Revelations: The Last War

by Lauretta Hignett

  One by one, my friends joined him, the voices croaky and hoarse, and barely more than whispers. Yet the chant increased in resonance and power. In the center of the clearing, a flaming circle opened up, a black void beyond it.

  Nimue, with the last of her energy, whirled her arms around in a circle and pushed. The seething black mass was sucked into the portal then was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The sudden silence was death-like. After a second, Alex and Nate stumbled towards me and crashed down at my feet. It seemed none of us had any energy left.

  Alex cradled me to his chest. “Are you okay? Is Lilith…?”

  “We’re fine,” I mumbled, my eyes shutting involuntarily. “Everyone else?”

  Alex looked around. “Everyone’s alive. The humans, fae, and shifters are unconscious, but all still breathing. Just…” Eyes cloudy, his gaze slid away.

  I glanced over towards the middle of the clearing, right where the darkest patch of souls had been just moments before. On the torn-up ground lay Magdalena.

  I almost didn’t recognize her. Her entire body was ripped to shreds. There wasn’t an unbroken bit of skin anywhere on her, and she lay in an awkward heap, all her bones clearly broken.

  I swallowed roughly. I couldn’t believe Mags had done this. She’d sacrificed herself. There was no way in Hell that I could have freed all those souls without her. I wouldn’t have even been able to see them. And my friends would never have survived the constant battering of the barrier if she hadn’t drawn the most violent souls into a circle of her own.

  Malach moved towards her body, broken and covered in blood, on the torn-up earth. Tears streamed down his face as he stumbled over and gathered her up into his arms.

  “She’s alive,” Alex whispered to me. “Just. I can hear her heartbeat.”

  “Will she be okay?” My own voice was hoarse.

  He didn’t answer.

  The ground shook again, just once, like it was shuddering to a halt. “What was that? Is there more?” I asked dumbly.

  “There is something coming,” Nate whispered, looking towards the entrance to the cave.

  I could barely keep my eyes open. The urge to sleep overwhelmed me, but I dragged my gaze around to follow Nate's line of sight.

  A man was crawling slowly out of the mouth of the cave. He shook as he crawled, moving painfully on his hands and knees. His head was bent down; his pitch-dark hair long and tangled. Stripped to the waist, his body was muscular, but had the gaunt, sharp look of a strongman left to starve in the jungle for a week. His creamy skin was covered in a million tiny cuts and grazes.

  The clearing was silent, as we all watched the man crawl slowly out of the cave. Finally, he tilted his head to look up at the crowd surrounding him.

  His face was heartbreakingly handsome. Unfathomable sadness shone out of his brilliant, ocean-blue eyes. I’d never seen such pain, such suffering before. I thought I’d had the weight of the world on my shoulders. In this man’s eyes, I saw that he’d been shouldering the same burden, but for millennia.

  “Morning Star,” Alex breathed out.

  Lucifer?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The crowd froze, all staring at the founder of Hell, broken and bleeding, struggling to his knees before us.

  He raised his head to the sky, and took a shuddering breath in. “It is done,” he whispered. His voice was like music, like the sweet final note at the end of a symphony.

  A brilliant flash of light blazed across the clearing, and I raised my arm to shield my face from the dazzling brightness. When my eyes adjusted, I realized that Metatron was now standing right next to Lucifer, wearing his shining gold armor. A solid beam of light ran straight through Met; a solid cylinder of white light stretching far up into the sky, and far, far below.

  Met opened his mouth, and spoke. But the tone that echoed from his throat came from somewhere else.

  The words weren’t his.

  MY SON.

  Lucifer tilted his head and looked up. Tears ran in streams down his face, cutting clean swathes through the blood and dirt on his gaunt cheeks. “Mother?”

  FORGIVE ME.

  The heartbreakingly beautiful face crumpled; Lucifer's broad shoulders started shaking. “Forgive... you?”

  Met walked forward, and the blindingly bright light fell directly onto Lucifer. The blood and dirt faded away. The gaunt cheeks filled out, his muscles bulged as his energy was restored. The ocean-blue eyes shone, his pitch-dark hair gleamed like obsidian. Lucifer closed his eyes, feeling the divine light wash through his body, soothing away all the pain.

  COME HOME.

  Lucifer opened his eyes. They sparkled like diamonds. He inclined his head slowly. “I am welcome home?”

  WELCOME? YOU ARE A HERO. THERE ARE NONE MORE WORTHY THAN YOU.

  I blinked stupidly, watching Met bend down and take Lucifer by the hand. “What is going on?”

  “It’s the Voice,” Nate whispered to me, overawed. “God is speaking through Met, and it looks like the demons were right all along.”

  “Well,” I huffed. “She could have probably given us a hint at some point in the last three thousand years.”

  “I think that’s the point,” Alex murmured in my ear. “Free will. We had to be free to make our own decisions, and listen to the divine guidance within all of us. Without ego,” he added, frowning slightly. “The Percuitat were full of it.”

  “You’re not wrong there.”

  Met grasped Lucifer firmly by the hand and drew him up to his feet. The Morning Star was so tall, so heartbreakingly handsome, my heart swelled in my chest just to look at him. “He’s been in Hell this whole time?”

  Alex nodded. “Looking after the souls. He was at the Gate just now, trying to hold them all back.”

  “Wow,” I breathed out, letting my head loll against Alex’s chest. I looked down again at Lilith, suckling at my breast. Her little mouth moved rhythmically, but she had slowed down. Her eyes were closing again. My eyes drifted shut, too, but I forced them open. I wasn’t going to miss this moment for anything.

  Met, holding Lucifer’s hand, pulled him in close and embraced him. The light around them swelled - Lucifer’s eyes shut in ecstasy.

  Suddenly, he opened his eyes and pulled back.

  “Wait,” he said. He looked over Met’s shoulder, back towards the crowd. “May I bring someone home to rest? One who has sacrificed?”

  Met nodded. He waited patiently while Lucifer slowly walked over to where Malach lay on the ground with Mags in his arms. Nimue knelt by him, cradling his broad shoulders while he wept over his daughter’s body.

  Lucifer stopped and knelt down next to Mags. “The hardest thing is to admit when you are wrong,” he murmured. “Harder still is to make it right. Magdalena entered Hell in great defiance, and with too much ego. She left it selflessly, drawing all pain and suffering towards her so that Earth might live.” He held out his arms in a gesture of offering. “May I take her?”

  Malach’s face was devastated. But he nodded, just once, and held Mag’s body out to the Morning Star.

  Lucifer cradled her gently, and turned back towards Met.

  “We are ready to come home.”

  Met smiled.

  The light grew brighter, and brighter still. I narrowed my eyes to slits and shaded them with my hands, but the light blurred out everything, and everyone, until I was forced to close them, and once they were closed, sleep took me and hauled me under.

  The last thing I heard was the celestial boom of the Voice, speaking through my friend Met.

  NICE WORK, STRAWBERRY.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I awoke in a panic, and with an icy jolt of fear. There was a pain gnawing at me; pinching at my breast. Everything else was numb, like my whole body was made of cotton wool - except for the sawing on my nipple.

  My eyes couldn’t focus. It took a few moments for reality to assert itself.

  Oh

  I looked down at th
e precious, sweet face of my newborn baby daughter. She was just feeding. The fear washed away immediately, replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling - despite the discomfort of my baby chewing her gummy mouth on my nipple.

  I took a big, deep breath, and sighed it all out contentedly.

  “You’re awake.” Alex was right next to me, cuddled in beside my body, radiating heat and comfort. “I was hoping you would rest for longer.”

  I grinned at him. “Hard to sleep when you’ve got a little mouth chewing on your boob,” I told him, grimacing slightly.

  I glanced down at Lilith's perfect little face. Her snub nose was pressed up against my chest as she tried to gulp in my whole nipple. “Who would have thought breastfeeding would hurt?” I said to the room out loud. “I thought it was supposed to be a natural, painless thing.”

  “You would have thought it,” Nate’s voice piped up from the corner. “If you had watched all those childbirth and parenting videos like you were supposed to.” He was reading in the armchair next to the bed. I took a peek at the cover of his book as he laid it down on his lap. The name of the cover was Raising Girls.

  He smiled at me. “We were hoping you would keep sleeping, but Lilith needed feeding.”

  I nodded. “Poor little baby. Spending the first few moments of her life working.”

  Alex grinned at me. “She didn’t do anything, woman. It was all you.”

  “Me? No, she’s the Omega. The last. She was born with special energy... or something…”

  “She is special. The most special,” Nate said, snuggling in on my other side. He stroked Lilith’s fat cheek. “But it wasn’t her that stopped the apocalypse. It was you.”

  I frowned. “No… it was her energy. She focused all the lost souls, let them see the deeper meaning to their life. Or something,” I muttered.

  Alex chuckled. “No, woman. That was you. All you.”

  I frowned deeper when Lillith jerked her chin, yanking my nipple in her mouth. “I don’t understand. All this happened because of her. And because of Mags, and everyone…” I trailed off and winced again.

  “Here,” Alex said, adjusting her slightly. “She might not have latched properly.” With a strangely practiced movement, he popped her mouth off my boob, angled her little head down a little, waited until her mouth opened greedily wide, and slapped her back on my nipple, getting all of it in this time.

  She took a big pull. It hurt less.

  “Huh,” I said. “That’s better. I just thought they had to get the nipple part in.”

  “Naw,” Alex said lazily. “The whole areola. The whole shebang.” He winked at me. “I’m glad I didn’t worry about tempting fate.

  “So am I,” I yawned.

  The door slammed open. “I hear someone is awake!” Met bounded into the room like a puppy, a huge grin on his face. He landed with a thud on the end of the bed.

  I laughed. “Easy, Met.”

  Nimue and Malach breezed in behind him, holding hands. Malach had a strange look on his face. It took me a good minute of staring at him before I figured out why I thought he looked weird. He was smiling. I’d only ever seen him scowl and grimace.

  Behind them, Dale and Zel filed in, their arms around each other and grinning from ear to ear. Dale dropped a kiss on my head. “Hello, doll!” He leaned down and kissed Lilith on the head, too, and he and Zel settled down at the foot of the bed.

  It was a good thing that Revelations had super-king sized beds. “Well,” I said, blushing slightly when I realized that my boobs were out. “The whole gang’s here, huh.”

  “Don’t be prudish, Eve,” Nimue drawled. But she was smiling broadly. “You’re feeding your child. There is nothing more sacred and beautiful than a nursing mother.”

  “Agreed,” Alex slung his arm around me, and I shook off my shyness.

  “So,” I looked around at all the grinning faces. “I’m guessing that it’s all over then? No more apocalypse?”

  “Nope,” Met shook his head. His whole face was stretched in a big, Cheshire-cat grin. “You did it, Strawberry. You fulfilled the prophecy.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, letting out a pish sound. “I never had faith in men. At no point in my teenage years did I even think about letting a human man get even close to me.” I shrugged. “So I know that doesn’t count as faith in men. I thought we were done for. There must have been a loophole in the prophecy or something. Or Lilith did something. Maybe the fact that she was born and we didn’t die immediately did something. Maybe there was a time limit on the apocalypse. And we ran out the clock.”

  Aware I was babbling, I took my eyes off my beautiful baby and glanced around the room. Every single pair of eyes was on me, sparkling in amusement.

  “Eve,” Dale said, shaking his head in amusement. “You had faith in mankind. That was what did it. Every step of the way.”

  “What?”

  “Mankind,” Met repeated. “That was the trick. Faith in humanity. I thought that was pretty self-explanatory.”

  “Well… what..?” I swallowed, confused. “What does that mean?”

  “You had a choice,” Met answered, grabbing my free hand and holding it gently. “You could have turned bitter and nasty after having such an awful childhood, and frightening adolescence, but you didn’t. You weren’t a victim, you were a survivor. And you rose above everything and became a hero. And because of that, you became our savior.”

  I squinted at him. “You’ve lost me. Did the actual Voice of God addle your brain when she was in there?”

  Met threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Well, it certainly blew out the cobwebs, let me tell you,” he chuckled. “But seriously, with the Voice came the knowledge that you’d chosen the right path. Every time the energy flowed towards you, looking for direction, you pushed it in the right way.”

  “I’m still not following.”

  Alex leaned close to my ear, his delicious scent tickling me. “Humanity has ascended to a higher vibration because of you,” he whispered.

  As sweet as his words were, I harrumphed. “That does not sound legit.”

  “You convinced the Pope to go balls-out with his charity project,” Nate said.

  “He was going to do that anyway…”

  “He was just testing the water. Because of you, he gave away billions of dollars of assets directly to the poor. The knock-on effect was incalculable. And you were directly instrumental in encouraging a key popular royal to give up her riches and serve her fellow humans in humility.”

  “I’m pretty sure Maz made that decision on her own.”

  Nate shook his head. “You made it real for her. You told her about your history in the foster home. It changed her. Then that energy flowed from her to lots and lots of others.”

  “You convinced the Quarters to start dismantling their empires,” Alex added.

  I held up my finger. “No, you guys did that. You scared the crap out of them.”

  “You asked us to do it. We would never have thought that it would be helpful,” Alex replied. “And never in our wildest dreams did we think that some of the Quarters would drink your Kool-Aid, and decide that being a meek and humble servant of the poor was far more rewarding than being in an all-powerful secret society that controls every aspect of the world.” He smiled at me softly. “The after-effects have been astonishing. It’s like you turned on a tap, and now the sink is overflowing with love and compassion.”

  “And that startup billionaire - what’s his name? The Texan?” Dale chipped in. “You chatted to him after he’d had one too many whiskeys, and next thing you know, you’ve talked him into becoming a barefoot philanthropist. And he’s so cool,” Dale grinned. “Like, razor-sharp cutting edge. He’s made charity and humility seem like the coolest thing ever. Now everyone wants to do it. Suddenly, being a billionaire is selfish and kinda gross.”

  Malach cleared his throat, and we all fixed our gazes on him. “And Mags,” Malach said softly, his voice low and deep. “You stopped me f
rom incapacitating her. I would have struck her down with my sword and carried her essence with me for millennia until she started to see some sense. Only then would I have let her regenerate. Instead, you convinced me to send her to Hell to atone for her sins. And look what she did.” His smile wavered, and the sorrow crept back into his amber eyes. “She sacrificed herself to save us. You had faith in her,” Malach's voice trembled. “You had hope that she would see the light, and she did.” A single tear ran down his cheek.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine what Mags went through in that circle, with those souls around her. But she lived?” I was sure Alex said that she was alive. “Where is she now?”

  Malach’s dark expression lightened, just a little. He smiled. “She lived,” his smile wobbled, “But she is gone forever. She would never recover from what she endured in the circle. Her body was ripped to pieces, and her soul was tortured beyond repair.”

  His bottom lip trembled. Nimue moved closer to him and wrapped a smooth arm around his massive shoulders. It was a moment before Malach went on. “She is no longer in pain. The Morning Star took her to the Source. She is now one with God.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So, she’s resting in Heaven?”

  “Forever,” Malach nodded.

  “See what I mean, Strawberry?” Met nudged me. “You had faith in mankind. In humanity. Every single step of the way, you steered the architects of society on the way to be better people. And the knock-on effect has changed the world.” Met's smile was serene, heavenly. “The collective consciousness has been raised. All humans are now operating on a higher vibration. The old world has ended, and because of you, a new one has begun.”

  “Oh,” I repeated, a blush spreading over my cheeks. “So that really is it? Is no one going to try and kill me anymore? I’m going to be left alone?”

  “We are,” Alex kissed me on my cheek, his eyes glistening with happiness. “Our family is safe.”