by Alexa Black
Sue looked around for Dehek and his crowd, but they were nowhere to be found. Thank heaven for small mercies. Or hell. Whichever.
But it was more than that, she realized. None of these Outcasts looked like Dehek. None of them were young.
She looked over the broad body of a slate-pale Outcast. His horns were massive, far larger than Kara’s, curling up and up and up. His cracks, pale yellow, tore through his chest and back in dozens of places.
Are those all scars? Sue looked from him to Kara and back again. How old were the Outcasts who had fought in their great war? He looked as old as Kara.
Sue watched the way he looked at Kara. An incline of his head, a low sound like the beginning of an Outcast song. That’s respect. It has to be.
And Kara nodded back to him, lowering her eyes.
Sue slipped closer to Kara. “These are all warriors,” she whispered, hoping her voice was low enough for them not to overhear.
“Yes,” Kara answered.
“Your comrades.”
“Yes.”
Sue watched a few more of them pass by. One fixed her gaze on Sue, and Sue lowered her head again, hoping it looked deferential enough. The woman sniffed the air and snorted, nostrils a bright angry red, but she passed by Kara without comment.
“This is where the warriors live,” Sue said.
“Most of us, yes.”
“But not you.”
“No.”
Kara didn’t say more. Sue caught someone else staring and went quiet.
The light was blazing bright here, the ceiling high and wide. Hollow beams wove in and out, the lights embedded between them, glaring down on Sue and Kara. The lights from the hallway were almost as bright.
What was it Kara had called her leader? Bringer of Light?
They stopped in front of a pair of closed metal doors, so polished they could have been mirrors. They fit together tighter than any doors Sue had ever seen, but she still caught a hint of light from the crack between them, a line of brilliant white.
The light was interesting enough, but the mirror-shiny door intrigued Sue even more. She stared at it, unable to turn away. In the colonies, every mirror, no matter how well tended, had scratches or dents or stubborn stains. Even the clean hospital room where she had stayed hadn’t looked as pristine as this. Sue stared at her own face and ran her hand through her hair.
It was uneven. It looked wrong in this perfect mirror. But Kara had cut it for her, and that mattered more. She ran her fingers through it again, suddenly determined. It would look right, it would look fine, because it had come from Kara, and Kara was why she was here.
A hand wrapped around her shoulder and squeezed, almost too tight. She could feel the pinpricks of the claws even through her jacket. She liked Kara’s strength, even though it made her wince.
“Come in,” boomed a voice, all around them. Some rational part of Sue knew she should be looking for speakers, that it was just an intercom, but she huddled close to Kara all the same.
The voice wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t something Sue would want to listen to, would beg to create song pictures in her head. It echoed like the others, but over it all Sue heard a broken rasp, like someone who’d been tormented. Or lived so long his throat could only croak out shattered sounds.
And yet there was something beautiful in the deeper sound that came with it. She clutched at her jacket even as Kara let go of her.
“Follow,” Kara commanded. She pressed a fingertip to the handle of the door with slow reverence, and it slid open.
Now Sue knew what the leak of white light meant. The room was so bright Sue had to close her eyes. Searing white light reflected on the metal of the wall beside her reflected on the wall in front, over and over and over, so intense she wondered if it might burn away her eyes in their sockets and leave her Kara’s blind little pet.
And yet in the center of the room, all was darkness.
The Enemy, the Lord of the Outcasts, the Bringer of Light, sat on a silver throne in the corner of the room, shrouded in his own shadow.
Sue’s aching eyes focused on him, less because she was supposed to than because looking at him didn’t hurt like the light. Through a haze of pain, she thought of the dream that had started all this. Of what she’d imagined the King of the Demons would be.
He was nothing like the monster in her dream.
Through the mantle of his wing shadows, she couldn’t make out the color of his skin. Some medium gray, probably, just paler than Kara. But the shadows of his wings weren’t like Kara’s, or anyone else’s she’d seen. They gave off their own darkness. It curled around him, twining and twisting like a companion.
Or a lover. Sue shuddered.
His head and his horns were the same. The horns were massive, whorled with elaborate patterns. A corona of darkness rose from them, surrounding his great head.
His face was angular, like Kara’s, the cheekbones impossibly high. His lips were pressed together, his expression stern, but Sue could see the fire behind his closed mouth, more easily than she could ever have seen Kara’s.
His eyes blazed first orange, then yellow, then red, the fire within him changing colors as his gaze fixed first on Kara, then on Sue. Like the other Outcast they had passed on the way in, his body was a patchwork of scars, the skin so rent by them Sue wondered what held him together.
His body was broad, with the same athletic shape she’d noticed when she first met Kara. Even seated, Sue could see that he dwarfed Kara in size, by about as much as Kara did Sue. She looked at his thick, chiseled arm lying against the armrest and at the curl of his claws around it and shivered. When Kara wasn’t thinking of her own strength, she could almost crush Sue with her hands. How much more powerful was her lord?
And yet he was all fire.
His claws clutched at the armrests of his throne, and where they dug in, Sue could see hints of his fire. Were his fingers scarred? Was he hurting himself? Or was his inner blaze so strong it leaked out when he moved? Sue didn’t know.
She threw herself onto her knees in front of him, pressed her face to the mirrored floor. She didn’t do it because Kara told her to, or because Kara had bowed down. She did it without thinking, without awareness, without any understanding but that she should.
You are a mortal, Sue Jones. We may be Outcasts, still paying for our sins against our Enemy, but to beings like you, we might as well be gods.
This being, this lord, this warrior, was the closest she would ever come to being in the presence of a god. Whether the Enemy or not, some part of Sue knew it.
“Come forward,” said the impossible voice, a broken memory of beauty.
Sue scrambled to her feet and stepped toward the throne.
Chapter Thirty
“What is this?” asked the broken voice, its own echo thudding after it.
“It is a human, my lord,” said Kara. She didn’t sound like him, but she didn’t sound human either. How long had it been since Sue noticed? She’d grown used to it, grown used to Kara. But Kara was an Outcast. A demon. More like the creature sitting in front of them than anything like Sue.
“It is my human,” Kara went on.
The Lord of the Outcasts turned his head. His eyes brightened and widened, and Sue lost herself in the whirling blaze. She stared, mesmerized, and he sniffed, as if in contempt.
“Your human?” he asked at last.
“Yes. A living human who is called Sue. She was stranded, and somehow she crossed the bridge between worlds. I found her, and I healed her, and…” Kara hesitated.
Sue stared at her. Kara had always seemed so sure. Of herself. Of Sue. Of everything.
“And you made her yours,” the Lightbringer finished. “I can smell you on each other, each within each.”
Kara nodded. “Yes, my lord. I have claimed this human as my own.”
“Very well. But it is not one of the dead, given to you for torment or for absolution. It is a mortal, and it lives.”
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br /> Kara nodded again. “Yes.”
The Lord of the Outcasts stretched out his hand and held it out, cupped, toward Sue. She could see light in it, blazing outward from some crack. She looked down at her own palms and at the wrinkles in them and had a wild sudden thought that maybe he, too, had wrinkles like that. Except for him they’d be fiery scars.
“You are not the first Outcast to claim a human,” he said.
“No, my lord.”
Wait. Is this a thing? A thing she knows about?
Why didn’t she tell me?
“And what does your human have to say for itself?”
Sue scrambled to her feet again and walked toward the throne. Her bad leg felt like a heavy weight, dragging behind her. Her clothes were torn, the body they hid a fragile imitation of the immortals around her, whatever their fall had done to them.
“I, uh. I want to say that Kara saved me.”
The Lord of the Outcasts smirked. Flame wreathed his mouth, even though he didn’t open his lips. Sue shivered. He’d been the beloved of God once. Or so the old religion said.
“Saved you?” he repeated.
Sue straightened. She thought of the starfighter pilot she’d always wanted to be. How would that woman stand in front of Lucifer himself? How would she talk? How would she sound?
Better than Sue, probably. But she had to try. “I went exploring. In a shuttle. I’m…I’m from one of the colonies. I don’t know if you know about them.”
The great head nodded. “I know about you humans. Our curse was to—”
“To punish the unrepentant. I know. I’ve seen it.”
And felt it. The marks Kara’s whipping had left on her were fading, but she could still feel the scratch of her clothes against the welts.
It felt almost good. A reminder of what had passed between them, and a reminder of why Sue was here now.
Kara, for her part, just glared at Sue. Sue could guess what that was about. Going from groveling in front of the Lightbringer to finishing his sentences for him.
She wasn’t sure why she’d done it either. But the Lightbringer’s smile only widened.
“That is for the dead,” he said.
“She endured it,” Kara put in. “As a living human.”
Was it Sue’s imagination, or was the curl of Kara’s lip a mark of pride?
The fiery eyes bored into Sue. She swallowed hard. “Well. I don’t think you quite did to me what your people do to the dead ones.”
“But you chose it,” the Lightbringer said.
I had a few things I wanted to atone for. “I wanted to know what your people do. To us, to others, to anyone. We humans…tend to hear only one side of the story.”
“Indeed,” the Lightbringer said.
“That’s why I brought her here, my lord,” Kara said. “I wanted her to see what we are. And to see that, she had to see you.”
“We were not always so friendly to humans,” the Lightbringer said. He opened his cupped hand. Like Sue had thought, his palms blazed with cracks. Tufts of flame burst upward from them. Sue watched the flames dance. What might it look like if he sang?
Hell, what might he look like? Sue thought of Kara’s song, the ripples of energy under her illusion’s skin. The Lightbringer was all fire, leaking from every part of his ruined body. How must he have looked in his prime, his skin crackling with the energy he could barely hold in?
His wing shadows made the light in the room bearable. And that was after his fall. How bright must his wings have been? In the vision Kara had given Sue, she’d barely been able to look at Kara’s wings. How much would his sear her?
And what might it be like to hear his song? Sue tried to imagine it. The Outcasts’ songs made visions appear, sights to go with the sounds. But the Lightbringer had been the greatest of them from the beginning. What other senses could his song touch?
“You started a war,” Sue said. “Over us humans. And now you’re willing to talk to me?”
“I started a war for my people,” the Lightbringer replied. “I started a war because my people were precious.”
“You didn’t like humans.”
“You were young creatures. Finite ones. You stank of the deaths you would someday die.”
“That’s why you didn’t like us? Because we were young?”
“You were fragile. You were weak.” The Lightbringer sniffed. Sue could see sparks flickering in his nostrils. “To us, you would last only for a breath. And yet.”
He drew back his lips, showing fangs longer than Kara’s. Sue shivered, imagining their bite. He laughed and opened his mouth, a bright furnace ringed with blades, and snapped it shut again.
“And yet the One who made us made you, and delighted in you. It seemed he liked his fragile children.”
Sue looked over at Kara. She was looking down, shaking her head. Was that how Kara felt now? That she’d come to like a fragile creature?
You are a mortal. And Kara wasn’t. Sue had thought about that, of course. Since she’d heard the song. Since she’d seen the flaring life force tucked away under the Outcasts’ cracks. But it meant more than that. Kara had lived for eons. The Lightbringer had probably lived longer than that. How long was a human life, compared to the eons of existence an angel got to live—or a demon got to live out her banishment?
Sue cleared her throat, went looking for the starfighter pilot inside her. “And you didn’t like us. Because we were fragile. Because we were weak.”
“Not quite. There are many creatures in the vastness of the universe, little human. Some are immortal. Some endure forever, beyond time and space. Some breathe and cease and die. We knew that. We did not begrudge your people the way that you were made.”
“Then what was the problem?”
“The One delighted in your kind. He watched you and he smiled down upon you, even when you sickened and died. Even when you warred with one another, turning against your countrymen and your kin.”
He sniffed again. “But even that, we could have forgiven. Even that, we could have looked past. But the One did not merely want us to tolerate you, to give you space within our heaven and upon our Earth below. He wanted us to celebrate you. To sing with joy at your creation.”
“And more than that,” said Kara. “He wanted us to bend our knees.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“That is so,” the Lightbringer finished. “He wanted us to prostrate ourselves before you, to exalt your people over our own kind.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Sue cried. “You were warriors.”
“We were warriors, yes. We were the soldiers of the One. His swords and his shields alike. That was our purpose, and that was our pride.”
Sue sucked in a breath. She’d wondered about the Lightbringer’s song. About what it must have sounded like before the One had mangled his throat. But he hadn’t just been his people’s greatest singer. He’d been their greatest warrior. Not just a soldier of the One, but the general of the rebellion. What had he sounded like then?
A battle meant rallying cries, trumpets of war, calls to arms. What had the Lightbringer’s war song sounded like? What did his people remember, now that his voice was shattered?
Now he chuckled, a hollow sound with a reedy rasp laid over it. What would that, too, have sounded like, the full-throated laugh of a warrior prince?
“Now that eons have gone by,” he said. “I see things more clearly. Now that I look back on it, I think he meant to humble us.”
Kara snorted, and he laughed again. “We are not so easily humbled.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be,” Sue said.
“You wouldn’t?” the Lightbringer asked. “A young, mortal creature, exalted above angels?”
“I’m not better than angels,” Sue answered. “I’ve never thought I am.”
“And yet you come to me with Kara’s marks on your back. But I doubt that humans deem us angels. We’re not angels anymore.”
He stretched, half rising to his
feet. He twisted to one side, exposing his back, showing Sue the scars where his wings used to be. Sue gasped, stepped back, and closed her eyes against the terrible sight.
“Look at me!” the Lightbringer roared. His voice was still feeble, but under it the echoes rolled like thunder.
Was that what he’d sounded like as a warrior? Sue took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
Kara’s scars were terrible enough, livid reminders of what she used to be. But they were nothing compared to the scars on the Lightbringer’s back. His skin had been ripped open as if by massive hands, and the light beneath blazed from the wounds.
Are those scars, or are his wounds still open? Sue winced again.
Even wrapping his wing shadows around himself couldn’t hide those scars completely. They were too raw, too bright, too searing, the edges of the wounds jagged, as though his skin-stone might crack and peel at any moment.
He turned away again, sparing Sue the sight. Sue gasped with relief, not wanting to look again.
And yet her own back was full of Kara’s marks. Maybe she did understand, after all, at least a little.
“You’re right,” Sue said. “We don’t think of you as angels.”
Kara hissed. Sue ignored it. If he really was the Devil, he’d heard it all before anyway. “Our religions say you’re the source of evil. Of false pride.”
The Lightbringer exhaled a little cloud of flame. Kara didn’t breathe fire like that. Sue fought not to blink or draw away.
“False pride?” he said after a long moment. “That is what the One would say, yes. That we were arrogant, and that I was the most arrogant one of all.”
“Kara’s arrogant,” Sue said. “But I like her that way.”
The Lightbringer laughed. “If Kara is arrogant, so are we all. False pride? There is no such thing as false pride. There is only pride and the lack of it.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
The Lightbringer opened his mouth to answer her, and even Kara turned her head. Sue held up a hand to stop them. “I don’t talk in riddles. Not like you. Not like angels or demons or Outcasts or gods. But I know your people fought a war. And you lost.”