Elias

"Pass me one of your coins," Lucifer said.

Elias wasn't about to argue — the sooner they got out of this place, the better. He thought he had put the hallucinations behind him, but then Lucifer brought them to this cafe. Elias and Etienne had their first coffee together here and later, it became their habit to catch up here every Saturday morning. Now Elias sat across the table from the devil himself, making Etienne's absence all the more palpable.

And with the memory of Etienne stirred the memories of all the other absences in his life: his mother, his father, his brother. Lucifer had torn through his mind and threw it all back at him. By the end, when Lucifer had offered him up a coarse rope and a ceiling beam, even Abigail had been too disgusted with Elias to suffer his presence any longer.

Just concentrate on something else.

Chewing his lip, Elias slipped his fingers into his sock and dug out the coin, then handed it over to Lucifer. After studying it for a moment, the angel slapped his other hand on top of it and clasped his hands together.

"Raphael," he chuckled. "Hard to believe that wet-blanket is still around."

Dark spots appeared in the air all around them. They swelled, like ink bleeding into paper, and began to take the forms of various sigils. Elias, having now looked at a fair few, recognised a couple of sigils, though their meaning continued to elude him.

Eager to distract himself from his thoughts, Elias leaned in to examine the sigils more closely. "Is this how the coin works?"

"Yes, this is Raphael's chicken scratch. Functional and nothing more."

"I daresay his talents lie elsewhere," Elias replied dryly.

Lucifer smirked and his expression made it clear that he had an uncouth response at the tip of his tongue, but he left Elias' comment pass unanswered. Instead, he pushed back on his chair until he was balancing on the chair's back legs. He flicked his index finger and the sigils in the air began re-arranging themselves.

"What's going on?" Abigail asked.

Using the tip of his index finger, Lucifer drew a complex sigil in mid-air. "This coin does two things. First, it sends a message to Ramiel or Raphael, wherever they might be. Second, it tracks your location, so that they may come and save you from whatever idiocy you've inflicted upon the world. I'm editing the source code so-to-speak, so that the coin tracks Ramiel's location instead."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Angelic hacking did look impressive. Lucifer produced ever more complex sigils and shuffled the existing ones around. By the time he was finished, they were neatly divided into three groups each with four sigils per row and four rows per group. Elias thought the result looked similar to the work of a Chinese calligrapher.

Lucifer waved his hand and the sigils melted back into nothingness. "Time to go, children."

"We're not children," Elias replied.

"Would you rather I call you nephilim?"

"Actually," Abigail piped in, "Elias and Abby will do."

The cafe's back wall cracked in half. The exposed red brick-stones crunched and groaned as they grated past each other until the wall had rearranged itself into an archway.

"If you believe I'll expend the effort to learn your names, you overestimate your importance." Lucifer rose from his seat. "Through the portal."

Abigail was the first one to go; Elias followed and grinned when he emerged on the other side. His feet sank a little into the sandy ground. Palm trees swayed in the moist, tropical breeze and the sun bathed them in its golden light. Now that they were back to their own world, the difference to Lucifer's constructed universe was obvious. Everything here felt more real, more tangible. The contrast was as stark as between a father's Mercedes and a son's plasticine replica.

Lucifer winced as he stepped out of the portal.

Abigail spun around. "What is it?"

The angel mumbled something in Enochian, then pointed at Elias. "You're a seer. Can you hear it too?"

"What am I supposed to be hearing?"

Lucifer's jaw tightened. "Listen."

Elias closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Tree trunks groaned as they rubbed against each-other and leaves rustled. Abigail shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Elias' own heart thumped. A bird chirped somewhere in the distance, and somewhere further yet, water churned.

And someone was speaking.

It was muted, as if forced through several layers of heavy fabric, but the moment Elias caught it, he wondered how he hadn't noticed it at once. The voice spoke rapidly, incessantly, yet never ran out of breath.

"I can't make out a single word," Elias said.

"It's not for you to understand," Lucifer replied, then under his breath, added. "Joy of joys. This will all end in tears."

Elias and Abigail exchanged confused looks. But whoever the speaker was, Lucifer had no interest in spending more time discussing it. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then took out the coin once more. He let lie flat in his palm and waited as the coin's surface changed colour from tired bronze to fiery red. Elias braved a step towards Lucifer so that he could see better. The single sigil that had adorned the coin slowly re-arranged itself into a string of smaller sigils.

As the coin began to return to its original colour, Lucifer groaned.

'What's wrong?' Elias asked. 'Is that not the location?'

Lucifer cocked his head. 'It's the location, don't worry on that account,' he said. 'Just as well you're not dressed for the tropics. Come closer. Ramiel will pout if I drop one of you into the ocean.'