by Lan Chan
The cathedral appeared to have been restored. Rebecca cleared her throat and I looked up from where I had been staring at the floor. Up ahead, demons lined the sides of the ornate hallways. They started off in single file and then their numbers multiplied until we got to the double doors that the leviathan had broken. They too had been restored. It was like a line in the sand had been drawn across the threshold. When we reached it, the bull man stepped aside, though not very far as he was hemmed in by other demons.
The doorway opened out to the familiar throne room. Even from this distance, I recognised the figure glowing on the throne. “Keep walking,” Rebecca urged me. My feet were weighted down with cement.
Stalling, I inspected the other people in the room with him. While the low demons were permitted in this section of the cathedral, Lucifer’s immediate presence seemed to be reserved for those he considered to be higher on the pecking order. No surprises that they were all humanoid. Some of them were supernatural. Vampires, shifters, and Fae glared at me as though I was nothing more than prey.
Closest to the throne, four figures in heavy silver cloaks stood with their cowls raised over their heads. A heavy air of death clung to them in a choking cloud that came through my bone magic as a murky grey. Necromancers.
As the closest of Lucifers acolytes silently judged me, Rebecca placed her warm palm on my lower back. A surge of cautious trepidation filtered through her fingers. I shivered as the touch of her emotions brushed up against my chest. The codex had said nothing about her being an empath, but the smattering of emotions I’d felt from her since I’d woken up made that evident. Her fingers curled slightly against my skin. She was doing her best to suppress her emotion, but she was terrified.
A seed of pure defiance planted itself in my chest. I was so done being afraid. Stepping over the threshold, I marched across the floor so quickly Rebecca stumbled to keep up with me. Like Kai, she was tall and her stride was long. But she walked like every step was going to come down on hot coals. How had she come to be here? Did Raphael know she was here? Why had she been kept alive? In the back of my mind, even though it was irrelevant now, was the other thing that had absolute fury simmering in my chest: Rebecca had been alive all this time. Kai wasn’t the last of his line. We could have bonded.
Instead, I had been absconded to the Hell dimension. Try as I might, I couldn’t locate Kai’s soul in the Ley dimension or anywhere else. He was lost and so was I.
That one thought cauterised every scrap of fear and left behind a diamond-hard resolution. As I approached the throne, Lucifer got to his feet. Today, he was adorned in armour that replicated the battle armour of the Nephilim. Only his armour was in a stunning polished silver that made him shine brighter than a star. He walked to the front of the dais.
“Alessia,” he said. “So happy you could join us.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” I told him, smiling as though I had meant to be here all along. The hall grew quiet as the supernaturals around us tensed. I had a feeling they were not used to speaking out of turn. Well, things changed.
Lucifer grinned at me, his amusement lighting up those crystalline blue eyes. I would have been fooled by the mirth in them if I didn’t know him well enough by now. He raised a hand and conjured up a ball of light. The necromancers didn’t cringe, but in the Ley sight, I saw their auras shying away from the Morning Star.
“We seem to have a slight technical difficulty,” he said. “The totality of my powers has been bound somehow.”
I cocked my head to the side. In the Ley sight, I saw exactly what he was referring to. The same bone magic spell that had hindered Gaia now wound around him too. If he didn’t want me to use my magic, he shouldn’t have given me all this power.
“It would seem so,” I observed.
He took a step towards me. The demons outside the room shrank. “Unbind me.”
“No, thank you.”
Rebecca inhaled. If she weren’t standing so close, I wouldn’t have heard it. Or maybe it happened via an emotive transfer. Whatever it was, Lucifer picked up on it too. His eyes narrowed. Then his smile returned, its edges tipped with cruel amusement.
“Rebecca,” he drawled. “You’ve been a guest in my cathedral for quite some time. Jacob’s protection of you has kept you pampered and pretty.” Lucifer turned. “But Jacob is gone, and I have no need for a healer.”
Lucifer hopped down the staircase to stand a few steps in front of me. Though he addressed Rebecca, his eyes never left my face. I was sure he tracked it when my left cheek twitched. Not caring, I turned toward Kai’s aunt.
“Did he hurt you?” It was a general statement, but she knew what I meant.
“No,” she said immediately, her face openly terrified. “I was a guest.”
“Why?”
“He…” she swallowed. “Loved me.” Gross!
“So Jacob murdered your whole family, kidnapped you, and hid you here while Kai suffered a torment thinking he was the last Pendragon alive. Did you love him?”
“No.” This was spat out with such distaste that I wanted to throat punch someone.
In my head, I replayed the moment Kai had split Jacob in two with the heavenly blade. It hadn’t been enough.
“The things we do for love.” Lucifer made to step closer to Rebecca and I found myself suddenly in his path.
“Alessia.”
“My Lord,” I said, voice laced with sweet condescension. Rebecca clutched at my hand as the necromancers broke their stance.
“Don’t forget your promise,” Lucifer said.
“Believe me, I forget nothing.”
His eyes widened. The problem with putting two bullshit artists in a room was that you never knew what was real or not. I couldn’t quite be sure whether Lucifer was actually insane and would kill me in a blink, and he wasn’t sure if I was as mentally deficient as I pretended to be. As a result, we both smiled.
The thing was, he was still the master of his domain. I was just the upstart he had created. “You want her freedom?” Lucifer asked. He raised his hand. A flicker of seraphim power brushed over Rebecca. Through the Ley sight, I saw a ring of gold that had been glowing around her light green angelfire burn itself out. I also saw the shroud of demonic energy that was masking her aura from being detected. No wonder nobody knew she was here.
The moment the gold ring disappeared, the demons went into a frenzy. Lucifer nodded and they surged through the doorway, running towards the Nephilim as though she was the last meal to be had.
Crying out, Rebecca took two steps back, ready to run. It said a lot that she didn’t attempt to cower behind me. When running from predators, you didn’t have to be the fastest. You just had to be faster than the other sucker. But even though she knew she was going to die, Rebecca wouldn’t betray me to the demons.
They were just two metres from us when I lashed out with my bone magic. One by one I gathered up their essences. When I was done with the demons inside the cathedral, I expanded my reach and grabbed as many of the ones outside the perimeter as I could.
Mawatah. Death.
The Angelical dashed through the Hell dimension like a tsunami. It devastated the demons in its wake and caused a ripple that destroyed the earth around it.
When the wave finally subsided, I blinked once and looked up into the face of a seraph grinning like he’d won the lottery.
“Next time,” I said, calm seeping into my voice, “I won’t stop at just demons.”
While he had been bound, my power was stifled too. But as the Angelical threatened to break down my physical body, I felt his power rise up and smooth over the cracks. He was so close to his goal and I was his means of getting there. No way was he going to allow me to die.
Lucifer turned on his heel and took the steps back up to his throne. “Take your place, Alessia.”
Giving Rebecca’s hand one last squeeze, I ascended the steps past the necromancers and went to stand on the left side of his throne.
“You unde
rstand my mission?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It had been part of our agreement and the reason why he had been so ready to accept my offer. The lives of the humans and supernaturals meant nothing to him. The earth dimension was exactly as he liked it. Submissive, petty, and terrified of their own shadows while infighting with each other. It wasn’t the humans Lucifer wanted. It was the heavens. He had been cast out against his will and now he wanted revenge.
“Find my blade. Restore it to me.”
I nodded as his laughter filled the throne room. It vibrated through the Ley dimension which was a connection to everything. The knowledge chased through the Sea of Souls, making Azrael aware of his delight.
Thank you for providing me with the key, brother, Lucifer crooned. Azrael gave no response. There didn’t need to be any. The game of war was won by knowing when to concede the battle. It was about how much you were willing to sacrifice. By allowing Hilary and Azrael to make their deal that saved my life, Lucifer was now in control of one of the only people who might be able to commune with the beings who hid his angel blade.
Once he had possession of it, even my bindings wouldn’t stop him. And then he would make a play for the heavenly realm.
“You’re not strong enough,” Lucifer told me. I didn’t contradict him because he was probably right. “But that is easily fixed.”
The room cleared of all but the necromancers. Rebecca cast me a quivering look before she disappeared in the clutch of a vampire guard. Two demon blades appeared in Lucifer’s grip. The room shimmered, and in its place, we materialised in a field of dead red earth. Lucifer tossed one of the blades towards me. It burned my hand. I clamped my jaw together to stop from crying out.
Drawing on the insidious rage inside me, I swiped the edge of the blade against my palm and let my blood drip over the steel. It sucked in every drop, the metal turning almost as red as the sky. I raised my head up and met Lucifer’s gaze.
“Let’s see what you’re made of,” he said.
Pressing my will on the demon blade, I reshaped it to fit my frame. With a wintery smile on my lips, I stood there unflinching as the Prince of Darkness advanced on me. There was something calming about knowing that winning wasn’t an option. But there were varying degrees of loss. I had scraped the bottom and there was nowhere left to go. Only one sacrifice was left, and I was finally ready to make it.
All of this had begun with a prophecy and the fallacy of a bone witch. That was how it would end.
Epilogue
Sophie
So this was what it felt like to be locked inside a celestial jail cell. There was something disconcerting about being caged up by the seraphim. It was no wonder Lex had always come away from it with her hackles raised. Thinking of her made my heart grow spines.
It compounded with the chill that kept sweeping over me knowing that Lucifer was back. And the bone-deep ache when I thought about what had happened to Kai.
In the end, I wasn’t strong enough. I bit my lip and tried to hold back the tears at the thought of where I might have accidentally transmutated his soul. Never mind where his physical body had ended up. I shuddered thinking about Kai existing somewhere without his soul. His body wasn’t in this dimension because we would have heard about a wayward Nephilim massacring people by now. That thought made things infinitely worse.
It had been a miscalculation on my part. The wrong words of light spoken with the right intention. She was too quick. Lex might have been small and weaker than a supernatural child, but she had more bone magic than all of them combined. When the soul gate latched on to her, all I could think of was that she would want to save him. But I hadn’t done that. Instead, I had destroyed him.
Raising my knees up to support my arms, I let my head hang between them. It felt wrong to be safe knowing my best friend was somewhere in the Hell dimension. It had been disorienting to feel the flash that burned without mercy, and then somehow wake up inside Seraphina unscathed.
As the dimensions hung on the precipice of annihilation, we all heard her bargain with Lucifer. His release for the safety of the humans. It was just like the Council to take exception to the fact that Lex hadn’t been able to bargain for their species. Like she had a choice!
Seraphina was anchored in place once more. As soon as order had been restored, the Nephilim guards had rounded up my parents and the remaining members of the Sisterhood.
Across from me, Matilda sat with her back against the only wall in her cell, carving something into the marble floor with the point of her knife. Within seconds of her making an indent, magic smoothed over the breakage again. I recognised the useless endeavour as a nervous tick brought on by anxiety, but it didn’t make the sound any less irritating.
“Could you please stop doing that?” I asked, rubbing at my temples. She paused and replaced her knife in her boot. Five minutes later, she began tapping her fingers against the wall. Breathing out slowly, I stared straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Giselle’s chest rising and falling, but she didn’t stir. She hadn’t done so after the cataclysm, and no matter how hard Matilda and Rachel tried, they couldn’t wake her.
The walls rumbled around us and I sighed. “You’ve gotta give him points for trying,” Harlow said from her cell at the end of the row of cages.
Alison kicked at the glowing bars, wincing at the shock she received. “Too bad he’s the only one. I knew this was how it would turn out.”
It was pointless ruminating on what could and might have been done because this was how it was. Max didn’t agree. An hour after we’d been taken, an almighty roar had gone up outside the cells. We heard the stomping of feet as Nephilim guards swarmed around the door. For all of the racket he made, Max didn’t manage to get inside. Not with Uriel now guarding us. The Sisterhood might be able to phase out of the cells if they tried hard enough, but they wouldn’t be able to do so without Uriel detecting it.
Since then Max had been coming at least once a day. At this point, it was just to make his displeasure at my incarceration known. My heart skidded whenever I felt his presence, both warmed by his loyalty and terrified by it at the same time. Locked up, I could still hold on to the possibility of his feelings for me.
What would happen when I confirmed that I had been harnessing supernatural essences with black magic? How would he look at me then? Never mind the fact that I was responsible for the disappearance and likely death of his best friend.
No. The longer he stayed out, the better. At least until I could cope with losing Lex and him at the same time. I played with the band of Gabriel’s Key inside the front pocket of my jeans. Nobody had bothered to pat me down for weapons. Trinkets weren’t the source of my power. It was what was inside that counted.
That was exactly what the Council must have been thinking when I was summoned before them. Unlike every other time, Mama and Dad were nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was marched into the Council chambers by a dozen Nephilim guards. They swooped around me like I was some kind of insane criminal. Technically, I was. What I had done was highly illegal in supernatural society. But given the choice, I would have gladly done it again. And I would do a lot more if there was the slightest chance it would bring Lex back.
No matter how hard I had tried to come to terms with her inevitable death, I just couldn’t bring myself to accept it. Just like I was finding it impossible to accept her loss now. Sometimes, a person just reached into your soul and left a mark. I missed my best friend and it made me obstinate.
“Speak truthfully,” Orin reminded me once I was standing in front of them. “Your freedom and that of your species depends on it.”
I watched Durin frown even though he didn’t pipe up. “I have no reason to lie or be deceptive,” I said.
“So you freely admit that you committed crimes punishable by death?”
Without skipping a beat, I opened my mouth to respond. My answer was cut off by the ear-splitting growl of a lion.
“Contain him!”
Orin shouted at the Nephilim guards.
The pleading look I gave Durin was met with a grimace. But it was Griff who tried to come to my aid. “Perhaps we should allow him –” the para-human began.
“He’s not Council and they’re not mated,” Durin said. “There’s no reason for Max to be here.”
The rebuff hurt more than if he had marched up and backhanded me. With that single statement, I knew exactly where I stood with the shifters. My throat clogged up and I had difficulty swallowing.
Orin repeated his question.
“Yes,” I said, knowing I was incriminating myself. Everything seemed so pointless at the moment.
“You knew Alessia was compromised,” Victoria said. “You should have alerted the Council straight away.”
Clearing my throat, I looked her in her shrivelled face. “But I didn’t,” I said. “What I should have done makes no difference now.”
There were a lot of things I should have done. Snitching on my best friend was not one of them. “The elite guard could have contained the problem,” Victoria continued.
I doubted it. They were the ones who had encouraged her in the first place. And they were the ones now sealing off all exit and entry points to all the supernatural cities and the academies. Soon, no human would be able to broach their sanctuaries without setting off wards that would kill on sight.
“Did you have any idea what she was intending?” Megan asked.
“No.” And then because I didn’t want to be contrary when there was so much at stake, I elaborated. “I don’t think it was a premeditated decision. She was forced into it.”
“Better that we had all perished,” Durin said.
“Maybe,” I whispered. All the strength felt like it was sapping from my limbs. “But you know what Lex was like. If she thought she could protect us, she would have made any kind of deal.”
“She doesn’t think about the consequences is more like it!” Scott snapped.
I wanted to ask him what he would have done differently in her place, but it was pointless arguing with idiots.
