by Dianna Hardy
“Handy trick that. I could do with that ability right now, what with us looking the way we do and my skin about to turn blue from hypothermia.” She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.
“Come on,” said Gwain, levering himself off the wall. “It’s not too far to my place.” He held out his hand to her, then must have decided she was taking too long, because he grabbed the front of her shirt – his shirt – and pulled her towards him. One of the last two surviving buttons broke free from its thread and tumbled to the ground, and Mary cared more than she’d like to admit. Not because of her state of clothing – or lack of – but because, somehow, the shirt had come to symbolise her fight for life. If it could make it, then so could she. Well, they weren’t quite safe and sound just yet, and now, a single button was all that stood between her and possible doom.
“And you think I’m dramatic,” he smiled, before meeting her lips with his own.
He was reading her mind? He had to stop that now.
His insistent mouth drove any further thought on the matter out of her head, although she couldn’t respond in kind as her shivering was getting worse.
Gwain scooped her up without any effort, in spite of his forlorn state. At five foot eleven, she never thought she’d see the day when anyone would be able to do that. Once again, she found herself wrapped around him.
“We’re going up,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can,” she chattered, her words sounding like she was being wheeled across cobblestones. The first drop of rain fell on her head.
“Five more minutes, that’s all – I’ll fly quickly.”
She silently groaned, knowing damn well everything would feel ten times colder once they were speeding through the October night … if it was still October.
“You can do it,” he encouraged.
She nodded, but winced when she caught the ice-cold blast of the air, unrelentingly tearing across her skin as he took off.
She wondered how fast they were really going. Fifty miles an hour? Sixty? More? Could birds even fly that fast? But then, angels weren’t birds, were they.
Exhaustion streamed through her body. What a crazy few weeks it had been. At some point, the rain, which had started to cascade, turned into hail. She suddenly jolted in his arms – oh, God, had she fallen asleep? She squeezed herself tighter around Gwain and hoped she’d managed, because she couldn’t feel her arms, legs or feet anymore. Was she even gripping him at all?
“Don’t let me fall,” she whispered through numb lips.
“Never, Mary. I’ll never let you fall.”
The forest rose up all around her.
She jerked fully awake.
How did I get here?
Above her, the sun shone through a clearing in the canopy, making the thick and twisted tree trunks seem a little less eerie. Jasmine flowers peppered the forest floor, their syrupy scent dancing up her nostrils as if they were invisible tendrils trying to seduce her.
A rustling to her right had her swinging around, ready to bolt … and then she saw him.
Standing tall and looking more than a little deadly, he leaned against the tree, his black hair glistening under golden rays.
It took her more than a few heart-thumping seconds to realise that this was not, in fact, Abaddon, although his height and frame looked so similar. This man’s eyes were as black as coal, not the piercing blue of Satan’s. He had no beard, and he had no wings that she could see.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said.
“I’ve lost consciousness, haven’t I?”
He nodded.
Shit. Gwain will be having another meltdown.
“Is this a dream?” she asked.
“No. Not really. You’re journeying. You’re not really asleep as such – your soul has just left your body.”
“And it decided to come here?”
“It appears so,” he smiled. From behind his back, he brought out an apple and took a bite. “The Jasmine is beautiful, isn’t it? The flower of the revolution. Can you smell it, Ymari? The scent of a new power rising?”
“Who are you?”
“I am the light.”
“You look more like the dark.”
“Looks can be deceptive, as can what you find in the dark. I have many names. You can call me Lucifer.”
Lucifer.
Her mind boggled, and her words caught in her throat, so she simply shook her head.
“I know, I know … everyone always gets that wrong. I’m not Abaddon – the one you call Satan – I’m another being altogether.”
“But … what … are you an angel as well?”
He straightened his back, and his wings emerged. They were a deep crimson – really quite stunning – then he spread them wide, and Mary could see that the underside of his wings were not the same colour. They shimmered gold. Wow.
“’Fraid so. We’re bloody everywhere, aren’t we. Abaddon was the first to be created; I was the first that fled.” He closed his wings up, and they disappeared.
“You … chose to fall?”
“I chose to leave. I don’t consider myself ‘fallen’. Such a degrading term, don’t you think, for all the good that we who have left are trying to achieve? Free will and all that?”
He came up to her, and sat down by her side. He offered her the apple. “Want a bite?”
“Er…” Her stomach betrayed her and started to rumble. How long had it even been since she’d eaten? She shook her head anyway. “No, thank you.”
He shrugged and bit down on the fruit again. “You don’t need it anyway, all this knowledge. You already know it all.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“See, only someone who knew everything would say that.”
She sighed. Were all angels a little crazy in the head? “Really, I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I am. I’ve been told I’m an angel of darkness – the ‘demon bride’ of Satan – but also more than that.”
“Mmm,” he agreed as he munched the apple, “a demon, yet an angel, because Abaddon made you out of his blood and marrow and gave you form – his form – which he should never even have been able to do, but like you, he always was a law unto himself.” He nudged her with his shoulder as if they were old friends. “Like father, like daughter, eh?” he winked.
Was this guy for real?
“But before he gave you form, you already existed as something else.”
“A piece of chaos?” she asked, sardonically.
He laughed out loud, a big hearty sound that bounced off the trees and scared all the birds into flight. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it – God’s way of looking at it, mainly. But tell me, do you think chaos is chaotic to itself? Of course it isn’t. Chaos is a form of energy. It has its own balance and conscious thought. What happens to energy when it is unbalanced? When it is torn in half?”
She could feel the frustration building rapidly within her. She’d had enough of riddles. “Everyone keeps telling me things I don’t understand.”
The air around them stilled. Lucifer’s countenance grew stony, and when he turned to look at her, there was both a hardness and an urgency in his coal-black stare. His gaze travelled downwards until it stopped at her necklace. The Chinese lettering of the pendant grew hot against her skin, and seemed to vibrate. The buzzing got louder, greater, and suddenly the symbols were hammering against her chest so hard that they cracked. The two letters shattered apart, and something inside her ripped with it. Tears of sorrow stung her eyes.
“Two symbols, Ymari. On their own, they don’t mean all that much. Together, they mean everything.”
“I’m broken,” she choked out, surveying the pieces of gold necklace that lay at her feet, and… Her eye caught sight of something small and round. Was that a button? Her heart sank. It was the last remaining button from Gwain’s shirt. Fallen.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Scattered between Heaven and Hell…” Then he pounced on her. He k
nocked her backwards onto the forest floor, ignoring her scream of surprise. He easily pinned her down, and suddenly he had fangs—Oh, fuck, he’s got fangs!—and a pearly white substance beaded out of them.
Venom!
“Don’t!” cried Mary.
“It’s time to rise.” He sank his teeth into her neck. A white hot, burning pain shot through her … and then the agony kicked in.
Chapter Eight
Five pairs of eyes stared that the jumble of papers strewn across the kitchen table. Pueblo wondered if the apocalypse would be as messy as this looked.
Above them, hail hammered the roof and the windows of the house. The clouds had unexpectedly closed in half an hour ago. He’d known a storm had been coming, despite the clear night earlier on, and he supposed this was appropriate timing, what with the end of the world detailed so haphazardly in black ink – and occasionally in red ink – for them all to see… Except there were some gaping holes in the prophecies that Karl had managed to dig out of God-knows-where – some kind of angel safety deposit box, he assumed.
“You’re wrong,” stated Katarra, haughtily.
“I’m not saying I’m right,” replied Karl. “Will you climb out of your ego for a second and listen to me? What I’m saying is that these are the best conclusions I’ve come to based on what we have. But ancient prophecies travel like Chinese whispers, and since it’s been thousands of years since these notes were written, the whispers have become distorted. I’m not saying that your translation is wrong. I’m saying that it’s just one version of the prophecy.”
“There is only one version. Lokoli spoke in the Old Tongue,” she argued. “When I had my people decipher this,” she pointed to the pile labelled THE DEMON BRIDE, “they made sure it was a word for word translation from the original.”
“Then how do you explain this?” asked Karl, tossing another pile of photocopied papers on top of the The Demon Bride pile.
“It’s a false prophecy.”
“It’s not false. It’s the same damn prophecy, just translated by a different race. If you say this is false, then you may as well call yours false.”
The Brujii demon scowled at him.
Pueblo let out a breath. The tension in the room was palpable. There was clearly no love lost between Karl and Katarra, and if he was honest, it threw him for a loop to see Karl rattled. He was usually so steady.
“Katarra,” said Elena, softly. “Can we just hear what Karl has to say? Just let him finish?”
The queen’s entire demeanour altered at Elena’s request. She kind of melted a little from the shoulders down, gave her a shy smile – which just looked odd on the viciousness that was Katarra – and reclined in her seat in acquiescence.
Karl looked even more pissed off than he did a second ago.
Oh, thought Pueblo. Now I’m getting it … three’s a crowd…
To the angel’s credit, he put whatever personal feelings he had to one side and carried on explaining his findings in that calm manner Pueblo had grown to admire.
“We seemingly have one prophecy here: Two thousand and eleven years after the birth of the Failed One, the Witching Pen will be made manifest on Earth by the Great Shanka Witch of the Old Scrolls. By her hand, the Earth will rumble and shatter, and all dimensions will bleed into one.
“But I’m fairly certain these are two prophecies.”
“Just two, darling?” threw in Katarra. This time it was Elena who scowled at her. The Brujii bowed her head apologetically.
Man, no wonder he’s strung tightly. I’d be trying to rip that head off her by now.
Karl ignored her. “The first sentence makes up one prophecy, about the Shanka Witch finding and being able to use the Pen on Earth. That’s already happened – Elena’s found and used the Pen. This second sentence about dimensions bleeding into one is part of another prophecy. Look.” He pointed at two different papers. “The curves of the symbols here are slightly different – and here. I’m sure this one was written at a different time to the other. And more than that, this prophecy has been translated twice by two different races, and each translation is a little different. The Demon Bride,” he pointed to the first pile, “was translated by the Brujii and is the accepted version throughout the demon realms.”
Pueblo nodded. It was also the version that the Dessec had archived.
“It reads exactly as we’ve been told by Katarra: By her hand, the Earth will rumble and shatter, and all dimensions will bleed into one. It then goes on to explain how an angel borne of darkness will be forced into a union with Satan himself. In this text, the demonised angel is referred to as ‘the demon bride’, and the Brujii believe that she is the one who will end the world.”
“That’s what Lokoli wrote,” said Katarra.
“No, all she wrote is the prophecy, which translates only as that second sentence. The rest is demonic folklore which you assigned to the prophecy in order to try and make sense of it.”
Katarra crossed her arms and said nothing.
“This second translation,” he picked up a sheet from the second pile, “was scribed by angels and reads just a little differently, but that little difference changes everything: By his hand, the Earth will rumble and shatter, and all dimensions will bleed into one.”
“His?” Everyone stared at Karl in confusion.
“Yes. His. It then speaks of the last angel that God created. The last angel was meant to sit by God’s side after Satan was cast out to rule Hell, but suddenly and without explanation, he leaves. He chooses to fall and walk amongst humans. But get this. He fell just over ten thousand years ago. Sound like anyone we know?”
Elena chewed her lip thoughtfully. “An angel who chose to fall and has been living on Earth for over ten thousand years … you think Gwain is the last angel?”
“He knows about the prophecies, he’s over ten thousand years old and he has The Witching Pen.”
“Wait a minute… ‘By his hand’? He might be the one who destroys the world, and he has the Pen? Isn’t that really, really bad?”
“The Shanka won the Pen from Lokoli, and own all rights to it now. They, God and Satan, are the only ones who can write futures with it. And Nathaniel gave it to you, Elena, so you’re the rightful owner. Angels can hold the Pen, but nothing happens when we write with it. So if Gwain ends the world, it’s probably not going to be with the Pen.”
“And the demon bride?”
“There’s nothing connecting the demon bride to the Shanka tribe. In short, Lokoli may have written the prophecy that will end the world, but the world won’t be ended by using that Pen unless Elena, God or Satan writes with it. But destroying the Pen will stop everything that was written with it from happening, that hasn’t yet come to pass, so that’s what we need to do … somehow.”
Elena looked freaked out. “It’s very unsettling to hear my name used alongside God and Satan.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about the apocalypse,” said Amy. “It blows my mind.”
Katarra let out a guffaw. “You’ve gone back in time, reacquainted yourself with your old lover, discovered you’re a shapeshifter and that your whole life has been a lie, and this blows your mind?”
Four angry pairs of eyes turned on her.
“What? It’s true.”
I really am going to rip her head off, thought Pueblo.
“So,” said Karl, more harshly than normal. “We have the last angel, who we suspect is Gwain; we have a demon bride who we know nothing about, and either of them could trigger the apocalypse. And let’s not forget Mary, who Gwain went after … at least, we all think he did.”
“He definitely did,” said Pueblo, remembering the look on the angel’s face.
“Right, so…”
Everyone looked at him blankly.
“Don’t you see? Is it such a stretch to think that she might be the demon bride?”
“An angel borne of darkness, forced into a union with Satan, who might end the world?” asked Elena,
looking flummoxed. “Mary’s an ex-goth who drinks too much Red Bull.”
“And now she has wings!” grinned Amy.
Pueblo was the only one who laughed. He quickly swallowed it back and coughed it away. “So… How can one version of the prophecy translate to ‘her’ and another translate to ‘him’?”
Karl smiled grimly. “In the Old Tongue, there’s no masculine or feminine. The adjectives in these notes were a bitch to get my head around. Katarra, I don’t know how your translators came to the conclusion that it’s a ‘she’ when I can’t find anything to indicate a gender within the sequence of symbols that make up the prophecy.”
“Well, my Brujii scribes did clearly interpret Lokoli’s prophecy as a female who ends the world.”
“And the angel scribes clearly interpreted it as a male.” Karl sighed. “And we have no idea which version is correct. There’s one more thing…” He drew out another paper from the ominous pile and laid it out for everyone to see. “It’s one more prophecy, and it’s not written by Lokoli, or with the Pen as far as I can tell, but it was tucked away with The Demon Bride translations. I have no idea what it has to do with anything, but I can’t ignore the fact that it was kept with them. It reads: the angel shall lay with the dragon, and he will take all sin from the world.”
~*~
“I’ve got you! I’ve got you!”
Mary heard the words, and the familiar thrumming of water, but all she could concentrate on was the harrowing heat consuming her.
“The pain will stop in a minute. The water’s only warm, but you’re numb through and through. You’re fighting hypothermia.”
She kicked out with her feet.
“That wasn’t your cue for battle. Stop thrashing, for fuck’s sake!”
Then Gwain aimed the shower hose at her face.
Water shot up her nose.
As she choked and spluttered, her head cleared a bit. “What … what…”
“I said, I’ve got you.”
“And you’re proving it by drowning me?” She blinked her eyes open against the water falling from her forehead and lashes. She was sitting in a shower cubicle – a very nice, large, designer shower cubicle – in Gwain’s arms. He held her upright from behind, while he hosed her down with a giant chrome showerhead gripped in his right hand.
