I rented an auxiliary room at the Chelsea Pier’s Military base to hold the recruiting session, I figured it seemed more official that way. The Patriot room was smaller than I expect, the facilities people had set out chairs in perfect rows with a coffee station in the back. It felt strangely pedestrian. SGI had never felt like that with Helios at the helm.
At exactly 4:45 am I open the doors. About a dozen sleepy eyed kids finishing up their two year military contracts stare up at me. There were some middle aged vets from the 2nd Gulf War, but I didn’t think they could hack it …probably too jaded.
“So”, I begin turning on the projector Aria had taught me to use to and display the PowerPoint she’d helped me make. I needed to get that girl on the payroll, “SGI is a private military company, and we’re looking for some new recruits.”
“What’s SGI an acronym for?” A smartass in the front asks.
“It’s um… it’s an initialism-“
“A what?—“, Smartass says.
“I… something my girlfriend told me about. You’re excused by the way-“
“Bu-“
“A private military company means we runs just like the military. Rank and file. You wouldn’t talk to your superior officer like that so you won’t talk to me like that. Good luck finding a job with the VA.”
The kid gets up and leaves. I probably shouldn’t have let him go but I have to show them I was tough.
“SGI”, I continue, “in case anyone as wondering stands for Security, Guards and Intelligence. It’s what we provide on a contract basis.”
It was bullshit. SGI had stood for Seraph Guard Infinite. It was the roughly translated name of what we elite warriors were called in our Homeland, Helios had known how to turn a phrase.
“We have contracts”, I continue, “With New Aeterna, The United States and NGOs”
More bullshit. We had no real employees and our only real mission was finding Helios but using the company was a good guise to get in and out of countries without being questioned.
Helios had it easy with the original SGI. For one, when he started it he hadn’t needed fucking PowerPoints and second there was brotherhood and comradery already there. We were trained in the art of war, we were bound by country tradition and loyalty. These guys were just eyeing each other up and wanting a paycheck.
Sera would be pissed that no women had bothered to show up (and where the fuck was she?). It didn’t matter that I’d been a part of the resistance, that I’d been a New Aeterna military officer or that I was Paris Prince’s bodyguard. I was an Angel and most humans were still antsy about that.
I file everyone out of the room and we do some drills and shooting practice. These guys were mediocre. The only halfway decent one was one of the kids who was in the resistance with us. These guys were slow, they couldn’t multitask and they weren’t team minded.
During a midday break a few food trucks show up in the parking lot. I grab a Bánh mì sandwich and sit on the curb. Aria and I have a text chain and have been sending emoji’s back and forth cause we were both too busy to actually text. I notice it get kind of quiet and when I look up I feel like I’m fucking seeing things.
Sera is walking towards the parking lot with Callum. She is wearing the same black shirt, jeans and leather jacket as yesterday and still smoking like it'sthe end of days. She’d switched out her flat shoes for high heeled boots and towered over Callum. The two of them leaned into each other every now and then to talk. They were both wearing mirrored aviators so I couldn’t read their expressions.
“She convince you to join us?” I ask Callum as they get closer “We could use someone like you, Callum. Our prospects aren’t great. It’d be just like the old resistance days”
I gesture to where a few of the recruits who hadn’t peaced out yet are sitting at a picnic table.
“Fuck no”, Callum says opening the door to a red Bugatti and throwing some official looking papers inside. Callum had found a comfortable place as the highest ranking officer with the New Aeterna Guards. He’d been one of the best soldiers in the resistance and was one of the few remaining Demons in the world.
“Why the fuck not”, Sera snaps, “Helios escaping is partially on you. You were in charge of that facility.”
“You were the fucking warden.”
She rolls her eyes.
“I didn’t ask for that job”, she says.
Callum turns to me.
“Well, I’m not the one who let a former Helion solider watch him”.
Sera cuts her eyes at me. It had been my idea to have Adonis, a Helion who had turned on Helios pretty late in the game, to take over the shift after the previous Angel we had watching him turned out to be a leaking information to Helios.
No one hated Helios like Adonis. During the Unification riots Adonis had been brutally attacked by the rogue male Angels who freed Helios. Adonis was a decent solider back in the day even though he was born with only one wing, which had been ripped it off during the attack. Kid had been left for dead.
“Look I’m done getting mixed up with Angels.” Callum said, “The Helion regime fell six years ago. The resistance is over. I think it’s time things got back to how they were before. Angels versus Demons.”
“Except there’s only four of you left.” Sera reminds him.
“Don’t care. “, he settles into the driver’s eat, “You want to find Helios ? You are on your own. He’s one of your people. It’s your problem now.”
Sera places her hands on his car window, she peers in and after some thought rams her elbow in to the glass and shatters the car window.
“Fucking bitch”, Callum screams. By the time he gets out of the car she’d broken the other windows. He pulls her back hard and she swats him off and reaches in her pocket and takes out a match and strikes it. I run over and grab her wrist, twisting the match out of it and stamping out the flame. I have to hold her back before she swings at Callum.
“The fuck is your problem?” she spits at Callum, “You’re just going to drop your fucking loyalty to us because you’re married to a fucking human. After everything we’ve been through its back to Angels versus Demons. That bullshit.”
He smiles darkly and turns away, “Oh. I see. Are you just pissed I’m not
fucking you anymore ?"
Sera doesn't even dignify it with a response.
“No that’s not all of it.”, Callum says with a wicked smile, “Mrs. Grigori, You’re pissed I don’t take orders from you anymore. No one does. The resistance is over, your failed military career was over before it started and your cute little title just exist to amuse tourist. You’re nothing again, Sera. You’re just back to being that psycho pretty bitch Paris wants to stick his dick into."
“Helios”, she says very carefully with me still holding her back, “He could come back. He could be building up a new army and--”
“I guess that’s your problem.”
She relaxes and I let her go and fumbles for her cigarettes. Sera stops midway to lighting one…which should have been my first clue she was going to fight back. Before I can reach for her again she lights the match and drops it into Callum’s open car window, the papers and the soft leather seats catch quickly and blaze.
“Call me a bitch again”, she says.
“Fuck”, Callum jumps out the car.
I run to the nearest food truck and a chef hands me a fire extinguishers. I spray down the car while Sera watches non-plussed. Meanwhile the recruits are holding Callum back from beating the shit out of Seraphina. I put out the interior before it can burn its way to the gas tank.
When the car is put out the guys let Callum go. He walks around the car and peers inside before glaring back Seraphina. He makes a move like he’s going to fight her and I step in-between them.
“You fucking bi-- Gemma is going to lose her shit.” Callum says around me.
“I guess that’s your problem.” She says turning on her heels and heading back toward her motorcycle at the other end of the parking lot.
I drop the extinguisher and turn back to find all my potential recruits are gone.
+2+
Paris Prince was fading quickly into history. He’d had a good run as the first leader of The Independent Nation of New Aeterna. He’d been lauded and citied for the violent rebellion that lead to the toppling of the Helion Regime. He was a rebel king with a history of scars to prove it. He was reckless though. At least the world thought he was reckless with ethics I knew he was really just a down and dirty former politician.
Still, he knew New Aeterna better than anyone. He built it so he could break it whenever he wanted. He even negotiated with Bless to keep his fancy office in the observatory at the Capitol in what used to be Prospect Park.
When I walked into his office I’d thought he’d be busy behind his huge desk plotting to overthrow Bless, but he was taking a midday nap in the small lounge area with a cup of warm chamomile tea was on the side table next to a cocktail of anti-depressants and anxiety medication.
I sit on the chair opposite the couch, I know he heard me come in. After a while he rubs his coal dark eyes and yawns stretching the red and dark morphed skin that made up his scars.
“Leon, what brings you by?” He asks congenially.
“Sleeping on the job, boss?”
“I had a one hour break before meeting with a subcommittee to finalize our proposal for The FIFIA World cup. It’s going to be a floating stadium out in the Hudson river---.”
“Your wife set Callum’s car on fire...”
“Is that a euphemism for an STD?”
“She set his Bugatti on fire.”
I slap the invoice Callum had e-mailed me down on the coffee table.
“Why does Callum have a Bugatti?” Paris asks looking at all the zeros.
“Why do you think?”
“Bribes”, we both say. Me as an explanation. Him as if he just figured out a hard crossword puzzle.
“… you do know as a public servant I don’t actually make a lot of money.”
I stuffed the invoice in my back pocket knowing this would have to come out of SGI company funds.
“This Helios thing is getting to her.”, I tell Paris what he must already know, “Uh, look we need another lead on Helios.” I say trying to get comfortable in the tiny modern Scandinavian bullshit chairs in his office
“Tea.” He says in response.
“Huh?”
“Tea? Whiskey? Coffee? What’s your poison?”
“I’m good.” I say and standing up. Fuck tiny chairs.
“Leon, if I had anything I’d tell you. Besides Prime Minister Bless is freezing me out of any top secret meetings. I’m a powerless public official. Access has been hard to come by and these charity events Bless has me going to are mind-numbing.”
“What about Green23?” I ask referring to the hacker who’d given us our best leads in the resistance days.
“They haven’t found anything on Helios. Not even on the dark web. He’s gone.”
“Helios is old school he won’t need the internet. He has connections. There has to be something.”
Paris’ phone starts to beep, he squints at his phone and slips it into the pocket of his tight expensive black pants.
“What do you know”, he says sitting up and slipping into his shiny
loafers and dawning a long jacket with a zigzag zipper,
“Mind taking a ride with me?”
I nod and follow him out the door, he hums as he walks and I realize he was either doing it for show or because all that therapy was working. He greets everyone we pass by name and his guards trail far enough back that you couldn’t tell he had a detail. Not my style, but fine.
We settle into the back of the converted black Escalade. The two guards got in the front. There is a comfortable silence and Paris keeps his eyes on his phone. I hadn’t even thought to ask where we were going. I guess I trust him like that. Just like I’d trusted Helios. I just…followed.
We pull up in front of the New Aeterna Police’s Upper East Side Division. The NAPD was a branch of the military and one of Bless’s biggest complaints, said it was too much like Martial law for his taste. The set-up had suited Paris because he’d had his people (Callum, Me and Ares) on the inside of law enforcement.
The police station was oddly quiet. It looked like they’d shuffled everyone to the second floor and cleared the bottom floor out. The police chief is waiting for us, nervously walking in circles. It was never a good look for any officials to do anything on behalf of the disgraced Paris Prince.
“Did you book him?” Paris asks flashing that smile of his.
“No, sir.” The chief said.
“Take me to him.”
“Right this way, sir.”
The chief walks us to the back of the building where the drunk tank and holding cells are. They didn’t remove the prisoners and I recognize a few council members drying up. The chief stops at a private cell on the very end of the block
At first I thought it was empty, then I saw movement in the shadows. Paris steps forward as a lanky blue eyed boy with long chestnut brown moves to the bars. His eyes are downcast, his mouth in an unyielding line. He tilts his chin up just slightly to look at Paris, causing his long hair to shift from his shoulder and down his back.
“Kid”, I say as Arrow’s sharp eyes shift to me. Now more than ever when I reached for his name I almost said Titus. It was those eyes and pointed features. What was he? 12? 13?
“What happened”, Paris asks the chief slipping his hands around the bars. Paris’s hands quiver in that way they do when he thinks about confinement.
Arrow doesn’t talk. Not that anyone expects him to speak. I’d only heard him say one or two words. I’d heard him sing a song from the old country once and never questioned how he learned it. Unofficially he’d been born in one of The United States top secret classified prison camps for captured Angels. Titus and Memnon had been also been captured and held there the same time as Sera. They’d only encountered each other once.
Arrow never had a chance.
When he and Sera had were being traded to Helios for American POWs, the resistance rescued Sera in transport… we weren’t able to get him. He’d been sent to New Aeterna and held in one of Helios child prisons.This kid was the only thing that made me despise Sera. Especially now that I had my girls and Aria. I didn’t understand how she could be ambivalent. She saw him as her enemy and a burden, which given the inhumane and abusive circumstance she was under maybe there wasn’t really a choice.
I don’t think Arrow remembered his days in captivity but it was bred into him somehow, all that cruelty and fear. When he first came to us he would only eat table scraps he could steal and hide in corners for days. He'd hide in dark corners and turn feral when anyone approached him. I don’t think he remembered Commander Fountain, the executive officer of the U.S prison camp who’d taken photos of him, given him candy and sweets before doing God knew what else.
“I wasn’t cruel. I just didn’t care.” Sera had said when we’d first rescued him. He’d been violent and afraid of everyone. We had all had ganged up on Sera asking what the hell was wrong with him. That was all she said on the matter for a long time except for what I picked up over the years
Sera did tell me she’d been in a medically induced coma most of her pregnancy except conveniently when she had to give birth alone in her cell, then she ambivalently left him in a corner to die.
I wasn’t cruel. I just didn’t care.
When I brought up that she wasn’t a bad person because she could have let him starve she’d said:
“They made me… They made me.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant, because back when we’d rescued Seraphina I’d uncomfortably realized she was lactating.
Almost a year after rescuing Sera we’d broken into the youth section of Helios’ prison to rescue kids that were being held. Isobel had gone with me to herd the kids while Sera went to find a way to the upper levels and a way to Helios’ suite. We put explosives under the bars and when they opened all the kids spilled out of the cells and followed Isobel to the escape tunnel.
Arrow was the only one that didn’t go. He didn’t want to know a life outside of bars.
“Let’s go”, I’d said to him not sure if he understood.
We were running out of time and I didn’t know how to talk to kids back then. I just saw this helpless scrawny four-year old with Titus’ deep blue eyes and widow’s peak. The kid didn’t move.
“Sera”, I’d said into my radio, “I need your help…he won’t come.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
The security alarms in the prison went off and I cursed. The Helions would be making their way down. Sera cursed on the other end. Time was up.
“We need to evacuate. Everybody out. Leon meet me by the tunnel.” She’d ordered.
“Fuck. Sera. The kid.”
“Leave him.” Her determined voice came through the radio, “We need to go.”
“No. you help me get him out… or we leave you here.”
“You can’t—“
“We’ll tell Paris you died on the mission.”
I was on an open radio and no one else on the team disagreed with me. It had taken Sera years to get over my insubordination in that moment. Back then it was war and we couldn’t afford to turn on each other.
I heard Sera thundering down the hall towards me a few minutes later. Arrow must have recognized her because when I reached for his hand he went with me. I picked him up and he weighed nothing. I followed Sera back to the tunnel, we moved quickly to reseal the fake wall then ran through the sewer lines until we reached the surface in New Jersey. When we surfaced the vans we’d gotten to transport the kids had already left. I pulled Arrow into the van heading back to the resistance safe house figuring we’d get him to a refugee center.
I’d gone to strap him into a seatbelt when he squirmed lose and attacked Sera who was in the back of the van, on some fucked up instinct she pushed him away, he started scratching her with his long nails his hands reaching for her shirt, then his little fingers strategically went for her eyes. She pushed him away and he sunk his teeth into her forearm. He’d wanted milk from her and I’d uncomfortably realized he’d had to fight her before. She shoved him away and reached for her gun, everyone in the car reacted. I held the kid back while Isobel and Callum restrained Sera. Blood was running down her arms from his bite. I let my grip go on the kid, he had no empathy and started attacking her again and I pulled him back.
We pulled off the interstate as Callum and Isobel did their best to hold Sera down, she was turning bright red and cursing like she’d lost her damn mind. Isobel had us stop at a grocery store while Seraphina was screaming at us to kill him. Callum forced Sera out of the van and they started a screaming match.
By the time Isobel came out from the store Sera had cooled off and wandered to the side of the road. We’d agreed to leave Sera there and send someone back for her. We rode back in silence with the kid gorging himself on sweet protein shakes Isobel bought. We’d decided for his safety Sera was never allowed to be alone with him, a rule we’d somehow kept up until today.
Sera never talked about the camp and maybe Arrow’s silence was his way of coping. She’d let something slip once, something about how she heard the nightly news on the radio in Commander Fountain’s barracks. She must have noticed the funny look I gave her.
“Fountain liked to sleep in the middle…so he could...” she said struggling to find the words then she defended herself, “I didn’t…I mean…I…distracted Fountain… so he wouldn’t…I just didn’t want to see that.”
So there was that.
We’d both shut up and got shitfaced after that. I’d shrugged it off and figured this meant the three therapy sessions Paris forced her to go were helping. With Fountain dead there were only two people who knew what went on and neither of them were talking.
Now that I had five fucking daughters I saw it all different. She’d had a choice, she could have chosen to comfort, love and shield him from that hell hole. She could have given him what she never had, now he had inherited just as much trauma as she had. When I thought about it I got real angry over it
“There was a break in at a bodega downtown.” The police chief was saying , “A few older boys. . . mostly er… Angel kids. This one tried to hide but we caught him. The boys school hadn’t even realized he’d run away. A patrol pulled up when the alarm went off. Tthe older kids bolted with some cases. I’ll let him go, but if he’s caught again…I’ll have to act, sir.”
Paris bought his hand to the bar, “Clean it”
“Huh?”
“Clean his record”, Paris said smiling at the man, “and maybe we can make sure no one finds out about the unfortunate hit and run you were in last year.”
The chief finally notices me and I gave him a hard look like I knew what Paris was talking about.
“Uh, yes sir. I’ll get the discharge papers.”
“No paper trail. Shred the documents and just get the damn keys.”
Paris steps aside and the chief unlocks the cell.
“Next time”, Paris says as the chief unlocks the cuffs, “Forget the cuffs. Kids’ spent too much of his life shackled.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paris puts his gloved hand on the kid’s shoulder and leads him down the hall. The kid tenses at the touch but Paris doesn’t notice. Someone barks as we walk past but I ignore it. Then someone calls to my name and barks like a dog again.
I slow up.
“Can’t even see your leash”, a cold bitter voice say and barks again. I halt in the corridor while Paris, the kid and the chief continue on without me
I step back and peer into a cell I’d passed. I knew the voice well enough but the face always throws me. Helios had offered the name to him as a joke for all the attention he got from women and men. His deep set eyes and chiseled features had dulled during his years in the Helion regime.
“Adonis?” it comes out as a question.
“Adam”, he corrects
He’d been one of the younger Angels and like most of the younger ones he’d been enthralled by Helios and wanted to be a good Angel despite his deformity. He’d worked with the resistance and it’d gotten him immunity after the Regime fell. He’d had a low paying job as a painter, but I’d taken a risk on him. I’d plucked him from obscurity and chosen him to guard Helios’ underground cell. Helios had forced him into marriage and sold his first-born daughter as a baby. I figured he hated Helios enough that he’d never be sympathetic.
I was right. He’d nearly died the night Helios escaped.
“I don’t see the leash Paris Prince has got you on.” Adonis snarls. His voice was like rocks and gravel after living in the Regime.
“What are you doing in jail?” I ask.
“Just everyday bullshit.”
“You smell like vodka.”
He wipes his mouth, “I didn’t do shit. I had a drink…some humans got in my face. Don’t see them in here though. Anything to fuck over an Angel.”
“Sober up, man”, I tell him, “You got kids with…what’s her name…Thea?”
I move to catch up with Paris but Adonis leans against the bars.
“Eos, Troy and Tiberius.”
“What?” I say recognizing the names. They were reformed Helions who died the night of the riots.
“They aren’t dead if that’s what you think. They disappeared from the halfway house the night Helios escaped. I think they may have been the ones who broke Helios out. I haven’t seen them since that day . . . but they write letters.”
“You’re lying”, I said. If they wrote letters we would know.
The halfway houses were for the few Helions who’d been granted immunity after the Regime fell. They were under strict regulations that supposedly aided their rehabilitation but that was bullshit.
“I’ve got proof.”
“What do you know Adonis?”
“Bail me out of here and we’ll talk”
+++
Adonis walks with a limp now, he sneers at humans that get to close to him on the street and yells at cars that nearly hit us when he ignores the street light.
“Damn city”, he growls, “It has no order. When Helios was in charge we had order at least. Not so many cars… Just saying”
“Shut the fuck up with that”, I snarl, “You really want to go back to the Helios being in charge.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell me what you know.” I ask him again.
“How about Lunch first? Or do you need to get back to your Demon master?”
I’d had to make excuses and left Paris to take Arrow back to the Boy’s School. If Arrow was smart he’d stay put.
Adonis and I walk to a greasy looking burger place around the corner from the police station. He looks around the place first and chooses a booth in the back. His dark eyes roam the menu.
“Talk”, I said gesturing to as waiter for two specials.
“I bet this food is shit”, he says, “I mean Helios was a bastard but the food was good during the regime. And free.”
“You just had to pay with your freedom.”
“What do you know, you were on the outside.” He sniffs and glares at some humans who are staring. Probably tourist who’ve never seen Angels.
“Aria tells me stuff. About what it was like. All the manipulation and psychological abuse”, Adonis shrugs it off, so I move on as our burgers arrive, “Tell me what you know.” ,
“That night when Helios escaped I was attacked from behind. I didn’t see who did it. It felt like at least three people. One had his foot on the back of my head and I think…two ripped my wing off I …blacked out but It’s coming back to me. Fuck… did you know I had to go to Queen Anne’s to get the ladies to treat me? No hospitals would take me. I got 20 years tacked on to my probation for missing curfew. The fucking minders didn’t care that I’d been wounded—“
“Adonis.”
“Right---When I got back to the halfway house Eos, Tiberius and Troy were gone. We only have each other in that house, and I guess the other guys covered for them. Told the staff they’d been killed in that Unification Party riot. I thought it was odd …but the humans bought it.
But you see Eos has got this kid Eos II. He’s sixteen and a little shit. He’s a mean bastard. Runs the household, treats his mother and sisters like shit—“
“I think I heard Aria talk about him”, something about not letting the girls near him. Some of the oldest Angel boys haven’t been able to shake the brutality Helios bred into them. For ten years Helios’s Spartan regiment was all they knew.
“Rumor is he’s been getting letters.”
“In the mail?”
“In a bottle”, Adonis said with a smirk, “Apparently the great Paris Prince set up a deal to reduce import tax on glass bottles because they are recyclable, so a lot of glass comes through the New Aeterna docks. Eos II and some others teens worked on the docks but got fired for stealing. They didn’t steal good shit, just cases of soda. Now suddenly Eos II and his band of followers have been robbing stores and shit, breaking into warehouses like they did tonight. And look, this Eos II kid has nice shoes, a party loft, lots of illegal guns. I think his old man is sending him money.”
“Message in a bottle”, I said, “Where are these bottles coming from”
“Mexico.”
“Mexico, huh?” I thought on it. We’d been following rumors that Helios had bought fake passports and we always assumed he’d gone overseas. TSA was a bitch but Mexico? He could have made it there on foot. I mean sure he’d stick out in the country there but we’d had tons of Mexican underworld contacts in our SGI days. Helios had worked with the cartels during his regime to get steroids and cocaine for this men.
“And you never shared this information because. . .”
“I don’t trust Demons or humans.” Adonis sneers at the humans staring at us, “ Look you don’t know what we ‘Helions’ went through. We have to look out for each other and each other’s kids whether we like it or not.”
“So why are you spilling now?”
“I saw you with Paris Prince. I want out of this halfway house. I want out of this parole system. I’m fucking reformed. I want be free…for real. Like you and Ares. I heard Paris Prince can make things like that happen.”
“That was before Bless. Bless won’t go for it though, he’s all law and order when it comes to Helions. I mean Ares and I were never Helions.”
Adonis had it pretty good. There were several Helions who had been executed for war crimes during Paris’ early days. He and the others had only gotten out because they had made good cases and plead fealty to the new New Aeterna. Having a family helped. It was how Eos, Troy and Tiberius had gotten parole.
“You owe me”, Adonis said wiping his mouth. His voice dropped all the bravado and vitriol. I realized he was thinking ahead to the long life ahead of him in that halfway house.
“How about we make a deal.”
“What do you mean?”
I can’t make any promises but I can offer you a job where you will travel most of the year. Help people and make good money.”
“Okay”
“See. . . I’m looking for someone to join my team.”
+3+
I probably should have called but I couldn’t risk losing Adonis—or Adam or what the fuck ever he went by. He'd been uneasy when we entered the bustling New Aeterna city center that had once been Prospect Park. We walked to the gated area where the residential area for non-humans was. Towards the back, deep in the woods of the park was Sera and Paris’s one story tiny isolated glass square house. Adonis stared at it, he’d been employed as a painter so he was used to the city center but not many had seen the audacity of Paris’ transparency.
I jog up the steps, the scanner take my prints and the doors slides open. The news is playing vividly on one wall. Paris and Sera are tangled together on the floor, Sera is sitting on top of Paris her hands tight around his wrist keeping his hands above his head. Thankfully she is fully dressed in a gray undershirt and black jogging pants with her hair slicked back, he was naked pathetically grinding himself against the pussy he isn't getting. There is a Fleshlight partially rolled under the couch and playing cards are strewn on the floor.
“Fuck”, Paris says noticing us first, “Get the fuck out of my house, Leon.”
“Stay”, Sera says.
Paris pulls a blanket down over his waist, he stands and helps Seraphina off the floor.
“Uh”, I started because it was weird with Adonis being here, “We might have a new lead on Helios.”
Sera’s eyes cut to Adonis. I didn’t know if she remembered him from when she was originally apart of SGI, but I knew Paris did. Paris remembers everyone.
“Wait”, Paris says before Adonis starts talking, “We should go downstairs.”
Paris looks around ominously and gestures to the small staircase that leads to the basement. Adonis and I follow Sera down the six steps to the small underground (sound proof) weight room. Paris shuts the door after he walks in, having hurriedly dressed in a pair of black pants and an unbuttoned shirt. Sera looks pissed that Paris has invited himself but they both turn to Adonis.
Adonis starts at the top, keeping to the basic facts. Helios. Alive. Mexico. Maybe?
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Seraphina says, “We’ve been looking for him for almost two fucking years and he is in fucking Mexico? ”, Sera sneers at Adonis, “I remember you. You were blind in your faithful to Helios...”
“Was”, Adonis barks,”I used to be. If you don’t believe me, believe Antony.”
“Who?” I venture.
“My son.” Adonis explains , “Thea and I we…you know how it was during the regime. Or maybe you don’t. But Antony… he’s only eight but he looks up to the older Angel boys. Those older boys, they think they know what it was like under Helios. They think it was some great time for Angels. They talk about their fathers like they are legends. They think they can treat my kids any kind of way cause I turned on Helios but—“
“Adonis”, I interrupt before he gets into another rant. I never remembered him talking this much before
“Anyway”, he says, “The older boys forget he’s there sometimes. He hears things and he tells me. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but...look... I want Helios’ influence gone just as much as you. Trust me when I say you’ll find him in Mexico.”
“I want proof before we waste our time again”, Seraphina says. Surprisingly decisive in a way she hadn’t been since the resistance.
“I believe him”, Paris says leaning against the closed door carefully buttoning his shirt, “I’m a former king. I think my opinion counts for something.”
“Yeah, well wasn’t it your idea to keep Helios secretly alive?” Adonis questions.
“It wasn’t an idea so much as it was a tactic.” Paris says with a challenging smile.
“It was selfish”, Sera cuts in from she is perched on the weight bench, “So fucking selfish.”
“I gave the orders you didn’t have to follow them--—“
I barley register Sera move across the small room, I grab her by the wrist at the last second before she can get near Paris with the switchblade in her hand. I notice the quick way Paris went from shaken to calm.
“This was the fight you were going to kill me over?” Paris says putting a on a thick layer of charm.
“This is not my fault”, she seethes, Don’t you dare put this on me. He ruined my Sisters, he left me in that prison to die. And you. You wanted to let him live. Merciful Paris Prince.”
“I’m sorry, love”, Paris says sarcastically, “But I’m afraid Helios has taken far more from me than he ever could from you. He slaughtered my entire family in front of me. I was drenched in their blood and I’d give anything for even that feel of them nowadays. Death would be to easy a punishment for that. So why don’t you save this for Helios”
He works the switchblade out of her hand and places it in her pocket.
Sera’s pulse is slowing down and her muscles relax beneath my grasp but I still keep a tight hold on her.
“Some kids and …Arrow broke into a convenience store”, I say more to Sera than anyone else, “On the way over here I called the store an apparently the kids stole some cases of Coke’s bottled in Mexico. According to the supplier they’ve been getting extra palettes for a few months that have been disappearing. Maybe this is how they’ve been communicating.”
“Great”, Paris says again, “We should go to Mexico.”
“You aren’t going anywhere”, Seraphina says to Paris
“This is something I have to do.” Paris says, “There are things I have to say to Helios”
“Is this about the Tempest?” she asks, “It’s not real. You were hallucinating, Paris.”
It looked like they were about to launch into a fight they’d had a million time before, I decide to cut if off before Sera’s roid rage kicked back in.
“It’s not that”, Paris says shaking off the fight before it could start, “Please. I need to be there. If you’re going after Helios I want to be there. I want to do this.”
He made the very decisive choice to turn and face me for permission. I looked at Seraphina and she seemed interested in my answer.
“I don’t know Boss… Look Paris the thing is…if you come with us you’re not exactly inconspicuous.”
Paris smiles a little, “Who says we have to be.”
+++
I know I know. Sera is very hard on the men but she has her
reasons. So I can't remember if I knew Adonis was going to show up in this or not when I wrote Little Rebellions. I think I had an idea because I wrote Little Rebellions because I wanted to show how awful Helios regime was.
I will say this is the last of Arrow we will see in this serial. I have an idea of how his relationship with Sera comes full-circle but I'm not sure if I will ever really get a chance to put it on "paper"