by Amity Hope
The demon’s snare pulsated, emanating a brilliant gold. A web of thin, burning gold strands connected each tip to each of the other tips. Ava could now see what Gabe had been trying to explain to her the night before. The snare looked like a giant, golden, glowing spider web.
“Gabriel, you decided to carry on with this charade, did you? I warned you, this will not hold me.” Azael glanced at Ava and his lips curled into a frightening smile. “Oh, I see. You need to keep up the façade of your plan. Very well,” he sighed. “Here I am. But like you, I am no stranger to discomfort.”
Ava’s eyes frantically flew to Gabe’s. He was watching his father, his jaw set. Her gaze swung back around to Azael. She was not sure what she had been expecting. Perhaps a corpse-like creature whose appearance would correlate with his detestable nature. Or perhaps a man with horns protruding from his skull and hooves adorning his feet. Surely, she had not expected a demon to look like the creature that stood before her.
He was nearly as tall as Gabe and the resemblance was like a dagger to her heart. The same chiseled features, the perfectly symmetrical face and the flawless skin. He had a beautiful face that would be so beguiling to the covetous, superficial likes of the human mind. A beauty, as Grier had claimed, that could be used as a weapon to draw you in.
Azael’s hair was like Rafe’s, an unnatural shade of red. It shimmered atop his head, like liquid flames. It was his eyes that made Ava’s breath catch painfully in her throat. They were bottomless pits of darkness.
An aching, biting fear began to course through her. She tried to ignore it, to push it away. She knew that Gabe could feel it and she did not want him to have to deal with her fear when he was already fighting his own.
Have faith, she told herself. She concentrated on those words, willing them to edge out the paralyzing fear that she felt rising, building, pushing outward, weakening her body.
Have faith.
“I knew you would understand,” Gabe finally said, “how important it is to keep up pretenses.”
Ava realized that Azael had not been surprised the demon’s trap was there. It sounded like he had known. How could he have known? Had Gabe told him and then kept that from her?
Her gaze ricocheted from Grier to Gabe but neither looked concerned. Gabe did, however, look ill. Ava knew the sigils were taking their toll on him. She felt a senseless yet intense rush of guilt as her own markings seemed to emanate a phantom heat that she imagined twisting around Gabe.
“Such a primitive idea and yet,” the threads of the snare flared brightly as he tried to move forward within the confines of its circle, “perhaps a little stronger than I had imagined. But sadly for you, not nearly strong enough,” he said as he strode forward, coming closer to the edge.
Azael looked at the three of them in turn. Ava thought it was too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed the sheen of sweat that covered Gabe, or the way his hands were shaking. Ava imagined the uncontrollable heat sliding its way through his veins, leaving a torturous path in its wake. Yet he was here with her. By her side despite the obvious pain he was in.
Her heart lurched in her chest. She wanted to hold his hand, to be close to him but that was not an option right now.
Mostly, she wanted this over. They were so close. Remove Azael from their lives and Gabe would be free to be with her. She ached, all the way down to her soul, for that moment to come.
Close. They were so close. What were they waiting for? To see if the cage would hold? That was the question Gabe had feared the answer to.
“A simple demon’s snare could not stop you,” Grier agreed as she spoke for the first time. “But one in the form of a hexagram…a symbol of perfect geometric opposites…Male and female…The sun and the moon…Good and evil…Angel and demon fused as one. Opposites that cannot exist in the same entity without one canceling the other out, yes, created properly this particular snare ought to be enough to stop you,” Grier said calmly.
Ava breathed a soundless sigh of relief. Grier sounded so confident.
Yet she noticed that Gabe was still trembling. The stones embedded in the dagger he held twinkled as the flames of the snare reflected of off them.
“This?” Azael asked, the smile crawling back onto his face.
Ava could see him pushing subtly against the invisible cage that was holding him. The gold etchings on the floor flared. Possibly it was her panicked mind seeing things that couldn’t be but it seemed to her that he was making a small progression outward.
“You think this can stop me?”
He was laughing now. She knew for sure that she hadn’t been wrong. He was pushing the boundaries. Did that mean the snare would not hold? Ava’s heart slammed painfully against the wall of her chest again and again.
Gabe’s body twitched, as if her fear had collided into him with a force too strong to ignore. She had to fight being afraid.
“You, all of you, overestimate yourselves. I’ve been around for millennia,” Azael reminded them. “You think I have never encountered a demon’s snare forged in the blood of an angel?”
Both Grier and Gabe moved to stand in front of Ava.
Azael’s laugh was chaotic now. Despite Gabe and Grier’s calm, Ava felt her panic rise. She struggled to quench it. Gabe turned to look at her, his face filled with heartache.
His gaze bore into his son, snapping his attention back to him. “Gabriel, surely you aren’t thinking of defying me. We had an agreement, you and I.”
His voice was so frigid it chilled the blood in Ava’s veins.
Gabe turned to Ava again. His eyes flooded with so many emotions she could not begin to translate them all. He looked at her as though he were trying to memorize her face.
He held Grier’s dagger in one hand and he reached for her with his other. His hand rested on her shoulder as he leaned forward and placed the softest of kisses on her lips.
Ava fought to keep her blood smeared hands at her sides and not lift them to rest on Gabe, where she felt they belonged.
When he stepped away from her, he turned to Grier and gave her a pleading look that Ava did not miss.
Azael laughed and the sound was like shards of ice shattering and embedding themselves into her soul.
“Its Nean"as liks time!” he shouted.
“I know,” Gabe whispered as he raised the dagger.
In the next moment Grier touched her hand to Ava’s forehead and her body was frozen. If it hadn’t been, she would’ve lunged at Gabe the moment she realized what he was about to do. He stepped away from the altar and into the snare as he plunged the dagger into his heart.
Ava screamed, her body frozen, the sound never leaving her mouth but resounding inside of her skull, tearing at her throat. She thought of those patients, prepped for surgery, seemingly unconscious but awake to feel every stroke of the surgeon’s blade. She felt like this as Grier’s blade pierced his heart.
The pain, whether physical or emotional was so intense he may as well have impaled her heart. Another silent scream tore through her thoughts as she fought to break free of the angelic restraints. She watched, helpless as Gabe fell to his knees and then slumped to the floor. She silently screamed his name over and over again, a terrified, endless loop that went unanswered.
“I believe you have underestimated your son,” Grier calmly declared, pulling Azael’s attention back to her and away from Gabe, whose body lay motionless on the floor. Her voice had changed, become more powerful. “As you said, a demon’s trap, even one forged in angel’s blood may not be strong enough to hold you. But one sealed in the blood of a demon will eradicate you.”
As the first droplet of Gabriel’s tainted blood trickled into the etchings, mingling with the blood of the angel it caused a synergistic effect. The hazy glow erupted into a vibrant blue inferno.
White-hot silver and blue flames—a blue so like the color of Gabe’s eyes—instantly began snaking their way through the intricately carved markings on the floor until the entire snare was aflame.
Ava knew Gabe was in there somewhere but his corpse was indiscernible behind the conflagration. Every cell in her body was straining to run forward, into the blaze to pull him out. With sudden clarity she knew then that this was all part of the plan. This was why Grier had bound her in place.
She did not have a future with Gabe.
I promise to love you forever…She had rejoiced at hearing those words. But they were a shield to cover the truth. He had not promised they would be together.
He had known.
This was the plan.
He was sacrificing himself to save her.
Ava did not want it to be this way. She wanted him to take it back!
The entire foundation of the church shook. Azael screamed, whether in outrage or agony Ava couldn’t tell, nor did she care. As the fire burned, the ground began to crumble beneath them. Chunks of it fell away, the outer circle of the snare first, leaving the core standing inexplicably on its own.
She caught a glimpse of Gabe, his lifeless eyes seeming to bore into her soul for a fraction of an instant as he tumbled into the dark abyss the gaping hole had created.
Ava had expected his body to be charred, burned beyond recognition from the intensity of the inferno. But it wasn’t. He was whole and untainted and beautiful and he was…gone.
***
Gabriel was falling.
It didn’t matter.
He had seen Ava’s face. Overflowing with anguish, infinite, indefinable despair.
He had saved her.
He had hurt her.
He could hear her screaming.
Crying out for him.
Even though it was only in her head.
Entangled in horror, imbued with regret for being…him.
Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone. But it was a torturous, agonizing burning. A burning…a ceaseless hunger for what you could not have. It was a smoldering, unending desire to return to those who held your heart. It was precisely for this reason that others like him could live comfortably in the realm of Hell. No one, absolutely no one, could hold the heart of the heartless.
Ava had changed him. He knew with an unequivocal certainty that he would find himself aflame in the pits for all of eternity. Burning with want and need for Ava. Burning with shame and remorse for all of the iniquitous things he had done. Burning with a desire, a yearning for the utterly impossible…to have lived his life differently.
Gabriel was falling.
And then he wasn’t.
Epilogue
Gabe was gone.
Grier was gone.
Ava’s parents had cried when the social worker had led Grier away, purportedly to go live with her recently found mother.
Grier was going home.
No one questioned it. The abruptness of it.
Ava had to assume Rafe was not alone in his ability to persuade.
Ava had not cried. She was not sad to see Grier go.
Ava’s family and friends were inexplicably under the impression that Gabe had to go away. That Gabe, perhaps, was suffering from a terminal ailment. It would explain Ava’s excessive tears and melancholy, a case of grief too severe to be attributed to a normal break-up. But the questions, the questions one would expect from friends and family never really came.
Neither did any questions as to her whereabouts the time she was missing.
Another case of intense persuasion?
Ava thought it likely.
Perhaps she should be grateful that Grier had at least taken care of that for her. How would she ever explain to her parents where she’d been or what had happened? No one had asked. It was as if she’d never gone missing at all. It was all wrapped up so neat and tidy. As if he had never existed. As if he could be easily forgotten.
Gabe’s car was gone from the church parking lot as well. The shattered stained-glass window was as pristine as it had been the day it was put in. She had found her blood-spattered hoodie—the one she’d used to wipe away Gabe’s blood, the same one she’d left behind in the church—hanging spotlessly clean in hely ad foundr closet.
She was hollow inside.
Empty.
But she had questions that were screaming, begging, pleading to be answered. To fill the void.
The void of unknowing.
She’d already driven out to the abandoned church. She’d sat there for hours. The only trace of Gabe, or any of them really, were their footprints scuffed through the dust by the altar.
There was no trace of the demon’s snare. The etchings were gone. The floor remained as if it had never caved away at all.
The last words he had spoken to her were like an echo continuously haunting her thoughts.
I love you more than you can possibly imagine.
Ava had gone to her cabin after the church. She wanted to be in the place where she’d last spent time with him. She’d found his wallet on the nightstand by her bed. It contained an absurd amount of cash, money he had told her he had wanted her to run away with.
His black leather jacket, the one he’d been wearing the night he’d come to get her, the same one he’d been wearing the day they’d gone for a ride, was neatly folded at the end of the bed. Those two items were the only trace that he’d ever been there.
Shortly after Gabe had disappeared, Grier had touched her forehead again. She’d awakened the next morning to find herself asleep in her bed. Her life seemingly untouched.
But it had been touched. It had been shredded and torn. And she needed answers. Although she knew any answers she received could not possibly repair the damage that had been done.
She grabbed her car keys, slipped out of the house unnoticed. She headed to the only place that could possibly provide her with any details about Gabe.
“You can’t go there,” Grier said, appearing beside Ava without warning.
Ava screamed, swerved, hit the curb, missed a pedestrian, swore and kept on driving all in what seemed like a millisecond.
“Don’t do that!” she shrieked.
“It would be unwise to go to the Castille home,” Grier warned. “Gabe believes Rafe will be pleased that his brother and father are gone. He has inherited much. You are likely nothing more than a speck of a concern to him. I suggest you stay away to keep it so.”
“Where is Gabe?” Ava demanded.
“Turn hean">
As much as she did not want to talk to Grier, she wanted, she needed an explanation so she did as Grier asked. She parked her car in the most secluded spot she could find.
“Where is he,” Ava grated out as she turned in her seat to face the girl who was not her sister. Who was not even a girl. Who was not even human. “Where is he?!” The car vibrated with the intensity of the question. Grier stared at her in that hard, uncanny way she had always had. “Is he in Hell?” Ava finally whispered.
“No. Not anymore. He was briefly. As the cage fell in but he is not there now.”
The tears started to stream down Ava’s face, silent and relieved. Her worst fear was that he was trapped in the pits of fiery cobalt flame, trapped with the monster that had been his father.
“Why did he have to die?” she finally whispered.
“The moment he told me of his plan, I warned him that I could only create the snare. I could not seal it. It could only be sealed from the inside. It could only be sealed with demon’s blood. The blood of an angel and the blood of a demon cannot coexist. He could have simply used his blood and not taken his life but he would’ve been trapped inside with Azael, living out the next decades of his existence in unbearable torment. Would you have preferred that?”
“I would prefer that he was here with me!” Ava turned to Grier, making no attempt to hide her anger. “You said you would not interfere. You told us that you would not disobey the command you were given. But you did. First by putting your blood on my palms and later…by making sure I couldn’t move. That I couldn’t stop him! You were only given permission to create the snare. You were not allowed to interfere.
But you did.”
Grier stared straight ahead, as if Ava had not spoken.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Ava bitterly replied. “You had no right. Permission was not granted to you. You should have let me stop him. You went against your orders by protecting me like you did. You shouldn’t have done it. You should have let me be!”
Grier’s gaze finally met Ava’s. “I did not do it to save you.” Her voice was so soft Ava had to strain to hear her. “I did it to save him. And I did receive permission. After I created the sigils, I pled Gabe’s case. A soul was hanging in the balance. It was my duty to try to see it saved. I was granted permission only moments before I retrieved you from the cabin.”
“How was it your duty?” Ava whispered. “I thought it didn’t matter to you who lived and who died?”
“I was not trying to save his life, Ava,” Grier carefully explained. “I was trying to help him save his soul.”
Ava’s ragged breathing seemed to echo through the car. She’d cried her teardrops dry and she had no more to spare for today. She tried to make sense of Grier’s words but nothing made sense to her at the moment.
“He sacrificed himself readily. You should know that, first and foremost,” Grier explained. “He did so without realizing that his action would redeem him for all of his prior sins. He did it selflessly. Willingly. It was the only way for him to be granted pure redemption.”
“I failed him,” Ava miserably acknowledged.
“You saved him. By allowing him to save you, he saved himself. Dying young to save your soul is worth more than countless lifetimes that embrace evil and damnation.” Grier stopped as though lost in thought. Ava waited numbly for her to continue. “He did not have a guarantee that his blood would seal the snare. Neither a demon nor a demon’s descendant has ever offered themselves up as a sacrificial seal. It was only in theory that it would work. You were the one who convinced him to have faith.”