"The city is too loud, and it smells like garbage." Melchior pouted from his position slouched in the front passenger seat of Ishmael's car. As if to further prove his point, he rolled up the windows his brother had lowered. He thought it an acceptable risk. Slowly roasting inside of the khaki-tan sedan, which seemed to predate the invention of central air, sounded a lot better to him than enjoying even one more moment of the city's splendor.

  A wise decision, he reasoned further. Given how slowly they were progressing, it seemed that an eternity awaited them between each stoplight. The rickety vehicle crept forward half an inch each twenty-eight seconds. Making such insignificant distance through New York traffic that Melchior had almost asked his older brother why he'd wasted his paychecks on four wheels at all, but the answer was pretty obvious. So he could babysit with higher efficiency. The A train didn't make a stop at Ailbe's cabin.

  "Please don't say things like that." Ishmael scolded. He momentarily abandoned the wheel--not that he was doing much driving away--to reach over the center console. He flicked Melchior across the forehead affectionately.

  Melchior's frown deepened, his eyebrows creased over the spot Ishmael had just tapped. "What? Everyone can tell that this place sucks."

  "You're not everyone, Melchi. You're different. Just don't draw attention, okay?" He placed his right elbow on the wheel and fixed his thumb nail between his teeth, punishing it absentmindedly. "This is a bad idea."

  "Correct." Ailbe huffed from the back seat.

  "It was your idea!" Ishmael exclaimed.

  "I never claimed it to be a good idea," Ailbe reminded, "just that it was our only idea."

  "Guys," Melchior spread his hands out, palms raised in picture perfect innocence. "I've got this."

  "Okay," Ishmael groaned, "That's it--I'm turning this car around."

  "Wise choice." Ailbe nodded.

  "Hey!" Melchior protested. "Why won't you just trust me?"

  Ishmael struck out as quickly as a viper. His fingers wrapped around Melchior's left wrist, extending it away from the squirming boy. Melchior winced as his vice grip bore down on his rapidly beating pulse. He looked at his brother's hand, placed perfectly over the branding scarred into his ebon skin. "I do trust you, Melchior. I don't trust this. Your curse could get you killed, it's not a joke."

  "More importantly, it could get the Soul killed." Ailbe gruffed. "The Progeny went through a lot to get that boy, don't mess it up, pup."

  "Angels," Melchior cursed, yanking his arm back. "I get it. I'll take care of any monsters that come for me, the Soul won't even know."

  "That isn't the monster I'm worried about." Ishmael muttered. The words struck Melchior through the heart, turning him to ice. He glanced into the back of the car. Ailbe touched the forming bruise on his cheek with fragile fingers--he had done that. Melchior looked into his lap, at his own hands. He traced the shape of his tattoo and clenched his fists, until freshly grown nails bit into the skin of his palm. He looked out the car window, too ashamed to be there anymore.

  ? ? ?

  Melchior Brisbane had never met the Cardinal, nor had he ever been to the cathedral close surrounding Saint John the Divine's grand church. Before his curse, he was completely unremarkable. He had no leverage to earn his parents affections, and he had no skill in battle to earn the Cardinal's attention.

  He was just the twelfth child of a family that should have stopped at eleven, or so he'd been told by his older siblings in a tussle over the last nanny-baked chocolate chip cookie. Melchior didn't even like chocolate--he'd just been vying for something to have to himself between his hoard of siblings.

  The first night his mother had ever truly looked at him, it had been in disgust as she sent him away. Now, for the first time since, Melchior had returned. Not home--but the closest he'd ever be allowed to get.

  Saint John the Divine's cathedral hung from the sky on invisible strings. Even from across the close, Melchior could see the spike of towers over the treeline. The rot of the city was heavy, but here in the lawn acquired by the cathedral, Melchior could almost turn his nose to the fresh cut grass. The close was a blemish on the industrial city, a few acres cut out of the cement. The yard was home to great gothic buildings of worship. A school that Melchior had attended until he was twelve, an orphanage that gave him the creeps, a Bishop House, a place to seek council.

  He closed his eyes and heard the heartbeat of the world beneath the car horns and chatter. A pigeon cooed from her nest in the nearby decorative brush. The smell of roses carried on the gentle summer breeze, coming from the nearby garden. Laity tourists crowded, making noises of soft awe, at the feet of the great stone figures in the Fountain of Peace. Ishmael shook him by the shoulder, already equipped with a glare for when Melchior turned his eyes on him. He was doing it again--listening to what was forbidden to anyone else.

  "Put this on." He held a jacket out to Melchior who accepted it begrudgingly. Melchior didn't complain that it was hot outside, or that the coat wasn't in his color. He pulled it on and adjusted the cuffs with care so that it covered the inside of his wrist. Melchior was not angry. It had never made his sickness easier, only worse, and it had never helped to pass the time in the cellar. So he had discarded it--but he almost wished he had it now. He wanted to be mad, he wanted to kick the bushes and cry that none of this was fair. He wanted to claw away the skin that they had used to brand him. And he did nothing instead. Completely unremarkable in every way, his father would say.

  "Keep up, pup." Ailbe gruffed. He hobbled across the greenery, leading the Brisbane boys towards the southwest corner of the close, where a gray sandstone building stood--the Synod House. It was nearest the edge of the close, and Melchior winced as the smell of car oil attacked his senses. It was hard not to be intimidated by the carvings of great knights posted in the walls of the arched entrance. Melchior shuddered under their scornful stone gaze and slipped past the double oak doors. The gallery would have easily fit an army, and very well could have given its sordid past with the Progeny. Melchior paused to admire the patchwork of stained glass windows. They were colorless, drab and beautiful. "Pup." Ailbe called again. He was at risk of falling behind. Melchior rushed between the pews to follow Ailbe into a small room full of cleaning supplies and chemicals.

  "Is this a holy broom closet?" Melchior asked. "Or just an average one?" Ailbe smacked the back of his head with an open palm.

  "The door is just in the cabinet there." Ailbe pulled a silver chain from beneath his silk black dress shirt and handed it to Melchior. His eyes traced the copper skeleton key with skepticism. He raised his eyebrows with question but Ailbe only scoffed. "It's going to be dark, you'll lead the way."

  "Oh," Melchior swallowed hard to dislodge the tingling bubble of nerves in his chest. He faced down the oak box. He would be able to fit in easily, so why was his stomach churning so heavily. It looked more like a coffin than a cupboard.

  "Melchior say your goodbyes." Ailbe instructed.

  "My goodbyes? To who?" Melchior furrowed up his brows.

  "Melchi," Ishmael sighed softly. He placed a palm on Melchior's shoulder and it answered his question.

  Melchior felt his world shatter, and he said, "Oh, okay. Um, goodbye?" Ishmael chuckled softly. He wrapped his arms around his brother's shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace that Melchior didn't want to ever pull away from.

  "I love you, Melchi."

  "Yeah, I love you, too." Melchior sunk his canines into the soft pink of his tongue to stop the words filling up his throat. He had no right to speak them--no right to protest the future that was meant for him. For six years, Melchior had only been half of something. He was grape jelly to someone else's peanut butter. And it was beginning to sink in to him that he was the lesser of the two. He had never asked for anything. He took his pills, struggling to keep them down as his body fought. He held his wrist still and watched as the needle plunged the ink deep into him. Just once, he wanted to ask for something. For his brother to walk him to whatever came next. Melchior was sinking deep into an ocean of dread, this hug seemed like the last. A nagging tug in his gut was filling him with the idea that he would not see his brother again. It would have been easy to dismiss; if Melchior did not expect himself to die at the end.

  As if aware of his thoughts, Ishmael pressed his lips close to Melchior's ear. "Remember your promise." They had barely come out of his mouth as a breath, but they echoed through Melchior's head like cannon-fire. Melchior nodded, and his brother's embrace lessened.

  Melchior turned from the hug and crawled into the cabinet before he could make a careless mistake. The back of the wooden box had been fit with a cold iron doorknob. Melchior found the keyhole just beneath it and fit in the copper key, twisting it before his regrets grew too strong. A lock clicked as loud as gunfire, and it stabbed Melchior just as deep. Melchior pressed it beneath his palm and shoved inward, the cupboard backing swung open into a tunnel only slightly taller than the cabinet itself. Melchior scuffled into the dark, rising to a half bent squat. He moved just enough inwards for Ailbe to crawl in after him and shut the door. The wood panel clicked back into place, sealing them in the shaft.

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  Outside, in the broom closet, Melchior could hear his brother speak. "Please, Melchior. Just stay alive." He didn't know if he had what it took to make his brother's plea a reality.

  "What are you waiting for?" Ailbe scolded. "I'm not getting any younger."

  Melchior began to descend the crawlspace.

  ? ? ?

  The tunnels beneath the cathedral close were tight and dusty and reminded Melchior very much of his cellar back home. He sunk teeth into tongue again. Melchior tried to deny himself the fear encroaching the edges of his mind, but the sense of being encased beneath New York was growing stronger, until he couldn't breath.

  "Uh, there aren't alligators down here, right?" Melchior had a pesky habit of saying stupid things when he was nervous--but since he was always saying stupid things, no one had picked up on his little tell yet.

  "This isn't the sewers." Ailbe said

  "Then why does it smell like one?" Melchior grumbled.

  This seemed to shock Ailbe into realizing he'd been playing into Melchior's childish whims. "Ugh--there are no alligators in New York!" He was crouched low, shuffling forward carefully on the balls of his feet. Melchior, who stood much taller, had given up the battle of detangling cobwebs from his thick hair and had decided to crawl. He was held awkwardly, walking on his hands and toes to keep from soiling his clothes. And suddenly he was glad his brother wasn't around to see it.

  "Hm, what about crocodiles? Or komodo dragons--or dragon dragons. Or just, like, a really angry gecko." Melchior puzzled. Ailbe did not dignify it with a response. "Anyway, there has got to be a better way to your secret club house."

  "There are many tunnels, most worse than this." Ailbe grunted.

  "I can't imagine how this could be any worse." The air had been growing steadily staler. Heat kissed the edges of his skin. "How far down is it? We aren't going all the way to Hell, are we?"

  "By all means, yap away, pup. Consume all the oxygen left in the shaft. That'll do us some good." Ailbe grumbled beneath his breath. Melchior was silent after that. His hands were slimy and cold from the bottom of the shaft, his elbows and shoulders ached with the effort it took to carry himself.

  As the tunnel spiraled down, and down, and down, he turned his fervent mind to mulling over the madness of their plan. There seemed to be no way for Melchior to escape the Forgotten Prophecy, no way to side-step his fate. In the end, what they had promised to pass would indeed do just that. Unless he took fate into his claw-tipped hands. Unless he walked willingly into the ax, baring his throat. It had been Ailbe's idea. Play along, until the game changes. If he could stay in sight long enough–then what?

  He couldn't exactly detangle what his mentor had been thinking, and yet he'd somehow ended up on his way to the Cardinal just the same. But Ailbe had promised, and he believed him, that the world was just as well barreling towards disaster. Two doomed fools, piggy-backing off one another's misfortune.

  He drudged on in silence--silence by Ailbe standards. Melchior's ears had been twitching to the symphony of ragged respiration and strained shuffling, until something changed.

  It was the lack of sound that alerted Melchior to it. His hot breaths had been echoing around the walls since they'd begun, and now they did not come back to his ears. Melchior perked up at that and slowly rose to a hunched height. Everything had been gray for so long, it took a moment to realize that he was no longer staring ahead into nothingness. The shaft ended. Melchior crept forward, running his palms over the smooth stone wall.

  "Uh, problem," he laughed nervously.

  Ailbe scoffed. "The key, pup--it's a door."

  "It doesn't look like a door, it looks like a wall." Melchior grumbled.

  "I wouldn't know." Ailbe huffed, reminding Melchior of the total darkness they'd been immersed in. Melchior ran his eyes up and down the wall in quick rapid bursts, trying hard to swallow down his building panic. He was beneath the cabin again, unaware of the days as they crept past. A Beast tore at the walls, trying to get him. A Beast tore at the walls, trying to get out. "Take a deep breath, pup. The Cardinal won't kill you--well. . ." Ailbe chuckled, misreading Melchior's anxiety--and making it worse. "It'll be just a keyhole."

  Melchior found it then. At first he had been ignoring it as just a crack in the concrete. It was a small hole the size of a thumbprint, the edges worn down with scratches. It seemed like many Deacon had stood in this place, failing to fit in the keyhole, until the wall had been worn away by their panicked struggle. Melchior did not follow their example, he fit the copper easily into the slot and twisted it.

  A bright white light pierced Melchior's eyes. He gasped and flung a palm up over his face. Careful to keep the grime collected there away from his skin. Ailbe shuffled past, pushing into the wall. It gave way with a heavy screech of stone against stone. Cool air flooded the tunnel, sending chills across Melchior's salty skin. He shuddered and filed out into the fresher air before he could think too deeply about it. As his senses attuned to the new room, it became apparent that he'd traded one tunnel for another. At least this one had AC, and space to stretch out into. The stone walls of the shaft had been exchanged for glossy white marble, the floors and high domed ceilings had been made of the same. Melchior had the sense he was standing inside hollowed bone.

  Everything was white and plain, the only color came from dozens of large oil-paintings hanging along the curved walls. The paintings were bent to follow the flow of the surface. He almost missed the rough character of the stone channel.

  Ailbe basked beneath the white-hot fluorescents. His pale eyes found Melchior in the hall and winced. "You look a mess, pup." Melchior looked down at his hands and grimaced at the sight of them. Ailbe chuckled and ruffled around in his pants pocket. He pulled out a packet of wet-wipes and handed it to Melchior who fixed him with a quizzical stare. "It's not my first time."

  Melchior accepted it with a nod and began cleaning the mess from his palms. Ailbe stepped past Melchior towards the door they'd come from. It hadn't seemed like something worth his attention at the time, so it had fallen behind much of the other weird sights. Now he followed Ailbe with attentive eyes. Ailbe gripped the edge of the thin wall and pushed it back into the curved sides of the tunnel. It clicked into place, leaving Melchior staring into one of the most horrific things he'd ever seen.

  It was a painting of a man. His eyes were wide, slouched in undeniable sadness over flushed cheeks. His agonized features were framed in long sandy hair that dragged along the earth beneath his groveling form. His bare skin was covered in fine fur, thin enough to reveal the bulk of strained muscles beneath. Melchior couldn't get his heart to still, his eyes fluttered to the bottom of the canvas, to the hands and feet of the crawling man.

  "Nebuchadnezzar." Ailbe explained. "He was a king--until a curse took it from him."

  "What happened to him?" Melchior whispered.

  "I imagine you could guess." Ailbe shrugged. "Come on, the Cardinal is waiting."

  Melchior turned his eyes away from the curled claws tipped on each finger and toe. He could imagine it all too well.

  ? ? ?

  The hall was empty, filled only by the buzzing of light tubes, the awkward march of Melchior's dragging boots, and many more disturbing portraits. Melchior didn't mind the length of their walk. He had turned three wet-wipes black and still needed time to fix his hair. He dragged his fingers through the soft curls in search of spiders. He had wrecked an awful lot of webs with his thick skull. Seemingly satisfied, he turned to show off to Ailbe.

  "Better?"

  "Hmm, still need to fix your face." Ailbe pointed.

  Melchior ran his cleaned palms over his cheeks, trying and failing to feel any grit or slime. "What? What's wrong with it?"

  "Oh, I just don't like it." Ailbe shrugged. Melchior leveled him with a glare and the old man laughed. It softened Melchior's resolve and he laughed, too. Knowing that this would be the last moments between mentor and Deacon made it hard to face Ailbe with any animosity. "Ah, I almost forgot. Give me my key back."

  Melchior pulled the cold chain from his throat and handed it back to his mentor, who accepted it with a heavy sigh. "Don't tell anyone I ever gave it to you, it'll really put a damper on the ceremony later."

  "Ailbe Damianos breaking the rules?" Melchior teased.

  "If I always followed the rules, you would have not lived to eighteen." Ailbe chuckled like it was humorous. He patted Melchior on the shoulder as he brushed past him down the white hall.

  The marble chute was even longer than the stone tunnel, and Melchior had to work twice as hard to dull his senses to the paintings littered throughout the walls. But he wasn't perfect, and one still caught his eye. It was unlike the others, dull and gray. Melchior had always liked art like that, because not many people appreciated art without color. And because he was colorblind anyways--well, it wasn't that Melchior couldn't see it, just that it had appeared duller to him and all seemed to blur together into three categories: yellow, blue, or gray. Art like this cut out the middleman, and left nothing for him to focus on but the intention.

  It was almost peaceful. The world was nothing but soft white clouds. A man stood in the partition of the fluffy curtains, holding a spear the entire length of his body. He was adorned in flowing robes. Large wings sprouted from his back, cut in sharp edges. Like those of a bat's. He stood over a sea of foam, below him and sunk ankles deep into the mist was another wing-toting being. He was slumped against a wall of smoke, looking hopeless and lost. A sword hung from his hip, but he seemed too paralyzed by fear to take it. His flowing robes had been made in harsher edges, so that Melchior wondered if he wore a chest piece over his clothes.

  "That's a terrible one." Ailbe commented.

  Melchior fixed him with a curious stare. "The painting?"

  "No, the door." Ailbe chuckled. Melchior thought he was joking until he elaborated. "It's some twisted staircase they should have shut off in the 1900s. Be glad I didn't take you down that one." Melchior nodded, but it didn't answer the questions he had remaining. Ailbe must have seen it in his face because he sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's Lucifer and Beelzebub--Gustave Doré."

  "Beelzebub?" Melchior echoed in wonder. It had been a name struck into him since he could understand the war he was born into. The Sect of Saint Francis stood in opposition of him, and now Melchior could not decide which figure he was meant to be. The man challenging the world, or the one crouched in the dirt.

  "Hurry up, pup. We're almost there." Ailbe pushed him gently and Melchior moved down the hall on feet heavier than anchors.

  The end of the channel came abruptly, just like the chute had. But unlike the stone tunnel, this one was a bit more splendid. Set in the beautiful white walls was a set of grand oak doors, much like the ones on the Synod House that Melchior had passed though seemingly years ago. Ailbe came to the entrance and paused.

  "Should we knock?" Melchior whispered.

  Ailbe turned to face his Deacon with something like apprehension in his pale eyes. Melchior could detect the quickening of his pulse and smell the sweat collecting on his weathered skin. "Melchior Brisbane." Ailbe whispered in the hallowed space between them. "I must admit that I did not hate raising you as much as I thought I would."

  "Um, thanks I guess." Melchior rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "I didn't hate it as much as I thought either."

  Ailbe smiled at that. "I know what you believe to be your fate. I'd be lying if I said I did not agree with it as well, but there is something you should know." Melchior held his breath. "Things are not always as they appear."

  "That's it?" Melchior exhaled sharply. "That's your advice?"

  "It's not my advice. It's just some wise words." Ailbe scoffed. "I suppose if you require advice. . ."

  "It would be nice." Melchior shrugged.

  "Then, my advice can be to take your medicine."

  "That's not really advice either," Melchior pointed.

  Ailbe rolled his eyes and turned to the massive doors. "It'll have to do. We're late." Melchior almost asked him to wait, but he fit his hands over the bronze handles and threw the doors inward with a bang. So Melchior walked willingly into the sight of the Cardinal, something his brother had spent six years trying to prevent.