Halo Goodbye by Nazri Noor (mind reading books txt) 📕

sentience or semblance of a consciousness the chariot carried under the hood. To my left, Florian looked a little less worried than he was on our last trip. He was probably on the verge of enjoying it, too. And to my right, Raziel had the nerve to be completely unmoved, almost bored. Angels were used to flying, but not me. My stomach lurched, but I kept my cool – and my lunch.

The trip was giving me newfound respect for Santa Claus, whether or not the jolly old bastard existed. Imagine having to do this hundreds of thousands of times on Christmas Eve. Santa would have to be a chronomancer to even come close to achieving that. I felt at my ears to check if my brains were leaking out because of the terrifying speed. I knew I wasn’t necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed, but this was an extra stupid time to be thinking about Santa, even for me.

Our landing was disproportionately smooth, the chariot descending slowly, vertically on a flat patch of earth a few hundred yards away from the volcano proper. I hadn’t even seen Masaya on the way down. My eyes were too busy being clenched shut, just like my butthole. Fear does that to you. I can go toe to toe with a demon prince without necessarily pissing my pants, but magical chariot turbulence at thirty thousand feet? No fucking thank you.

The others piled out of the car normally, but I practically scrambled onto the grass, my palms flat against the earth as I retched. I could’ve kissed the dirt, really. Nothing came out, just some really cathartic air heaves, but I took a few more moments to get steady again, to very literally ground myself. Apollo chuckled, slapping me on the back.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll try to go slower on the way back.”

“You’re an asshole,” I said, groaning and clutching the bottom of my belly. Florian helped me up. Raziel could barely restrain his smile.

“If you flew more often, Mason, this might not be such a problem for you. Flying sickness doesn’t have to be your weakness forever, you know.”

I grunted, waving a hand at his face. “Not the time. Not the place. Gotta go kill a demon prince.”

The park was dark now, easily into the early evening. My phone said that Nicaragua was a couple of hours ahead of California time, which could have been good news for us.

“It’s good that it’s dark,” said Florian. “Isn’t it a tourist destination? Less people around.”

“No,” I said. “That’s actually the problem. People come on night tours because that’s when you get to really see the lava.”

“Oh,” Florian said, gesturing towards the volcano. “Oh, you’re right.”

Billows of thin smoke rose into the air above the volcano, the lava visible as a bright, burning orange in the cracks in the earth, even from a distance. It was easy to see why people thought of it as a mouth to hell. If you think about it, any volcano could be a gateway to the infernal underworlds. But Masaya Volcano burned low enough that you could even stand on its lip to observe the lava. It wasn’t inconceivable for someone to jump in and assume they’d be taken straight to hell. Or in this case, one of the seven prime hells.

“I find it very interesting,” Raziel said as we approached the volcano. “How Apollo can see with his eye even by night, I mean.”

Apollo tapped the side of his nose, grinning. “I followed Beelzebub’s swarm across time zones, but when it got to the darker side of the world – I mean, moonlight is just a reflection of sunlight, isn’t it? One can’t exist without the other.” He stuck his chest out, cocking his eyebrow knowingly at Artemis. She rolled her eyes and shrugged.

“Thinks he’s a big strong man just because,” she grumbled. “So obnoxious, shining your damn light all over the place. But don’t you forget. Moon’s out. I’m the badder bitch on this turf.”

Apollo nodded good-naturedly, then cleared his throat. “Granted. We’ll need every advantage we can muster against Beelzebub.”

We walked, the low rumbles of the volcano filling the silence. It had all been left unspoken, but the twins weren’t doing this for fun, despite their behavior in the chariot, or the casual nature of them quipping and sniping at each other. The entities of earth, the gods and deities, worked differently from angels and demons. Celestials, in most cases, reformed in the high heavens when killed, and the infernals could always slither their sludge back to the prime hells they called home, where they waited to be assigned new earthly vessels to inhabit.

Kill a god, however, and that was it. As powerful and ancient as they were, there was still a permanence to any death that occurred outside of one’s domicile. I could stab Artemis in her sleep if she was in a hammock in Paradise, and she’d wake up just fine the next morning, ready to stab me back. But if they died tonight, out here, far from their home dimensions and places of power, that was it. The scholars of mythology always did say that the gods of the Greek pantheon, with their pettiness and squabbles and failings, were so much like humans. But they shared even more with mortals than anyone could have imagined.

Apollo took me in, gave me a car ride and a wad of cash when I was at my lowest. And Artemis gave me a home. As much as we liked to get on each other’s nerves, I held the utmost respect for the twins. At the end of the day, the two of them had saved my life. Some day, I would find a way to repay them.

“All is quiet,” Raziel said. “All seems well. Which, as we all of us know, is never necessarily a good sign.”

“Good thing there aren’t any tourists rolling up just now,” I said. “This could get ugly, and quick. Too many normals could