Redemption (Book 4, The Redemption Series)

by S. J. West

  “Here,” she says, “let me help take away all your pain.”

  I scream out in agony as I feel her hand punch through my chest and grab hold of my heart, squeezing.

  Helena begins to laugh, as if the act of torturing me tickles her. I feel as though she’s draining the life out of me, but I realize she’s doing something even worse. She’s taking the seals. I feel their power begin to flow out of me like water from a faucet. As she steals the seals from my body, I also feel my life force begin to slip away.

  “Oh sister,” Helena says, sounding as if she’s experiencing an immense amount of pleasure, “I knew you could do it. I had faith you could use our father’s love for you to persuade him to give you his seal. He never would have given it up so freely to me, but I can certainly take it from you easily enough. Our souls have never been so connected to one another. All that anger and hate you were feeling before wasn’t just from the seals, you know. It was from me too. Now, it’s time for you to share part of yourself with me, sister. I need the seals more than you do. I need their combined power to help me escape this place. Our father has kept me prisoner here for far too long.”

  I scream again in agony. It's almost as if Helena is tearing not only my body but also my soul to shreds.

  “That’s it,” Helena moans. “I almost have them.”

  Helena opens her eyes and a look of utter shock contorts her face as she looks down at me.

  “How are you doing that?” she demands angrily, removing her hand from my chest and shoving my head forward as she finally lets me go.

  I cough uncontrollably while trying to take in a deep breath to assuage my burning lungs.

  “How are you keeping them from me?” she demands again, kicking me hard in the stomach with one dainty foot.

  I’m so weak I can’t even muster up enough strength to defend myself. Instead, I simply roll over onto my side and look up at her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a raspy voice as I stare at her.

  “How are you keeping some of the seals for yourself?” she demands hysterically.

  I close my eyes because I have no idea what she’s talking about and feel too tired to care.

  Helena leans down over me and places a gentle, cool hand against one of my cheeks.

  Almost instantly, I feel reinvigorated.

  When I open my eyes again, I feel no pain and my exhaustion has faded, leaving me feeling normal again. I look down at my chest half expecting to see a gaping hole there, but I guess it just felt like Helena put her hand inside me. Outwardly, I look undamaged.

  I stand to my feet and face Helena.

  “Better?” she asks sarcastically.

  “Yes,” I say. “How did you do that?”

  Helena rolls her eyes at me. “We’re connected, Anna. Weren’t you paying any attention to what I was saying? I just gave you some of my strength because I need answers from you. Now,” she says, holding out one of her hands to me, “give me the seals you have left, and I might just let you live.”

  “Even if I knew how to give them to you, I wouldn’t,” I say stubbornly.

  I hear the boom again of someone trying to phase into Hell.

  “I really wish they would stop doing that!” Helena says irritably. “It’s interrupting my concentration!”

  “How long can you keep Lucifer from phasing down here?” I ask.

  Helena looks at me in surprise and then begins to laugh hysterically as if what I just said is the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life.

  “It’s not Lucifer, sister. It’s Malcolm and the others. Lucifer is already here.”

  I notice Helena’s gaze shift to something behind me. When I turn to see what she’s staring at, I see Lucifer sitting on the bench in the replica of Malcolm’s courtyard. Snow covers him, and he looks frozen into place as he watches us with unblinking eyes.

  “Dad?” I say, but receive no response.

  Helena giggles behind me, drawing my attention back to her.

  “He can hear you and see you,” she tells me, “but he’s completely trapped now.”

  “Trapped?” I ask, feeling my heart sink with dread. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Don’t you know the definition of trapped?” Helena asks sarcastically. “Trapped… the act of preventing something or someone from escaping a certain place. Lucifer has kept me trapped here since I was conceived. He’s only reaping his due reward from being so cruel. Now he’s the one who can’t leave, ever.”

  “How are you able to do that to him?” I ask.

  “The power of the seals, dear sister. They’re inside me now, or at least the ones I could take from you are.” Helena phases over to me and thrusts her face so close to mine I can feel her breath on my face. “Now give me the rest!”

  I feel my hands tighten into fists at my sides. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I bring one fist up quickly and hit Helena hard under her chin. The force of the blow lifts her a few feet into the air. She comes crashing back down to the floor sprawled onto her back.

  I hear her moan in pain. Slowly, she sits up and rubs her jaw where I hit her, grimacing. She spits out a spray of blood and just sits there staring at the star shaped pattern it made on the floor.

  Helena begins to cackle with glee. I almost ask her what she finds so funny.

  Then realization dawns.

  Helena is bleeding, like a real person.

  Helena looks up at me as she wipes the last traces of blood from her lips with the palm of her right hand. She holds the hand in front of her face before turning it towards me.

  “Do you know what this means?” she says in wonder. “I’m a real girl now, sister. I’m real!”

  I begin shaking my head in disbelief, refusing to believe what I’m witnessing.

  “That can’t be,” I say, hoping that if I reject what I see it will simply go away. “You can’t be real.”

  Helena stands to her feet.

  She smiles at me, but it ends up looking more like a red gash splitting her face in two because of the blood covering her teeth.

  “I’m as real as you are,” she says, excitedly. “Do you realize what this means?”

  I shake my head because I have no idea what the ramifications of Helena having a corporeal body means in the grand scheme of things.

  “It means I’m finally free,” she says right before phasing.

  From her phase trail, I can see that she’s phased to the desert.

  I look over my shoulder at Lucifer, not wanting to leave him but also knowing nothing good can come of Helena being on Earth.

  “I’ll come back for you,” I promise him.

  When I phase back to the desert, I see Helena skipping across the dune Malcolm and the others are still standing on.

  Malcolm sees me first.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” he says taking me into his arms as I walk up to him.

  “I’m fine,” I reassure him, giving him a quick hug before letting him go.

  I turn to watch Helena act like a child playing in the snow as she bends over to grab handfuls of it to make a snowball.

  “Who the hell is that?” Brutus asks.

  “Helena,” I reply. “She’s real now.”

  “How did that happen?” Jered asks.

  “She took some of the seals from me. She says I still have some left that she can’t seem to reach.”

  A snowball hits Desmond directly in the face causing him to sputter.

  We all hear Helena laugh heartily at her own antics.

  “If she’s real, we can kill her, right?” Jered whispers, only…it isn’t quite soft enough.

  Helena’s laughter dies and all becomes quiet. The only sound that can be heard is the desert wind.

  “I won’t be that easy to kill,” she tells us. “I’ve waited far too long for this moment. Do you know everything that went into orchestrating my own freedom? If you think I’m just going to stand here and let that happen, think agai
n.”

  In the blink of an eye, we find ourselves surrounded by creatures I can only assume Helena brought up from the depths of Hell itself. They look like they might have been human at one time, but their bodies have been corrupted into malformed shapes after spending so much time in Hell.

  All of us pull out our swords and stand ready to defend ourselves.

  “Should we phase?” I ask those around me.

  “We can’t allow these things to live,” Malcolm tells me. “If we leave them here, they’ll kill every human they cross paths with. Phasing should only be used as a last resort.”

  “Kill them!” Helena yells to her minions.

  All at once, the hellspawn run straight for us from all sides.

  It seems like the more we kill, the more hellspawn Helena brings up. As soon as we kill one, their body disappears into a cloud of black smoke, making a clear path for the next attacker. I chance a glance away from the creature in front of me as I slice its head off and feel a sense of helplessness as I see an ocean of Helena’s minions coming for us. I’ve completely lost sight of Helena in the horde and don’t even know if she’s still here.

  “We can’t fight this many alone!” Brutus yells as we stay in the tight circle we’re in fending off the bloodthirsty demons in front of us.

  Before I can even swing my sword at it, the hellspawn in front of me screams out in pain. I see the tip of a short blade protruding from the middle of its chest just before it disappears into a cloud of black smoke. I look up and see a large man with a black tattoo covering his left shoulder. I instantly recognize him from one of my trips to Hell. He was the Watcher who traded in his soul and accepted an eternity in Hell because he couldn't take the pain of a hellhound bite.

  “You’re not alone, Brutus,” the man says. “We’re here to help.”

  “Slade?” I hear Brutus say in surprise. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Funny you should mention Hell,” Slade says, turning to thrust his dagger into the minion coming up behind him.

  Slade joins our defensive circle and uses the dagger in his hand to kill more of the hellspawn. More men, possibly twenty, like Slade join our circle to help us kill the thousands of creatures attacking us, but we’re still desperately out numbered.

  A loud boom sounds accompanied by a blinding flash of white light. The earth shakes, forcing us all to plant our feet just to maintain our balance. As my eyes adjust to the dazzling brightness, I find its source just beyond the sea of minions in front of me.

  Standing just outside the perimeter of hellspawn are at least two-thousand men. All of them are wearing black feather cloaks, leather pants and boots like the outfit Malcolm wore to our wedding. The only difference is that their cloaks are a mixture of black and white feathers.

  “War Angels,” Malcolm says beside me, sounding surprised by the presence of our new arrivals.

  One of the War Angels stands out in front of them all. I recognize him as the man I saw in the crowd of partygoers in Stratus and again at Brutus’ wedding to Kyna in Alto.

  I watch as the man pulls out a large sword from the scabbard at his side and charges forward into the legion of hellspawn. The men behind him follow his lead and begin slicing their way through Helena’s horde with incredible speed. In a matter of minutes, the creatures are dispatched back to Hell, and we’re left standing side by side on the dune. Helena, not surprisingly, is nowhere to be found afterwards.

  The War Angels surround us, making me feel slightly uncomfortable.

  Like the parting of the Red Sea, the angels in front of me make a clear path, and the man, who I’ve seen on two occasions now, strides through the host of angels towards me.

  “He’s the one I told you about,” I say to Malcolm when the man is half-way to me. “The one who was staring at me at the wedding.”

  “His name is Chayyliel,” Malcolm tells me, keeping a watchful eye on the angel’s approach. “He commands the War Angels.”

  As Chayyliel continues to make his way towards us, I can almost feel the control he holds over the men around him. It isn’t an oppressive type of power though. It’s obvious by the look on the faces of his men that they all respect him. They would die for their leader if it came to that.

  Finally, he’s standing in front of me. Before I can say a word, he drops down to one knee before me and bows his head. All of the War Angels follow his lead, dropping to their knees and bowing their heads in my direction.

  “Our father sends his greetings to you, Anna,” Chayyliel says to me. “He asks that you use us as you see fit. We are here to serve you in whatever capacity we can be of most use. Though, we’re more suited to combat than most any other endeavor.”

  “Thank you for helping us,” I tell him. “Please, all of you, stand up. I’m not much for people kneeling to me.”

  Chayyliel looks up at me and slowly rises to his feet. His men do the same.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Chayyliel,” Malcolm says, holding out a hand for the other man to shake.

  Chayyliel shakes Malcolm’s hand and grins at my husband.

  “It’s been a long time, Malcolm. And please, you might as well start calling me by the human name I picked for myself. I’m now known as Ethan Alexander Knight.”

  “Certainly easier to say than Chayyliel,” Malcolm jests.

  Ethan smile at Malcolm, but quickly returns his attention back to me.

  “Like I said, we’re here to serve you, Anna,” Ethan says to me. “How can we be of help?”

  “Has God told you about Helena?” I ask.

  Ethan nods. “Yes. He informed us about the situation before we came down here.”

  “I need to know where she is,” I say. “She has a whole universe now to hide in, but I know her. Her vanity won’t allow her to stay in the shadows for very long. She’ll make a mistake somewhere along the way and reveal her location. I need you to send your men out and watch for signs of her reappearance both here on Earth and off-world. I’m certain she’ll start causing trouble, if not now then very soon. It’s her nature to make people suffer. We need to find her, Ethan, before she causes any more damage.”

  “And when we find her,” Ethan says confidently, like failing in the mission I’ve given him isn’t even a possibility. “What should we do with her?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I admit. “I have a feeling I’m the only one who will be able to deal with her. Finding Helena will most likely be time consuming. Catching her will be near impossible. But I haven’t come this far to fail. I still have a mission to complete. It’s just going to take me a little longer than I thought it would.”

  “We won’t fail you,” Ethan pledges. “We will find her.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him.

  “Anna,” I hear Jered say. I look over at him. “Where’s Lucifer? When you phased, he did too.”

  “Helena has him trapped in Hell,” I reply. “I need to go back down there to see if I can free him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Malcolm offers.

  I put a hand on Malcolm’s right arm. “No, go get our son and take him home where I know he’ll be safe. I don’t want you to go back down there. I can handle this on my own.”

  “I don’t want you to go there by yourself.”

  “I’ll go down with her,” Jered volunteers, stepping up to my side. “I’ve been there before. It can’t show me any sin I’ve committed that it hasn’t already tortured me with in the past.”

  “Do you think Hell will be the same?” I ask. “Now that Helena is gone.”

  “No, it’s not,” Slade informs us. “When Helena brought up the hellspawns, I don’t think she realized she was also making cracks in the veil between Hell and Earth. That’s how we were able to escape, through one of the cracks that opened up. I don’t know if these fissures will seal back up by themselves or if they’re permanent. But it’s chaos down there right now. Just… be careful.”

  “And where exactly do your loyalties lie, Slade?�
� Malcolm questions harshly.

  I can see my husband won’t be welcoming Slade back into the fold with open arms anytime soon.

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Slade confesses. “But I don’t plan to make any more, Malcolm. I know I was given this second chance for a reason, and I don’t intend to disappoint any of you ever again. I want to make Caylin proud of me and reassume the responsibility she gave to all of us to protect her descendant. I’ll do whatever Anna needs me to do. You have my word on that.”

  Unexpectedly, I feel a sharp, excruciating pain in the pit of my stomach like someone just stabbed me.

  I bend down at the waist, wrapping my arms around my midsection.

  “What’s wrong?” Malcolm asks in alarm.

  I drop to my knees as another wave of pain washes over me. Malcolm kneels down and tries to hold me, bringing me what comfort he can.

  “Move, Malcolm,” I hear a familiar voice order.

  I look up just as Malcolm stands to make room for Will.

  “Why are you here? I’m not dead.” I’m able to say just before another surge of agony wracks my body.

  “I’m not here for you,” Will declares quickly as he takes my head in both his hands. “I’m here for the babies.”

  Before I can say anything else, Will lowers his head and places his mouth over mine. There’s nothing carnal about the act as he breathes into my mouth. The taste of his breath is like sugar against my tongue, and I feel its regenerative effects as it enters my lungs. Will lifts his mouth from mine and takes in a deep breath before giving me a second breath of life.

  The pain I felt subsides to a dull ache.

  Will places his hand against my lower belly as if he’s trying to verify something. He looks troubled at first but then grins.

  “Are they all right?” I ask, on the verge of tears.

  Will nods. “Yes, they’re fine now.”

  Malcolm kneels down on the other side of me.

  “Babies?” he asks me, looking amazed by the news.

  “Apparently,” I say, feeling astonished that I suddenly find myself pregnant.