by Stone, Leia
“Have Noah or Raph worked on this?” I asked, forcing him back to the table to sit.
He waved me off as he took a seat. “There were too many injured. I figured I would work on it when I got home. Or have my wifey do it for me.”
I grinned. I was so stupid in love with this man that when he called me “wifey", my knees went weak. “Your wifey will work on it if you do her a favor.” The caramel light ignited the second I called forth my healing powers, letting it leak from my palms, and drip onto his wound.
“Hey, isn’t that blackmail or something?” Lincoln raised an eyebrow.
Shaking my head, I chuckled. “My pathetic little summer class isn’t so pathetic anymore, but I only have four more weeks to prep them for the gauntlet.”
Lincoln nodded. “And you want my help. Of course.”
I recoiled a bit. “Not exactly. Shea and I got this, but I need access to a demon. It can be something low-grade though, like a Yew demon or a Snakeroot.”
Lincoln raised an eyebrow. “I can’t bring a demon on campus. It’ll set off the alarm.”
“I’ve thought about that.” I nodded. “We could go to the apartment parking lot, where my mom lives. Raphael spelled it to be safe from Lucy’s eye, but there’s no alarm.”
I’d been over to my mom’s a handful of times with Lincoln for dinner, so I knew he was okay with me going there.
Lincoln was silent a moment, staring at the table salt like it might sprout wings and fly.
“Come on, please? I want them to pass, and they can’t do that by sparing with each other. They need to fight the real thing,” I pressed him. Overprotective didn’t cover what Lincoln was; he was the next-level shit, and I knew this was asking a lot of him. Even a lower-level demon being in my presence would set him on edge. The fact that I could kill them with one hand tied behind my back, wouldn’t matter to him in the slightest.
“I’ll clear it with Michael,” Lincoln answered, sighing resignedly.
I squealed, leaning forward and placing a kiss on his cheek.
“But.” He stopped and caught my gaze. “I want you to speak to someone about the panic attacks.”
Dammit. He’d trapped me. The panic attacks were random, and I didn’t think they were a big deal, but I also trusted Lincoln and that he wanted what was best for me.
“Fine,” I growled. I wasn’t really sure there was a shrink on Earth who would know what the hell I was dealing with, but it was worth a shot.
“Tell me about the war.” I continued to heal his shoulder, letting the golden light wrap around his arm, bringing healing where it was most needed. I felt so helpless here inside the safety of Angel City, while my friends were doing shifts in the war zones, pushing the demons back to keep us all safe.
Lincoln sighed, pushing his fingers through his hair, which had started to grow back out. Instead of speaking, he pulled me into his lap and rested his face on my back. I shifted my position so I could still heal his shoulder.
“Come on, Linc, I’m not fragile. Tell me what’s going on out there, or Luke and Chloe will.” Luke and Chloe had been assigned to Lincoln’s team, and Shea was working directly with Archangel Michael—when she wasn’t helping me train my summer class. My friends would spill the beans eventually.
“It’s bad,” he spoke against my back, his breath tickling my spine. “Every week there seems to be a hundred more demons. I don’t know how he’s making them so fast, but we won’t last at this rate.”
My heart hammered inside my chest at his words. Had things really become so dire in the past month? I’d heard they closed the border to and from Demon City. You now needed special security clearance to get through, and even then, it was only at certain times of the day that they opened it. How the hell was Lucy creating a hundred new demons a week? Probably with magic, that bastard. He was trying to overtake Angel City, weaken our defenses, and then what? Would we fall? Would we flee? Would we—
I shook my head against the defeating thoughts. “What do the archangels say? What are we going to do about it?” Perk of being married to a captain was that I got all the good high-level clearance gossip.
Lincoln shifted me to face him, wincing when he tried to use his bad arm. “They’re thinking of putting out a call to the sister schools, pulling in everyone who’s willing and able to fight.” His eyes held worry, but there was also something else darkening there, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on right then.
Wow. Putting out a call to the sister schools meant things were bad. Or on the verge of being bad, at least. A realization hit me then. Los Angeles was the only large city left standing. If we fell, the demons would rule the world.
“Linc, we have to stop them. Stop him.” Lucifer was cranking out demons on a factory line, and it took us four years to train a hundred Fallen Army soldiers. The math would never add up in our favor.
Lincoln peppered my shoulder with kisses. “No one knows what to do. We’re all surviving day to day out there. The archangels are having a meeting tomorrow with all the captains. I’ll try to help come up with—”
“I want to be there!” The words flew from my mouth before he even finished.
Lincoln gave me a look that said, ‘You are not a captain in the Fallen Army.’
“I’m going,” I declared. “I saw Lucifer create those things. I know his process. I can be of value,” I urged.
With a resigned sigh, he nodded. I could sense that he was torn between my safety and the safety of this city, but in reality, if one fell, the other wouldn’t survive.
I needed to kill Lucifer. Like yesterday. It was my destiny.
I knew that now. There was no other way around it.
* * *
The night passed torturously slow, with each toss and turn, leaving me restless, and then I had to leave early the next morning for my training with Emberly. I’d had to move our session to eight, in order to be able to make the nine o’clock archangel meeting with Lincoln and the captains after, which didn’t make me any happier about what I was about to endure.
“Hey, girl. It’s early as hell. I should up your price,” Emberly called out as I walked into our training gym.
A grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. I loved this chick, and she’d fast become like a little sister to me. “No way, you’ll bankrupt me. What does a fifteen-year-old need with four hundred a month, anyway?”
The teenager cocked a hand on her hip, giving me a playful scowl. Her hair was in a messy top knot, and she wore baggy sweats and a loose T-shirt. She’d literally rolled out of bed and come here.
“I’ll be sixteen in a month, and I’m saving for an old Mustang. My dad’s going to help me restore it.”
A pang of jealousy pinched my heart for the slightest moment, before it turned into happiness for Emberly. I missed my dad, missed working on projects with him. I’d never have that again.
“Won’t he buy one for you?” The archangels were rich. The heavy taxes the Angel City citizens paid all went into their banks to use for the war, of course, but I was sure they took some type of salary.
“Hah!” she barked. “Any extra money we have goes to buying slaves from San Francisco. If I want a car, I need to buy it myself.”
The situation with San Francisco wasn’t right. It made me sick to think about it. And of course, Michael put all his extra money there; he was an angel, after all, not tempted by mortal materialism, I guessed. I should have known.
“Well, I’m glad my hard-earned money is going into getting you a car. Just promise me a ride when it’s up and running.”
Emberly grinned. “You got it.”
I was about to get into my training stance when she spoke again.
“Oh, and your mom is so cool. Man, that apple crumble thingy she cooks is yum.”
The color drained from my face as I processed her words. “What? When did you meet my mom?”
Emberly hesitated, the look on her face said maybe she wasn’t sure she should have told me anything.
“Emberly.”
“Raph has been bringing her to weekly dinners to our house.” She chewed a nail. “I thought you knew.”
What the hell did she just say?
“Like, as friends?” Why wouldn’t my mom tell me about that? Or Raphael? Oh my God, are they… dating? A warm feeling spread throughout my limbs at the thought. I loved Raph, so that might be kind of awesome, but also very weird.
“Umm, I dunno. They look friendly… when they’re holding hands and stuff.”
“Holding hands!” I jumped into the air to release the energy building in my body. “For how long?”
Emberly busted up laughing. “Dude, you’re totally freaking out over this. What’s the big deal? It’s been like maybe three weeks.”
Three weeks! What was the big deal? I didn’t know. My father had been gone almost ten years now, and obviously I wanted my mom to be happy, but… it was Raph. I just couldn’t see them together romantically. It was too weird.
Emberly checked her phone. “Didn’t you drag me out of bed at the ass crack of dawn because you were on a time crunch?”
Oh shit!
Shaking my head, to clear it of all thoughts of my mom and Raphael, I nodded. “You’re right. Okay, so I’ve been working on this shield thingy.”
Emberly raised an eyebrow. “Shield thingy?”
I nodded. I’d done some weird-ass magic juju in San Francisco when the Succubus came at Lincoln and me, shooting out some kind of plasma that cemented the demons in place. I’d also erected a shield when the men in the tunnel were shooting at Noah and me, so I’d been working to sort of combine the two. The idea was to create a thin plasma-type dome over myself, to protect me from a physical attack, but I needed to know if it would guard me from thought intrusion too.
“Step back,” I warned her.
She took two steps away, looking impressed. “Let’s see what you got.”
I could tell she was having a good day, her wings seemed relaxed, as though they weren’t bothering her as much, and she wasn’t wearing what I now recognized as her “pain face”.
Nodding, I took a deep, focusing breath, before calling up my magic. Lincoln had taught me not to think of it as Celestial magic or dark magic, or Michael/Raphael magic, and all of that separately. Instead, I should just think of it as my magic. That had been a key turning point in my training. I called forth the silvery mixture of all of my inherited abilities. Yes, I had Lucifer’s powers inside of me, there was no doubt about that, but I also had the power of four archangels running through my veins.
It was time I found a way to put it all to good use.
“Whoa,” Emberly gasped, when the pearlescent mist flowed from my palms and started to surround me.
I beamed. I’d been practicing in the trailer for hours each day, but it was still nice to see it working. Lincoln had thrown an apple at my shield last week to test it, and it bounced right off the shield, falling to the floor. However, we still weren’t sure about the mind control thing. It hadn’t been ready to test until now.
“It’s totally like a little bubble!” Emberly started to walk around me as the shield erected itself, thin enough that I could see and hear what was going on outside of it, but thick enough that it was visible.
“Touch it,” I urged her.
Without hesitation she reached out and flicked it, then popped her mouth open in surprise. “It’s solid. That’s legit!”
A grin pulled at my lips. “Now, try to make me do something.”
My almost-sixteen-year-old mentor nodded, standing before me. “All right.”
Suddenly, I felt my right arm moving against my will, toward my face. It was slow, like it was moving through quicksand, but moving, nonetheless.
“No!” I cried out, as it eventually came up to smack my forehead.
“I’m sorry, girl. I totally thought that would work,” Emberly shared. “Didn’t you, Dad?”
I gasped and spun to follow her line of sight. My shield popped.
Michael was standing in the doorway, looking like a freaking Adonis with low-slung jeans and a silver armor chest plate. I shook my head to force my thoughts away from where they were going. I loved Lincoln, but damn, Michael was nice to look at and drool over.
“Sorry, I didn’t want to break your concentration. Nice shield. It’ll serve you well in battle against physical forces, but not mental ones.” His voice boomed as if it were everywhere at once, yet he held no microphone.
“Oh, bummer.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. Michael and I had worked together before—he’d taught me how to call Sera to me from across the room—but I still felt super self-conscious in his presence.
“I would offer to train you, Brielle, but as an angel, I’m forbidden to use my mind control over humans, celestials included, even to practice,” he confessed.
I’d kind of been wondering why he hadn’t offered. That made sense.
“But Emberly can?” I asked.
Emberly shrugged beside me. “I can do anything because I’m half human.”
Michael gave his daughter a pointed look. “You can, but I hope you’ll always make the best moral decision.”
Emberly just gave him a little eye roll.
“I can still advise you,” Michael looked at me. “And I have some time before the meeting, so I thought I would offer my two cents.”
Yes! I needed all the advice I could get.
I nodded enthusiastically.
Michael approached us and Emberly crossed her arms, cocking one eyebrow at her father as if annoyed that he was jumping in on her job.
“Brielle, I imagine it took a lot of mental fortitude to get through your time in Hell,” Michael sympathized.
I tried not to remember those mornings where Raksha fed me drugged oatmeal, and I was wheeled around the place like a zombie. Left to think that everyone had given up on me, and taken me for dead.
“It did.” My voice cracked.
Michael’s gaze filled with compassion. “That mental fortitude is what can make your mind impenetrable to outside commands. It’s the resilience you have from surviving the loss of your father, watching your mother become a demon slave, and then becoming one yourself. Most people wouldn’t fare so well, my dear. Their spirits would have broken long ago, leaving them cynical about the world. Your heart is still soft toward love, and you have a generally positive outlook on life. That’s what you need to use in order to fight the mental commands from Lucifer. It’s something a human could do.”
Shock ripped through me at his declaration that a human could do this. I’d been trying for weeks! I didn’t know at what point the tears started to fall down my face, but it must have been a while, because Emberly slipped her hand into mine and squeezed. What he’d said was basically a mini review of how hard my life had been, and the emotion overwhelmed me.
“Geez, Dad. Did you have to be so hardcore?” Emberly glared at her father.
Michael lifted both hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, just trying to help. I want Brielle to know she’s had this ability inside of her all along.”
Giving Emberly’s hand a squeeze before releasing it, I wiped away my tears. “How? How do I withstand the mental commands?”
A pensive look entered Michael's eyes and he nodded, starting to walk in a circle around us both. “Let go of the Fear. It’s like candy to Lucifer. It weakens the mind, and allows mental commands to flow right in.”
My brows gathered in a deep frown. “Fear itself? Or of Lucy?”
My feminine nickname for the Devil, made Emberly grin.
Michael shook his head. “Of anything. Him, dying, cancer, the dark, losing a loved one, not getting a job, not having enough money. Being scared creates an energetic cord into your soul, and it’s like a vacuum, sucking the energy out of your body and giving it away. Lucifer hooks into those ‘vacuums’ and gets control of people.”
Holy shit!
“That’s freaky.” Emberly hugged her chest.
&n
bsp; Michael nodded. “It can be intimidating, but if you work on those emotions and realize that you have more control over your life than you think, you can eliminate fear.”
Emberly’s expression said she wasn’t buying it. “Obviously I’m not afraid of death. But public embarrassment? Succubus demon coming at me in my sleep? Not getting asked to prom? That’s terrifying.”
Her father chuckled. “Fleeting worries are normal, but being frightened about a Succubus demon coming for you in your sleep, on a nightly basis, creates a perfect energy vacuum.”
I swallowed hard. There was so much I was terrified of—getting cancer like my dad, losing my mom, Lincoln, or Shea in this war, not being able to live up to the prophecy and defeat Lucifer. Hell, I was even anxious of this training with Emberly not working, and that Lucifer would control my mind again! But I wasn’t actually scared of the Prince of Darkness himself. At first, I was. I was downright terrified, if I was being honest, but spending time with him down there, had humanized him to me.
I hated him, yes, but did I fear him? Not really.
A grin swept across Michael’s lips, and I knew he was reading my thoughts. “Brielle, you have been placed in a unique situation, and therefore, you have unique fears, but Lucifer isn’t one of them. That’s your greatest asset against him. Now, work on calming your other anxieties, and no one can control your mind.”
A chill worked up my arms. “How?”
Michael stepped closer to me, and the brightness he normally dimmed in my presence intensified, causing me to squint. Reaching out, he cupped both sides of my face with glowing blue hands. The moment his palms touched my skin, a pure feeling of love and exhilaration swept through my entire body. Ideas started to flash through my mind, bringing with them information, and clear knowing. Nobody really died; we all went into the afterlife, so fearing death of yourself or a loved one was pointless.
We were all reunited in the end.
Dreading things happening in life was pointless too, because it only served to weaken your body and mind, actually attracting what you didn’t want to happen, on an energetic level. Being terrified of a Succubus demon on a nightly basis, increased the likelihood of a Succubus attack.
