by G. P. Ching
Hope sprinted deeper into the hive as fast as her legs could carry her. Applegate and Ravenguard had come from this direction. There had to be a way out. But the faster she ran through the maze of honeycomb walls, the more she realized she was lost.
“Oh, you can run, you can even hide, but I will find you,” the Devil said from somewhere in the dark labyrinth of wax behind her. “I can smell you. Humans have the most delicious smell when they’re afraid. It’s not quite as good as the smell of murder but better than greed. I love fear. I can tell from your scent you are filled with terror. Good. You should be.”
The walls were different here, the tubes roughly hewn from the rock itself. As Hope searched for a place to hide, she soon discovered why. One of the wax-covered indentations still held a small twist of black. A baby demon, dead by the looks of it. She must be in their nursery. The thought made her shiver.
Heart pounding, she found the darkest corner she could and slid into one of the unused chambers in the wall, pulling her knees into her chest. She steadied her breathing and gripped her triquetra in her sweaty palm. Footsteps echoed through the section she was in but because of the tubes, she couldn’t tell if they came from behind her or from inside the same room.
“I’m going to skin you alive,” he said, his voice gritty and low. “I’m going to pry your eyeballs from your pretty little head. Maybe I’ll wait for you to regenerate. Keep you as my plaything to torture over and over. I did that to your mother, you know, when she was mine.”
He inhaled deeply through his nose. More footsteps. “Ah, that touched a nerve. Yes, I held Abigail in a cage for months while she was pregnant with you. I used to feed her maggots. Almost starved her to death. I tried to starve her, actually. I’m not sure how she survived. You shouldn’t have. Not after what I put her through.”
The footsteps grew closer, but all Hope could think about was her mother. She closed her eyes and pictured them, Abigail and Gideon, the photograph her adoptive parents had shown her of them. Abigail was beautiful and kind. Gideon was brave and loyal. Both Soulkeepers, tried and true.
“I remember the day your father, Gideon, died,” Lucifer said smugly, his footsteps slowing. “One of my fallen angels broke him like a twig. I heard he suffered miserably. All to protect you. All to protect your whore of a mother. But she was as good as dead anyway.” He laughed wickedly. “All for naught. How does it feel to carry the weight of your parents’ deaths on your shoulders, Daughter of Angels?”
Hope gripped her triquetra tighter. It bit into the skin of her palm. She opened her hand and saw the impression the symbol left on her skin.
“When I’m done with you, you’ll beg me to make you one of my own. You will gladly lead a new era of demons to stop the pain. Daughter of Angels… bah! You’ll be Mother of Demons.”
She gritted her teeth, anger steadying her trembling limbs. As she stared at the symbol of her calling in her palm, everything changed. Being the last Soulkeeper was no longer about a responsibility thrust upon her at birth. It was no longer a duty she must reluctantly fulfill. As she thought about her parents and Finn, all of the people she’d known and loved and the horrible fate they had endured and might still endure at Lucifer’s hand, everything inside her coiled tighter, ready to strike.
She closed her hand around the triquetra, the disc of light forming with an audible hiss of energy. She was prepared to suffer and die to take Lucifer out. This was never about good vs. evil. This was personal. He’d made it personal.
Warmth spread across her heart and she opened herself up to it. With total humility, she accepted her accomplishments as well as her mistakes. She allowed the love of her friends and family to fill every corner of her being. She embraced her birthright.
Lucifer’s footsteps stopped. His face appeared in the opening to her hiding place. “Gotcha.”
With a warrior’s cry that echoed from the tube, Hope punched forward, slicing his face with the ring of light from her triquetra. For a moment, his lower jaw dangled, his face cut almost in two by her assault. She did not let up. She slashed and sliced, cutting a deep gash in his thigh.
With a vile roar, a pulse of pure darkness blew her across the room. Her back slapped the far wall, forcing breath out of her body and extinguishing her disc of light. She landed on her feet and fired her power back up again.
Half of Lucifer’s face dangled from his skull, a flap of lip torn from his teeth and one eye protruding unnaturally from its socket. “You surprise me. There’s real faith in your weapon. More than usual for one so young. Too bad, it won’t be enough.”
He dug his fingers into his chest and tore, shedding the illusion of his broken human body. The real Lucifer stepped from the brown Nazi uniform, an enormous monster, at least eight feet tall, with horns and hooves and black eyes that promised Hope death and destruction. Massive leathery wings spread from his back, each with a hooked talon at the joint that rose above his shoulder.
Hope trembled, her bladder giving out. Urine trickled down her leg as tears formed in her eyes. She ignored it. Feet spreading into fighting stance, she grasped the triquetra with both hands, its razor-sharp arc of energy extending over her knuckles. Her chin lowered, and she looked at the Devil from under sunken eyebrows.
“Don’t mess with me, child!” He circled one taloned hand over the other, conjuring a slick black darkness between his palms. “I’ve battled angels and nearly destroyed your God. What makes you think you have any hope of defeating me?”
“Because evil may not play by the rules,” Hope said, “but good always wins.”
He bared his teeth. “There’s a first time for everything.” Unleashing an unholy growl, he hurled the dark force in his hands in her direction.
A great umbrella of light spread from Hope’s locked arms, colliding with the darkness in the space between them. Sparks flew. The walls shook. A chasm opened in the stone between their feet. She held her ground. When she thought the vibration from holding the triquetra would break the bones in her arms, she screamed. She screamed louder when her bones did break and the pain became almost unbearable. Tears streamed down her cheeks and blood poured from her nose, but she did not quit. She stood her ground, knowing the force of his power might grind her into dust.
All the while, she thought of her parents. They’d sacrificed themselves for her. Wasn’t it the apple’s way to not roll far from the tree? Now it was her turn to sacrifice herself. For the world. For her friends. For her family and the Soulkeepers who’d come before her.
The power flowing from the triquetra kicked back as if giving one final thrust before running dry. It threw her into the wall again, hard enough to rattle her teeth. She crumpled to the floor in a heap, her weapon returning to the confines of her pendant. As she gasped and curled on her side, she saw that Lucifer was injured too, thrown against the opposite wall. The places she’d cut him were open again, his wounds unhealed, and his monstrous form looked smaller and darker than it had only moments ago. She’d hurt him. She was not the easy target he’d expected.
Still unable to breathe, she strained to lift her triquetra between them, propping her back against the wall and her shattered arms on her knees. The sharp light fired up again and glowed as strong as her resolve. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.
With an awful hiss in her direction, Lucifer seethed, “This isn’t over, Soulkeeper.”
He twisted, melding into the shadows. He disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the smell of sulfur and a trail of black blood.
Hope lowered her hands and took a long, wheezing breath. “This may not be over, but neither am I.”
49
Aftermath
When Hope was strong enough to hobble back to the room where she’d left the others, she collapsed as soon as she saw Gabriel. The angel caught her before she could hit the floor and she wept into his T-shirt. He smelled of citrus and vanilla, but it was his soft white wings that took her pain away. They enveloped her, infusing her with
healing warmth. The pain that had racked her body moments before faded into nothing. Inside Gabriel’s parental embrace, she could almost forget the people she’d failed, the truth that she’d played a part in opening a portal to Hell and giving the Devil a foothold into their world.
“Is he gone?” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes. I think so. I… injured him. I mean, he seemed injured. He poofed out of here.”
Gabriel hugged her to his chest as if she were a child, a sigh of relief leaving his parted lips. “If I know Lucifer, he’ll take time to regroup. He won’t want to risk what he’s gained. Coming back like he did… there will be consequences. His power is not as strong here as it was in Hell.”
Hope met his gaze. “I didn’t mean to bring him back. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Lucifer laid this trap before you were born, Hope. These demons, this school… it has been here for ages. The scrolls upstairs in the headmistress’s office, the genealogy charts… Do you know why they exist?”
She shook her head.
“They were targeting Soulkeepers. By rounding up descendants of known Soulkeepers, Lucifer intended to replace people with the potential to become Soulkeepers before they could come of age. He started this place well before he lost the challenge that confined him to Hell, and it has continued ever since.”
“I should have known. I should have predicted this.”
“He created this place in a way that ensured you couldn’t. It’s as protected and isolated as Eden. There’s no way you could have discovered its truth without coming here.”
A hand gripped her shoulder and Gabriel’s wings opened. “It wasn’t your fault, Hope. It was mine.” Ms. D placed a hand over her heart. “Theodor and I were part of the group who started this school under the direction of the commandant a lifetime ago. We had no idea we were doing the Devil’s work. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to take my art to new heights. Theodor wanted his magic to be real. We both wanted to escape the war. Revelations was our Shangri-La. We knew it wasn’t natural what was happening here. We just didn’t want to admit the source of our greatest joy could be something evil. And after the war was over, we built this place into something more. We turned it into a commercial success because we refused to live any other life.”
“There’s a reason we call Lucifer the lord of illusions, Victoria,” Gabriel said. “You can’t blame yourself for doing the thing he forced you to do.”
“No, but I can blame myself for believing the lie, for perpetuating this, all these years.”
Sobs came from the corner of the room. Finn was kneeling on the floor near the wall, his hands sifting through a pile of cards. Hope wondered how the cards were still there, why they hadn’t been sucked into the void with Theodor. Perhaps they’d been kicked out the way the king of spades had been.
“He’s gone,” Finn said.
“Theodor knew the risks,” Ms. D said, her own voice catching with the loss. “He is a true hero, despite what Lucifer would have you believe. He would have never used a spell to open a portal to Hell if he understood the consequences.” She wiped away a stray tear.
Mike stirred in the corner of the room, groaning and clutching his head.
“Are you okay?” Hope asked. She was prepared to heal him again, even in her weakened state, and broke from Gabriel’s arms to go to Mike’s side.
“Were you kicked in the head?” Mike snapped, pulling away from her. “I am definitely not okay.” He shivered although the room wasn’t cold. In fact, the fragments of the star that festered around what remained of the hive had raised the temperature to the point of discomfort. “I just want to go home.”
“The buses are loaded,” Ms. D said softly. “All of our guests had a wonderful time and are currently resting peacefully, waiting for their return trip home.”
“You drugged them.” Hope raised one eyebrow.
“A simple, temporary method to get them through the portal, but it is time to go. Gather your things, Michael. I’ll take you home.” She helped Mike to his feet. Finn gathered Theodor’s cards and allowed Ms. D to lead him from the hive.
“Before I go,” Gabriel said to Hope, “congratulations on completing your first mission. You solved the mystery of the lost souls and ended a century of demon terror. You are a worthy Soulkeeper, Hope. I am humbled in your presence.” He bowed formally.
Hope glanced at Gabriel, placing her hand over the triquetra at the base of her throat. “Why do I think this isn’t goodbye?”
“Because it’s not. Lucifer is back. He’s freed from Hell. We’ll need to put him back where he belongs.”
“So my life, it won’t go back to normal?”
“What’s normal?” he answered through tight lips.
“What will I need to do?”
“May I suggest you visit the Immortals and ask for help?”
She licked her lips and nodded. “Okay, Gabriel. You win. I will. I promise.” She needed to become much better at being a Healer and the last Soulkeeper. Humanity was counting on her. And only she could clean up the mess she’d made.
50
Home
Hours later, Finn helped his groggy father through the front door of their house, half carrying him to the couch. He eased his dad onto the cushions and removed his dress shoes.
“Thanks. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“It’s okay,” Finn said. “It’s late.”
His father nodded and closed his eyes again. Finn spread the tartan plaid blanket they kept in a chest in the corner of the room over his father. When he tried to pull away, to retreat to his room, his dad caught his wrist, rousing once more. “You were really something tonight, Finn. A star. A superhero. It looked like you could actually fly.” His father’s sleepy eyes widened slightly.
Finn dug his toes into the carpet. “Smoke and mirrors,” he said. “It was a lot of hard work, but I got good at it after a while.”
“No kidding. You look like they pumped you full of steroids.” His dad squeezed his bicep.
“Dad…” Finn shook his head and laughed.
“Seriously, son. All I ever wanted was for you to find your passion. I wanted you to plan what you needed to do to get what you wanted from life and then do it, even if it was hard. I know this semester wasn’t easy, but you did it. You made it through. No one can ever take that away from you.”
Finn thought about his months at Revelations and nodded his head. His eyes stung with unshed tears. He’d run the race, for whatever good and bad came of it. He hadn’t quit. He’d survived. And he’d been part of something big, something important.
“You were right about what you said. It did change me. More than I thought it would. I think… I think I want to try to be good at something, like work harder in school and, you know, make my life count.”
His father sat up, wrapping his big hands around Finn’s shoulders. “I am so proud of you, Finn. I wish your mother were here to see the man you’ve become.”
Without hesitation, Finn threw his arms around his father’s neck and squeezed. He was home, finally home.
Finn sat cross-legged on the floor next to his bed, trying not to stare at Wyatt, whose round, cocoa-colored cheeks and bright white smile were the most beautiful thing he’d seen in a long time. Wyatt, of all his friends, hadn’t been exposed to the toxic environment of Revelations. He didn’t carry the residue he and others failed to wash off, no matter how much scrubbing or how many hot showers. Finn had been exposed to evil. It made him misty with happiness that Wyatt had not.
“What was that school like, anyway?” Wyatt asked innocently. They were playing Space Sniper, Wyatt sitting within a window-shaped square of unappreciated sunshine.
“Hard. Painful sometimes. There were a ton of physical challenges, sometimes mental ones. But, I don’t know, it grew on you after a while.”
“Mike and Jay won’t even talk about it. Mike acts like he’s having a fit or something and tells m
e to shut up. Jayden acts like it was one big joke.”
“Mike had it the worst.”
“Why? A teacher there have it in for him or something?” Wyatt frowned.
“Something like that.”
“You must be glad to be home.” Wyatt banged on his controller as a squadron of enemy fighters attacked.
Finn missed a shot and his character got hit in the head by a drone and died. He pressed the pause button.
“Would you like to play again, Finn?” HORU asked, her cat ears twitching.
“Not right now.”
“It’s good to have you home.” She wagged her hologram tail.
“Thanks, HORU. I’m going to talk to Wyatt now.” She nodded and powered herself down.
He removed his headset and turned toward Wyatt. “Some days at Revelations seemed like torture.”
Wyatt nodded. “No wonder Mike doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Finn picked at the side of his nail. “But the weird thing is, at times I miss it.”
His friend’s face sobered. “Why?”
“Everything was simpler. I woke up every day knowing exactly what I had to do. I didn’t have to deal with grades or sitting on the bench every game. I was good at my act. Really good.” He thought of Wendy, but he didn’t mention her. He didn’t see the point.
“You gained like a hundred pounds of muscle in that place. One thing’s for sure, no one is going to mess with you anymore.”
“If you worked out all day for four months and ate the crappy food they made for us, you’d look like this too.”
“No, thanks.” Wyatt laughed. “But you say you liked it?”
He nodded. “I guess I did. Some of it. Weird, huh?”
The doorbell rang, interrupting them. A muffled sound came through the floor below, and his father yelled up the stairs for Finn.
“Go ahead and play without me. I’ll be right back,” he said to Wyatt.