by G. P. Ching
“It’s you,” Finn said. And then he cursed. “You stupid prick.”
23
The First Time I Died
Finn hadn’t wanted to know. But now he did, and there was no forgetting the truth. When Mike had touched his arm, healing energy flooded his body, causing every symbol bound to his skin to burn like a brand. Thankfully, he’d pulled his hand away before doing any damage. Finn needed his powers, especially now.
He’d told Mike to go. Begged him. Hope had figured out what was happening right away, but not Mike. That numbskull stood there being a loyal friend, probably trying to reconcile the person Finn used to be with the one he’d become. The guy didn’t get it. There were no similarities. Finn was an entirely different person from the boy who saved Mike from embarrassment in the third grade. He was the Devil’s accomplice now. He had to be.
“Listen to Hope,” he said to Mike. “Run, now. Don’t turn back.” Thankfully, the idiot finally obeyed. Finn replaced Juliette on her stand.
“What are you doing?” Ravenguard appeared backstage, which meant Lucifer wasn’t far behind. How did he explain being onstage?
“Soulkeepers!” Finn pointed at Mike’s receding form. Almost to the door. Almost. Run, you bastard.
The hunter sniffed the air. Ravenguard drew his dagger from inside his jacket and leapt into the crowd. He cut through the throng of gyrating bodies, his gripped dagger concealed inside the breast of his red jacket. He’d never catch up to Mike in time. Not unless he started tearing the crowd apart to reach them, and that was a publicity no-no.
Lucifer appeared beside him, nostrils flaring and tracking Ravenguard in the crowd. His eyes widened when he saw Hope.
“I couldn’t stop them,” Finn said. The Devil seethed, but he was too late. Mike and Hope were at the door.
Ignoring Finn, Lucifer picked up Juliette. He slung the strap of the peacock-blue guitar across his shoulder and struck a chord with the extended talons of his hand. Everyone in the crowd froze, drawn in by the sound. Everyone but Mike, Hope, and Ravenguard. Lucifer leaned toward the microphone. “Get them.”
The bouncer blocked the door. They were there. Finn could see the streetlights through the open door. But that human elephant was blocking their way. Fists flew. Although Mike and Hope were stronger, the crowd had closed in. He watched Mike reach for his triquetra, but a dozen humans grabbed his arms before he could and tackled him to the floor. Hope tried to use her power too. A vine or two succeeded in restraining her attackers. But there were fifty people behind them, swarming over each other to take her down.
Blood sprayed. Shreds of her clothing were thrown above the heads of the mob. He could no longer see either of them. Finn glanced toward Lucifer. Some part of him writhed. He wanted to help, but if he did anything, it would be the end of him. He didn’t dare. And the longer he waited and did nothing, the more that tiny piece of him that wanted to help decayed. They were idiots anyway. They had it coming. Don’t be the martyr. Survive, he told himself.
He was frozen, helpless. Even when the sounds of Hope’s screams met his ears, he did nothing.
And then, the crowd parted enough for Finn to see Ravenguard standing over Michael, his red coat visible in the shifting crowd. He raised his hands above his head and plunged his dagger into Michael’s heart.
That tiny light inside of Finn screamed. They were killing him. They were killing her. Hope’s screams came again, cutting over the music as the crowd swarmed her, trampling her underfoot.
Without thinking, Finn took a step in their direction.
“Don’t you dare,” Kirsa whispered. She was behind him, so close, he could feel the bones of her shoulders pressing into his back. “You’ll ruin everything.”
He stayed where he was, but that tiny light in his chest refused to go out. Please God, he prayed.
Finn was not the type of person who had ever believed in the power of prayer, but it was clear someone had heard him. Everything changed in a flash of light.
Hope never thought this would be how she died. She lay at the bottom of a heap of feet and grabbing hands, unable to breathe. A woman’s nails gouged the flesh of her arm, while a man kneeled on her chest, and someone’s stilettos dug into her calf. She was bleeding and terrified and had no air left to scream. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Michael. He’d taken a dagger to the chest and was sheet white. His eyes stared blankly at nothing. He was dead.
He’d tried to call Gabriel, but the crowd had overpowered him too quickly. He wasn’t able to reach his triquetra. He was the Healer. He’d come back. She wouldn’t. Where was Jayden? A knee landed on her nose and blood sprayed across her face and into her mouth. The pain threatened to knock her out and sent a wave of nausea through her.
But she didn’t pass out. She was conscious when a wave of light lifted the crowd off her body and washed over in an explosion of fire. Ravenguard was thrown off Michael and plowed into a sea of people, knocking them into each other. Others, the bouncer, the girl with the poodle tattoo, they floated through the air like rag dolls.
The fire was beautiful, hot against her skin, but somehow comforting. It lapped the air over her broken body. Bright. Colorful. Warm.
Starved for air, Hope tried to breathe now that there weren’t fifty people parked on her chest, but the air whistled into her pinched lungs. She could barely draw a trickle. Black dots swirled in her vision.
The fire swept her off the floor and against a broad chest. “I have you. Breathe. Just breathe,” it said. It hurt to move her eyes, but she knew who it was. Damien. His face was close, and he smelled of freshly peeled oranges and a picnic near the ocean. His warmth seeped into her skin.
“Mike,” she wheezed.
A blast of dark energy bombarded them from the direction of the stage, but with a circle of his arm, Damien shielded her and Mike from the worst of it. Unfortunately, the other patrons weren’t as lucky. Hope watched dozens of concertgoers collapse, twitching like poisoned roaches. Lucifer jumped off the stage and strode toward them.
“You,” he seethed. “How dare you challenge me, Brother. Crawl back to Heaven where you belong.”
Behind Lucifer, Hope saw Finn. He and Kirsa were standing there, doing nothing while people died all around them. As Lucifer strode toward her, he tore through the crowd of human beings hell-bent on taking her life. She cried then, for the boy she used to know, for the friend she’d lost who now worshiped at the altar of self-interest.
Damien noticed her tears. “Hold on to me.” He grabbed Mike around the chest and twisted. Lucifer’s howls followed them into the light. It was a rough journey. Unlike the last time she’d traveled with the angel, this passage was turbulent and squeezed what remained of her breath out of her. It seemed like an eternity before they slammed into the pavement in the parking lot where the tour bus was parked. Hope grunted from the impact.
Framed by a circle of artificial light from the streetlamp above him, Damien looked down at her, his healing warmth still flowing into her body. “I’m sorry. It’s more difficult with artificial light. I would have helped you sooner if it hadn’t been so dark in there.”
Hope was too weak to talk. Beside her, Mike lay dead on the pavement. Blood covered his torso, stemming from the wound in his heart. His eyes were glazed.
“He’ll come back,” Damien said. “Give him time.” He cupped the back of her neck along her hairline, and the curl of energy that flowed into her made her moan. For a few moments, she forgot about everything, even about who Damien had once been to her. All she felt was love, warmth, peace. It flowed into her, through her. It healed her. Her breathing eased, and the bright red of her bruised and broken flesh faded and disappeared. Bones that might have been broken became whole again.
Hope looked into Damien’s eyes and saw the angel. The one who existed before the fall. The one who looked at her like she was the center of his universe.
“You came for me,” she said, tears welling.
“You’re crying.
Where does it hurt?” Damien ran his hands along her limbs, searching, she supposed, for wounds he hadn’t healed yet.
She grabbed his hand and placed it over her heart. “You came for me,” she said again. “I sent you away, but you came anyway.”
He stopped and wiped under her eyes, then smoothed her hair back from her face. “Of course I came. I love you. I’ll leave again if you wish, but I could not let you die. I could not bear it.” His face contorted into something truly haunted, eyes dark, cheeks gaunt. He carefully set her down on the pavement and pulled away.
“Where are you going?”
“I thought you’d want me to go now that you’re healed.”
She reached up and looped her arms around his neck, her pulse quickening. God help her, she could not push him away anymore. “No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want you to go. Please don’t go.”
He pulled her into his arms again and she pressed her cheek to his, inhaling deeply. This close it was impossible to deny her feelings for him. She dug her fingers into the back of his hair, felt his wing curl around her like a cloud. Her nose traced the line of his jaw from his ear to his chin. Her eyes landed on his mouth, his full, parted lips. She couldn’t help herself. She kissed him.
Hope remembered what it was like to kiss Liam. She’d felt excited, alive, like the world was spinning faster than a moment before. Kissing Damien was so much more. She knew what he was and what he had been. And she accepted all of it. She kissed the boy and the man. The one who had waited and watched over her for longer than she would have bothered with herself. The kiss was warm and wonderful, timeless but somehow grounding. There was a tug inside her heart and she finally understood. The kiss had healed the last thing broken inside her: her heart.
Damien pulled away. “Now, will you call me Liam?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“You still don’t forgive me?”
She placed her hands on either side of his face. “It’s because I forgive you that I will always call you Damien. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. I forgive you, Damien.”
He let out a shaky breath. There was a sound behind them, and Damien rose with one flap of his wings, setting her on her feet. She whirled to find Mike’s body bucking off the pavement. His heart glowed like a beacon, his back arched between head and heels. With his eyes rolled back in his skull, his lashes fluttered as the light in his heart spread to his fingers and toes.
Hope rushed to his side. “You’re okay, Mike. Don’t fight it.” She remembered the first time she’d died and came back. It was even more painful than it looked. She spoke to him in soothing tones. And when his body collapsed back onto the pavement, she was there, her hands on his shoulders.
He blinked twice at her, then said one word. “Ow.”
“I know. Breathe through it. You’re okay.”
“Did I…”
“Die? Yes. Ravenguard stabbed you in the heart.”
Mike sat up and patted his chest, digging his fingers into the hole in his shirt. He looked down at himself. “Damn. I liked this shirt. Not even a scar though.”
Hope nodded. “It’s pretty amazing until—”
“Oh, crap.” Mike rubbed his eyes.
“Is that your consequence?” Hope asked. “It affects your sight?”
Mike nodded. “Completely blind right now.”
“It’s okay. I’m here. I’ll help you.”
“Hope? Where’s Jayden, is he already on the bus?”
She turned to Damien, her eyes going wide.”
“I’ll go. I’ll find him,” he said. With a twist of his shoulders, he dissolved into the streetlamp, the bulb flickering as he passed into the wiring above their heads.
Mike squeezed his arm. “Damien saved us?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“You need to give that guy a break.”
“I know.” She helped him to his feet and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Slowly, they headed toward the bus.
“We failed. We lost him, Hope.” He was talking about Finn.
Hope didn’t want to agree, but when she thought back to the way Finn had stared at her, knowing the crowd would kill her, she had no choice but to agree he was right. “Yeah, we did.”
Mike shook his head. They reached the bus, but when Ms. D opened the doors for them, Mike attempted to board without her help. He missed the bottom step and Hope had to keep him from face-planting.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Disoriented. I need to get better at this temporary blindness. If you weren’t here, I’d be doomed.”
Hope guided his foot to the bottom step. “Don’t think twice about it. It’s your first time.”
He paused when they reached the top of the stairs. “Do you think this will happen again?”
She guided him deeper into the bus. “How do you feel about learning to read braille?”
24
Malice
Fourteen people died in the skirmish between Lucifer and the Soulkeepers. Their bodies were disposed of along a highway in the desert in Arizona, compliments of Ravenguard, who drove all night to do the job. Lucifer compelled the others, some after taking their souls. Finn had locked the doors while each patron was cleaned up enough to pass as unhurt. It was all an illusion. Broken legs would remain broken to be discovered later when the person was far from the Tilted Raven.
At Lucifer’s command, Finn used sorcery to clean the place, mend broken glasses, and patch bullet holes. Only after the guests were gone and all four of them were back in the cabin in the cemetery did Lucifer ask Finn and Kirsa about what happened.
“Why didn’t you pursue them?” Lucifer asked through his teeth as he paced before the fire. The room was hot, at least a hundred degrees, and Finn hadn’t had anything to eat or drink all day. His head swam.
“Ravenguard was taking care of it,” he said, his gaze darting toward the hunter.
“You could have used magic. You could have stopped them.”
“I didn’t think I was allowed to use magic without your permission,” Finn said.
Lucifer turned and gripped Finn’s lower jaw. “I have not taken your power for a reason. I expect you to use it when it serves my needs.” His breath was foul as death and lingered in the heavy air. Finn swallowed a gag.
The Devil turned his attention to Kirsa. “What about you? Why didn’t you intercede, Kirsa?” Lucifer’s voice was low and even, laden with malice.
“I was in the dressing room. I didn’t know what was going on until it was already over.”
Lucifer bared his teeth, his hand coming around to slap her across the face. The blow sent her flying out of her chair onto the floor. Resilient or not, it looked like it hurt.
Lucifer whirled on Finn. He was next, and what hurt Kirsa would kill him. “Admit it. You wanted them to get away.” The Devil pressed a talon into Finn’s chest.
Finn considered what to say. He could tell Lucifer that Mike was the Healer. The healing energy that had flowed into him when Mike had touched him felt the same as when Hope had healed him on the island. But if he told, Mike was as good as dead. Although the light inside of Finn was tiny at the moment, buried under heaps of self-protection, it still existed deep inside. He remembered playing with Mike as a child: video games and monkey bars and laughter at midnight during their sleepovers. His eight-year-old self stood over Mike’s name, armed with a toy rifle and the last remnants of love Finn’s soul was capable of producing.
He would not give him up.
“Hope is extremely powerful,” Finn began. It was the truth. “Without backup, she would have popped my head off with a vine before I could lay a hand on her. Hope and Mike had come to rescue me. By staying where I was, I thought I was using myself as bait until you and Ravenguard could overpower her.”
“You were stalling,” Lucifer hissed. “You wanted them to survive. You think of them as friends.” He said friends like it was a filthy curse.
Finn scoffed. “What do I care if they survive? I’m not one of them. If you want to blame someone, blame Ravenguard. After he stabbed Mike, he could have killed Hope. She was right there, next to him. Instead, he was getting off on watching Mike die. Newsflash, there’s no coming back from multiple stab wounds directly to the heart.”
Ravenguard growled, his fangs descending. “I could not get to her. The crowd had closed in.”
“Bullshit. You’re stronger than ten men. You could have brushed them aside with one arm and had your dagger in Hope’s ticker in seconds. You were scared. You were afraid she’d do the same to you that she did to Applegate. You were afraid she’d reduce you to a pile of ash.”
The hunter snapped. Ravenguard launched himself at Finn like a raging beast, fangs flashing as the two toppled onto the floor next to Kirsa. Everything came into sharp focus for Finn, and he caught the man’s bottom jaw. “Incinerate,” he whispered.
Fire engulfed Ravenguard’s head and then his trademark red coat. Finn shielded his own body from the flames, although the heat licked his face. The hunter’s screams filled the cabin.
Snap. With a quick connection of his fingers, Lucifer extinguished Finn’s magic.
“Stop your bickering,” the dark lord said. “Mr. Wager, you still haven’t answered my question. As you have now demonstrated, your power is intact. Why did you not use it to detain Hope and Michael until Ravenguard could end them?”
“The crowd did it for me.” Finn spread his hands. “Look, the problem was not keeping Hope and Mike from the door. They were trampled. They weren’t going anywhere. The problem was the damned angel. None of us could foresee Damien rescuing Hope when he did.”
Face half-scorched, Ravenguard hissed in protest. But Kirsa, who’d been rubbing her jaw silently eased back into her seat next to a disturbingly empty bookshelf. “He’s telling the truth.”
They all turned to look at her.
