Michael's sure Ella's as clueless about the Celestial world as she ever was.
He could have used her instead of Espinoza in one of his many plans. She was a believer after all. Seeing St. Michael in all his robed glory would have made her compliant after, he was sure, the inevitable twenty minutes or more of rapid-fire questions. Ella talks a lot. He only worked alongside her for a week, but even he remembers that months later. But he'd picked Dan instead, hoping his animosity toward Samael could be manipulated.
But how did that old human saying go, "The best laid plans of mice and men…"
Yeah, all gone awry now. Totally ancient history.
So, why is she here?
Michael eyes her finally, and it would be obvious to him even if fear wasn't his gift that something has changed in Ella, more than just her pale look or the dark, heavy circles under her eyes. He can feel the hints of it already wafting to him without having to do a thing. Some Celestial gifts have to be concentrated on. Hard. Amenadiel always had to focus to control time. But some are more natural, and he can always tell fear the way the late Uriel could always sense patterns.
He cannot shut it off, and Dear Father has he tried.
But it depends on the human and their mood too. In truth, around the Silver City, it's no differen. Ella is scared and twitchy, and again, even a mortal could tell that. But she's built up a fairly impressive wall for a human, and he can only get a few flashes without putting the effort in. For the oddest reason, he keeps seeing lilies, and he has no idea why she'd be scared of flowers, but he's seen odder phobias.
He's seen them all.
"Tequila," she says, and he notes this change too.
She's brief to the bartender, says little, and barks out the request more gruffly than he ever thought her capable of from what little he saw of her back in California.
Michael should keep his mouth shut. No one would notice him now, well outside of his damn scar, and thank you, oh twin, for that parting gift from the now quite literal City of Angels. But with Father's punishment, for once in his interminable life, it would be impossible to confuse him with Samael. All Michael has to do is finish his drink and not breathe a word. It's not his fault that of all the gin joints in all the world, Ella Lopez waltzed into the one he was milking for spare cash. He just has to keep his mouth shut.
But he's never been good with that either. It's one of the few things he does share with Sam.
As the bartender sets her drink on the bar, Ella looks around, staring especially hard at the Black Jack tables-never his own style, too much left to luck even if he felt like learning to count cards-but her eyes finally catch his own. She won't recognize him, and that's good because he's an idiot and all roads eventually lead back to Samael and Amenadiel somehow. Even if Ella is on vacation for a long weekend by utter chance, if his brothers even start believing he was in the same town for some nefarious purpose, they'll hunt him down.
Michael would rather avoid more punishments and face scarring if he can avoid it. He's had enough of Father's dumbest angel and of the most self-obsessed one as well to last the rest of time.
However, as Ella spies his scar, she startles just a bit. Does the same as she catches the look of his shoulder, the way the right side is more raised than it should be. Oddly, as he is now, the wrongness of his right-side bothers people less. Maybe that makes sense, as overbearing physical strength isn't supposed to be what he projects currently. Whatever. It's still been a while since someone noticed him more than just as a flash of anxiety rising and a quick sprint for the door. But Ella has noticed, and she frowns back at him, her look surprisingly sympathetic.
If only she knew.
She'd hate him, and, for once, Ella would have a right to. Not just because he's scary and unsettling; he is that even if he tries not to be with strangers. No. He's hurt her friends, but that's nothing she knows. This last trace of his brothers' L.A. lives, one who is a babe in the woods he still bets when Celestial matters are involved.
"Are you okay?" she asks, and a bit of her more typical cheer bubbles up in her words.
Michael sighs and waves to the bartender. "I'm fine."
"I…the scar and the everything. I'm sorry. The wound on your face looks like it hurts. Who did that to you?"
He chuckles wryly. Playing cards or not, haunted looking or not, apparently we all only change so much (well, except for him currently). Ella may be clearly upset by something, and he could press harder and find out what those lilies mean the fast way, but she's still the woman he met months back. Still talks too much, probably still cares too much.
Oh mortals.
If they had billions of years to waste, they'd stop caring too. It's so much easier.
But it's sweet, her tone, even if her questions would be rude if Michael gave two shits. He shrugs and offers her his answer. "Once, a very long time ago, my brother and I had a fight. My shoulder never was quite right after that. Unfortunately for me, a few months back, we had a bit of a rematch, and he left a parting gift."
A soft hand is on his shoulder, and that he doesn't expect. No one touches him. No one. Not because he wouldn't want it, dear Dad does he. Just anyone to pat his good shoulder or hug him or more… But if humans and Celestials both feel the wrongness of him and his gift from a distance, then touching him is overwhelming, reflects their panic and anxieties back on them a dozen fold.
Michael jerks his good shoulder away before Ella's overwhelmed.
She blinks at him, and he can feel her change as her phobia ramps up in her mind. Not just lilies now, a full room, a hot house with special lights and the smell is…wrong somehow. Not just flowers or, more accurately, the flowers are covering up rot underneath, decaying human flesh. Michael doesn't know what case Ella worked on last, but one of them is clearly fresh on her mind. Odd, for someone usually so cheery over the bodies, with quips to spare around them. She never seemed scared of her work before.
But he forces his own walls up, feeble as they are. He doesn't want to know. In point of fact, he has never wanted to know. He's found manipulating fear useful for him and, yes, was eager to use it against his brothers as a tool. However, he doesn't just want to be a satellite dish for the world's pain and fear. But with Father, you don't get choices.
One twin had to get the fear. Would that it had been Samael, but that was not to be.
"I…are you okay?" Ella asks, but he can see her eyes darting around for an exit already.
Michael laughs, and it comes out more shrill than he'd have wished. Oh well, in the two months since he left Los Angeles with his tail between his legs, he's had to adjust to many things. Apparently, he's rusty with practiced insouciance.
"That's a million-dollar question."
She frets over him, even as he can feel that damned room of lilies and rot basically pouring off her in waves. Reaching out, she almost touches the scar on his face, but hesitates at the last moment, realizing she's overstepping boundaries.
"I've been here a few weeks. I know there's a shelter in town. If you need a place to get away from your family…if they're hurting you, there are other places to go."
Michael sighs before gesturing for a second vodka from the bartender, not that he can feel it. He likes to pretend he can though. He hasn't been vulnerable enough on earth to get truly wasted since back in New York. Since he was in love himself, but that was several lifetimes ago.
"I'm far away from my family now, trust me," he replies.
She nods and turns back to her shot of Tequila. "Alright, just so you know there are options."
Michael frowns back at her. "Is that where you stayed?"
Ella shakes her head and drums nails with chipped polish on the wood of the bar. "No, I have a small place, still looking for a permanent one."
He frowns. The mention of weeks had confused him, but now that she's talking about looking to settle in Reno, he's even more shocked. She seemed to love Los Angeles and adore (cause they always did) not only his idiot twin but also Chloe and Dan as well. Why on earth was she so far away and starting a life in Nevada?
Not your business. Anything connected to Samael and Amenadiel is not your business, Mike, leave it.
That would be a what a smart man would do. He'd walk away. But Michael, for all his plans and foresight, was not as smart as he wished he was. If he were, he'd have trusted in his twin's ability to self-destruct and fuck up his own life unassisted and just pulled out the bucket of popcorn to laugh at him from the Silver City when it did.
It would have saved Michael a lot of pain, a deforming scar (to match his shoulder and how thoughtful, Sam), and every other complication currently assailing him.
But, yeah, not that smart. So he can't resist asking. It isn't like Ella is averse to oversharing, herself. Hardly.
"Why did you move to town? I just got here from Vegas. Needed something with less attention on me," he admits, going first.
She quirks her head at him but shrugs. "I used to work in California. I…I thought after something happened on the job that I could just get back to it, be who I was. I can't, you know? My friends expect cheery, goofy Ella. Just the chica talking about Comic Cons and Lord of the Rings, and I just…at night I can't even sleep, and it got too hard both doing what I did and trying to be happy for them. I needed a break for a while. I mean, I have leave cause of the whole bad stuff happening on the job, you know?"
Michael frowns, now wondering if the room of lilies and the ominous grow lamps and the scent of decay even choking him reflected from her memories…if that happened while he was in town or not. Part of him hopes not, because obviously Samael and his band of loyal humans were quite distracted at the time for all the good it netted Michael. However, if he was a distraction enough to help let that happen, well, he was sorry. He hadn't dragged her into anything in Los Angeles because, much like Charlie or Trixie, she seemed too innocent to yank into his machinations. He took advantage of the apparently mortal infant's cold to prey on his brother.
For fuck's sake. He'd been angry and not a monster. He didn't go about giving babies colds or harassing forensic scientists who were too naïve by half for Dad's playground.
"What did you do?" he asks, focusing on his empty glass, trying not to seem too eager.
Truth be told, he's not even sure why he cares now, but she's the first person he's talked to in two months who's not a mark at poker, a bartender, or a motel clerk. A guy has limits, even one like him, who is used to being lonely.
"I was with the LAPD, but not a cop," she says. "I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I just…you'd also think just being the lab tech wouldn't get me in trouble. I'm supposed to be just in the lab running slides and analyzing blood splatter. The safe stuff, but this time it wasn't, and I tried…but I can't concentrate or sleep or…I just needed a new place," she confesses. "New routine and a new me, you know?"
Michael nods. "I know exactly what you mean. Look, I play poker, and I can see you eying the Black Jack tables. I know that look."
"Do you?"
"You're about to run the table," he surmises.
Ella's eyes widen but she tries to look nonplussed again, even if she fails miserably. "What?"
"Takes one to know one," he continues. "It's like the mafia or, well, cable services. You have your territory in Reno, and I'll keep mine, sister. I'll take poker, you do Black Jack, and we won't have a problem."
She cracks a small smile at that. "I think between both of us, this place so know what hit it." She holds out her hand and he takes it with his good one. "Ella Lopez, and, seriously, if you need advice on any help…if someone's still hurting you…"
He quirks his head at her. Of course, she'd know these things. This girl, so good as gold, this one, so like a child really in her interests and in her trust, she'd know where to offer strangers succor even in a new town of her own. How odd. How beyond human really. How just utterly kind.
Rare that.
"I'm Michael, pleasure to meet you."
If the name seems odd to her, she doesn't show it. Honestly, in a town like Reno, there are many names and many things that don't fit for anyone, like his twin's L.A., Michael suspects this big little town is full of transplants reinventing themselves. As good a place as any to try, he figures.
She nods. "Well, great, Michael. It's good to meet you. I…I'm staying at the Vagabond Motel if you, uh, ever need a friendly place to hang."
He shakes his head even as he drops her hand. Oh yes, before the scar was as off putting as was his posture, back when he loomed far more than he can now. For once, he's amused and actually heartened that, at least with someone as kind as Ella, the scar-his brokenness-elicits concern. And not anxiety. It's a novelty. He's worked as hard as he can to block his powers, to keep her from feeling more fear at his very touch. It must be working because while she's broadcasting about those lilies, he's seen nothing deeper, not felt exactly what she has felt.
That's the worst.
To feel the horror and the pain. After all, most phobias start for a reason, don't they?
He offers her a final smile before climbing as best as he can from his stool and getting to the floor. "Well, Miss Lopez, then. I'll be seeing you."
Michael makes it most of the night without bumping into Ella again. He sees her at the Black Jack table, and the woman has laser focus on what she's doing. She also has a massive pile of chips that makes him green with envy. He's doing fine for the night, but she's going gangbusters. If they teamed up, with all their talents, they'd really clean the town out.
It's tempting.
Not all angels are rolling in dough and property and fucking castles like Samael.
However, toward the end of the night, he notices Ella in the corner. She's cashed in her chips and secreted the money away in her purse. It's one of those clutch things without a strap and huh, that's a thought…Anyway, she's talking to a dude that Michael can feel from there. He knows this aura, has felt it before. Sharks swim amongst humans all the time. This is one of them. In the movies or even in popular culture, humans assume that the rapists and murderers, the serial killers and psychos feel no fear at all.
This is a lie.
An image that the media has cultivated.
Oh, a true sociopath tends to feel nothing, but they are not so scattered that they cannot feel anxieties, run the traps in their mind about their plans and how not to get caught. The man leading Ella out to the alley looks utterly normal, unassuming, even suave in a suit not nearly as expensive as Samael likes them but worth far more than anything Michael's ever owned. But Michael can feel it. The rat bastard is already agonizing about what if I get caught.
He stands fast and grabs his chips, shoving them into his satchel, and he'll trade them in later. They know him here, know he'll be back every Friday like clockwork…at least for a while longer. Michael hurries as best as he can, speed qualified even though he has his powers (just not his wings) because of his limp and the human witnesses. He could go faster, at least by mortal standards, but he's been in enough trouble all year, and Amenadiel has that conveniently enforced "Mortals and Divinity shouldn't mix" rule. So, Michael slips around tables and hurries as best he can all at a quickened mortal pace. He knows full well what Ella has gotten herself into even if she can't see it.
He hurries out and finds that she's the one beating the man in front of her. She's got brass knuckles on one hand and has slammed her fist into the man's jaw. Michael is impressed but also grateful the man who targeted Ella (or did she target him?) is no taller than Espinoza was. If he'd been Samael's height, then even with her brass knuckles and her rough edges, Ella wouldn't have fared well at all.
Then again, maybe she knows how to pick them if this was her intention all along.
Michael waits under the lights and by the dumpster, not sure yet what he's walked into, but knowing that he wants to give Ella her space. The way she's moved into a swift knee to the groin for her attacker has Michael amused. She looks every inch the avenging angel and his sisters-Remiel and Azrael, fierce in their own ways-would be put to shame in this moment. However, he perhaps applauds Ella too soon.
Her heels slip on the gravel and she stumbles back.
It gives the would-be rapist a chance to grab her by the throat and hold her roughly up against the wall.
Michael's seen enough. He has no mind to steal Ella's fun or whatever the fuck this is. But she's in deep shit now, and he's not much of an angel these days, but he still is one. And he has no interest in seeing an innocent hurt before him. Not like this. After his failures and tantrum in Los Angeles, Michael's utterly spent on carnage and just wants quiet, in point of fact.
He's on the man in a flash, his hand wrapped around the bastard's throat and holding him high above his head. His eyes blaze gold, all that righteous fury of an avenging angel now buzzing through him instead. Michael's shoulders itch, phantom pains that spring from the urge to release wings that no longer exist (not that they were that functional in the first place), but he's felt more in form, more himself, than he has since Dad levied his punishment.
"Tell me, Mortal," Michael says, his voice a low purr. "What is it you fear?"
It doesn't take long before the man is blabbing to him about his own childhood and the beltings his mother gave him. Michael couldn't care less about the sob story or the excuse, but he can draw on that, and he will. He twists his power around him like a cloak almost and focuses, the man before him starts to scream.
Michael drops Ella's attacker to the ground. The rat bastard curls around himself and screams again and again, begging for the belt to stop.
It never will.
Michael could make it cease, and, except against beings of other pantheons or rival armies, he's always released the fear's hold eventually. But this was…not acceptable. This man, this shark, has asked for it, demanded the attention of the Sword of God and the Angel of Fear, and he's won it. Let the asshole deal with the visions for the rest of his life.
It's what he deserves.
Michael brushes the dirt of the alley from his clothes and turns to Ella, who is shaking now. He can feel the fear as a blast to his very system, has to force himself not to hyperventilate like a mangy human but her own fear is so hard and so visceral. Still, Michael is impressed by her walls. The putrid smell of decaying flesh and the overly intense florals may be in his nose, but he still can't quite feel what happened to Ella, why she's a ball of fear herself now.
But he also gets other things.
This flavor of fear he knows all too well.
This feeling he's perceived all his life, since his Creation. Even Samael has had it near him, and how frustrating that his twin, his very mirror, fears him so. But that's the sensation now, as Ella regards him with wide eyes darting between his victim (once her attacker) and him.
"I…how?"
Michael wants to laugh. To be fair, if he were more himself, the fact he'd reduced her attacker to a crying, mewling mess of a man would be less confusing. But, as Father has remade him, it is probably more inscrutable. After all, there are few women, even as tall as he is like this, who could do what he did, hold that bastard up high. Honestly, barring maybe female Olympic weightlifters-maybe-Michael suspects none at all could.
But Ella's still terrified, and he didn't…for once he wanted it not to be of him, and that's how one nice favor is returned after another, he supposes. He should know this. Cynicism is his life.
Michael holds up both hands to her, palms flat, and channels the line still in all bibles: "Be not afraid, Ella."
The woman before him pushes herself up against the nearest alley wall and is shivering, and now it's not the lilies that fill his own senses but the confusion over him, over what he's done, and the powers he's clearly displayed for her. It makes Michael almost double over, that wave of nausea and terror working through Ella, and it is even harder to push away knowing that it's about him.
He squats low, still with his hands up. "I'm not going to hurt you. You have my word."
Not that his word is worth much, and not that he doesn't lie like a rug as needs to. But he means it this time both because she actually touched him. Before at the bar, actually offered him kindness when no one ever does. And because if anything ever happened to Ella, and his brothers thought it was his fault, he'd be locked down in Hell permanently.
A fate that, wingless, Michael does not relish.
"I…not again," Ella mutters more to herself than at him.
Michael frowns. That's not the reaction he expects. Her terror is still there, roiling in his gut and making his mouth taste of bile. Dear Father, so very much of it, but the flavor is changing again, the lilies are long gone and the fear of him now pales in comparison to the constant tattoo in his brain, the litany of fear and anxiety stampeding through Ella's mind too, telling her to be afraid of herself.
Michael quirks his head at her but forces himself not to leave his spot. He's glad he wore jeans out tonight. He usually does even though robes and kilts are no real strangers to him. Fashion changes over the centuries after all, but most of the time, it's too much for now, even a couple months into his altered physique, to put on dresses and skirts. Also, he'd be basically flashing Ella squatted as low to the ground as he is now.
So good sartorial choice all around.
"Why are you worried about yourself?" He shakes his head, still ferreting through her feelings. "I'm glad you're less scared of me because I'm not going to hurt you, but you really…oh…oh!" He gets it then. Something he doesn't know if even Samael knew. Something his little sister has so very much to answer for. Mixing with mortals is forbidden, yeah right. Unless you're Samael or Amenadiel or the fucking Angel of Death before any of them. "I'm real. You're not crazy."
"You just picked up a dude twice your size like he was nothing, and he's still screaming, and you didn't…lady, this is freaking weird. I have to be hallucinating again. I thought-"
Michael curses under his breath, and he will be talking with Azrael later no matter how long it takes to summon her busy, idiot psychopomp ass. How stupid. Samael has fucked his way through human history. Amenadiel has created a very defective Nephilim, and his sister has left a scared, confused human in her wake, one clearly convinced she's schizophrenic. All he did was…okay…admittedly cause a lot of trouble…but it's not like his still winged siblings are blameless either.
Michael nods, and he can hear that soon the bouncers at the casino will be coming for them both. There's too much screaming in the alley coming from Mr. Attempted Rape 2021 for them not to check.
"Ella…uh, Miss Lopez? I swear that I'm here. I'm a fucking mess too, but I'm here, and you're not insane. Look, let's get you back to the Vagabond, right? You said that's where you were staying. I don't…you're wrecked, and I'm not leaving you."
"Why?" she croaks, and she pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them.
Fucking perfect.
Try the hero route the one time, and you end up with a chick in a catatonic level of shock. Perfect.
Michael sighs and inches toward her, well aware that the bouncers and management will be on their asses soon. "Ella, I can't carry you. I'm strong-"
"No shit."
He takes it as a good sign that Ella can still snark back at him.
"Sure, but I'm awkward and my right side doesn't work so well. I need you to stand up and move with me. Can you do that?"
"You're not real. This stuff is never real. I…are you a ghost too?"
Michael laughs because it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard. Witches, angels, and demons all exist, but there are no ghosts. Azrael would never allow it and human souls left to linger on earth rot. So why on Earth…
Fuck, what has Rae Rae been telling this one?
Michael shakes his head and nears her enough to brush Ella's hair back from her face. I'm here, and, like I said, I'm pretty fucked up myself, but you're not hallucinating, and I don't think either of us want to talk to the cops right now, okay? Let's just get out of here. I have a car in the parking lot. You coming?"
She nods and finally gets to her feet.
Like this, he doesn't tower exactly, not like his twin, and perhaps Michael should have been more specific when he always wished to be anything but identical to Samael. Dad was always oh so fond of the ironic punishments, wasn't He? But even female, Michael is far taller than Ella, who's tiny, and he helps her walk by tucking her to his good side and wrapping his left arm around her.
"Come on, I cannot deal with the questions here," he says again, coaxing her forward.
Ella frowns at him. "But you're real, right?"
"You're not crazy, Ella."
She snorts. "Wouldn't be the first time though." Ella looks back to the corner of the alley, where her attacker is still whimpering and covering his head from belts that aren't there. "Is he going to get better? I mean, after what you did to him?"
Michael's eyes flash again, he can feel that much wrath working through him, even if he hadn't felt Ela's fear flare with the gesture. Just peachy. "He'll never get better, Ella. I promise you that."
"Good. Let's go."