by Dahlia Lu
Trent called upon Ragnarok the Destroyer. “I think not.”
“Again, you have something to protect while I do not.” The dark god summoned a fire circle beneath them. “Reconsider.”
Trent glanced down to Nala. She shook her head in protest. No, Trent, you must not tell him!
She needed to be true to her role. “Tell him what he wants to know so we can go!” Nala cried.
“I cannot,” Her other-self said to her. He then cast a protection spell around her.
She’d never been more proud of him.
Her other-self turned to the dark god. A red aura blanketed the cemetery. The gravity around them weakened, which was evident from the floating rocks and pebbles. The earth began to tremble. Nala braced herself for the earthquake she knew would follow.
The earth shook furiously, causing massive rifts through the fire summoning circle and the landscape all around. Without a complete circle, the dark god could not summon the flames.
While the dark god was disoriented by the earthquake, her other-self took the opportunity and fled.
They rematerialized to the place that Noctiam had arranged to be her home.
Why didn’t you finish him? Nala wanted to ask her other-self, but she already knew the answer to that question. Trent was not a killer. Even the power over life and death couldn’t change that fact.
He was her complete opposite.
“Are you alright?” Her other-self asked. He gently lifted her chin so that he could examine her neck. “It’s bruised.”
If she was in her own identity, she would be touched by the gesture. But he wasn’t being kind to Nala. He was being kind to Raya.
Despite the fact that she was both of these women, jealousy was burning her insides.
“I’m fine,” she replied flatly.
“I supposed you want an explanation.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to know.”
“I understand you are upset.”
“You don’t understand anything!” she snapped at him. She inhaled deeply before she spoke again. “I’m sorry. I’m just a bit… confused. Please give me a minute to pull myself together.”
“Of course,” Her other-self agreed. “I will respect your privacy.”
“Please don’t go…” she said softly. “The last thing I want is to be left alone.”
“You want my company?”
“Aren’t friends supposed to keep each other company?”
He didn’t reply.
“I still have the two bottles of brandy you let me take home and I also have HBO. All I need to do is microwave the popcorn. What do you say?”
“Special delivery!”
The UPS guy came at eleven in the morning. He handed over a package and asked Amara to sign for it. She didn’t recall ordering anything, but she signed it anyway. She thanked the delivery man and then closed the door behind her. She went into the kitchen for scissors to open the box. Inside the box was a lot of filling. After she got rid of most of it, there was a long, black, wooden box inside. It looked even older than her.
Amara checked the address again to make sure. It was in her name and place of residence. She placed the black box on the table and slowly opened it.
Inside was a pair of thin, black leather gauntlets.
“What is this?” Amara asked herself. She picked up the note inside the box. It read ‘These will help you channel your energy’.
Amara furrowed her brows. Channel my energy? It can’t be!
“Are these what I think they are?” Amara dropped the note and excitedly tried on the gloves. One size smaller would have been better, but they fit well as they were. “Oh my god! My very own channeling gauntlets!” She squealed in excitement.
Witches and sorcerers all over the place would kill for these babies! Who could have sent me something so rare and why?
Amara checked the boxes again for any clue that would tell her who the sender was. There was no return address. Odd.
“Must be from that necromancer,” Amara concluded. “I guess he’s not half bad.”
Lizzie entered through the front door, looking like she had just been through the wrong part of Hell and back.
“You won’t believe what happened…” Lizzie paused on her way in, “…your head. Oh, sweetie, what happened to you?”
“I tripped and hit my head at the cemetery after the fake zombie hand incident.”
“Are you alright?”
“It was torturous last night, but this morning I feel fine. That reminds me, I need to change the bandages.”
“Let me help you with that.”
“It’s fine. I can handle it. So what were you about to say when you came in?”
“Guess where I’ve been since seven thirty?”
Amara shrugged. “The sorority house?”
“Police station, interrogation room 8!”
“Why?”
“Three of the six girls we were with were murdered! They made me retell what happened last night, like… at least twenty times. They released me after they realized I had nothing to tell.”
“Murdered? My goodness, what about Raya?”
“I don’t know. We got separated last night, remember?”
“But she’s not dead, right?”
“I hope not. That cemetery is really haunted!”
“How did they die?”
“The first girl died of a broken neck and the other one drowned in the pond. The police haven’t found the rest of the third girl yet. The whole campus is buzzing about this!”
Amara glanced at the clock. “It’s only been a few hours.”
“I know! Nothing like this has ever happened on or anywhere near campus before. They think there is a serial killer on the loose, but I think it was done by whatever we saw last night.”
“About that…”
“What?”
“It was a fake hand. The sorority sisters planted it, and a few more things, at the cemetery to scare us.”
“Really?” Lizzie asked, almost disappointed.
Amara nodded.
“You mean I could have been killed by a serial killer last night instead of… something more? Well, that’s kind of disappointing. Ooh, those are really nice gloves! Where did you get them?”
“Someone sent them to me.”
The doorbell was ringing again.
“Who could that be?”
Lizzie answered the door since she was closer to it. Camden rushed in as soon as the door was open to him.
“When I received your call I was so…” He frowned instantly when he saw the white bandages wrapped around her head. “What happened to you? Are you alright?”
“Oh this,” Amara reached for her forehead. “It’s nothing. I tripped and fell. It’s nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious? You were abducted!” Camden exclaimed.
“Abducted? Oh no, I was just visiting an out-of-town relative,” she lied.
“I didn’t believe that man was your cousin for a minute. That man threatened to hurt you if you told the truth, didn’t he?”
“It’s not like that.”
“The injury on your head… was it caused by him?”
“No, no. I tripped and cracked my skull against a tree at the cemetery last night.”
“Cemetery?”
“Lizzie wanted to join the sorority and ask me to come along. It’s part of their initiation thing.”
Lizzie nodded, confirming her words.
“I got a hole the size of a quarter on my forehead because I got freaked out by one of their pranks. Not because of that man.”
“He’s not your cousin.” It was a statement.
“That was a lie,” Amara admitted. “I’m sorry.”
He inhaled deeply. “Let me see that injury of yours.”
“He is a future doctor,” Lizzie said, smiling.
Amara sat still for Camden to remove the bandages. When the last layer was removed, Lizzie rolled her eyes. Camden
was sighing in relief.
“You bitch! You’re pulling our legs!”
“What?”
“I was so worried about you, but you were only faking it! Fake blood too? Real nice! You were just trying to get me back for last April fool’s.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
Her friend dug through her bag, pulled out a portable mirror, and placed it in front of her face.
Amara stared at her own reflection with puzzlement. The ugly scrape she saw last night was gone. Her skin had completely healed, with the exception of some dry bloodstains on her skin and the used bandages. There was no scar either.
That’s odd…
Lizzie slowly shook her head. “I’d watch my back if I were you.”
“You should have let me in on the joke,” Camden said, setting the used bandages aside. “Not nice of you, Amara.”
Last night wasn’t a hallucination. Noctis did come to her. Did he also time-heal her wound after she fell asleep? Amara couldn’t think of any other explanation, but why did he?
Ah, Hell.
The things she’d blurted out.
Noctis stared at the ticking clock on the wall. Each tick was a second. Sixty seconds amount to a minute. Sixty minutes amount to an hour. Twenty four hours make up a day. Three hundred and sixty five days equal one earth year.
Lucifer had been sleeping for six thousand years.
Noctis became painfully aware that he had been imprisoned for much longer. Each minute was the same length to him as it was for anyone else. While he was locked away, time had ravaged his world. All he’d ever known had gone to ashes.
All but Lucifer.
Noctis chuckled to himself.
In the time that he was locked away, the Archangel had fallen in love with a mortal woman and sired a son. It contradicted everything he knew about Lucifer. Noctis pondered over whether his memories were entirely accurate.
Chapter Eight
“You’re doing it all wrong,” said the necromancer, clear annoyance in his voice. He had been trying to teach Amara how to summon minions to do her bidding since four o’clock. It had been three and a half hour since then, but all she had managed to summon were round, gel-like, harmless little creatures. “Think a little more aggressively.”
“I’m not doing it wrong,” Amara argued. “This is already considerable progress! If it weren’t for these channeling gauntlets you sent me, the only thing I would be able to summon is air!”
“I sent you?”
“You didn’t?”
The necromancer shook his head. “There are less than a dozen pairs of those in the world. If I had them, I would have kept them for myself.”
“Oh…” Amara voiced her disappointment. “I was thinking a little better of you, but now…”
“Get back to work, apprentice,” the necromancer ordered. “Summoning is the most basic necromancy skill.”
“But I don’t want to be a necromancer,” Amara whined, “maybe sorceress or something in that category.”
“You’re an apprentice to a necromancer. Go figure.”
“I can branch into something else.”
“Get back to work. Chop. Chop.”
Amara sighed. She straightened her shoulders and repeated the same summoning spell for the hundredth times. A summoning circle drew itself on the ground.
Another gel ball popped up among dozens others.
The necromancer shook his head in disapproval. “What are you going to do with these…? I don’t even know what these are.”
“You never heard of strength in numbers?” She pointed at him. “Minions, attack him!”
Her summons swarmed him, nibbling on him from head to toe.
Amara giggled.
“Very funny,” the necromancer said dryly. He then waved a hand to dismiss them. The summoned blobs vanished into thin air.
“I’d like to remind you that I’m mortal.”
“Don’t doubt my judgment. You definitely have potential. You just don’t know how to tap into it yet. Try it one more time. Think big. Think vicious.”
Think big. Think vicious.
Amara was reciting another summoning spell when a large hand from behind covered her mouth.
“Mortal.” She recognized his masculine voice immediately. “Whoever told you that practicing Necromancy is a good idea?”
She pointed.
Noctis leveled his gaze to the necromancer. “You’re still alive.”
“And kicking,” the necromancer replied, his signature wolfish smile on his face.
“I’ll rectify that right now.” Noctis ignited a white fireball in his other free hand.
Amara grabbed his arm to stop him. “No!” she protested. “We had a deal!”
He glanced down at her. “Is he someone close to you?”
Amara glanced at the necromancer and then nodded. “We’re friends.” She turned to the necromancer and suggestively nodded to him. “We’re friends, right?”
“Taking on an apprentice is one thing, but would I really go as far as befriending you?”
“If you want to stay alive…”
“Hmm. I supposed, if it’s a life and death situation. Sure. We’re the best of friends, honey.” He winked at her.
Noctis shot a glare at the necromancer and then teleported himself and Amara to the parlor of his home. She sank down on the nearest sitting furniture. He leaned forward, trapping Amara in her seat.
“Do you even know what you were doing, mortal?” he asked in an interrogative tone.
“I was learning summoning skills,” she replied candidly.
“You were about to sign your own death warrant. Necromancy is the lowest form of magic. Those who practice it can only walk one straight path. Capture ten thousand souls to obtain immortality or die trying. I forbid you from ever practicing it.”
“You forbid me?” She gasped. “How dare you forbid–”
Yield to him, Amara! You must yield to him! Other people’s lives are depending on you.
Amara stopped herself from saying another word and clamped her mouth shut.
“Am I understood?”
She grudgingly nodded.
“And another thing.” He lifted her chin, forcing her to look directly into his eyes. “You will stay here with me tonight.”
Jerk.
Amara reached for the top button on her shirt. He caught her hand before she could unbutton it.
“Dinner.”
“Oh right,” she exasperated, “dinner and then sex. I hear ya loud and clear.”
He stepped back, looked up at the ceiling for the brief second, and then headed for the door. “Come.”
Amara followed him, although she didn’t need any help with the direction. She knew the place like the back of her hand. A flashback replayed inside of her head as they approached the dining hall. Suddenly feeling irritated, she asked him, “Is the same woman serving us dinner tonight?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“You know…” She showed him her blank hands.
There was a puzzled expression on his face.
Is he seriously telling me he doesn’t know what I’m talking about?
“Nothing…” she muttered when she saw that dinner was already served on the table. They were having grilled steak.
Amara quietly seated herself at the table. Feeling uncomfortable in that particular seat, she rounded the table and reseated herself on the other side. His eyes followed her movements.
Amara took off her gauntlets and set them aside.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my day?” She teased.
“I know about your day.”
She blinked at the presumptuous statement. She expected no less from him. “Alright then…”
Amara rolled up several thin slices of beef with the tines of her fork and stuffed them into her mouth. To hell with proper etiquette. She was hungry.
“Slow down, mortal. There are plenty.”
She
swallowed before she spoke. “I know there are plenty, but it just felt more satisfying chewing in bulk. It relieves some of my stress. I guess, according to Freud, I’m orally fixated. I’d figured, since I never had a mother to nurse me.”
“How old were you when Kali took you in?”
“I’d just turned nine.”
Amara turned her head sharply to him.
“What did you just say?”
“I can solve a simple equation, mortal.”
Wide eyed, she asked, “How much do you know?”
“Lucifer had been in stasis for over six thousand years. Lucifer’s bride was really that female demon who shouted at me ‘I am Kali’. She bore him a son. You tried to deceive me into thinking that he was Lucifer and your lover. You deceived me on another occasion, claiming to be the bride of Lucifer to protect the woman who raised you. Is there anything else I should know?”
Amara’s shoulders slumped. “No…”
“The archangels’ information was a bit outdated. But then again, time has little relevance to them.”
She noted that he was all too calm. “You’re taking this well…”
His low chuckle brought an arch to her left eyebrow. “I know when I’ve been had.” He lifted a wine glass. “To you, mortal.”
He’s toasting me?
She watched him with incredulity as he drained the glass empty and set it aside. Forcing an awkward smile, she too, drained hers. It wasn’t enough to calm her nerves, so she poured herself another.
“You’re not going after her, are you?” She asked, her eyes pleading.
“How did you end up with her?”
Amara chewed her lower lip. Her eyes anxiously wandered around the room. “If I…I…” She stammered. She inhaled deeply. She’d never told anyone about her past before, but the situation demanded it of her.
Amara inhaled another deep breath. “Fine, I will tell you. Restrain yourself from laughing. When I was eight years old, my father remarried. His new wife had a teenage son, and the little brat was pure evil. He bullied me at school and made my life a living hell at home. He took pleasure in torturing me. When no one was home, he locked me up in the basement by myself. There was this one time he and his friends went too far and almost killed me. He threatened me if I ever told anybody. I was afraid of him so I kept quiet. My father noticed that I became more antisocial and tried to talk to me. I told him the truth. My father was angry. He was cursing and went looking for his keys. He said he was going to kill that brat. He walked out of that door and I never saw him again. My father was all that I had.” Amara lowered her eyes.