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Minutes.
That is how long it takes for Charlie to find them.
She will always wonder if she could have been faster. If there was something she could have done differently.
Her aunt had trained her well and the Princess was a skilled medic; exterminations and the general chaos of Hell giving her ample opportunity to hone her skills. Charlie knows how much each and every precious minute matters, when a person is bleeding out. When their heart no longer beats, oxygen no longer reaches their brain. Seconds stretch into minutes, and the dead have precious few of them before it is too late.
Minutes that Charlie does not have slip by her as she charges through the streets of Pentagram City’s Entertainment District. Glass from a thousand shattered windows crunches beneath her hooves, courtesy of the recent detonation of Vox’s cannon – she refuses to use the name he gave it, that blasphemy of her missing mother.
The overlords play their games, and Charlie runs. And Charlie prays.
When it was over, when Vox was safely in the hands of his partners and the city saved, Charlie had looked around and made a singularly terrifying observation.
Lute and Vaggi were missing.
So was Abel.
Fear and uncertainty had taken over then, when she could not lay eyes on the woman she loved or the terrifying angel of death who had hunted her from on high. She had seen the look in Lute’s eyes – not hate, nor rage, but grief, a sorrow so complete and overwhelming that it had hollowed out all other emotion until it was left with nowhere to go but out, and Lute had taken that grief and honed it into a blade to take with her unto Hell.
Last she had seen Abel was corralling the exorcist lieutenant away from Vaggi, and then she lost track of them in the chaos.
Debris still rain down, dust still hangs in the air, the air that tastes like metal and brimstone on Charlie’s tongue; tempered with fear. Her heart is beating out of her chest, she can feel it, hear the blood rushing in her ears.
How many minutes pass as Charlie sprints down the streets, across alleyways and through buildings? Not many, but she will never know for certain. Not many, and yet far too many.
Fear and uncertainty grip her, panic kept back by adrenaline and desperation alone. A silent, wordless prayer she casts up to the God who forsook her father, who forsook her love, that They could find it in Themselves to take pity upon a Princess who never once asked for anything more than peace for her people, her friends and her family.
She does not dare think of the alternative. To what it would mean should her prayer go unanswered.
Charlie knew better. She knew better, and the first splatters of golden blood – still fresh, still glowing – remind her that she is of Hell, and God has turned Their back upon them all and her, the Antichrist, Heir to the Unholy Crown, most of all. Minutes matter and Charlie sprints down the trail of blood. Chunks of concrete and asphalt are missing; the buildings here scarred from battle.
The gouges in the stone tell the story of a fight that was as intimate as it was vicious.
“Vaggi! Abel! Anyone!”
Charlie’s cries echo off the damaged buildings, her hooves thud against the asphalt. Blood pools thick now, in an alleyway, so much like another alleyway she ran into years ago. Sick déjà vu washes over her and bile floods her mouth but Charlie chokes it down, she can’t afford the delay, not until she knows that Vaggi is safe, that she is alive and well – it is the hotel all over again, separated in the fighting, her armor, gone.
She is so reckless, so self-sacrificing; Charlie is not blind but there is no quick way to peel away the layers of guilt and self-loathing that shroud Vaggi’s heart. Little by little she has been peeling them away, in hopes that some day Vaggi will live because she wants to live, not out of duty nor gratitude, that she can see the beauty in herself that Charlie sees every morning, day, and night.
Charlie hopes that they will both have the chance to see that day come.
When she rounds the corner her knees buckle. Charlie is the Princess of Hell – she has seen death all her life, violent and peaceful, clean and messy. Not since she was a small child has she faltered like this, no, her conviction always enough to carry her through. As she falls to her knees, golden blood wicks into the red silk of her formal gown – her blood. Vaggi’s blood.
And Charlie’s own blood runs cold as ice.
“No no no no no no no no no no no…” That is her mantra as she stumbles, crawls, and claws her way to the horror before her. Lute’s body lies half atop Vaggi, the head of her lover’s spear jutting from the lieutenant’s back.
The fallen exorcist is forgotten the moment her body leaves Charlie’s hands; bouncing down the alleyway in a spray of blood and gore as the Princess’s demonic form takes over. Her strength is paralleled by few and yet her touch is tender as she presses two fingers to Vaggi’s neck.
There is a familiar sword in her lover’s chest.
Lute’s sword. Not the golden blade she had sported when the army had attacked the hotel, no, this blade was something Charlie had seen only as a child in Lucifer’s vaults. A relic from a war older and crueler than anything creation had seen for thousands of years. The steel leaches into Vaggi, shredding her soul as surely as it carved through skin, bone, and organs.
Charlie found no pulse.
And where Vaggi and Lute were trained for war, had the tenants of combat and killing drilled into them from birth, so too was Charlie trained.
Only minutes had passed, and if she ignores the sword in her love’s chest there is still time. Still a window, narrow though it may be, if she moves quickly. There is a huge amount of blood already pooling around her but it could be Lute’s, and Charlie has seen more blood than this leave a person.
But Vaggi doesn’t have a pulse, carotid or femoral, and she is pale, so terribly pale.
So Charlie summons a ring of hellfire, three feet across, and reaches across ten miles of Pentagram City to her bedroom and hauls a duffel bag to her side. The first aid kit that Belphegor gave her when she moved out of the palace.
Charlie’s heart and soul crumble a little further every time she opens that bag. Bloodstains dot the faded canvas duffel, and now gold joins red while she tears the bag open, wicking up the fabric. She doesn’t think, because if she thinks then she will break down and she cannot afford that. Vaggi cannot afford that. Not now, not when minutes matter.
Not when she has wasted so many minutes already.
Training alone carries her hands through the motions, even when her brain is screaming at her, even as tears stream silently down her face. Cut away Vaggi’s dress. Don’t think about how lovely she looked in it minutes (was it really only minutes?) ago. Leave the penetrating object in place. Pack around it with hemostatic dressings. External bleeding is controlled. Wipe the blood off her chest, stick the monitor leads to her flesh (Is it cold? Is she imagining that?). PEA on the monitor.
Hope – desperate, dangerous hope – floods into Charlie and her hands blur into motion.
Check for lung sounds, but nothing, of course there’s nothing. Stupid, stupid, wasting time. She needs an airway. Pull an iGel out of the bag, thank God it’s the right size. Tilt her head far back, open her jaw, insert the airway, push push push down until she hits the resistance, check the bite block, look in Vaggi’s mouth. The airway is secure, tape it off, attach the BVM.
She needs more hands; Vaggi needs fluids, CPR, and bagging but Charlie can’t do all three at once. Vaggi had insisted that everyone at the hotel have a distress button on their phone, months ago, before Vox, before the battle, back when their biggest problems were getting into fistfights with news anchors. Charlie had never used hers, until now. She presses the button and throws the phone down. Everyone – Al, Husk, Angel, Cherri, Baxter, even Niffty – should get her ping. A location and an alarm that cannot be silenced until they get close enough to Charlie.
Rip the caps off two needles. Perform a bilateral needle decompression. Mid-clavicular, down below the second rib. Feel the pop as it punches through the chest wall. Pull the needle out, golden blood sprays out. Hemothorax, which means internal bleeding. Don’t think about the implications, don’t think about where that sword is (not exactly in line with her heart, above and a little to the left). Repeat on the other chest wall.
More blood. So much blood, spilling from the limp body of the woman she loves. Too much, it pours from the tubes that sprout from Vaggi’s chest. For a moment her hands shake, a sob wrenches free; emotion overwhelms her training for but a second, but it is a second that Vaggi cannot afford. With her shaking hands and shattered hope Charlie carries on fighting to save her love.
No one has arrived yet but she hears footsteps, voices in the distance. “Over here! Help!” Charlie cries, voice wavering as her plaintive call echoes down the street.
Still just her though. Too many tasks that need done at once, she has to prioritize. No time to waste on an IV, Vaggi’s veins have always been hard to find. Dig around, get the IO kit. Bleed the air out of the tubing. Find her sternal notch, stick the target patch to her chest. Kneel over Vaggi’s head, IO clasped between her hands.
It is almost like a prayer – Charlie the supplicant kneeling before the altar upon which she worships, hands clasped around the tool of her devotion. Except the woman she worships is an exorcist, a species that is baptized in blood and sanctified in violence. Her offering then, razor sharp and carefully designed to drill through flesh and bone that another might live.
Line it up, press firmly. The device shudders, and Charlie feels instantly that the needle has been driven home. Pull the sleeve up and off, careful, smooth; a catheter hangs from Vaggi’s chest. Flush the tubing, attach it to the catheter and aspirate it – marrow flows smoothly. Pull the syringe off and slap the protective dome over the site.
Shit, she needs something to hang the bag off of. No stand, she can’t hold it, but… Vaggi’s spear is lodged in Lute’s chest. Reluctantly, Charlie leaves Vaggi’s side and wades through rivers and pools of blood to where Lute lies motionless, her dead eyes staring skyward. Almost peaceful, were it not for the spear through her chest.
Damn it, Charlie should try to save her – it would be the right thing to do, but she might still lose Vaggi, and if she does it is because of this woman’s actions. This cruel, hateful… grieving woman. The spear shaft is cold in her hands, knuckles white as she clenches it and hesitates. She places one heeled foot on Lute’s chest, and pulls. With an explosion of gore and blood the barbed spear head tears back through Lute’s chest, shredding tissue and splintering bone.
If she was not too far gone before, she is now. Lute’s heart is exposed in the ruination of her chest cavity, where the barbs of Vaggi’s spear wrenched fractured ribs up and out of the way, through her pale flesh, through her exorcist uniform. Nearly bisected, the organ hangs on by the barest strip of muscle.
Charlie should feel bad. She should feel grief, that one more person has died in these senseless crusades. That someone she knows that Vaggi once cared for is dead, a person who no doubt has people waiting for her to come home, people who now will be waiting evermore. Instead she feels only emptiness, and a vague, far away sense of satisfaction.
After all, this is one less exorcist to threaten her people.
She killed Vaggi.
She deserves this.
She deserves worse.
Charlie shakes her head. Enough. This does not help Vaggi. So she turns her back on Lute’s cooling corpse and slams Vaggi’s spear into the ground beside her body.
Hang the pressure bag of normal saline from the spear shaft, set it to wide open flow. Vaggi needs fluids, she’s already lost so much blood, it fills her chest cavity, it leaks out of the exit wound in her back and pools around her. She can’t bag and do compressions at the same time; attach the oxygen to the iGel and set it to flush. Check the monitor: still in PEA. Start compressions. Two minutes. Then a rhythm check.
Charlie’s shoulders burn. No one ever talks about how hard CPR is. About the guilt that comes with breaking the ribs of someone you love; bones shattering like gunshots. Vaggi can be mad at her about the broken ribs when she wakes up. When, not if, because Vaggi is going to wake up. She’ll live. She has to.
“…please…” Charlie’s voice is small, pitiful. “…stay, Vaggi… for me, please.”
One beautiful, red and gold eye stares unseeing up at the sky, and she does not react to Charlie’s words.
Now, all that she can do is continue compressions and keep fighting as another minute ticks by.
And another.
Husk arrives first, panting, sweat staining his clothes but he hits his knees on the other side of Vaggi’s lifeless body and picks up compressions from Charlie without a word. She relocates to Vaggi’s head, picks up the bag, and begins to force oxygen into her angel’s lungs. One breath at a time. Twenty times per minute. Don’t think about how many minutes she has been without breath, without circulation.
One minute.
Charlie checks the monitor and prepares a dose of epinephrine to push through the IO. Vaggi is still in PEA. Husk resumes compressions while she attaches the syringe to the port and pushes the first dose. Back to bagging.
Two minutes.
Another rhythm check. PEA. Vasopressin this time, 40 ml. The bolus flows down the tubing and into Vaggi’s chest, into her sternum, to her heart.
Please, God, though I carry the sins of my father and my mother; if you are even out there, I beg of you, save this angel of yours for her only sin is mercy, mercy Lord, and I will not ask of you another thing as long as I live if you but save her, please!
Charlie resumes bagging and watches, half-unseeing, as Cherri sprints out of an alley. Her mouth moves, but Charlie can’t make out the words, there is only the rushing of blood and the noise of the monitor in her ears. Her blood. Her blood. Cherri sprints off the way she came, Husk said something, what did he say? It doesn’t matter. She needs to bag.
Resistance on the bag, but no blood in her mouth, and Charlie’s heart sinks. The needles aren’t enough, she needs a chest tube, but Charlie doesn’t have what is needed to put one in here, in a filthy alley in Pentagram City – and there is no way to move Vaggi, even if they could, where to? Nowhere here would have the blood needed to save her anyway, and Heaven would never allow its wayward daughter to return home, even in straits so dire as this, not with Lute’s corpse fresh on the ground behind them.
Two minutes.
Asystole.
Flatline.
A continuous beep from the monitor, until Charlie smacks the button and shuts the damn thing up. Footsteps, wingbeats –the air around her lightens, and she can breathe again; even her fluttering heart slows at last. Calm feels like a punch in the gut, but for the first time since she collapsed at Vaggi’s side Charlie can think.
Periwinkle light floods the alleyway. Motes of the purest white and gold float down from the sky; Emily’s magic is a living, breathing thing and to be in its presence is to bask in the essence of joy itself. To lay down the sword and take your foes hand, and embrace as brothers, as sisters. To find the beauty in all Creation, from the smallest flower to the blossoming of a supernovae.
But it is tempered with the steel of conviction, a desire to protect, to guard that joy lest it be snuffed out by those with hardened hearts and bloodied hands.
Emily’s might is overwhelming, for she commands raw power the likes of which Charlie had never seen save for in Lucifer and Sera herself. The storm is upon them, and the storm may yet bring her salvation, for if anyone can save Vaggi it is Emily. Wind whips around the alley, Emily hangs in midair, five whole wings and the twisted, melted remains of a sixth flapping weakly in the breeze but there is fire in her eyes, and even the Princess of Hell kneels before the might of a Seraph unleashed.
One hundred times one thousand eyes blink in rippling waves in the gaps between her feathers, between the strands of her hair, and those gentle eyes burn with the certainty of divine right.
NOAN SAGA, ZONRENSG GE DE TELOC (Become whole. Deliver not to death).
Emily speaks without speaking and the air in the alley recoils, the infernal nature of Hell flees from the weight of divine energy unleashed by a Seraph. All the demons in the alley clasp their hands over their ears, even Charlie, Nephil and heir to the Crown of Hell though she may be.
The power that Emily commands is far beyond mortal ken, beyond that of all but the most ancient and powerful of beings, and she speaks in a language long forgotten by all but those ancient few who were raised from the barest firmament when Creation was young, and it was Good, and it was Ordered.
And on the street Vaggi’s body twitches. Once. Twice. The line on the monitor jumps, erratic, strange patterns repeating repeating repeating on the trace before it falls, almost sullen, back into a flatline.
Vaggi lies still once more. She is so small like this, exposed, covered in medical devices that have failed to bring her back. Failed, like Charlie has failed the woman she loves, like she has failed her father, and her people. Charlie lost count of how many times she has failed long ago, and all she can do, all she could ever do, is keep trying.
She does not know how she will do that without Vaggi by her side.
Above the street, untouched by the filth of Hell, Emily’s true form withdraws in upon itself. Her great wings curl, her eyes close; even the very air around Charlie feels thin to her, as if Emily is sucking it all in. The periwinkle light dims, motes of silver and gold plunge like meteors into Emily’s orbit.
Everything falls away until there is only Emily. The world is quiet, and still, and dark when compared to the brilliance of her form.
A single fiery Eye wreathed in six great wings that scrape the sky and touch the deepest reaches of Hell’s bedrock at once.
In that Eye Charlie gazes upon infinity, and upon nothingness. She is transfixed, but the great Eye does not fall upon her. The air itself ignites into purple fire; divine light illuminates Vaggi.
From the Eye comes Emily’s voice, and Charlie hears it for the divine commandment that it is.
“Draw forth the sword.”
In a trance, tears falling salty upon her lips, Charlie gently, tenderly, draws Lute’s sword from her lover’s body. Very little blood comes with it. There should be much more, but she trusts Emily. She has to. What other choice does she have now?
None.
There are no other options left.
And the gaze of the Eye falls upon Vaggi and Emily Speaks in a fell unvoice, sound that is not heard but felt, that slams into every soul present as though the Most High is Themselves pressing upon their immortal soul.
CHRISTEOS IABES. PAAOX BUSD MADRIAX. (Let there be life. Remain in the glory of Heaven.)
Vaggi remains deathly still.
The Eye blinks.
“No, no, wait. Shoot, she’s fallen, of course that wouldn’t work. Uhhh, crap, fiddlesticks, okay sorry Sera but fuck, what is better to invoke? But if it predates Hell then… huh, would that work? What was the word for it, darn it, think Emily, think! Dodar-… no, that isn’t it, oh, right! Dod… don… donasdogamatatastos, that was it, right!”
The Eye breathes a sigh of relief.
TORZUL. PAAOZ BUSD DONASDOGAMATATASTOS! TORZUL! TORZUL, VAGGI! (Arise. Remain in the glory of Hellfire. Arise! Arise, Vaggi!)
Now the purple flame are tinged with red, the scent of brimstone fills the air and burns what is left of Vaggi’s clothes. Singed, Husk leaps back from the fallen exorcist, shaking his hand and turning his eyes from the unconstrained might of a seraph.
The Eye closes. All is quiet.
Vaggi is still.
Vaggi is still, and Charlie’s heart shatters in that alley.
Vaggi is still. She has gone where Charlie cannot follow, not without abandoning all those she loves.
Charlie could hear their voices now, the reporters, the overlords, the Ars Goetia – all who looked down upon Vaggi for her past misdeeds. The smug satisfaction as they pointed out how fitting it was, that an exorcist was killed by angelic steel. Exactly the same fate she had visited upon many a poor sinner.
They did not know Vaggi, not like Charlie did.
Not the little noises she made in her sleep, nor how she ran her fingers through Charlie’s hair after a long day.
Not the kindness she showed to many a stranger, the selflessness with which she tried, with every waking moment, to just help people.
Not the stubborn determination to help a naïve Princess chase a foolish dream, the same stubborn determination that now paved the way for a new era in Creation.
Not the guilt, nor the nightmares that tore her from her sleep to bolt upright, screaming, thrashing, crying for mercy and scratching at her face, at her arms, at her wings while Charlie held her tight until she came back to herself.
Not the way she looked out on the balcony, a mug in her hand with her hair blowing in the breeze.
Not the small, knowing smile that she gave whenever she brought food and water and a gentle reminder to get some rest to whoever had gotten caught up in their work, their obsessions.
No, not a one of them knew that Vaggi. They knew the ex-exorcist, who with a bloodied spear and fire in her eyes defied Heaven, defied Overlords; who had with her own hands slain thousands upon thousands of sinners. They knew that Vaggi, they feared her, and in their fear they came to hate her.
Her soul hollowed out like a long dead tree, with a low keening wail rising in the back of her throat, Charlie fell to her knees at Vaggi’s side. Her dress was long ruined, but it didn’t matter as she lifted the love of her life off the bloodied pavement. The shredded remains of Vaggi’s dress fell away from her body as Charlie squeezed her tight, memorizing every detail of her face as she cradled Vaggi’s head in the crook of her arm.
From her hand, a small scrap of paper fluttered down. Almost in slow motion it fell, like the last leaf of fall letting go in the face of winter’s first frozen gusts, down, down towards the blood soaked ground. The world was still but for that scrap paper. It settled atop a pool of blood, face up, and for a single, heart-wrenching moment, Charlie saw herself… and Vaggi.
A picture of them on their first date, clutched in Vaggi’s hand as she died.
Cotton candy in Charlie’s hand, a beaming grin on her face, and Vaggi’s small, warm smile. Charlie would sell her soul a thousand times over if only to see Vaggi’s wry smile just one more time.
Golden blood, already drying to a greenish-brown, wicks up the paper, blotting out the scene, washing away their happiness in a relentless tide that sucks them down, down beneath the surface, slow but inexorable.
Something splashes onto the street, and sends a final wave of blood cresting over the photo. Charlie flinches, startled, Vaggi shifting in her arms as her eyes track the object that broke her from her reverie. It is a small box, only a couple inches on each side. Gripped by an instinct she herself does not understand, Charlie shifts Vaggi’s weight to her left arm and picks up the box.
Blood stains black velvet. With a trembling finger Charlie flicks the box open. It clicks, the lid held at a perfect right angle. Nestled there on a bed of silk is a ring of blackened silver, intricate bands of metal looping around cut garnets and rubies. An engagement ring fit for a Princess, and its twin, for a Princess Consort.
Charlie shatters. Grief pours out of her, her anguish made manifest. Hellfire erupts in the street, cracking the pavement, forcing Husk and Cherri back, pushing away the crowd that has gathered in the aftermath of the battle. Even Emily, for all her might, retreats. Giving space to the Princess and her fallen love. The flames crackle, evaporating the blood, lighting what remains of Lute ablaze.
Four uneven, twisted horns sprout from Charlie’s head as she tilts her head back and howls her anguish to the sky. Up past the pentagram, higher, a cry born from rage and grief that is too much, too powerful for her vessel to contain so it spills out towards Heaven, that paradise in the sky that has torn everything from her – her family, her people, and now, her love.
When she can scream no more, her voice cracking and shattered, as broken as the rest of her, Charlie stands. One leg at a time, Vaggi clutched close to her chest all the while. Careful not to let her wings drag on the ground, even through the fog of her grief, she will not defile Vaggi so. On her feet now, Charlie rounds on Lute.
Lute.
Vaggi killed her.
She had been ready to kill everyone to have her revenge.
One of her final acts, perhaps her very last, protecting Charlie. Saving the countless thousands that would have died if Lute had destroyed the weapon or slain enough of the overlords present. Charlie knew that after Vaggi, she was next on Lute’s list.
First hate, then grief had hollowed her out. Lute had fed it, had sharpened it into a weapon that she wielded to deadly effect. Look where it had led her. Dead, in a nameless alley in the bowels of Pentagram City. Left to rot amidst the litter and the leaves.
Charlie understands her now.
If Vaggi had not slain her, Charlie would rip her apart with her bare hands. She would put her back together, only to tear her apart again and again and again until death was a mercy for the exorcist.
God, but Charlie understands Lute now.
And she should be better, she should walk away, but Vaggi is dead in her arms and Charlie is clutching the ring Vaggi never got to give to her.
When it comes the Hellfire is hot, cleansing. Lute’s body, clothes, and armor are incinerated in seconds. All that remains is a charred and damaged Halo of black steel and an old sword.
Fitting, Charlie thinks, and then she pays it no more thought.
Sobbing openly, great heaving cries while tears pour down her face, Charlie gathers Vaggi in her arms, makes sure that she is comfortable, and begins the long walk back to the hotel. Dozens follow in her wake; Emily, Cherri, and Husk are at the head of the crowd and for once all of Pentagram City is silent.
Heads bow in reverence. Every hat is removed as Vaggi passes. Even Zestial, that ancient and proud overlord; even Alastor, for all his dislike of Vaggi – they all pay their respects to the fallen exorcist and their Princess as she passes them by.
Scarcely a dry eye is present along their route.
Word of the Princess Consort’s death has spread quickly, and with it, the knowledge that all of them were saved by a single former exorcist. Not a name is cried, not a voice is raised to protest her passage. Like the Red Sea, the crowd parts before Charlie to let her carry her angel home.
Home, to the Hazbin Hotel.
Home, to her final resting place.