“Paca, I think you moved your secondary trigger into them,” he says in a ghost of a whisper.
My skin chills as I struggle to keep the flame inside me, and he cuts his eyes toward me. “If Lucifer finds this out—”
“I’ll kill you,” I say, finishing that sentence in a much different way than I’m sure he intended.
He swallows so hard I can hear the lump go down his throat. “If he finds out, it won’t be from me.”
He tears out those pages and hands them to me. I quickly turn them to ash.
“If he found this out, he’d send them in there on their own, and they’d be forced to needlessly sacrifice themselves. Not even you could withstand the effects of a destructive detonation of that caliber inside the Pure Branch,” he says as he looks away. “Not in Purgatory. Not on Earth. And in Hell, you’d just—”
“Blow everything up. Yeah. I know. I wish everyone would stop reminding me of that. And now I have this to deal with. Why would I move it to them? I know I’d never sacrifice them in my place,” I say quietly, sinking in my seat as something heavy weighs on my chest.
My mind searches for memories that are no longer mine, straining to collect even one fragment that would help me piece this fresh, confusing puzzle together.
When Lamar and I huddle up to do a conspiratorial cramming session, I don’t know if we sound like cryptic geniuses, or raving loons that make no sense.
“You’d never sacrifice them in your place,” he agrees, putting his hand over mine and giving it a gentle, friendly squeeze.
It’s oddly comforting, probably because he knows the old me way better than I do and sounds very sincere.
“Then why would I do it?” I ask him quietly.
“Everything you did, you did it with purpose. Maybe it’s to give them the chance to level the world in your absence, should…”
He lets the words trail off, and I nod slowly.
“Should I not win in the war against Jahl,” I say in closing. “I’d have a backup plan to help them stay safe for as long as possible.”
“They’d level the world to the best of their ability, reaping all the souls they could at once, sending them to their final rest or unrest, before Jahl could steal their minds and souls to feed himself and consume everything all at once. It’s your Hail Mary pass to give everyone what they want, and gamble on both Heaven’s plan and Hell’s. Theoretically.”
“Because I couldn’t decide, even back then, what needed to be done,” I say on a long, suddenly tired sigh. “Theoretically.”
He squeezes my hand again, patting it with his other.
“Only you could make it possible to form this Plan A and Plan B. The secondary trigger is almost as powerful, according to the math I’ve done based on these journals, only it’s not lethal to the host, especially if it’s spread out between four instead of one.”
“But all bets are off if Lucifer learns about this twist of fate,” I go on, scrubbing my free hand over my face. “He’ll sacrifice them and probably buy me a pony as an apology.”
“He does have a hard time with sympathy,” he states too seriously, certainly downplaying things.
“Let’s not tell the guys,” I say quietly. “I need to learn more about my latest level up. I have some really awesome cyclone thing that does a lot of vacuum sucking, but it’s not a portal like that living whirlpool in Hell’s Black Heart.”
My eyes scan some of the riddles in this particular journal, lips pursing as I read the one in the margin. Notes in the margin are always the most important, or at least they were in the nineties. I think.
From death comes life upon a grave misdeed. Only then can one sow a truly destructive seed.
That sounds ominous.
Flipping the page, I find another note in the margin.
A weapon can be used more than once, and never fully ceases to exist. The ammunition is the loss that comes at a cost you will find the hardest.
My fingers run over those lines, the wheels of my mind turning, as I try to piece that together. The weapon is supposed to cease to exist once it’s used, right?
Then again, all the information I’ve learned in Hell gets called into question anytime new information conflicts with it. After all, the Devil is the one controlling the information stream down here. Shit’s sake. This is why we can’t be heroes. It’s every bonded group for themselves down here, and no one can trust anyone.
He pats my hand again. “I know what none of that means,” Lamar says, cutting through my thoughts.
I nod, even though I’ve already forgotten what I said by this point, my mind lost on the route of self-doubt and inner tangents.
“What do you think this means?” I ask him, pointing at the note in the margin.
He frowns as he glances at what I’m pointing at.
“What does what mean?” he asks.
“This,” I state, pointing again.
He slowly shakes his head, flicking his gaze to me. “You apparently see something I don’t. It’s just a blank margin to my eyes.”
There’s a quiet fluttering in my chest, and I swallow harshly. The margin notes are oddly in English instead of this dead language. The old me only wanted me to see this, apparently.
“What about this one?” I ask him, flicking the page back again.
He slowly shakes his head. “Also blank.”
“I also made the ground break apart,” I add, going back to the conversation I remember us having before the inner tangents and confusion.
Lamar, not missing a beat, follows suit, not prying. I’ll figure out why these notes are important and secretive when I’m alone.
“You control storms and natural disasters with a flick of your wrist,” he assures me.
It wasn’t quite that simple, but I don’t admit that.
“I also found out I have—”
A squeal takes the place of the rest of my words, as a fist slams into Lamar’s face, and he goes flying across the room.
I jerk my gaze over to see Kai rubbing his fist as though Lamar’s jaw has hurt it, while Lamar groans from the floor.
“No touching,” Ezekiel says as Gage stabs his sword into the table in front of me.
“Next time there won’t be a warning shot,” Gage adds, eyes lethally narrowed like Lamar is the most offensive man he’s ever encountered.
“You do know he’s gay, right?” I ask as Jude siphons across the room, moving to be behind Lamar, his eyes just as cold and dark as his soul. “And banging my lazy brother,” I tack on, just to be certain they understand how innocent Lamar’s touch is.
“I see you’ve gotten a lot of your strength back,” Lamar notes as he finishes picking himself up off the ground and siphons across the room to take a seat. “One punch wouldn’t have knocked me down so easily otherwise.”
Fortunately, Lamar doesn’t seem offended. I’m still unsure how powerful he is versus my still-growing boys.
Ezekiel slides into the recently vacated chair next to me, as the other three pull up chairs all around the table.
“Stay over there,” Gage tells Lamar, when my bestie stands to come join us. “I may still stab you.”
Lamar immediately plants his ass in a chair on that side of the room, not bothering to argue.
“I think that’s a bit excessive. Lamar is my bestie. Don’t be so—”
I shut right the hell up when all four sets of eyes suddenly light up twice as bright with that cosmic blue that was dull in three sets of eyes just moments ago. Even Jude’s have lost the black, getting in sync with the rest of theirs, all within a unified blink.
“That’s creepy,” I point out.
They continue to stare at me with those creepy eyes.
“No touching,” Jude says, echoing Gage’s words. “Unless you want girls—gay or straight—touching us.”
I look over at Lamar and give him a shrug. “No touching,” I tell him, trying not to smile.
I’d so set a bitch on purple-fire. I wouldn’t sto
p at punching her in the face. I still want to roast Chloe and all those other girls who’ve touched them, but I feel that’s a bit overboard. I wonder if my current favorite color played a part in my new fire’s shade.
Things to ponder…
“Surely you all realize no woman in her right mind would touch you on purpose,” Lamar tells them blandly. “At least not now that Paca has made her champion debut. Most of the souls who attend those things were too young to even know The Apocalypse is a real being.”
“I’d show them how badass I am now…but I don’t want Jahl getting too many reports on what I can and can’t do,” I say by way of adding to the conversation and bragging on my badassness in one swoop.
They all give me those even brighter, creepier stares.
“We’re still going to have a discussion about your latest level-up,” Gage informs me.
“I’d get excited about punishment, if you guys weren’t so sadistically cruel,” I quip, flipping the page on the book I can’t understand.
“What happened to these pages?” Gage asks, flipping the pages back before I can hide the spot where some have been ripped out.
I shouldn’t have called attention to them. Do I have to suck this hard at deception?
Lamar quickly steps in to handle the lying. “They were just some private notes, most likely. I’m not sure. They were missing before—”
“He was asking Paca,” Ezekiel says, interrupting my bestie before he can help me out.
All four horsemen continue staring directly at me.
“They hold secrets Lucifer can’t know. And I’ll tell you, so long as you promise to play by my rules with this information…and also promise not to hurt Lamar. It’s not his fault that he’s the only one I trust to translate these things, since no one else in our group is smart enough to read dead languages,” I tell them.
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to get us to enter into some sort of deal right now?” Jude asks me, suspicion in his tone. “I even have a chill up my spine.”
He shudders and his eyes narrow to slits.
“You’re sensing her true power for the first time,” Lamar tells us as though he’s pleased with this new upgrade.
When I look over, he’s the picture of composure, eyes on me as he absently raps his fingers on the edges of the chair’s arms.
“Making a deal with her is less tricky than making a deal with the Devil, but no less powerful. She’ll only get better at it the more deals she makes, and it could help feed her power,” he adds. “Especially with the four of you struggling as a unified unit.”
I turn my attention to their creepy eyes once more and begin rapping my fingers as I smirk. “Ready to make a deal with the Devil’s daughter, boys?”
Jude leans forward, always ready to argue. “You want to control this situation, but you c—”
“The old me put a lot of things into play, and Lamar knows her better than any of us. You know what she did for you. You know what she saved you from. And you know what she went through to keep you safe,” I tell them as my nose drips with a drop of blood that sizzles when it lands on the table.
They all glance to the sizzling blood and back up to my eyes.
“Make a deal with me, and I’ll be honest. Don’t make the deal, and I’ll keep this secret for myself,” I warn them. “You don’t have to trust me, but by this point, you certainly shouldn’t doubt her.”
Jude bristles, and Gage releases the first breath of reluctant defeat. Then they do that infuriating silent eye-conversation thingy.
“Fine,” they all grind out in eerily timed unison.
I glance over to Lamar. “Is this where I finally get a chalice and virgin’s blood? You know, to seal the deal?” I ask with an alarming amount of hopeful anticipation.
Lamar stares at me with a blank expression. “A handshake works just fine,” he tells me, bursting that bubble.
I stick out my hand, and I smile as Gage takes it first. Then Ezekiel. Kai goes next, rolling his eyes as he does so. Jude is the last one to reluctantly shake my hand, and he makes it known he hates this just by giving me that one scalding look.
I grin, flicking my gaze between them.
“Congratulations. You just made your first binding deal with the Devil’s daughter.”
Chapter 17
KAI
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all,” Jude says, absently twirling his scythe as he stares at the floor under him.
“None of us do,” Ezekiel chimes in, gaze flicking to Paca, who is worn out, now that three out of four of us took a turn with her before she passed out with that orgasm coma thing.
A smile is still on her face as she unconsciously snuggles closer to Ezekiel’s side.
I’m barely keeping my shit together.
“She’s bruised all over, has no idea if she’s powerful enough to take on Jahl, is entirely too trusting of Manella’s shady boy toy, and we still don’t even know if she’s truly maxed out her power levels,” Jude goes on, stopping his scythe from spinning as he looks around at the three of us.
“I thought we agreed you’d do the love thing,” I interject, glaring at him.
His eyes narrow. “If it was as simple as saying the words—which actually is impossible, as it turns out—”
“We already told you that,” Ezekiel interrupts on a very frustrated huff.
Jude slants his eyes at him. “If it was as simple as saying the damn words, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I fucked her. I kissed her. I gave her every ounce of my attention and cleared my head, just as you all said to do—”
“If he doesn’t truly feel it, then it won’t work.” Gage is the one to quietly interrupt this time, slipping onto the bed to take up the other side next to Paca.
She turns in her sleep, curling up next to him, and he kisses the top of her head.
“These rules don’t make any sense,” Jude bites out. “We have a battle to wage, and the Four Horsemen are sitting around discussing love while The Apocalypse sleeps off her orgasmic bliss.”
I really want to punch him right now.
“She did all this to save us, and grows more powerful and commanding every time one of us gives in. It’s easy to theorize that’s why her latest level-ups have been so much more advanced than all her previous ones combined,” I point out, staring at him as he glares back at me. “So it’s pertinent to our battle plan, soldier.”
“Now’s not the time to push me,” he cautions.
I stand, smirking over at him. “You really in the mood to cast threats?”
“Are you really picking a fight with Death?” he volleys.
“I put money on Kai. He’s actually got something worth fighting for,” Ezekiel drawls.
“Clearly tensions are high, and we can’t deal with our unit having fractures at this point in the game,” Gage says as he siphons to stand between us, crossing his arms over his chest.
“It’s not like they haven’t fought before,” Ezekiel says around a yawn, as Paca snuggles back up to him, sighing contently as he wraps his arms around her.
“He can’t even stay focused for two seconds without staring at her like a lovesick pup. None of you can. How are we supposed to be the ultimate evil weapon, if this life is all some sappy romance The Apocalypse wrote five hundred years ago? We know nothing about that version of her, or how convoluted her mind—”
“We made a deal, but I can’t imagine any consequences befalling us if we break that deal,” Ezekiel cuts in as though the solution to all our problems is obvious.
Jude’s willing to die for her, but can’t admit he loves the damn girl. Unbelievable.
I drop to the chair, rolling my eyes, as I take a long sip of the liquor next to me.
A noise draws my attention to the door where an envelope slides in, and Gage goes to collect it. I return my attention to Jude as he shrugs out of his shirt and climbs into bed next to Paca.
She doesn’t turn away from Ezekiel this time.
Jude has to tear her out of Ezekiel’s grip, earning a glare.
It’s a lot harder to share her when we have to consider this could all end in another month—
“Our deadline just got shorter,” Gage says on a long exhale, tossing the latest mail onto my lap.
I glance down at the gold writing, and the muscles of my stomach contract so painfully that it almost makes it hard to breathe.
The Apocalypse and The Four Horsemen:
The window of opportunity will be closing in one week instead of the previous estimation. If you’re going to strike, you have seven days left to prepare. Jahl’s power has grown, and the Pure Branch is weakening at a much more rapid pace. The world’s sin is bleeding in at an even higher rate, and the scales are on the verge of tipping.
That’s all there is. No one even bothered signing the letter, likely because they didn’t want to endure her wrath for stealing what’s possibly the last bit of our lives.
I toss the letter to Jude, and he catches it, eyes quickly skimming the contents as his jaw tics.
“Death has seven days to fall in love so fiercely The Apocalypse can’t deny it, or watch her go into battle weaker than she intended when she sacrificed everything she had to come back and keep us all safe,” I tell him coldly.
He crumples the paper in his fist, staring at the floor. “I don’t know what I did wrong,” he says as he tosses the paper to the floor and drags her even closer. “I did everything you stupid fucks said.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him unsure of himself during the many long decades we’ve spent together. He pulls his arm over his eyes, keeping her pressed to him.
“Don’t think that means you get to hog her for the next seven days. Figure it out without stealing all her attention,” Ezekiel warns him as he slides in closer behind her.
“Maybe if you all didn’t make it seem so pathetic, I’d find it easier to give in the way she clearly needs it. It’s almost as though she expects full surrender, if I’m going based off you imbeciles,” Jude grumbles, puffing out another long breath of annoyance.
“Surrender yourselves,” I state in observation, drawing all of their attention toward me. “That’s what Jahl kept saying.”
One Apocalypse (The Dark Side Book 4) Page 14