Soul Guardian

Chapter 66: Mind the Dip

At first, Six had assumed that Bael was summoning the sweet disasters by accident. Eventually she came to realize that it was part of a wider plan. The first one had caught them off guard, but the rest were being used to drain the Om-Nom-Nomicon of its remaining power. The snacks were just an unexpected perk.

As she sat on a rock, eating a shrimp tempura the size of her head, Six reflected on the book at her feet. Murphy had made his way back up the mountain, apparently no worse for wear, and was doing jumps off of ice cream snow drifts. The cold had solidified the caramel gunking up his engine, allowing the SUV to shake it off. But there was still a lingering smell of burning sugar.

There were any number of reasons why she would be justified in destroying or discarding the book. It was dangerous and unpredictable. But something was stopping her. Six understood better than most that books wanted to be read. The Om-Nom-Nomicon was no different. It didn’t want to linger on the shelf, forgotten or ignored.

She picked up the grimoire, but didn’t open it. “Are you going to behave? Or am I going to have to call up your owner to come get you?”

The Om-Nom-Nomicon gave off a feeling of defiance. It was a great and terrible tome, second only in power to Dimensions, Demons, and Depths. It wasn’t going to take orders from a human child.

“Oh, you aren’t afraid of going home? Well, there are worse fates than that. I might decide to get creative.” She leaned in close to whisper the next part, as if it were too evil to speak at full volume. “If you try to bury us underneath another avalanche I’ll give you to our neighbor Julia. And do you know what she does when she likes a recipe in a cookbook? She takes a pair of scissors, and cuts it out.”

The grimoire began to tremble. It had never heard of something so barbaric.

“Oh, and it gets so much worse. Julia is a terrible cook. She likes to make substitutions, then blames the recipe when they don’t work,” Six continued, “Right now, Julia is on a health kick. She puts coconut oil in everything, and do you know what she does when a recipe calls for cheese?”

The Om-Nom-Nomicon didn’t know, and it didn’t want to know. But it was forced to listen.

A wicked grin crossed Six’s face. “She uses tofu, Nom. She says it tastes the same. Sometimes she even writes in her cookbooks, in permanent marker.”

The book made a point of radiating not just willingness to behave, but total supplication. Nom wanted nothing to do with any of that, and wasn’t going to risk calling her bluff. It was too weak to fight, or even escape.

“Good!” Six said as she sensed she had won. “Now, let’s clean up this mess and get back on the road.”

The Om-Nom-Nomicon, or Nom as it had now been named, allowed itself to be used to unblock the road. The grimoire had hoped that the delay caused by coating Murphy in caramel would entice Six to read it, but that plan had backfired. Now, instead of influencing her, she was influencing it.

Nom shuddered, At least she was better than Julia.

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***

Potato wasn’t enjoying the trip. His cage had been buried under hundreds of pounds of camping gear and Murphy’s tumble down the mountain had done him no favors. The angel formerly known as Metatron looked like an owl that had gone through a tumble dryer.

He didn’t need to breathe, or eat, but the smell of the food Six and Bael were eating was maddening. Potato wiggled his way through a gap in the ruined cage and worked his way towards the smell. Bael and Titan made a point of ignoring him. “Potato?” the angel asked as he fluttered into Six’s lap.

Six looked up from her tempura. Clearing the road had worked up quite an appetite. “Did you want some?”

“Potato!” the angel called out as he danced around in the air, “Potato! Potato!”

She broke off a piece of shrimp, holding it out for him. Potato didn’t have a beak or mouth, so she was curious how that was supposed to work.

Potato flapped his wings like he was wafting the smell towards him. The food began to dissolve into silver vapor, absorbing into his feathers. “Potato!” he called out happily, before repeating the process on the rest of her food.

Six scowled as her tempura turned to silver smoke. “I wasn’t done eating that, you know.”

Potato looked up at her with wide eyes. It was like trying to stare down a biblically accurate puppy. “Potato?”

“Fine,” she said, finally looking away, “I suppose you needed it more than I did.”

Bael and Titan shared a look, but the hellhound was the first to speak. “YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT I’M THE LAST PERSON WHO WOULD EVER DISCOURAGE YOU FROM GIVING PETS FOOD. BUT YOU MIGHT WANT TO BE CAREFUL.”

“Oh? Why?” Six looked up from the small angel in her lap. He didn’t seem any bigger or stronger, just happier.

“You might also not want to get him wet,” Bael cautioned.

Six narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you calling Potato a gremlin?”

“Of course not,” the demon replied, “I’d never say something so cruel to a gremlin.”

***

The two angels tasked with spying on Bael’s family vacation decided to stop and have a chat.

“That was weird,” one said as he watched Murphy make his way up the mountain, “And what was with that avalanche?”

His partner shrugged. They were getting tired of babysitting the younger angel. “I don’t know, and at this point I don’t really care. Gabriel told us to watch him, and that’s what we’re doing.”

“I know, but an avalanche made of ice cream. That’s weird, right?”

The older angel stroked his beard. He was a veteran of the war with heaven and had seen some things in his career, most of them unpleasant. “It’s demons, they do weird shit.”

“You’re not supposed to swear,” said the younger one, “Gabriel says it's un-angelic and bad for unit cohesion.”

“Is that so?” Asked the veteran as he pulled out a green tin and packed himself a lip full of dip, “Well, if Gabriel doesn’t like it, he can kiss my ass. Why are we even following these assholes around? It’s obvious that nothing worth seeing is going on.”

“Except the ice cream avalanche, the hot fudge mudslide, clouds made of sprinkles, and that one point when it was raining fried shrimp,” replied the younger angel with rising annoyance, “Are you even taking this seriously?”

“Of course I am,” the older angel lied as he started looking around for any food that might have been left behind, “Now help me find some of those shrimp. I’d give someone’s left nut for some tempura right about now.”