by Ember Hollis
I can’t help but gasp and take a step back as my heart pounds while I watch him struggling slowly out of the grave.
Christian loops an arm around my shoulders, and I give him a grateful look. It’s completely different to see a corpse you don’t know emerge from the ground as opposed to someone you once thought of as almost family.
“You made him dig himself out?” I gulp, when I see bits of wood lodged into his wrinkled skin and between his yellowing bones.
“Better him than us,” Bane says, standing up. “Okay, I’ve also tethered his soul to his body momentarily. Are you ready to talk to him?”
I nod and step forward.
“Martin? Martin, do you remember me?”
The corpse which has been gazing blankly forward with milky, dazed eyes suddenly gives a little jerk, then turns to me.
“Heaven…” he whispers, his voice sounding rough and hoarse, as if his throat is full of phlegm. Though it’s probably grave dirt, in this case. “Where am I?”
I grimace. “It’s a long story. Do you remember the last thing you saw the last time you were…” I glance at Bane, who nods at me to go on. “The last time you were awake?”
He gazes at me for a long moment, then his lips draw back from his teeth as he clenches them in fury. “Yes,” he spits. “Your whore of a mother! She was cheating on me!”
Bane and Christian’s gazes on me feel heavy, but I ignore them in favor of Martin. “Is that why you killed her?”
“I gave her everything, everything!” Martin rants. “And then she goes and fucks the bellboy! I wouldn’t have believed it, but it happened just like she said it would!”
“Who,” I ask in confusion. “My mother?” Surely she couldn’t have been that cruel?
“No,” Martin shakes his head so hard that thick pieces of rotten skin falls off of him and onto the ground. “The other one, the woman with all those… with those glowing hands.”
“Probably a witch,” Christian says quietly.
“I didn’t believe her… but I should have!” Martin falls to the floor and starts to tear at his hair. “Argh!”
“How did this witch look like?” I ask. “What did she do? Did she tell you to call my father and ask him to take me to Pandorax?”
“One question at a time,” Bane whispers to me. “It’s hard for them to think after being dead for so long.”
“Okay,” I reply, then I raise my voice to speak to Martin. “What happened after you found her in bed with the bellboy, Martin? Did you kill her?”
“Why would I?” he howls. “I loved her!”
“Then… why did you shoot her?” I frown at the man. “Both she and Barry were shot, so you must have done it. Then you killed yourself. Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t!” he sobs, falling to his knees. “I didn’t do it… I didn’t want to… oh, it hurts… stop it…”
“I don’t think we’re going to get more out of him,” I turn to Bane, feeling a wash of pity for the dead man. He might have killed my Mom… but I still feel sorry for what had happened to him. “Maybe we should try questioning Barr—”
“Heaven, look out!”
Christian pushes me out of the way as Martin’s corpse lunges at me, sharp finger bones curled into claws to strike at me. One of them actually does connect, penetrating deep into the soft flesh at the base of my throat before Christian kicks him away.
I clutch at my throat and cough on blood as we crawl back. Martin’s corpse has dropped to all fours, like an animal. With an inhuman roar, he runs at us again, still intent on attacking me.
Bane steps forward into his path, then slices his hands through the air, letting loose purple discs of energy that carve through the corpse’s body just at it leaps for him. Martin’s torn limbs fall to the floor, twitching frantically with some still wriggling towards us until Bane sends them deep underground.
But as soon as he does, the ground starts to rustle, and suddenly, hundreds of hands start to erupt from the earth surrounding us.
“Fuck!” Bane exclaims. “The witch laid a trap! She must have known we were coming! Get her out of here,” he calls over his shoulder to us.
“Heaven,” Christian crouches over me, his hands sending healing energy to my throat. “Are you okay? Can you stand?”
I cough and rasp as I nod and plant my feet on the ground. I can feel my flesh knitting around the wound, but something still feels wrong. The pain seems to be traveling lower in my chest. I point at the spot and try to speak, but only manage a groan. Something is wrong with me. The air feels hot and cold at the same time, and my feet are too rubbery to hold my weight.
“What’s wrong with her?” Bane asks as he holds off the zombies surrounding us. Christian starts swearing quietly and leans my body against his when I start to collapse. “Why isn’t she healing properly?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I sense foreign magic inside her. Maybe one of Martin’s contaminated bones has lodged deep inside the wound. I can’t take it out by myself without re-opening the wound, and she’s already lost too much blood. We need to take her back to Madam Kahili.”
“Let’s go then,” Bane says as Christian lifts me up, carrying me in his arms. He releases a blast of purple light that knocks back the corpses in front of us so hard, it splits a nearby obelisk in two.
“Why did he attack her all of a sudden?” Christian ask as he starts to run. Though Christian is holding me as gently as he can, a sharp pain shoots through my chest with each of his footsteps, making me moan in agony.
“I don’t think he wanted to,” Bane replied. “For a moment there, I sensed another will, a strong one, taking over control of his soul from me. Whoever is animating these corpses is probably the one who made him attack her. It’s probably the witch he spoke about earlier. Her hold is very strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d controlled him even when he was alive and made him attack Heaven’s mother too.”
“She must be strong if she can sense we’ve resurrected one of her toys, and summon so many others,” Christian says darkly. “Either that, or it’s more than one witch we’re dealing with.”
I moan loudly, unable to bear the pain, which has increased all of a sudden.
“Shh, it’s okay, Heaven,” Christian says, looking down at me, his face pale.
I hear more cracks and rustling, then Bane drops behind us with a swear as explosions and savage howling starts up behind us.
“I’m calling the others,” Christian says darkly, tracing a glyph on his arm. “Knox can take you back faster than we can.”
A few short moments later, the air beside us splits, and a piercing green gaze peers out of the depths of darkness, widening in the gloom when Knox catches sight of me.
I try to smile at him and Malek as they both step through the portal. Knox has his silver sickles strapped to his sides and Malek is already in a fighting stance with his gleaming bronze sword raised. But the pain is too much and I can’t do anything but whimper instead as the pain sharpens and darkness starts to creep over me.
The last thing I’m aware of before everything fades is the sound of furious fighting fading in the distance, and the feeling of strong, warm arms carrying me swiftly through chilly darkness, as Knox’s smooth voice tells me to hold on.
Chapter 25: Heaven
The next thing I’m aware of is being laid down on a bed as voices sound above me. I hear Knox speaking urgently, then Madam Kahili’s calmer tones reassuring him. Then there’s the sound of curtains being drawn close and Madam Kahili’s face appears above me.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she clicks her tongue. “You just can’t keep out of trouble can you? Not to worry, at least you’re awake now. We’ll have you sorted out soon.”
I try to nod, then wince as pain streaks through me. Slowly, I raise a hand to my chest, and point to the middle of it.
It hurts.
“Yes, dear,” Madam Kahili says, her many hands moving like a blur as she starts to place a tray of i
nstruments, a sheet, and a divider on my chest. “We’ll get it out, right now, don’t worry.”
I nod and close my eyes, hoping she’ll be able to ease the pain soon. Then, something closes hard around my ankles and wrists. When I open my eyes again, I see that I’ve been chained to the bed.
What is going on!
I stare at Madam Kahili and moan. But the blue-skinned nurse just smiles and reaches out with one of her hands to stroke my brow.
“Now, don’t struggle my dear,” she says in a sweet voice. “We need your heart nice and whole. It won’t do to sever any important bits!” she laughs loudly, as if she’s just said something extremely funny. Then she holds up a knife and starts cutting into me.
I try to scream, but my throat still doesn’t make a sound. The pain is terrible and even though I can’t see what she’s doing I can feel her cutting and digging into me.
“You know, Heaven, for the longest time, I thought I’d been completely mistaken about you,” she says in a confiding tone. “I tried so hard to activate your Darkness. And yet, nothing I did worked. Not the Nightmares, not those mean girls, not even that angel that I poisoned just for you,” she shakes her head. “Even facing the hellspawn and feeling the echo of Dark energy from the underworld did nothing.”
Tears run down my face as I listen to her, horrified at what I’m hearing. She’d orchestrated everything? Even what had happened to Mikael? That had been because of me?
“I’d thought that even the Sacrifice had let me down,” she says, yanking hard at my chest. I hear a loud squelching sound, then a tremendous pulling sensation deep inside me sends so much pain sparking through me that my vision blurs and a low roaring starts to fill my ears. I’ve never felt so much pain in my life, not even when my wings had been set on fire, or when they’d been broken and shredded after I leaped off a cliff.
“—was all for waste… perhaps it had been another student who’d slept with the arcangel,” Madam Kahili is saying when I next manage to pay attention to her. “But then, today, I felt one of my patients start to flatline. You know I rushed in here, all panicked that I’d done something wrong… only to find you perched by that werewolf’s bedside, sucking out his life force to the brink of death… just like the good little half-angel half-demon I suspected you to be.”
She leans over me and grins a wide, toothy grin, her blue lips stretches to they almost look white. “That’s when I knew I was right! And now look at what we have here!”
She holds up something red and dripping with blood in front of my face, and I almost pass out when I realize it’s my heart.
Why am I not dead yet, I think absently, as the rest of my mind wails in horror. This is like the worst horror movie ever! If only I could just move, or do something!
“Don’t take it personally,” Madam Kahili tells me, with a sympathetic look. “I don’t actually want to kill you at all. I just need one of your hearts to start the Apocalypse.”
She sets my heart down on a metal tray, then pulls out a yellowed old piece of parchment and some candles. Without even bothering to stop my bleeding or prevent me from watching, she lights the candles and starts to chant, holding my heart out over the paper so my blood drips onto it.
The Apocalypse?
My mind is so dulled by pain and shock I can barely process what’s happening. This is what my mother had meant… what Bane had mentioned… I just didn’t think it had been linked… that it would have anything to do with me.
Stop panicking and think!
I try to take deep breaths and calm my mind. I had to get help. There was no way I could break free of my chains by myself and stop the blue-skinned witch. But how could I get help when no one could hear me?
I kick my legs, hoping to connect to something and make a loud sound. But the bed beneath me is too soft and I hear nothing but a soft flump.
At first, I’m disappointed. Then, my eye is caught by a flash of purplish light, slicing through the air at my feet until it connects with the curtain beyond and… slices a thin cut into it.
But hang on. Isn’t that Bane’s power? How is this even poss—
I kick my foot out again, deciding to try it even if it seems crazy. And true enough, the flash of purple emerges, larger this time, to slice a hole about the size of a palm in the fabric.
Oh my God.
Suddenly, my mother’s words return to me, making sense in the aftermath of everything that’s happened.
‘I can have all the power in the world, but only so long as it comes from someone else.’
Aside from my angelic magic, which was what I assumed fueled my wings and helped me purify the unicorns, most of the magic I’d done had only occurred around or after I’d been with someone. Intimately. Either a touch, or a kiss… or sex.
Was this what Mom had meant when she’d tried to tell me what being a succubus meant for me? Did she mean I was some soft of battery? Or a sponge… something like Rogue from the X-men, but without the neat white stripe and spandex suit? I’d love a suit like that, especially now that everything feels so cold and—
I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts as they start to drift. I have to concentrate if I want to survive. Who have I last touched… intimately? Christian. Bane. Noah. Malek and Knox too, but that was much earlier before I’d given my energy to the Sacrifice. But maybe I don’t need their powers, not if I can…
I focus my mind, trying to visualize the metal fastenings around my hands and legs. If I can just get Bane’s power to slice through them…
I imagine the purple power I’ve seen him wield so often, imagine it emerging slightly from my skin, coating my limbs.
A second later, the metal snaps and I’m suddenly free.
Madam Kahili turns to me, her chanting momentarily interrupted.
My mind whirls as I try to figure out what to do, what to do, what to do…
I can’t think of anything to do, except to lunge at her, which I do, half surprised that I manage to throw myself across the bed without the insides of my chest falling out.But when I look down, I see that my skin has knitted across my torso, my bones, still broken, but at least not jutting through.
Madam Kahili pauses for a moment in sheer amazement as I throw myself at her. I’m sure that’s the last thing she expected. She recovers almost immediately and her blue hands swirl through the air, starting to glow as she readies her magic to strike, or picking up sharp instruments to throw at me.
A scissors pierces my arm and a ball of fire sears across my thigh, but I’m too fast for the rest of her hands to strike.
Thinking only of stopping her, I try to feed the deadliest of magic that I can to her, putting all my anger, my hate and fear in to the attack.
I expect her to drop to the ground in pieces, or shrivel up and die. But what happens is almost worst. All of Madam Kahili’s hands raise up to her face as she starts to scream, her eyes smoking and her whole body quivering.
It continues for almost a whole minute.
Then she falls down to the floor, her limbs splayed like a dead spider. Her eyes are burnt and blackened, with smoke rising from them, and a terrible burnt smell drifts up to my nose as I back away and collapse against the bed.
“Shit! What the hell’s going on here?”
I look up and gape at Bane, Christian, Malek, and Knox. They’ve only just arrived, covered in dirt and bruised, their weapons raised as if ready to charge. The sight of them gaping at Madam Kahili and then at me is somehow incredibly hilarious, and I start to laugh, first slowly and hollowly, and then in uproarious cackles as tears stream down my face.
Who needs the Four Horsemen to trigger the Apocalypse… when they’ve got me?
Chapter 26: Heaven
The next few days are a blur to me. I spend all my time in bed, sleeping and recovering. Thanks to the power I’d siphoned off from Noah, my bones and flesh knitted together quickly enough to save me from dying from Madam Kahili’s attack.
But my heart takes a little whil
e longer to regrow, though the lack of it isn’t fatal, not for an angel born like me, who apparently has three hearts. Finding that out is almost ironic, since it nearly gives me a heart attack that would leave me with just one heart left. But the angel healer that’s come to take care of me in place of our murderous (and dead) school nurse insists that I stay bedridden till it’s grown.
It’s not a chore for me to stay in bed, since the secret of who I am is out and I have no desire to be seen. Not everyone knows that I’m an angel-demon hybrid, with a generous helping of Horsemen in me, but many people do.
Like Pandora and her secretaries.
My Mom, who’s given up her facade as Madam Hinako and is now nowhere to be found.
Alya, who’s promised not to say anything, but who could barely speak a word of farewell to me before she left.
Sybil, who finally woke up and was devastated to find out she’d missed so much.
Noah, who I still haven’t told has slept with my mother, and who I can’t bear to see just yet.
And… the Horsemen, who for some reason, haven’t stopped dropping by to visit me, even though they don’t have to anymore, now that the threat to me is gone and they know exactly what I am.
“So, do you think she’s decided whether to make me leave?” I ask Christian one day as he traces magical swirls in the air. They hover over me, darting like little air snakes around one of the little pink streamers that I occasionally throw up to join them. I can still feel the levels of power I took from them, diminishing slowly within me. I can’t really make a purple slice the way Bane does anymore, but I’ve learned that the pink allure is something all my own, just like Mom said.
“She probably won’t,” he says predictably. “Madam Kahili is gone now.”
“But so is half the map,” I say, reminding him of the parchment she’d poured my heart’s blood on. It had gotten torn when I attacked the nurse, and after everything had been sorted, we’d only found half of it, with three spots marked out in bloody red. “Someone’s taken it. Someone who will eventually want to know where the other four Seals are.”
