“To do what precisely?” Lani asks, her tone clipped. She’s trying to sound bored, but she’s watching me carefully, and I can feel her anger level rising.
Great.
Just what I need.
“To figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that is,” I throw out there, hoping one of them will take the bait and ask me why I think my life might be cut short.
But Leo just snorts. “She’s been interfering with human lives.”
“In what way?” Lani asks.
“Well, because of her actions, one human died,” a newcomer says.
I flinch. “Lola.”
“Did she kill the human?” Lani asks.
“Not directly,” Lola says darkly. Her skin is a paler color than the rest of us, whiter. Combined with the dark circles beneath her eyes, she looks rather ghoulish. If she were as thin as Lara, Lola would look like a living corpse.
“Then how did the human die?” Leo asks. “Has she even taken a human life at all ever?”
“Not directly,” Lola repeats. “How about you tell us what you did, Lydia?”
I set my teeth on edge. Admitting what I did won’t get them to stop. No, it’ll only increase Lani’s wrath. Just talking about death fuels Lola, and Leo’s already burning to fight me.
So I don't bother with words. Not really. I just open my mouth and let out a horrific shriek, a wordless scream.
And the skies answer with a brilliant flash of lightning followed by a roar of thunder that is much more horrific than the sound of the animal Leo refers to.
There are no clouds, no sudden darkness, no rain either, but I take the thunder, take the lightning, and I do my best to manipulate the wind, gearing up to send lightning bolts at my siblings.
And I seem to be having the upper hand against them, against all three of them, right up until I don’t.
Because another sibling has come.
Lucas lands right in front of Leo, right as a lightning bolt is streaking toward my warmonger brother, and it takes everything in me to divert the bolt. It slams into a nearby tree instead, charring it, the trunk now black and smoking.
“My, isn’t that a wonderful greeting,” Lucas says. “What havoc are the lot of you creating?”
I'm breathing heavily. My vision is a bit spotty because of all of the fighting and wielding of lightning. It's also been years since I've attempted to do any of this. The last time had been… maybe three years ago? My hellhounds and I had been bored, and I threw lightning bolts instead of sticks for them to go chase. That game had been a lot of fun until the two of them plowed into each other, and a lightning bolt almost singed the fur off their rumps. Whoops.
“Lydia here cares more about humans than she does us,” Leo snaps.
"As if the lot of you don't care about humans. Lily does. After all, she needs to consume souls. Lara loves when humans do without. Landon steals from humans to try to satisfy his greed and so on and so forth. Like it or not, we need humans to make ourselves more powerful. Is that such a crime? Because I thought crime was kind of our thing."
“You would think,” Lucas says, shaking a finger at me. “But not crimes against the family.”
“I haven’t done anything against the family,” I protest.
“You don’t consider us family, is that it?” Lucas asks. “Just those mangy mutts of yours.”
"If you touch one hair on their heads, any of their heads—"
“You’ll what?” Lucas asks, his tone mocking. “You’ll hurt me? Attack me? Kill me?”
I inhale sharply and lift my chin. “You made a bold statement, talking about my committing crimes against the family. Let’s hear it then. What have I done that’s so utterly terrible? Is it because I haven’t seduced any humans? Haven’t killed any? Haven’t stolen enough? Haven’t this? Haven’t that?”
“It’s what you have done,” Lucas spits out.
“And what have I done?” I ask coolly.
“Lily told us what you did.”
“And what was that?” I roll my eyes. “What about that store the hellhounds and I burned down?”
“The one where you saved people from burning to death?” Lola asks.
I scowl at her. “They wouldn’t have gone to Hell. They weren’t… Their souls weren’t dark enough yet.”
“But you didn’t stick by their side and try to rectify that, now, did you?” Lola snaps. “No. I had to do that myself, and then I killed them one by one.”
I swallow hard. She’s joking, right?
But there’s one thing Lola never jokes about, and that’s death.
I’ve failed even worse than I thought I had. Everything good I’ve done so far has all been undone, just like that, between my father and my siblings.
We’re the bane of the Earth’s existence. Our only purpose is to destroy.
And if that’s the case, then that leaves me no other option.
But to destroy my family.
To think that my sisters had cheered me on and exalted me as one of them after the fire. Of course, they hadn’t realized at the time what I had done. Only Lucifer had. Who wants to bet that Lucifer is the one who mentioned my actions to Lola?
He’s been playing me all along. He never wanted me to take over Hell.
Or maybe he did. He hoped to lure me to the darkness, to the shadows.
But I am above the shadows. I am the flames that cast the shadows, not the shadows themselves.
Leo heads for me, but Lucas shoves him aside. Their eyes burn with the fires of Hell, and I drop down to the ground, my hands touching the dry soil, and I invoke terrakinesis to cause a small earthquake.
Yes, I can do that above the Earth as well as below.
My brothers fall down, but my sisters are far enough away that they manage to stay upright. A gust of wind is directed at me, sending me flying, and I struggle to reclaim my footing until I opt to teleport around to behind Lola. My hands grip the side of her head, and, thinking of Leo, I drop her with a heavy dose of sedation.
One down. Three to go.
Before I can decide who to go after next, though, Lani’s behind me, grabbing the back of my neck. I can feel her use biokinesis, trying to affect my body in some way, and it’s suddenly nearly impossible to breathe, but I just teleport the both of us straight toward that tree, pinning her against the burnt trunk so hard that she can’t breathe any easier.
The instant she’s pinned against the tree, she releases her magical hold on my heart, and I suck in a deep breath of air. As I back away from her, spinning around so I’m facing her, I wish I could contact to trees so that I could use the branches as chains and hold her in place, but she’s already recovering and racing toward me.
Leo and Lucas are coming for me, too, from different angles, and I hold out my arms and shift into my demoness form. My wings fan out as I take to the sky.
My brothers aren’t far behind me, though, and I struggle to manipulate the weather so I can blast wind at them to slow them down.
No such luck.
Leo has zoomed ahead of me, flying just above me. Lucas is beneath me, and they converge on me, tangling our wings, causing all three of us to crash to the ground, and I react badly. I fling orbs of magical energy at them, but they just consume my power and then fling it back at me, and while I can absorb theirs back, they're both attacking me, and I can't take all of it.
As for Lola, she’s back at it again, ready to kill me. I swear she is. The sedation didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked.
Abruptly, I zoom up, straight up, and hover above them. “Look at us!” I call. Even my demoness voice is slightly altered from my normal voice. It’s harsher, louder, maybe more powerful, definitely less lyrical. “Fighting and attacking each other and for what? Because a few humans were killed a little later than the grim reaper would’ve preferred?”
A blast of fire whips by my head, narrowly missing my hair and one of my horns.
I flare my nostrils.
“You all act as if I’m not one of you. We all have the same father—”
“You don’t have a vice,” Lani spits out.
“And you aren’t keen on any of the traits of the four horsemen either,” Leo spits out.
“You’re the youngest,” Lucas says, “the baby, but you aren’t an angel. You’re something else, something worse.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I hiss. His words are too close to the truth, and I want no part of them learning what exactly I am because if they’re this furious with me for trying to help humans, just imagine what they would do if they knew I had a tiny bit of valkyrie blood in me.
“You’re a disgrace,” Leo says.
And all four of them—Leo, Lucas, Lola, and Lani—all zoom toward me, each of them in their demon or demoness forms, and I just wait for the attack, for me to react and fight back, but before anything else can happen, we’re all sucked away to Lucifer’s throne room.
Fire-rific. This is just perfect.
Only it's not just those of us who had been fighting. All twelve of Lucifer's sons and daughters are here, and I have a feeling things are only going to continue to trend downhill.
Chapter 30
I lift my head up high, my shoulders back, but I remain in my demoness form. The siblings I fought are back to their human forms. Are they seriously pretending we didn’t just fight?
“I love a good fight,” Lucifer booms, his gaze shifting from one to another of his offspring from youngest to oldest—Lance, Larissa, Leo, Lucas, Logan, Lara, Lena, Lola, Lily, Landon, Lani, and finally to me. I grin him a tight, coy smile, not unnerved in the slightest.
My siblings are siding with my father against me. So be it. I’ll take them all on. I’ll fail, but I don’t care about that.
Or maybe I should, but I'm past all sense of reason at this point. I'm furious. So many lives I touched, and each one of those lives has had their threads cut short.
It’s infuriating.
It’s insulting.
It’s beyond reproach.
And I won’t stand for it.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” Lucifer continues.
Larissa glances around. She has no idea what’s going on, and when she spies me, she does a double-take.
She shifts to stand beside me. “Lydia,” she murmurs, “what are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I whisper back, hardly moving my lips, not looking anywhere but at Lucifer, wishing that the heat of my stare could go right through him, boring a hole through him, right through his black and twisted, rotting soul.
What is a soul? It is the life force of a person. In some ways, it’s more real than any other part of the person. The summation of a life, of the emotions of a person, the spiritual and most private part of a person. Without a soul, there is no life, and yet the soul goes on after death.
The soul is immortal, or it should be. In most cases, it is, yet there is such a thing as ghosts and ghouls. Ghosts are when a person dies suddenly, usually under violent means, doomed to wander the Earth until their unfinished business is completed, whether that is merely saying goodbye to a loved one, to avenge their murder, or to finish some other job or quest.
Ghouls, on the other hand, are rather similar to ghosts, but whereas some ghosts will move onto Heaven once they finish their business, ghouls are all bound for Hell. Many ghouls have no unfinished business at all and therefore cannot actually move onto Hell ever.
Lucifer hates ghouls, but then again, there is not much he does not hate.
The more good deeds a person does, whether it is something as small as a compliment or helping an old lady across the street or more like donating to a food drive or helping in a soup kitchen or praying or any of a vast array of various actions, the lighter their soul becomes until it’s so very light that it can float all the way up to Heaven even if a grim reaper isn’t around to escort the person’s soul.
But each lie, each time you disobey your parents, each sinful action, even sinful thoughts, they all cause your soul to become darker and heavier until the soul has no choice but to sink all the way down to Hell.
Some souls are light enough to head to Heaven if they have a guardian to lead them there, but if not, they can falter and fall down to Hell regardless.
And once you’re in Hell as a soul, you cannot ever leave.
“Did Lydia tell you all why she’s been on Earth all this time?” Lucifer asks casually.
I suck in a breath. Is he really going to tell them about the deal? Because if so, they’re really going to want to kill me.
Just what is Lucifer’s end game?
Do I really want to know the answer to that?
Probably not.
“Is that why you’ve been fighting her?”
Lena chomps down on something crunchy, her chewing loud and obnoxious to the point that even Lucifer glowers at her. She swallows and wipes a hand across her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I was hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” Lara huffs. “How can that be?”
“I’m a growing girl,” Lena protests.
“You’re twenty-six,” Lara argues. “You aren’t growing anymore.”
Lena taps her temple. “There is such a thing as brain food, you know. Maybe if you ate a little food, you would realize that you don’t have to experience mind fog all the time.”
“My mind isn’t foggy,” Lara snaps. “I can recall incidents with more details than you can.”
“Prove it.”
“Enough!” Lucifer roars. “We aren’t here for the two of you to bicker about how much or little food you two ingest. We’re here because Lydia has… Lydia, why don’t you explain to us all what you’ve been up to?”
The smirk curling his lips, the smug tilt of his head, the arrogance in his cocked eyebrow…
He wants me to admit to my failings because he wants my siblings to go after me. He probably wants them to all gang up on me and kill me while he watches so he doesn’t have to bother with killing me himself.
I spread out my wings, so my siblings have no choice but to move away from me, six on one side, five on the other, as if they're shifting into two groups either for or against me. I'm directly across from Lucifer as if we're going to have a final showdown right here and now.
If only.
But with my siblings here, with four of them having just fought me, there’s no way I can possibly go against my father. No way at all.
“I’ve been spreading my wings and figuring out who I am, and I’m far more than the youngest daughter of Lucifer.”
My father bursts out laughing, the dark sound echoing off the stone walls of his throne room. He has a vast castle of a mansion that serves as his throne. Depending on his mood, there’s a roof or not, but even if there isn’t a stone roof, there’s always the stone ceiling that is the Earth above Hell.
“There is no better title you can have than that of the daughter of Lucifer,” he claims.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say boldly.
Larissa gasps.
Lance rolls his eyes.
Leo mutters something to Lucas, and Lola murmurs something back. They’re probably lamenting the fact that they didn’t kill me when they had the chance.
Lily looks bored, whereas Logan, I can’t tell what his reaction is, and Lara and Lena are still grumbling to each other, probably about the topic of food. I doubt they’re paying Lucifer and me any attention.
“You have designs to be the leader of Hell, don’t you?” Lucifer asks, his tone harsh, bitter, cruel.
I gulp. The deal we made, he set me up. He wanted to turn my siblings against me all along. The impossible task he gave me should’ve been proof enough that he sought my failure.
He played me, and I fell right into his evil, twisted plan.
Lance’s eyes glow in the darkness, and you better believe he’s as envious as can be at the idea of someone else being the leader of Hell after Lucifer and it being anyone other tha
n him.
Even Larissa straightens as if she’s affronted by the notion too.
Leo and Lucas and Logan too, for that matter, are all furious as well.
The two foodies—or the foodie and the non-foodie—hush up as if they realize things are about to go down.
Out of all of my siblings, only Lily seems to be indifferent, but then again, she and I almost came to blows ourselves earlier. She’s not on my side.
No one is.
I’m all alone.
And that doesn't bother me at all. I'm alone, and that's fine. So long as I'm alone, my hellhounds will be kept safe. They might be on Earth still, or maybe they found their way back to Hell, but they aren't here. They won't be involved in any battle that might risk their lives to save me. I wouldn't want that, although if I do die here and now, would the others hunt them down? If they even dare to try, I will come back as a ghost, and I will haunt them until they die.
Come back as a ghost? Not as a ghoul?
Whatever it takes.
And yes, I'm alone, but Clarissa isn't. She has not one but two angels by her, and she's strong. Yes, in some ways, she's vulnerable, but honestly, all of us are vulnerable. Even demons can die. One day, Lucifer will die. He will cease to exist, and his entire domain will be finished.
But today is not that day.
“You want to know what it is I want?” I ask, my tone as harsh as ever. “I want to not be known as your daughter.”
“You renounce me?” he asks calmly.
I say nothing because to do such a thing would be unforgivable in his eyes. It would be damning.
Frankly, it would be inconceivably stupid.
Because it would mean that I would lose the protection that being his daughter affords me. There are demons out there who would purposely seek me out for nefarious reasons just because that protection would be removed.
My hands with clawed fingers hold balls of fire, the flames licking up my arms, not burning me, not casting any smoke.
“Yes, yes, the daughter of flames.” Lucifer rolls his eyes and waves his hand. “Just how would that help you in your quest to… do what again?”
Daughter of Flames: A Mayhem of Magic World Story (A Girl and Her Hellhounds Book 1) Page 19