Becoming his Monster

by Amelia Hutchins

  “What the fuck was that?” I demanded, but as we got to our feet, we were left alone with no angels to answer us. Some of the archangels hadn’t survived either, because the headless angels were there, no winged outline…just…dead? “They…died?”

  “They only left the bodies that had housed them. Or at least the archangels did, the others, they are finished,” Lucian muttered as he stared at me, dropping his gaze as he took in my disheveled appearance. He reached up, wiping away what looked like ash from his face, and I looked around the ground we stood on, noting there was in fact ashes everywhere.

  “But it killed them? Closing that void killed the lesser angels and forced the others out of their host bodies, which means we’re fucked,” I mumbled as I let him search me for injuries as Ryder was doing with Synthia. Ristan seemed uncertain whether or not they’d actually closed the hole and continually searched the area around us for any sign it had been moved or something else.

  “It’s more likely they used a dead body to hold their light, and then used their grace to project their image from it. Angels are vain creatures, created in the image of purity and beauty. They hate mirroring His lesser beings that He created, even for a moment in time.” Lucian finally released me once he was sure I hadn’t been hurt by the blast.

  “They think I’m wrong, that I’m bad.”

  “Furies are creatures who the Gods call to seek vengeance and retribution. They don’t create you to host tea parties and galas, kitty cat.”

  “No shit?” I smiled as Spyder smirked at the sarcasm dripping from my lips.

  “No shit, but I’m guessing you still fuck like you’re going to war, and I’m owed,” he pointed out with a heat-filled gaze that sent a ripple through me.

  “Spyder, enough,” Lucian growled as he pulled me closer to him as Ristan shook his dark head.

  “It’s gone. But something is wrong with the ground where it was,” he murmured as he knelt down, examining the blackened earth. “I don’t think they meant to explode with it.”

  “Lucifer has gotten smarter since the last time he came here,” Lucian growled.

  “Well…shit,” I said as I felt the wrongness in the air around us. “I think they opened the fucking world up to the creatures Hell housed.”

  “I think you’re right,” he replied. “I think Luc knew they’d come, and they did exactly as he wanted them to. He alone didn’t have enough power to open the realm, but with theirs, he would.”

  “So what you’re saying is, Hell is wide open, and we’re fucked in a not good way that leads to absolutely zero pleasure.”

  “Exactly,” Lucian confirmed, and the ground began to creak, as if something was cracking below where we stood. “We should go, now,” he snapped as he grabbed me as the others began sifting out.

  Chapter 27

  It took less than an hour for Hell to rise up and claim the city as a whole. Screams tore through the night, and no matter how fast we moved to save the humans, they died continually before we could even reach them. We moved through the night, long past the rising sun of dawn, and deep into the next rising moon as we fought to save those we could. We made quite the fighting force, tearing through the streets as one, ending any creature who had decided to feast upon the blood of those we sought to protect. It didn’t matter how many we saved, as long as we saved those we could reach before the monsters of Hell devoured them. I’d thought the acrid scent and taste of sulfur was bad before, but it was nothing compared to the taste of it now as it mingled with the coppery scent of innocent blood that had been spilled as Hell had risen up, into our world, fully freed.

  Hell was here, a part of our world now. There was no barrier standing between the creatures of it and ours; only us. Hours passed, and yet it felt like days as we fought to save those who had yet to be slaughtered. Side by side we fought to save the people of the city until fewer and fewer heartbeats sounded around us.

  “We can’t keep going like this,” Synthia said as she removed a head from a demon and stared down the blood-soaked street at the corpses that littered it, dead before we could reach them. Bodies were strewn as far as my inhuman sight could reach. Some had been torn apart, others lay sightless as if they had just sat down and given up. Looks of horror covered their faces in death, as if they’d stared down the purest form of evil before meeting their end.

  “We can’t stop,” Joshua snarled as he tore through a demon’s chest, ripping the human soul from it as the body sagged and fell upon the ground to join the other corpses. Rivers of blood flowed down the streets, all draining into the sewers as we watched it, like a horror show playing out right before our eyes. “They’re dying. It’s our fucking job to save them.”

  “Everyone is dead,” I whispered as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, choking on bile that pushed through my throat and threatened to spill into the river of blood and entrails. I took in several husked-out humans, as if something had literally sucked the life out of them, leaving only a dried up version in the bloody mud that lined the streets and alleyways. “Something else besides demons are feeding now, those are not normal corpses.” None of this was normal.

  Husks had been shed like something had lived in them and then discarded the humans’ form like a snake shed its skin. As if it was wearing humans like flesh suits, but where the demons used them to walk on earth, these had been sucked dry and left behind. I bent down, touching one, and watched as it crumbled the moment I did. Its essence had been sucked dry, and then the creature had moved on to the next. The other bodies which had been similarly crushed into ashes the moment they were touched, blowing away in the wind as if they’d returned to the world as they’d come to it, in ashes.

  “What the fuck does that?” I demanded as I fought the need to spew what little substance I’d kept down on our trek into the hellish world we now lived in. As far as I could see with my new senses, husked corpses filled the darkened alleyways.

  “Something bad,” Lucian offered.

  We’d lost.

  We’d thought the angels appearing would be a win, but instead we’d fallen right into the trap Lucifer had placed for them and us. Now, everywhere you looked was littered with human corpses, or what was left of them. Fires lit the night; Hell itself had risen and replaced this one classical town of rich history and trading post. Now, now all that was left was shelled out buildings and the dead.

  “Welcome to the new world,” Spyder hissed as he pushed his bloody fingers through his hair and stared down at the pile of ashes. “Hell housed thousands of monsters that other worlds couldn’t contain. Hades houses the souls once they’d been punished, but Hell housed the worst of the worst.”

  “And what the fuck houses the larger ones?” I asked.

  “Tartarus, and if it is opened, we will die. All of us.”

  “How do we know if it opens?” I asked.

  “We’ll know,” Lucian said in a guttural growl as he followed something in the shadows around us. “We got company,” he informed as Spyder became a mixture of shadows as he disappeared into the real ones. Screams ripped through the night as I watched shadows hit one large one, and then pink mist exploded everywhere, bathing us in what was left of the creatures. No one said anything as Spyder’s form solidified and he smirked at me as he walked towards where I stood.

  “We should retire for the night,” he said softly. “There are no more heartbeats near or around us. We need to regroup and get a fucking plan going before this entire shit-show leaves us wading in it.”

  “And we’re not already?” I asked. My heart buried in my throat as the reality of what he said hit me. There were no more humans left in this town, not alive. “They’re…we lost.”

  “We got played, kitty,” he stated and frowned. “He won’t get that lucky again.”

  “What does it matter if everyone is dead? What’s the point of fighting if he won?”

 
“Because he took the town, he didn’t take the world yet. We fight to survive. We fight until the last heartbeat is extinguished and there is no one left to help. We fight because we are the only things standing between him and his untimely reign of this world. He won this fight, he hasn’t won the war, kitty cat. That is not something we will allow to happen, ever.”

  We sifted back to the Guild, and even though there were now thousands of humans we’d saved below, I preferred to be out on the roof, a sentinel guarding the Guild as I viewed the damage around us.

  Earlier only scattered fires burned around the city. Now, the entire city was ablaze as building after building caught fire and eventually tumbled to the ground in a blazing pile of embers. How did you come back from this? Could they even rebuild it? It seemed as if we were fighting a losing battle, and those who needed us were now strewn over the pavement, nothing more than husks and empty corpses.

  I felt them before I saw them, Layton, Bane, Spyder, and Lucian. They seemed to emerge from the shadows moments before the Fae sifted in, all coming to stand shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the Guild.

  “Jesus,” Synthia murmured as tears streamed from her eyes as she surveyed what I had been staring at. “New Orleans just fell.”

  “The City of Saints has fallen?” I countered as my stomach churned.

  “The Guild…or what was left of it. They’d been gathering as many people as they could to protect, and couldn’t distinguish the difference between the demons and humans. They sent a warning to the remaining Guilds to close their doors, and wait this out.”

  “They can’t do that! They’re supposed to stand against creatures who feed off the human race.”

  “That’s not the same as demons, Lena. We were trained to fight Fae, to fight monsters we could see or feel, and they cannot sense them. New Orleans let humans in, and demons walked right through their doors and slaughtered what little of their numbers remained. We are fighting an enemy who has never been here before. Not these demons, Mages I can handle, Fae we can face and come out on top, but Lucifer? The fucking devil? They’re unequipped. We are unequipped to fight him, and we are Gods, Horde Fae, Dark Fae, Furies, and whatever the fuck he is,” she flicked her hand in Lucian’s direction as her hair tumbled over her shoulders as they slumped. “Do you think if I knew what to do I’d sit here and watch my city burn?”

  “I’m sorry,” I uttered thickly as tears burned my eyes. “It’s hard to watch it happen,” I admitted as I felt Lucian stepping closer against me. “I gave my life to stop this from happening. Now, now I have to watch it happen and know that I gave everything I had and it didn’t matter in the end.”

  “You stopped the seal from escaping, from using you to do so much worse than Lucifer can ever dream of doing to this world,” Lucian whispered against my ear as he pulled me back against his warmth and I allowed it. I rested my head against his chest as I stared up at the starless night.

  “Even the stars refuse to shine tonight,” I uttered.

  “What if we release the seal, and send it after Lucifer?” Synthia asked, and I swallowed hard as I turned to stare at her, not removing my head from Lucian where his heart had begun to thunder in his chest.

  “You have no idea what you ask for,” Spyder answered before anyone else could.

  “What do we have to lose?” she asked.

  “Everything,” Lucian replied. “The seal wasn’t even fully released, and yet it opened worlds the moment Lena stepped into Hell. Can you imagine the chaos it would bring down upon us if it was allowed to awaken? It’s done what it hasn’t ever been able to accomplish while it slumbered, if it is allowed to come out and play, not even your Gods will be able to stop it.”

  “But you can,” I pointed out as I stared up at the starless sky once more. “You are its keeper, its holder. You alone can stop it if we unleash it.”

  “To release it, you’d have to give it control. In your new body, it would be unstoppable, it’s not fucking happening.”

  “You’d need to kill me,” I said softly as I turned in his arms. “But you could, couldn’t you? Whatever you are, you can kill me.”

  “We’re not exchanging the world for you, Lena. I won’t allow it. I’d destroy it first. I’d snuff out every life in this realm and take you to mine. Do you hear me? I’d rip this world apart to protect you.”

  “So that’s a no?” Ristan asked as he watched us from where he stood beside Ryder. Zahruk’s sapphire eyes held mine before they moved back to the burning city.

  “If the seal is released, every world will open into this one. You think Hell is bad? Imagine the outer realms joining this one. It would open to worlds twice as large as Faery with monsters this world wouldn’t sustain holding. It would be like opening this one up to become one large feeding ground.”

  “That’s a no,” I stated as I watched another building crumble to the ground as embers shot into the night. “Nightshade,” I uttered as it beckoned me. The bar remained untouched, wards so thickly built that they glowed like an earthy beacon of hope on the burning city was where the humans were running for. “We have to help them, now!”

  The Fae sifted, and Lucian held me as we moved through space and time and appeared at the doors of the club, but within, only silence was heard.

  “Vlad,” Synthia whispered as she pushed the doors open as humans pushed and forced their way past us into the safety of the club.

  Inside the coppery tang of blood was thick in the air, and rancid. I pushed my elbow up against my nose as we entered it, finding bodies of immortals and humans in pieces littered on the floor. Silver eyes flashed in my mind; the gentle being that had always encouraged me and pushed me to be stronger, better, was lying on the bar with an iron rod protruding from his chest.

  “No,” I uttered brokenly. “No, it can’t be.”

  Chapter 28

  Ryder’s approach to the bar was unnervingly slow, as if his feet dragged to the gruesome task of discovering Vlad’s corpse laid out on the bar, with an iron bar pierced through his heart. I swallowed one, then twice as bile pushed heavily against the back of my throat as tears threatened to fall from my eyes. One foot in front of the other, he passed through the mutilated corpses that had been scattered onto the floor, left in tattered pieces by those who had desecrated the one place immortals and mortals had been safe to mingle. His hands gripped, turning the corpse over to reveal the face and then expelled a shuddered breath as his shoulders slumped and the body was set back down. His voice was thick as he plucked the note from the corpse, and read it before letting it drifted to the bloodied floor.

  My eyes stared down at the bloodied note which read two words. You Lose.

  “It’s not him, thank the Goddess it isn’t Vlad,” he said thickly, his voice filled with the same emotion we’d felt seconds ago when we’d believed it was Vlad’s corpse on display.

  I started to collapse in relief, but Lucian caught me as Synthia released the soft cry of relief that splintered through her. I watched her in disbelief as she began to search for someone else among the littered bodies of immortals that covered the floor, face down in the river of blood that seemed endless inside the club.

  It took hours of sorting through them to discover who had died, and who had been able to get away before this place had fallen to Lucifer. Hours passed as we helped her, piecing body after body together as the Fae began sifting corpses in and out of the club and back to Faery for their final burial. Fae sifted in and out, one after another until the bar was empty of death and then we began slowly cleaning it, as if for our own benefit it would help our mental state.

  Hours later, humans began lining up at the doors, demanding entrance into the one place they could be assured safety from the new world, and one by one, they were sifted to the Guild where we were sure they’d be safe. It stung, knowing that this place had been a beacon of hope in a world rife with chaos and debauchery,
and yet they flooded to it, even though it had fallen. Instead of running to the Guild as they should have, they came here.

  “I didn’t think he’d be in danger. The club has always been protected, always safe,” Synthia whispered as she dusted off her hands on her pants. Her top was covered in blood, as the rest of her was, the rest of us. Blood smeared her sharp cheekbones, and then all at once, as if I’d imagined it, she was clean. “It’s always been warded against anyone seeking to cause harm entering it. How the hell could they bring it down?” she demanded as Ryder pulled her close, kissing the top of her head as he comforted her.

  “I’m guessing the wards we crossed outside removed the ones inside. Someone turned the new ones that Erie placed against us. They countered it, meaning Lucifer has a powerful fucking Mage or being on his side, working to undo what we did,” Ryder answered, and I shook my head.

  “Witches,” I corrected. “He used witches. They’re not strong wards, they’re smart wards. They used wards that turned your wards into a weapon against those inside the club. So once the ones inside the club became entangled with the others, they nulled the beings in the club, rendering them all but mortal. It worked long enough to allow those in the club to be slaughtered, and then his wards once again became the dominant ones. Witches are taught to outthink our enemies, to not work harder, but to work smarter. This was a smart move, for them, not for us. It’s not something those in here would have seen coming, and the moment they tried to fight back, the wards saw them as the threat to the club. They used your wards to kill your people. It’s smart, and yet fits the monsters we are fighting. It was dark witches, judging by the taint of dark magic still heavy in the air.”

  “They were placed by Fae and a very talented druid. They wouldn’t fall to mere witches, it had to be something stronger, much stronger,” Zahruk snapped, his sapphire gaze alight with rage brewing in their endless depths.