The door to Jack's opened, and the room was bathed in golden light.
Three angels stepped through, armored in gleaming Celestial plate, wings folded tight against their backs. They greeted Jack pleasantly enough—old acquaintances, perhaps, or at least beings who knew the rules of this place.
Then their eyes found Mo'oraq. 
"Jack!" The lead angel's hand fell to his sword. "What is that thing doing here? Do you know how dangerous it is?"
Jack's too-wide smile narrowed. His eyes glittered in a way that made Jason suddenly very aware of the lantern sitting on the bar.
"Aniel," Jack said quietly, raising the lantern, "I will brook no violence in the Tavern."
The light that poured from the lantern pushed back against the golden radiance streaming through the open door. Pushed it back, and kept pushing, until only the lantern's flickering blaze remained. Blisters appeared on Aniel's exposed skin. His armor began to smolder.
The angel released his sword instantly, guilt flashing across his charred face.
"I'm sorry, Jack. I was just... surprised." He gestured toward the bar, toward the thing that sat there drinking something that steamed and hissed. "You realize that is more dangerous than one of Lucifer's minions?"
"Mo'oraq is welcome here so long as he abides by his agreement upon entering," Jack said, still stern. "The same as any being. As are you, as is Lucifer or Oberon or Ra. My tavern is a place of tales, and any who have currency to spend may spend."
Aniel nodded, his face already healing, and he and his companions found a table by the fireplace—far from the bar where the hungry thing was feasting.

The angels lingered. Jason tried not to stare, but he couldn't help noticing that Aniel's eyes never left Mo'oraq. The angel sat rigid, hand resting near his sword hilt, watching the Voracian with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Finally, as if he could stand it no longer, Aniel rose. His companions followed.
At the door, the angel turned.
"Jack, my apologies again for disturbing the peace of the Tavern." His voice was formal, controlled. Then his gaze shifted to Mo'oraq. "Creature, I will not raise hand against you here again. Though if I meet you elsewhere, I cannot make that promise."
Mo'oraq didn't turn around. His voice carried across the tavern without effort—a low rumble that seemed to pull at the air rather than push through it.
"Flee then, little angel, and seek me in other quarters. If you are great enough to consume me, so be it." Now he turned, and Jason saw teeth that had no business fitting in any mouth. "I do not fear thee, little angel. Mistake not my peaceable intention under Jack's roof for weakness. Should you hunt me, I will consume thee, too, an I am able."
The angels left. The door closed. The golden light vanished.
Thomas leaned forward. "I'm impressed, Mo'oraq. I don't think I'd have been able to avoid shivering if an angel talked to me like that."
Mo'oraq made a sound—laughter, maybe, but wrong. The noise pulled inward rather than outward, like breath being drawn rather than expelled.
"The angel does not concern me. Either he will smite me or I will consume him. It is of no consequence."
"If you're that strong," Thomas pressed, "why are you so accepting of the Tavern's rules?"
"Strength does not necessarily imply the need to conquer." Mo'oraq's impossible gaze settled on Thomas with something that might have been approval. "And do not underestimate Jack. He has his own kind of strength."
He pulled back his cloak—or his fur, or his shadow; it was hard to say which—and revealed a scar on his neck. Old. Deep. The kind of wound that should have been fatal.
"Even I am not strong enough to consume Jack's lantern light."
He made that inhaling laugh again.
Jason turned to Jack, who was polishing a glass that didn't need polishing.
"Jack? Can Mo'oraq really defend himself against three angels? Would he find it offensive if we offered to assist when he leaves? Should we even intervene?"
Jack's smile returned, stretching wide. "You might be surprised to find Mo'oraq amenable to the idea of group tactics. Do not allow your mortal minds to assume that each being desires to consume all others and cannot work as a pack. Order evolved in Voracia because many are more able to dismantle, consume, and undo than one."
He set down the glass.
"But no, do not fear for him. Aniel is a good soldier and has served Heaven well. But even with his friends, he is no match for Mo'oraq outside Celestia."

The next evening, they found the confrontation already in progress.
Aniel stood at the threshold of Jack's with five other angels, all armored, all bearing flaming swords. They faced a gash in the sky—a wound in reality, hovering at eye level, its edges being pulled away as if something were chewing through from the other side.
The gash collapsed inward, folding on itself, and Mo'oraq stepped through.
"That is quite far enough, creature." Aniel raised his flaming sword. "Return whence you came. The Earth is rightwise the land of promise to my Lord's children, not your kind."
A tap on cobblestones. A familiar rhythm.
Elias walked up beside them, his staff striking its measured beat. Other patrons gathered too—beings from inside Jack's, drawn by the commotion. Even mortals from Dublin stopped to watch, though they couldn't possibly understand what they were seeing.
Aniel turned to address the growing crowd. "Hear me, mankind! This creature has come to devour your world. Trust in the Lord of Hosts. He will bring this to pass!"
Many of the mortals crossed themselves. Some clutched rosaries. And as they did, Jason saw Aniel breathe in deeply—almost drinking—as the air filled with shimmering light. The flames on his sword intensified. His form seemed to swell.
He's feeding on their faith, Jason realized. Right here. Right now.
Mo'oraq raised one eyebrow—or whatever served as an eyebrow on that face.
"I did warn thee once, little angel. Raise your hand against me, and I will consume you." His voice was a growl, but inverted—pulling at Jason's eardrums rather than pressing against them. "This is a day for endings."
The door to Jack's shimmered behind them. The Gaelic words on its surface glittered with reflected firelight, the exact shade of Jack's lantern.
Thomas stepped forward, deliberately placing himself in Aniel's line of sight. "Leave him alone! He hasn't attacked anyone. I'm so sick of the church bullying."
Jason moved to stand in front of Jack's door. "Aniel, Jack's is neutral ground. Whatever quarrel you have, this is not the place for it."
Marcus called out: "Mo'oraq, if you need help, say the word."

Mo'oraq opened his mouth.
The world leaned.
Jason felt it as a pull—inexorable, patient, vast. The air itself began to bend toward the Voracian's maw. The shimmering light around the angels—the accumulated Faith of the watching mortals—curved toward him like water toward a drain.
"Little angel," Mo'oraq said, and his voice was the sound of something vast and hungry speaking to something small, "the Faith you consume emboldens you. You, however, are not Yahweh, nor Odin, nor Ra. Even with the respect of those who look on here, their obeisance does not suffice to grant you strength to strike me down."
He inhaled more deeply.
The flames on all six Celestial swords guttered and died.
"Great respect have I for Jack, else I would have already feasted upon your essence and cracked your bones for marrow." Another breath, and the golden glow around the angels dimmed further. "Flee, little angels, else I need not enter Jack's this night and will feast on you instead."
One of the angels cried out: "Lead us, captain!"
The glow around the five soldiers dimmed, flowing toward Aniel, and the captain swelled with borrowed light. He took to the sky, wings spreading wide, and his voice rang out like a bell.
"Stand down, Voracian! Slink back to your crumbling Realm and leave these good people in peace. Heaven protects here!"

Thomas turned his back on the hovering angel.
"Mo'oraq," he said calmly, "will you join me for a drink?"
And he opened the door to Jack's and walked inside.
Mo'oraq paused—just for a moment, something shifting in that impossible face. Then he nodded, turned, and walked through the door shoulder to shoulder with Thomas.
"Coward!" Aniel's voice thundered from above.
Lightning cracked down—a thunderbolt aimed precisely at the cobblestones just before the threshold. A warning shot. A demonstration of power.
Mo'oraq glanced over his shoulder. The motion was lazy, unhurried—but it happened so fast Jason could only piece it together afterward.
The Voracian inhaled.
The lightning—the light, the electricity, the ozone, all of it—bent toward his mouth and vanished.
Mo'oraq licked his chops.
"Join us inside, little angel, and drink." He shrugged, already turning away. "Or stay here and posture for your audience."
He walked into the Tavern without looking back.

Elias stepped forward, and Jason saw something change in the Wanderer. His travel-worn clothes began to glow. His weathered face smoothed into something beatific, something ancient, something that reminded Jason that Elias had been born at the intersection of four Realms and carried all of them within him.
"Have care of your next decision, Captain," Elias said, and his voice carried harmonics that made the air vibrate. "Bring this issue into Jack's at your own peril."
He walked inside. The others followed.
Jason looked back once, at Aniel still hovering in the sky, at the other angels with their extinguished swords, at the mortal crowd watching with awe and confusion.
Then he stepped through the door, and the noise of Dublin faded behind him.

The Tavern had rearranged itself.
A great table dominated the center of the room, large enough for their entire party and more. The fireplace had moved—no longer against the wall, but an open pit beside the main table, roaring like something from a Viking hall. Every patron in the place was watching them.
Mo'oraq sat at the table. Elias beside him. Zaquiel drifted over from the shadows, and the two old predators exchanged greetings that spoke of history and mutual respect.
Jack stood by the still-open door.
"Aniel," he called out, his voice carrying easily to the street, "pray come inside and refresh yourself. I would speak with you."
Mo'oraq leaned toward Thomas, his whisper carrying despite its softness—for effect rather than secrecy, especially here.
"Well done, little human. Your invitation calmed events. I would not have enjoyed bringing death so near to Jack's door, were I forced to consume." He made that inhaling laugh. "The little angel is rapidly becoming a gadfly I will need to harvest, I think. Mayhap I will soon need to step into Celestia once more."
From outside, there was a flare of light. Aniel's voice boomed across Dublin: "Rest easy, children! I have seen to it that the creature is not free to ravage your city. Praise be to Him who guides us all!"
A moment later, Aniel and his soldiers walked through the door, weapons ostentatiously sheathed.
Jack spoke before the angel could. "Aniel, your desire to protect the humans who turn to you is admirable. It is the agreement you have." He raised his lantern, just slightly. "However. I am not human. My Tavern is not the mortal Realm. And I have no need of—" he paused, smile stretching too wide, "—a bouncer."
Aniel held himself high, refusing to be cowed. "Your pardon, Jack. While I know you will keep the peace in here, the danger to humanity out there was all too real. I certainly would not expect you to reach into the mortal Realm. That is Heaven's duty." He inclined his head. "But I would welcome a drink, my friend."
Mo'oraq inhaled, that wrong-way chuckle.
"Little angel, your facade is fooling no one. Heaven's desperation for worship is showing. Your posturing is a waste of calories, as the mortals would say."
Zaquiel snorted from nearby, his rotting angelic form half-visible in the shadows.
"I will never understand the Celestial craving for esteem. Faith as food. Idiocy." His voice dripped with contempt. "And Heaven in particular. Just forward on the sustenance to Yahweh. Don't acknowledge that you are gods yourselves. Take the title 'angel' and be content with your lot. Despicable."
Aniel's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
He took a seat at a table far from the fire, far from Mo'oraq, far from the beings who saw through his performance.
And the Tavern's conversations resumed around him, as if nothing of consequence had occurred.

Aniel would return to Jack's many times in the months that followed. He never again drew his sword there. He never again challenged Mo'oraq directly.
But he watched. Always watched. Convinced of his own righteousness, certain that the Voracian was a threat that must eventually be addressed.
He never went to Voracia. He never saw Mo'oraq drink a river into submission. He never understood that "little angel" was not an insult but a simple statement of fact—the assessment of a being who had consumed gods, who had bitten Apep when the weighing of hearts was new, who could snuff Celestial flames with a breath and eat divine lightning as a snack.
Mo'oraq, for his part, found Aniel amusing. A gadfly. A nuisance that might someday need to be harvested.
But not yet. Not while there were drinks to be had at Jack's, and stories to trade, and the simple pleasure of watching a little angel posture for an audience that could not save him.
That was entertainment enough.
For now.