by Nour Zikra
I unlocked my phone to send her a quick text to Nate’s cell phone when I noticed two missed calls from my boss, Melissa.
“Oh, crap.”
“What? Is everything okay? Is it Reed?”
“No, it’s my boss. I’ve been absent from work the past few days and I haven’t sent in any of the work I was supposed to do.”
Dreading the next few minutes, I called Melissa back.
She picked up on the third ring and pretended she had no idea who was calling, even though I was pretty sure she saw my name on her phone screen. “Saronata Signature Designs. Melissa speaking.”
“Hi, Melissa. This is Adelaide Shaw.”
She was silent for a while. I could hear her tapping her neatly filed fingernails against the mahogany desk in her office. I imagined her stirring sugar into her coffee with her other hand and staring intently at the interior design projects from the interns while having me on speaker.
“Adelaide,” she finally said. “I hope for your benefit you’ve been ill this past week.”
“I apologize for not calling. I’ve had a family emergency. I’m currently in Latrobe.”
“When will I receive your designs? The deadline is this Friday.”
I mentally cussed. “I’ll have them in by then. I promise.”
“You better, or you might not have a job here anymore.”
After that, she hung up, and I was left making calculations of how long it would take me to finish everything. With everything going on, I just did not have the time to be creative and come up with the amazing new interior design ideas for our clients’ homes that I’d dreamed of. But since I had no choice, I would have to make the time and send something in, even if it wasn’t my best work.
“This week is becoming the most overwhelming and bizarre week of my life,” I told Adriel.
He took my hand and started out the door. “At least we met each other.”
As we drove out, we decided to eat at Creed’s Diner, the place we had our first discussion. So much had changed; I’d gone from not trusting Adriel at all to trusting him with my life.
“I thought you were some crazy guy who’d escaped jail or something when you ran in front of my car looking the way you did.” I flashed him a smile and looked back at the road.
He placed his hand on my knee. “You also tried to kill me that night.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t successful.”
“Trust me, me too.”
“How old are you, anyway? You don’t look over twenty-five.”
People drove to work like on any typical day, unfazed by the fact that a shooting occurred at Saint Vincent College yesterday. Then again, we weren’t acting any different. We passed by a park. For a split second, I looked to my left out the window, concentrating on the children swinging from the monkey bars. Did they know people had died in their city less than twenty-four hours ago? No one seemed frightened. It was odd, but I brushed it off.
“As an angel, I’m older than this universe,” Adriel said. “As a human, I don’t really have a physical age.”
“Then can I pick an age and birthday for you? A day you can celebrate for years to come?”
He squeezed my knee. “Go ahead.”
I didn’t need to think about it; the day he landed on Earth made the most sense, so I told him. “That’s your birthday. And . . . let’s say you turned twenty-three. You look around that age.”
“Deal.”
Before reaching Creed’s, I wanted to fill Lucy’s tank. I’d driven from Pittsburgh to Latrobe a lot in the past few days, and my car was running dangerously low. At the nearest gas station, I pulled the car up to a pump.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to pay with cash inside.”
Adriel waited in the car. As I walked, the weight of the Swiss Army knife in the pocket of my pants gave me strength. When more demons, human-turned or hell-based, showed up, I would be ready. Marching inside the store with thirty dollars in my hand, I kept my head high and stayed aware of my surroundings.
I saw four people throughout the store, including the old woman behind the register who chewed gum with her mouth open, making loud popping noises. She smiled when I headed her way with the unmistakable cash in my hand.
Before I reached her, my phone vibrated against my leg. I pulled it from my pocket—the one without the knife—and saw Nate’s number.
“Hello?”
“Addy!” Lizzy cried out. “Where are you?”
“In Latrobe still. What’s wrong?”
“Are you not seeing the news? It’s not safe out there!”
“Out there where, Liz?”
She was panting on the other end of the line. In the background, I heard Nate screaming at her to get away from the window.
“Lizzy? Lizzy, please, what’s going on?”
My heart pounded in my chest when she didn’t respond right away. I felt certain everyone standing in the store could hear it.
“We’re under attack! It’s all over the news. Addy, it’s not just here. It’s the entire country.”
I jumped back to look outside through the glass doors. Adriel sat in my Oldsmobile, watching me across the way. “Lizzy, are you sure? I was literally just driving. It’s completely quiet out here.”
“It’s not, Addy. Please find a shelter!”
Before I could ask her what kind of shelter she was talking about, I felt the earth shake. My eyes shot to Adriel, but I couldn’t see him. My car’s passenger door was wide open, and Adriel was gone. People were filling gas, and he wasn’t among them either.
My heart thumped in my ears, and I stepped forward. Outside, the world became bright red. My car came alive, exploding like someone had stuffed it with billions of fireworks. Everyone inside the store yelled, but their voices seemed distant.
Lungs full of screams, I ran to the door and smacked both hands against the glass, dropping my phone and the money somewhere. Fire flared around my car, and the gas pump next to it blasted. One by one, the other pumps blew up until the entire parking lot was aflame.
The glass door and windows where I stood shattered from the blasts. I fell back on the floor, my head missing the ground by an inch. Tiny glass shards cut through my flesh. Crying, I held up my bloody hands and extracted three small glass pieces from my skin.
“Adriel!” I was on my feet in seconds, searching for Adriel through the smoke and fire outside.
I stepped into the chaos that used to be the gas station. Flames surged around me. I somehow dodged them. The scene reminded me of my vision of hell when the gate had exploded and fire raged into my room.
“Adriel?”
Several other cars were on fire. Heavy, burning smoke roiled against the auto glass, trying to escape. There was no sign of the drivers who had been filling gas just a minute ago. My heart sank, knowing they were almost surely dead.
Was Adriel dead, too? I didn’t want to think it.
Sweat trickled down my neck. I hurried around the burning station to get a better view of the place. Again, no sign of Adriel. With a tightness in my chest, it finally hit me that he might be gone, that he might have burned in the explosion. The idea of him on fire tore me apart. Just a few minutes before, we’d been in bed together, happy, and now he was dead. He had burned alive, just like that. One second staring at me, the next gone from existence.
I ran back inside the store through the broken glass door. Tears fogged my vision, but I couldn’t move my trembling hand to my face to wipe them away. Pain stabbed my throat as my lungs filled with smoke. I wanted to sink to the floor, crash among the broken glass, and cough and wail and die. My chest felt hollow, like the fire had burned a pit in its center.
But I didn’t sink to the floor. Adriel’s earlier words about me being courageous rang in my ears and kept me up. With shaky hands, I searched for my phone through the mess on the ground. When I found it, I put the screen to my ear.
“
Lizzy?” My voice did not sound like it belonged to me. “Lizzy, you still there?” My tone was rigid, hopeless.
“Oh, thank God!” she chirped. “I thought you got hurt!”
“Liz, I can’t find Adriel.” A cry ripped from my throat. I put my hand to my mouth and let it happen.
“You have to find shelter,” she repeated, ignoring my words. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
I shook my head like she could see me. “I can’t find him!”
I hung up on her without thinking too much about it and glared at the people on the floor in the back of the store. Like me, they’d survived. The old lady who had been chewing gum was now covered in a layer of dust. I wondered if I looked like her too. Her eyes were wide with fear. Unlike me, she kept low in the corner of her counter, watching everyone without moving.
Leaving the old lady and the others, I walked back outside into the hell storm. How could this happen? And why? I was happy for a good couple of hours, then the world just had to take that away from me, like it always did. This time, though, it was just being cruel.
In the midst of everything, I thought of Reed. Adriel might have been gone, but I still had my brother. I sent him a frantic text with fumbling fingers. Half of what I wrote came out misspelled and incoherent. I just wanted to know he was safe. A few heartbeats later, Reed responded that Madadel was guarding him.
With one less thing to worry about, my thoughts went back to Adriel. My mind raced back and forth between two conflicting thoughts. One, that there was no sign of Adriel and the world outside seemed to have been destroyed, meaning he was dead. Two, that he might have somehow escaped. My car door was wide open before it was destroyed. Could he have run? Where was he now? The gas station burned and burned, and I didn’t know what to believe.
I hunched over in the middle of the disaster, my hands on my knees, and panted while I cried. Smoke filled my lungs, sending me into a coughing fit. We shouldn’t have left the motel. We shouldn’t have, we shouldn’t have, we shouldn’t have!
The fire crackled, not in the nice, bonfire kind of way, but in a threatening, aggressive way that sent me shrinking back.
And I slammed into something . . . or someone. Arms snaked around me, holding me still. I smiled, thinking it was Adriel.
“Having a good day, are we?” Lucifer spun me around in his arms and beamed, showcasing his rotten teeth. He had a deranged look in his eyes. “Hello, daughter of mine.”
Like someone had poured poison down my throat, the smile washed from my face and the tears vanished, their only remains on my cheeks. Without a second thought, I spit in Lucifer’s face. My saliva dribbled down his nose and cheek. He didn’t even flinch.
“You have not changed, Adelaide. Just as well. That is how I made you.”
“You did not make me!” Putting more force into my upper body, I tried pushing myself free of his embrace. I failed.
“On the contrary, dear. Nonetheless, if the idea that I am not your creator helps you sleep better at night, then perhaps we could arrange something to keep you in restless sleep.”
“Fuck you!”
“With pleasure.” He smacked his lips against mine. There was no love in the act. He was just displaying how easily he could overpower me.
With bile rising to my throat, I froze. Every part of me was immobilized with disgust. I couldn’t move my face, arms, or legs. My stomach roiled at the dirty, bitter taste of his mouth.
When he pulled his face away, he grinned from ear to ear. “Sweet like your mother.”
“What is wrong with you? You’re sick!”
“I am the devil, child. I do not play by the rules.”
“You killed all those people. You killed Adriel!”
He pursed his lips. “No, you killed all those people.”
“How? I was minding my own business, filling gas. I’m not to blame for this.”
I hated being chest to chest with him. Every tear that fell from my face dropped onto his dark suit of armor.
“My dear.” He grabbed me by the back of my head and restrained my face. “The minute you made a few people worship me, you played a role in all of this.” When I kept glowering at him, his face softened—despite his scary eyes—and his tone became sweeter, the words sliding off his tongue like syrup. “How do you feel about becoming the president of this country? You know I could make that happen. You just have to say the word.”
His eyes searched mine, and when he saw my resolve, his face hardened again.
He shoved me away. For a moment, I felt both relief and confusion. He had let me go, but why? What was his motive? After I rubbed my sore arms, I reached for the Swiss Army knife in my pocket. Even though I couldn’t kill him, I didn’t want to go down without a fight.
From my right, something moved.
“Grab her!” Lucifer shouted.
Two fallen angels with scarred backs came from either side of me and clasped my arms while my hand was still in my pocket. I recognized Saleos, Lucifer’s right hand. Saleos and the other demon shoved my hands behind my back and compelled me forward, pushing me toward the store.
I glowered at Lucifer as I passed by him. “What do you want from me?”
He didn’t say anything until we were in the store. The old chewing-gum lady and the other people on the ground rose to their feet and watched me. They all had creepy grins on their faces.
I didn’t understand right away. “What . . .” It hit me a second later when I noticed their blank, pitch-black eyes. I wrestled against the demons holding me and shifted my body so I faced Lucifer. “You turned them?”
He lifted his arms into the air. “This is a war, Adelaide.”
“You never answered me; what do you want from me? If this is a war, why can’t you just leave me out of it?”
“Because.” He moved closer, towering a foot over me. “You are still my blood. I want you on my side.”
“I won’t do that.”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Perhaps I can change your mind.”
I looked him in his two empty holes and did not blink. “Only in your twisted dreams.”
“Very well.” He turned to the humans and gestured with his head. “You can kill him now.”
A strong, broad-shouldered, cleft-chinned man in his thirties marched to the back and opened a door to a storage closet. He went inside. A second later, he came back hauling something over his shoulder. When he came closer, I saw what he was carrying.
He’d draped Adriel’s limp body over his shoulder like a big sack of flour. I blinked in disbelief. Adriel—a muscular, lean, and tall man—now looked lifeless. Did they drug him?
“No, stop!” I screamed.
“Have you changed your mind?” Lucifer said. “Perhaps all you have desired this entire time is love. Is that what you want? Do you want the affection of a man? I can make all the men of this world fall at your knees in worship. Choose me, and I will give you that. What will it be, child?”
“Cut the bullshit!”
“Do you want a man to satisfy you? Name anyone, and he will become your sex slave. How about one of the Hemsworth brothers? Or are you more into dark-featured men, like dear old dad? If that is the case, I can certainly bring you one of the Francos or . . . Oh, I know! Women drool over that Somer—what was his name? Somerhot? Somerhold? You get the idea!”
I refused to respond.
The man carrying Adriel dumped his unconscious body on the ground and stepped back, waiting for more instructions.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Adriel. He had no obvious scratches on him, but he’d clearly been knocked out, most likely drugged. Turning my anger on Lucifer, I said, “What are you going to do with him, and what the fuck do you want? Stop playing mind games!”
“Shh.” He placed his hand on the side of my face. His skin felt hot to the touch, even more so than before. “Child, I told you already. I want you on my side.”
�
�Or you’ll kill Adriel?”
“Obviously.”
“But what’s the point? You’ve accomplished what you wanted.” I pictured the scene behind me. My car was gone, innocent people were dead, and the streets looked like hell. And the angels? They didn’t seem to be around. He’d truly achieved his goal. “You destroyed everything. You don’t need me anymore.”
“That may be the case, but you are still my blood. I would like to keep you on my side.”
I jerked my head from his touch, making him drop his hand. “I won’t do it. I’ll kill myself first.”
“No, you will not.” He waved his hand at Saleos and pointed to the back corner of the store. “Lock her up.”
“Wait, what?” Nothing made sense to me. “I thought you wanted me on your side. Why are you locking me up?”
Saleos and the other demon pushed me along. I wished I were stronger and could fight back, but there were two of them, and I was small. The Swiss Army knife felt heavy in my pocket. If given a single second at freedom, I would take advantage of the moment and pull the weapon out.
In the back, they shoved me inside a small empty office. I stumbled forward and crashed into a wooden desk. When I spun around, it was too late. Saleos slammed the glass door shut and locked it with a key from the outside.
I took a step toward the door and studied the handle. When I saw it had an internal lock, I smiled up at Saleos, feeling proud that I’d outsmarted him. If I twisted the lock, I would be free.
Saleos was two steps ahead of me. He held the door in place as the other demon brought a chair and wedged it underneath the handle. Now, even if I unlocked the door, I could not escape. The handle would not budge.
“Damn it!” I slammed my palm against the glass.
Lucifer strutted over and rested his hand on Saleos’s shoulder. His thick, arched eyebrows rose with anticipation. I wanted to think of him as the devil, but his prominent, familiar features reminded me that he was my father. We shared a lot of genes. No matter how hard I tried to forget that, facing him was a slap of reality.
“If you try to kill yourself,” Lucifer said, “Adriel will certainly die. If you do not stand by my side, he will also certainly die. What shall your choice be, Daughter?”
