After that bombshell, I just sat there in shock while Sam kept chugging from that flask of his. Heaven was gone? How the hell did that make any sense? How did the place God governed from just up and disappear?

I got out of bed and took the flask away from him. "What the hell are you talking about? How can Heaven be gone?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is that no angel or practitioner of Heavenly magic I could get ahold of is able to go there, and I even went to Hell and asked Cousin Zimmy, and he couldn't get there. Something is just plain fucking wrong."

I quickly downed half the flask myself. That he even considered asking Ziminair meant this was way more serious than I'd already thought it was. "Where's Hadraniel?" I asked, hoping maybe the British asshat was out doing something useful.

"Waiting at your place. We've gotta get going now, or else something terrible might happen."

I raised an eyebrow. "Get going? Going where?"

"Massachusetts. There's an archangel there named Jubril that might be able to help us."

I gave him back the flask. “Why can’t we just use your angel fast travel and have Hadraniel meet us there?”

He shook his head. “Because Heaven is cut off to us. What little magic we can actually use right now is stupid things like refilling this damned flask every time it runs empty.”

I guess that made just about as much sense as anything else. “And aren’t you an archangel? Shouldn’t you know everything this Jujube guy knows?”

“Jubril,” he corrected, “and no, Jubril’s been an archangel since before I was born. If anyone would know what to do, it'd be him. He's on vacation visiting his kids in… Some shitty little town. They live with some girl named Ashlynn or Ashley or something like that. Real looker, I've heard, and total racing badass."

I sighed. "Whatever. Let's just…" A thought crossed my mind. I really hoped we weren't gonna do what I thought we were gonna do. "We're taking the bus or a plane or something, right?"

He smirked. "Nope, your mom says you need to drive."

I groaned loudly. "I only have a learner's permit and we're driving way out of state!"

He patted me on the shoulder. "I have faith in you."

I groaned again. "Goddamn it, Mom!"

 

---

In the passenger's seat beside me, Kevin yawned. I couldn't blame him, seeing as it was three in the morning and we were about to go on a two day drive to fucking Massachusetts. It didn’t help that we had been waiting for ten or fifteen minutes, just sitting in the driveway outside Thandie’s house.

"What the hell are we doing here?" Hadraniel asked.

I turned around in my seat and glared at him. "I'm uncomfortable driving anyway, and this being at least a two day trip doesn't help, okay? I dunno about you, but I wanna get there in one piece and not be a completely sleep-deprived mess!"

He blinked twice, then held up a 7-Eleven cup. "French roast?"

Sam asked, "You're British, aren't the French like your mortal enemy?"

"That doesn't mean they don't make a right nice coffee."

Five minutes later, Thandie practically bounced out of her front door and quickly dumped her duffel bag in the trunk, then climbed on top of the car and slid down between the angel brothers in the back seat. The look on Hadraniel's face was pure surprise, the look on Sam's face was pure entertainment.

"Okay, let's get this road trip on!" she exclaimed. Hadraniel winced. Sam smiled.

"Don't sound so happy," Kevin said.

She blew him a raspberry. "Oh shush. You're just pissed you're gonna miss your precious football."

He laughed. "No, I'm pissed the sweet little angels in the car felt the need to do this at three in the morning."

"Not being able to get into Heaven is a serious problem, wanker."

Thandie asked, "So what's our first goal?"

Sam put his arm around her shoulder. "I'm glad you asked, Thanna. First thing --"

"Thanna?"

"It's short for Thanatos. Anyway, first thing is this trip to Massachusetts."

I continued his thought. "Where we're going to meet this angel named Gerbil or something."

"Jubril," he corrected, "we're hoping he knows a few things. At the very leaset, he should be able to tell us where Azrael is."

"Who's Azrael?" Kevin asked.

"Have you not read your bloody Bible?" Hadraniel scolded. "The very first Death."

I asked, "Why don't we just go to him?"

Sam answered, "Because Azrael's been off the grid ever since he came to spend his life on Earth. All we know is that he lives in the western United States."

I blinked. "What?"

"He lives out west, but we don't know where."

I turned around in my seat. "So… not only do we need to spend two days going east to the snobbiest state in the country, then we need to turn around and go the other direction to find the guy we really want?!"

Thandie smirked. "Oh, this is gonna be fantastic."

“What’s the problem?” Sam asked in obvious confusion.

“What’s the problem? We’re about to spend two days on the road going to fucking Massachusetts, just to have to spend God knows how many days going the other fucking way to find the guy we actually need to find!”

“Dani,” Kevin said, in what sounded like concern. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t paying attention.

“And what if this Jubril guy doesn’t even know where the guy we’re looking for is? All we know is out west! West is a really big fucking place, Sam!”

“Dani…” Kevin was a bit more worried this time.

Sam shot back, “Look, we’re going on what we actually know, okay?! All I know is where Jubril is and that he should know where Azrael is! If we could get into Heaven, this would be as easy as asking the Locators were Azrael is, but we can’t do that, now can we?”

“Dani…” Even more anxiety in Kevin’s voice.

“If we could get into Heaven, we wouldn’t need to go on this fucking road trip to even find this guy!” I screamed.

“DANI!” Kevin outright shouted at me.

“What?!” I shouted back.

“Zeus!”

He pointed out the windshield and there, in his white bathrobe with gold trim, his gray beard basically flowing in the wind, was Thandie’s dad, the king of the Greek Gods himself. Lightning struck the ground around him, one bolt coming a bit too close to the car. The wind began to pick up speed as he approached, and electricity surged between his fingertips. He looked like one of the most frightening people you could ever imagine.

He stopped at my side of the car, knelt down and gently tapped on the window. “Good morning, Danielle. You’re certainly looking… Ravishing.”

I cursed myself for wearing a tanktop instead of a tee-shirt, but I hadn’t actually planned on speaking to him. Either way, I practically felt his perviness radiating from him.

Through gritted teeth, I said, “Thank you.”

“Now, what’s so important that you’re taking my precious little daughter in the middle of the early morning after I just finished reading her a bedtime story?”

I shot Thandie a look that I’m sure would be described as concern, horror and absurdity all rolled into one, and all she did was shrug. I turned back to the old creep and answered, “We’re going on a trip to the east coast and she’s a better driver than me, so I wanted some automotive backup.”

He glanced in the back seat. “And what do Hadraniel and Samael have to do with this?”

Hadraniel asked, “You… You’ve heard of us?”

Zeus ignored him. “And for what reason is your human love-slave coming along? Were two men not enough for you two?”

Thandie answered, “We’re going to find out what’s happened to Heaven, Dad, we’ll just be gone for… A week at most.”

Kevin asked, “Human love-slave?”

Zeus had a surprised, disgusted look on his face. "A week? I'm going a week without showing you the pleasures of Mount Olympus?"

I turned back to Thandie and said, "Please tell me Mount Olympus is a place and not his name for --"

She cut me off, "It most certainly is what you're thinking." She turned to her father, "Go back to bed, Daddy. Mom and Hera are probably busy with the vibrator while you're out here."

He sighed. "You're most likely right." He looked me in the eye. "Listen, Danielle, if anything should happen to my precious little goddess, I won't be kind about it. And your love-slave may have to settle for how I've landscaped your garden before he gets a chance to pluck your flowers."

I blinked. "That is a terrifying and oddly horticultural way of saying you're going to rape me."

"You kids have fun." With that, he walked back into his house.

After afew minutes of silence, Sam broke it by saying, "Your dad is fucking weird."

I wasn’t sure if this was intentional or not, but right after he said that, lightning struck a tree just to the side of the car, causing a limb to fall off and land just outside my window. The timing of it made me almost positive that Zeus had heard what Sam said.

 

---

Two days later, I pulled the car into a parking lot in Clane County, Massachusetts. The idea that the small town itself had “county” in the name perplexed me, but after two days of hearing Sam and Hadraniel bicker with one another, sometimes with me sitting between the two of them (because God forbid they sit beside one another, nooooo; there always needed to be a girl between them, so Thandie and I took turns; the only time either of us got a window seat in the back was when one of the angels was sitting in the front passenger’s seat).

Seven months with Hadraniel as basically my adopted brother had not prepared me for the intensity of his arguments with Sam in concentrated bursts. More than once, I’d shouted at them to shut up, and all that had done was cause more arguing. About the moments of solace were when we stopped at hotels to sleep and the boys had one room while the girls had the other. Thandie and I intentionally made sure our room was on a different floor from theirs.

Thandie was another… Pressure. Generally, she was okay, especially when we were on the road and she could sight see (though I wasn’t fond of when she’d drag us off on side trips to see “World’s Biggest [insert object here]”). Once we were alone, it was pretty obvious she had Zeus’s blood in her veins. She liked to cuddle, would not wear any kind of sleepwear to bed, insisted on sleeping in the same bed and tried to get Kevin in the room to have a three way. She apologized every time she made things awkward, though.

I wasn’t looking forward to the trip “out west”, wherever the hell that would be, but these last two and a half days had gotten me a little used to all the crap. I was hopeful they’d calm down at least a little bit. Maybe once we learned whatever we were about to learn from Jubril, they’d be less… Them.

Clane County was a small town, smaller than even back home in Kansas. The sign on the way in said it was home to four thousand people, and it showed. There was only one stoplight, it seemed, and every building was a Mom ’n’ Pop store with an apartment on the second floor. Three restaurants, two bars, and a single clothing store dominated Main Street, with a small service station (one of those old ones where the attendant came out and filled your tank for you) just around the corner from the clothing store. The parking lot was across the street from one of the bars. Down the road from the service station was a junk yard/auto parts store.

Sam got out of the car first and stretched his legs. I was second, and the first thing I did was toss the keys to Thandie, because she’d be driving once we got back on the road. I wasn’t doing bad, but I still wasn’t comfortable. Driving about half of the 1500 miles from home to here had done absolutely nothing to help my confidence.

"So where is the old bastard?" Hadraniel asked through a yawn.

Sam shook his head. "I don't know yet. I'm calling him now."

Thandie looked impressed. "You have his phone number?"

Kevin added, "I have three angels' phone numbers."

"But are any archangels?"

Kevin nodded. "Yeah. Dani and Sam."

I said, "I'm an archangel on probation, thank you."

Sam ordered, "Quiet, everybody, it's ringing." He tapped his foot on the asphalt a second, then cheerily said, "Hey, Jubril! It's Samael, I'm in town and I need to talk to you face to face." He listened a second. "You're where? O'Malley's Breakfast Barn? This state was founded by the British, why the hell is there an Irish restaurant here?" He listened another second. "Okay, okay, that's… Two buildings away. Be there in a bit." He turned to us. "Alright, let's go get breakfast."

Kevin looked at his phone. "It's one in the afternoon."

Sam glared at him. "Waffles are supreme regardless of the time of day."

Hadraniel folded his arms across his chest. "You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it right."

I sighed. "Let's just go. The faster we learn where Azrael is, the sooner we can get going."

The five of us walked the requisite five minutes from the parking lot to O'Malley's, which had a quaint diner feel with ceiling fans and red and white booths. I'd seen American Graffiti too many times as a kid, and imagined this to be where Ron Howard liked to hang out. There was even the passenger's side framework of a '67 Shelby Mustang on one wall, with fake tires and fake glass to make it look as if they'd put an actual car on the wall.

There weren't many people around, just a small lunch crowd. Almost instantly, we found Jubril and who I could only assune was one of his sons, a pasty looking, white-haired dude who looked completely out of his element. They were seated at a corner table, enjoying some pie.

"Well, look who the cat dragged in," Jubril said as approached. "You all wanna tell me just what it is you're doin' here?"

Sam sat down first, then I did, then Hadraniel. Kevin and Thandie, probably assuming they were both the fifth wheel here, sat at a nearby booth to listen but not really participate.

Sam asked in response, "You know we're cut off from Heaven, right?"

Jubril stopped chewing and a grim expression sat on his hard features. "You wanna be sayin' that again?"

Sam nodded. "We're cut off, or maybe it's gone, either way, we can't get back there. We were hoping you'd either know a way or…" he leaned forward, "Or know where Azrael is."

Jubril pointed at me. "That why she's here?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm suspended, not thrown out entirely."

"Missy, you got a ways to go before they let you back in. Last I heard, you were showin' signs of somethin' you shouldn't have."

Hadraniel blinked. "Word travels bloody fast about some things. We learned about that the same day we learned Heaven was blocked."

I pointed at the white-haired dude, who didn't look like he was about to say a word. "Does loudmouth over there know about my little light show the other day?"

Hadraniel added, "Come to think of it, where's the meth head twat?"

White Hair answered, "Rumi's a pothead, not a meth head."

Jubril glared at his son for a second, then turned back to us. "He's busy. Look, I don’t know how to unlock Heaven if it’s locked away from us, and I don’t really know how Azrael can help, but if you wanna find him, I know where he is.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, let’s hear it so we can get this show on the road and spend like five days heading there.”

He laughed. “You ain’t goin’ that far. He lives in Miami.”

Sam perked up. "That's great news!"

I shot him a look of annoyance. "Woo fucking hoo, we cut our travel time down from five days to two and a half. It still means more time in the goddamn car."

"But less than you thought," Hadraniel said.

Jubril grabbed a napkin and started wiping his hands. White Hair just sort of looked at the remains of the steak on his plate but didn't finish eating it. After sticking a toothpick in his mouth, Jubril said, "A couple things before you head down there: Azrael ain't been in this for a good long time, hasn't wanted to be. He'll be an ornery sonuvabitch.

"Second, I may not have a Horseman's power, but I know a thing or two about what's happening to you. That power didn't wanna leave ya, and hung on for a reason. It knew something nasty was goin’ down, and it wanted to warn ya. That’s why it just happened to act up the same day Heaven got locked up. You have a connection to the power and that will be the thing you wanna ask Azrael about.”

I stood up. “Well then, now that we’ve got our information, we’re going to go now because traffic will be a bitch.”

He motioned for me to stop. Sam and Hadraniel hadn't moved. "Listen up, little lady. Blockin' access to Heaven ain't easy, and if somebody managed to do that, it means you ain’t dealin’ with something simple. The Boss couldn’t stop it, and that means this is a big deal.”

Hadraniel asked, "So why don't you come with us?"

Jubril shook his head. "Now that I know about this, I've gotta go find other angels stranded here and let them in on it. No, this is somethin' I'm gonna leave to you kids." He gestured at Thandie and Kevin. "Y'all should be mighty shiny, what with a Greek freak and that boyfriend of yours helpin'. Just remember, this ain't gonna be a walk through the corn field. I wish ya mighty fine luck."

I looked at his kid. "You got anything to add, Chatterbox?"

He shook his head. "I don't want to accidentally blurt out how screwed you guys are."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," I said with obvious sarcasm.

 

---

I dropped into the passenger seat and immediately turned to Hadraniel. “What are we really getting ourselves into?” I asked. “This is somebody potentially strong enough to bitch slap God just so he could lock Heaven away from anybody down here. We’re… A bunch of teenagers. Is this something we should be doing?”

He rubbed at his jaw for a second, then answered, “Jubril has been the Boss’s right hand man for longer than I’ve been alive. The two of them have gone through so much together, that an order from that bloke is as good as one from God Himself. If he told us that we need to be the ones to do this, then this shite is up to us.”

Thandie added, “Plus, if what he said was true, you’ve still got some Death in you, we’ll be takin’ whoever this is on with two Deaths. We’re gonna be great!”

“And we’ll beat their ass no matter what, because I’m an archangel,” said an almost overjoyed Sam.

Kevin put his hand on my shoulder. “And you got me, too.”

“No offense, Kevin,” Hadraniel started, “but that stupid derivative sport of yours isn’t going to help you much up there.”

Kevin scoffed. “Kiss my ass, Brit Boy, I’m still gonna do what I can for my best friend.”

Hadraniel folded his arms over his chest. “Bloody twat.”

I tapped the dashboard. “Alright, Thandie, let’s move.”

She grinned. “Miami, here we come!” Her hand immediately shot to her mouth. “Oh, shit!”

“What?”

“I left my bikini at home…”