Interlude: The Rain

I gasped for breath. Death held me in his arms. He sang of maggots and rot. Samael's touch burned at the back of my ankle.

"You bit me?" I demanded.

He looked at me guiltily. The song changed to worms. I sighed, too weak to rise. The rain was sweet on my tongue.

"Is this some shamanic death-rebirth thing?" I said weakly.

He nodded in response. His raven wings furled open. They glistened with hidden jewels.

"Remind me to never do acid."

"Rest, lemming." He fell silent. His eyes were glacial blue.

"Your eyes. They're from before the Fall. This was your old gaze, wasn't it?"

"Do you ever sleep?" he lamented.

"I can sleep when I'm dead."

He sighed, tracing the back of my neck. "Why didn't you run away?"

I leaned my head on his chest. "To where, Corpseboy? Home? I should never have invited you there. You're the vampire in my house. And now, I can never get rid of you."

He reminded me of Poe's raven somehow. But of course, he was older. Old as dirt. Girls had danced with him before. But had he raised them from the dead?

He saw the thoughts in my head. "Only you, maggot."

I frowned. "There's a rhyme, isn't there? To your insanity?"

He toyed with my hair. "Of course there is. Like chaos, you cannot comprehend it." His lips skimmed my waist. "I loathe being indebted to people. I may be a mongrel, but even I must follow claims."

He scrutinized me, mouth drawn thin. Black clouds fumed above, casting us in darkness. I watched him warily. My eyes lingered on his scar. His chest was healed now, but the ancient wound remained.

"Who gave it to you?"

"You," he said. The word was sharp as splintered bones.

"That makes no sense, Sam." I shivered. He wrapped his cloak around me and wiped the rain from my brow. "You gave it to yourself."

"Perhaps in time it will."

"Is that prophecy?" I asked, exasperated.

"Madness, I suppose."

"Thanks, Captain Cryptic."

"You need rest," he said. The garden shifted beneath us. I lay on red silk sheets, in a tower above the Beyond. My eyes grew wide as saucers.

The angel laughed. "Sleep," he soothed. He guarded the foot of my bed. There was no fighting his will.

I dreamed.