by Lan Chan
“It’s the only way –”
“Don’t give me that bullshit! There has to –”
“There isn’t! Don’t you think I would jump on it if there was some way I wouldn’t have to die?” Something burst in my left eye. It sent a sharp sting down my jaw and made my words falter. A cloudy blotch appeared in my vision. It was beginning. My body was starting to break down. “I’m dying, Sophie.”
Her face crumbled. “No.”
I hugged her, hating that she was here and yet selfishly glad that she was. Sophie’s presence made me calmer.
“I want to go out the way I came into this world,” I told her. “Kicking and screaming and killing somebody on my way.”
She shuddered against me, caught between grief and the ridiculousness of my remark. My mother had died when I was born. It was only fair that I would take out the seraph that had caused her death when I died.
The sky outside darkened. A blast of purple and blue fire licked at the barrier that Lucifer had constructed to keep the demons from dirtying his monument. “We need to do this now,” Giselle said.
Reluctantly detaching from me, Sophie refused to leave the perimeter of my circle. She sat with her legs crossed in front of her, lips still quivering but a resolute shine in her eyes. With all my self-control, I closed my eyes and pushed everything away. Dropping into the Ley dimension, I allowed it to overlay in front of me.
The brightness of Lucifer’s vessel had me throwing my arms out in front of my face. It did nothing to shield me from the blinding energy. I was on my knees, forehead pressed to the cold floor beneath the circle before I knew what I was doing.
It had always been instinct to bow down to the seraphim. But whereas Raphael and Azrael commanded meekness through their grace, Lucifer elicited fear. Even before I had a chance to summon him, terror wracked my body at the vastness of his essence. How the hell was I going to do this if I couldn’t even look at him?
Earth, Giselle pressed, her voice now a squeak because she couldn’t help but shy away from his presence either. Latching on to her advice, I sank my hedge magic into the surrounding tainted earth and allowed it to anchor me into place. The energy here was muddy. It pushed back against my hold, trying to make me detach.
Feeling like sludge was pouring over me, I grabbed at the Ley dimension out of instinct and asked it to strengthen me. The shift happened without me knowing how it happened. As I watched dumbly, the threads of the soul lines bulged and stretched until a second layer of reality settled over the earth beneath me. It was like two sheets of weaving sitting on top of each other. The bottom layer was the earth from the Hell dimension. The top one was...Nanna’s home on earth before she had been possessed.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I grabbed at the Ley lines from Nanna’s place and used them to weave a barrier around Lucifer’s vessel. It created a spider’s web around him that blocked out some of the light coming from his body. He looked the way Gaia did when Hilary had bound her.
Now that he was mummified by threads that looked very much like plant vines, I was able to open my eyes. They still stung like a bitch, but I could at least see what I was doing.
Taking in a calming breath, I began to collect demon essences. My body jerked as the rushing of essences washed over me. I heard Sophie gasp beside me as I doubled over and smashed my cheek on the floor. My Ley sight began to muddy as I snatched up pieces of demon souls like a net dredging up the surface of the ocean.
A unified bellow rocked the cathedral as the demons surrounding it cried out from pain and fear. On and on the net rolled, collecting up every demon essence it could touch. My head pounded. Without knowing why, I reached out for the handle of the heavenly blade. Grasping it tight, I spoke a silent prayer that my sacrifice wouldn’t be cut short.
And then I touched on the soul of somebody as strong as me. My second layer of vision snagged on Jacob. He stood on his own, untouched by the other scrambling demons at the barrier to the cathedral. His mouth opened in a twisted grimace as I tugged at his soul and began to tear it away.
His scream was music to my ears. It soothed some of the rage that had been bubbling in me since the moment he hurt me with the heavenly blade. But I should have known that good things were anathema to my very existence. My smugness was cut short but the sudden burst of blinding white light that appeared in the circle with me. I suppressed a hiss, terror budding that Lucifer was able to breach the soul barrier so easily. Sophie cried out and scampered backwards. Her arms came up to cover her head.
I felt the Sisterhood bear down on the instinct, but one by one, they buckled too. In a strange twist of fate, I managed to lift my head and stare directly into the wintery blue eyes of the Morning Star.
“Thanks for coming without being called,” I said. “Saves me the trouble.”
If he was disturbed by the ritual that I was about to perform, it didn’t show on his unearthly beautiful face. My heart ached in my chest as something ancient reached in and held it still.
“You are the funniest little thing,” Lucifer said, his voice at once terrible and beautiful. “Still obstinate even though you are about to break.”
“I could say the same for you.” I smiled at him, wanting to do something to show that I wasn’t afraid even though I was pretty sure I had peed myself.
“You are most definitely mine, Alessia.” His gaze shifted to the left, eyes glowing with arctic emotion. He sighed and tapped on the side of his head. “Free will. An obstacle since the beginning. It’s a good thing most beings are so easily persuaded.”
The weight of his words settled on me like napalm. “No!” I moved towards his vessel as quickly as I could. But even supernatural speed couldn’t hope to be fast enough.
Do it! Giselle screamed in my head. Despite being a thought, it sounded gargled like she was having trouble piecing her mind together. I tripped over Lucifer’s side as the Sisterhood funnelled all the souls they had collected through me. Raising my arm, I was about to stab Lucifer’s vessel in the heart when I felt his grace whipping across the earth and slam into Jacob.
The tip of the heavenly blade had just nicked his skin when the doors to the cathedral exploded and demons poured in around us.
52
The moment the heavenly blade sank into Lucifer’s chest, a pulse of unbearable energy coursed through my veins. The force of hundreds of thousands of souls slammed into the seraph’s essence, but Simone hadn’t had enough time to finish the job. Through the Ley sight, I sensed her slumped over on her side, trying to push her body up to standing. No!
If I destroyed him now, without my soul to strengthen the ritual, I would kill everyone in this dimension and potentially all those surrounding it. But the ritual had already been initiated. Thinking to end it myself, I tried to pull the heavenly blade out of Lucifer’s vessel but my physical strength failed.
A force built up around Lucifer’s vessel, a collision of energy so dense it threatened to blow a crater in the Hell dimension. It shoved at the perimeter of my circle, rapidly eating away at my magic. Giselle cursed in my mind at the miscalculation. With his grace anchored to another vessel and my strength failing, we had lost our window to performing the ritual properly. The cascade had begun and even my soul couldn’t stop it now.
But as the energy of the souls funnelled through me, I felt my body beginning to respond. The essences acted like a jolt of electricity. I was a conduit that would burn itself out before long, but until then, I was able push myself up to a standing position. Letting go of the handle of the heavenly blade, I drew a single soul circle and infused it with Angelical. Decipulah. Contain.
The world flashed in a blast of golden light. It threw me six feet into the air. My back hit the side of the circle where I was plastered as the rush of the explosion battered me. Sandpaper and lava scraped against me, the scream was unable to escape my throat because it was closed over. The heat from the explosion stripped off pieces of my skin, but just as quickly, the rush of souls throu
gh me repaired the damage.
I wailed in agony. The Angelical tore at me at the same time the power of the souls contained me. It was a cosmic equilibrium that resulted in pain far greater than what I’d felt when I’d been stabbed by the heavenly blade. My mind went blank.
It felt like an eternity but must have been seconds, because when the shock waves finally subsided, Jacob had only just stepped into the cathedral.
I bent over, my palms on my knees as I tried to steady my breathing. Sophie scrambled to my side, the demonic circle no longer active thanks to the blast. The Evil Three groaned as demons charged against the soul circle. Outside the cathedral, I felt them scrambling over the broken bodies of their fallen comrades who I had harvested. Like a plague, they crawled over each other to get to us, more and more of them popping out of nowhere.
But it was the demonic mage who held my attention. As the Sisterhood fell back from the edge of the soul circle, I watched him cut a smooth path from across the floor, the demons scrambling around him knowing instinctively not to touch him. Though the body might have been his, the expression on his face showed an amusement that was steeped in Lucifer’s detached humour.
As he got closer and the Sisterhood closed in, his smile grew into a long stretch across Jacob’s face. Without knowing it, the Sisterhood had formed a protective circle around me. Lucifer arched one of Jacob’s brows. It was freaky as hell because a seraph possession was nothing like a demon one. Being lower creatures, demon essences were able to hide within a human more easily. Lucifer’s presence was too much for even Jacob. Blue veins decorated his skin, throbbed at his temple, and around his throat. Golden light poured from all of Jacob’s orifices, making his features glow but causing his expressions to look like a demonic jack o’lantern.
“The fearsome Sisterhood,” Lucifer drawled in Jacob’s scratchy voice. “I have a present for your deity from a score still unsettled.” He waved his left hand and two leviathans burst through the already crumbling wall of the cathedral. Rock and dust spat into the room, smashing into the backs of unsuspecting demons.
Up close, the leviathan’s hides were definitely coated with rough skin. Outside of the water, it cracked and shrivelled. When they roared, I knew it was because they were in absolute torment. Their laboured breath came from lungs that were accustomed to moisture in the air. It made them mindless with rage and pain.
The first of the leviathans charged at the soul circle. It scratched a set of ten-inch claws at the barrier. A shot of electricity whipped out from the circle, snatched the leviathan by the torso, and threw it into the wall. The thing braced with ridiculously elegant wings and snarled as it regrouped. Not learning from its companion, the second leviathan barrelled into the barrier. In its killing rage, the leviathan, like the low demons, didn’t perceive the concept of self-preservation. They were fuelled by Lucifer’s command alone. Like its companion, the leviathan got in a single shuddering hit before it too was rejected.
The Sisterhood took no encouragement from the soul circle’s ability to withstand the leviathan attack. The circle itself was drawn from their energy. With each hit, I had watched them shudder. With the constant clawing of thousands of demons all around us, I knew it wouldn’t be long before the barrier fell.
An itch crawled down my right nostril, followed by a dull pain in my head. Here we go. The impact of the souls was already beginning to wear off. With my gaze locked on Jacob, I forced myself to take a long breath. Not thinking straight, I grabbed the handle of the heavenly blade and dislodged it from Lucifer’s vessel.
Jessica was standing closest to me, her back just barely inches to my right. I ripped Gabriel’s Key off my finger and pressed it into her hand.
“Go!” I screamed at them. In my head, I told Giselle to run.
“Not happening,” Giselle said aloud.
“We’re overrun.”
Matilda cleared her throat. “Then we die fighting.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Take Sophie. Go back to Seraphina. I’ll hold him off.”
“You’re joking, right?” Harlow said, her voice quivering. “You can barely stand up right now.”
“I’m dead either way. But the rest of you can still make it out.”
“For how long?” Sophie shot back. What the hell was wrong with all these people?
“So much loyalty,” Lucifer said, his lit-up eyes locked on me. “I’m impressed.”
I bared my teeth at him. “Oh I don’t know if this has anything to do with me. I think they’re all here mostly because they hate your guts and would jump at the chance to see you unmade. It’s like a special skill you have.”
Even Giselle made a strange gargled sound at my insolence. At their core, they were human and had been fashioned to be subservient to the seraphim. But I was so sick of this particular seraph and his dominion over me.
Lucifer just laughed at my bravado. Even lodged in Jacob’s body, I knew he could still feel my terror through our unwitting bond.
“You’re such a funny little girl,” he said. “It’s a shame you’ve chosen not to accept my offer. Tell you what, why don’t we forget about everything that’s happened and I’ll let these humans live if you release me?”
Lifting my head, I looked him square in the face. “Screw you.”
“Funnily enough, I thought that might be your answer.” He waved his hands at the demons around him. “Kill them all. Bring her to me.”
My head whipped towards Sophie. “Go!” I pleaded. In answer, she dropped down into a crouch and picked up the knife I had discarded earlier. My attention split as the demons all around us lifted their heads to the sky and screeched. Their garbled voices were like a death knell that reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. I felt moisture leaking down my neck.
As physically gruesome as they were, the low demons were the least of our worries. Like me, Matilda and Giselle were tracking the swirling movement of the mist demons that circled around us. As soon as the circle broke, those demons would seek to possess us.
The two Sisterhood witches traded a glance. With Giselle’s presence still latched on my mind, I felt their promise to each other that if the worst happened, they would take each other out no question.
The knowledge had me gripping the heavenly blade tighter. I was like a fly caught in amber. There were no good choices to make.
With my strength at its weakest ever, I didn’t think I could produce another Angelical word without dying here and now. I would have been okay with that if I could guarantee that my sacrifice would save my friends.
There were too many demons to actually fight. The only option was for them to leave me, but they were being ridiculously stubborn. I couldn’t leave with them. It was pointless. Sophie’s potion was becoming less and less viable. Even if we retreated, I had days to live. The problem was that now I had alerted the demons to the fact that we had tried to kill their master. And now Jacob was here. Whatever he had been doing with his collection of demons, it meant that he would probably be gearing up to attack the supernaturals.
As I stood there grappling with my unhappy choices, one thing became clear. If I was going to die, I was taking Jacob down with me.
Without giving myself time to reconsider all of the possibilities, I gathered up all my strength, phased through the line of the Sisterhood, and started running.
“Lex!” I heard Sophie scream, but my vision was already tunnelled. I wasn’t getting out of this. The best thing I could do was hurt something on the way out. That seemed like a good enough bet. Pain blasted my mind at the tip of my skull and ran all the way down my spine. Despite being in a phased state, my body was still breaking down. That didn’t stop me from advancing like a bullet towards Jacob. I wasn’t at all surprised by the cool touch of ice as I phased through the demons. It made sense for them to feel cold.
It was impossible to think that I could surprise Lucifer given that he felt my presence keenly. What I was counting on was that he wouldn’t try to kill me unless there wa
s absolutely no choice.
Using Jacob’s powers, Lucifer erected an arcane circle of his own.
“Nice try,” I hissed, running straight through it. Two metres in front of the mage, a serrated-edged sword appeared in his hands. He swung it out in a wide arc that was worthless because I was still mid-phase. Coming to a dead stop a few feet away from him, I made myself corporeal and tried to stab him in the gut. It would have been better to go for the head, but I had a vendetta to return. Having lost the only advantage a human like me had over a supernatural, Jacob was able to evade the slice of the heavenly blade. His sword clashed with the blade’s sharp metal, the clang of weapons ringing in my ears even as the impact jarred up my arm. Ignoring the discomfort, I pivoted to the left, kicking out and trying to sweep his legs out from underneath him. The problem was, I was still in this gown. It made manoeuvring difficult.
Luckily, unlike shifters and vampires, mages weren’t gifted with additional physical strength. Their advantage was in spellwork, something that was somewhat negated by the fact that I kept disappearing on him. My head pounded as I phased to avoid the lash of lightning that jumped from his open hands. Phasing through yet another circle, this one necromantic, I hammered a kick to his sternum. He staggered back a few steps but remained upright. Or maybe it was that I was swaying. Dizziness stole my thoughts, as I tried not to bend over and throw up.
Behind me, I heard the approach of a demon and phased. Its body hurtled past. The demon lost its footing, running headlong into the mage who had summoned it to help him. If only I could produce some kind of circle or anything else.
Something kicked me in the chest. This time, I fell to my knees as a trickle of blood built up in my throat. The hollow sound of wind blowing through a tunnel assaulted my ears. Inside, a rip sounded as Lucifer held out an arm. An imaginary force lashed around my soul. I grit my teeth as he tried to harvest my energy. Bearing down on the Ley dimension, I stitched myself back together and secured it to the lines of power running all around me. Picking at the threads from the layer of energy of Nanna’s old home, I sliced the lines in two and then patched them together, intersecting then through my soul tether, and making it unbreakable.
