The Lord of Darkness

by Kim Richardson

The news of the breakout had spread, that she was sure of. Why else was the elevator empty? Or was it unrelated and the operators’ disappearance was something else entirely?

  She didn’t have time to dwell on that. She needed to act fast. Where should she go? Anywhere in the Legion was a risk. She was a fugitive. An escapee. She had no friends in the entire Legion apart from Lance and Milo. The oracle Mr. Patterson had helped her a few times, but would he now after all she’d done?

  Making up her mind, Alexa pressed her finger on a brass button. The number one button flashed, and with a jerk, the elevator began its descent.

  Alexa stood awkwardly behind the doors, her chest compressing inward, as though she was running out of the breath she didn’t even need. She wondered what would happen when the doors swung open. Would there be an army of angels waiting for her? Would they eliminate her now to avoid more mishaps? Each time the floor indicator dial pointed at a new level, a cold sweat slid down her back.

  Alexa had been near tears when she’d suffered her sentence. She’d never been so humiliated. All those archangels thought those terrible things of her. Every angel did too. Now there was nothing left to humiliate her with. She’d been to her lowest. There was only one way left to go, and that was up. She would make this right.

  As the elevator descended, she felt a wave of nausea hit her hard. Her mind was so dizzied by the thoughts that she could no longer trust she was thinking straight.

  She reached out and pressed a hand on the wall to steady herself, fighting the dizziness. She took a deep, unnecessary breath to try and calm herself. It didn’t work. She pushed off into a fighting stance, fists up, although it did nothing to hide her shaking.

  “You won’t take me,” she whispered, her teeth chattering.

  When she thought she might pass out from the dizziness, the floor dial pointed to the number one, followed by a slight ting, and then the doors swished open.

  With a cry, Alexa flung herself forward—and landed in an empty chamber.

  The walls of Orientation threw Alexa’s cry back to her, amplified and echoing.

  She stood, her hands still clamped into fists, as her own voice died down until there was no sound at all but the elevator’s doors closing behind her.

  Orientation—the place where all newly appointed angels from around the world were gathered to be sorted. The enormous chamber was the size of ten football fields. She had found it intimidating and had been overwhelmed by the thousands of people. Now, it was deserted.

  There were no chaotic noises of thousands of voices speaking at the same time, no happy cheers from the recently deceased, or unhappy moans from those who still couldn’t grasp the fact that they were dead. It was like stepping into a ghost town where the remnants of people were still in the air. You could feel people had once been here.

  Alexa felt her nerves pounding through her body. What the hell happened here? Where were all the angels? The oracles?

  “Hello?” she chanced and waited for her echoing voice to subside. But the silence that followed was eerie and unnatural, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up as sharp as nails. For a moment, she felt like she was back in her cell, and a flutter of fear spiked through her again. But she would not panic.

  She only let herself feel a sense of relief at the familiar humid air and the smell of the ocean. The pools were still there.

  Her boots echoed on the hard floor as Alexa made for the score of office buildings nestled in the middle of the chamber like the remains of a village on a deserted island. Now that the chamber was empty of people, she could see the buildings more clearly—haphazard office buildings sandwiched together in too tight a space. Through the windows she saw beige walls and carpets with many doors leading to many offices. It always made her feel like she was walking into a bank.

  Finally, Alexa reached the door fit for an elephant with the brightly lit neon sign, which read: Oracle Division # 998-4321, Orientation.

  With her nerves hammering inside her, she grabbed the handle, turned it, and pushed in.

  For a panic-filled instant, she focused on the hundreds of scattered papers covering the ground and littering the desks. The filing cabinets that twisted all the way to the ceiling looked just as she remembered, just as messy, as though a bomb of papers had gone off from within them.

  “Hello? Jim? Mr. Patterson?” she ventured and stepped through the threshold. “Anyone? Hello?”

  It was quiet, too quiet. The only sound was the papers crunching under her boots. She could see them in her mind’s eye—the tiny old men who ran balanced on top of crystal balls, like circus acrobats, their silver gowns and long white beards flowing behind them.

  She pushed open the first door on her right and saw nothing but an empty desk littered with papers. No oracle. She ran to the next one and, with her shoulder, plowed open the door. Piles of papers were stacked in dangerously tall and teetering columns, but no oracle.

  Every door she tried gave her the same result. The oracles were gone. When she came at last to Mr. Patterson’s office, she heard a cry escape from her own throat as she pushed through.

  His half-moon, mahogany desk was empty except for one single sheet of paper. As she stepped into the room, the raised salt water pool was her only comfort. At least she could use it to go to the mortal world. But where would she go? Where would she start? How would she find Milo when she didn’t even know where he was? Maybe he wasn’t even in the mortal world. The last she saw he had disappeared into a portal of black mist to another dimension. Milo could be anywhere.

  She was alone, really alone. When she was in her cell, at least she could fool herself into believing that once she was out, she would find her friends again. Someone could assist her on her journey. She’d been wrong. Orientation was deserted. She felt her eyes burn, but she wouldn’t let herself cry.

  Alexa paced the room, her mind swirling with questions. Broken images raced each other through her mind—Lucifer escaping from purgatory, angels and archangels writhing on the ground, the breakouts from Tartarus, Milo’s kiss…

  Alexa sat on the edge of the desk and hung her head. “I can’t do this…”

  “Not with that kind of attitude, you won’t.”

  Alexa flinched and slipped off the desk, landing with a hard thump on the ground. She whirled around and blinked up at a large white, long-haired dog.

  “Lance?”

  “Do you know of another, white-furred, dangerously handsome canine devil in the Legion?” The Scout trotted in the room, his tail wagging behind him. “Please tell me you don’t.”

  Alexa got to her feet and brushed the hair from her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” said the dog. “When I heard about the breakouts, I came straight here. Everyone else thinks you took off with Nathaniel, but I knew you didn’t. I figured you’d come see your oracle bestie. Clever girl—made everyone think you were somewhere else so you could come here and move ahead with the plan right under their noses. That’s something I would do. I hummed all the way over here.”

  Alexa’s spirits sank even lower. “When you say everyone… everyone as in Ariel and Metatron and the rest of them... the rest of the Legion?”

  Lance sat on the floor. “Well, I don’t have all the facts, but it’s clear they think you’re gone with Nathaniel and the prisoner escapees. I do remember hearing the archangel Ariel speaking up for you, saying that she thinks you probably had to, that if you didn’t follow Nathaniel, he would have killed you.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I can see that.”

  Alexa leaned on the desk. She was so happy to see her friend, and part of her wanted to reach out and hug him. But she couldn’t help the sudden sick sense of dread that crawled inside her mind, heavy and ill-fated, as though she would never be happy again.

  “Lance. What’s happened? Where are the angels? The oracles? I took the elevator and there was no one in there. No operator. That’s never happened before, a
nd I’ve taken lots of elevator trips.”

  “Well, lots has happened since you’ve been… you know… gone,” said Lance carefully, his brows low.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters,” said the dog, “Metatron went a little ballistic after Lucifer showed up. Not to mention Sabrielle’s betrayal. He grabbed an army of angels and arrested every angel he suspected had something to do with The Order of the First. They were tossed in Tartarus, just like you, but without even a trial. I’m sure some innocent angels got caught up in this.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that now.” Alexa thought of how persuasive Nathaniel was. “Nathaniel will have no problem luring the innocent angels to join him after they’d been wrongly imprisoned in the first place. But the real issue here is that he got all his buddies get-out-of-jail-free passes.”

  “Yes,” Lance said, his voice uneven with rage or fear, “all new recruits for his army. The Legion suspects their numbers to be about ten thousand.”

  “Ten thousand?” said Alexa incredulously. “But that’s an enormous amount.”

  “It gets better,” said the Scout. “After our friend Hades was destroyed and the Hellgates closed, the Veil began to repair itself—and then it stopped.”

  “It stopped?”

  “Yup,” said the dog. “It’s like the layers of protection, the invisible skin that keeps the supernatural from penetrating through, is super thin and weak. The Veil is sick. Too sick to repair itself. There’s some anomaly shifting inside of it, but no one knows what it is. It’s infected with a darkness that has nothing to do with Hellgates.”

  Alexa’s jaw tightened. “Lucifer.”

  “Exactly. It’s as though he’s infected the Veil with a virus. I don’t know when, but it will eventually crumble.”

  Alexa shifted uncomfortably. “Can the mortal world survive without the Veil?”

  “Think about it,” said Lance. “Not only will every single mortal now see the supernatural—demons, devils, imps, and the like—but all the demons from the Netherworld will be able to come through into the mortal world. They won’t need to wait for a rift or a crack in the Veil because there’ll be nothing to stop them from entering. It’ll be like the gates of the Netherworld are open. Once that happens, it won’t make a difference how many angels there are to fight them. It’ll be too late. The humans and their souls will be fair game. The demons won’t stop until there’s nothing living in the world. Until they’ve devoured every last human soul.”

  Alexa felt another wave of dizziness and grabbed the edge of the desk until it passed. “What about the Greater demons that escaped from the Hellgates?”

  Lance blinked. “The reports I’ve seen say that Lucifer’s killed every god, goddess, or demon that wouldn’t submit to him. Every single demon. Which means, he controls both the Netherworld and The Order of the First.”

  “He’s got demons and angels pinned against the Legion,” said Alexa, “and that would make a very large army, wouldn’t it?”

  “A hundred to one is what I heard the archangels say,” answered the dog. “With odds like that…” Lance didn’t finish, as though what he was about to say would only make things worse and he’d decided against it.

  The memory of the thrashing angels and demons at the mercy of Lucifer’s power sent a lick of cold up Alexa’s spine. “But it doesn’t explain why everyone’s gone.”

  “While Nathaniel was busy bailing you out of Tartarus—”

  “He didn’t bail me out.”

  “—word reached the Legion that The Order of the First were planning an attack on the Legion, Orientation to be exact.”

  “Why would the order want to attack Orientation?”

  “It was said they wanted to put a stop to the forming of new angels,” Lance added quickly. “And what better way to hinder us—to stop the wheel from rolling—than to destroy the first level and kill thousands of innocent angels and oracles. Orientation is where everything starts. Remove it, and the wheel stops. Levels one and three are the most vulnerable levels with barely any protection and all newly appointed angels. The High Council decided to move everyone to levels two and five. And to shut this one down.”

  “Shut it down?” exclaimed Alexa. “But isn’t that exactly what Lucifer and his followers want? To stop the Legion? To break it?”

  Lance hung his head, his eyes glimmering. “Yes. But we can’t risk the lives of all those angels and all the other creatures that work for the Legion. The High Council really didn’t have any other choice. It’s not safe for them here.” He paused. “It’s not safe for anyone. They shut it down until they can figure out their next move.”

  “Which is what?”

  Lance clamped his mouth shut and shrugged. “No idea.”

  Alexa shook her head and stared beyond the open door to the piles of papers scattered in the hallway. “So, who’s protecting the mortals if there’s no more Legion to protect them?”

  “We are?” offered Lance and gave a small wag of his tail.

  Alexa gave him a feeble smile. “Then, I feel bad for the mortals.” She felt a deep pain inside her chest, as though her ribs were caving in on her. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Lance gently, but Alexa wouldn’t look at him. She knew if she did, she would lose it.

  Her lips shook. “It is. It’s all my fault. I let him out.”

  “Not willingly. He tricked you. Sabrielle tricked you. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I can.” Alexa moved off the desk and rubbed her eyes. “Tragedy followed me as a mortal, and it’s followed me as an angel.” She turned and looked at Lance. “Everything I’ve done or touched turns to crap. Ever since I’ve been an angel, I’ve created disaster after disaster. Haven’t you noticed? I thought I was special with the soul channeling ability. I thought this time, I could make a difference with this gift. But now I realize this gift, this thing I had, whatever it was, was never meant to do good. It was evil. I used it to release the most powerful, malicious being that ever was.”

  “Alexa,” began Lance, “you can’t say things like that.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, her voice raw and her eyes burning. Guilt pushed down on her shoulders. Her face burned with shame under the cool mask. She’d felt regret that night when Lucifer stood in place of the boy demon Markus. Regret and shame for acting on blind defiance and for her insubordinate behavior towards the Legion.

  The consequences of her actions were catastrophic. Without the Legion to protect the mortals…

  Death. There was only death.

  Her wrath was a song in her essence as she said, “I can’t change what happened, what I did, but I can try to fix it. Or die trying. But first, I need to find—”

  “Milo.”

  Alexa raised a brow. “Am I that predictable?”

  “No. Yes.” Lance’s gaze was intense. “I’m a Scout. It’s my job to know things. Besides, I think whatever you’re planning on doing, he’s a big part of that. And… I kinda miss the tall brooding blond.”

  The corners of Alexa’s mouth twisted. “Good. The only problem is I have no idea where he is. He could be anywhere. He could be in Horizon or the mortal world or some other dimension with his father.”

  Lance got to his feet and stood next to Alexa. “I think I might know where he is.”

  Alexa’s insides rushed to her throat. “You do? Where?” She tried and failed to hide the emotion from her voice.

  “With his brothers,” said the Scout. “Nephilim have been spotted in the mortal world.”

  “But I thought the Nephilim were destroyed.”

  “They were. But this is Lucifer were talking about. He can raise the dead or create more of these creatures on a whim. I don’t know how he did it, but I can assure you, the Nephilim have returned.” Lance moved towards the desk. He lifted himself on his haunches and rested his two front paws on the surface. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” said Alexa,
snapping her mind out from her thoughts of Milo.

  Lance rolled his eyes. “It’s right in front of you. That piece of paper there. What is it?”

  Alexa glanced at the sheet of paper she’d barely taken notice of. She leaned over and slid it closer so she and Lance could both read it.

  Words were scribbled over the piece of paper as though the person who wrote it was in a hurry. She smoothed it out.

  Dear Alexa,

  If you’ve found this letter, then what I’ve seen in the crystals will come to pass. I cannot abandon my obligations as an oracle in good conscience without leaving a little something behind. First, I must proclaim—all is not lost. Where there is light, there is a way. And your path is illuminated in light. Let me explain.

  The oracles and I have tried to persuade the Legion with our findings, but our efforts were in vain. Alas, our hopes rest in you.

  The only way to vanquish Lucifer is to reopen a doorway to purgatory and trap him back inside. To do that, you need to create a vacuum rift, which will open a doorway to purgatory. Three special ingredients are required to open a doorway to purgatory.

  First, you will need to bind Lucifer. Otherwise the vacuum rift will be useless as he can use his portal abilities and get away unless he’s in a closed environment. Therefore, you will need Holy Fire. A circle of burning Holy Fire is the only way to trap a celestial being.

  Second, you will need the help of a celestial weapon—the Staff of Heaven. The staff is imbued with supernatural power. It was created by the archangel Michael to use against Lucifer. Since then, the staff was stolen from the Legion, but we know it is hidden somewhere in Horizon.

  Third, you will need the blood of a demon. A demon sacrifice. The blood must be offered willingly. The blood from a compliant demon with a slam of the staff will create a shockwave and open the doorway to purgatory.

  Alexa turned the paper over, expecting more, but it was blank.

  “He wanted you to find this,” said Lance. “He knew you’d come here. It says he saw you in one of his visions. Their prophecies don’t always come true, which I’m guessing is the reason the Legion didn’t listen. Or they were just too busy trying to save the angels before Nathaniel’s attack. But he felt strongly enough to risk his post by leaving you this note. He’s got some big crystal balls, if you know what I mean.”