by Jane Hinchey
“Place your hand on top of the light,” I told Levi, “but keep your focus on what you’re seeing.”
He squinted open an eye and placed his hand on top of the ball as instructed, then returned his attention to the giant sphere, floating above a lake in a massive cavern somewhere beneath Shadow Falls. I turned my attention to the light ball. “Find the location of the sphere, but don’t leave yet,” I instructed.
The light emanating from the ball dimmed, then brightened several times before it settled.
“Okay, let’s go.” I let go of Levi’s hands and he snapped open his eyes in surprise.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m hoping the light ball managed to zero in on where the sphere is. I connected it to your vision. Now we just need to follow it.”
“That’s…”
“Cool? Yeah, I know.” I grinned, then instructed the light ball to lead the way. It immediately set off across the chamber and down a tunnel. “Slowly!” I called after it, hurrying to catch up before it left us in total darkness.
I didn’t know how far we walked, or for how long, but my feet and legs were aching. We’d stopped to rest a couple of times and we’d both taken guesses on where we were in relation to Shadow Falls above us. Nowhere near the town square, that’s for sure. We didn’t even catch a glimpse of the crater I’d created and I marveled at who had built these tunnels in the first place and how long it would have taken them.
Eventually, the tunnels changed, the walls becoming jagged and uneven, more like a natural rock formation than man-made. We had to dodge boulders in our path, climbing over or going around, squeezing through narrow openings until finally, we stepped through into the cavern. My mouth dropped open. It was beyond huge. And the lake was more of an ocean, and as Levi had described, hovering over the water was the giant sphere. It was egg-shaped and emitted a white glow, enough to illuminate the cavern. Along the shoreline was black sand broken by a platform of rock that was smooth and flat and had carvings covering it.
“Wow.” Levi rested his hand on my shoulder, taking in the magnificence before us. It was breathtaking that’s for sure. “Is this…alien? It looks alien.”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.” If it was alien surely I’d have known about it when it arrived on Earth. It would have triggered the alarms in Hell. So how did it get here and why didn’t I know about it? All good questions. Scrambling down the embankment onto the black beach, our boots sank into the sand up to our ankles, making walking difficult. Within seconds I was in up to my knees before I realized what it was.
At the same time, I heard Levi saying, “Uh, Lucy?”
“Fuck! It’s quicksand!” I cursed, peering over my shoulder to look at Levi who was sinking fast. Shit. Extending my wings, I flapped, pulling myself free, then grabbed Levi’s hands and lifted him, flying us both to the stone platform.
“That was unexpected.” He puffed, brushing the sand from his pants and shaking his boots.
“A natural phenomenon or a trap?” I wondered.
“Either way, effective.”
I crouched, examining the markings on the stone beneath our feet, then glancing at the egg. Same symbols. The symbols on the egg were emitting a faint blue glow. I wondered if it was a language from an ancient time or civilization, but if so I’d know about it. I knew Earth’s history, and while the symbols did look similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, there were enough differences to tell me this had nothing to do with the Egyptians. My choices were alien, or another dimension, and given we had a creature from another dimension currently running around in this realm, the two had to be related. The question was how. And what was inside the giant egg?
17
“What do you think it means?” Levi was tracing his fingers over the patterns, following them. “It’s like a maze. Each of the symbols has a shallow channel leading to the next one and to the next and so on. But they all lead here, to the middle, to this stone.” He crouched where the channels all led to a white stone embedded in the stone platform. Placing his palm flat, he lowered his face and squinted along the surface. “I think everything slopes towards the center. Only by a fraction, like a drain.”
“So we need a liquid to flow through the channels?”
“Could work. What sort of liquid? The water?” He stood, hands on hips and looked out at the body of water. It too was black like the sand and I didn’t fancy touching it. Who knew what was beneath the surface? “Let’s see.” Kneeling on the edge of the platform, he leaned over the edge, cupped his hands and scooped up the water.
“No, Levi, don’t!” But it was too late. I held my breath, but nothing happened. His hands didn’t sizzle as if burned by acid as I’d feared. Carefully he poured the water onto the platform, watching as it flowed into the channels and made its way through the maze to the white rock in the center.
“I was right.” He grinned triumphantly and I smiled at his enthusiasm.
“Yeah, but nothing happened. The wrong type of liquid.” I hated to burst his bubble but as quickly as the water had flowed through the channels the quicker it simply evaporated.
“Good observation, sister of mine.” The voice behind me was oh so familiar yet not. Gabriel. Spinning on my heel, I faced him.
“Are you responsible for this?” I waved my hand at the egg.
“No hello? No hug for your brother after all this time?” Like me, he hadn’t aged. He was still gorgeous to look at with his blonde hair, blue eyes, and golden skin, yet there was something different about him. I could feel it.
“Fine,” I huffed, stepping forward. I wrapped my arms around him, felt him do the same, then felt an excruciating pain in my lower back.
“Lucy!” Levi screamed my name and I staggered back, out of Gabriel’s embrace to see the glowing sword, once more dripping with my blood, in his hand. Levi had almost reached me when Gabriel swatted him away as if he were a pesky fly. I turned in time to see him slide on his back across the platform and off the edge, into the inky black water.
“Levi!” I rushed to the water’s edge, pain slowing me down, and peered into the dark depths. Where was he? Suddenly his head broke the surface, coughing, and spluttering. I closed my eyes in a silent prayer of thanks that he was all right. Swimming back to the platform, he heaved himself out of the water.
“Are you okay?” He was by my side in an instant, spinning me, lifting my shirt to examine the wound on my back. It hadn’t closed, my blood was running thick and fast, and the pain was disorientating. Like before, I wondered if I were dying.
“Why?” My knees gave out and Levi lowered me to the ground, holding me close as I glared at my brother who hadn’t moved except to cross his arms over his chest and watch us with interest.
“Always with the questions, Lucy-loo.” He sounded so goddamn chirpy I wanted to wipe the smirk right off his face.
“Am I dying?” I asked, for the bleeding wouldn’t stop. And then I noticed it. My blood, pooling in the channels on the platform, making its way through the maze of symbols, toward the center. “Look.” I nudged Levi and he too turned his attention to the red pattern my blood had created.
“Relax. You’re not going to die.” Gabriel shrugged, strolling closer, knowing I was no threat to him while I was bleeding out on the ground.
“Tell me. About the egg. Where did it come from?”
“I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you. You’re going to find out anyway.” Gabriel stopped, watched my blood as it slowly wove its way along the platform. It wasn’t moving as quickly as the water had. Goes to show blood is thicker than water. “You’ve had to notice Earth is a mess?” His eyes met mine. “That you’re getting more business than us.” I nodded slightly. I did agree with his assessment. Earth was out of control and I’d wondered more than once why Father had let such atrocities happen in this realm. The way the humans were destroying their own realm and pissing off Mother Nature, who Father had put in charge of the planet itself.
“Through
my research, I discovered this”—he nodded at the egg—“in another realm. It has the power to fix everything. So I brought it over—”
“How? How didn’t I notice?”
Gabriel laughed. “I told Mother Nature she looked fat; she predictably got mad and triggered an earthquake, and I slipped it through with no one noticing.”
“When?”
“Oh, about ten Earth years ago. It needed time to charge.”
“Why here? Why Shadow Falls?” Levi asked.
“The veil is thinnest here. It was easier to get it through quickly, unnoticed, and undamaged.”
“Why all the tunnels and chambers?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Not my doing. This was already here.”
“What does this have to do with the soul stealer? Is the egg from his dimension? Did you do a deal with him?” I could feel the flow of blood was slowing. I was healing. But I didn’t move, lay leaning against Levi.
“Always so fucking smart.” Gabriel’s smile slipped. “That’s why he picked you.”
“Who?”
“Father. I should be running Hell, not you. It’s my right. I was the first. The heir. You stole Hell from me.” His words were laced with cold hard fury. Still. Still he held that against me.
“He chose me. I didn’t ask for it,” I reminded him.
“You were always his favorite. He made you different, gave you dark hair when the rest of us are light.”
“For fuck's sake, Gabriel, get a grip. We all have different hair color; no two of us are the same. You know that. You’re just grasping at straws, trying to find fault so you can continue to hate me when you and I both know you have no reason to.”
“Bitch.”
“Asshole,” I shot back. This reminded me of old times.
Our name-calling drew to a halt when Levi nudged me and whispered, “Look.”
My blood had reached the white stone. It pooled under it, then climbed up the sides, defying gravity and completely covering the stone. I watched wide-eyed as the blood sank into the stone and then…disappeared. The blood that had been weaving its way through the channels was gone, vanished. And the white stone was now…a red crystal. My blood inside it.
“It’s time.” Gabriel smiled and I could see his excitement. What the fuck was going to happen now? I was worried. For Levi. For myself. For all of mankind.
With an audible click, a ray of light shot out from the red crystal, hitting the egg. I struggled to my feet, Levi supporting me as we watched. The faint blue markings on the egg glowed red and I couldn’t help but shiver at the resemblance to my own magic, for it glowed red too. Then the egg slowly began to spin.
“What’s happening?” I asked Gabriel, who was practically rubbing his hands together in delight.
“It’s working!”
“What’s it doing?” I persisted. This couldn’t be good.
“It can control time. I can control time,” he gloated, “and I’m taking Earth back to when it began before Father put his precious humans here. The angels will rule this realm.”
“What about Heaven? Their home?”
“Heaven is dying.”
18
His comment was offhand, delivered with a shrug, yet his words hit me like a sledgehammer. Heaven was…dying? What the fuck? How? Why? I had so many questions, yet the spinning egg, which was picking up speed and making me nervous, had me keeping my questions to myself. I’d deal with the Heaven situation later.
“Gabriel, you have to stop this. This is insane.” I begged, to no avail. And where was Michael in all of this? The two of them had always been as thick as thieves. Why wasn’t he here with his brother?
“Lucy?” Levi sounded worried and I couldn’t blame him. The egg was spinning so fast it was a blur. How the hell did we stop it? My energy was depleted from healing myself, and just like last time when I’d been stabbed by the glowing sword, I was feeling tired and woozy.
“Has my wound closed?” I whispered to Levi. He lifted my blood-soaked shirt to look. He nodded. Good. I turned to him, keeping my voice low. “I don’t know how we stop this, but my best guess is the red crystal. If we remove it, we might just stand a chance.”
“I’ll distract him, you get the crystal,” Levi whispered, but I shook my head.
“No! He’ll kill you. He can’t kill me. Even though I’m weak, he can’t kill me. I’ll distract him, you get the crystal.”
“Nice plan, guys, but I’ve got a better one.” Dacian appeared in front of us, the soul stealer in his grip with Dacian twisting his arm up behind his back. Zuska writhed in agony.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” I addressed Zuska who was cursing up a blue streak. “He’s not giving you this realm. He’s destroying it. He’s killing all the souls. There will be nothing here for you. He tricked you.”
Noticing our group had grown, Gabriel looked over before throwing back his head and laughing. “You’re fools, all of you!”
“Is this true?” Zuska asked, eyes narrowing.
“That I’m turning back time, ridding the Earth of the Homo sapiens species? Correct.”
The hum of the egg spinning was getting louder. I figured it was almost at full velocity, and in one fell swoop, the entire human race would be wiped out. We didn’t have time to stand around talking.
“How do we stop it?” I snarled at Zuska. “Is it the crystal?”
“Yes, but it’s not just the blood stone. We need power. Lots of it.”
“We’ve got two angels, a psychic, and you. Is that enough?”
He hesitated, then nodded. He was going to help us, of that I was certain, for Gabriel’s double cross meant he had nothing. Still, I had every intention of kicking his ass back to his own dimension once this was done. There would be no more human souls for him.
“Get to the stone. We all need to be touching it at the same time and channel our power into it. Do not break the beam of light to the orb.”
“Dacian? Can you help with Gabriel? I was injured…by the sword.”
Dacian’s eyes met mine and once again I caught a glimpse of the friend I used to have. He nodded, then spun and threw a bolt of energy at Gabriel. Gabriel hadn’t been paying attention to us, he was fixated on the egg—or orb as Zuska called it—and the blow sent him sliding off the side of the platform and into the quicksand at the far edge.
“Quickly!” We rushed to the red crystal, sliding onto our stomachs, and each of us held out a hand and touched a finger to the red crystal.
“Noooooo!” Gabriel wailed, fighting against the quicksand. We only had a second to get this done and then he’d be free.
Closing my eyes, I channeled all of my energy into the crystal and I felt it—I felt it vibrate beneath my finger. I opened my eyes and looked up. The egg had stopped spinning and was now suffused entirely in red.
“Oh my god, it’s going to explode!” As the words left my lips the egg exploded, the boom deafening, fragments flying through the air, rocks and debris raining down on us, but then we were flying, twisting, turning, somersaulting through the air. I heard Levi’s shout, opened my eyes to try and find him, but we were in some sort of twister, spinning around and around until I grew dizzy and was convinced I was about to throw up.
Then it stopped. I was flung out onto the ground, gravel biting into my cheek as I landed with a thud. Ouch. My ears were still ringing and slowly I pushed myself up. We were in the cemetery on the outskirts of town. How the hell did we get to the cemetery? Dacian was dusting himself off, stepping from behind a tombstone and apologizing to whoever's grave he’d landed on. Levi was sitting up, running a hand over his face and looking slightly green, but otherwise unharmed. Zuska was here too, staggering to his feet.
There was no sign of Gabriel. There was no evidence of what had just happened beneath the Earth. There was just the four of us in the moonlight.
“Is everyone okay?” Dacian asked, coming over and giving me a hand up.
“How did we get here?” Levi asked, loo
king around.
“It brought me here,” Zuska said, walking toward Levi. “This is where I came to this realm, this is where the portal is. It brought me back to it. You were just along for the ride.”
“Why?” I asked, puzzled. Dacian and I moved closer to where Levi was standing in front of us.
“It’s clear I need to leave this realm. For now.” His lips curled and his smile made my skin crawl. “But I’ll be back. With reinforcements.” Before I could ask what he meant, the air behind him shimmered a long slash appearing. He’d opened the portal!
“Levi, step back.” But it was too late—the soul stealer wrapped his fingers around Levi’s wrist and pulled him through the portal. Levi’s startled shout echoed in my ears as I jumped forward, trying to grab his hand, but it was too late. He was through and the portal closed.
I watched as Levi vanished, a scream I couldn’t hear wrenched from my throat. Dacian said something I didn’t comprehend. Levi was gone, and I could not wrap my head around it. Any of it. A wave of grief overtook me, and tears fell down my face to splash on my shirt. In that moment, the only thing I could think about was what it would be like to live without Levi. It wasn’t a life I wanted. An agony that matched the pain in my back consumed me so fully, I could think of nothing else but the fact that I did not want to go through life without him. My heart contracted so fast and so strong I felt as if I’d been punched in the chest. I would not survive the force of my pain. I wanted him. I wanted Levi Forrester in my arms, warm, solid, and alive.
Dacian’s words dislodged the sobs I was holding onto and I cried and screamed and railed against him. He pulled me tighter, and I felt true empathy radiate off him. No matter that he’d scorned what Levi and I had, I knew he felt remorse. But remorse wouldn’t bring Levi back and the mere thought of it, that I’d lost him, was enough to tip me over the edge again.
My screams echoed through the graveyard. No! No, this couldn’t have happened, Levi couldn’t be taken, he just couldn’t. He was mine, and I was his. No matter we belonged to different realms, we would have found a way. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that.