“They’re coming,” Nimue murmured. Her face was deathly pale, but she shook herself and lifted her chin. “Everyone, listen!”
The panicked voices quietened. “We must surround the entrance and build another boundary,” Nimue called out. “We need to hold as many souls in this small space as possible, to give the demons Below time to try and rebuild the boundaries in Hell. You, angels,” she pointed at the shining figures huddled behind Uriel. “Spread yourselves evenly in a circle around the entrance. Create a barrier. Zel, you and Dale place your otherworldly creatures among them. We need to combine as many different vibrational energies, and spread them around as evenly as possible, or else the barrier will not hold.”
Zel lifted his head and shouted above the noise of the groaning earth. “Vampires! Spread out! Fae, shifters, do the same! Alternate with the angels and demons. “Doms!” he yelled out to a group at the back. “Give your subs permission to separate from you, and divide yourselves between the supes.”
A whisper of the prophecy came back to me. I would have to unite all the creatures of every dimension. But I didn’t know how many there were. From what Nate had told me, there were dozens of different species.
And the crucial part of the prophecy was that I would have to have faith in men. Which I never had.
“We don’t have any other humans,” I whispered, my lips numb. “I’m the only one.”
Zel heard me, and gave me a grin, his eyes decidedly crazy. “The doms and subs are human, Eve. No kink-shaming, please.”
“Oh.”
But I felt no relief. I didn’t know those guys, and if I did, I probably would have been terrified and run away from them too. I’d had no faith. I’d failed.
The earth shook wildly, and suddenly, the rumbling was so loud I panicked. It sounded as if a wild freight-train was about to come bursting out of that hole in the ground. The creatures around me hurried into place, forming a loose circle around the entrance.
“Hands out!” Nimue called, demonstrating with her own, holding her palms away from her as if pushing out an imaginary door. Her black leather bodysuit was ripped to shreds, and she was covered in cuts and bruises, but her voice was commanding and assured. The other creatures leaped to obey her, holding out their hands.
Nate and Alex stepped forward and joined the circle, both just in front of me. Alex glanced back once sternly, silently bidding me to stay put.
I was too scared to move.
“Focus your power,” Nimue called. “Send out your energy. Feel it combine with your neighbor, and feel it strengthen into a wall of impenetrable steel.”
The rumbling grew impossibly louder, and Nimue raised her voice so we could hear her. “Let that wall rise up, and feel it meet into a dome above us. Feel it’s strength, like solid diamond. It will not break!”
I adjusted Lilith in my arms, pressing her ear to my breast and covering her other ear with my hand so she wouldn’t be scared. Impossibly, she slept soundly in my arms, her little mouth slightly opened in a cute little O.
She was so perfect. Her little face gave me courage, and a crazy, wild hope.
“Here they come!” Nimue shouted above the noise.
The horrendous sound was like nails down a blackboard, magnified a million times, as a million souls came screaming out of the hole. A million writhing, pulsing shadowy shapes, screaming in unending agony. They ripped out of the hole in the ground and shot straight up, ricocheting off an invisible barrier, and rebounding back down to the earth.
There was nowhere for them to go. “Angels, hold!” Malach bellowed. The faces of the archangels were frightened, but steady, as they braced themselves and flexed their big muscles, holding the barrier in place.
“Hold, Fae! Weave your magic through the barrier!” Dale yelled. “Vamps, combine your blood magic and repel the souls from the barrier’s edge! Shifters, use your transformational energy to meld it all into something unbreakable!”
The creatures around me focused, some groaning with effort, brows sweating, and some quaking in fear as the invisible dome filled up with screaming, destructive souls. Soon, the space was filled, and I couldn’t make out any individual shapes. The clearing above me was filled with a solid, heaving, and whirling grey mass.
Still, they kept coming.
The noise was awlready unbearable, but it kept getting louder. I glanced worriedly down at my baby, but she slept on.
“Hold!” Nimue screamed. She was paler than ever. The boys in front of me had their arms flexed and straining.
“What are we holding for?” I whispered to myself. We couldn't do this forever. They couldn’t hold this seething mass of rage in place forever.
I glanced around at all the faces. The archangels looked panicked. Some of the fae were sweating, the strain evident on their faces. The vamps were hissing with outrage and effort. My eyes flicked to one of the shifters, a heavyset man. His face was wet with tears.
“This can’t last,” I whispered down to my baby. It would only be seconds before one of the supes collapsed in exhaustion, and the barrier would be broken. “We have to do something.”
Lilith yawned, and her little eyelids cracked open for a second, giving me a quick flash of her brilliant, icy-blue eyes. They closed again gently, and she fell back asleep.
“Those souls are going to crush us if they get out,” I whispered to her. “Do you want to try to do something?”
Her little fist, resting on my breast, clenched suddenly.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I told her.
My heart in my mouth, my feet edging carefully over the rolling, shaking ground, I edged closer to the dome. The screaming souls inside of it were packed to capacity now. I couldn't make out individual forms, but I looked harder.
Alex grunted beside me. “What are you doing, Eve?” His voice was strained, and his neck muscles bulged. But he was locked in place, and couldn’t turn his head towards me, he could only sense me behind him.
“Don’t you worry about me,” I said, trying to make my voice as reassuring as possible, given the screaming mass of souls in front of me. “Me and Lilith here just want to get a little closer to you, that’s all.”
He gritted his teeth and carried on concentrating. I moved slightly out of his line of sight, and carefully examined the dome.
I put out a shaking hand. Now that I was up close, I could see that the solid grey mass was still made up of individual pieces, every single one whirling and raging like a tornado. There were so many. And in the middle of the dome, I could still see them streaming out of the hole in the ground. This was impossible.
But I crept forward, and gingerly put my face close to the dome. In there, I could see the ghostly figure of an old woman amongst the seething swirl of grey. She flew from side to side, moaning, her face distraught. Her flight path took her a little closer to me, and I took my chance.
“Hey,” I whispered to her.
Her pale eyes snapped open. She looked at me.
“Come here. I can help you.”
She drifted closer, and I held my breath.
Unlike the formless mass of grey swirling around the dome, I could clearly make out the old woman’s form; the long, white-grey hair and old-fashioned nightgown, buttoned up to the neck. She focused on me, and floated straight up to the barrier, her face crumpled in pain. Reaching the barrier, she looked down at the baby in my arms, and she wailed softly.
“Hey,” I said again. “No. Focus up here.” I pointed at my eyes. The woman's gaze snapped up again, and I turned my pointer finger around to her.
“Look here,” I said softly, praying with every ounce of my being that this was going to work.
The old woman held out her finger to meet mine.
I touched the barrier.
She was free.
Her soul immediately popped out from behind the boundary and appeared on the other side, floating next to me. Heart pounding, I quickly examined the boundary to make sure that no other souls had
come through. It looked like we were safe for now, but I could see that the strain of keeping it up was taking a terrible toll on the creatures surrounding me. One of the shifters fainted on the ground, and his neighbors strained with the effort of picking up the slack.
I glanced over at Nimue and Malach. They were holding steady, but Nimue was panting with the effort. “Hold tight!” she called out. “Hold them!”
Desperately, I wrenched my eyes back to the ghost before me. Her sad eyes were glued to Lilith in my arms, and she looked more robust now, less like a ghost. This had to work. It had to.
“Did you have a baby once?” I asked her on impulse.
She nodded, her face sad.
“We are born innocent, aren't we?” I went on. “We are born without sin. But then, the world around us takes its toll. Sometimes, we don’t understand that the things that we do are wrong, or cause pain. You sometimes shouted at your kids, didn’t you?”
The ghost nodded dumbly. Glistening rivers of tears started to fall down her cheeks.
“Don’t feel bad,” I whispered. “You’re human. Your children forgave you. You should forgive yourself.”
The old woman took a slow, shuddering breath. Before my eyes, she grew more solid, less grey. Her flowery night-gown turned brighter and brighter.
After a second, she sighed with relief and opened her eyes again. “Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “Was that what it was? I just had to forgive myself?”
Now, it was my turn to nod dumbly. I opened my mouth to explain to her, but she shook herself and spread out her arms. “Thanks, sweetie. You’re an angel. Look, I gotta go, I got some grandbabies to visit.”
She was gone in a puff of silver sparkles.
It worked. But it wasn’t enough. The raging mass inside the dome grew darker and more tormented. I could feel the negative energy building up. Soon there would be no more room, and the barriers would break.
My friends were starting to suffer. I had to speed this up.
I made out the form of another soul floating past, wailing pathetically - a young man. “Hey,” I whispered to him. “Come here!”
I poked at him through the barrier and set him loose. His soul floated next to me for a second, but before I could open my mouth, he let out a cry and whirled away.
Shit. Well, that was kind of the plan. Nimue said that we’d probably have to let a few souls loose. At least he didn’t look like one of the more violent ones.
The situation was getting dire - I could no longer see individual souls in the dome anymore. It was just one building, whirling pressure cooker filled with the worst negative energy imaginable. I glanced around. Two of the archangels were on their knees. Three vamps had passed out.
This whole thing was going to blow.
Desperately, I peered inside the dome, hoping to find some more benign souls to set free, when I spotted something strange.
In a spot to the left of me, the darkness was solidifying. A dense figure was in there.
It wasn’t a ghost; I could see a defined form. It was hard matter in there. It was definitely a person.
Who would go inside this circle of horror? There was definitely someone there - a female figure? There was a curve of waist, and a hint of breast, and a gracefulness to her movements that was undeniable.
The female was whirling her arms around, drawing in the darkness, and stuffing it inside a circle of her own, in with her, so the spot that she occupied inside the dome was getting blacker and blacker…
I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, and I couldn't identify her. Soon, the blackness had consumed her. Confused, I glanced around and realized that this strange female had condensed some of the souls around her so that the others had more room.
I could spot individual ghosts more clearly now. Hurriedly, I pointed at a passing little girl, sobbing her heart out.
“Oi!” No time for niceties now. “Come here,” I barked the order at her.
She drifted closer. I touched the barrier lightly and set her free. She gazed up at me with huge, sad eyes.
“Get over it,” I snapped. “Whatever you did, no one cares about it now. You took your sister’s doll? You snuck the last of the chocolate cake, so mama couldn't have any?”
She sniffed, her face crumpled, and she threw back her head and wailed. “I broke my brother’s Nintendo!” Her body changed as she cried. She became whiter and brighter almost immediately.
“Oh. Well, I doubt your brother cares about his Nintendo anymore, because you’re dead. Forgive yourself, and move on.” I nodded sternly.
The tough love seemed to be working. Before I’d even finished my sentence, she’d transmuted, and drifted straight up, her face ecstatic.
It was quicker this time. I was getting the hang of this.
I released two more souls next time, both of them transmuted straight away. The next one - a middle-aged lady - got away, and whirled off into the jungle, crying piteously. She snapped a tree in half as she left, and I cringed.
But I carried on. I set free four young men, all crying together, then a handful of children. Yet the ground still trembled, and the souls kept pouring out.
We were fighting a losing battle.
The strange dark mass in the center of the dome grew even darker, all of a sudden, I smacked my head with my palm when I realized who it was.
It was Mags. She’d gone to Hell, and she’d busted out with the rest of the souls. But somehow, she was drawing the most violent escapees towards her, tethering them to her. I had no idea if she was doing it to help us, or hinder us, whatever her intention, it made it easier for me to spot the less-violent souls that whirled around the circle.
I kept on, getting the attention of the sad, less violent entities, and I quickly set them free. I lost a couple more, but I freed more than I lost.
After a few long, tense minutes, Alex realized what I was doing.
“Eve,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. He had no energy for anything else.
I put my hand on his arm. “It’s the only way,” I told him. “We have to hold out.”
He nodded, no longer capable of speech. I lost the next two souls, and they drifted away, crying in pain. But I quickly freed a handful of children after that, and they transmuted easily. “Straight up to Heaven, you understand?” I waggled my finger at them, and they obeyed, their smiling faces shining with a bright-white light.
I was getting too tired. Lilith started to feel like a heavy rock in my arms, but one I would hold forever if I had to. Exhaustion was beginning to drag me down. I couldn’t do this forever.
Suddenly the ground shook violently beneath my feet. I stumbled, and fell backward on my butt, carefully holding my arms out so Lilith wouldn’t feel the blow. She was okay, but she woke up and started to cry. The fall knocked the last of my energy out of me; abruptly, it was all too much. The souls within the barrier writhed and screamed, wailed and whirled around, the space getting more and more filled…
It was impossible. What we were hoping to do was impossible. Even if just these souls got out, the world would be smashed to pieces. At least Mags was in there, holding the more violent ones in a circle of her own. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing to her in there, the pain she must be experiencing.
A rush of guilt shot through me. No betrayal, no amount of trying to kill me could possibly make her deserve this.
She was sacrificing herself.
On the other side of the clearing, a burst of flame caught my eye. A massive figure with blood-red skin and black hair popped up behind Nimue.
“The barriers are complete, sister,” the demon said hastily. “The gate is sealed, and the Morning Star is almost destroyed from trying to hold it shut.” He glanced around the circle with worried eyes. “You will have to send all these souls back down by portal.”
Nimue was at breaking point. She screamed, long and loud, and I wrenched my tired eyes towards her.
“My love,” Malach shouted. He wobbled, and fell on one k
nee, exhaustion overwhelming him. “Together. We can do this!”
“Together!” Leif roared. Hannah Savage echoed him.
My eyes were dimming. Over on the other side of the circle, Zel and Dale closed the gap between them. They held hands, watching each other’s faces desperately, as if they were trying to memorize everything they loved before it was ripped away. Bodies littered the ground, every third or fourth person in the circle had fallen and lay motionless.
They’d given everything, poured every possible shred of energy into making sure these souls couldn’t escape. None of the humans were moving. I was the last one holding on to consciousness.
“No.” I had to help. It needed to be all of us. Yet I could barely move. My legs weren’t responding to my brain's commands. I was too tired.
I shuffled forward on my butt and touched the barrier with my big toe.
Immediately, there was a ghost in front of me. A woman.
“That baby needs the breast, young lady,” she said between sobs.
I shrugged at her. “We always do the best we’ve got with what we’re given,” I mumbled stupidly.
The woman’s eyes widened as if I’d given her an epiphany, and with a relieved sigh, she drifted away.
I blinked heavily and tried to focus on the dome. There were hardly any souls drifting around anymore - I’d freed most of the sad ones, a couple had gotten away, and the more violent ones had all been condensed into the smaller circle that Mags had drawn.
I couldn’t see her now. I wasn’t even sure she existed anymore.
Nimue shouted out, her voice hoarse and tinged with desperation. “Everyone! Walk in!”
I wasn’t walking anywhere. I could barely lift my baby, but I wasn’t planning on letting her go hungry before I died, so I popped out a breast and tried to navigate my nipple into her mouth. Lilith caught it, and sucked in sharply. It hurt.
Then again, everything hurt. My whole body was aching, tired and sore. My lower half felt like it had been sawed off. I wasn’t moving.
My friends were though. On shaky feet, they slowly stepped forward, grunting and sweating with exertion. The faces in the circle were gaunt, almost drained dry. The red demon joined the circle, pushed hard, and started to chant.
Revelations: The Last War Page 21