Angel Exalted

by C. L. Coffey

  My heart leapt into my throat, but it was too late to go back and warn Joshua to keep quiet. I just had to trust that he would be okay. I looked over at the building opposite but decided that was unnecessary. If only I’d thought of that earlier… Instead, I kept moving away from the church, climbed up onto the adjoining building, before dropping down onto the balcony below. From there, I lowered myself to the ground.

  Now it was time to put my plan into action.

  I made my way down the street. The further away from the convent I got, the more of the shadow men seemed to appear. I frequently had to drop down behind parked cars to hide as they drove past in their far from subtle Hummers.

  Once again, the streets made no sense. I had no real destination other than somewhere I could make a statement. Then the French Quarter turned into an area of the city I didn’t ever want to go back to. In front of me was the abandoned Six Flags theme park.

  I sucked in a deep breath as I stared at the derelict entrance. “But this could work,” I realized. Actually, this was perfect. I needed to get back to the Superheroes section of the park, to Gotham City. This was where it all started: it was only right that this was where it would end. “Thank you, Joshua,” I muttered.

  I picked up my pace as I made my way to the back of the theme park. In the gray filter that was set over everything here, even though there was no rain, the place still looked like the setting for something post-apocalyptic. I did my best to ignore the unease I felt and forced myself to check everything I passed: there were shadow men patrolling here; including one standing guard to the main entrance to the Gotham City Hall – the same building where I had killed Lilah, her vessel, and released Lucifer.

  Thankfully, from experience, I knew that there was a window along the side I could use as an entrance. I took the extended route through the overgrowth, thankful that Joshua’s imagination didn’t include all the bugs and reptiles that could have been lurking, and pushed my way towards the side of the building.

  The front was just that – it was like the building was a set on a movie. Behind the façade, it was nothing more than a large oblong room with a long window down one side. Peering in sent flashbacks through me. Although I had been back here a couple of times before in a dream, I had never been to this spot before.

  The dull throb of pain I associated with the guilt of what happened flared up. I clutched at my side, doubled over as I fought to control the pain. I still believed I deserved that pain – I had killed someone – but now was not the time to let it take control. I had the chance to put this right. Or at least, some of it right. Some of what had happened could never be put right.

  Slowly, the pain ebbed back, and I was able to bring my attention back to the task at hand. I quickly made the glass disappear, and then climbed up, through the window, and inside.

  This was it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Trust Me

  It wasn’t until I walked into the middle of the room that I knew I’d made mistake. If I was an avatar in a computer game, my energy bar would have just given me the warning that I was under fifty percent. But my energy levels weren’t the mistake. The mistake was going back to this place.

  I should have taken my chances and recreated Fort Knox – or a castle with a moat – in the middle of Joshua’s head, because this… this wasn’t just Joshua’s head anymore.

  The hairs on my arms were standing on edge, telling me what my head already sensed: this wasn’t a trap for Lucifer. This was a trap for me.

  I held my hands out, conjuring up my bow as the quiver, fully stocked, appeared on my thigh. I withdrew an arrow and nocked it, aiming at the door.

  I’d thought I’d be able to lure Lucifer into a trap, but somehow, he’d done that to me. And the crazy thing was, I had nothing to go on but a feeling…

  Until Lucifer walked in through the door.

  I’d seen this form once before. Instead of using Joshua, which I had been expecting, or even Luke Goddard, he was standing before me in his original form – the one Michael had defeated millennia ago. He walked a few paces into the room, leaving a suitable amount of distance between us. “What gave it away?” he asked.

  “Joshua,” I said, simply. That was all I could attribute to the sensation I was feeling. It was his head after all.

  Lucifer shrugged. “Oh well. I got you where I wanted you.” He gestured to the room. “Kind of poetic for your ending, don’t you think?”

  I sent my arrow soaring towards Lucifer, the line straight and on target, but before it could hit him, a shadow man appeared from nowhere, taking the hit for him. It slumped to the ground, before melting into the mangled concrete.

  My mouth dropped open in dismay as my fingers moved quickly to re-nock the bow. As I went to take aim, the door behind Lucifer opened and more of the shadow men started streaming in. I shot the arrow, taking out the first, but they were coming in faster than I could move. “What the hell?” I muttered, discarding the bow and conjuring up my swords.

  “You thought you were the only one with ‘magical powers’ here?” Lucifer sneered, using finger quotes at me.

  Truthfully, yes.

  But I wasn’t about to admit that.

  “I feel the only thing Michael has successfully managed to bequeath you is his arrogance,” Lucifer continued.

  “Bequeath?” I repeated, slowly turning on the spot, trying to make sure my attention wasn’t fixed on one area as I scanned the area. I was surrounded. There had to be two dozen of them. “Showing your age a bit there, Lucifer,” I snorted.

  “Or maybe it’s just your plain stupidity?” Lucifer sighed. “That age you’re referring to is also experience, babes. I might have more years on you, but I sure as hell have more experience. You think you’re the only one who had the ability to manipulate dreams when Dream Walking? Social Media can only do so much.”

  I came full circle back to Lucifer. “What do you mean?”

  Lucifer gave me a look of pity. “You really are stupid, aren’t you? How do you think I became a pop star in the first place? Luke Goddard was a nobody, running in a gang, and about three months from either being arrested or shot. Record labels won’t just pluck a person like that out off the street and make them a pop star.”

  I could think of a few hip hop artists and rappers who would beg to differ, but I wasn’t about to start that argument. There was a time and a place, and this wasn’t it.

  “Once I had control over his body, I sought out the people with power so I could take it from them,” Lucifer continued. “And I did that through their dreams.”

  “Michael never once-”

  “Michael refused to acknowledge it,” Lucifer cut me off. “Like always. And they say it was my pride which made me fall.”

  “I think it was more that you were so keen to have everyone worship you,” I shrugged.

  Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. “You have definitely spent far too much time with Michael.”

  “And you have spent too little time in Hell,” I retorted.

  “Maybe you’d like to spend some time there?” Lucifer offered.

  Before I could tell him where to go (back to Hell), the shadow men moved. I dodged the first one, decapitated the second, and then knew I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t do something; so I slowed them down. Trying to make them disappear would be too energy draining, and although they greatly outnumbered me, none of them were armed.

  Keeping them from moving was hard enough, and I could only maintain a small area around me. Using only their arms and fists, they would swing at me. Most attacks I managed to avoid while taking another out with a counter swing, but when the first one managed to punch me in my back, it was with such force that I thought they had used a sledgehammer. I could see why they didn’t need weapons.

  I fell to the ground, turning it into a roll as I dodged another fist aimed for the side of my head. How the hell a punch could hurt so much in a dream wasn’t my concern – it was that if they could hurt me t
his much, they could probably kill me too. Terrifying as that thought was, it also gave me a bit of hope that what I was doing was the right thing.

  I swung my leg out, kicking one of them away as I managed to run my sword through another. It was only from the vantage point of being on the ground and being able to see through their eerily skinny legs that I saw that for everyone I took out, another would walk through the door. I focused my attention on the door. It slammed shut.

  Then I paid the price for it as one of the shadow men punched my shoulder. One of my swords fell to the ground, the clattering sound of metal on concrete muffled by my yell of pain. I turned the pain to rage, grasping my free hand around the hilt of the remaining sword, springing up and swinging wildly as I dodged the onslaught of attacks. Limbs went flying in an almost comic book like effect. Gaining some space around me, I was then able to focus on the shadow men one by one, until it was just Lucifer and I left standing in the room.

  “You have more power than I thought you did,” Lucifer mused.

  “Just keep underestimating me,” I told him, calmly. “It will be the last thing you do.”

  Lucifer laughed. “I’m not Michael. I learn.”

  “Is this the part where you surrender?” I asked, wishing that would be the case, but knowing it would be quite the opposite.

  Lucifer held out his hand, his own sword appearing in it as he kept his brown eyes locked on me. “Nope: this is the part where I kill you myself.” With no other warning, he charged at me, using his sword like a lance.

  As soon as he came in the vicinity of my invisible bubble, he did slow, but it was marginal. I only just managed to deflect his blow as his motion had him spinning on the spot, swinging for my head. Once more, my body reacted in time, bringing my sword up to block this blow.

  Unrelenting, he swung at me again and again. Each time, I managed to block him, but only just. He was strong, and like he had said, he’d had pretty much the whole of time to become as good as he was. I was only keeping up because I was manipulating the dream to do so. At this rate, this fight wasn’t going to last much longer. I needed to do something drastic, and I needed to do it quickly.

  With Lucifer sending attack after attack at me, my brain didn’t have much time free to think of anything clever. I did the first thing that came to mind: I made his sword wooden. The change of weight in his hand threw him off balance just enough for me to get one attack in. I swung wildly, and his sword sliced in two.

  Thinking that was it, I made my second mistake. I stepped back and let my guard down.

  Lucifer lunged forward. The stump of his sword wasn’t that long, but it was long enough for him to stab at my stomach. He stepped back, leaving it in, while I dropped my own sword to grab the one protruding from me. I clutched my hands around the hilt as I slumped to the ground.

  “That was unexpected,” Lucifer admitted as he moved away from me. “I mean, it wasn’t good enough, but it was unexpected.”

  From my knees, glowering up at him, I wrapped my hands tighter around the hilt and, refusing to make a single noise of pain, pulled it from me. “You think that’s going to stop me?” I asked him, focusing on healing the wound as much as I could.

  Lucifer barked a laugh. “I would be disappointed if it did.”

  “Well it’s going to take more than that,” I ground out, forcing myself to my feet.

  “Oh, babes,” he said with a mocking tone. “That wasn’t to stop you. That was to distract you long enough to be able to bring in the one thing that’s actually going to stop you.”

  My attention switched to the door in horror. The energy I was using to heal myself had dropped the protection on the room’s entrance. Before I could stop it, the door opened.

  My heart stopped.

  In front of me, restrained by a single shadow man was Joshua. “How…?” I whispered, the words sticking in my throat. He looked nothing like how I had seen him earlier. His complexion was gray – actually gray – like someone was in the process of turning him monochrome. The only thing I could recognize was his navy-blue eyes, but even they looked empty. “What did you do to him?”

  Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Really?” He marched over to Joshua, grabbing him by his hair, and flinging him to the ground between us. Joshua hit the ground, hard, and stayed there, trying to catch his breath.

  I leaped over, my hands pawing at him as I tried to find any injury. He looked up at me, grabbing my hand. “What are you doing here?” he gasped. “You need to get out of here.”

  “What did you do to him?!” I yelled at the fallen angel. Joshua had been safe not long ago, and this looked like he had been… I had no idea what it looked like – I had never seen anything like this before. But I had the strongest feeling that whatever it was, it had been happening to him for some time. “Joshua was fine when I saw him before.”

  Lucifer laughed. “You really think that was Joshua?”

  I stared at him, unable to keep the surprised from my face as my mouth slowly fell open. I had thought it was Joshua. “It wasn’t?” I whispered, dropping my eyes to the man in front of me. Had I really managed to let Lucifer trick me again?

  “Did you really think that I wouldn’t know you were up to something the second you sent me that text message? Did you really think I didn’t know you’d been in his head, the first time you Dream Walked in here? Please! I wasn’t born yesterday – literally. As soon as I read that, I made sure Joshua was locked away somewhere in his head where you wouldn’t be able to find him, and then I created a Joshua for you to find.”

  “Why?”

  Lucifer let out an exaggerated sigh. “Are you really that stupid? Because I knew that the moment you saw him, you’d tell him your plan.” He folded his arms and looked at me with disappointment. “I am Lucifer. I survived when everyone thought Michael had killed me. Twice. The fact that you, a barely-out-of-your-diapers angel with absolutely no shred of intelligence or skill, think that you can kill me, is not only pathetic, it’s frankly insulting.”

  His words stung. I had fallen for his trick, but he’d also fallen for mine.

  While he’d been scorning me, I had been healing myself, and Joshua. With his back to Lucifer, Joshua’s eyes had never left mine. He’d done something I hadn’t realized was a possibility: he had reached out for my hand and somehow transferred his energy to me. With it came words that, although unspoken, I heard clearly.

  “This energy is as much his as it is mine. Draw from me, from him, and get stronger, Angel.”

  I did.

  Then, while Lucifer was distracted as he ranted at me and my inability to be an angel, I leaped at him, re-conjuring my sword as I did so. His eyes widened as my sword came for him, and this time, it was him who only just managed to avoid the hit.

  With my energy replenished, I focused on pouring that into my attacks. I ducked under his retaliatory strikes, spinning quickly to slash at him. I didn’t need to slow him down. I had sped up, and for the first time, the match felt even. Using everything Michael and Raphael had taught me, I attacked and defended like a pro.

  Even though we were now evenly matched, I needed to find something that would give me the advantage. If I could just stop him moving around so much…

  While I distracted him with an attack, my attention was partly elsewhere: the floor below him. Doing two things at once was hard enough, but when one of them was fighting the King of Hell, and the other was manipulating a dream which wasn’t mine, I could feel the energy drain from me. Beneath Lucifer, the concrete turned to liquid – thick, like it had just been poured.

  Lucifer’s surprise as he sank into the floor was enough of a distraction for me to attack. I landed a blow. It was enough for his grip on his sword to falter, and in that moment, I took the opportunity, stabbing Lucifer in his side. As he dropped his sword, I pulled mine free from his flesh, blood lashing the floor, and I raised my sword, ready to finish him. “Wait!” Lucifer yelled.

  I don’t know why, but I paused. “There�
��s nothing you can say that’s going to stop me ending you,” I informed him, coldly.

  Lucifer’s face, covered in a sheen of sweat, looked up at mine. He was panting just as heavily as I was, but he still managed to look smug. “I would disagree on that,” he retorted, using his chin to nod behind me… where Joshua was.

  I half turned, keeping Lucifer in my sight as I looked over at Joshua. He was on the floor, clutching at his side in an identical place to where I had impaled Lucifer. “What have you done?” I demanded, looking back to Lucifer, feeling my own blood drain from my face.

  “Me?” Lucifer laughed, before coughing up blood. “You did that.”

  “What?”

  “Joshua and I are more connected than you think.”

  This energy is as much his as it is mine. Draw from me, from him, and get stronger, Angel.

  From the now hardening concrete, I conjured ropes. They slithered up around Lucifer like snakes, wrapping around him, binding him tightly. Once I was sure he was secure, I darted over to Joshua, pulling him into my lap. “What did you do?” I asked him, clamping my hand over his wound. I started to heal it, but he pushed his hand away.

  “We’re connected,” Joshua told me, weakly. “The only way he’s going to die is if I do.”

  “You are not dying,” I told Joshua firmly, forcing my hands back on him.

  Joshua grabbed at them, holding them tightly. “Darlin’, it’s the only way. If you heal me, he will win. If you let us both go-”

  “That’s not even an option,” I cut him off.

  “Angel,” he pleaded.

  I shook my head. “I did not come all this way to fail now.”

  “You have to trust me,” he said, one hand reaching up to cup my cheek.

  I reached up and took the hand in mind. “You have to trust me,” I said, gently.

  His deep blue eyes stared back at me. I could tell how uncertain he was from the doubt in them. There was pain there too, like he really didn’t expect this to go on for much longer. That he was right about. “Okay, darlin’,” he consented.