Chosen Angels

by May Dawson

  “Please say the deal is that you die a bloody death right here and now,” I said. “Because that’s the only deal I’m interested in.”

  “I think I’m going to pass on that,” he said evenly. “I already told you I could give you Nimshi back. In life.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” I said. “Demons like you only deal in pain and death.”

  “There’s no death without life,” he said. “But here’s the thing. I can give you back Levi and Ryker too.”

  I turned to look over my shoulder, but the boys running toward me were no closer than they’d been before. Their lips parted, shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear them.

  Samael’s old trick. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

  I couldn’t reach them. And they couldn’t reach me.

  “Just us,” he said, a smile haunting the edges of his lips. “Just the first man and his wife.”

  “I’m not your wife,” I said.

  He tapped a thoughtful finger against his chin. “Did it count as a divorce when I smashed the life out of you?”

  “What’s your deal, Samael?” I interrupted. My boys would find a way to break his magic. I just had to hold his attention, keep him talking. I felt the last of the fear ebb away, replaced by rage and certainty.

  For millennia, this man had made a hobby out of murdering my incarnations. It ended with this Lilith.

  “It’s a great deal,” he said. “I’m not even asking for your life, and I’ll give you back their lives. You can all go sun-side again.”

  I stared back at him, suspicious, and his lips tilted in a smug smile.

  “What’s in it for you, you murderous prick?”

  “Is that any way to talk to your first love?” He reached out for me again, his hand going to cup my cheek, but this time I wasn’t frozen in fear and confusion.

  I grabbed his wrist in my hand, pulling him toward me. And then I grabbed his throat. Samael’s throat fit perfect in my hand, my thumb pressing into his artery, my fingers spanning the base of his throat.

  He stared into my eyes, the two of us so close we could have kissed. “We had a good hundred years or so, didn’t we? Before I couldn’t stand to listen to the sound of your voice anymore, the way you prattled on. Before I got sick of looking at your face.”

  Still staring into my eyes, he said, “Your eyes never change. They’re always that same shade. Every time I’ve watched your soul drain.”

  “Jesus, you say I’m the boring one, but you cannot stop yourself from waxing on, can you?” I exploded. “What’s the deal?”

  His hand twitched slightly, his hand that held the Final blade. “I want one of those eyes. Just one. Just that. Small price to pay for those boys of yours, isn’t it?”

  My blood chilled. For a second, the image of what he was asking for flashed clearly through my mind. I could imagine the way he’d drive the Final blade into my eye. The thought of that pain terrified me.

  “My sister too,” I said. “You have to bring her back. And the Council.”

  “Fine.” His voice was amused. “You’re not even going to ask why?”

  “Like I said. Sick of hearing you go on and on.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” he promised me.

  As if I’d really thought I could get him to shut up.

  “You think those men love you,” he said, his voice taunting. “But they’re going to watch me disfigure you. They can see everything, and they can’t save you. And at first, they’ll be glad when they get you back, sure, but they won’t be able to look at you. Not only will your face be ruined, but every time they look at you, it will hurt. It will remind them that they failed you. That you saved them. No man wants to be saved by a woman, and no man can bear it when that woman is his lover.”

  With the Final blade in his fist, he raised his hand to stroke his knuckles over the curve of my cheek. The blade flashed in his hand. “You’ll let me take what I want to save them. And then they’ll leave you. And you will always regret what you did for them.”

  “I guess we’ll see,” I said. “Sorry. Bad pun.”

  “I’d rather break you than kill you,” he said.

  “Only took you a few millennia to get a new hobby,” I said. “Maybe next time you can try knitting.”

  I was keenly aware of the blade so near my face. I needed to get the blade from him. I was going to kill Samael.

  But for now, I could raise my boys from the dead.

  “Is there a demon ride-along when you raise my boys and my sister?” I asked.

  “No tricks, Lilith,” he said. “The trick’s in what comes after.”

  “Then shut the fuck up and resurrect them.”

  His thumb stroked over my cheek. “Payable in advance.”

  I could feel the boys’ panic and rage from here, even without seeing them, as they tried to break through to me.

  I knew that they would tell me not to sacrifice for them.

  But love means sacrifice.

  Any of them would die for me. We all knew that by now.

  I could live like this for them.

  “First,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “I guess you’re not quite as foolish as you used to be.”

  “Yep,” I said. “Put that in my biography. Not quite as foolish as I used to be. Would you please get on with it?”

  “Have you ever tried a resurrection spell?” he asked.

  I stared at him without answering, and he said, “I’ll take that as a yes. Do you ever not fail, Lilith?”

  He took a step back, and a shiver of relief ran down my spine not to have him so near me. For the first time, I realized how wildly my heart had thudded. Samael sent me into fight-or-flight mode, no matter who I was supposed to be now, as if my soul remembered him.

  He held the Final blade out in front of him, resting lightly on the tips of his fingers. I leaned forward slightly, involuntarily, because I was keen to snatch that blade out of his hands once my boys were saved.

  “Nimshi. Ryker Alexander. Levi Alexander. Ashley Landon. Soul severed from body too soon; raise them to life again. Let the power of steel and sickness that took them redeem them.”

  The earth seemed to tremble under my feet, and I swayed. Samael smiled slightly. “The good Lord always does hate it when he’s reminded that we’re as much angels as his flunkies. Except they only raise the dead with permission.”

  “Look at them,” he said.

  I turned. Levi’s throat was healed; Ryker touched his t-shirt covered chest in wonder, as if he was confused by how the knife lodged in it had disappeared.

  Nim swayed on his feet, and Ryker and Levi both reached out to steady him, putting their hands on his shoulders.

  Behind my boys, demons massed; hundreds of demons with swords at the ready. Samael held up a hand, halting them.

  “What’s wrong with Nim?” I demanded.

  “It’s a tricky thing, raising a demon,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d raise every dead demon we could. You’ll have to follow him into the real world and see, Lilith.”

  “See, when I made the bad pun, it was just an accident. You should be embarrassed, though.”

  “One little thing first and then you can all go home,” he said. “But look at where we are now.”

  I nodded, keenly aware of the mass of demons converging around my boys. They had to get out of here; if the resurrection spell had worked, they could return to their bodies and they would be safe out of the Far.

  “It’s going to be good to be king,” he said, his eyes dreamy for a second as he stared out at the demon horde. “To finally take my rightful place.”

  He flipped the blade in his hand. “And what a way to begin!”

  “All right, psycho,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  There was no escape.

  In one quick, fluid motion, Samael drove the blade toward my eye, a blur of silver looming large in my vision.

  Chapter 32

 
Up until the very last second, I really thought I’d find some way to escape, or maybe I had to believe that. I thought I would outsmart Samael for once, that I would get what I wanted without giving anything up to him.

  Then the blade drove into my eye.

  Silver, than red. My eye moved in the socket, pushed aside by the blade. I felt cold and wrong, the sick sense of my eye moving, and then the blade twisted and my eyeball exploded and the world was all agony.

  I screamed.

  I was blind, but I could feel Samael’s amusement, and I could feel him gather himself to push the blade in deeper, to drive it into my brain and kill me. No matter what he said, his blood lust was up now. His old traditions.

  I threw myself backward, reaching for the blade. My hand wrapped around the hilt of the final blade, which was slick with my blood, and I yanked it out. When the blade left my eye, the pain made me stagger, on the verge of falling to my knees before Samael. I couldn’t see anything; my other eye refused to open, to work, to find so I could kill him.

  I stumbled forward. I fell against his chest—god, I’d know him anymore, this man I spent a hundred years with—but Samael tried to push me away.

  I locked my arm around my old lover and I shoved the blade deep into his guts.

  The two of us fell together.

  Suddenly, the world around us accelerated, noisy and loud. Samael’s magic must have come to an end, along with his life.

  Jacob gathered me up against his chest; I would have known his scent of black coffee and spice anywhere. “Hang in there, Princess. We’re going to get you home.”

  I clung to his shoulders as shock washed over me. My brain was trying to shut down, to protect me from the unbearable pain. But I fought to stay awake and clear-headed, even if it hurt. I had to hang on and make sure the last of my boys made it home.

  There was the distinct, wet sound of someone ripping the Final blade out of Samael’s chest, and a rushing sound as they brought it down, and a chunk.

  “He’s definitely dead now,” Levi said. “Here and forever.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jacob said. “The Far’s not looking so friendly.”

  I could hear the grumble of confusion from the massed demons around us, but surely, soon they would find a leader, or at least come looking for the only human blood around.

  Ash’s fingers were on my face, trembling. I would have known my sister anywhere.

  “We’ll heal her,” Jacob promised her, his voice gruff. “She’ll be fine.”

  “No, she won’t.” I could feel Ash’s tears on my face, along with all the blood. “You can try. But a Final wound can’t be healed.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, my voice distant to my own ears. It was worth it to save them. But we had to get out of the Far. Now that they were all alive, I wasn’t going to lose them.

  “Let me help,” Dani said.

  “You can get the hell away from my sister,” Ash said. “I’m about to add another corpse to this party.”

  “Calm down,” Dani muttered. “Look at her, she’s going into shock. I’m just going to ease her pain, give her back some clarity.”

  I felt nothing but agony, and then slowly, other sensations came back into focus. Dani’s thumb and fingers, resting lightly on my face, spanned the wound. My heart started to beat normally, a strong rhythm, and for the first time, I realized how slow and irregularly it had beaten seconds before. My eye still burned, but I could think through the pain.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Nim!” Levi’s voice was urgent.

  I heard Levi catch him, the sound of Nim being laid on the ground.

  “God damn it,” Jacob swore.

  “It wasn’t a resurrection spell,” Levi said, and I heard him go down heavily on one knee.

  “It was a reanimation sp—” Levi’s words were lost in a gurgle as the slash across his throat opened up again.

  No. No! I couldn’t have failed my boys.

  “They can’t go back into their bodies,” Ash said, her voice urgent. “When they leave the Far, they’re dead.”

  “We’ll stand and fight.” Jacob’s slow British drawl sounded sure, despite the odds.

  “We’ll die,” Dani said.

  “Then we’ll die together.” Jacob said. “Pick up a sword, Dani. You’re dead in either world, anyway, when the Council gets their hands on you.”

  The magic kept working, and now the ruins where my eye had been just felt cold, although I could still feel the sticky blood across my face. My good eye fluttered open, and at first I saw only red, and then the world resolved into the deep night sky above and Jacob’s worried face staring down at me.

  “I think I earned that Final blade,” I said.

  Jacob’s lips cracked into a grim smile. “I think you did. But you’re going back.”

  “Not without you all.” I said. “Is today a good day for us to die together?”

  “I do not think it is,” said a deep, angelic voice behind us.

  Jacob spun around, holding me cradled in one arm, his sword at the ready.

  In front of us were hundreds of angels, each of them like a flame stretching up toward the sky, each of them with flaming sword in hand.

  And in front of them all stood Zuriel.

  “Hello, son.” Zuriel stared at his son with those golden-flame eyes, as if he were feasting his eyes on Jacob. Then those intense eyes met mine. “And hello, Lilith, slayer of Lucifer. Light-walker. Hell-walker.”

  Well, I had never been an Honors student or anyone special at all, but that was one hell of a set of honorifics.

  “I’ll take that as a nickname,” I muttered. “Satan-slayer.”

  I squeezed Jacob’s shoulders, and he set me gently on my feet. I knelt to take the Final blade up from where I had dropped it in the grass. My hand trembled when I wrapped my fingers around the bloody hilt. My blood. My eye. My life.

  But I would have given whatever it cost to save my boys and to fulfil the mission Heaven had sent me on.

  “I’m in a Hell of a mood right now,” I said, “And I can’t wait for this fight.”

  “I knew you’d come around,” Ash said.

  “This battle isn’t yours,” Zuriel said.

  Around us, a roar went up as one demon broke ranks, moving across the field The angels and demons ran to meet each other in combat.

  “I’ve never been one to back down from a fight,” Jacob said.

  “I’ve noticed,” Zuriel said.

  I knelt next to Levi, who was struggling to sit up on his elbows. He touched the cut in his throat, which was bleeding freely again, his wound in the world seeping through into the Far again. But he was alive here, in the Far, for now.

  “The goal of Heaven is justice,” Zuriel said. “I lost sight of that, Jacob. And I am sorry.”

  “So it wasn’t justice to try to kill the mistake you brought into the world?” Jacob demanded.

  Zuriel took only a few strides, but it brought him so near us that I could feel the heat of his flames on my face. He shimmered, and the flames dissolved into wisps and then died away.

  The battle raged around us, but we were safe, ringed by angels.

  “Justice is restoration,” Zuriel said. “Between heaven and human. Between men. Even between father and son.”

  “So you’re not going to try to kill me anymore, Father?” Jacob’s British drawl was lazy and flat. When he was that emotionless, I knew he felt something intensely.

  “As I said, I had lost my way. But now I’ve found it, and I intend to restore what was taken from you, with the blessing of the great Father.”

  Nimshi stared in shock at his hands, at his body alive again. He began to struggle up from the ground.

  Zuriel crooked a finger at Nimshi. “Come here, fallen angel.”

  Nimshi stared up at him with rebellion written across his face. Then he staggered to his feet, still unsteady. He reached out and his trembling fingers
wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

  Zuriel rolled his eyes. “I see words are lost on you.”

  “I’m not going to make it easy for you to kill me,” Nimshi said. He held out his hand in front of him. Blue flame seemed to spark at his fingertips but died without growing, as if he didn’t have the strength to draw his demon-magic.

  “Stupid children,” Zuriel said, but fondly. He reached out for Nimshi, but his eyes went to Jacob. “I hope, in time, you will forgive me for all I did. I lost myself, and I lost the love that should have been between us.”

  Zuriel blazed, and his flaming fingers touched Nimshi before Nim’s blade could reach him. Nim’s face was washed bright with light, and then he was gone, blinking out of existence.

  Zuriel was a flash of gold, touching Ryker and Levi, and they too blinked out of existence. Jacob, Ash, Dani, Calla and her men; they all faded before I could respond.

  My fingers tightened on the hilt of the Final blade as Zuriel stopped in front of me.

  “You really resurrected them?” I asked. “Can you heal me?”

  My voice broke. And I was ashamed of myself, because having my boys and my sister alive should always have been all I needed.

  “I could,” Zuriel said. “But you are not dead and you are not broken. Just changed.”

  His fingers hovered near my face, just out of reach, and I wanted to turn my face into the warmth of that touch that had just brought my loved ones back to life.

  “You do not need me,” Zuriel said definitively, taking a step back. His hand fell to his side. “It’s time to return to your world. You have altered the Far, slaying the king of Hell and setting demon-at-demon for generations to come as they war for his place. You’ve made Heaven proud.”

  “Does that mean the endless reincarnations end?” I asked. “Is the Lilith done with her work?”

  Zuriel smiled. “What do you think?”

  “I think there’s a lot to be done sun-side,” I said.

  “Then go home.”

  I fell through time and space again, through the shattered grass, catching final glimpses of the battle that raged in the Far, the bright lights zooming across the battlefield, the roar of demon voices. The battle that, for once, wasn’t ours.