Infinite

by Erica Crouch

  “Nothing touches you,” he says.

  The garden catches fire around him, blue flames licking away the beautiful greenery. Birds scream out of the trees, wings ablaze. It smells like sulfur and ash.

  “Beautiful, strong Lilith. Perfect. Brilliant. But vulnerable.”

  “No.”

  Behind me, Adam has disappeared. Maybe he caught fire like the rest of Eden and his ashes have blown away on the wind that carries the scent of death.

  “Yes,” he says. “That rib of yours. It is a problem. Hamartia, your tragic flaw. ” He reaches out his thin, white fingers—they look so much like bone, even with his flesh still whole, still perfectly smooth—and runs his hands up my side. Prodding at the rib that belonged to Adam, he smiles. “Or is it fatal flaw? I can never quite remember.”

  I’m unmoving as his fingers whisper over my skin, gentle and unwelcome.

  “It only takes one weakness to fall. Will this be yours?” he asks, icy-blue eyes holding me captive.

  The fire around us dies, and we’re in a world of charcoal. Of soot and absolute blackness. I blink and shake him off, coming back to my senses. With a few deliberate steps back from him, I’m able to find my smile again. The smile that can cut a man in half, that can bend even the strongest of wills to my bidding.

  “You would know, Lucifer.”

  His white hair seems to glow in the darkness, his laugh echoing in the silence of this alien world. “I had ignored your childish behavior for a long time after you left Eden. Sadly, I was foolish enough to believe that you had changed. I should never have trusted you.”

  “No,” I say, “you shouldn’t have.”

  He shrugs casually, as if it doesn’t bother him. “I took your children with me in death, at least.”

  “The death of the Lilim led to your death. If you had let them live, I would have extended you the same courtesy.”

  “For how long?” he asks, moving closer again. He winks out of existence for a moment, only to reappear behind me, the breath of his words whispering over my bare shoulder. “Sit with the devil for too long…”

  I spin around, and he’s gone.

  From somewhere in the darkness, his voice comes to me.

  “…and the devil you become.”

  I jolt awake, sitting straight up in my bed, the sheets fluttering to the ground around me. Blankets are curled around my legs, evidence of my fitful sleep. Annoyed, I shake them off, rake my hands through my hair, and pull myself back together.

  Nightmares cannot unsettle me. I will not give them the power.

  But as I climb out of bed, pull another dress out of my wardrobe, I can’t help but catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Just over my right bottom rib blossoms a garden of bruises. Knot after knot of purple, yellow, and green swatches of pooled blood, little flowers left unpruned from my dream.

  Adam’s rib.

  I drop the dress to the ground and move closer to the mirror. Turning, I inspect the curve the bone takes under my skin and muscle. I follow the shape with my fingers, tracing it from my stomach and around to my back. My one weakness. The only part of myself I’ve never been able to strengthen.

  Lucifer’s warning rings in my head. “It only takes one weakness to fall. Will this be yours?”

  My jaw hurts from how hard I’m clenching it, furious with the part of me that still belongs to man. It needs to be gone. I will not let something so simple be my downfall.

  Lucifer’s big mistake was trusting me. Was letting me into his inner circle, allowing me to see his flaws, to find his secrets and then use them against him. He never should have let me near enough to kill him.

  His other great mistake was not thinking I wouldn’t do whatever necessary to grab power. No one ever believed I could be capable of such dirty tasks, but they always forget: I do not fight fair, and nothing—nothing—is unthinkable.

  On my nightstand waits my dagger, its long and slender blade tapering off to a needlelike point. A stiletto dagger, it’s named, and I’ve always found that charming. An unassuming, feminine blade can draw just as much blood as man’s gaudy and obvious broadsword. Men know nothing of subtlety.

  I grab the dagger and return to the mirror. Dragging the tip across my skin, I cut myself open, following the bend of my rib. My mouth clenched closed, I hiss through my teeth, breathing in the pain. The stinging delight of the thin laceration. I need to go deeper, so I press the dagger harder into myself.

  Blood drips to the floor, slides down my side, and spills to my feet. I live in the pain, embrace the sensation as I finish the cut, and then drop the dagger. It splashes in my blood, and I step closer to the mirror.

  Now’s the hard part. I slide my fingers in through the cut, my skin pulled back as I feel around for my rib. It’s the muscle that causes me the most agony to push away, but I use my fingernails to detach it from the bone. A gasp escapes me, and I bite my lip, holding any other noises back.

  I’m better than this. I’ve known pain worse. This is just the beginning.

  Whatever it takes to be strong. Root out the weakness.

  When I’m able to get my finger hooked on the curvature of the bone, I slide more of my fingers into the cut I made. Grasping it firmly in my fist, I test its pliability. It’s slightly more flexible than my other bones—rubbery, almost, with cartilage—but that shouldn’t be a problem.

  One quick movement and I hear the snap. Blackness takes my vision over before it ebbs away.

  Breathe in the pain. Live in it. Accept it.

  I start laughing, tears sliding down my cheeks and falling to the ground to water down my blood.

  I don’t stop laughing as I lean a little to the side and pull out the long, bowed bone of the rib. The jagged ends of the bone scrape against my skin on the way out. It hurts like Hell. I love it.

  Inspecting the bone in my bloody fist, I curse Lucifer again. For not having believed I have what it takes to survive; for not having known that I will always do whatever is necessary to get what I want. No cost is too high, no pain insufferable.

  I throw the rib—the last of my weaknesses—to the ground and return to my wardrobe. I pick out a dress, step into it, and leave my room.

  The blood and the bone wait next to my bed.

  As expected, I find Gus in the throne room. He’s taken to spending all hours of every day in here. Surrounded by books and fates and the thick, rotting smell of Lucifer’s corpse. I guess that’s stopped bothering him now, because he doesn’t ask me anymore if we can get rid of the body.

  Sometimes, when I come in, I hear him talking to himself. Maybe he’s losing it and he thinks he’s having conversations with Lucifer, conferring about what the fates mean, what the best way to translate them is. Usually, though, it sounds like he’s just thinking out loud. Like his head is too full of other things to puzzle everything out internally, so he has to work on the problem outside of his head.

  The heavy throne room doors crash closed behind me, but he doesn’t look up. I cross the room and climb back into the throne. I’m growing used to the way the gold feels against my skin. What was once stiff and uncomfortable now feels soft and pliable. But this will not be my throne. That one waits for me back in Hell. I look much better in black anyway.

  “There’s a portal,” Gus says. He either has realized I’m in the room or is speaking to himself again.

  “From where to where?”

  His head snaps up, his eyes wild and foggy. “Lilith.”

  “Gus,” I say on a sigh. “Where’s the portal, and where does it lead to?”

  “It’s—” His mouth falls open when he catches the bit of fabric that’s sticking against my side, the wetness of my blood seeping through the silk. More blood is drying on my one leg, streaks of rusty scarlet against porcelain. I can take away man’s rib, but I’ll never be free of his blood. “What happened?”

  “I got rid of a weakness.”

  He tilts his head, following the blood back up my leg to my side. His eyebrows draw
together, low over his shadowed eyes. He gets so easily distracted.

  “I broke off Adam’s rib,” I say. “It was bothering me. I’ll heal fast enough.”

  “You…” He clumsily gets to his feet. “You ripped out one of your ribs?”

  “I have eleven more.”

  His distractedness is starting to irk me.

  “Now about the portal,” I say sharply, gesturing at his books. “Where is it, and where does it lead to?”

  It takes him a few more seconds of gaping at me before he finally concedes and returns to his work. He noisily drops to the ground and pulls a piece of parchment closer to him. It looks like a map, but the lines on it keep changing. Like the world is moving, rearranging itself.

  “Hard to say, exactly,” he says. With his pinky finger, he draws small circles around three points. “There are a few open right now. Lucifer attempted to seal them after we took Heaven. For obvious reasons.”

  Didn’t want to make it too simple for the angels to come storming home and evict him.

  “But for every door he closed…”

  I laugh. “God opened a window?”

  Gus looks back up at me. “More or less.”

  “Incredible,” I say, shaking my head and sinking down on the throne.

  “Anyway, they lead back to Heaven. The angels must always have a way home. But knowing exactly where they are open is difficult. At least, for us, it is.”

  “Us, as in demons?”

  He chews on his cheek and nods. “And fallen angels. Anyone dark enough to belong to Hell. It’s the angels’ way home. Only those with pure hearts are able to locate them.”

  Which begs the question: Which angels still have pure hearts? Are there any who exist after all of these years?

  “My concern,” he says, “is that the group Pen has joined, New Genesis, may have found one.”

  “And what brings you to that conclusion?” I ask, bored.

  I’m only half paying attention to him, as Jeremy’s blabbering on in my head about Azael and the rest of them leaving London. They think have a track on Pen’s group, and they believe they found where the compound is located. I’m not interested until he stops using words like think or believe and starts using words like know and certain.

  Gus taps a pen, and then his fingers, on the parchment. It crinkles under him, and he spreads it out wide again. “Right now, it’s just a feeling. A suggestion from how the fates are reading. But it makes sense. Their motive for this rebellion is to shore up Heaven’s morals. In a more modern way, sure, but still. Their intentions are good.”

  “The road to Hell…”

  “And if they’re accepting of both Heaven’s angels and those belonging to Hell, then their hearts know forgiveness. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their hearts are pure, but it’s suggestive of it.” His fingers find the curls of his hair, and he tugs on them, frustrated. “It depends on how Heaven interprets purity now. Without the angels’ interference.”

  “What are the fates saying?”

  He shuffles some papers, folds the disorienting map, and pulls some more books closer to him. Three books, and he opens them all.

  “Heaven will be overrun with angels,” he says.

  That brings me back to caring about this conversation.

  Dragging his hand over his rough chin, he shakes his head. “Fates are not calendars. What I see isn’t time-stamped and dated.”

  His sarcasm makes me picture the different ways I could disembowel him. I would turn him inside out and keep him alive the whole time. Maybe I’ll cut him open with the broken-off rib that’s back in my room. My new weapon.

  Before I get a chance to snap at him, he rushes forward, explaining. “It’s why I assumed that those in New Genesis have access to a portal. Or may come across one soon. The fates show angels, plural—and a lot of them. If it were just a small incursion, I’d assume it was a lone angel. A small group of those who had fallen, regrouping and trying to come back, not knowing where things stood.”

  “But it’s more than that.”

  “Much more,” he says. “And as they flood back into Heaven, there are others with them. It suggests—and again, this is up to interpretation, so I’m not sure how accurate the reading is—”

  “Enough with the warning label, Gus. Get on with it.”

  “When the angels return to Heaven, a battle breaks out. The symbol that represents a doorway—the one I take as the portal—is buried in the center of a line of fate that suggests fighting and bloodshed. Before and after. Fighting, a doorway opening, and more fighting.”

  “They’re bringing the war back to Heaven,” I say, and my side pinches with pain. The skin has yet to start stitching itself together. Maybe it won’t heal on its own and I’ll have to sew myself up. Or get someone else to do it for me. Gus doesn’t seem like he’d be very good with a needle.

  “That is how I am reading it.”

  I sit back in the throne, my fingers prodding the wound at my side as I think. My plan has never been to stay in Heaven. I don’t belong here, and I much prefer the view from below. There’s easier access to Earth. And dragging souls down is much simpler than carrying them up and piercing the veil that separates the worlds.

  The only thing that has been holding me back from immediately returning to Hell is Azael. I want to know where he stands and what he accomplishes before I show my hand.

  Word of my advancement to the throne is already circulating. Those who are important know, and they are spreading the news that Hell serves a queen. That their Dark Lord goes by the name of Lilith and she should be both feared and worshipped.

  The moment I return to Hell, the grip we have on Earth will loosen. The world will start to thaw out, and Azael will know what’s happened. Or he could guess at it, at least. I don’t want him coming at me before I’m ready to defend myself, my title, if that’s what it comes to. I’d much prefer to have him cornered, to have him unable to fight back.

  If the war between him and his sister spills into Heaven, perhaps I’ll get a chance then to take my leave. He’ll be too preoccupied with fighting Pen to come after me, and I can build up my resistance in Hell, if ever that time comes that we should face off against one another. Pen may very well help me if she ends up killing him herself.

  I will wait a little bit longer. The great, bloody battle Gus’s texts keep referencing cannot be too far off, and if that is when the angels will bring their fight to Heaven, then that will be the perfect time for me to return to Hell.

  My pride is not so great that I will refuse to retreat.

  This, I think, is where Lucifer and I are the most opposing in thought. I know when advancing is unwise, and I’m patient enough to pull back and wait it out in Hell for a more advantageous environment.

  Lucifer was hotheaded and bent on revenge, driven to recklessness by it. He couldn’t sever the emotion, and his plans were drenched in bias.

  I’ll tear myself apart from such a personal investment. It’s the wise rulers who survive, who lead their followers to greatness. To victory.

  If it means I’ll one day hold the world in my hand, that there will be a time when every living thing scrapes a knee bowing to me, then I will wait. I am in no rush.

  Azael

  I DON’T KEEP TRACK OF how far we fly. My mind is focused on one scene, replaying it until it consumes me. It’s all I hear, all I see. The blood. Her blood, and his. How I’ll spill it, how my enemy will look drained of their life. Picturing the way my sword will slice my sister in half, silencing her judgment—her lies—forever, sends a buzz of electricity through my fingertips. I will tear Michael and Pen apart.

  They will be unrecognizable by the time my wrath is anything close to satisfied.

  I’ve never been hungrier for blood than I am now, and I never would have guessed that my sister could elicit such hate in me. After everything we’ve been through, after everything we’ve done and seen together… It all melts away after her betrayal.

 
When I promised her the world, she spit in my face. She threw my offer on the ground and stomped on it with her childish feet because, suddenly, she thinks she’s grown a conscience. She has finally told herself enough lies that she believes they’re the truth now. How blind she is.

  Pen is gone. Everything valuable about her has already died; it’s only natural that her body should now be dealt with and disposed of. It’s only a shell of who she was.

  It’s a mercy killing, really. Everything she believed, everything she stood for, has disappeared. And she destroyed it all for some angel. She couldn’t have hurt me more if she had stabbed me in my back. In fact, I would have respected her more if she had done just that. But this? This militia of mixed soldiers from Heaven and Hell who are convinced they’re fighting for something that Pen took a great stand against when she sided with an archangel over her brother—the future King of Hell? It’s thoughtless.

  Pen tripped into a revolution, and now, she thinks she’s capable of leading it. She’s nowhere close to being qualified. Not for the change New Genesis is fighting for. Do they know how many lives she’s taken, how much blood she’s spilled?

  I’m half aware of the land we’re flying over. There are beaches, there are mountains, there are plains filled with snow. There are streets that have fallen in, cities that smoke with no apparent fire, barbed-wire fences erected around cold, square buildings with military tanks lining the perimeter. As if the government thinks they could truly protect their people should we decide to redirect our aggression away from the angels. Humans have no idea how lucky they are we’re ignoring them. For now.

  Maybe that’ll be the next step. Once Pen and Michael are taken care of, Lucifer will scrub this world clean of all the filth. He never liked man, and he showed no pause in exterminating all of Lilith’s children. The Lilim were half human, and now, they’re all but eradicated from history. Only Lilith and I will carry on their story, and it’s not one I’m particularly interested in sharing. No one will even remember them in a few years.

  That could be man, if Lucifer decides so. Or maybe he’d think a total holocaust would be a waste of potential resources. Laborers, soldiers… We could use them should the angels ever decide they want to win their throne back. If the angels ever actually organize, an army of their precious humans standing as a wall in front of them would be quite useful.