Chapter 1

It was made of pure white gold. Two entwined links capped at each end with an engraved gold button. Two opposing crowns.

My dad held the collar pin close to his chest as he took one last breath and pressed the pin into my hands.

It was mine now.

An enigma I was slowly unraveling.

+++

sand

-1-

The Angel stood as hundreds of Demons walked around her.

The Demons walked in perfect unison separated into orderly lines. 3 parallel and 3 horizontal intersected at an angle by a seventh line.

Each Demon walked toe to heel in a calculated but meditative pace. Arms were straight, dark eyes slightly downcast. All the Brothers were dressed in pure black from shiny black shoes, perfectly tailored pants, shirts and vest. Some wore jackets. Jackets were optional.

White gold collar pins glinted in the dim light.

Perhaps the Angel had heard of and knew of The Walking Ritual, but for her to see it was another matter entirely.

The Angel knew why they walked, so she kept her cold blue eyes trained on her high heels. A  sign of begrudging respect.

Reckless Demon Brothers shifted their eyes to glance at The Angel. Most out of curiosity, others because Angels were just so . . . so.

The Angels only dressed in white. This Angel was in an short white dress, bare legs and  a mid-back length cloak made of pure white feathers. Her intricate white gold collar pin clung around her neck.

In her hands the Angel held a dainty white basket filled with pure white apples.

Snowfire apples

The Angel Mother had used seeds from a  Homeland plant to create the snowfire apples. The Angel Mother had been rather desperate for money and quickly introduced the snowfire apples into the human NYC marketplace to great success.

You couldn’t open a magazine or walk by a bus without seeing a thin, beautiful, smiling foodie exalting the New York City delicacy. Humans were drawn to  their sugary sweet taste and proposed health benefits, not to mention the pure white skin.

They were. . . divine.

Such a rare treat in a dwelling full of Demons.

Studying the lines of walking Brothers I easily moved through their ranks. I kept in time and slowly made my way to the Angel dressed in white.

“Sister”, I greet her.

“Brother”, she responds formally with two cold kisses on my cheek.

I motion for her to follow me through the ranks of walking Brothers and towards the corridor at the back of the church.

As we continue down the corridor the Angel’s steps slowed and her eyes were tight as she studied the grotesque paintings that adorned the hall.

To this day some of the paintings in the hall make even me sick.

Perhaps this wasn’t how the Angels remembered Homeland.

Perhaps this wasn’t how the Angels remembered.

How we became

Lost children.

Forever

--

-2-

I couldn’t say where  Homeland was.

No one could

Homeland was a place that was on Earth, yet somehow wasn’t. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was another planet or another dimension.

Homeland was connected to the human world somehow. Or maybe the human world was connected to it ?

Homeland was just a place so faraway it was allowed to be different. The people were different. We were different.

We were great.

Homeland has a proper name, a name so entrenched in our ancient tongue that it just didn’t quite translate into any human language.

‘Homeland’ was close enough.

When I thought about Homeland I remember it had been pastoral. I remembered the smell of wild grass, smoke and blood.

It always smelled of blood and war.

A vicious war between Angels and Demons was waged . A war over land, religion and politics.

We fought gallantly with weapons made of pure white gold, the only element that could slash an Angel wing or break an elegant Demon horn. An individual battle was won only when the other side was dead on the battlefield.

Forever clashing, forever shedding blood in new and horrendous ways. We would have fought for centuries had it not been for The Transgression.

The Demon Father tells us with great shame it was us Demons who started The Transgression.

Lucifer The Demon King and his army snuck into Angel territory and attacked The Angel Kings’ summer resort town, located in a neutral zone.

In the middle of the night Lucifer The Demon King  and his army slayed all the Angel men  and boys in the village as they slept. When the Angel women awoke defenseless he and his men had their way.

The Demon King’s prize from the pillage was the cherished Angel Princess whom he kidnapped, raped and killed.

The King’s unethical tactic worked to his advantage. With the strongest male Angel warriors away on the battlefield, he could easily kill the weak Angel men who were left at home and take villages for himself.

The Demons vastly supported their King,  joining his ranks as they slaughtered every male Angel in their path.

The Angel Warriors were vengeful. They spilled into our territory where they raised their white gold daggers and killed every female Demon to teach us a lesson for violating their women..

No mother, daughter, niece or aunt was spared.

The gendercide was carried out like a bloody whisper in the course of 7 days. So many beautiful bodies.

The avenging Angels quartered Lucifer The Demon King in the public square, where he watched them brutally tear apart his wife.

Those avenging Angels were quickly culled by the remaining Demon men.

Soon, the Demons were a country without their women, The Angels a country without their men.

The women Angels took up arms to defend themselves, they were fierce and deadly warriors but were quickly cut down. Again and again.

Soon we were all that was left.

The children.

Lost children

Little children.

Those whose lives had only been spared because we could fit into cupboards and hollow tree trunks.

Scavenging, shivering, starving in an ashen brutal wasteland.

It was as if I had always been a dirt covered  8 year old scavenging for food in the bowels of a once mighty kingdom.

My mouth bleeding from the extended smile cut into my cheeks. The ashe that had been packed into my bleeding new smile  burned for months after it became infected.

Then Humegu Ljgnd appeared.

Humegu Ljgnd was an adult Demon. He danced across the barren fields with a lute in hand.

He had been the first adult Demon to make an appearance in months. Perhaps the only one left.

He picked up every hungry, treacherous, cannibalistic and evil Demon boy and urged them to join him out of Homeland and to rebuild in a new place.

A new place.

A new home

Humegu played such cheerful music on his lute and promised food, real food, and peace so  we all followed this great man.

Our new Father

The Demon Father

Father

Hundreds of orphaned Demon boys joined him and together we walked away from Homeland never to return.

Around this time a young Angel woman had heard the story of Father and she gathered the orphaned Angel girls and led them out of Homeland.

She became The Angel Mother.

The orphaned Angel girls and Demon boys met at the borders of our respected territory. Hatred boiled between our races. We boys snarled and cursed at the dirty, thin and ugly Angel girls. The Angel girls threw rocks at us and cried for their dead fathers.

We brandished our white gold daggers and knives ready to rid the world of Angels much in the way our parents had tried. The little spoiled Angel girls were armed but hardly knew how to hold a weapon.

The Demon Father stepped between us and spoke out to The Angel Mother. He pointed to the horizon before us.

His mighty voice boomed when he spoke.

“Go thee the western route, we shall take the eastern route. If  the ancient maps are correct we shall make it to a new vast land where we may settle far away from one another.”

Father turned to us children and warned us against violence, he said there would be no peace with violence.

To teach us tolerance we were made to camp the night in proximity to one another.

Father and The Angel Mother set up a large cauldron over a  bonfire. We watched as The Angel Mother took from her dress 7 white gold blades and dropped them into the cauldron.

The sallow Angel girls followed The Angel Mother’s lead, dropping their white gold weapons, Father did the same and motioned for us to to follow in suit.

We did so hesitantly.

The molten white gold swirled in the cauldron, ,merging the weapons of two different races..

We slept as Father and The Angel Mother worked some type of magic by the fire. The older  Demon boys watched the girls carefully,  knowing it was the lust and bloodthirst of our king who caused the Transgression that lead to this harsh imbalance.

That didn’t mean the Angels had to murder our mothers.

In the morning the molten gold was gone and in its place  were 1000 white gold collar pins. Entwined gold links with buttons engraved with The Mark of the Angel and Demons.

The Lux Aeterna, we called it.

We boys were instructed to pick up a marked collar pin  and give it to the girls.

An act of good faith

That we, the future and only generation left, would abide one another in a way our parents could not.

If only it were that simple.

After that the Angel went west

The Demons went East.

We walked

At first it was days

Weeks

One year

Two

The terrain was beautiful and full of  strange and wonderful animals and plants to keep us nourished and healthy.

We walked and walked and walked.

Until  something changed.

As I said I can’t tell where Homeland is, whether it’s across an ocean or across a mountain range . . .

But once we stepped into the human world it was like being hit by a gust of unpleasant wind.

The thick air made us nauseous and slow. Our slightly pigmented skin cooled and lost color under the dim sun.

Our skin felt tough and heavy, our eyesight so sharp it hurt.

Our bodies were crushed by human time and space.

We walked for several more years and we were nothing more than the children we had been when we left Homeland.

It frightened all of us.

We stumbled upon human civilization and (as we do) restless Demon boys created havoc in their wake.

It was Celtica 805 AD

What a time it was.

The Celts had  greeted and danced with us. They pointed in amazement to the tiny child-horns on our heads. Father had kept his fully matured horns covered by a hooded cloak.

They knew our name as Demons and called us names we had never known like goblins, elfs and gods ! They marveled at our strange language and we learned thiers.

Deep in the ancient forest we Demons  lived and learned that in this human place we were strong and invincible. Father failed to curtail us as we stole, ran wild and caused mischief.

How we reveled in being forever children.

Childhood ended when the Romans came. They came with weapons, scripture and a harsh hand. We Demons hid in the moors, where we soon became nothing more than legends and heresy.

Then Father kept us moving, to find a land we could call ours.

Nor war, nor strife, nor plague would stop us from walking. From finding a piece of land for ourselves.

We lost many along the way as we very slowly aged (only once every 55-65 years we estimated) from children into adolescence.

Through our travels we learned the Angels had also made it to this human land. They had gained notoriety as they traveled ; saints, witches,banshees.

At the end of The Dark Ages Father decided we must settle to avoid the war and plague that engulfed Europe.

In a large abandoned church we took up residence under the pretense of a monastery, a school for wicked boys.

Father taught us the history of Homeland, he told us stories of war and there Father developed and perfected The Walking Ritual.

Each day we were to walk 2 hours a day in silence. We were to bow our heads to remember the treachery the of war, The Transgression. We were to think of our mothers and how we had watched them die, we were to think of our days as starving heathen orphans in a desolate land. We were to think of how we were all that would ever be.

This was our ritual as we performed it everyday for the next 500 years.

When the Renaissance hit Europe,  Father enlisted us to paint the horrific scenes of Homeland to aid our meditation during The Walking Ritual.

Brother Isaiah had painted a mournful scene of his mother being chopped to bit by the Angels. Beautiful bloody images.

I requested  a vivid oil on vellum of the day we feasted on the dead Angel which he painted with much enthusiasm. It was glorious though It’s been lost over the years.

In those first couple hundred years we had seen the Angels maybe 6 or 7 times from a distance. They looked like sad young women, as we were looked like sad young men.

Humans had so greedily claimed every bit of this world, that we feared we would forever be refugees.

Oh, how we wandered from place to place. Staying a few years or decades then moving on.

By the 17th Century most of us Demons had grown of to be of age. We often participated in the many wars of our adopted countries. The wars were so petty compared to the one we had known in Homeland.

Our strong skin and resilient bodies made us ideal soldiers. We brothers stayed close together in the trenches, never fraternizing much with the humans.

When war was not brewing, Father decided we must learn a trade.

So, we made guns.

Lucian Ammunition & Sport

We made tiny innovative guns, some with gold bullets. Day in and day out 295 Demon brothers worked in the factory assembly line, and in the afternoons we did The Walking Ritual on the factory floor.

After The American Civil War, Father took us across the ocean to the America. Surely there must be a land for Demons there ?

At the twilight of the 19th century, Father decided guns were dangerous and too evil for us Demons to make. So we left the factory catch fire and moved on to a new trade.

To this day Lucian Guns are antiques.

Tailoring, Father decided was a much more respectable trade in 19th century America, where more men went to white collar position.

After all with no women kind we had been making our own clothing and shoes for years. It was a profitable service that was necessity and skill no one cared to learn anymore.

I don’t know when the Angel’s arrived in America. One day they seemed like something we had imagined and the next day we spotted groups of Angels in parks or on the street.

The world was getting too small. To sentient.

Finding a new land for  Angel or Demon kind was just a dream now. Something we told ourselves to help us sleep at night and make it to the next century.

We had been children for so long, we barely felt like adults.

We are lost forever

Never to find a true home.

+++

There was always something small but significant that made humans another species from us entirely. Many Demons confessed the love and company of human women was tolerable but severely lacking any real connection.

They said loving a human woman was like a human loving a dog. How could it love you when it knew and understood so little about what it meant to be you ? Or a goldfish who was so insignificant in the scheme of things,  but was too stupid to realize it.

Angels

While they were a ignorant, spoiled, luddite race, surely they were at least the same species as us?

The thought made me sick.

I touched the white thick white gold chain attached to my collar pin and remembered it was Angels who killed my mother and baby sister, and those disgusting Angel girls probably made a meal of my relatives who died fighting for justice.

It was a child Angel that had cut the smile into my face, packed it with dirt and ashes leaving me forever scarred when I was nothing but a child myself.

They were untouchable. Unknowable.

The Angel Mother was a harsh protector of her Angels.

In 1695 Brother Ashe had crossed a  forest clearing to torment a group of Angels who had made sure not to make eye contact with us, they were in the midst of some sadistic Angel ritual.

“Will you not look at us, whores?” Brother Ashe shouted to the Angels.

“You dare you speak us.”, a haughty Angel had said.

“Is that how you speak around The Smiling Demon Prince ?”, Ashe said.

“Prince ?”, the Angel said confused and staring at Ashe.

The haughty Angel surveyed the group of adolescent Demon boys and her  eyes zeroed in on me. They all took in my seond smile, it had long since broken and turn dark from the ash and infection.

“You. You are the Demon King’s son. The Smiling Demon Prince”

Find the demon prince and make him smile

He we bleed for a while

Pack it with ashe and make him laugh

The king is dead the king is dead

the prince’s grin brings joy unsaid.

I was still as the much loved Angel limerick played in my head. The Angel girls had sang it that night we had camped next to each other and it was all I ever heard.

I did not answer.

The haughty Angel spat in my face. I was still and shaken.

“This is all the Demon King’s  fault. He pillaged, murdered and took what was not his. You should be hanged for your father’s crim--”

Brother Ashe hit the Angel in the jaw.

“Lucifer The Demon King was a great Demon and great Demons take what they want. If you Angels weren't all disgusting sapphist now,you would be crawling on your knees to the Prince.”

She kicked him the crotch.

Ashe kicked the Angel again and this time she stayed down, Brothers had surrounded the other Angels so they would not run.

“ What do you say boys ? Perhaps this cold Sapphist need something hard and warm.”, Ashe said aloud and laughed.

The Demon boys laughed as Ashe hit the Angel again and pulled up her petitecoat.

The Angel reached beneath her sleeve and pulled out a white gold dagger. Before Ashe could react she plunged it  into Ashe’s eye and through his skull.

She pulled out the dagger out and and sliced the throats of the  two Demons closest to her.

I was next.

“Die, Prince”, she whispered.

The Angel was grabbed from behind by The Angel Mother. The Demon Father had a screaming Ashe by the arm.

Later we were all forced to watch as The Angel Mother punished Ashe for his lewdness by using a pointed white gold stylus to slowly remove his other eye.

The Demon father granted the haughty Angel immunity, even though she had taken the lives of two Brothers.

She hung herself, not wanting to take mercy from a Demon.

It wasn’t till 1805  that the strict Rules of Civility were instituted by Father and The Angel Mother

We sat for hours as listening to lecture of how we were to be tolerant.  That Civility was the key to peace and to finding a new Homeland.

Demons were not permitted to carry weapons, Angels are allowed but only for protection

Angels and Demons are to always greet one another as Brother and Sister, a sign of respect. Even if begrudging.

War is expressly forbidden

A kissed greeting was a tradition from Homeland that was strictly enforced, but even the touch of an Angel’s lips on the cheek felt taboo and sick.

I hated being civil to the foul creatures. After all the only way to have an Angel was spitted over an open fire with a snowfire apple in her mouth.

+++

I reached into the Angel’s basket and removed a snowfire apple and placed it in my jacket pocket. She made a disapproving noise, being idiotic connoisseurs of  religious appropriating the Angels did not like sin.

At the end of the hall we came to a set of gilded gold doors. I took the key from around my neck and inserted it into the lock.

On the other side the bedroom buzzed with the sounds of a large flat screen television, dehumidifer and the hum of the medical machines.

Father’s bedroom  was the only remodeled room in St. Lilth’s. It was spacious and very few Demons were allowed in it. Especially now with all the medical equipment.

The Angel eyed the room cautiously. Unlike Demons the Angels  were hardly allowed to participate in modern life or leave the sanctuary The Angel Mother had for them.

The Angel set the basket of apples next to Father’s bed and knelt to where the bedridden Demon Father stared at the wall. She kissed his cheeks in greeting. His eyes were glossed over but he still breathed. He lifted a hand up to the basket but his hand shook mid air.

“I’ll make juice for you, Father. These apples are a gift from The Angel Mother.”, I said.

The Angel felt Father’s warm forehead and watched his shallow breathing.

“Tis true ”, she said standing, “The Demon Father is . . . dying.”

“Yes”, I said placing the freshly processed apple juice next to him.

Unsteady in her high shoes the Angel tripped and knocked the glass over. I clenched my fist and tossed a rag on the floor.

“Brother, The Angel Mother would like to have an extended audience with you at our residence.”

The Angels voice was raspy and oddly deep.

Father’s illness was becoming a serious matter and without him to I knew I would have to follow in his great and mighty footsteps. I liked to think being the son of the long dead Demon King made it destiny.

“How long ?”

“The weekend. You will need a suitcase”, she answered.

I knelt by Father’s bedside.

My heart felt heavy knowing the man who had danced and led us out of hell into a new world might be dying.

He was teacher, friend, confidant, family.

“I shall return”, I pledged to him. My cheek on his slowly heaving chest, “You will not die without me.”

Father could only blink in return.

+++

I have never had my own room. The idea of privacy seemed far-fetched and foreign to me. We Brothers were always together in some form or another.

Upstairs all the walls had been removed to make way for rows and rows of four poster beds. A small chest stood at the end of each bed.

Many Brothers had abandoned cell phones, tablets, e-readers and laptops on their freshly made beds while they performed The Walking Ritual.

Every so often a gadget would ring or chirp.

I took my suitcase from my chest and folded in 3 shirts 2 slacks and socks. There was enough room for my laptop and a book. I knew I’d be in isolation at the Angel residence. I guessed they didn’t have WiFi.

I also bought my work kit, needle and thread.

A sigh came from behind me, followed by the sound of moving bedsheets

Quiet laughter.

I continued packing noting a shift out of the corner of my eyes. Quick glances confirmed two lean naked bodies pressed  against one another in sleep.

I made a sound of disapproval

“Jealous ?”,  A tired voice said.

“I’m disappointed.”, I said

I turned to face the lovers.  

“Disappointed ?”, he repeated.

“There is no excuse to miss The Walking Ritual. You are taking advantage because of Father’s illness. We are to never miss The Walking Ritual.”

“ Fuck it.. .  and  what is it you are doing ?”, He said.

“Diplomacy. I must go in Father’s place.”

“Diplomacy ? Go where ?” he seemed genuinely confused and sat up, turning to my voice.

“The Sapphist.”, I said simply, “I’m going to visit the Sapphist, Ashe.”

“Hmm”, was the only noise Ashe could make as he was biting his tongue. His eyebrows moved in a way to indicate he found humor in it.

With that he settled back into Jonathan's arms and kissed him on the cheek.

Ashe’s disfigured eyelids slumped as a sign that he was going back to sleep.

“Ashe.”, I said with my back to him.

“Hmm ?”, he responded sleepy.

“I don’t mind if you are lax in your rituals and duties. . . but don’t bring my little brother down with you.”

I walked out quickly as Ashe started humming in jest.

Find the demon prince and make him smile

He we bleed for a while

Pack it with ashe and make him laugh

The king is dead the king is dead

the prince’s grin brings joy unsaid.

-----

A/N

So, yes this is really part one of chapter one. It was getting long I had to cut it down.