Lucifer's Pride

by G. P. Ching

  Archie nodded. “Oh yes. Tell no one.”

  “Cool. We’ll go after breakfast.”

  The gnome grinned. “Excellent. Good night, Soulkeeper.”

  “Good night.” As Michael watched the gnome go, he smiled. It would be a good night after all, and with any luck, an even better tomorrow.

  26

  The Broken Tree

  Hope came down to breakfast the next day feeling sorry for Mike. She remembered what it was like to stand in front of a group of Soulkeepers, feeling utterly incompetent and trying to be the leader you were destined to be. He was supposed to be in charge and he knew it. Only they couldn’t let him risk himself. All that stood between the Devil and Hell was Mike. It was worth ten thousand Finns to keep him safe. She was sorry to admit that, but it was true.

  “Hey, Hope,” Mike said, waving her over. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She sat down beside him and selected a scone from the tray. “Sure. Honestly, I’m relieved you want to talk to me at all after yesterday. I’m sorry things went down the way they did.”

  “I know you care,” he said. “Now that we’re here though, I’d like to get to know the island better. I never got to see it as a student. I was hoping you’d take me on a tour.”

  Her face became serious. “Sure. I can show you around. Is there something specific you’d like to see?”

  He shrugged. “The river. The mountain. Archibald tells me there is a gorgeous beach on the back side of the island.”

  She nodded. “He would know. All right. We go after breakfast.” So that was it. Archibald. The gnome had likely convinced Mike the Island wasn’t such a bad place. She’d have to thank the little guy, later.

  With a small bag of provisions, compliments of Mrs. Wilhelm, Hope gave Mike the grand tour. She told him stories of the Crimson Forest, Murder Mountain, and how a water dragon that lived in the Fever River had once eaten her. “My legs grew back while I was dead,” she said.

  Mike sat down on a rock and pulled off his pack, taking a long gulp of his water. “I didn’t like being dead.”

  “Nobody likes being dead.” Hope laughed. “At least you came back.”

  “When you were gone… I mean before you came back, did you sense anything?”

  She took a seat beside him, turning her face toward the sun and closing her eyes. “I think so. I could never be sure because when I came back, it all seemed so far away. But I think I felt peace. There were times it was easier to be dead than alive.”

  “Me too. I wondered if it was all in my head.”

  “No.”

  He shifted on the rock, looking across Fever River. “About Finn…”

  “Ah, I knew there was a reason you wanted to get me alone. Here it comes.” She smiled at him, expecting him to ask her to help him leave the island. She would refuse of course. But she expected this.

  “You know Finn is where he is because he was trying to help us. That’s always been the thing with Finn. He sacrifices himself.”

  Her heart grew heavy and she looked down at the toes of her hiking boots, suddenly tired. “Yeah. Just like how he saved your soul. You’d think the idiot would have learned by now not to take it this far. He never knows when to give up.”

  “Yeah.” Mike laughed. “Problem is, I love the guy. He’s the best friend I ever had.”

  “Look at you being so emotional. What happened to that hard candy shell I bounced off of last time you were here? I’m already to your gooey center and I didn’t even have to throw stuff at you.”

  “Well, uh, I’ve done some soul-searching lately. Going through the initiation will do that to you.”

  She nodded. Now it made sense. He wanted to bond with her because she was the only one who had been a Healer and had been to the In-Between.

  “Didn’t you and Finn find the holy water around here?”

  “On the back side of the mountain, near the beach Archie told you about.” Hope nodded.

  “Can you show me? I think it would be wild to see actual water from Eden,” Mike said. He stood and headed for the water.

  “Uh, do we have to? This process holds bad memories for me.” Hope hesitated. Logically she understood that the dragons no longer lived in these waters. Veil Island was a much safer place to be these days. But it was hard to put the memories behind her. She abhorred the cold and wet.

  Michael had already reached the other side. “What are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “You know, there isn’t much to see. Holy water looks exactly like regular water.”

  “Come on, Diva. You’re not afraid to get your hair wet are you?” Mike teased.

  Maybe there was another way. Hope reached out with her power and sensed all the plants and animals around her. She latched on to one form of life in particular and funneled her energy into it. A massive lily pad opened on the edge of the water, growing six feet wide and a foot thick with a giant white bloom at the center. Hope stepped on. The pad squished beneath her shoes as she carefully moved to the center of the blossom. At her command, the entire thing grew toward the opposite shore, skimming the current, slowly, deliberately. It wasn’t as fast as swimming, but when she stepped off the other side, she was still completely dry.

  Mouth agape, Mike pulled his shirt over his head and wrung it out between his hands. About a gallon of water splashed toward his feet. “Might have been nice to know you could do that before I swam across,” he said through a bright smile.

  She laughed. “You never asked. Come on, it’s this way.”

  They rounded the mountain to the ocean. Hope couldn’t believe how the island had changed since the last time she was here. The forest was greener. The ocean was no longer gray but a magnificent shade of lapis. Even the mountain was more welcoming. They reached the cave in a fraction of the time it had taken her and Finn, but she hadn’t known where she was going then. Panting from the climb, she flipped on the flashlight from her bag to lead Mike to the tree and the pool.

  “Wow,” he said, his eyes locking on the tree. She understood. Although the oak was almost split in two, with only a few twisted branches bearing evidence of life in the form of green leaves, being in its presence was unforgettable. The tree felt like it had a soul. And when she stopped to think about its history, along with the water in the pool beside it, she felt connected to everything, like she was a piece of a grand puzzle.

  “This used to be a portal?” Mike asked.

  “To Eden,” Hope said, stepping into the circle of light that poured through the side of the mountain. “This is how Archie came to be here. When the portals to Eden collapsed, he was able to escape through this. All the rest of his kind were trapped there. My mom said when Lucifer tried to take Eden apart, he couldn’t enter it directly, so he made the world around it come apart. When she left, the earthquakes had practically leveled the place.”

  She couldn’t blame Mike for being fascinated. He ran his hands along the bark, then squatted next to the pool. Although his back was to her, she heard his hand splash in the water.

  “That’s the water we used to save the island. It’s from Eden as well.”

  Mike stood again and looked over his shoulder at her. “I have an idea,” he said.

  “What kind of idea?” Hope found the look on Mike’s face strange. Her gut told her he was lying, but why would he lie about having an idea?

  “What if you tried to heal the tree?” Mike said.

  Hope laughed. “What? Why?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but if you could use your power to mend this tree, we might be able to travel back to Eden. It’s possible that some of Archie’s family are still there, and if the school is standing, the resources inside might contain a clue about how to stop Lucifer.”

  Hope raised her eyebrows. “It’s a good idea, Mike, but this is big. I can’t do something like this without talking to the council first. I’ve never done anything like this before. What if something went wrong?”

  Brushing water from his h
ands, he smiled and crossed to her. “You’re right. This is big. Dangerous.” He sighed. As he brushed the water from his hands, he turned over his left arm, exposing his wrist to her. She saw him make a plucking motion with his opposite hand.

  In the blink of an eye, Hope was back in the In-Between standing on an island that was dead. “Bring life,” Nephthys’s voice came on the wind. Hope was holding the seed. She needed to make it grow. But then the memory changed. There was a tree in front of her, one that needed healing. She placed her hands on it. This wasn’t so hard. All she had to do was mend what was broken, not grow a new tree. She poured herself into the task, knitting the bark, the wood, the cells beneath.

  After several minutes, she realized she wasn’t on the island at all, but in the cave where she’d found Archibald. Only, she wasn’t standing in the same place she had been before. Neither was Mike. Worse, the tree was whole again.

  “What have you done?”

  “What I needed to do,” Mike said.

  “You used your power on me. You sent me back to my initiation.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to get you to do what I needed you to do.”

  Hope was livid. “Yes, you did. You could have waited. I told you I’d do it, but I wanted to talk to the council first.”

  Mike frowned. “That would defeat the purpose, Hope.”

  There was a swirl of green light and Archibald appeared. His eyes darted at Hope guiltily.

  “Do we still have a deal, Archie?” Mike asked.

  “Archibald lives to serve the Soulkeepers.” He waddled to Michael’s side.

  “What are you doing?” Hope asked sternly. “Whatever this deal is, the Soulkeepers don’t approve.” She narrowed her eyes at the gnome.

  But Archie scowled. “The Healer leads the Soulkeepers,” he said in a harsh voice Hope had never heard come out of the gnome before. “So it has always been. So it will always be, Daughter of Angels.”

  “Archie…”

  Mike’s big, dark hand wrapped around Archie’s green-stained fingers. The size difference gave Hope the impression of father and child, although Archie was the far older of the two.

  Mike’s dark eyes met hers. “I learned something about portals recently. Portals when attached to a living thing like a tree, can be used as bridges from one realm to another. But, if you have magic or sorcery in your blood, they can be used to take you almost anywhere. Trees are connected, spiritually.”

  Her spine tingled as she realized where he was planning to go. “No, no. Don’t do this.” She reached out to him.

  But she was too late. Archibald touched the tree. The bark climbed the gnome’s arm, then over his head, then swallowed Mike as well. The two became a knot of wood that was absorbed into the trunk of the oak. In another moment, both gnome and Healer were gone.

  Hope lowered her hand and fell to her knees. She knew where Mike had gone, and it wasn’t Eden. She had to tell the others. She’d made a terrible mistake, and Mike was in great danger.

  27

  The Deal

  Mike emerged from the tree at the center of Saint Louis Cemetery still gripping Archibald’s hand. After orienting himself among the mausoleums, he made a quick self-inspection to make certain he hadn’t burst into flame. He’d made it, whole and unscathed. Silently, he congratulated himself on doing the impossible. He had slipped inside the Devil’s safehouse through the backdoor.

  Each of the Soulkeepers had attempted to thwart the boundary surrounding the cemetery but the protective bubble had proven ultimately Soulkeeper-resistant. After talking with Archibald though, Mike had developed a theory that the portal in the tree Finn had opened could be used to circumvent the protective magic. It was a loophole. And now he was here, walking straight into the enemy camp. It seemed stupid when he stopped to think about it. Only, his gut told him the way to stop Lucifer was to change Finn’s heart. You couldn’t change someone’s heart at a safe distance.

  “Are you sure you want to stay here, Healer? Archibald hates this place. It smells of evil and makes my heart heavy.” The gnome’s voice came out a high and tight whisper. He was afraid. It would be wrong to keep him here.

  “I need to stay, Archie. Thank you for your help. I want you to use the tree to go home to Eden. Find your family if you can. If not, return to the Soulkeepers. Above all else, stay safe. Take care of yourself.”

  The gnome’s eyes widened. “Thank you. Thank you, Soulkeeper.”

  “Call me Michael.”

  “Michael.”

  “Go.”

  The gnome bowed slightly at the waist. Backing toward the tree, he reached out his small hand to touch the bark as a smile splayed across his lips. There was a swirl of sparkling green light, the bark swallowed him, and he was gone.

  Mike shivered against the chill air. It was summer in New Orleans, the middle of the afternoon, easily ninety degrees anywhere else in the city, but the cemetery was cold, dark, and foggy, as if a permanent storm had moved in. There was no wind. In fact, the air hung stagnant. But the chill went through him anyway.

  Among the crypts, the scenery was creepy enough, curls of ill-colored fog coiling against the brick and plaster graves. He had heard that it took only a year for a body to completely decompose into ash in the New Orleans heat. Each of these crypts could hold hundreds if not thousands of bodies. But the most horror-movie worthy thing here was not the houses of the dead, but the rustic cabin that rose above them to his left. It had no windows, only one door, and a chimney that billowed smoke with the green tinge of burning copper. It was this chimney that seemed to produce the fog the tangled around his ankles.

  This was a bad idea. He swallowed. This was his only idea.

  There was no turning back now. He toyed with the triquetra around his neck. On shaky legs, he navigated the maze of tombs until he’d reached the cabin. Slowly, he placed his fingers on the doorknob and turned. There was a soft click and it opened. Not that surprising really. Why would Lucifer want or need a lock? The blast of heat that met his face as he stepped inside made him nauseous. Not just the temperature, but the smell: a combination of rotten eggs and burned marshmallow.

  As quietly as possible, he strolled through the main room with its roaring fire and into the back hallway. Should he call out for Finn? The idea here, after all, was to get caught. He didn’t think for a second that he could slip in and slip out without facing Lucifer. This was not about winning. This was about saving. It was about Finn and a friendship Mike was unwilling to let die. A friendship Mike was willing to die for.

  Alas, when he raised his voice, no one answered. “I guess no one’s home,” he said.

  He opened the first door. There was no light switch but the stench that met his nostrils told him enough. The room smelled of blood and sewage. A torture chamber? He closed the door again, thankful for the lack of light.

  Behind the next door was a normal bedroom, but the blouse spread across the bed told him it probably wasn’t Finn’s. He was guessing Kirsa’s by the weapons lined up along the dresser. His gaze fell on her nightstand and he was unexpectedly bewildered by what he saw there. A romance novel lay open beside the lamp. All he knew of Kirsa was death. She’d stabbed him more times than he could count. It gave him an uneasy feeling that she was reading about love. He closed the door.

  The next room he was sure was Finn’s. The bed wasn’t made and the closet door was hanging open. Typical. He entered and closed the door behind him. Flipping through the clothes in the closet, he found the shirt Finn had worn the night before at the Tilted Raven. Yep, this was his room. He flipped through the other shirts, then paused when he noticed writing carved into the back wall. The letters were small and tight. He brought his face close to the wood to read it.

  What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

  Mike recognized the quote from the book of Matthew. So Finn was quoting the Bible in the back of his closet. If that wasn’t a sign the guy could be redeemed,
what was?

  The sound of the door opening made Mike whirl around. Finn saw him but didn’t say a word. He closed the door behind him, then pressed his hand to the wood. A purple shimmer cascaded around the room.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Finn asked through clenched teeth.

  Mike took a step forward. “I came for you. You’re my friend. I wasn’t going to leave you to that monster.”

  “Are you insane?” Finn charged forward, stopping with his face inches from Mike’s. “If Lucifer sees you, he will know what you are. He will kill you. And after he kills you, do you know what happens next? We all go to Hell, Mike, because Hell comes to us.”

  Mike shook his head. “The Soulkeepers need you, Finn. Come with me to the tree. I can help you get back to Revelations. There’s a portal. We won’t go through the dragons. I can get you in. You’ll be safe there.”

  “Shhh.” Finn brought his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell me how you got in here. I don’t want to know. Whatever way you were planning to escape, use it… without me.”

  “Why? You don’t want to be here. You’re not evil. I know you. You’re my best friend.”

  Finn’s face morphed into something ugly. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been besties, Mike. A long time. There are things about me you don’t know. Things you don’t want to know. It’s too late for me.”

  “No.”

  “I’m here for a reason.” Finn paced the floor. “I earned my place here. And as long as I am here, I can do what I can to help you and the others. But only if you play your part and stay the hell away.” Finn rolled his eyes. “Honestly, are you sick or just stupid? Why couldn’t you let it be? All you had to do is stay away. Now, everything I did is for nothing.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You sacrificed yourself for us… for me. You did what you did so they’d lock me up on that island and Lucifer would never be able to complete the spell.”

  Finn said nothing, but he swallowed hard.