by Kate Martin
With a grand sweeping gesture, and a breath filled with the joy of rebirth, Lillianna admired herself then looked down at the creatures who had tried to stop her. “What do you think? Worth all our efforts? Admire me now, for as soon as I secure my place, my first action will be to destroy you all.” She gazed upon Olin with more venom than anyone else. “Watch now, as the final soul completes my ascension.” Three hands reached out towards where the crying infant, the last of her victims, lay on the grass.
Alec willed himself to look away, but could not.
That whip of lightning appeared in Lillianna’s hands once more, blue and vibrant.
“Too late.” The voice was a mockery of the demon’s and carried the unsteady sound of someone old and tired. Dorothea stood on stiffened joints, head held high as she faced down the demon god. She dragged a blade across her wrist, spilling blood like from a cup, pouring it onto her completed spell. The labrynth came to life. The ninth point of the star broke, shattered like glass. The lines beneath the infant went dark, and its cries subsided.
The power at Lillianna’s hands died. The fire beneath her extinguished in a burst of smoke, the hellions and others as of yet unborn creatures dissolving into the tendrils of fading embers. Lillianna dropped from the air, landing on her feet unsteadily. The new arms and other features vanished, leaving her eclipsed and clawed in her true form.
For a long while, no one moved. No one breathed. Then Lillianna coughed, black blood spraying from her mouth, and collapsed, hitting the ground as though she were made of the onyx she resembled. Blood continued to pour from her lips, and from the gaping hole in her chest where Olin had thrust his hand. The grass and dirt beneath her sizzled, soaking up the blood even as it was destroyed by it. The shriveling began at her fingertips and toes, just as it had with the humans she had killed. She dried up, her skin turning wrinkled and brittle. As the transformation reached her face she struggled, twitched, then finally went still.
No one moved. The breeze shuffled by them, but called none of them to action.
Tassos was the first to move. He treaded towards Lillianna cautiously, alert and ready. With that same caution, he stood over her, waiting for a sign of life. Nothing. He reached down into her chest, and that blue light Alec had seen him use on Bri formed where the reaper touched. When he pulled away, he withdrew more light and released it at his side. Alec thought it looked like Tassos could see much more, but it wasn’t the time for such questions. Reapers extracted only one thing—souls. Lillianna’s last remaining source of power was gone. She crumbled then, flaking away bit by bit, until nothing remained but a pile of black ash.
The dome above them disappeared, and the sounds of the infuriated and wounded seraph army reverberated. They did not rush in, though. They stood in shock.
Carma, however, went to Olin. “What was that?”
He stood, brushing himself off as though he had gotten caught in the dust of a passing carriage. “What was what, my dear one?”
“You betrayed Lillianna.”
“It cannot be betrayal when I am faithful only to myself.”
“Why? What are you up to?” she demanded.
“My dear, it seems, at least for tonight, that our goals were the same.”
“You let her ascend first. You could have let me kill her earlier.”
Placing a hand on each of her shoulders, Olin kissed her softly. “Carma, what would have been the fun in that? Weren’t you curious?”
She did not move away from him. “About what?”
“About whether or not it could truly be done.” He kissed her cheek while she stood in shock, then released her. “I am going to collect what’s mine. I suggest you do the same.” The darkness wrapped around him until he was gone.
— CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE —
When Kai wrapped his arms around Bri, hugging him so tightly it seemed they might actually become one being, Bri wanted to cry. Cry for what Kai offered him—peace, and family. Cry for everything he would never be able to have, because his brother was mad. Yet he let the embrace linger, pretending for just a moment that everything was normal.
“You’ll see,” Kai said. “You’ll see just how good everything can be. I already came up with spells that will start the process. It will take more time for me to figure out how to join our powers completely, but with you with me, it will be far easier. Here.” He stepped back, holding out one hand. “Give me your arm. I can place the first labrynths on us now, and then we’ll get out of here.”
Bri stared at his brother’s scarred and blood-caked hand, seeing not the terror in what his brother could do, but the promises of a life Bri had never dared to dream of.
“No.” The word was little more than a whisper.
Kai’s brows drew together. “No?”
Tearing his gaze from that hand, Bri looked his twin straight in the eyes. “No. I won’t do it, Kai. Your plans and mine are too different.”
“That can change! You just don’t understand. I’ll make you understand.”
“Why can’t you understand me, instead? Listen to me?”
Kai stabbed Bri in the chest with a finger. “You sold your soul to a demon.”
“You scribe for one! I don’t see much of a difference.”
Kai took a single step back. “There is a huge difference.”
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t have sold Lillianna your soul if that’s what she had asked for? If you wouldn’t be useless to her without it? The only reason she didn’t deal with you is because you’re a witch.”
Anger flared behind Kai’s silver-brown eyes. “That’s right, I am a witch. And that gives me the advantage over more than just demons.”
“It makes you nothing more than a tool everyone else wants to use for their own selfish reasons.”
“You don’t know the first thing about being a witch, Bri.”
“Don’t I?” Bri dared to advance on his brother, to stand his ground. “You’ve certainly showed me enough, and Dorothea has been littering my life with that awful blood magic since I was thirteen.”
Bandaged arms folded over his chest, Kai did not back down. “That doesn’t make you an expert.”
“Then why do you think you know so much about my powers? Until the autumn, you had never seen the myst before in your life. I, at least, had seen labrynths before.”
“You just continue to illustrate your ignorance, brother.” Kai turned, flicking a gesture over his shoulder. “Go ahead, lift my shirt. Take a good look.”
They had traded enough stories of their pasts for Bri to have an idea of what he would see there. “I don’t want to see your scars, Kai.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, teeth bared. “Not the whip marks and the smaller cuts, but the oldest of them. They’re also the thickest, hard to miss. So look!”
Provoking him further seemed foolish. Besides, the sheer agony in his twin’s eyes tore at Bri’s heart, and it was that desperation that made Bri step forward and move aside his brother’s shirt.
Criss-crossed lines of thin, feathered skin marked the entirety of Kai’s back. Bri flinched as he thought of the whippings that had created them. Scattered between and among those unforgiving lines were random ridges of raised skin and burns, each with a story that would no doubt give Bri nightmares for weeks despite all he had seen in the myst and in his own life. Kai had been right, there was no mistaking the scars he intended Bri to see. Thick and perfectly symmetrical, the raised pink skin traced the lines of his shoulder blades, shifting with each breath Kai took, as if they were some terrible imitation of wings.
Bri traced one lightly with a single finger before he could stop himself. The skin was smooth and tough. It sent shivers up his arm. “What are they from?”
“Our father gave those to me.”
Bri dropped the shirt down to cover the horror of Kai’s back. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?” Kai rolled his shoulders and neck, as though dismissing a feeling or stiffness, then laughed. �
��Our parents separated us and let us both fall into the hands of abusers, but you can’t believe that our father would scar me so?”
“No. I can’t believe that. They must have done what they did for a reason. To protect us.”
Kai snorted. “They wanted to hide us. To keep us from each other. They knew what we could be together.”
“You can’t possibly know that. You never knew our mother, and our father died when you were still very young.”
“Not that young. I remember him. He spent years concocting the labrynth that mutilated me.”
“Why? For what purpose?”
The echo of the room carried even the silence. Then Kai’s footsteps as he stalked closer to Bri, his expression a mixture of pain, anger, and unbalanced despair. He took Bri’s face in his hands, pressing their foreheads together and closing his eyes. Bri didn’t dare do the same. “Because,” he said, half laughing, “my dear, dear brother, you may have the seraph power…but I had the wings.”
Shock stole all thought from Bri’s mind as Kai tossed him aside and walked away. Seraph. When his mind cleared he had only one question. “You had wings?”
“Until I was five.” Kai leaned against the stone wall, his face half hidden by the stone. “We lived out in the country. Isolated. I can still remember what it felt like to have the sun on my face as I soared closer and closer to it. Oh, yes, brother, I had wings. Until our father tore them from my back.”
“I’m sure there must have been a good reason—”
“There was no reason!” Kai exploded, removing himself from the wall and advancing on Bri so that he backed away until he hit the cold stone. “No good reason for taking them from me! I feel them missing. Even now. I feel their loss like the absence of an arm or leg! You tell me, Bri, you tell me what reason there could be for mutilating your child like that?” Kai’s eyes were pure madness.
Bri reached for his brother. “I’m sorry, Kai. I don’t have an answer for you. But I’m sure there is one.”
Sparks exploded behind his eyes when Kai’s fist collided with Bri’s jaw. Everything went black, and when his vision returned, Bri realized he was flat on the ground, Kai sitting across his hips, fists curled into his shirt, shaking him. Kai was screaming something, saying something, but all Bri could hear was the rush of his own blood past his ears.
“—just like him! You can’t understand—” The words faded in and out.
Kai had reopened the wounds on his arms, and his blood seeped downward, staining his white sleeves a reddish black, and dripping onto Bri’s chest. When Kai slapped him, some of the blood got past Bri’s lips and hit his tongue.
It was sweeter than he would have imagined, though still bitter, but Bri hardly noticed beyond that. He turned his head, hearing a strange hum that beckoned him. The labrynths on the walls appeared different, more like they had when Kai let him touch him while he scribed. Bri could see each turn and twist, and knew where it needed to lead. The runes produced words in his mind, and the labrynths themselves were clear and uncomplicated. Simple.
He understood them. Kai’s blood let him understand. Just as his blood had let Kai into the myst.
The power began to fade. The labrynths lost their meaning and the runes turned back to nothing but strange patterns. Kai’s power was gone, but not the memory of the knowledge. Bri knew what he needed to do.
Kai continued to rant above him, although he had stopped throwing punches, for which Bri was grateful. But his brother’s words were unimportant. Bri reached up, wiped his hand along the length of Kai’s bleeding arm, and brought the hand to his mouth.
Kai realized immediately what he had done. “What are you doing? Stop that! You can’t!”
Bri sat up, shoving his brother off him with every bit of strength his possessed. Tripping as he ran, he made his way to the far wall—the wall Kai had entered from—reading the labrynth that had been scribed there and seeing exactly how each line and loop made it something that could be passed through.
He knew exactly what to change to pass through in the opposite direction.
Using the excess blood on his hand, Bri altered the course of the spell, changing one small line and one single rune. The light of the labrynth stopped a moment, then began to flow the other way.
When Kai tackled him, they both tumbled through the stone wall, landing on soft grass on the other side.
The sky was black, and in the distance, a strange shimmering wall began to collapse. A burst of fire went out as though smothered, and ash and smoke carried into the sky to blot out what few stars could be seen.
Kai reached for him, clutching at Bri’s collar as he lay beside him on the cool ground. “Why? Why can’t you understand?”
Exhausted, Bri sighed and closed his eyes. There was little left of the anger and the madness he had seen in Kai. “I imagine for the same reason you can’t understand me.”
He thought he heard quiet sobs, but Bri’s whole body ached and his ears were still ringing so loudly that he was sure he had imagined it. The two of them lay there, in relative silence, for an indeterminate amount of time.
Finally, when he thought Kai’s sobs had subsided, Bri spoke. “Our mother,” he said, “she was seraph?”
“Gods, Bri, you’re so stupid. Of course she was. How else would you be able to see into the myst?”
Bri dropped his head to the side so he could see his brother—a boy he’d once envied, but now feared and pitied. “Our mother was kind and gentle, that hasn’t been my experience of seraph. And you’re a liar. I shouldn’t be asking you anything.”
“I’ve never lied to you. We’re stronger together. I’ll convince you,” Kai said, though he sounded shattered and weak.
“I don’t think you will.”
Silence befell them again, and Bri let his eyes slip closed.
When he felt a large presence looming over them both, he opened them again. Broad, and bigger than mortal men, the myst wanted nothing to do with this man, and he had the unmistakable scent of Hell on him. A demon, no doubt. Bri didn’t have the energy to be frightened.
The demon laughed once, a strange sound coming from such a giant. “What a pair you two make.” He plucked Kai from the ground, hoisting him up, and tucking him under his arm like a sack of flour. Kai, surprisingly, did not fight. With a smile that reminded Bri of Picadilly’s menacing expression, the demon nodded once. “Until we meet again.”
He disappeared into the darkness, the shadows wrapping around him until both he and Kai had vanished, and Bri was left alone with the ache of his body and the errant thought that he would never be free of the brother he had lost.
Hell’s power continued to dance its way through Alec’s body, sweet and inviting, and though he felt stronger than he had in a long time, he wished to dispel it, but he didn’t dare. The seraph army lingered, and those who could, still had their swords drawn. He was ready for a fight if they wanted one.
Carma had stood still as a statue when Olin disappeared, only coming to life when Gabriel attempted to stand and fell back beside Picadilly. “Are you really that thickheaded, Gabe? Let Pica finish. You know what she can do.”
Gritting her teeth, Gabriel didn’t stop Picadilly from taking up her thread once more. “I do not need the help of demons.”
“It seems you do. Unless you would like your heart to fall out of your chest on your way back to Haven.”
Tying off the thread, severing it with a single nail, Pica licked her lips as she stood. “Done. You made a delightful feast, Gabriel. I feel almost like my old self.” Her expression changed to introspection as she made that revelation. Wandering off, she teased small flames across the tips of her fingers and shifted their appearance slightly.
Alec wondered what effect the seraph’s power would have on her.
Two seraph came forward, lifting Gabriel from the ground and helping her stand. Her left wing hung at an unnatural angle, but her chest cavity had been closed tight, the black stitch a glaring contrast to her brown
skin and silver armor. “I should bring you all in,” she said.
Carma raised an eyebrow. “By what power? You are unable to stand, and your First File has been more than decimated. By my count you have less than a dozen able bodied soldiers at your disposal. Tend to your wounded and leave me be. I have committed no crime this night.”
“You are a demon. I need no other reason than that.”
“I am a demon filled with extra souls. It will take a number of days for them to dispel themselves, and until then, I feel quite strong. Go ahead, challenge me.”
Tassos stepped in between the two headstrong females, his black robes fluttering even though there was no wind. “If I might interject. There are far more concerning issues at the moment than the arrest of a demon who has been instrumental in averting a worldwide disaster.”
Gabriel scowled. “I do not need your advice, Reaper.”
“Apparently, you do. There are two children over there quite in need of Haven’s guidance and assistance. Perhaps you should focus your energies there.”
Everyone looked upon the infant lying quietly in the grass. Dorothea, the closest of them, retrieved the child with some difficulty, but cradled her as she spoke. “No family.”
Alec dared to glance at the next point of the star, and not unlike two years earlier, saw the slow rise of the boy’s chest.
For a moment, his long dead faith resurrected. “The boy survived too.”
“It matters not to me what becomes of the children,” Carma said.
Alec took one look at that small face, so tired and no longer able to cry, and broke his silence. “Give them to some deserving family. A couple unable to conceive? Or who lost a child?”
Gabriel pulled free of her support, taking a single step towards Alec before she faltered and remained still. “That is not part of The Plan, Soulless. We cannot simply change their life’s plan.”
“The Plan has already been changed. Their family is gone. Why make them live with the knowledge of what happened tonight? Give them a life where they will be bothered by no one.”