by A. K. Koonce
I can’t hear anything for what feels like minutes but could very well be mere seconds. Then my father is looming over me as the flesh on his burned face knits together. Half of his lips come together, and he smiles. It’s grotesque, and I want to rip it straight from his face, but the pain is consuming, and I can’t stop shaking. My fingers gnarl like the roots of trees, and I can’t straighten them.
“You insignificant, weak offspring.” His foot shoots out and connects with my body. I barely feel it beyond the magic wreaking havoc in my body. “With your weak, angelic fucking heart.” His leg comes back just to kick me again. I wait for a blow I don’t expect to feel when out of nowhere, a wolf flies from over me and snaps its jaws onto my father’s foot.
My father lets out a startled cry, and I know my magic has left him weaker than he should be. I try to angle my body so I can see and end up rolling on the ground, too weak to get up.
My father shakes his leg, but the massive wolf is clamped on tightly. Then my father kicks him and sends Malek flying. He lands on the ground with a whine.
“N-n-n-no-o…” My words stutter out from between my chattering teeth.
Malek doesn’t stay down for long. He hops up on four paws and snarls at his prey, circling him, herding him away from me.
My father laughs. “You think you can go against me alone, mutt?” His skin is regenerating. His power will soon be restored, while I’m worthless and weak on the ground.
Malek’s eyes flash, and his lips pull back into a wolfish smile.
It’s all the warning my father gets before he’s attacked from all sides.
Saint latches on to his back and digs his fangs into his neck, ripping out the knitting flesh. Syko comes in from the left, blasting him with white nephilim magic. From the right, Phoenix prowls, his eyes black and consumed with rage and death that shakes through his every move as he destroys everything in his path.
Together, they attack him from all sides. With claws and teeth and magic, both hellish and heavenly. But they’re tired… they can’t do it… Just as I think my father is going to win, a tornado of glittering dust sweeps around him, pinning him in place.
Jeans-wearing pixies burst from the tornado of dust and latch hungry teeth into his arms, and he cries out. And then Azazel swoops down, landing in a crouch next to me. With a single sweep of his hand, the pain in my body ebbs. He charges toward my father, his magic helping to pin him in place.
Together, they keep him down.
I get up, and not an ounce of agony is left in my body as I stalk forward to face my father once again. They have him held down against the earth, and he’s struggling as the flesh crawls over his cheeks.
“Daughter, daughter, please!”
I stare at my father unkindly, with tears blinking in my eyes, and hold my hand out.
“Die,” I command.
And I let my magic consume him.
We blast back as the world implodes around us in fiery colors. Malek lands over me, shielding my body with his own. The others land beside me as earth and fiery magic rain down around us. It’s death and destruction, and I shield my eyes as I look up.
The rift between worlds is thrown wide open, shrieking in rage at the loss of its master.
I lift my hand and point toward that exploding portal. “Ego eiecto, Regna Infernumae, infenum. Eicto daemonium, eiect dimensio mihi, eicto domus meus. Regina Infernumae filia diabolus et angelus, libero aperi mundi.”
The portal seems to shrink and then all at once, everything is sucked into the vortex of the rift. It’s a storm, a tornado, and the bits and pieces of hell that exploded around us are yanked from where they sit and pulled back to where they belong. I stand on shaking legs, the wind threatening to pull me back down.
My hair whips against my face, and I shove it aside, shielding my eyes from the pain of whipping earth. Creatures of all sizes are being sucked into the portal, screaming as they go. Some try to flee, but their fate is inevitable.
My words were their banishment.
Hell is disappearing right before our very eyes.
“Izara!” Azazel’s voice cuts through my distracted eyes. I turn. His hair snaps viciously against the wind, and he’s looking at me with sadness and pride in his expression.
“Take care of yourself, yeah?” He squeezes my shoulder, and I realize what’s happening.
All of hell is going back to hell.
Even him.
I grasp for his forearms as if that’s enough to keep him here, but the vortex begins pulling him away from me.
“It’s okay,” he reassures. “We’ll see each other again. I promise. In the meantime, please take this.” His hand slips into the pocket of my jeans. He winks. “Something to remember me by. Don’t look at it until the portal closes, though.”
I don’t want to let him go. A lump catches in my throat, but the tears are whipped away by the wind.
“It’s time to let go.”
I can’t.
I can’t.
But I do.
And then Azazel is gone, too.
We watch it happen within a matter of minutes. When all of hell is finally gone, a sense of relief and extreme heaviness presses against my chest.
They’re gone.
It’s over now.
The devil is dead.
Twenty-Three
Izara
My shoes kick at the rubble left in the aftermath of the battle. Broken bits of statues and body parts are strewn around everywhere, and it makes me sick to look at it all.
This was my doing. The banishment of hell had been on my lips the whole time, but I couldn’t have uttered it before. Not with my father still alive. I knew it wouldn’t matter how many times I banished him back to hell; he’d always find a way to come back.
Their deaths were on my conscience.
“Wipe that look off your face,” Phoenix growls, slipping his hand into mine so our palms kiss. “It’s not your fucking fault.”
His words should lift the heavy weight off my shoulders, but they don’t. “It is, though.”
My men are all surrounding me, and I know it’ll be like this for quite some time. They won’t leave me alone, and I honestly don’t want them to. I need them now more than I’ve ever needed anyone in my life.
“You have to forgive yourself, mi corazón. If it hadn’t been you, Shade would have chosen somebody else.”
He had a point. If someone wanted to do bad, they’d always find the fucking way to do it.
But still…
“Syko’s wings…” He’ll never fly again, never soar again, and if I can forgive myself for everything else, that is one thing I’ll never be able to.
Syko presses up against my other side and slips his fingers into my palm. “I won’t lie; life will be hard for a bit.” There’s a note of longing in his voice that slips away. “But my wings don’t define me. I still have magic. I’m still nephilim.”
I know his words are meant to reassure me, and for a second, they do, but it’ll be a long time before I can forgive myself for everything that happened. I kick at a rock and look up.
My mother’s statue still stands, while the others are nothing but scattered remains. “I wonder if they’ll rebuild them.”
“I fucking hope not.” Saint skips ahead, kicking up dirt with his leather boots. “My only regret is that I never got to spray paint a mustache on my ancestor’s statue before it was destroyed.”
Phoenix rolls his eyes. “You only knew about the statue’s existence for less than twenty-four hours.”
“Precisely enough time for me to want to scribble facial hair onto its stupid face.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on your family,” I tell him, my eyes straying to where Heaven and Sasha are huddled together and then again to where his father cradles his mother to his chest as she mourns the lives lost. “The vampires did come to help, after all.”
Saint makes an impatient sound. “What I don’t understand is how, through all
of this shit storm, are these fucking ankle bracelets still functioning?” He shakes his foot, where the glowing bracelet that marks him as a criminal to supernatural society glows.
“Probably would have fallen off the moment the angel statue broke,” Malek observes, ever the scholar. He’s not wearing his glasses anymore… or clothes—not that I’m complaining about that. He looks lighter, younger, but still as exhausted as I feel.
Saint flashes us a mischievous smile and skips over to the statue, picks up a rock, and throws it at the monument.
I sigh. “Saint.”
“I’m just joking. But not really. We just saved the world; I think we can be finished with the bullshit that is the Academy of Six.”
“We do deserve a vacation.”
“Miss Castillo, I’m so glad I found you.” Professor Henn suddenly appears before us. Her hair is in disarray and her clothes are askew. Her eyes go momentarily to the hand Syko’s holding, and her face flushes. She looks over all of us and immediately averts her eyes away from Malek’s nudity. “Mister Ramirez, please, have some decency and put some clothes on. Things have gone astray, but the world hasn’t gotten that wild for you to be so—” Her eyes widen as she takes one more look. “So incredibly naked.”
He uses two hands to cover his dick from her view.
“What did you need, Professor Henn?”
She clears her throat. “Yes, Miss Castillo. In the aftermath of all this chaos, I have spoken to the board of directors of Academy of Six.”
When the fuck did she have time to call them with the place in fucking shambles?
“This oughta be fucking good,” Phoenix grumbles sarcastically.
The professor shoots him a glare for the foul language but turns her attention back to me. “I’ve been arguing your case for leniency. You did start this, after all.”
Phoenix and Syko grip onto me tightly.
“However, it appears that for years the authorities have been searching for the many faces and identities of Lucian Morningstar, and as you have eliminated that threat to our world, they are willing to discuss the terms of your and your companions’ freedom.”
Freedom.
Never has another word sounded so sweet.
“Freedom?” Syko asks, like he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. We’ve been here for two years, and the concept is strange. What will we do with our lives beyond these walls?
Hog Dog’s Shack isn’t going to take me back now.
“Thank you, Professor Henn.”
She smiles and walks away. My hands slip away from theirs, and I press them to my beating heart.
Freedom. Freedom from shitty lunches, freedom from gym, freedom from ankle bracelets, freedom from this place.
I whirl around to stare at the academy’s massive structure. It’s barely standing. In such a short time, the demons nearly destroyed the building completely. Bricks litter the ground among the blood and gore. This place was terrible, with teachers who didn’t care and students who couldn’t thrive without competent professors.
“What’ll happen now?” I wonder aloud.
Will the Prods left here be thrown into real jail without a real opportunity of reforming? And what about the Prodless? They have their whole lives ahead of them and just need an extra push to reach what they’re capable of.
“It needs to be rebuilt,” I say, my mind racing lap after lap. “With better teachers and leaders.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Saint is suddenly next to me, staring up at the academy that’s been our home for years. It feels like a goodbye, and even though I hated it here, it still breaks my heart.
It was meant to help people just like me. It really was.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sudden pulsing sensation in my pocket. I look down with a bit of surprise to find it bulging, and then I remember.
“Azazel’s gift!”
I’d forgotten all about it in the aftermath.
Slowly, I reach my hand in. Perhaps he left me some form of communication to his hell domain. He did promise we’d see each other again—
“Ow!”
Pain shoots up my fingers.
“What the—?”
I yank it out of my pocket and dangle it in front of me by the waistband of its pants.
“The fucker bit me.”
“That’s what he left you with?” Syko wrinkles his nose at the chattering creature.
“How the fuck did it not get blasted back in?”
“Maybe because it was being held by an angel?” His brows lift, and he smiles at me.
A sort of warmth spreads through me at the thought of being able to protect something from the deadly flames of hell.
The creature swings its fist out at me like it’s ready to take me down with gnashing teeth and glittering, golden dust.
This is all that remains of Lucian’s war. This is a memento of what we suffered and what we overcame.
This little fucker right here.
I glare into its inky eyes and can imagine Azazel in hell right now, laughing his fucking ass off as I face off against a fucking jeans-wearing pixie.
Epilogue
EpilogueFive Years Later
Izara
“What do you mean I can’t take them on a field trip to hell?” Azazel lifts his hands from his sides, and even I have to admit he looks weird in a button-down shirt and tie when all I’ve ever seen him in is leather and boots.
“I’m telling you that you have textbooks for this kind of lesson, Az. Just teach the lesson plan,” I say with a heavy sigh.
It’s the third fucking time he’s been in my office this week, and it’s only the third fucking day of school.
Maybe Malek was right; he’s not professor material.
But how could I ever say no to him when he burst through so many rings of hell the moment I suggested we rebuild the academy last summer? I still have no idea how he did it.
But I’m happy he’s here.
“Izara!” He gives me his very best pout, but his boyish charms do nothing for me. Nothing.
I shake my head once more. My sweet pixie, Glitter, shakes her head in disgust from where she sits in a little cage on a bookshelf across from me. She looks just as disappointed in the angel as I am.
Good girl.
“I think you mean Headmistress Castillo,” a smooth voice like sex itself says, just before Saint strides past the angel and settles himself on the corner of my desk.
“Save your bedroom pet names for when I’m not around, please.” Azazel folds his arms like a child and storms out of the office, pausing to say a soft-spoken hello to Mrs. Warren and high five the pixie through the bars of its golden cage on his way out.
Her cheeks bloom red immediately.
“So…” Saint drags that little word out, his long, tattooed fingers sliding up my thigh to the small slit of my skirt.
I bat his wandering fingers away, and it only makes him smile more.
“I like this side of you,” he says seriously.
Too seriously. Especially for Saint. But I suppose we’ve all grown up some.
“I’d like it even more if you’d let me use this desk properly.” His brows wag up and down suggestively. Glitter chirps a threatening little sound of disgust, but she goes ignored. I can practically see the thought of me bent over beneath him in the shine of his mischievous eyes.
Perhaps he hasn’t grown all the way up.
“Tell your mother, the nun, that I said hi.” I level him with a reproachful stare, but the reminder of his religious mother clearly doesn’t absolve his filthy thoughts.
“Tell her yourself. She’s coming for dinner tonight. Syko’s cooking Angeled ham, Angeled eggs, and whatever else sinless creatures cook.” He shrugs as he stands.
“You are such a liar,” I whisper, but I can’t help the smile from tipping my lips.
He smirks back at me, confirming my thoughts.
Angeled ham. Sometimes I think too much of his vampire blood remnant
s are on standby for his cock and he isn’t saving any for his brain.
Syko strides in just in time to miss all the ridiculous things Saint just said about him. I’m sure the vampire has more ridiculousness in store and is waiting patiently to use it. The nephilim stands so much straighter now. His broad shoulders aren’t weighed down by the missing heaviness of his wings, which have been clipped down to two smooth stubs on his back. I can spot them sometimes when he turns just right with his tee-shirt clinging to his skin.
But mostly, he just looks untouched. Unaffected by what happened to us all those years ago.
He’s as confident as ever. I think I’ve even finally learned to forgive myself for it.
“Hey,” he whispers as he bends down and leans into me. He leans so far, my leather chair squeaks at the press of his hand against the headrest. It doesn’t stop him though.
Those dark eyes of his shift across my face before his tongue slides across his lips. “I’ll see you at lunchtime?” The way he’s looking at me, the press of his chest against mine, it makes me wonder if “lunch” is an insinuation for something else. I put it right up there next to “the nap.”
“Yeah,” I say a little too breathlessly.
His smirk lifts higher just before he kisses me slowly, his tongue flicking sinuously against mine.
“Mrs. Warren is watching us,” I tell him between kisses.
“I know,” is all he says before his big hand drops to my waist and he kisses me harder.
“Syko,” I warn as he bites my lower lip. I hear the door click closed, and I just know Saint is prowling over here.
I’d be surprised if he wasn’t naked already.
The door flings open with a hard bang, and it’s only then that Syko pulls back from me, his warm breath fanning my skin before he looks up to find two Prods staring down at us.
“Detention. Both of you,” Phoenix says with an authoritative wave of his hand.