by Jane Hinchey
“I can sense your anguish, sister dear. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.”
Michael barked out a laugh at Gabriel’s taunt, and I sat back in my chair, regrouping.
“I suppose you want our help, since Dad isn’t here?” Gabriel asked.
I didn’t move, waiting for him to drop his trump card. Gabriel had forgotten that while he was able to read me like a book, I could do the same to him. He was as predictable as he thought I was.
“No can do, sorry,” Michael joined in. “We’re busy here. Looking for God.”
“So you don’t need the Sword of Angels back, then?” I asked, studying my fingernails.
“What?” they said in unison.
I couldn’t contain the grin splitting my face. “Levi had the Sword of Angels when he was dragged into the pocket dimension. It’s stuck there with him. Since you aren’t prepared to help me, I can only assume the sword isn’t important to you anymore?”
I watched the furious exchange of facial expressions between my brothers, knew they were communicating telepathically. I did my best to appear calm and patient, when in reality, I was ready to bombard them both with a barrage of fire balls. Deep breaths, Lucy, deep breaths. You’ve got to play this right.
“We can’t leave Heaven. Not at this time,” Gabriel said, with Michael nodding beside him.
“So you won’t help?”
“That’s not what I said.” He glowered, a new look for Gabriel, and I bit back a smile at how constipated he looked.
“Oh?”
“You can retrieve your human pet yourself. You don’t need our help.”
“How? I tried to open the portal, but my magic isn’t strong enough. I’m not waiting until All Hallows’ Eve again.” That was still a year away, and there was no way I’d leave Levi to fend for himself for that long. He’d never survive.
“Tell her,” Michael grumbled.
“You have the ability to create your own sword. One that will open any dimension you want.” I could hear the reluctance in Gabriel’s tone. He didn’t want me to have this information.
“My own sword…” I let his words sink in. “And you didn’t tell me this before because you know any sword I create could be used against you, just like you used the Sword of Angels against me. Was that why you created it?”
Neither of my brothers would look at me, so I took that as an affirmative. Assholes. Why did they hate me so much? I’d done nothing to them, nothing, yet still they plotted to destroy me. I couldn’t hate them in return, though. They were my brothers, my family.
I rose to my feet and moved my gaze between the two of them. “And you’re positive God isn’t here in Heaven? You’ve searched thoroughly?”
Gabriel shook his head. “We’re positive. God is not in Heaven. Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to retrieve Levi and find Dad. In the meantime, I suggest you two do something about healing Heaven.”
I didn’t wait for their reply. Instead, I turned on my heel and strode out, feeling a sense of satisfaction in the stunned silence I left in my wake. They’d expected a temper tantrum—screaming and yelling. And as much as making that kind of scene appealed to me, I needed to stay focused, for as soon as they’d mentioned creating my own sword, I knew exactly how to do it.
Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
3
Dacian was waiting by our vehicle when I exited the elevator. He straightened up when he saw me, arching a brow.
“Well?” he prompted.
“Did you know God was missing?”
His stunned expression and mouth hanging open told me all I wanted to know.
“What? Since when? How?” Sliding into the car beside me, he bombarded me with questions I didn’t have answers for, but I told him what I did know. That I could get Levi back with my own sword.
He mulled it over as we drove. “How would you create a sword?”
“In the fires of Hell. As soon as they told me, it was like a page turning. I just knew, it all fell into place. I think this is something Dad always wanted me to know—that it was there, on the edge of my subconscious, only I never needed such a weapon…until now.”
“So you’re going back to Hell?”
I glanced across at him, surprised by the dejected tone in his voice. He was gazing out the window as the vehicle whisked us through Heaven Central and back toward the Pearly Gates.
“Of course.” I continued to watch him, taking in the way his fingers clenched into fists on his knees and the tight set of his jaw. “Come with me,” I said, my voice soft.
These were the words I hadn’t been able to bring myself to say to him all those years ago, when I’d first left Heaven. The words that could have saved our relationship. Our love. Instead, I’d left him behind.
His head swiveled and those stunning blue eyes met mine. “You mean it?”
“As my friend, Dacian.” I placed my hand over his fist. “But yes, I mean it. I can’t leave you here for my brothers to mess with again.”
“They’ll banish me.”
I shook my head. “Nope. You’re on a mission.”
“If you think a mission to rescue a human will save me from banishment, then you don’t know your brothers very well. I don’t want to be fallen, Lucy.”
“Not a human. God. He’s missing. You’re a Seraph Angel, Dacian, a warrior. Who better to find him than you? He trusted you to train us. He’ll understand that you left Heaven to find him. You won’t be fallen.” I could see the cogs turning as he thought over my words. “Plus, you won’t be alone. You’ll be with me. We’ll find him together.”
“Who gets the credit?” His smirk told me he was joking.
I played along. “You, of course.”
He smiled widely. “Deal.”
I was glad we were friends again. I’d missed him. I’d blamed myself for not keeping in touch, and for not knowing what my brothers had done to him. I’d thought I was being kind to stay out of his life and let him get on with things without me. The day I’d left, I broke his heart. He knew I’d put my career ahead of our love.
“Why did you?”
For a moment, I wondered if I’d spoken aloud, and I turned to him in surprise. “Why did I what?”
“Tell me not to go to HR?”
I must have been daydreaming while he was talking. “It seemed strange that my brothers hadn’t seen you in a while—had sent you on a mission that you didn’t return from—and their first instructions were to send you to HR for disciplinary action. They didn’t ask why you were with me, or what had happened, or for you to explain yourself. Something was up.”
“You have good instincts.”
“Do you remember what they did to make you forget me? Have you been to HR before?”
He frowned. “I don’t remember ever going to HR. I don’t remember anything at all, really. Like, if I try to think back on what I’ve been doing in Heaven these past ten years, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Weird.”
“Right?”
I wondered if my brothers had used the same mind altering techniques they’d used on Dacian on other angels. That would explain why Earth was in so much trouble. If the Guardian Angels had been brainwashed to not help their charges, it would result in chaos. I itched to investigate further, but my first priority was to rescue Levi, and then find Dad. Once God was back in Heaven, he could sort out my brothers and the multitude of problems they’d caused.
Our vehicle came to a stop and we stepped out. The gates were still locked, and thousands of people waited dejectedly to get in. They reminded me of the human refugees I’d seen on my monitors, all huddled together, bedraggled, incapable of understanding what was happening to them.
“This worries me,” I muttered to Dacian as we pushed our way through the souls, who all pleaded to us for help.
“That you can’t help them?”
“Well, yes, but if they are stuck here in limbo for too long, they’ll return
to Earth as revenants. We can’t allow that to happen.” A revenant was a soulless entity that could return to Earth to haunt the living.
Dacian cursed, picking up the pace, urgency in his stride. “All the more reason to find God. I can’t believe I didn’t know he was missing.”
“It’s not your fault. They fucked with your mind, remember? Or not, I guess.” I half laughed at my own joke. Dacian stopped, arms folded over his chest, and stared at me. “Okay, so it wasn’t that funny.”
Dacian shook his head. “No, you idiot, that’s not why I stopped. We’re going to Hell, yes? I don’t know the way.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” My cheeks warmed with embarrassment, something that hadn’t happened since my early days training with Dacian. Clearing my throat, I held out my hand to him. “This way.”
“What is he doing here?”
Arching a brow, I studied Ashliel, noting her narrowed green eyes and the hands on her hips, her flaming red hair dancing and flickering around her shoulders. Ashliel was my second-in-command, and she was awesome, but she was also pissed, which aroused my curiosity. Why would she be annoyed I’d brought Dacian to Hell?
“He’s helping me.” Keeping my voice neutral, I looked at Dacian, who was watching Ashliel with a goofy grin on his face. Wait. “Have you two met before?” I asked.
“No,” they said in unison, but no matter how much they denied it, my senses were tingling. Something was up with these two, but we were on a tight time frame and I didn’t have time to stand around wondering about it.
“Dacian can fill you in while I pop down to the pit.” I was already halfway across the floor, heading toward the elevator that would deliver me from my offices atop Hell HQ to Hell’s one and only fiery pit.
“Wait!”
Ashliel hurried along behind me. I glanced at her over my shoulder. She was holding her electronic clipboard and had begun to rattle off questions.
“We’re almost at full capacity. We need to escalate our expansion plans. Do you want me to get started on that?”
“Yes.”
She typed something into her clipboard, then said, “A soul that ascended has returned to us.”
That caught my attention. An ascended soul, returned? It wasn’t possible. I told Ashliel as much.
“Maybe, but it’s true nonetheless.” Her green eyes met mine. “Any idea why?”
“Possibly due to the fact that Dad is missing,” I said. “That’s why Dacian is here, to help me find him. But first I need to create the Sword of Souls.”
“The what of what?”
“No time to explain.” The elevator doors slid open and I stepped inside, turning and placing my hand on her chest to stop her from following. “No. Dacian will fill you in. I trust you to make the right decisions about this place. Yes to expansion. You know how to field the requests from the sinners. I have every confidence in you. But right now, my priorities are making the sword, retrieving Levi, and finding Dad.”
The doors closed, cutting off her response, and I was whisked down to the pit. The pit was reserved for the most heinous of sinners, and as I walked the gangway suspended over it, the heat hit me, then the screams, followed by the stench. I didn’t like the pit, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? No one was meant to like the pit.
Since God created Hell, not a single soul had escaped the pit, nor repented their sins. Beyond the superficial screaming and cursing, none of them had changed. Deep down inside, their souls were tainted. There was no saving them. I remembered the argument I’d had with Dad—wouldn’t it be more compassionate to extinguish their souls rather than condemn them to burn in the pit for all eternity? But God had a plan, and this, apparently, was part of it.
Stopping in the center of the walkway, I spread my wings, closed my eyes, and swan-dived into the firestorm below. My clothes burst into flames, then turn to ashes, but my body remained unharmed. The souls around me writhed as I continued down, deeper and deeper, until I reached the very bottom of the ocean of fire. Everything around me burned a kaleidoscope of red, yellow, and orange.
Crouching, I scooped up a pile of ash in one hand and, with my wing, I sliced open my opposite palm. Blood dripped down, mixing with the ash. Closing my eyes, I began the chant that would bring the Sword of Souls into creation—words that had been locked inside me for all this time, now ready to be released.
The ash swirled in my palm, twisting up into the air, mingling with my blood. It glowed pale blue, then white, as the blade began to take shape. My fingers closed around the hilt, and I was almost overwhelmed by the connection I felt with it. We were one, the sword and I. For a moment, I stood in the flames of Hell, the sword raised over my head as I reveled in its power.
Then I sneezed and almost peed myself, bringing me back to reality. I didn’t have time to stand around here basking in my awesomeness. I had a job to do.
Flying up through the pit, the sword in my hand, I landed gracefully on the walkway and made my way back to the elevator. Ashliel and Dacian were waiting for me up in my offices. I hoped Ashliel hadn’t singed him. I still didn’t understand why she didn’t want him here. It couldn’t be because he was an angel—she was an angel, too, after all. I’d recruited her from Heaven myself.
“So that’s the Sword of Souls,” Ashliel breathed when I returned, her eyes on the blade. It no longer glowed blue and white, but crackled with flame.
“Er, Lucy?” Dacian sounded like he was choking.
“What’s up?”
“Your clothes?” he muttered, looking at everything but me.
“What about them?”
I glanced down just as he replied, “You’re not wearing any!”
With a laugh, I materialized a new outfit, a black, skin-tight pantsuit. If I was going to act the superhero, I was sure as hell going to dress the part. Sliding the sword into the holster at my hip, I said, “I need a superhero name.”
Ashliel groaned, shaking her head. “You don’t think being Lucifer, Queen of Hell, is enough?”
“I want something cool. You know, like Spiderman. Or Wonder Woman. Have you noticed there aren’t that many female superheroes?”
“Are you serious?” Dacian muttered.
“Deadly.”
“What about Levi?” he asked, waving a hand around.
“I can’t call myself Levi. That’s Levi’s name,” I pointed out. Then I realized what he was getting at. “Oh! You mean, stop standing around choosing superhero names and go rescue Levi? Right?”
“Yes.” Was he grinding his jaw? I shot Ashliel a look, but she was watching Dacian intently.
“Okay, then, let’s go,” I said. “We can brainstorm names on the way.”
4
The Sword of Souls cut through the veil between dimensions like a hot knife through butter. I tossed a satisfied grin over my shoulder at Dacian before stepping through into the Xoelax dimension.
“Where do we start looking?” Dacian asked as he stepped through behind me and surveyed the bleak landscape that greeted us.
“I can feel him.”
As soon as I’d stepped into this plane, I sensed the connection between me and Levi, like a cord flexing between us. I hadn’t been able to feel that connection since Levi had been taken, yet I’d known he wasn’t dead, for surely I would have felt the severing of our bond. No, the connection had been temporarily blocked, but not severed. Now I just needed to follow it and Levi would be at the other end.
“So, you’re bonded then?” Dacian’s voice was rough, like he’d been chewing gravel. I glanced at him. He couldn’t still harbor feelings for me, could he? Not after all this time?
I shrugged. “I guess.” Not an outright lie, which I couldn’t do. But I could dance around the truth.
“With a human.” His observation was more to himself than to me.
“Love is love. It knows no boundaries,” I reminded him. That had been one of Dad’s mottos, among a host of others. The man had a motto for every occasion.
&n
bsp; “And yet—” He cut himself off, and I looked at him speculatively. Where was he going with this?
“And yet…what?” The tone of my voice had changed. I was getting pissed off. Why was Dacian so intent on belittling my relationship with Levi? If he wasn’t careful, I’d clip his wings with my new sword.
“When you left me, you told me a relationship between us wouldn’t work because of the distance between Heaven and Hell. The boundaries.” The hurt in his voice was unmistakable, and I winced. I had said that. But I’d said it thousands of years ago. It was long past time for Dacian to get over himself.
“I was young and naïve, Dacian,” I said impatiently. “I’m sorry I hurt you, I truly am. But that was a long time ago. A very, very long time ago. It has no bearing on the here and now, or on my relationship with Levi.”
“I’d forgotten, until my memories came back. So while you may have moved on and this is all ancient history to you, for me, it’s real, it’s raw, and it’s fresh.”
Fuck! I could feel Dacian’s pain, but Levi’s pull was a distraction, and I was torn. Stay and talk about feelings with Dacian? Or rescue Levi? Okay, it was a no-brainer, but I still felt like a bitch for hurting Dacian. Again.
“Let’s finish up here and we’ll talk about this later, okay?” My words came out harsher than I anticipated. Dacian stiffened. His face went blank, and he nodded once.
“I’ll guard the portal and make sure no one gets through. You go find Levi.” His voice was devoid of emotion. I was messing this up big time, but I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. I could feel Levi’s agitation, knew he was in trouble. I would never forgive myself if something happened to him while I was having a deep and meaningful discussion with Dacian.
Without another word, I spread my wings and flew across the desolate landscape. To my left was an outcropping of rocks, and I veered toward it, my connection with Levi growing stronger the closer I got. And then I spotted him, running at full speed, a horde of Zuskas in pursuit.