by Lucy Blue
The Gate
She came out of the woods into a vacant lot. She could see the sky now, burning orange gray like the sky over a factory at night. In the distance, she saw the broken spires of buildings, stark, bare silhouettes against the ugly light. The lot where she stood was strewn with trash and junk cars and scattered all over with a sparse, uneven, sickly-looking grass. A skinny yellow dog, its ribs and hipbones sticking out painfully under its mangy skin, stood up at her approach then slunk fearfully away.
“Kelsey!” Asher came out of the trees just as the dog disappeared in the shadows of a burned-out pick-up truck.
“Shhh,” she said, waving him off to listen intently to something else. “Mama, where are you?”
“Kelsey, it’s a trick.” He felt so tired, so ready to be done. Looking around at the open field, he wondered what had inspired it, what place in Kelsey’s past had made this her version of Hell.
“They’re here.” She looked back at him, her hair blowing loose around her shoulders in the icy wind, her eyes huge and sparkling with tears. “I have to find them.”
“I don’t think you want to do that.” The lust he had felt in the clutches of the demon had subsided, leaving him empty and sad. “I don’t think you’ll like what you find.”
“Of course I won’t like it.” He could see in her eyes she wasn’t innocent; she knew exactly where they were. “But it’s what I want.”
“Oh, Kelsey…” Stupid, selfish, broken mortal child. Stupid him for loving her so much. She turned away to start across the empty field, and all he could do was follow.
At the far side of the field they came to a high, rusted, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The gate didn’t match the rest of the fence. It was wrought iron, an elaborate Victorian design that was familiar—the gate to the cemetery where Jake was buried, Kelsey thought. She stopped a few feet away from it, chewing her lip, considering. The gate was locked with a thick, rusted chain.
She heard a noise behind her and turned to look. The dog she had seen before was slinking closer on his belly. He whined, crawling toward her, his eyes turned toward the gate. “I know, pooch,” she said. “Me too.” How could they get through?
“Don’t touch him,” Asher said. “He’s not a real dog.”
“I think he is.” She crouched down and held out her hand. The dog bared his fangs at her, growling low in this throat. His snout was red and swollen with a deep scrape on one side that was crawling with maggots. “What did you do, doggie?” she said, her hand still out. “Bite a preacher?”
“Kelsey, come away from here,” Asher said. “There’s no point.” He grabbed the iron bars and shook them hard, and a frisson of heat passed through him like an electric current. “We can’t get through.”
“You don’t know that.” The dog had crawled steadily closer, his growl rising to a whine. “You said before you don’t know what this place is, that it was up to me.” She reached out and scratched the dog tenderly between the ears, the only comfort she could give him.
“That’s not what I said.” He watched her pet the hellhound, frustration closing like a fist around his heart. She was lost, but gifted, kind to every creature she encountered, even here, brave to a fault. How could she be damned?
“Maybe we could climb over.” Giving the dog a final pat, she stood up. “Or you have wings; you could just fly over.”
“I can’t use my wings here,” he said. “If I keep trying to use my powers…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” she said. “What will happen?”
“I’ll transform,” he said.
Her lower lip trembled. “You’ll turn into a demon?”
“Yes.” The dog turned and put himself between Asher and Kelsey. “The worst sort of demon—one of the fallen.”
“Like Black,” she said. “The one at the hospital.”
He felt his lips curl in a bitter smile. “Exactly like Black.” The dog had pressed his skinny body tight against Kelsey’s legs and was trembling all over, and he bared his fangs again at Asher, warning him away. “I won’t care what happens to you anymore. In fact, I’ll want very much to hurt you.”
“But you can fight it.” She still looked so hopeful, it broke his heart. The girl who had no hope left for herself still had hope for him.
“Eventually it will happen.” He looked away, unable to face that hope. “I don’t know why it hasn’t happened already.”
“Maybe you’re wrong. You haven’t done anything so terrible.”
“I told you what I did.” The dog growled. His hackles were suddenly standing up, and his eyes were fixed on something behind Asher.
“What is it?” Something was moving in a patch of weeds toward the middle of the field, something that hadn’t been there when she passed that way before. “Asher, can you see it?”
“No,” he said, but he was lying. He knew exactly what it was. It was the man he had killed—or some projection of him—lying writhing on the ground, just as he had been when Asher last saw him. The sword Asher had defiled in killing him and abandoned was still sticking out of his belly, and he was moaning, swearing under his breath, cursing God and all the saints of a thwarted Catholic education.
“What is it?” Kelsey repeated, putting a hand on Asher’s arm.
He looked at her, his expression sullen. “He’s here for me.”
“He? It’s a person?” At the sound of her voice, the thing’s moans rose into a scream begging for help. “Asher?”
“I told you,” he said. “I killed someone.”
“And that—?”
“It’s not a person anymore,” Asher said. “It’s dead and damned.”
“Like me?” As they argued, the distance between them and the creature on the ground had seemed to close up, sweeping them back away from the gate. Before Asher could answer her, Kelsey had turned away from him toward the creature.
“Kelsey!” The dog barked, too, a horrible, strangled sound, calling after her. But she didn’t look back.
She fell to her knees beside the damned soul on the ground. “You’re an angel,” he said, sobbing as she reached him, his face slick with sweat. “Help me, angel.” The sword was stuck straight through his belly, pinning him to the ground. “Please, angel, get it out.”
“I’m not an angel.” She leaned closer, looking at his face. “I know you.”
“You don’t,” he insisted. “Swear to Christ.” He screamed, clutching at the sword. “Just pull it out!”
“You attacked me on the street.” The sword was glowing blue, soft as moonlight. “You were one of the ones who tried to kill me.”
“No,” he insisted, tears running down his cheeks. “We didn’t mean to kill nobody, not you or your boyfriend with the sword. Just play with you a little bit, I swear.” He grabbed her wrist, tight at first, then gentling his hold. “But you and me, we’re the dead ones now, right?” He had beautiful brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes—an innocent’s eyes. “We got to stick together.”
She looked back at Asher, still standing where she’d left him, arms crossed on his chest, looking like a statue in a church. The dog had raised his haunches and dropped his snout to the ground between his paws. When he saw her looking at him, he whined, digging at the grass, obviously distressed. But Asher was just watching.
She turned back to the man on the ground. “Say you forgive him,” she said. “Say you forgive the angel who killed you.”
“Fuck that,” he said, his mouth twisting in a snarl.
“Forgive him, and I’ll forgive you. Say it and mean it,” she said, standing up. “Or I’m leaving.”
“No! Shit…” He was whimpering now. “Okay…I forgive him.”
She put both hands on the hilt of the sword, and a shiver passed through her like swallowing a sip of ice water on the hottest summer day. “You mean it?”
“I mean it, shit.” He gasped for breath, reaching up to take hold of her wrist again, an almost loving gesture. “Just do it.”
“Okay then,” she said. “I forgive you.”
The dog howled, his whole body shuddering with the effort, and Asher looked at him as if he were waking up from a trance. “Kelsey,” he said, moving forward. “Kelsey, don’t.”
Kelsey drew the sword out, shocked by how easy it was. She did it one-handed, leaving her other wrist in the suffering creature’s grip. Light poured outward from the sword, bright white now, and it shuddered in her hand. She heard a sound like rushing wind, and her heart was pounding fast. Asher was coming toward her, running, but the ground was playing tricks again; the distance between them kept expanding. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. She read his lips, “Don’t drop it!”
The creature on the ground was crying, saying something she couldn’t hear, kissing the back of her hand. Suddenly his eyes widened, showing their whites all around. He opened his mouth to say something else, and his head split open, exploding with blood. She screamed as his whole body split down the middle like a chrysalis, falling away from something else, something horrible. It emerged from the ruined belly, sleek and wet and dark, much bigger than its host. The horned head looked up, and Kelsey’s scream rose another notch. She tried to run, but the thing still held her wrist, the thick fingers splitting through the dead soul’s skin like an ill-fitting glove. The face was like Asher’s, but twisted and animal, the sensual curve of the mouth stretched wide over long, curving fangs, exposing the red, lolling tongue of a wolf.
“Thanks, Kelsey,” he said, the voice thick and deep and horribly familiar. His skin was dark and scaly, a pearly bluish silver on his face and down his chest and stomach, thickening to black across his shoulders and down his arms and legs. The fingers wrapped around her wrist were tipped with glistening black talons. “Now give me the sword.” As he straightened up, he towered over her, and huge, black, leathery wings unfolded from his back. His breath fell on her face like the draft from a furnace, and with every breath he took, his black scales seemed to burn like embers, edged with blue-hot light.
She tried to say no, but she couldn’t find her voice. Instead, she raised the sword and brought the blade down as hard as she could on the arm that held her fast.
Asher surged forward. Lucifer’s concentration that had held him back had been broken by Kelsey’s stroke. He caught the sword in one hand just as the impact of her blow knocked it from her grip, catching her in his other arm as she fell. She screamed as the demon’s black blood spattered across her face, but he couldn’t stop to see if she was hurt. “Get back!” he shouted, shoving her away from him. She stumbled, stepping on the hem of her nightgown, but she managed to scramble clear, the demon’s talons swiping the air just over her head as he turned. “Run!” Asher ordered, his palms burning, seared to the holy sword’s hilt as he grasped it. He wasn’t worthy anymore; it wasn’t his. “Run for the gate!”
He couldn’t look back to see if she obeyed. Lucifer’s sword of iron was swinging toward his head. He parried clumsily; the holy sword that had always been like an extension of his arm and will was now fighting against him. Dropping into a roll, he struck at his opponent’s legs, slashing at his hamstrings, but it was like swinging a club. “Not quite how you pictured it, is it, brother?” Lucifer said, his voice a rasping hiss. “Fighting me at last?”
“You’re right,” Asher said, leaping back to his feet, his eyes locked to his opponent’s sword. “I’m very disappointed.” The iron blade went up, and he thrust his own blade forward, stabbing it deep into the demon’s hide at the crease at the top of his thigh, the most painful blow he could manage. Lucifer’s sword caught him squarely in the chest, slashing through his armor to open the flesh underneath.
“Oo, that’s got to sting,” the demon said, barely limping as Asher staggered to his knees, heart’s blood pouring from his breast. “What are you doing, brother? Distracting me while she escapes?” He laughed as Asher struggled back to his feet, still clutching the holy sword. “Where do you think she can go?”
Kelsey stopped halfway across the field and looked back. The gate hadn’t moved again; she knew she could reach it at a sprint if she kept going. The dog was running at her heels; when she stopped, it yipped and whined, urging her forward. But when she looked back, Asher had fallen to his knees. The demon was looming over him, raising a heavy, jagged, black sword that burned with unholy fire. How could she just run away?
“Kelsey!” She heard her name and turned back toward the gate, her heart skipping a beat. “Honey, come on!” Jake was standing on the other side.
“Jake!” She ran as hard and as fast as she could, flying over the broken ground, oblivious to the jagged stones that cut her feet. She slammed headlong into the iron bars, mindless of the pain, reaching for her husband, hugging him through the gate. “Baby, I missed you so much.”
He was kissing her, reaching through the gate to clutch at her the same way she was clinging to him. The dog was panting, trying to jump up in spite of his pitiful state. “Kelsey, honey, you’ve got to come through,” Jake said. “You don’t have much time.”
She pushed at the gate, but it wouldn’t budge. The chain barely rattled. The heavy lock looked rusted shut. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he promised. He took a step back, out of her reach. “Come on, honey, try.” Behind him was a hillside with a narrow, winding road, and halfway up she saw her mother standing with another man she didn’t recognize. She ran her hands over the lock, looking for some kind of trigger or latch.
“I can’t,” she said, starting to cry. “There’s no way to open it.” She didn’t deserve to pass through. She deserved to be in Hell.
“Baby girl, listen to me.” Jake reached through the bars to frame her face in his hands. “Nothing is over.” He looked just the same as he always had, shaggy-haired and bearded, his clothes splattered with paint. “Nothing has been decided.”
She looked into his eyes. So many times he had asked her to trust him, had promised her everything would be all right, and she had always believed him. And almost every time, he had been right. Every time but one. “I made you go to Hell,” she said.
“Bullshit.” He smiled, shaking his head. “You couldn’t have even if you’d wanted to. I’m the only one who could send me to Hell.” He stepped back again. Her mother was hiding her face in the stranger’s shoulder. He was holding her tight in his arms. “And you’re the only one who can open that gate.”
She took hold of the bars. The stranger smiled at her and nodded. Looking back into her husband’s eyes, she pushed…
The chain broke apart, falling with a rattle to the ground. The gate swung open.
The dog ran through, barking his painful bark. He rubbed once against Jake’s legs before shambling up the hillside. The stranger let go of her mother to meet him halfway, falling to his knees to catch the dog up in his arms.
“Come on,” Jake said, reaching for her, but she took a step back. “Kelsey, honey, come on, quick.”
“Wait.” She looked back at Asher who was still fighting the demon. He was staggering, bleeding, obviously hurt. But he was still fighting back. “Do something for me, baby,” she said, turning back to her husband. “Hold this open for me one more minute.”
His sweet, crooked smile broke her heart. “One more minute.” He grabbed the gate, and she heard a hiss, like touching a hot iron. “Don’t make me come in there after you,” he said, barely wincing.
“Don’t you dare!”
“Then hurry up.”
Asher felt the change as soon as the gate swung open. A rush of sweeter air filled his lungs. He had been wrong. Kelsey was safe. Without looking back, he sheathed the holy sword that no longer obeyed him and grabbed hold of Lucifer’s sword arm with his bare hands. With nothing left to lose, he snarled the words of pain and destruction he had been taught but forbidden to utter, soft but lethal enough to freeze the demon’s arm in holy fire. Lucifer roared with pain and fury as Asher wrenched the iron sword from his grip.
“Yes!” the demon crowed. He gnashed his teeth like a maddened beast, lunging for Asher’s throat. Asher fell back, the two of them rolling end over end, Asher slashing at the creature’s hide with the sword, the demon tearing him apart with fangs and claws. The sword of Hell felt natural in his hands; it wanted him to wield it.
“She’s free,” Asher said, driving the jagged blade deep into the demon’s belly. “You’ve lost her.”
“Who wants her?” the demon said, gasping and laughing at once. “Oh, that’s right. You do.” He swiped at Asher’s shoulder with his talons, opening the flesh to the bone. “Take heart,” he said, his tongue lapping at the jet of angel’s blood before he shoved Asher face first to the ground. “She hasn’t left you yet.”
Asher climbed back to his knees, still clutching the sword. He risked a look back and saw Kelsey running toward him. “Kelsey, no!” Her nightgown had shrunk to her own size, and the haunted look was gone from her eyes. But her feet were still bare and bleeding; her face was still splattered with blood.
Lucifer punched him in the jaw, knocking him backward. “Let her come if she wants,” he said, bent over, holding his slashed gut with one hand. “You’ll need something down here to play with.”
Asher heaved himself up from the ground, swinging the cursed sword in a wide arc over his head. He slashed across the demon’s throat, a spray of burning blood bathing them both. “Kelsey, go back!” he ordered, advancing as the demon fell.
“Will you destroy me, brother?” Lucifer rasped, his forked tail snaking restlessly, digging deep ruts in the dirt. “Will you take my place in Hell?”
“Asher!” Kelsey was shouting behind him. “Come with me! The gate is open, but we have to go now!”
“They will only cast you out again,” Lucifer said. “Rule or serve in Hell, my brother.” His burning eyes looked almost human, the eyes of the angel he had loved. “You will never have this choice again.”
“Asher, please!” Looking back, he saw Kelsey was sobbing, tears for him streaming down her face. “Come on!”