by Izzy Shows
Nothing but finding her again.
With a groan, I forced myself from the bed.
No sleep tonight. I can’t do it again, I thought, not for the first time. Every morning, I swore I would not sleep the next night. Swore that I couldn’t take seeing her, even in my dreams, ever again. It hurt too much to be reminded of her when I would never hold her in my arms again.
Even being in the same room with her, without touching her, hearing her voice—it would be enough. I could live the rest of eternity without ever touching her, if I could just breathe the same air as her again.
But that wasn’t going to happen, and I needed to get over it.
Which was why I needed to give up sleeping. The sooner I did that, the sooner I would get past her, because then there wouldn’t be as many reminders of her. Then I wouldn’t have her haunting me.
But I couldn’t do it. Every night, when I tried to keep myself from sleeping, the weakness would take me, and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting the dream.
The truth was that I wanted to see her, even in a dream. I couldn’t give her up, no matter how much I needed to.
For both our sakes.
I set my jaw in a firm line, and with a huge display of willpower, forced my mind to move on to other matters.
There was no time to spare thinking of her. I had other things to distract myself with—like Cassiel coming back, hunting me again. That was a good distraction, though it did nothing for the in-between times. She would show up again, but that didn’t help me now.
No, now I would have to distract myself with the other issue—the cambion rebellion.
I walked out of the room, not bothering to throw a shirt on, and found Lilith in the dining room.
Neither of us needed to eat. Human food did not provide the sustenance we needed. It was a pastime, much like sleep, that we enjoyed.
She had set a plate for me as well.
I sat across from her without making eye contact, a little concerned that she would try to bully me into another conversation about Blair, and I couldn’t take that right now.
We ate in silence for several minutes before she put her fork down with a sigh.
“I’m sorry I pushed you last night,” she said. “I can see it did you no good.”
“Thank you,” I said tightly, not willing to discuss it further.
It was too dangerous a topic for me to entertain.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
I grinned, a rush of satisfaction coming over me as my mind turned to the pain in my body. “Awful. My body is healing, but there’s still the pain. It’s fantastic.”
She made a face, clearly not agreeing with me that the pain was a good thing.
But I didn’t need her to. All I needed was the pain. Even if it wasn’t the best distraction, it still helped somewhat. I would take what I could get.
“How did you sleep?” I asked after another minute, deciding that she shouldn’t bear the burden of conversation alone.
“Well enough.” She took another bite of her food. “And you?”
My features darkened, and she paled. She had apparently forgotten that that was a question never to be asked.
“I did not sleep,” I lied at last, after the pain of the memory had passed me by.
“Of course,” she said, collecting herself rather quickly. I had to give her that: she was very proficient at decorum.
But of course she was; she was a succubus. Her entire existence was built around the pleasure of others. That required a certain finesse in conversation, though she generally let it drop around me. It wasn’t a necessity between the two of us. We had known each other far too long for that to ever be necessary again.
“What are you going to do today?”
I frowned, poking at some of my food. “I’m not entirely certain. There’s an issue going on with some of the soldiers in Hell that I need to get a handle on. They seem to think they can rebel, and I’ve delivered the first threat. My thinking is that it needs time to sink in before I make my next move.”
Her eyes had widened as I spoke. “A rebellion?” Her voice was soft, as if she didn’t dare speak the word aloud.
I laughed. “It isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with this, Lilith.”
“But that was eons ago, when things were still fresh. This shouldn’t be happening. Not now.” She frowned down at her plate, her eyebrows knitted tight together.
She was thinking about something, and I needed to know what it was.
“What is it, Lilith? Tell me.”
Her eyes darted to the side. “How are they behaving?”
I started, a little surprised. Why did that matter?
“Ah, well…abnormally. Ten soldiers left Hell yesterday without permission, which hasn’t happened in…well, eons, as you said. And when I found them on Earth, there was something not quite right about them, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It seemed familiar, though.”
“Like me?” she asked quietly, and I saw that her hand was shaking.
Comprehension began to dawn, but I refused to acknowledge it.
“What do you mean, like you?” I asked slowly.
“You remember how I was, before Bl—before I was helped. When I was tainted. I can’t be sure, because I didn’t see them, but it sounds like how it started with me. Just a few things that were outside the norm of behavior at first, and if anyone had known to look, I’m sure they would have felt something a bit off about me. It escalates from there, but that’s how it started.”
No. They couldn’t be tainted. It couldn’t have reached Hell.
Her words were so startling that I didn’t bother to latch onto the fact that she had almost said Blair’s name.
“That’s not possible,” I said. “It couldn’t have reached Hell.”
“It could if it was brought in from the outside,” she said. “If one of them contracted the taint while they were on Earth with permission, and brought it back into the ranks when they returned.”
I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the soldiers could be tainted. But of course they could. Lilith had been tainted, and she was nephilim—not a nephilim like any other, either. She was the only nephilim who had not been born of the Fallen, but rather created in her own right.
She had been cast out of the Garden, and her tryst with Samael had corrupted her.
If she could be tainted, then a cambion could. It would be no great difficulty in comparison. And so could my nephilim. The taint could spread from the cambions to the nephilim, and I didn’t know how quickly that could happen.
This was something I would have to take care of very quickly, otherwise I would lose my army—and possibly quite a bit more if the entire army turned before I could do anything about it.
“How do I know for sure?” I asked, my jaw set in determination.
For the next hour, we talked at length about the signs of the taint and the effects it would cause.
I hadn’t thought it was possible, but the conversation only left me feeling worse than before.
A rebellion was the least of my worries now.
Fourteen
Hell is going to be destroyed.
That was the thought that kept running through my mind as I walked back to my room to get dressed. The conversation with Lilith had shaken me, but in a way, I was grateful I had spoken to her about it. If I hadn’t mentioned the rebellion—or, well, I suppose it wasn’t a rebellion anymore, not in truth—then she would never have known to speak up about the taint.
It would have silently made its way through all of Hell, spreading from my army to my brothers’, and none of us would have been the wiser. Would we have been able to kill all the rebels before it spread? I doubted it.
Even now, I doubted that we would be able to get it under control in time. There was a very real possibility that this could ruin everything.
Blair could fix this.
The thought came unbidden, and I cursed aloud as soon
as it entered my mind.
Of course Blair could fix it. Blair was the only person in all of the realms who had dealt with the taint. It was a new creation, something we had never seen before, not until Lilith had been taken by it. Blair had managed to save Lilith from the taint, and I knew she could do it again.
She could make it so that my army had never been touched by this taint at all, and a part of me thought she could do it very quickly as well.
She was good. Better than any Wizard I had ever met, and I had met quite a few of them. None of them liked to admit that they dealt with demons, least of all one of the Fallen, but more of them came to me than the Order would care to know about. They had been powerful, too.
But Blair was so much more than that, though I could never tell her. She had to find that out on her own.
How had I ended up thinking about Blair again?
I shook my head as if that would chase away the thoughts of her and got dressed, then sat on the bed to collect myself.
What was the point in denying that I missed her? Pushing away all thoughts of her was doing me no good, for she always came back to my mind. She always returned to me in some fashion or other to haunt me and remind me of what might have been.
But it was dangerous to admit even to myself that I missed her.
It was a mercy that my brothers could not sense my emotions like we could sense those of the humans, or even those of our offspring. If they picked up on this, if they knew how much pain it caused me to be separated from her, then it would all have been for nothing.
They would know how important she was to me, and they would kill her.
It had never bothered me before. It wouldn’t be the first time one of us had killed another’s pet, but she wasn’t a pet. She wasn’t an object I owned. She wasn’t a toy I entertained myself with, no matter what I had made her think.
She was everything I could never have, and I had known it the first time I’d set eyes on her, though it had been worth all the pain in the world just to have a moment with her.
I wouldn’t take a single second of it back, even if it would rid me of this pain. I wouldn’t trade a moment with her for all the peace in the world.
She had shown me happiness. She had been a comet in the night sky, blazing light through my life and leaving it dark and empty. Not even the stars could be seen after the light of the comet, for they were but a pale imitation.
I frowned, looking down at my hands.
You’re moping. You’re acting like some pathetic human who can’t get over a girl. You’re better than this.
Was I, really?
No, I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I was better than being able to do nothing but wish for her. How could I, considering all she had been?
Not even the joy of a fight with Cassiel could compare.
I was doomed to miss her for eternity.
But that was as it should be. My life should be pain, while hers could still be joy.
Fifteen
Pain is a beautiful thing. It can distract you from just about anything else in the universe, and it can serve as a tool of education. It is a very versatile thing, for certain.
All around me were the sounds of pain, and I allowed them to rush through me and soothe the nerves that had hounded me throughout the morning. It was not my own pain, so it was not the best method of distraction, but I had no choice but to focus on the task at hand.
Overseeing the training of the newly of-age cambions.
I was standing on a balcony that overlooked the training arena, my hands closed around the railing as I leaned my weight against it. Everything in my posture said I was perfectly at ease, that there was nothing to worry about here.
Nothing but the emotions roiling inside of me, driving me mad, but no one would know about that.
Not for the first time this week, I found myself grateful that no one could sense my emotions. All would be lost if others knew I was…feeling things.
It was abnormal for a Fallen to be so overrun with emotion.
We had been angels, once upon a time, a species that did not feel. We had not been created in the image of our Father in the way that the humans had been; we had not been gifted with the ability to feel. But over time, the Fallen had grown to feel small things, deviant things.
Jealousy was the first emotion that had taken us, but was would come as no surprise to anyone who knew our tale. We were jealous of the freedom the humans had; it had stolen into our hearts and hardened us against our Father.
Lust had come soon after, and was quickly followed by rage.
But this agony that carved through my heart—no, it was not a feeling that any of the other Fallen had ever mentioned before. I wondered if perhaps they had felt it and simply had chosen not to enlighten the others about it, much in the same way as I was behaving.
Hiding it from my brothers, that they might not know my shame.
No, I very much doubted that. This pain stemmed from an attachment I had foolishly formed, and I didn’t see any of my brothers being as idiotic as to do something like that.
I should have known better, but I couldn’t stop myself, once I had seen her face.
The sound of flesh slamming against concrete jolted me out of my reverie, reminding me where I was and what I was about. I didn’t have time to waste on mooning over a woman. There were more important things, like the state of my army.
I watched as they battled one another, no holds barred. They were out to kill one another, not hesitating to draw blood. They needed to prove themselves to their potential generals, so that they might curry favor and find a nice position in the army.
There was no room for weakness in the army; only the strongest could survive.
Barbaric? Perhaps. But that was the way of my world. It was as it had always been, and it had worked well for us. There was no need to fix something that wasn’t broken.
Soft footsteps echoed against the floor, coming in my direction. I did not turn to look at the newcomer, but rather waited until they wished to announce themselves.
“My lord.” The voice was feminine, belonging to one of my generals.
I flicked my gaze to the right, so that I might see her out of the corner of my eye.
Serah.
“What can I do for you, Serah?”
“Shouldn’t that be what I should ask of you?”
I could hear the playful note in her voice, at odds with the flatness of my own.
Devoid of emotion, as it should be.
“I require nothing at the moment,” I said. “I am merely taking stock of my army.”
She came to stand beside me, leaning a hip against the railing.
“They’re strong,” she said. “They will make good additions to the army, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I grunted.
“Was there something in particular that you were looking for, sire?”
I couldn’t tell her the truth. That would be too dangerous. I was not here on a pleasure trip, to survey my people and ensure that they were following orders as intended. I was here to see if I could discover the taint in any of them. I remembered the signs that Lilith had taught me, but I couldn’t spot a single one of the cambions before me exhibiting those symptoms.
Either the new ones were safe, or I was a poor student and I would need Lilith to come here herself and check it out for me.
I didn’t want to do that—Lilith did not enjoy coming to Hell. It was not her home in the way it was to the other nephilim, because she had not been born from any of the Fallen, and she had not grown up here. She had not fought for her life in the way that the others had.
Being here was distasteful for her, and I would rather not force her down here if it could be avoided.
But I couldn’t deny that having Lilith here would speed things up—she would recognize the taint in an instant, symptoms or no. She had been intimately familiar with it, having harbored it inside her soul for a time. She would be able to smell it on
anyone else, and this would all be over very quickly.
I would give it a day or two, see if I could handle this on my own, and if I couldn’t, then I would bring her in. Only as a last resort.
There is someone else you could bring in as a last resort.
I stiffened at the thought. No. I could not think of her now.
And it wasn’t as if she would leap at the opportunity to give me her aid. She most certainly hated me now, and would never want to see me again. I had done everything in my power to make it so, and that was for the best.
“I just wanted to ensure that all was well here,” I said at last, glancing over at the general. “I have been absent for a time, and it is good for me to check on all areas under my control.”
“Of course, sir. We welcome your inspection at all times.”
But I could hear a small tremor in her voice, smell the anxiety radiating off of her. She feared that I would find something wrong with her command, that she would be replaced.
A natural fear, but one that I doubted would come true. Serah had been a good general for a very long time now, one whom I had found I could trust with almost anything. Well, as much as I could trust any demon, nephilim or not.
She was loyal to the bone.
But I couldn’t trust her with this new information. There was no knowing whether or not she was infected herself, as terrible as that would be to learn. I hated the idea that I might lose her to the taint, as such a loyal soldier was not easy to replace.
“How have the new ones behaved?” I asked, being careful to maintain the same flat tone as before.
She frowned. “As they always have, sire. Desperate to prove themselves, overambitious, stubborn.”
“Mm.”
That was good. As long as everything carried on as it always had, there wasn’t anything to be worried about.
As I watched the cambions fight, I could see the truth in their words. The new cambions were too green, too eager, and they would have to learn their place in the army just as everyone before them had. I found that I doubted that any of them would turn out to have succumbed to the taint, largely because of what Lilith had said.