by Nour Zikra
“What are you saying?” I glared at Lucifer. “What was that crap about granting my wishes, then?”
Lucifer tapped his nails against the bones of his seat. A hollow clanking sound resounded. “I want you to do some things first.”
“What kind of things?”
He smiled. “Being the devil, as you probably figured out, means I can manipulate people.” He grabbed his viper off his leg and stared into its eyes like he was mesmerized. “I can compel them—at least the weak ones. They just want to please someone, and I am always there for that.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, you are my daughter. If I am right—and I know I am right because I can sense it in our shared blood—you also have the power of compulsion.”
Reed opened his eyes and brought his face closer to mine. “Addy,” he whispered. “Don’t do what he says.”
“It’s okay, Reed.” I stroked his cheek and cleared the sweat from his eyes. “I will get you out.”
“No, she will not,” Lucifer said. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, you, Adelaide, can compel people just like I can. But I need you for much more than that. You see, you are not just a manipulator; you are a manipulator with feminine appeal, and I need you to entice people to join me, to devote themselves to me. Together, we can rule the universe.”
I snorted and let my lips stretch into a smile for the first time in this awful place. “And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because.” Lucifer pointed at one of his men. “I have the power to kill your brother.”
Saleos came forth and jerked Reed out of my arms. I pulled back, and it became a tugging war.
“Don’t let them take me,” Reed begged, his eyes like bronze, round marbles.
“Let him go,” I demanded, but Saleos didn’t stop.
Reed fell back into Saleos’s hold and got hauled into the corner of the chamber.
Turning to Lucifer with a fire unlike anything I had ever felt, I stormed over to his throne and wrapped my slim, long fingers around his throat, earning a bizarre smile from him.
“I have always wanted a fighter,” he said. “I am a father just like my father, but unlike him, I have the most beautiful ruby there ever was.”
I spit in his face. “I will not manipulate people for your gain, you sadistic piece of shit!”
He put his hand over mine and, with no effort, freed his neck from my clutch. “I’m stronger than you, my child.”
He waved at Saleos, and when I looked back, I saw the grotesque man holding a blade against Reed’s middle finger.
My heart sank.
“Now, you do what I ask.” Lucifer wiggled his fingers at me. “Or your brother loses his fingers and toes. Which will it be?”
Chapter Six
Adriel
It was all but a second. After the demon knocked me down, he grabbed Rosy Cheeks and disappeared. In that second, I wasn’t sure if she would ever come back.
I was still on the ground when she emerged from a portal shaped like her body. She crashed on top of me, her head falling onto my chest, and drenched my sweatshirt with her sweat.
She lay there motionless, her arms resting on my sides.
“Hey,” I said, gently lifting her face up.
Wet strands covered her eyes. I reached out and tucked them behind her small, double-pierced ears. Her eyes were closed, curtained by thick, long lashes, and her forehead burned. I held her close and sat up, ignoring the pain in my back and letting her head rest against my arm.
“Rosy Cheeks.” I put my ear over her chest and waited to hear the thump thump of her heart. I had never done that before, never heard the sound of a living heart. When I felt the heartbeat, I exhaled. “You’re okay. Thank God you’re okay.”
She coughed, her eyes blinking open. She sat in my lap as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the parking lot.
“They have Reed,” she whispered.
When she set her eyes on mine, they reflected my image in their dark depths. I watched her, unable to blink.
“You were right about the demons,” she said.
The longer she stared at me, the more I felt the air get sucked out of my lungs.
“You were right.”
I stood and helped her to her feet. Her eyes never left mine, and I couldn’t for the life of me look away. It was like she was controlling me.
“How long were you there?” I asked.
“In hell?”
She dropped her gaze to the ground and let go of my hands. In doing so, she also released me from her hold. I felt my chest pump at its normal speed again.
“A little under an hour. Why?”
“You weren’t gone long here.” I looked inside the big windows of Creed’s, at the faces we had seen a moment ago. “You were in hell for just a second.”
Her eyes grew wide. “How is that possible?”
None of heaven’s messengers ever paid attention to time, because time was just a human construct. When you’re immortal you don’t care to hold on to every fleeting tick of your heart. Hell worked the same. Rosy Cheeks had just experienced that without realizing it.
“Time doesn’t really exist in hell. You could have been there for many years and still come back to this moment.”
Her head sprang up, displaying wide, petrified eyes. “So, Reed could be there for years? He could come out a seventy-year-old man?”
“Not exactly. Heaven and hell have special characteristics since they’re not on the same plane as Earth. The aging process is halted completely over there. You may still breathe, and your blood may still flow, but your lungs and heart won’t decay or age whatsoever. Reed could be there for years through his perception of hell's nonexistent time, but only a month for us. Either way, he will come out at the exact same age as when he was taken in.”
She turned her back to me and ran both her hands through her long locks. When she spun back around to face me, her eyes were bloodshot and sparkly, like a red moon’s reflection in a lake.
“We have to get him out.”
“We will.”
Moving closer, she fixed her eyes on me again and pulled at the cords that bound my soul and body together. “You don’t understand, Adriel.” She was just a foot away now, her head barely reaching my shoulders. “I’m Lucifer’s daughter.”
My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to say, “You can’t be his daughter. You’re just a human,” but the words wouldn’t come out. Her spellbinding eyes transfixed mine, weakening any control I had over my new human body.
“He wants me,” she said, “because I’m capable of creating an army for him. He wants me to get people to write his initial on their bodies using their blood; he said that’s how I recruit them, how I sell their souls to him.”
Those eyes. Those big almond-shaped brown eyes. Lucifer had them too. Still, people looked like other people all the time. And fallen angels were not exempt from lookalikes in the human world.
She pulled away. “Come on. I want to get out of here.” Her Swiss Army knife lay on the ground. She reached for it, tucked it in her back pocket, and got into her car.
I followed her and got into the passenger seat. The right words still hadn’t popped into my mind, so I sat there regarding her, wondering what kind of life she had lived with the blood of my enemy coursing through her.
Ten minutes into the drive, I started wondering where we were headed. Rosy Cheeks drove fast, moving between lanes and cutting off slower cars like she had no time to spare.
“My name’s Addy,” she said when we pulled up to a red light. She glanced at me, but this time, she didn’t hold me hostage under whatever power she had discovered in hell. “Short for Adelaide.”
I continued to examine her face, her obvious likeness to Lucifer. When I didn’t say anything, she took it as her cue to talk more.
“I didn’t know who my father was until tonight.”
Her grip on the wheel tightened. She took off, hurrying down the street and dodging a light just as it changed to red, her car roaring. “And now I have the devil’s blood in me, my brother is in hell, and I’m supposed to gather soldiers for the devil’s army. Oh, and if I don’t, Reed dies.”
“I won’t let him get hurt.” The words rushed out of my mouth on instinct. I had always protected my humans—or at least, I had tried to do what I thought was right—and even though I wasn’t an angel anymore, I felt the same impulse with her.
“You’re a fallen angel too, aren’t you?” Addy was stating the fact more than looking for an answer. “God burned your wings.”
My wings. They were so strong. Now they were gone forever. Yet, I was still better off than other fallen angels. I looked at the pale, blue-purple veins in my hands. They were new. No angel—winged or fallen—had ever had blue veins. Black maybe, for the demons, but never blue. “I’m fallen, but I don’t think I’m like the rest of the demons.”
“So, what are you?”
Somehow, I had made it to Earth and descended into a human body, whereas my long-fallen brothers had gone straight to the furnace of hell to rule and torture all the strayed humans. “I guess I’m human now.”
She was silent after that for a while. She rested her head back against the headrest and said, “I don’t feel so good.”
I had been watching her for a while, but it wasn’t until then that I realized her sweaty face had paled. Every couple of seconds, when the streetlights flashed in her face, it was apparent that the rosiness in her cheeks had faded away.
I leaned toward her in panic and asked, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
She said no and kept on driving for a minute, though she did slow the vehicle down. When we neared a gas station, she put her signal light on and pulled into the parking lot.
“I’m just nauseous.” She stopped the engine and wiped moisture from her forehead with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I’m going inside to wash my face and get some water. Come with me?”
I followed behind her. She staggered right and left, looking like she would topple over any second. When I tried to steady her, she shrugged one shoulder and moved away.
“I’m fine.” She pushed the gas station’s shop door open and skidded in, barely lifting her feet off the ground. “Give me a minute. I won’t be long.”
In the back of the store was a sign that read “Restrooms” in big bold letters. Addy moved in that direction, disappearing behind the women’s door.
A few minutes went by and she still hadn’t come out, so I knocked on the door. “Are you okay in there?”
She came out without any sweat on her face, and some color had returned to her cheeks.
“I’m better,” she said.
I kept an eye on her as she made her way to one of the refrigerators to grab a drink. She chose two iced honey lemon teas and walked to the register.
In line, she looked at me with heavy eyes. “You know what I don’t understand?” she said, her voice the only sound in the store. “Why would Lucifer do this now?”
The place was mostly empty, except for the person before us in line and the owner of the store. Still, I couldn’t help but whisper back, “What do you mean?”
Addy imitated my soft tone when she saw me glance at the two men within earshot. “I mean, he had all the time in the world—literally since the beginning of time—to procreate and use his child for whatever he is trying to do. Like, he wants war, right? Why didn’t he just get his army a long time ago? And don’t get me started on the war. What war is he even planning?”
We moved up to first in line, and she placed her drinks on the counter.
“That will be four thirty-five,” the owner said.
She paid him, and we walked out.
“Here.” She handed me one of the bottles. “You didn’t drink anything since we left the hospital. You’re going to need that.”
Condensation ran down the bottle, feeling cool against my hand. Within the container, the brown liquid sloshed around like mini ocean waves. Suddenly, my throat felt dry. An image flashed in my head of my burning wings. The heat—my throat felt that heat, and the sensation of the heat dying out, leaving everything ashen.
Addy studied me in between sips. “Drink some. You’ll feel better.”
I opened the bottle and brought the rim to my lips. I looked at her for approval. When she nodded, I let the tea ever so slowly pour into my mouth. The word “heavenly” popped into my mind. Never had I known the power the coolness of a drink had to soothe and wash ashy sensations away; but then again, I had never had any ashy sensations until this night.
Sighing, I licked the lingering taste of tea from my lips. Since I’d never tasted anything before, I didn’t know how to identify each flavor.
“Tastes good, right?” She grabbed her keys from her pocket and fumbled with them until she found the right one. “The honey and lemon are good for getting the sugar level up.”
So, this is what sweetness tastes like. I took another gulp before we got back into her car.
Back on the road, she returned to her talkative behavior. “You still haven’t answered my questions.”
Once more, she was racing through the streets like a wildcat charging after its prey. I just couldn’t figure out what her prey was.
“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked.
Down the horizon, a hint of blue highlighted the early hours of the morning. Soon, the sun would follow, flashing its bright rays across the world for my new human eyes to witness.
Addy set her sleep-deprived eyes on me. “We’re going to my apartment. Unless . . .” She looked back at the road with creases between her eyebrows. “You know, unless there’s somewhere else you want me to drop you off?”
I didn’t even have to think hard to realize that I had nowhere to go. Thus, I told her, no, I would go with her. “Besides, I promised I’d help your brother, and I’m not breaking that promise.”
The frown dissipated from her face. “Good. You can start helping him by answering my questions about my father.”
Addy drove down the highway alongside other cars without shifting through lanes like she had earlier. Her heavy eyes were glued to the road, making me wonder if she was listening to anything that came out of my mouth.
“You probably already know that Lucifer wasn’t always bad.” I looked at her as I spoke, waiting for any reaction her face might unveil. “He was actually God’s favorite angel, his right hand.”
Above us, the dark heavens transformed into a light blue with a smidge of yellow along the skyline, but instead of watching the transformation, I took the whole picture in. I saw the colors of the waking sun glow against my skin, warming me as if I had my wings wrapped around me. Beside me, Addy’s dark-brown eyes glimmered in the soft light. The rays even revealed reddish strands in her hair.
“He was God’s most loved son.” I tipped my head to see her face better, hoping to read her thoughts through body language, but she had a dead expression on. “And hypothetically, you could say he was like a spoiled first child.”
We drove by a few stores before a green sign that read “376 West Pittsburgh” emerged on the right, and Addy sped up, hurrying to take the exit.
“But Lucifer didn’t like that God made all the decisions. He wanted to have free will, and things spiraled from there.”
Addy glanced at me. “I know this. A quick google search will tell you all that.” She took the far-left lane and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. Her car’s engine rumbled, slowing down for a split second before taking off faster than before. “Tell me something I don’t know. Why is he doing this now?”
She was right, of course. Most humans knew the basic facts; Lucifer had made sure of that. He wanted to have more power, more control over heavenly decisions, and God refused. An angel was an angel, and God was God. But Lucifer couldn’t stand that.
Still, thi
s young woman that sat beside me wasn’t just an ordinary human who happened to know the basics. Addy was Lucifer’s daughter. She had been living a normal life, as far as I could tell, up until last night. How could I tell her that she was a pawn? That her whole existence was orchestrated?
“You might not like what I have to say.”
“I don’t care. I need to know everything if I’m going to have any control over the situation.”
Another exit emerged, taking us to Grant Street. Addy slowed down at this point. We drove by old churches and tall buildings with raised flags at their entrances. The streets were small, and everything else was huge.
My eyes drifted upward, searching for the point where the buildings touched that bright, warm sun. “Wow.”
“What?” Addy watched me in between glances at the road.
“Nothing.” I continued looking around while I told her what I knew. “Lucifer didn’t just start this war now. We’ve been—” A knot tightened in my throat, and I pushed back tears. I couldn’t call myself an angel anymore. “The angels have been fighting Lucifer since his fall. That’s how long he’s been planning a war. But he has always failed.”
Addy stopped at a red light and regarded me. “And that’s why he needs me?”
“Yes.”
“And he made me for that reason?”
“Yes.”
Her chest swelled and deflated several times in the span of five seconds. She turned to the road and stared at the light until it flashed green, and she took off, her face losing all expression again.
“You’re probably not the only child he has,” I said. “Chances are, he made many in the hope they’ll do his bidding here on Earth.”
She sneered. “And what good would that do? He wants to fight God, right? What is he going to gain from people? People are weak.”
I thought of her, how she had punched me in the face a couple of hours ago. For a small person, she was not weak. I smiled. “Don’t underestimate humans. They can surprise you. And to answer your question, Lucifer doesn’t want a few people. If I know him at all, I can tell you that he’s planning on making a huge army whose souls are his. And with that, he can take down God’s angels.”
