by Kelly Oram
I turned and stared at Beelzebub. “You’ll give me anything I want?”
Beelzebub nodded eagerly. “I swear it.”
I worked hard not to laugh at his offer. I’d never cared about power. I had no desire to rule over anyone. The only things I really wanted were things he could never give me.
“He’s lying, Russ! Don’t do it! He promised me power, too, and he never gave it to me. He’ll only use you!”
Beelzebub looked offended. “I gave you limitless power,” he told my dad with a gesture in my direction. “That you cannot control your own son is no fault of mine.”
“You promised me the artifact!”
This conversation was spinning in so many directions so fast that it took me a second to remember that my dad had been telling me about an ancient demonic relic that could take a supernatural’s essence and turn them human.
Beelzebub shrugged and gestured to me again. “Another promise I have delivered on. The boy has it.”
I was about to deny it, but then the medallion Rachel had given me warmed against my chest. I pulled it out of my shirt and studied it as my dad stared at me, mystified. “Where did you get that?” he asked.
I ignored my dad and looked at Beelzebub. “This is what you guys are talking about? This talisman can turn people human?”
“That is merely a side effect of the relic’s power. It collects one’s essence—transfers it from one supernatural to another. You could take the power of everyone on this Earth and keep it for yourself. You could become the strongest, most powerful being in existence.”
And there it was. The truth that I’d been desperate to know. The reason my father would kill my mother and sell my soul to the devil.
I glared at my father, feeling more anger than a person should be able to feel. “Summoning Beelzebub was never about finding answers for me, was it? You already knew what I was.”
My dad said nothing, but Beelzebub laughed. “Of course he knew. You father is a very wise man. He made sure he knew exactly what he was getting you into before he gave you over to me.”
“I had to know that you would be safe,” Dad said. “I wouldn’t have condemned my own son to Hell for eternity.”
That stopped me so short my brain may as well have walked into a brick wall. I hadn’t really had time to think about the fact that the devil owned my soul. I hadn’t yet had time to process the ramifications of something like that. Like, say, being damned to spend my afterlife in Hell.
I focused on my anger in order to swallow the fear growing inside me. “Do I have to go to Hell when I die because you gave my soul to the devil?”
“No, Russ,” my dad said quickly. “I swear to you, no. I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
His eyes were wild, desperate for me to believe him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t think I’d ever believe a word he said ever again. At least not without having my doubts that he was telling me the whole truth.
I looked to Beelzebub for the answer, and he grimaced. “Unfortunately, your father is right. The choice to become my Scion was not yours, and so you still have your agency. You will still receive the afterlife that you earn—whatever it may be. Had you offered your own soul to me, you would be mine.”
I breathed a huge freaking sigh of relief and then something else clicked into place. “That’s why Dad gave me to you instead of becoming the Scion himself. So he wouldn’t damn his own soul.”
Beelzebub looked at my father with grudging pride. “Alexander is a crafty one. Though, judging by his actions in this life, he may have damned his soul anyway.”
That was a disturbing thought.
“You have your choice, Russ. You do not have to do the Creator’s will. What has She ever given you, anyway? Look at all that She has allowed to happen to you. Look at everything She’s let be taken from you. And does She even care? So long as Her precious Chosen Ones are safe and healthy, She doesn’t care at all what happens to the rest of the creatures in this world. You are merely tools to bring about Her cause.”
I didn’t exactly disagree with him. I wasn’t ready to be heir to the throne of Hell, but I wasn’t exactly a fan of the Creator anymore, either.
“You have the power to change your own destiny, Russ. You can destroy the Creator’s plan. You can free this world—and everyone in it—from whatever fate She has planned for them. You can take control of your own life. You can have whatever you want. I can show you how. Release us, and I can give you anything you want.”
Suddenly, that glass of whiskey on the table looked awfully appealing. I reached for it and heard Beelzebub chuckle as I downed the liquor. I waited out the burn, doing my best not to cough or cry, and prayed that the alcohol might numb me a little.
Beelzebub looked at me, as if waiting for an answer. I could see the excitement, the greed, in his expression. I must have seemed as if I were considering his offer, because the dude was so hopeful and my dad looked beaten. They both thought Beelzebub was getting to me, but he wasn’t. I was only stalling while I gathered up as much demon magic as I could. When I was ready, I looked back at Beelzebub and said, “You’ll give me anything I want?”
“Anything,” he promised. “Everything. If you release us, the world is yours. I swear it.”
There was a single heartbeat of silence, and then I glared at the devil with all the hatred in my heart—which, with as many times as I’d been screwed over, was a lot. “I want my mother’s heart back, you evil asshole.”
The next series of events happened in the blink of an eye. I released the magic I’d been holding in me, both supernatural and demonic, and sent it crashing into Beelzebub. His eyes widened in surprise as the wave of power blasted him. Then, he vanished in an explosion so violent I thought maybe I’d broken the entire world with it.
I don’t remember passing out, but when I came to, it was as if Beelzebub had never been here. I was lying on the floor in the middle of the devil’s trap. The chairs, the whiskey, and the devil himself were all gone. The room looked exactly as it had before we’d summoned him, except that the five candles my father lit for the ritual had been extinguished.
The house was still. I lay there a moment, giving my brain time to try and piece together everything I’d just learned. There were so many bits of information to process that I mentally ticked them off on a list.
I was the Scion. The devil’s godly descendant, destined to create chaos and discord on Earth.
The devil had possession of my soul.
So did Dani and Grace. Or, they had pieces of it, anyway.
I had the power to steal other supernatural beings’ essences and turn them human.
My mother hadn’t abandoned me.
She’d loved me.
She’d been strong.
She would have handled the truth of what I was.
My father killed my mother.
Sacrificed her.
Cut out her heart and fed it to the Dark Angel.
For power.
The same reason he sold my soul.
After a few minutes, I came to one undeniable conclusion. “My life blows.”
Letting out a long sigh, I slowly pulled myself to a sitting position. My entire body felt stiff and exhausted. Whatever I’d done to send Beelzebub back to the underworld had taken a lot out of me.
As I stretched, my eyes fell on a small, crumpled figure hugging herself on the couch. She was as pale as a ghost and trembling a little. The second our gazes met, her bloodshot eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Unable to stand her pity, I turned away from her and saw my father sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. “Are you okay?” he asked. He was watching me with a bleak expression.
I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to talk to him.
“Thank you for not freeing Beelzebub.”
“So you don’t trust him with a planet full of strangers, but you trust him with my soul?” Apparently, I was capable of speaking.
“Fine?” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “You think I’m fine? I’m the devil’s minion! The council wants me dead! Michael’s going to freaking smite me the next time he sees me!”
Dad shook his head. “Michael can’t touch you. You’re not a demon. And you aren’t Beelzebub’s minion. He can’t control you.”
“I can’t control me! You saw what I did at the Leventis farm! When I get mad, I go to some dark place and it’s like he takes over.”
“You’ll learn how to fight that.”
“Before I hurt someone? Before the council kills me?”
The mention of the council pissed my dad off and he shot to his feet. “The council could never stop you! You’re more powerful than all of them together.” His eyes fell to the talisman hanging from my neck. “Russ, with that relic, we could stop the council once and for all.”
He looked almost excited as he crossed the room to me. “May I see it?”
When he reached out as if he was going to touch my talisman, I tapped into my darkness quicker than I ever had before. In the blink of an eye, I was no longer Russ but the devil’s Scion. I was dark and powerful and angry. So angry. I’d never been angrier.
Blinded by rage, I used a simple warlock spell to break the devil’s trap that was holding me hostage and reached for my father the second I was free. One of my hands went around his throat and the other held a dagger firm against his gut. The slightest move and his insides would become his outsides. “There is no we,” I hissed. “You sold my soul to the devil.”
My demon powers must have lent me supernatural strength, because my father was almost the same size as me but I was able to lift him until his feet left the ground. Eyes wide with surprise and fear, he clutched at the fingers around his throat. I didn’t let go. “You murdered my mother for power!”
I wanted to kill him. I wanted to strangle the life right out of him. I had every intention of doing so, too. My dad’s face started turning blue, but he stopped struggling. The second I mentioned my mother, all the fight left him. It was as if he accepted death. Welcomed it. Fine by me.
“Russ,” Clara whispered. She placed a hand gently on my shoulder. “You’re not a killer. You don’t want to murder your father.”
She surprised me out of my rage enough that I was able to think with my own mind and not Beelzebub’s. Horrified by what I was doing, I dropped my dad. He fell in a heap at my feet, coughing as he fought to get the air moving through his lungs again. I just stood over him, staring in disbelief. I had been about to kill him—murder him with my bare hands in cold blood. I hadn’t even been conflicted.
“Damn it!” I raked my hands through my hair in frustration. My dad said I’d learn to control myself, but so far I only seemed to be getting worse.
Clara took my hand and held it to her face. “Take a breath, Russ. It’s okay.”
I scoffed, wanting to believe her, but it wasn’t okay. Not at all. “No matter what he’s done to me, I shouldn’t have reacted like that. That was not me.”
“No,” she agreed, placing her other hand on my other cheek. I had no choice but to close my eyes and shiver as her energy washed over me, calming my nerves. “But you snapped out of it. You stopped him from taking over. You won.”
“You snapped me out of it. I would have killed him.”
My eyes were still closed, but I heard the smile in her voice. “Which is exactly why I came along with you on this trip. It doesn’t matter how you snapped out of it; the point is, you did.”
I understood what she was saying, but that wasn’t good enough. What was she going to do, follow me around for the rest of my life, making sure I never lost my temper and killed anyone? Most of the time, she was the reason I lost my temper.
How was I supposed to accept what I was? How was I supposed to live with knowing the evil I was not only capable of, but supposedly destined to create? “I’m a monster.”
“No, you’re not. Your father is the monster. He did this to you. This sin is on his shoulders.”
She had some serious balls, saying that right in front of Dad. And even cooler, he crumpled beneath the accusation, feeling the truth of it like the holy sword of justice that Michael carried.
Unfortunately, as awesome and surprisingly supportive as her speech was, it didn’t lift my spirits. I couldn’t get past the guilt, anger, and depression that was crushing my chest. “The sin may be his, but I’m the one who has to live the nightmare. I’ll be the one responsible if I lose control. I’m the one who’s going to hurt everyone I love.”
Emotion clawed its way from my stomach up into my throat. I could feel hot tears forming behind my eyes, making them sting. I’d be damned if I was going to cry in front of either of them. Well, I was probably just damned anyway. But I still had my pride, and I wasn’t going to let them watch me fall apart, so I stalked off to my room and spelled the door locked.
. . . . .
The next morning, one seriously worried Chosen sister blasted her way into my bedroom. After blowing my spell-locked door to smithereens, she barged in, followed closely by Grace, Ethan, and Clara. Gabe was there too, but he hung awkwardly back by the door, staring at me as if I looked like the little hellion that I was.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be hiding from the council, and nowhere in the vicinity of my father.”
“Clara called and said you needed us.”
Startled, I glanced in Clara’s direction just in time to see her blush. I appreciated the gesture, but it was pointless. As much as I loved my friends, they couldn’t help me. No one could help me. In fact, they shouldn’t have come at all. I wasn’t just a dangerous threat to them—I was torturing Dani’s and Grace’s souls. I wasn’t sure, of course, but I assumed the closer we were to one another, the harder it had to be for all of us. “You shouldn’t have come,” I grumbled. “You’re totally crashing my pity party.”
I rolled over on my bed, turning my back to them, and smashed my pillow over my head. “Tough,” Ethan said, plucking the pillow away from me. “We came to drag your sorry butt home, where you belong.” He didn’t sound mad, but he wasn’t being playful, either.
“I am home, dumbass.”
“Stop sulking. I told you, it’s pathetic.” He kicked my mattress and added, “And don’t swear. You’re in the presence of a heavenly being, you know.”
No matter how hard I tried not to, I turned toward him and cracked a tiny smile. “Piss off, Angelface.”
Ethan chuckled and I almost laughed with him, but when I opened my mouth, a sigh came out instead. “Look, I can’t go home now. I wanted answers, and I got them. The truth is worse than any of us expected.”
Dani huffed. “So explain it to us.”
“Russ, whatever it is, we want to help you through it,” Grace insisted. “We love you. You belong home with us. We’re stronger together, you know we are, so let us help you.”
I wanted to say yes to her. I wanted to go home with my brother. I wanted to wrap my arms around Grace and let her tell me things would be okay until she turned blue in the face from it. But the desperation in her voice, and the way she seemed as if she’d fall apart without me, made me remember Beelzebub’s words.
Grace was connected to me. Whether I wanted to be or not, I would always be the discord in her life. Because of me, she would never be completely happy, and the closer I was to her, the harder it would be for her to move on. She had to move on. Ethan was her soul mate, and the only reason she hadn’t fallen for him yet was because she thought she was in love with me. But she wasn’t. Not really. She was just carrying a piece of my soul inside her. I was holding her back. And now that Dani had left the consulate, I’d hold her back, too. I refused to do that any longer.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I can’t come back with you guys. I can’t—we can’t be around each other anymore. Y
ou all need to go home and forget about me.”
Grace gasped and buried her face in Ethan’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her and frowned over her head at me. “Come on, Russ. You’re being dramatic. There’s nothing so bad that you can’t come home. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”
That made me jump to my feet. My hands balled up into angry fists. “You have no idea what’s really going on! And if you knew, you’d probably kill me yourself! Take the girls home, keep them safe, and leave me alone!”
I was angry enough that I felt my soul start to tap into that connection with Beelzebub. I refused to go demon spawn on Ethan, so I got out of the house before I lost control and got in a real fight with one of the only guys on Earth who could give me a serious beating.
Carmine, Pennsylvania, doesn’t have much, but it does have a nice lake. After storming out on my friends, I ended up on the shore of that lake. It had been habit that led me there, but it still hurt once I’d arrived. So much history.
Dani and I had spent the last day of our normal lives in almost this exact spot. She’d come here looking for comfort exactly like I’d just done, and when I came to find her we shared the happiest moment of my life. That moment had lasted all of five minutes, and then our lives unraveled at the seams. That day felt like forever ago and yesterday all at the same time.
“Russ.”
The voice startled me. I hadn’t realized anyone was there, but more than that I was scared to know what Michael was doing here. I whirled around to face him, instinctively drawing my daggers in defense even though I would have had no chance against the guy if he decided to end my existence. I was good, but he was the man teaching me to use my daggers, after all.
Michael ran his eyes over me and stopped walking, keeping a good ten feet of distance between us. He didn’t say anything, just stood there studying me.
I’ll never get over seeing Michael. He doesn’t hide his true form. I have a theory that nobody can see angels unless they want you to, so I figured if anyone else had been at the lake, I’d look crazy right now, staring really hard at absolutely nothing.