Divinity Falling

by Nour Zikra

It caught up to me and grabbed my arm, pulling me back. “I said stop!”

  I turned and stared into its burning eyes. While the other demons had a blank, empty stare that seemed to suck the life out of everything nearby, this demon’s eyes had the opposite effect. They shook a person from the core. If I didn’t know about angels and demons, I would have fallen to my knees and wept after staring into the eyes of my double.

  “You should stay here.” It let go of my hand and looked down at the asphalt, the flames in its eyes fading. “I mean, stay with me.”

  A lightning bolt illuminated the skyline, followed by the shuddering sound of thunder. The clouds surged, one by one, as if in a race. I had a feeling the lightning would strike me in a few minutes if I stayed around.

  Wanting to get away from the inevitable storm, I kept on walking. “This isn’t a real place, is it?”

  My double’s feet thumped against the ground with every big step it took to catch up with me. “No. This is only your mind. The more anxious you are, the more that happens.” It hurried to my side and pointed toward another lightning bolt. This time, the bolt was closer than the first one.

  “You think I’m anxious?”

  “I know you are.”

  “Well, that’s probably because I don’t have the answers I need. Like why I’m here now.”

  The tips of its fingers touched my arm, but a second later, it pulled away, tucking its hands underneath its red and raw armpits. “Sorry.”

  “What is it?”

  Though my double kept up with me, its gaze stayed on the ground. “It’s dangerous for you to stay anxious while here.”

  “You mean the lightning could hit me?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. It can physically end your life.”

  I paused to look back at the moving storm. “But I thought this was my mind. How can my mind kill me?”

  “Dark emotions can hurt the mind, and a weak, overwhelmed mind can hurt the body.”

  “But this isn’t a real place. It’s all in my head.”

  “People who dream they are falling from a height sometimes die when they hit the ground in the dream. Their heart stops, tricked by the dream into thinking the fall was real.”

  “Are you saying my mind could trick my body into dying?”

  Another lightning bolt struck in the distance behind us, bringing an explosion of thunder with it. I shrieked and covered my ears with my hands. When I looked to my left, my double was doing the same. Heart thudding, I started to run.

  “Fear can kill,” my double yelled out while it ran after me. “You need to calm down. That’s the only way it’ll stop. Otherwise, we’re both dead, and I don’t want to die.”

  I glanced at my double. The fire in its eyes was fading; what had been the size of an apricot was now the size of a peanut. Did that mean it was scared?

  I stopped running and tried to catch my breath.

  My double came to a halt a few feet later. “Why did you stop?”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I said, “If I can’t get the answers I need, then I might as well die. I don’t really give a shit anymore.”

  Of course, that wasn’t true. I did give a shit. In fact, I gave many shits. I was probably the last person on Earth who wanted to die. After coming close to death yesterday, I wanted nothing more than to have more time with the people I loved. Reed needed me, but I needed him more. And Lizzy . . . she was battling demons right now. How could I leave her with a problem I’d created?

  But a lie seemed necessary in that moment. If my double feared death as much as I feared death, that meant it would do anything to survive, including telling me what it was hesitant to let me know.

  I let out a scream. My double froze, its mouth hanging open. Knife still in hand, I began cutting myself. At first, I only lacerated the first layer of skin on my arm. When that caused the thunder to bellow nearer and the ground to tremor, I knew it was working. I started making deeper cuts that filled my eyes with tears.

  “What are you doing?” my double shouted, hands on its bald, skinless head. “You’re going to kill us!”

  “It’s better than living without answers.”

  I tore through my forearm, right over the artery that Adriel had cut into earlier.

  A dozen or so yards away, lightning flashed. Its brightness blinded me for a few seconds. I looked away until I finally regained my sight.

  My double grabbed my shoulders and pulled me from my spot. “Please stop!”

  “Why should I? I don’t know anything. Adriel’s gone, and we’re all going to die anyway. There’s no reason for me to live.”

  Blood poured from my arms like a fountain onto the ground, my sneakers, and my double’s bare, deformed feet.

  Another lightning bolt hit the ground, this time a few feet away. If I’d extended my arm, I would have felt its lethal touch.

  “Please,” my double whimpered. “I don’t want to die!”

  “Then why did you bring me here, and what are you keeping from me?”

  The muscle tissue on my double’s forehead creased, but it kept its mouth shut. It pulled me harder, but I planted my feet on the ground, moving my body backward every time it tried to drag me forward.

  Staring my double in the eyes, I placed the knife on my other wrist and dug its tip into my skin.

  A lightning bolt clashed against the ground close enough that my double and I fell back from its intensity. My head hit the ground and a ringing sound echoed in my ears. I sat up, putting my hands on either side of my head.

  It was now or never, I realized. I would either get answers or I would die a terrible death. I closed my eyes.

  “Stop! Stop!” my double screamed. “You’re the weapon!”

  Everything stilled for a moment. The thunder buzzed in the distance, sounding even lower with the ringing in my ears.

  I opened my eyes and stared at my double. “What?”

  “You weren’t ready to know! That’s what he said.” It sat hunched over, its hands covering its eyes. “Father didn’t want you to know yet.”

  “I’m the weapon?”

  “If we die, Father would be weak.”

  “Is that why my body kept healing these past two days? Because he made me into a weapon?”

  My double lifted its head and looked at me. It had tears in its eyes . . . real eyes. The fire had died out. In its place, eyeballs with brown irises stared back at me. “You’ve been healing all your life, you just didn’t know it.”

  “But I’ve injured myself before. I’ve always taken time to heal, just like everybody else.”

  “Minor injuries don’t count.”

  I planted my palms against the ground and pushed myself into a standing position. Even though my arms kept bleeding, the thunder stilled and my heartbeat slowed down to its normal pace.

  “You said I could die here. Were you lying?”

  “No, you can die here.” My double sat up but remained on the ground. “If your mind thinks you’re dead, you die. There will be nothing to fix you anymore.”

  “But what makes me the weapon, and why can’t I be killed in the real world?”

  “Your connection to me makes you a weapon. Father made sure to tie us together until death do us part. Meaning you stay alive if no one can get to me. With you alive, he stays invincible because I’m protected.”

  “So, essentially, you’re his weapon—his shield, really—and he hid you inside me.”

  I couldn’t believe it. This whole time I had the power to end Lucifer’s life and didn’t know it.

  More tears welled in my double’s eyes as it looked up at me. “Don’t go out there. I don’t want to be alone.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  My double looked at me with glazed, wet eyes.

  “You’ve allowed the entire world to be terrorized, and I was your tool! You’re so pathetic! You don’t want to be al
one? Really? You’ve literally helped a biblical apocalypse come to fruition, and you’re worried about being lonely? How dare you make me the Antichrist!”

  My body shook as a powerful realization dawned on me. For a second, I froze, a pit in my chest.

  When the last lightning bolt struck, the knife had fallen out of my hand. I gathered myself now and searched around, discovering it a few yards away.

  Looking down at my empty hands, I let out a small cry. I wasn’t ready to do what I was about to do, but I was also not ready to let my friends get hurt because of me.

  “I’m not staying,” I told my double. With a trembling hand, I grabbed the knife and pointed it at my heart. “But neither are you.”

  Wild flames flashed in my double’s eyes. “No!”

  One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths. I dug the knife into my chest and fell, blood gushing everywhere. I knew this was my end, and even though I didn’t want it to be, it needed to happen. My death severed my tie to Lucifer. I hoped that meant someone would kill him soon.

  My double rushed over, pulled the knife out, and pushed its hand over the wound. “What have you done?”

  “What needed . . . to be done.”

  I felt—or imagined—blood filling my lungs, rising to my throat. I was drowning in a sea of red. There was a strange metallic taste in my mouth. A deep ache branched out from the center of my body while the world twirled around me. Blinking several times, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. My entire body began to shake violently.

  The gray sky flashed white, smelling of static electricity. I shut my eyes as a spark of lightning crashed down.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ADRIEL

  I woke up in total darkness. I had nothing to feel, nothing to hold on to, except the mental image of Addy. When I tried to move my body, I found nothing there. Hollowness encapsulated me.

  With nothing to see, taste, touch, or hear, I didn’t know what to do. My thoughts raced. Was this place—this void—purgatory? Having already known hell, I knew this wasn’t it. Had God put me away in my own personal prison? Or perhaps it was just a dream, one I was having a hard time waking from.

  I wished I could grab onto something just to have some sort of clue, anything really, about where I was. When that didn’t happen, I hoped for an end to both my life and my burning thoughts.

  A flicker of light danced in the distance.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart whacked against my chest, the first sign of life within me.

  The light kept moving. The closer it got, the more I could tell it was small. I could also see a pair of wings maneuvering within the light.

  “Son,” a powerful voice spoke all around me. “This is not the end of your battle.”

  I recognized the voice immediately, but I couldn’t quite believe my ears.

  “You have strayed, but you are not lost.”

  The dot of light reached me, though it wasn’t light at all. It was a firefly. My old, winged friend tapped my nose with its leg, greeting me.

  “You must wake up, Adriel,” God said.

  The firefly glimmered one last time. When its light died down, my eyes fluttered open, and I found myself back in the real world. I was slumped against a wall without a clue as to how I got there. I had a vague memory of holding Addy down and slicing deep cuts into her skin, and the feeling of her thrashing against me lingered. Did I bring her here to kill her? My stomach churned.

  Voices yelled nearby, yet I didn’t see anyone around; then I looked a few yards away. Addy lay flat on the ground with her arm twisted underneath her in an odd position. Her body shook back and forth.

  I pushed myself up to my feet despite the pounding in my head. “Addy?” I stumbled and fell on my knees beside her, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

  She was having a seizure, it seemed. Her head shuddered with the rest of her. I went to turn her on her side, but she stopped moving. She was paler than Reed when we’d brought him back from hell.

  “Addy!”

  Her sweaty hair clung to her temples. I swept the strands back and waited for her to move or flinch or do something. I wished she would open her eyes, but she didn’t. Her chest wasn’t rising or falling. I put my fingers over her wrist and checked for a pulse. My heart thudded in my head, but hers was silent.

  “No . . .”

  I turned her over to face me. She was strangely stiff.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” I lifted her off the ground and cradled her, the first tears flooding out. Several of them landed on her cheeks. “Don’t die on me!”

  My fingers vibrated against her cheeks as I held her close. I felt the earth spin underneath me. My lips found her forehead, and I let out a sob. I did this to her. I killed her. My memory wasn’t the best, but I knew it had to be me. The last thing I remembered was her dark-brown eyes looking away from me as I went to plunge the knife into her chest.

  The knife now lay not far from her hand, bloodied by all the cuts I’d made.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Her arms had a few grazes. Somehow, the deeper wounds I’d made were gone, leaving me without proof of my horrible actions.

  “Addy.”

  I picked her up and stood.

  Michael would know what to do. He would bring her back. He had to!

  I tripped on my way out of the alley, nearly falling with Addy in my arms when I passed by the garbage disposal bins. My arms and legs trembled. I also couldn’t see straight, not when my eyes blurred with tears.

  The carnage outside the alley was still happening. The crackle of shattered ribs rang in the wind. Hundreds, if not more, of angels, demons, and people swarmed the street. Each side sought to kill the other, and both made sure blood was spilled. Decorating the battlefield were torn-off wings, fallen feathers, and bloodied, broken teeth.

  Of all the beings present, no one looked my way twice or noticed the dead woman in my arms. The daughter of Lucifer was gone, and no one cared.

  I passed by the corpse of a young human woman. Someone had killed her and tossed her body aside, away from the fighting crowd. The pale color of her skin almost matched Addy’s. I looked away.

  My heart sporadically skipping beats, I hurried around the crowd. The demons that saw me shrugged me off, probably thinking I was with them. The humans didn’t even look scared to see me; rather than killing me on sight, they left me alone to carry my girl.

  I couldn’t see Michael from where I stood on the edge of the battle. Who knew how far the archangel had gotten into the swarm?

  I looked at Addy. “It’s going to be okay! I promise!”

  A dozen yards down, I glimpsed Reed in battle. He had an angel’s sword in his hand. Aside from a few minor wounds, he seemed fine on his own. In fact, the rigidity in his jaw made him a little daunting.

  How am I going to tell him his sister is dead?

  An angel fought near Reed. I started toward him, hoping he would know where Michael was. But I didn’t get far. A man with short, light brown hair thrust a knife into another human’s chest in front of me. When he turned, both of us froze.

  It was Devin, Addy’s ex who’d shot her in the chest.

  “Your eyes.” He leaned his head closer and stared at me with his two black holes. “How are they changing color? Didn’t you turn?”

  My heart burst inside my chest. Unlike Devin, I was not feeling chatty. I set Addy down, keeping her on the sideline and away from the fighting, and glared at the human-turned-demon. It wasn’t his fault Addy made him like this, but I didn’t care. Not now.

  Snatching a sword from a dead angel, I moved in on him. “You hurt her!”

  Devin glanced at Addy. “But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Shut up!”

  I lunged at him with the sword. At the last second, he skipped back and came out unscratched. He raised his hand and aimed the blade my way.

  “How could you do that to her?” I spat at him. “H
ow could you shoot her?”

  “We both know she was alive this morning.” He raised an eyebrow and frowned. “You better hope Lucifer doesn’t find out.”

  At the mention of Lucifer, I dropped the sword and dashed forward, shoving Devin to the ground. I missed his knife by an inch and fell with him. Before I knew what I was doing, my hands became fists and I was landing punches across his face and chest. Every time he tried to push himself up, I hit him again and again until his teeth became bloodstained. He raised his arms over his head, but I did not let him surrender. I spat at him and rose.

  “This is for Addy!”

  My foot struck his skull like a soccer ball. He groaned once, his head lolling to the side. I kicked again, this time against the back of his head. His eyes submitted and he fell asleep.

  “You. Shot. Her!”

  I knelt beside him and grabbed his head, ready to bang it against the ground while he was unconscious.

  “No!” A weak, husky voice called out behind me. “Don’t kill him!”

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw her sitting up. She blinked slowly, as if she had just woken from a deep slumber. Seeing me take her in, the corners of her mouth quirked up.

  I drew in a deep breath.

  “Addy?” I let Devin go and rushed over. My fingers tangled with her hair, pulling her close. My thumbs stroked her cheeks, each painted with a glorious pink. “You died in front of me. I saw you die! How are you . . . how did you . . .”

  The intensity of my beating heart outmatched my earlier anger. She felt warm even in the chill of the afternoon. I pulled her in and crashed our lips together, needing to taste her. When I let go, I held onto her, not sure if my eyes deceived me.

  She leaned into one of my hands and closed her eyes. “I did die. I killed myself. But . . . but something brought me back.”

  “You killed yourself?”

  She opened her eyes and smiled again. “It’s a long story. Probably just as long as your story.” Her eyes danced between mine. “You’ll have to tell me how you became human again, but not right now.” Grabbing my hands, she stood. “We don’t have much time. We have to find Lucifer.”