by L F Seitz
I turned my head to see Micah behind me where I had told him to stay. His face was drained of color as he watched me, his eyes clouded as I assumed he was still working through what he saw.
“It’s done,” I yelled, which vibrated my skull and made me cringe in pain.
Micah stood still for a long moment until he finally broke free and made his way up to me. As he got to the edge, he said nothing. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t hug me or thank me. He didn’t even ask if I was all right. He just peered over the edge at the Nephilim who were looking around, wondering what had happened. I could see relief in his eyes, but there was nothing there for me. He finally saw me for what I was. For what I truly am.
The blood dripped down my chin as it continued to flow from my nose, and pressure built in my head as I tried to focus on Micah. I could sense my soul’s fatigue, like a heaviness that was lifted from just beneath my ribs. My soul was lighter, small. It was worth it, I thought, though Micah wouldn’t even look at me or smile and rejoice with me. He’s alive, the Nephilim survived, and that’s all that was supposed to matter.
“Let’s go,” Micah said, turning away and walking back across the dome. My head felt like a rock as I tried to move. But my movements were too fast, and I became woozy.
“Micah?” I called. “I need help getting down.” I took a step, but there was nothing below my foot. I began to fall sideways.
“Lamia,” Micah screamed.
His face was gone, and I saw the dome getting farther away. Air whooshed past me as gravity pulled me toward the field, where the rest of the bodies lay. The cold air stung my back and the sensation of weightlessness was suddenly quite peaceful. I had no energy left, no more strength to use on myself, no more purple flame. Screams rose from below as I felt myself getting closer. Any moment now, and the wind would subside. Purple fire filled my eyes as I gasped for air, but darkness came rushing in, and there was nothing left to do but accept it.
“The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?” – Edgar Allan Poe
Thirty-One.
I WOKE NOT LIKE I USUALLY did ... wanting to. I was breathing, and my heart thumped heavily in my rib cage. My fingertips caressed soft sheets, and a smell of strong cleansers stung my nose. I was awake, I was alive – but.
That isn’t possible.
The room was white, with daylight streaming through the blinds. I wasn’t at home, I wasn’t in the stadium, and I wasn’t alone. I looked around at the beds surrounding me. It was a large room that held four separate beds separated by curtains. A patient occupied the bed next to me, as well as the two across the room. All were asleep, hooked up to bags and monitoring equipment. Being watched. I sat up slowly, scanning the room for something familiar, but I recognized nothing. I’d never been to this place. This must be what came after death. Everything was white, clean, and unfamiliar. So cold and isolated. Hysteria ensued as I noticed the monitor attached to me. I don’t want to be here. I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t right. I began to pull off the sticky patches on my neck and head, the monitor sounding its alarm. It was so loud I winced as I reached for my ears, someone would be coming to see what’s going on. I needed to get out fast before then.
Micah came around the corner as I was peeling back the tape that held in an IV. Surprise covered his face until he realized what I was doing, and concern took its place as he rushed over to me.
“Lamia, calm down, you’re all right.” Micah said, grabbing my wrists. I leaned away at the sight of him. Something was wrong here. I’d fallen from the top of the stadium. I’d died.
“No, no, this isn’t real,” I said, unable to hide the fear. His words weren’t enough. I tried to pull away from him, to rip off more patches, but he gripped my wrists tighter. So much it hurt, breaking me from the panic to focus on him.
“Lamia, you are in the medical building at the Nephilim compound. You are here. This is real.” He tried to reassure me. His face was so close to mine that I recognized the angle of cheeks, his thick pale eyebrows, and the faint pink of his lips. Details I didn’t think I’d be able to create so vividly in my mind. They were too real.
I nodded as I continued staring at him, a part of me still unsure. He sighed, smiling as he let go of my wrists and sat in the chair beside my bed before he sipped his coffee silently. His shoulders sagged a little with relief.
“I –” I tried to speak but my voice caught. I coughed to clear my throat. “I was falling,” I whispered as I studied my trembling hands. I squinted as I searched my memories, trying to recover the moment I hit the ground. I swear I hit it. I shook my head to get rid of my mind’s cobwebs. Micah rested his forearms on the edge of the bed as his coffee sat between them. His hands curled lazily around the foam cup. They looked like they always did: pale and thin, long fingers with calloused palms. I dragged my hand from my lap across the blanket and rested it on top of his. I needed an anchor. I needed to touch something familiar as I floated through my thoughts. Nothing was right, and I felt like I was going to disappear any second.
“Yeah, you fell, but you disappeared before you hit the ground.” Micah’s voice was almost a whisper as he peered from the window to my hand. He didn’t pull away as I started to draw small circles into his flesh. The movement helped reduce the shaking.
“I hit the ground. I died – I didn’t.” I choked on the words as my eyes brimmed and tears fell. “I didn’t make it.”
Micah’s hand twisted as he took my fingers and squeezed. I felt so vulnerable, so confused, like my brain couldn’t take it, so it turned off before the final curtain could drop. Micah didn’t reply as he watched me intently, empathy clouding his clear irises. After a few moments, he raised the foam cup to me with his free hand. I declined, but he persisted. I slowly took the coffee from him and let its warmth seep into my cold bones. It was familiar and comforting as Micah’s hand still gripped mine.
“You’ve been out for two weeks,” he said as I handed him back the cup. I met his gaze as he took a sip after me. He knew what I was waiting for. I needed information. “Once the battle was over, we searched for you, but nothing, I – we couldn’t find you,” he said. He cleared his throat while adjusting in his seat. He was as uncomfortable with the memory as I was. “We started sending people back in the SUVs to get medical attention, since there were so many injured. Jimiah was the first one to drive people back to the compound, and when he came in, I guess someone told them they saw a flash of light out behind the training building. He went to check it out with a few other security personnel, and they found you outside the fence. You were surrounded by a ring of burned grass.” He was fixated on the window in thought. “Jimiah and the others brought you here, to the medical building. They said you had a subdural hemorrhage, and that’s when I came in: as they were taking you back for surgery.”
My fingers warmed up against his skin, making things a little less scary. Despite our limited contact, I found comfort in it rather than anxiety. With everything that we’d been through, and the death I couldn’t believe I’d escaped, I was grateful for the touch. Micah made me feel normal in this chaos. He was something familiar, something I recognized in this strange place. He made me feel grounded, and I didn’t know what I would do if he weren’t with me.
When I was given big news when I was young, that was the moment I always felt most cold. The change of everything I thought I knew, with no amount of comfort. My social worker would give me a sympathetic face and a pat on the shoulder, and sometimes offer a hug – but the pain wasn’t in her eyes. She never really let herself get attached, let herself feel, maybe because it was too painful. I wish I would have had comfort. Comfort like this through my hardships would have changed me and made the struggle of just existing less brutal.
“I thought I would never see you alive again. Everyone watched you fall ...” he trailed off. Micah was pushing his boundaries, comforting me with his touch. I didn’t
question it as I still traced small circles into his skin.
“I thought I would never see you again, either,” I said. “To be honest, this doesn’t seem real. Like I’m dreaming.” I tried to blink away the last of the grogginess I felt. I rested my other hand just under my ribs. Maybe that’s what was off, that’s what’s missing: I used yet another part of my soul, and now I only had so much left. Like my father said. I only had a few pieces until the darkness rushed in.
“Whatever that purple light thing is, what you used to kill all the demons and Cambions, it surrounded you right before you hit the ground. It blinded the whole stadium,” Micah said. “I figured that was you, but ... something didn’t seem right about it. It wasn’t you, was it?”
I didn’t want to answer. The moments that followed his question were eerie. Holding onto the edge of a knife, about to rip the skin open and expose everything. All my tainted blood.
“No, it wasn’t me,” I said. “But I know who it was.” I felt raw and angry, knowing that he did save me. He saved me because he has plans for me, for my soulless body.
Since I could first create memories, I have had to fend for myself, understanding the difference between someone taking care of you and someone loving you. Many of the people in the foster system didn’t need the latter to do the former for me. I dressed myself, fed myself, and taught myself, all under the supervision of someone who saw me as another mouth to feed rather than a brain to teach or a heart to nurture. Every foster home I was sent to resulted in unfinished relationships that left me wondering what I’d done wrong to be sent back to the Napoleon House with all the other kids waiting to find foster homes. Those kids weren’t my friends, they weren’t my family; they were other prisoners, condemned to a sentence of isolation for a crime they didn’t commit. We didn’t ask to be born, so why were we stuck with the consequences? Why were we the abandoned ones? We fended for ourselves, and many took the easy way out by getting into mischief and giving the system a reason to punish them. I found my own way out and did the best I could with what I had. I was rejected more than once from a family for reasons I didn’t understand. Jennifer abandoned me because of a fire I didn’t even mean to start, and Phil and Dorothy saw me as a job rather than a human being, getting me through high school and nothing more.
All these years, I had done things by myself, yet in the final moments of my life, my father suddenly erupted out of hell and saved my life? And for what reason? Not out of curiosity about who I am, but for his own malicious reasons. For his benefit. Where had he been the last horrible 19 years? Years of struggling to live and find purpose, and he has come for me just when I thought I’d figured most of it out. He took away this proud moment and smeared it with darkness and obstacles I can't even begin to comprehend. How was I supposed to come back from this?
“Who?” Micah looked confused. “Who else is like you?” He laughed a little at the thought of someone being like me, but I couldn’t join in his laughter. This was something I would never find amusing.
He was the reason people avoided sin, the creature in the shadows, the thing that breathed down your neck in the darkness. He was the ruler of the underworld.
“It was my father ... Lucifer.”
Epilogue.
ADJUSTING THE LAPELS of his Brioni suit, Mammon peered between the black glass screen of his phone and the entrance of the small Coffee shop adjacent to his parked Lexus. Common Grounds. Why Lucy was obsessed with this little no-name town in redneck Wisconsin, where people were dying from cheese clotted arteries was beyond Mammon. Still, for his Lord, he would serve. Even if it is in a place like this- anything for a private engagement with the King of Hell.
It was unlike Lucifer to call a private meeting with Mammon in a remote location, the last time they spoke as individuals and not in the presence of the other Princes was nearly one hundred years ago. Mammon assumed Lucifer didn’t much like him, though he always tried to show his appreciation to the Lord of the Underworld. He sent him gifts of various rarities, creatures, virgins, European cars, aged whiskey; anything Mammon thought might bring him favor over the others.
Mammon caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and noted the wrinkle in his taupe complexion; he rubbed the spot between his brows quickly. He was paler than usual, which contrasted against the soft onyx waves of his hair, combed back from his face to his ear. Uneasily he watched himself, chalky brown orbs looked back as he wet his lips, noting the skin stretching across his widest jaw before he rolled his eyes.
Lucifer was to notify him when he was ready to meet. It was supposed to be over an hour ago when the shop originally opened. What if he had forgotten?
Mammon huffed in annoyance before adjusting his cufflinks for the tenth time; brand new golden coins with his symbol pressed in. An inverted triangle with two swirling lines descending from the corners down to the tip, but a ‘M’ was placed at the apex of the lines, instead of a ‘V.’ It was a customized symbol for every Prince, one Mammon took great pride in, especially in front of his Lord. He used it to keep track of his belongings- from gold, Cambions, Hell Hounds, and Cars. Usually, other initials were added to identify the location they came from.
Given Mammon had multiple investments around the world; casinos, resorts, oil plantations, distilleries, and various other fingers in many other honey pots. Anything that can be bought, he has purchased once in his lifetime, anything not for sale, he’s managed to get or steal. He wasn’t the Father of Thieves for his pretty face alone.
Mammon’s phone buzzed, and he flinched before growling under his breath and glimpsing at the name LU. Lord of the Underworld. Stepping out of his vehicle Mammon stood under the lightly falling snow, consciously adjusting his suit once more. There was an icy wind coming off the lake as he made his way across the street, observing the bland grayness of the sky. These were days that didn’t make money.
The kind of days that made people stay home- made them tired and mopey. Mammon frowned.
The coffee shop was an old two-story building, painted white with a victorian crown molding across the parapet and around the windows. There were two entrances with four long glass panes that made up the store front, but nothing was placed inside from what Mammon observed. The shop’s words were splayed across the top of the first-floor windows in white, surrounded by a powder blue. Common Grounds. Common is an understatement.
Stepping inside there were mismatched chairs scattered around unused tables, the alabaster walls were covered in pieces from local artisans, how quaint. The place was rather empty, aside from a man who sat at the very back of the shop. Past the coffee counter on the right, he sat by the furthest window looking out at the bleak harbor.
Lucifer.
Mammon swallowed hard before squaring his shoulders and taking up a casual pace as he made his way back. He could tell, even at a distance, that Lucy was wearing a charcoal Desmon Merrion piece, cut to fit him perfectly of course; accentuating his thin waist and wide shoulders. His ashen hair laid loosely around his face as he fixed his glance on something outside the window beside him, one leg crossed over the other.
Before he passed the coffee counter Mammon stated aloud- to the barista he had no interest in conversing with- his order. “Spiced Vanilla Latte, whole milk.” As he approached Lucifer did not stir, nor did he seem interested as he continued looking out the window as the snow fell across the grey-blue water of the Harbor. His hand rested under his chin while the other lie limp in his lap - his mind repeating the events of the last 24 hours on a loop.
“My Lord,” Mammon stated in a quiet, respectful tone before sitting across from the King of all dark things at the same small table. Lucifer noted his presence with nothing more than a blink, he did not acknowledge Mammon- not yet. He was too engrossed in the waves, the way they smacked against the rocks before retreating and repeating the process again and again. Over and over the water beat across the rocks and made no progress. A thousand years with no progress, until now. The question was did Lucif
er have the patience to let things play out now that he could see the finish line? After what happened last night ... it nearly ruined everything.
Footsteps approached the table as the barista, a bald man with glasses, set down two tall coffee mugs, one white, one orange. “Your cappuccino sir,” he pushed the white mug in front of Lucifer, “and a spiced latte.” The barista turned on his heels and made his way back to the counter without another word, not even a smile.
The smell of coffee and nutmeg filled the meager winter air around them as Mammon presented himself as patient, as he reached for his cup and took a sip. Warm milk mixed with cinnamon pooled around his tongue as he took a bit of comfort in the taste, knowing whatever was to come will either be terrible or exciting and with Lucifer, both are equally unsettling.
“I saw Lamia last night,” Lucifer stated in a monotone before shifting from his stone-like state to reach for his coffee; he held it to his lips for a moment, his nostrils flaring as he took in the smell, then took a sip. Mammon gawked for a single breath before reigning in his shock and focused on his mug, turning it clockwise on the table. The last any of the Princes had heard of Lamia, Lucifer’s heir, was when she forced Asmodeus from this dimension. Before then it was when she was first conceived 19 years ago. When Mammon heard the news of Asmodeus he destroyed his office and lit his vintage 1934 Ford Vicky on fire. Distraught and enraged, Mammon was beside himself as he waited for the meeting with Lucifer on details of the matter. It turns out she is no mere Cambion, but a child with powers unmatched by anyone other than her father, the only difference is her abilities are linked to her soul and whenever she uses such powers it slowly diminishes it. That is all Lucy was willing to disclose about his spawn when the Princes were notified, and also made them swear to not pursue her in any form. It was difficult for Greed not to send his Hellhounds for a small underworld greeting, or send a serpent to spy on the child.
