A Merciless Year One

by Eva Brandt

  “Do you know if Lucifer’s been experimenting with it?” Raphael asked my lovers.

  Sariel shook his head. “He always had trouble with resurrection magic. It strained him a lot. The curse on us only broke because of some unexpected circumstances.”

  “Because of The Supreme Being’s intervention, you mean,” Raphael commented. “Okay, fine. I believe you. But there are still traces of demonic magic here. Do you recognize it?”

  “You mean you don’t?” Yeqon drawled. Apparently, he’d recovered enough to be snarky toward the guy who’d killed him. That was encouraging.

  “Stop stalling and just tell us what you know,” Sandalphon snapped. “If you don’t—”

  “This is Cain’s work,” Sariel cut him off, obviously losing his patience with the whole thing. “There’s no doubt about it. He was here. We can’t tell you anything beyond that, on what he might have intended, but I assume he must still be planning to bring back his mother.”

  “Not this again,” Sandalphon muttered. “That woman is just the gift that keeps on giving.”

  “To be fair, she really got the short end of the stick,” Azazel pointed out.

  “And you’ll find that few people care about that right now, considering the trouble she’s been. It might not be kind of us to say, but that’s just the way it is.”

  I didn’t understand who they were referring to, but whoever it was seemed to be out for revenge of some kind. “There’s a lot of resentment in the air here,” I said. “And these people… Why are they extending their hands like this?”

  “That’s an excellent question and a good point, Delilah,” Raphael said. “Nothing is coincidental, especially not in a resurrection ritual.”

  “Well, then, let’s not delay any longer,” Sandalphon offered. “We have to find Cain, at once, before he unleashes another disaster like at The Academy of the Devil.”

  The comment jolted something very unpleasant inside me. Images of a crushed yacht, rushing water, and snapping teeth flashed through my mind. I might have told myself that I was ready to leave the past behind, but that was clearly not the case.

  “Cain was involved in that?” I asked, hating the way my voice was suddenly trembling.

  My lovers didn’t miss my reaction and they shot me concerned looks. “He was,” Sariel replied somewhat sedately. “He was part of the group who kidnapped Alyssa Michaelis. He disappeared shortly after the incident and seemed to frequent The In-Between.”

  I didn’t push them for more information, since it was obvious that they didn’t have time to provide it. “I think we should go to The Infernal Realm and ask Lucifer about it,” Azazel suggested. “Someone there might know more. Knowing Lucifer, he’s definitely keeping an eye on The Shadow Realm.”

  Raphael was unhappy with the idea, but he nodded. “All right. Go. But I expect you to come back as quickly as possible.”

  There was something sharp and dark in his voice as he grabbed my arm and tugged me closer to him. I stumbled away from my lovers and narrowly managed to not fall into Raphael’s arms like some kind of swooning maiden.

  Just like that, all the work I’d done to calm my lovers down was rendered useless. “Get your hands off her,” Azazel growled. “Now.”

  Yeqon’s gaze shone with an almost demonic light. “You can do whatever you want to us, but you have no right to hurt her.”

  “And I don’t intend to. But you yourselves said you need to go see Lucifer. What are you going to do, take her with you?”

  I was very tempted to say that yes, that would be the right call. But I didn’t know what I’d do if I actually met Lucifer face to face. Probably nothing good. The last thing we needed right now was for me to lose my temper and get into an argument with the devil.

  Instead of defying Raphael—like I very much wanted to—I offered my lovers a quick smile. “Just go, okay? I’ll wait for you and then we’ll talk. And be careful. It could be dangerous.”

  Sariel’s lips twisted into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “If Lucifer had wanted to kill us, he’d have done it a long time ago. But all right, Delilah. We’ll listen to you. We’ll see you soon.”

  Strands of black slithered into Sariel’s silver feathers. It reminded me of Uriel’s class, and it was awful. I couldn’t do anything except watch as my three lovers disappeared.

  Once they were gone, I freed myself from Raphael’s hold and glowered at him. “That was unnecessary, Archangel Raphael. You can’t dangle me over their heads and just hope they won’t betray you.”

  “Yes, I can, and I will,” Raphael replied. “For whatever reason, they’re drawn to you. I can’t say I understand it. Maybe it’s just a sexual response, tied into their past. But it’s there, and as you yourself have proven, it can be used to improve their performance.”

  “Is that a fact?” I asked. “What happened to simply having faith?”

  Raphael shrugged. “I have plenty of faith, Delilah, just not in the Watchers.”

  A part of me couldn’t blame him. The other hated the hypocrisy of his attitude. “Then instead of pushing them and angering them in class, you’d be better off helping them, and yourself. Because guess what? Constantly getting them angry isn’t the right way to get them to accept The Heavenly Host.”

  “You’d be surprised, Delilah,” Sandalphon answered. “Now come. While you’re here, we have our own investigation to pursue. And you might be able to help us.”

  City of Fire

  “I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m not afraid of the dark. There’s nothing here that can harm me.”

  I unsteadily made my way through the labyrinthine cave, my incipient wings providing me with light. When Sandalphon and Raphael had told me they needed my help in their investigation, this wasn’t at all what I’d had in mind. I felt like I’d fallen into a hack-and-slash game and any moment now, a monster was about to come from around the corner and eat me.

  Considering the reason why I was here, that fear wasn’t completely unjustified.

  When I finally ran into the beast I was looking for, she didn’t show any sign of wanting to devour me. She was slumbering in a massive cavern, her scales lighting up as she breathed.

  The dragon Sunrefni must have sensed me, because she cracked her reptilian eyes open. “Who are you, human? You smell of angel.”

  In front of the massive dragon, I felt smaller than Bilbo Baggins. I held my ground anyway. “My name is Delilah. I’m here with a message from The Celestial Realm.”

  “Are you?” Sunrefni rumbled. A wisp of smoke emerged from her nostrils. “And what would those winged pests want with me?”

  “An information exchange. I’m told you might know something about Cain Adamson.”

  Sunrefni got up on her haunches and leaned in closer to me. My spine tingled and I instinctively took a step back.

  She bared her teeth at me, eyeing me with undisguised interest. “I might. But why should I tell you?”

  “Because he may be a danger for the people you care about,” I answered, hoping and praying this would work.

  According to Raphael, Sunrefni had once been the dragon of one of the Seven Princes of Hell. Now that they were defeated, she was free and hadn’t returned to The Infernal Realm, since it held bad memories for her.

  Even so, Sunrefni had been part of countless battles against armies of angels. Her hatchling, Redrum, had been the guardian of The Academy of the Devil and a close friend to Alyssa Michaelis. Neither of them would react well to having an actual celestial being in their lair. Even with the Watchers, it was a little dangerous. Enter the half-divine human. Lucky, lucky me.

  “Have you asked the Brightest Star?” she inquired, her tail swaying back and forth in a hypnotic motion.

  “We’ve sent a messenger to The Infernal Realm too, but we thought it would be a good idea to come see you anyway.”

  “You weren’t wrong,” Sunrefni answered after a few seconds of pause. She tapped her tail against the wall of the cave and another,
smaller dragon emerged from the shadows.

  It was, of course, Redrum. “Cain Adamson is back, is he?” he asked without preamble. “I owe that man a devouring for what he did to Lyssa.”

  “Yes, hatchling, I know.” Sunrefni sounded like she’d said this countless times before. “But it would be best for us to stay out of this one, at least for now.”

  Redrum rumbled, but didn’t question his mother. “Here is what we know about the situation. Lyssa mentioned one of her males ran into Cain in The Shadow Realm recently. We were concerned, especially since he seemed to be working with both a demonic symbiote and an archangel.”

  An archangel? Raphael hadn’t mentioned that. If that was true, I was surprised Sunrefni and Redrum had even agreed to talk to me.

  “O-Oh,” I stammered. “And what happened after that?”

  “We knew better than to think he’d give up just because his plans failed. We tried to track him down to the Adamson clan, only to learn they were all missing.”

  “Missing?” I repeated. I thought about all the dead people in the circle. It didn’t take a genius to realize who they must have been.

  The group of angels must have known about their identities but had decided not to mention it. Why? It seemed strange. I could understand them not trusting me with the information, but they’d recruited me for the investigation anyway.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I mumbled.

  “Welcome to the world of angels and demons,” Redrum commented. “You look tired, human. Come, sit down.”

  He offered me his paw and, following a sudden instinct, I plopped down on top of it. “How did someone like you come to be in The Celestial Realm’s service anyway?” he asked.

  “It’s… complicated. My family died and I’m supposed to become a guardian angel to save them. But I’m not doing a very good job.”

  I hated falling into a bout of self-pity, especially in front of two mythological creatures who could easily eat me and had no reason to like me. But they were strikingly kind about it.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Sunrefni answered. “You just have to remember to take better care of yourself. Otherwise, you’ll just wither away and die.”

  “The Celestial Realm is a cruel place,” Redrum added. “Angels aren’t exactly the most welcoming beings. I’m not sure your heart is that of an angel.”

  “I don’t understand,” I answered, confused.

  “You will, one day,” Sunrefni replied, waving her massive paw. “Anyway, back to Cain Adamson. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but he’s been trying to resurrect his mother for millennia. Eve’s soul was dealt a heavy blow after the battle at The Academy of the Devil, so many now assume the last threads of her consciousness might have drifted into The Shadow Realm.

  “Our expertise isn’t in that field, so we can’t tell you what he’s been doing or if he’s had any luck. But we have detected something interesting. There’s been an imbalance in the energy fluctuations in Sodom. The currents of sinful and spiritual magic are clashing in ways we haven’t seen in a while.”

  “Sodom? As in Sodom and Gomorrah? I thought those cities were destroyed.”

  “Things that are destroyed can easily be rebuilt,” Sunrefni said, her fangs glinting in the darkness like daggers. “Ask your angels about it. They’ll tell you.”

  I made a mental note to do exactly that. “Okay, but if it’s such an issue, why hasn’t anyone intervened yet?”

  “Sodom’s been around for ages,” Redrum replied, “but no one considers it an epicenter of demonic activity anymore. I do believe Lucifer may have sent some demons to investigate. As far as I know, they didn’t find anything.”

  “So Cain is in hiding?”

  “He might be, or he might be up to something entirely different,” Sunrefni said. “I don’t know, young Delilah, but I’d highly recommend that you be careful. He’s dangerous and I wouldn’t be surprised if he attacked you.”

  I shot her a look of disbelief. “What would he want with me? I’m not so important.”

  “I think we both know that’s not true,” Sunrefni answered cryptically. “I can’t tell you more, I’m afraid. You have to find your own answers. But if you want my advice… Follow those wings of yours. They’re not just for flying, you know. Celestial beings too often miss the obvious.”

  “I don’t even have wings,” I told her, frustrated. “Mine are more or less stumps.”

  “That may well be for now. But, Delilah, you carry the trace of resurrection magic. There’s an ancient power slumbering inside you. All you have to do is let it out, and you’ll become so much more than you are.”

  After that, the dragons refused to tell me anything more. Redrum gently dropped me at the edge of the main cavern and ushered me away. “Be careful, Delilah,” he said.

  “I will,” I promised. “And thank you.”

  Baffled by their behavior, I went back the way I’d come, heading toward the exit. Raphael and Sandalphon were still waiting for me outside, on the cliff that was the access point to the cave.

  It was very cold up here, as the cave was in the Alps and exposed to wind, snow, and low temperatures. I shivered, although my skin shouldn’t have been affected by the elements.

  “Well?” Sandalphon asked. “Anything?”

  “More or less. I spoke to them and they said they sensed something around… Sodom?”

  The mere notion seemed silly to me, but stranger things had happened. My lovers had already told me that parts of the biblical stories were true, although in a very twisted version. The existence of these mythological cities wasn’t so surprising.

  “I didn’t feel anything different from there,” Sandalphon offered with a small frown, “but I suppose it’s worth checking out.”

  Once again, he took my hand, although this time, he was a little gentler. His power whisked us away from the icy cliff—and straight into chaos.

  * * *

  Everyone knew the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the two cities destroyed by God because of their sinful citizens. When the two dragons had mentioned them, I hadn’t known what to expect. Pillars of salt? Fire and brimstone?

  As it turned out, there was no salt, but there was plenty of fire. In fact, when we first arrived in Sodom, I thought we’d missed a turn and ended up in The Infernal Realm instead.

  A wave of heat struck us with a fury that reminded me of the angry ocean. This time, though, it wasn’t water that attacked us. Everywhere I looked, I could only see flame, ash, burning coal, and molten lava.

  My two companions didn’t seem surprised by this development. Mostly, they seemed annoyed. Their wings twitched, but they didn’t display their irritation beyond that. “So much for not feeling anything from here,” Raphael murmured.

  If Sandalphon was offended by the comment, he didn’t say it. “This is very strange. Last time I checked, the city was completely dormant.”

  Somewhere to our right, a building exploded. The two archangels started heading in that direction. Not knowing what else to do, I shuffled after them.

  That was when I saw him. Lucifer was standing there, in the middle of the burning city, magic swirling around him.

  Today, he was in his humanoid form, but it was still undeniably him. I might not have met him before, but at an instinctual level, I recognized him.

  Suddenly, I was back in the darkness, brought back by Death itself and watching Lucifer kill me and my parents. My lungs refused to draw in air. I was beginning to suffocate, and it wasn’t because of all the smoke in Sodom.

  Every inch of me started to convulse in pain. I stopped walking and leaned against a pillar of coal, trying to compose myself.

  In front of me, Lucifer noticed our arrival. The magic around him faded and he turned toward us. His eyes shone like supernovas and my mind and body screamed, torn between two conflicting desires—to run and to make him pay.

  “Raphael?” he asked. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Trying to c
lean up your mess,” Raphael replied. “What about you, Brightest Star? Finally taking responsibility for your mistakes?”

  Lucifer didn’t take the bait. “I don’t have time for this. Stay out of my way. I have a city to heal.”

  “Your city breaks the rules set in place by The Supreme Being,” Sandalphon answered.

  “Please.” Lucifer snorted. “If he’d wanted it gone, he could have wiped it away a long time ago. Don’t bother me with your stupidity.”

  The exchange was short, but it bought me just enough time to recover a little. As much as I hated being here, in the devil’s presence, I had other pressing concerns.

  On shaky legs, I made my way to Raphael’s side. “Where are Sariel, Yeqon, and Azazel?” I asked, not bothering to introduce myself.

  Lucifer tilted his head at me, his lips quirking in a mocking smirk. “How am I supposed to know? Aren’t they the responsibility of The Celestial Realm now? Or are they too busy adopting mortals to take care of actual angels?”

  “Considering your queen’s background, you shouldn’t really criticize anyone for being human,” I snapped back. “Alyssa Michaelis was a mortal too, right?”

  Lucifer narrowed his eyes at me. The air around us crackled with energy and several sets of wings appeared behind him. His form shifted, dancing between his humanoid one and his angel one.

  “Don’t talk about her,” he hissed. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t deserve to even say her name.”

  This hadn’t been the plan. I hadn’t wanted to piss him off, not when the whole thing with Cain was still an issue and my lovers were involved. But I had no intention of apologizing to him.

  “If you must know, my name is Delilah St. John and your little temper tantrum at The Academy of the Devil killed me and my family. The Celestial Realm was kind enough to give me a second chance. But you don’t care about that, do you?”

  Lucifer said nothing, which was actually a little surprising. I’d half expected him to laugh in my face. He didn’t, and I had no idea what to do with that.