A Slither of Hope

by Lisa M Basso

  Shape changing. I imagined all the places he could go, all the things he could see, all the chaos he could bring with a “gift” like that. The thought splayed my stomach under the blade of a guillotine, slicing it into frail ribbons.

  His blue eyes snapped to Kade, playful demeanor vanishing again. “Technically, since I’m the Prince of Hell, you should be bowing to me, but since you’re obviously not on the winning team, I’ll let that go. For now.” Lucien’s words drew out slow, his threat obvious, hanging in the rapidly chilling air.

  “But look where we are.” Lucien spread his arms wide, a grin snaring his lips over his teeth. “This isn’t the place for bowing. This is Earth’s realm of the dead. Who are we here visiting?” He twirled toward Mom’s headstone.

  While he moved, Kade stepped between us again, his hand a fist at his side.

  With an exaggerated squint Lucien read Mom’s headstone. “Oooh.” The longer he drew it out, the deeper his voice became. “Mommy dearest.”

  A tear leaked from my eyes. I didn’t know if it was from the pain twisting in my back or the self-proclaimed Prince of Hell standing on Mom’s grave.

  He turned, this time slowly, purposely on the balls of his feet, his boots making no noise in the gravel. “I can tell you my own story about your dear, dear mother.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Ray,” Kade said between gritted teeth.

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked Kade.

  “Whatever it is, it’s a lie.”

  “Lies, lies, lies!” Lucien hissed and backhanded Kade across the face.

  Kade touched his hands to his cheek, but did nothing to retaliate. His wings shook as he caught his breath.

  “Why would I lie to this little thing if I don’t have to?” He peeked out from behind Kade again to gauge my reaction. The way his emotions bounced around reminded me of people I’d met at the SS Crazy, only Lucien struck me as a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

  The vibration in my wings calmed some, decreasing enough that I could take in full breaths, but not enough to attempt to climb to my feet. “What do you mean, you don’t have to?”

  “Not only did I know your mother, but I know how she died. A little mystery I have to assume you’ve been dying to hear.”

  It wasn’t possible. Like Kade said, he was lying. He had to be. But… what if he wasn’t? What if this was my only chance to hear what he had to say? Even a fake story was better than nothing at all. Wasn’t it? “Go on.”

  “Ray, no!” Kade’s warning earned him Lucien’s attention. Lucien’s mouth straightened in the tiny pinpricks of light coming off Kade’s wings. He turned, lifted his leg an inch off the ground, and kicked his boot into Kade’s ankle. Kade grunted, turning his head away, but still, he did nothing.

  Lucien smoothed the back of his hair, leveling his gaze on me. “Not so long after your dear mommy and daddy married, she contacted me.”

  That settled it. He was lying. “My mother would have nothing to do with you.” Trepidation quaked in my voice.

  “Oh really? Even if her sister Nora became dreadfully ill?”

  Aunt Nora, sick? Mom had mentioned something about her being in the hospital for a long time before I was born. Trying to think with the pain jolting through my body was nearly impossible, so it took longer than it should have for the memory to find its way to me. When Aunt Nora was a teenager, she’d been diagnosed with something serious. Cancer, leukemia, a brain tumor, something like that.

  Lucien’s face lit up. “You do know what I’m talking about?”

  “I might,” I grumbled, wishing he would just get this over with. Whatever he was going to do to me, just let it be done.

  “Your mother promised to do a favor for me…in return for the miracle of letting her sister live. Now, it does take a few deaths to grant a miracle—a few dozen, more like—but I was happy to do it, because she had something I wanted.”

  “Wh—” My voice cut out, though the pain lessened with every breath. “What did you want from her?”

  Kade turned his head, tipping his wing to look at me. “Don’t listen to him.”

  The vibrating had subsided to more of a nuisance. I pushed off the ground and circled around in front of Kade, forcing him to step back. I couldn’t endure watching him take another hit.

  “I have to know this,” I told him so he wouldn’t pull me back. I’d been wondering about my mother, clinging to any stories about her. Kade’s were so quick. But Lucien knew things. Yes, he could have found some of those facts with a little research, but something about it felt different—we were linked somehow. I could feel it in my wings. They were almost humming now. He was telling the truth. “What did you want from my mother?”

  “Well, it was just a little, ah…” He waved his hand around in a circle in the air like he was thinking, racking his brain for the answer he already had. Drawing it out for my benefit. “Let’s call it humanity.”

  “Her humanity?” I shook my head, not understanding.

  “All right. If you want specifics.” He huffed, straightening his shirt cuffs. “I’d been tinkering with this experiment. One I couldn’t get to stick. On anyone. I, in my infinite wisdom, had the idea to grant a special power to someone. I couldn’t embody it myself, for I have far too much power inside me already. No, I needed someone else to be able to carry out this specific power. To my dismay, all the Fallen I tried to implant it with expired.”

  “Expired?” I let the word slip by my lips.

  “Poof.” His hands expanded in an explode-y motion. “Nothing left but blood and feathers.” He shook his head in mock-sadness. “So many feathers. Eventually, I moved on to humans. The risk was paramount, giving a mere human so much power, but I wanted to see my creation come to life. Again, more death with the humans. Less feathers, but more death.

  “Have you any idea the velocity of an exploding human body? It was ridiculously comical the first dozen times. As you can imagine, my humor quickly faded. The lowlifes and scum of your planet couldn’t contain my precious gift. Then your mommy called on me. It’s rare when a human filled with so much good, so much light, propositions the devil. I took one look inside her and thought why not? It was worth a shot.

  “In exchange for eradicating her sister’s cancer, Kayleigh took into her my gift, which she agreed to use as I commanded. Everything seemed fine, at first. My orb of energy passed into her. Her heart didn’t so much as skip a beat. Her body accepted it. So it seemed Mommy”—he glanced over at her headstone—“Kayleigh was the good I needed.

  “Time went by, and though your mother hadn’t died, two little rug rats had come along, and my gift remained within her, dormant. Or so I thought. Turns out it needed time to bloom inside her. To bring it to full-term, if you will.”

  I tried my best not to be sick.

  “Not long after I checked up on her, I started getting reports of a woman in small-town Arizona that was having… mental issues. They claimed she was seeing winged beings. Not exactly how I had planned my weapon to bloom, but there you have it.

  “But this story is dragging and we have so much ground to cover.” He sighed, his sounding nothing like the ones I’d come to expect from Kade. “Your mother, bound in some sick house.” He rolled his eyes. “Humans, am I right?” He looked past me to Kade for camaraderie. Obviously finding none, he continued on. “My gift grew stronger inside her while her mind grew weaker. It wasn’t something I had foreseen happening. But as long as she could still deliver, there was no need to screw the pooch, so to speak.

  “She went on like this for years, but soon, I wasn’t the only one getting reports. My team claimed there were angels spotted here, in your hometown. One in particular.” Another long, drawn-out sigh made him tip his head back. “I’ve been over this again, and again, and again. I should have just taken her to Hell. But your mother begged me to let her stay with you. You and your snot-nosed baby sister. She promised to behave better and hide the blooming power so that I could stay close t
o her and she could stay with you.

  “It didn’t take long for an angel to come. And kill her.” He stopped to shake his head, ending with his full attention on me. “One I believe you know.”

  “There’s no way any angel could have been responsible for my mom’s death,” I fired back in anger, tears blazing in my eyes.

  “But there is a way one could have been responsible.” His brows lifted expectedly, like he was giving me time to answer. When I didn’t, he growled and dropped his head back again. “You humans are so slow. Elyon. I know he’s been in contact with you. I have my spies. Elyon killed your mother. He made it look as if she drowned.”

  A bolt of shock pinged around inside my head until it left me hollow and wanting. Elyon was the only angel that could have killed Mom without Falling. And he could have gotten away with it if he was under orders and used his Sword of Honor. I recalled the passage in the angel bible, the only one where Elyon was mentioned. It had backed up everything Kade had said about him, and what Lucien had also just confirmed.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Kade. “Did you know about this?” My tears were gone, replaced by hate and anger.

  Kade shook his head. His wings were fully extended, the stars shining forward from them, casting too much shadow on his face.

  “Oh,” Lucien said. “So you believe me. Good, because it’s the truth. And dearest—”

  “Why would you tell me this?” I threw back at him.

  A hearty chuckle rolled up his throat. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  A chaotic pounding took up residence inside my head.

  “Don’t think too hard just yet, dearest,” Lucien said. “I haven’t gotten to the best part. When your mother died, my special gift transferred to you.” My stomach bottomed out. “It didn’t take the years it had for her to grow inside you. It just switched on, like a light. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”

  “No! How can that be?” Mom had gone through the same thing I had. The same exact torment. From seeing angels to mental hospitals. All of it. Except Mom had done it to herself. For Aunt Nora. After living through all of that, she wouldn’t have purposely transferred it to me.

  “My best guess is our deal was struck while you were just a little pinprick of a bun in her oven. Don’t you see? Fate has brought you to me.”

  “You’ve been following me everywhere. There’s no fate in that. Here on Earth, that’s called stalking. And if you knew all of this, why follow me? Why not just take what you wanted?”

  “Where’s the fun in that? I don’t get to traipse around on Earth very often, and after hearing the stories that Azriel told about you, oh, I had to see it for myself.”

  Azriel. I slipped my fingers into the sleeve of my jacket and below my sweater. Tentatively, I brushed over the three raised marks on the underside of my forearm. The demonic scar Azriel had given me when he visited my dreams. I swallowed, doubly sick.

  “I had to watch the madness inside you take over. Every single time, the look on your face was worth a thousand years of hunting for you. It was the most exhilarating hunt quite possibly of my career.

  “And of course, you weren’t ready. That’s why I didn’t take your mother. She had only managed the first step of three.” He held out his hands by his side, palms up, weighing them against each other like a scale. “You were able to see angels. She was able to see angels. She died before my gift progressed.” With no sympathy he dropped the hand resembling my mother and extended the hand representing me. “You have not only entered stage two, but these fantastic little wings”—he tried to reach over me to touch my wings, so I pulled my fingers from inside my sleeve and swatted his hand away. Unfazed, he continued—“link us. Have you noticed that they recognize me whenever I’m near? No matter what my form.” The idea made him smile so wide I could see almost all of his teeth. “They are… ingenious little creatures.”

  My heart rattled in my chest, almost too afraid to pump regularly. “And… the third phase?”

  “The third phase, my dear, is that blast you hit me with several weeks ago.”

  I knew immediately what he was talking about. The one in the alley.

  “I wanted to take you so badly every time I saw you after that, just remembering the force of that blast. It could have killed me if I wasn’t its creator,” he said through half-hysterical bursts of laughter. “I’m giddy just thinking about it. You don’t think you could conjure one up for me right now, do you?”

  The wildness of his blue eyes made me take a step back into Kade.

  “You look like a yokel. So I’ll take that as a no.” He gasped through another set of giggles that had him doubled over. “Well, that’s all right. We’ll be working on that, now that we’ve been reunited.”

  Kade’s fingers clamped around my waist, just above my hip. The touch, soft but firm, did so much to reassure me. I linked my fingers with his to let him know I was okay, that I was tamping down the pain of the emotional daggers Lucien had been throwing at my heart. I brushed my thumb over his, telling him, I’m still here. I’m with you.

  Without even thinking about it, I’d forgiven him. After listening to everything Lucien had to say, I knew Kade wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. Unless he didn’t have a choice, and Kade always had a choice. He’d followed me here. He didn’t have to do that. He wasn’t like Cam, bound to me through his job. Nothing about Kade was ordinary. I held tighter to him.

  “I think I’ve had enough fun.” Lucien wiped imaginary tears from his eyes and straightened up. “Shall we?”

  I released Kade’s hand and stood as tall as I could. “Shall we what?” My voice was the tip of a needle, small, but sharp.

  “Go. To Hell, my dear.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rayna

  Not this again.

  No way I would go anywhere with him. Then I considered the alternatives. Cam, who I didn’t know if I could still trust after that weirdness in his hotel room—even though I was ninety-nine percent sure that man was Lucien and not Cam, a small part of me still wondered. Or Elyon, the angel that might have killed my mother.

  Both options lacked sanity. And that was coming from someone formerly certifiable.

  My only real option was Kade.

  “You have a lot of mommy dearest’s pain to endure. She left me high and dry. So many times.” His face pulled tight, lips drawing in, anger burning his cheeks. “And like an idiot, because I had a soft spot for my creation, I let her. I’ve come to realize something in the years I’ve spent looking for a second option. It takes a lot of souls to create the gift I gave her, the one you now have. She spit on it. And then she dropped dead.”

  “She was murdered!”

  “Now you’re catching on. However…she still owes me. Since she’s not currently among the ranks in the nine circles—that’s down below, dear—I have the pleasure of taking her punishment out on you. We are going to have such fun! Now, come along, like a good little pet.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  My refusal was drowned out by Kade saying, “You’re not getting anywhere near her.” He dropped his hand from my waist. The illumination behind us brightened.

  “Is that so?” Lucien spoke over my shoulder. “Now, you… I’m sure it’s been a while. I still can’t place your name or your face.”

  “Kasade, you bastard.”

  “Kasade. Kasade. Kasade.” Lucien tapped his index finger on his chin, his eyes skyward. “Kasade. Kasade.” He gasped. “Oh, my. Isn’t this interesting? You Fell for her mother.” Excitement widened his eyes. “You lusted after my first pet before she was my pet. And now you’re… protecting her teenage daughter? Oh, that is twisted.”

  Lucien spun on Kade and in half a second he was beside us. “It’s been a while since you Fell, so you probably don’t remember my power. I’d sure love to use it on Earth one last time. Plus, Pet Number Two here hasn’t seen it. But you don’t have to, darling, if you come with me now.” He exte
nded his hand out to me, reminding me all too much of Azriel atop the Golden Gate bridge.

  I took a step back, right into Kade’s wing.

  “Tsk tsk. No running away.” The way he shook his head, trying to feign disappointment with an eager smile tearing at his face, made my legs shake.

  “I suppose I had to do this,” Lucien said with a smile. “Remember earlier when I said I was a shape changer? Well, my pet, I can be anyone.” He growled the last word and thrust his hand out.

  Streaks of red lightning bolted out of Kade like fiery whips, one line from each of his wings and one from his chest, straight into the sky. The jolt knocked me back and threw me to the ground. My shoulder bounced off a tall headstone, sending fresh spiderwebs of pain across my back. Lucien reached out to Kade with one hand. With his fingers extended, he eased his hand back. As if obeying him, the lightning arced down from the clouds and into his fingertips. The lightning now connecting him and Kade.

  Lucien and the air surrounding him began to move. No. As I watched, I saw that he stayed in the same place. He was vibrating so fast, so sharp, that everything around him blurred. His facial features and the tall length of his body fused into a sand-colored mass. My own wings rode high up on my back, the power around Lucien causing them to tremble. The dry taste of dirt invaded my tongue.

  Time slowed to a crawl, thinning the air, making it hard to breathe. Lucien’s form came into view again. The lightning from Kade snapped once, then cut off. The atmosphere still hummed with power, fueling my wings to keep flapping. Kade staggered, gripping Mom’s headstone to keep on his feet. He gasped, sucking in huge gulps of air. Lucien was gone, replaced by…

  The sight of him evaporated the air from my lungs. My father stood in front of me. Not Dad, I knew that, in my head. That didn’t stop my eyes from betraying me. Just another game. I fisted my hands beside me to stay alert. Lucien wanted me, badly enough to spend his time on Earth following me, driving me crazy. Badly enough to screw with my brain to get what he wanted.