“I can be forgiving, Gray. Give me the Dagger and we will rule the army you delivered me together.” She steps toward me, and I fight the urge to step back. “Join me, and we’ll have all the time in the world to discuss your past.”
What’s terrible is that for a brief moment, wanting to know about my life before Lilah eclipses my wanting anything else. Redemption. Revenge. David. She says what I’m thinking the moment it pops into my head: “You’re bad, Gray. So be bad.”
Lilah holds out her hand for the Dagger.
I bring up the copper gun and pull the trigger.
There is no spatter of blood. No dropping body.
Lilah flicks her wrist and the bullet stops in mid-air, inches from her outstretched palm. It drops to the floor, the casing clinking on the stone as it rolls away.
“This is why I had you killed,” she says, disappointment dripping from every word. “All the promise in the world, and in the end you always make the wrong choice.”
I shove the gun back into my waistband, pull a diamond dagger from my pocket, and fling it at Lilah’s face. She spins and dodges, looking past me and reaching her arm out for the door behind me and the hallway beyond. She twists her wrist, and the door to the room flies open.
“Enter,” she says, her voice dropping an octave and going oddly two-toned.
The deep thunk of a bolt snapping back and the creak of metal hinges echoes down through the hallway, and I turn to see the heavy wooden front doors fall open and dozens of newly-risen dead pour into the foyer.
22
The thump and rumble of heavy footsteps on hardwood grows louder as the undead horde piles in through the open front doors and thunders toward us.
“No.” The word comes unbidden from my lips. I will not fail. Not now. Not this close to succeeding at Lucifer’s task.
I spin around, catching the door to the Artifacts Room with my leg and kicking it shut. I slam the lock home just as the first of the zombies reach the threshold. The door rattles on its hinges as the bodies pile up on the other side.
A snarl of rage bursts from me as I launch myself at Lilah. Despite my heightened demon speed, I’m not as quick as her, not yet, and she dodges me easily.
I pull another dagger as I wheel around and fling it at her with no hesitation. Just as with the bullet, she flicks her wrist and sends it careening to the left where it embeds itself in the wall.
I advance on her, pulling blade after blade and throwing them at her in an unending assault.
Flip.
Flip.
Flip.
Lilah sends each of them wide of their target, avoiding them all, aside from one. My last. The diamond dagger with the Kira in its hilt. It buries itself deep into her left shoulder. Taking advantage of her astonishment as she yanks the weapon from her flesh, I race toward her, dropping to my knees in a slide, going low instead of high.
I sweep my leg, hoping to knock her off balance but she launches herself into the air, somersaulting over me and landing on the other side of the room.
Whipping around, I pull myself to my feet. We appraise each other from opposite ends of the room as the fire in the hearth crackles between us and the dead scrape their bony fingers against the door as they look for a way in.
Headlights flash through the window. Runner and his hearse. The engine roars as the car approaches, and Lilah’s attention is drawn away from me for a fraction of a second.
I pull my gun and fire off five quick shots.
Inhumanly fast, Lilah reacts in time to send each bullet pinging off the stone walls or lodged deep into bookshelves or furniture.
Wait.
Not all of them.
Red blooms across her abdomen. In the back of my mind, I register that she must not be a demon if her blood isn’t black, but I tuck that thought away and run toward her, arms outstretched, firing shot after shot until the hammer goes click.
She’s wounded, but she isn’t weakening.
She’s angry.
“Enough of this, now,” she hisses and raises a bloody arm. “Enter.”
The door to the room flies open and the dead tumble inside.
I crouch behind the overstuffed chair and yank open one of my zippered pockets, reaching in to grab a handful of the bullets Nico gave me. Like I’ve done a thousand times before with a thousand other guns, I load the weapon.
I race out from behind the chair, pulling the gun up as I move.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Three of the undead drop like sacks of flour, but a dozen more scramble over them. I empty my gun and the pile grows larger, but there are not enough bullets for all of them. Tossing the now-useless weapon aside, I pull my original dagger. I feel it’s only fitting that I destroy Lilah’s army with the weapon she gifted me.
I back up as far as I can, until my back is against the window and I can feel the cool glass through my coat. Over the advancing dead, I see Lilah move to the hearth and pick up the lowball glass. She takes the smallest of sips, and I watch as the wound on her shoulder knits up and the gunshot in her abdomen stops bleeding.
“That’s how we fix the dead, Gray,” she says as she lifts the glass in a mock toast. “Once they’ve finished with you, I’ll feed them the water and my blood, and they will be transformed. I carve a little something from the Codex Malum into them with the Dagger of the Fallen that I’m going to take from your dead body, and they are mine to control. So, hurry up and die, would you? I have things to do.”
My dagger is a blur as I cut a path through the undead. Limbs fly. Heads roll. One by one, they fall underneath my blade. More, there are always more, and I dispatch them with ruthless efficiency.
A sudden rush pushes forward, and the swarm drives me back. Tripping over a body, I slam backward into one of the display cases, sending it crashing to the floor and shattering the glass. Still, I fight.
Another undead returns to its final rest. And another. Another. They pile on top of me and I can’t breathe. Still more come. I slice and I cut and I stab until I can no longer move.
Finally, finally, they stop.
And so do I.
I am crushed beneath them. Bruised and bleeding, I can feel my strength ebbing.
“Shame.” Lilah’s voice is muffled and I can’t tell if it’s because the corpses on top of me are blocking the sound, or if I’m about to lose consciousness.
I fumble for the zippered pocket on my pants. The one place I have not grabbed a weapon from. The weight of the undead on top of me pins me down and I can’t reach the Dagger of the Fallen. I strain and I silently plead and my fingertips brush the hilt but it’s not enough it’s not enough it’s not enough…
She’s close. She is going to find me alive, and she is going to end me.
The pile on top of me moves, and I wait for one of her army to clamp its jaws into my neck, or my shoulder, or my leg, but it’s not them. It’s her. She’s digging me out so she can see that I’m dead for herself.
The static at the edges of my vision clears as the weight on my chest lessens, and all I need is for her to move one more body and then…
Yes.
She rolls a dead man off of me and I wrap my fingers around the hilt of the Dagger of the Fallen and drive the blade into her with the last of my strength.
Lilah blinks. Once. Twice. She looks down at the impossible black of the obsidian blade protruding from her chest. Crimson blossoms around the wound, and fiery lines crackle and smoke, snaking out along her skin.
I scramble back from her, smearing old, clotted blood and bits of decayed skin on her floor, the remnants of her army strewn about me. Every muscle and joint in my body is screaming but I do not feel a thing because I got her.
I got her.
Somehow, I manage to stand. Though I sway on my feet, the unbridled hatred I have for Lilah propels me forward and I lunge for her, grabbing the Dagger and plunging it even further into her coal-black heart.
I pull the weapon fre
e, and her blood drips from the blade and puddles at my feet.
Her skin begins to smoke and flake away. Rivers of fire crackle and race along her flesh, and she seems to go incandescent from the inside out. Her scream cuts off as she collapses to ash, and it swirls and spins around me. Covering me. Lifting me.
Lilah’s body disintegrates, and I smell sulfur as I disappear along with her.
23
I am on my hands and knees in front of familiar blue flames.
Lucifer’s lair.
The muffled screams of the sinners outside in Pandemonium carry through the glass of the windows, and I am reminded once again that that’s where I should be. Not in here, getting a second chance.
The Dagger lies on the floor next to me, its obsidian surface absorbing all the light and making it look like there’s a knife-shaped hole in the floor. It’s unnerving, and I want it away from me as soon as possible while simultaneously wanting to pick it up and lay waste to anyone who gets in my way. I split the difference and pick it up only long enough to put it in the sheath strapped to my leg.
“About bloody time.” Leather squeaks and I look up to see Lucifer leaning forward in his chair to set his chin on his hands and peer at me over the edge of his desk.
“I wasn’t gone more than a day,” I say, and sit back with a wince. My injuries are healing, but I just fought off a horde of the undead and it’s going to take me a minute or ten to get back to full strength.
“Time passes differently around here,” he counters. “It’s been nearly a week in what you’d consider normal time.”
“Almost seven whole days?” I say, feigning astonishment. “Yes, you’re right. I really should have picked up the pace.”
He smirks at me, though I get the feeling that sarcasm only goes so far with him. He’s the Prince of Darkness. I’m sure not many sass back to him and live, so to speak, to tell the tale.
A scream from somewhere in the bowels of the building rings out, sending echoes of pure pain ricocheting off of every surface. Lucifer sits back, relishing the sound, and I realize its tone is oddly familiar.
“Is that…?”
“Lilah. Yes. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
I don’t admit to him that it’s a sound that will haunt me for the rest of my days and that I’d prefer never to hear anything like it again.
Pulling myself to standing, I shuffle toward him on still-wobbly legs. “I did what you asked.”
“Indeed you did,” he says, but makes no move to stand himself. “Have a seat. Let’s chat.”
“I’d prefer to…”
“What you’d prefer is irrelevant,” he says, and gestures to the chair across from him. I remember that chair, the way the bones dug into my skin and kept me on edge. I’m in the Devil’s lair, I don’t need any help in the discomfort department, but I sit anyway.
He has the box on his desk, the one that should contain the Dagger, and he opens it and holds it out to me. “If you’d be so kind,” he says.
Surprising him, and myself even more, I hesitate.
“Something the matter?” he asks.
“It’s just…” How do you tell the Devil you don’t trust him? “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain?”
He sets the box down with a hard crack and pins me with a fiery stare. “You don’t. But you’ve already completed your mission and returned to me with the prize in hand. So either you put it in the box and take your chances, or I throw you out into Pandemonium and keep the Dagger anyway. What’ll it be?”
He has a point. I unsheathe the Dagger and place it inside the box. He watches me closely as I set it inside, revulsion on his stunningly beautiful face. I’ve barely set the Dagger down before he snaps the lid shut, narrowly missing my fingers.
“Wise choice.” He stands and moves to the shelf against the far wall, setting the box in its rightful place. “Now that that dirty business is over, come with me,” he says, motioning for me to rise.
***
Moments later, I’m following Lucifer down a nondescript hallway toward an unknown destination.
Every dozen feet or so, the rough stone walls give way to a door with a small, square window at eye height. They’re the kind of doors you’d see in an asylum or hospital, so orderlies can peer in on patients. So far each room has been empty, but it gives me a queasy feeling nonetheless.
I don’t want to follow him. In fact, I try to stop. My legs do not comply, following him seemingly of their own accord. The deeper we get into his lair the less safe I feel, though I suppose that just because he didn’t immediately throw me out into Pandemonium doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not in danger.
“In your short time as one of my minions, you have racked up quite a debt.” He turns, walking backward, the heels of his shiny black dress shoes clicking on the stone floor. He counts on his fingers as he speaks. “To Mina. To Baron.”
“I had no choice,” I respond. “You gave me no information, nothing to go on except that I needed to find the Dagger and bring it to you.”
“Don’t blame me for your failures.”
“And no time,” I continue. “From the moment you sent me back I was on the run, and…”
“Enough,” he says, waving a hand, “I have no use for your excuses. I supposed you’re going to blame me for the debts you owe prior to our meeting, as well.”
My mind races as I try to figure out just what the hell he’s talking about. “I have no other debts.”
“Don’t you?” He spins around and stops, and I nearly plow right into him. “We know you dealt in objects stolen from me. But what about the other things you stole, Gray? While you were in Lilah’s employ, you procured things from deities and Counterfeits with reputations so foul that even I would hesitate to fraternize with them.” A flash of disgust crosses his face. “Do you know how hard that is for me to admit? That there are those out there worse than me? And you crossed them.”
“How could I have known?”
“Again, don’t place the blame anywhere but yourself,” he says, spinning around and taking off again. “You could have been a good person. You could have chosen to get a job as a bank teller rather than a bank robber. A doctor rather than a killer. You could have made any number of choices, Gray, and you chose to be bad.”
He’s not wrong. I am a product of my choices, though I only had one mentor, one person to look up to, and she was as rotten as they come.
“Do you really think you can turn it around?” He tosses the question over his shoulder like it means nothing, but the answer is everything to me.
Before I can answer, we pass a door and a hand slaps the glass from inside, making me flinch away. I can’t see who the hand is attached to, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that their wrist has a symbol burned into it: three interlocking circles.
Whoever is inside is branded just like me. The symbol may be different, but the meaning is the same: we are the property of Lucifer. If this person is trapped in here, what will become of me?
I scramble to catch up to Lucifer, who hasn’t broken his stride. He waves a hand as if shooing a fly. “Pay no attention to her. She is in time out. Unlike you, she didn’t complete her mission, and I haven’t devised the proper punishment yet.”
“Who was that?”
“You’ll meet her soon enough.”
“Wait, no,” I say, and again I try to stop my legs from following him to our destination, and once again they betray me. I am being pulled by an invisible thread I cannot break. “No meeting people. I’m leaving.”
“Gray,” he says, and he sounds exhausted with me, “if I send you back as a human to the earthly plane, those terrible creatures I mentioned will kill you before the sun comes up. You’re no longer protected by Lilah.”
“I don’t care,” I say, my anxiety ticking up with each step. “I’ll take my chances.”
“You are many things, Gray, but I do not believe you to be stupid.”
“I have to go back. David…
”
“David is the least of your worries. You are wanted by some of the lowest beings in all of Counterfeit City, and I don’t just mean Ash City. I mean worldwide. You are known, Gray, and that is not a good thing. So, focus.”
He glances back at me, and his eyes flash with an unearthly delight. He’s not going to let me go, and I should’ve known this was coming, but I refused to believe it. I still refuse.
“Send me back,” I plead, and I realize with sick dread that he’s enjoying this.
“You want a chance at redemption?” he asks. “Then you continue to work for me. You pay off your debts to everyone you’ve wronged on this side of the veil, and maybe I give you the chance to die a good person. Eventually.” He shrugs. “When you think about it, I’m doing you a favor.”
We’ve come to the end of the hallway, and he finally stops. It works out well, because I don’t have the strength to stand at the moment, and I crumple. “No…” I am hollow inside. I’ve done what he asked and it doesn’t matter.
Lucifer leans down and whispers as if sharing a secret with me. “You made a deal with the Devil. How did you think this was going to go for you?”
This was a losing game from the beginning. Instead of spending my time running his errands, I should’ve been plotting my escape.
Escape. Yes.
There must be a way to get away from him.
Another scream cuts through the solid stone walls, ripping me from my misery. Lucifer betrayed me. I’m almost certain now that he betrayed Runner. Who’s to say he didn’t betray Lilah as well? What if I’ve delivered her here to him under false pretenses?
Lilah escaped him once. Who’s to say I can’t do it a second time? A fire sparks in the empty space inside me. Pulling strength from it, I stand. A wicked smile lights up Lucifer’s inhumanly beautiful face. “Ah, yes. I’m late for a reunion with the lovely Lilah.”
He pulls a brass skeleton key from the pocket of his suit and brandishes it like a prize. It’s then that I realize we’re not at the end of a hallway. We’re at a door.
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