by Lan Chan
He turned around slowly. It was just as well. It gave me time to brace myself against the horrifying beauty of him. It was a beauty humans were never meant to behold. We didn’t have the presence of mind to witness it. I had a feeling it was the same with Raphael and the other seraphim. The only difference was that Lucifer made no concessions in order to ease the humans around him.
“Alessia.”
I clamped my jaw shut lest the rage that was still burning in me escape. I’d learned that if I just let the visions ride, it would be less difficult on my senses. The seraph wasn’t going to be ignored today. He turned and took a step towards me. The blinding white-and-gold-trimmed robe he wore fluttered.
“Demon got your tongue?” he asked with an amused twist of his lips. I shut my eyes and thought of another beautiful yet daunting face.
Azrael, I called in my thoughts. Help?
There was no response.
“He would not brook himself to appear in this place of purgatory,” Lucifer said. Fantastic. He could read my thoughts just like the other seraphim. I projected images of my demon blade tearing into his chest. The attempt at turning the tables had him rumbling with laughter.
“We could be so much more,” he teased. “You weren’t meant for them. Come to me, release me from this prison, and I will give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
I highly doubted that. The number one thing on my wish list was for his timely death. He chuckled again. I willed myself to think of nothing.
“You can stop it, you know,” he said. He swept his hand over where the mangled body of the dingo lay. I ground my teeth as he pressed the tip of his boot against the column of the dingo’s throat. He grinned when my shoulders tightened. I was terrified that any more pressure would bleed the dingo dry. Lucifer shook his head.
“You were early,” he said. “The full ritual should have taken another ten minutes.” He nudged at the dingo’s hide. It made a low gasping sound as though it had been crying and this was all it was capable of now despite its terror. Unable to stand it, I tried to leap at the seraphim. He swatted me away with the back of his hand. I landed with a hard thud next to the dingo. It blinked, tears streaming from its eyes. I fisted my hands and slammed it against the metal platform. Rage bubbled inside me, heating up my well of power until it was boiling.
“Good,” Lucifer said. “You will need that anger.” He nodded at the dingo. “This is your fault. If you do not release me, I have no choice but to resort to cruder measures. Next time, it won’t be an animal.”
He waved his hands, and my mind filled with the cruel vision of the men setting up the ritual. They were gruff and vacant-eyed. I recognised the milky condition of their eyes. They were demon possessed. My chest constricted as they dragged the dingo from the cage they’d brought and made the first cuts. To open the kind of the circle they wanted, the men intended to drag out the dingo’s agony. It cried and whined as the knife the man used to nick its skin sank deep enough to draw blood but not enough to puncture an organ. They meant to feed the circle with its fear and pain.
“Come to me, Alessia.”
I snarled. Lucifer crossed his arms over his chest. “This world you protect is rotten. When they find out what you are, they will turn on you. Then you will understand.”
I understood all right. When I got my hands on him, I would stick him with my demon blade and unmake him. It was a fanciful thought. One of the many things I’d learned during my fevered research after meeting Lucifer in the cavern in the Fae forest was that killing a seraph would have near catastrophic consequences. They were made of celestial light. The fallen seraphim had given up some of that essence when they imbued the Nephilim with their bloodlines. Lucifer had not. It was very likely that if he were unmade, the resulting energy shift could destroy this dimension and those around it. I had this grand delusion that one of my circles might contain the destruction if by some miracle I could win a fight with him.
What he did now scoffed at that hope. He moved so quickly he was a blur. His fingers clamped around my throat. They didn’t constrict, but my heart was a drumbeat in my chest. His eyes looked into mine. I knew without a doubt that if he were physically present, he could end my life in a heartbeat. Technically, he was still in his cage being watched over by Uriel and Ariel. This was just a vision. One that was getting out of hand. I had told Jacqueline about the nightmares, but right now, I wasn’t asleep. The Morning Star’s power was growing. I had tried to tell the Council but they dismissed it as me trying to get attention. Next time, I would have to be more persuasive.
Heat erupted around the column of my throat. It burned the way firebreather chillies set the salamander’s breath on fire. A thousand hooks dug into my voice box. I struggled to take in air.
“You will not speak,” Lucifer said. “Nothing you say will make a difference.” He chanted a few lines in a forgotten language that muffled my hearing. It was like somebody had stuffed cotton wool in my ears. My eyes watered.
That’s when I spat on him. If I was going to die, I would do it as foolishly as I had lived.
“Soon,” he said.
Something tugged at my hand. “Blue?”
There was a moment of clarity in which Lucifer’s unearthly face twisted. I caught it as the world around me filled with colour once more. All of the sound came rushing back. The smells too. Including the metallic scent of blood all around me. I opened my eyes to find I was still holding on to the dingo’s paw.
“Hey,” Kai said, his arm around my back. I leaned into him, the cage of his body reassuring. “You’re okay.”
No, I wasn’t. I was shivering despite the heat. He wasn’t okay either. Though he tried his best to appear calm, I could feel the tension in every line of his body.
I tried to sit up, but my head was pounding. He touched his finger to my temple and my vision filled with green light. “No,” I said, trying to brace my shoulder against his chest. “The dingo…”
“Not until you’re okay.”
I thumped him in his stomach. Pain radiated up my wrist. Damn him and his stupid physicality. “I’m fine. Please?”
He blinked slowly. I tried to remember the last time I’d used that word with him. He was as shocked as I was. “Kai?”
“Give me a second to bask in it.”
“That’s not funny.”
The glimmer in his eye said it was. He reluctantly let me go to place his hands over the wounded torso of the dingo. I tried to get to my feet but couldn’t move my head around without a throb of pain.
I heard clicking on the metal platform. A shadow draped over me as the scent of sweet pea and cucumbers filled my nose. “Hi, Jacqueline.” I didn’t open my eyes. “Do I get hazard pay for this?”
A palm touched my temple. I would have opened my eyes, but the flare of Kai’s magic was too bright. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t take you off the guard roster,” Jacqueline said. “Do you think you can move?”
“Not really.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She must have made a gesture, because I heard boots thumping on the platform. “Leave her!” Kai barked. “I’ll take her.” His voice strained. If it took more of his celestial energy to heal a human, was it just as hard or harder to heal an animal? I swallowed, wondering if I was asking too much.
“She needs medical attention now,” Marshall’s voice said. My head lolled when he picked me up. He tsked when Kai made a disgruntled sound. I didn’t hear any more of his protests because Marshall must have teleported. The next thing I knew, the scent of freshly washed sheets and the sound of claws on linoleum filled my senses.
“Not again,” Doctor Thorne said.
“Don’t blame me! It was an ambush.”
“It’s always something, isn’t it?”
Marshall lay me down on the bed. I tried to open my eyes, but Doctor Thorne was already waving something in front of my nose. It smelled sweet, but it must have been a supernatural drug because a second later, I was out
cold.
3
In the midst of all the problems with the Soul Sisterhood, Doctor Thorne had taken it upon himself to brush up on human medical theory. “How’s it working out for you?” I asked as he held two thick, scaly fingers in front of my face to test my vision.
“Tedious,” he said. “You’re all so soft and...killable.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Everything I’m learning suggests you should all be dead already. To think you get sick from a cold. It’s ridiculous.”
I couldn’t help laughing. The movement hurt my side, but I dared not complain in case it proved his point. In between his ministrations, I was watching the senior campus entrance trials for the first-year students. There were no low-magic students in this batch. After last year’s debacle, Professor Eldridge had taken over the obstacles. They were much tamer than Kai’s idea of initiation.
“How’s your head?” Doctor Thorne asked. I paused the replay and set the mirror aside. “Getting there. I wasn’t out that long this time, was I?”
“Only twelve or so hours.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “How’s Astrid?”
He sighed. When he picked up the putrid mixture in the glass beside my bed and tried to make me grip it, I sat on my hands. “I can do this all day long,” he said. As a basilisk, he could go for days without sleep. I kicked out at the chair beside my bed.
“It’s disgusting!”
“We all have to do things we don’t enjoy.”
I took the glass. “That’s some bedside manner you have there.”
“That’s another thing. You humans expect to be coddled every time you hurt yourselves. Even when it’s your own fault.”
I pinched my nostrils closed and took a couple of slow, preparatory breaths. It didn’t make swallowing the concoction any more pleasant. The bitterness went halfway down my throat before it tried to come back up again. I sputtered. Doctor Thorne switched out the glass in my hand for water. I gulped it down like I was dying of thirst. That helped to push the substance down, but it did nothing to take away the taste of river sludge.
“As a hedge witch, I would think you’d be more accepting of these organic brews.”
“I might be a witch, but that doesn’t mean I want to drink sewage.”
“Now that’s not very nice. Peter made that concoction especially for you.”
I sniffed. “Remind me to send him a lump of coal as a thank-you present.”
He shot a puff of smoke from his nostrils and made a dry sound. I interpreted it as basilisk laughter. Then he turned around and fiddled with something on the side table. I let a couple of seconds tick by.
“So I’m guessing by the avoidance tactic that Astrid isn’t doing so well?”
His tail curled into a spiral. “I should wait for Jacqueline to tell you.”
Alarm spiked in my chest. “Why?”
“It strikes me as unfair that I am always the bearer of bad news.”
I tried to get off the bed. “Now hold on a second,” he said.
“Is she in Seraphina?”
“Yes.”
“So she’s alive?” I could feel my throat closing. He saw it too. Poor beside manner notwithstanding, he placed his hand on top of my head.
“There now. Don’t cry. Astrid is alive.”
I wasn’t sure when he’d managed to press the duress alarm because Jacqueline and Kai marched in a moment later. Sophie and Wanda trailed after. Sophie saw the look on my face and raced up to throw her arms around me. Doctor Thorne moved away to give us space.
I glanced up at the headmistress. “Astrid?”
The vein in Kai’s jaw jumped. “She’s stable but unconscious,” Jacqueline said. “Those humans dumped some kind of magic-infused toxic chemical substance on her. It burned her quite badly.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
Kai glanced at Sophie. “I’ve tried to heal her, but she’s not responding well. The chemicals are interfering with her ability to absorb celestial magic. Professor McKenna hasn’t been able to isolate the ingredients as yet. She thinks it might be demonic in origin. I’m hoping Sophie might be able to help me.”
That made a lot of sense. Sophie’s magic went beyond the usual kitchen witch stuff. Her alchemy, coupled with the fact that it was low magic, might make a difference. “Have you thought about running her through a decontamination shower?” I asked.
He frowned. “That might be a last resort. I don’t want to take her into human space unnecessarily.”
I nodded and then glanced at Wanda. “How are you?”
“Pissed,” she grit out. I knew the feeling.
“Are you well enough to see me in my office?” Jacqueline asked.
My head said yes. My legs contradicted me when I tried to get up. Kai caught me on the downward spiral. “I can still go.”
“Maybe when you’re better,” Jacqueline said.
“I’ll just be lying around here anyway. At least this way I’ll be doing something useful.”
They exchanged glances like I wasn’t even in the room. I stomped on Kai’s foot, but I don’t think he noticed. Finally, he sighed. I knew the teleport was coming, but it still didn’t prepare me for the sensation. My head was spinning when we landed inside Jacqueline’s office. I was practically swooning.
“So this is what it takes to get you to be quiet,” Kai said against my ear.
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
The stubble on his jaw grazed the shell of my ear. I shivered. “I must be a masochist,” he said. “I think I like it better when you’re not so quiet.”
I gripped his hand as we waited for the others to arrive. He seated me in the armchair in front of Jacqueline’s desk and crouched down beside me. “I’m not going to faint,” I said. My head was definitely spinning, though.
“Uh huh.”
“How’s the dingo?”
“It’s healing. I left it with Basil inside the Reserve. I don’t think Basil’s too happy about that.”
By contrast, I was thrilled.
“Thanks.”
The air between us became taut for a moment. With our schedules as they were, and his mysterious disappearances to Seraphina, we hardly got to see each other. The tension was shattered when the door opened and Jacqueline walked in with Marshall, Nora, Mani, and Professor Mortimer. Kai straightened and moved to stand behind me so that there was room for Nora to sit beside me.
She reached out and touched my arm. “How are you feeling?”
I made a so-so gesture at her. The pain in my head was slowly subsiding. It was the memory of Lucifer’s fingers around my throat that had me apprehensive.
When I opened my mouth to try and tell them of his appearance, my throat locked. I made a sound as though I was choking on my own spit. My tongue felt like it was swelling. Kai tapped me on the back lightly. Jacqueline pushed a glass of water in front of me. By now my eyes were watering. I hacked like I’d gotten debris down my windpipe. All the while my mind screamed at me to say something about Lucifer. It made no difference. Only when I stopped trying did my airways clear.
What had he done to me? I thought of him commanding me not to speak of him. Was that it? Had be put a curse on me? My skin turned cold at the notion. If he was strong enough while he was still bound to stop me from speaking, I didn’t even want to think about how he would be if he ever got out of containment.
Thinking I could somehow outsmart him, I reached for the paper and pen on Jacqueline’s desk only to find my hand cramping. My fingers locked into a fist. No matter how much I tried to force it to open, it remained curled up. Unaware of my alarming dilemma, Jacqueline spoke.
“I just got the report back from the guards. The humans weren’t just laymen. They were high-ranking military officials. The demon that possessed them was expelled when Lex broke the summoning circle.”
I could cut the unease with a blade. “Where are they now?” Marshall asked.
“We transported them
to the closest human hospital,” Jacqueline said. “We’ve had them under medical surveillance since the incident, but I’ve just gotten word that they’ve been declared medically unfit. They’ll be shipped to a psychiatric hospital tomorrow.”
Mani scratched at the back of his head. “If it’s helpful, we’ve been hearing all kinds of things about the rise in incidences of violence in the human world. Nothing connected to any of the missions we’ve recorded. The number of demon possessions is rising.”
I bit my tongue raw trying to alert them to the threat. It did no good. My spine went cold at the thought of facing an enemy that could incapacitate me with a single word. Azrael! I screamed in my mind. Once again there was no answer.
Jacqueline sighed. “This could all be a coincidence, but we don’t have the luxury of waiting to find out.” After a long pause, she pulled something out of the top drawer of her desk. “Hey!” I shouted when I saw it was the ripped-up pieces of the letter the Soul Sisterhood had sent me. “I threw that out!”
She knew that. She’d been there on Christmas Eve when I’d thrown it in the fire at Basil’s place and declared that I didn’t want to talk about it. Now here the letter was. I had seen part of it burn, but the letter in front of me was completely whole.
“I know you don’t want to do this,” Jacqueline said. “But if the Sisterhood are behind this attack it means they have recruited other human allies. They could be a bigger threat than we imagined. This new weapon of theirs coupled with their abilities could make things very difficult for us.”
“I’m not going to join them.” It was frustrating as hell to know who was really behind the attack and not be able to communicate it. But as I glanced at the faces around me, I knew this was possibly the best option for us. Giselle was being held in Seraphina, but whatever I’d done to her meant she hadn’t regained consciousness. I had no real idea how I’d bound Basil besides pure luck. And in the back of my mind, those crystal blue eyes in Lucifer’s inhumanly beautiful face haunted me. One day, he would come for me. I had no doubt about that. If he could find his way out of the abyss, he would try and get me.
