Page 51 of Hell and Halos

He smiles now. And it's a big smile. "Not a single person in the Ashby family has ever asked a bank for free money."

I sit with this for a moment, sussin' out the point. "They run oil wells that way too?"

Cash nods. "The land those wells sit on is leased, that's how men make money off land. And every bit of equipment as well. From the water trucks that run daily, to the casing inside the well itself, not a single bit of it is owned by anyone but the debt holder."

I think about the TV.

HALTED. HALTED. HALTED.

Every headgate they had, slammin’ shut at once.

"And that's you, as of today," I finish for him.

Again, he smiles. But this time he stands up to do it. Then he offers me his hand. "And you," he says simply. "Congratulations, Legion Kane. You are officially… respectable."

Later that night Savannah and I will go through the packet of information that Cash sends me. She knows as much about oil as I do, so it's a little blind leadin' the blind. But we figure it out.

We figure out that of all the equipment that Cash took—hundreds of water trucks, and pump jacks, and workover rigs, and frac fleets, and drillin’ rigs, and all the casin’ and pipe that goes down the holes, and the tanks, and the lines that carry it off—my cut is two wells. About a million dollars a year after expenses.

It's more of a hassle than an empire.

But for a kid who grew up trailer trash and thought an outlaw biker club was salvation, a million dollars a year of legal money might as well be the Promised Land.

And after we're in bed and she's lyin' next to me—all warm, and soft, and breathin' slow—I just lie there. Starin' at the ceilin'.

Her hand's on the center of my chest. Right over the archangel. Right over the kill shot where the flamin' sword goes through the demon's ribs.

I close my eyes and I can feel the ink movin'.

Not really. But the way it does sometimes when I'm this still. I can feel the whole war that lives on my skin.

I feel the fight. And the hopelessness of battlin' back the dark. Because the dark's never goin' away.

You can't just banish the dark.

It lives here.

But if you want it bad enough, you can win.

Not forever, but at least for now.

You can buy yourself seconds, then minutes, then hours, then days, then months, then years, and then—if you're really good with that fuckin' sword—decades.

You can win.

And this right here, this moment in my time, is proof.

Because my battlefield has gone quiet.

Oh, there are dead bodies everywhere, angels and demons both. All tangled up together in the dirt the way enemies get when the fight goes on long enough that nobody remembers who started it.

Wings broken.

Swords stuck in the ground like grave markers.

Smoke risin' but no fire left to feed it.

But way up in the sky, above all this wreckage, way up in the grey nothin' between heaven and whatever comes after, an army of wings is retreatin' back to where they came from.