by Izzy Shows
At the moment, though, I needed Lilith to stop laughing at me.
“If you don’t stop, I swear—”
“What are you going to do?” she giggled as she interrupted me. “Hurt me? But, how could you? You have feelings!” And then she dissolved into another bout of laughter.
“God dammit, woman! Can you not stop for five seconds to help me?”
She wiped tears from her eyes and straightened up, doing her best to keep her expression under control, but every few seconds her, lips twitched into a smile.
“What help could you possibly need?”
“It has to go away. There has to be some kind of—I don’t know, a cure. Some way to get rid of it.”
“Oh, Malphas,” she said, shaking her head, a look uncomfortably close to pity in her eyes. “There’s no getting rid of it. You just learn to live with it.”
“I can’t, Lilith,” I said, letting some of the pain eke out into my voice. I sat down in the overstuffed chair beside the couch and put my head in my hands. “I can’t live with this kind of pain. It’s too much.”
She sobered immediately, coming to kneel in front of me and taking my hands in hers. “You’re going to adjust, Malphas. I’m sure the pain is as bad as it is because this is all new to you. But you’re going to adapt to it, and the good news is, it’ll fade in time.”
I looked at her, despair filling my heart.
“Or you could do the sensible thing to rid yourself of the pain,” she said flippantly, shrugging.
I latched on to that immediately. “What? There’s a solution? Tell me.”
She grinned. “Stop mooning over Blair and just kiss her.”
I scowled and shoved her hands away from mine. “If you’ll recall, I’ve tried that already. It didn’t exactly work out in my favor.”
The memory of the kiss broke violently into my mind, reminding me of the feel of Blair’s body against my own, melting against me as she parted her lips to allow me to invade her. The soft touch of her skin on mine, the way her hair crushed under my hands.
The taste of her was something I would never be fully rid of; I knew that now. But the pain that came with that memory was too much to bear.
“You aren’t being particularly helpful.”
She stood up. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Malphas. There’s no getting rid of your feelings. There’s only learning to live with them or doing something about them. And since you won’t do the latter, well, you’re stuck with them.”
“You know why I can’t go back to her.”
She softened. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I like it or that I approve of your decision. I’m a romantic at heart, you know, and I wish you had fought for her.”
That stung. The implication of not fighting for her being that she hadn’t meant enough to me for me to do that, when it couldn’t be any further from the truth. It was because I cared about her so much that I’d had to walk away from her, to keep her safe. It would have been selfish to stay, to put her in danger that way.
“Why do I even keep you around?” I muttered, more to myself than to her.
“Because you need me to keep you sane.”
“That’s not quite how I see it.”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be on a bender, drinking too much and glaring at every single person who tried to get close to you, instead of solving problems and getting your life back in order.”
When she put it that way, she did have a point. If I hadn’t had Lilith around to talk to about this, I never would have figured out that the taint had spread into my army. I would have been treating this as the insurrection I had thought it to be, and no doubt the tainted would have figured out a way to slip past me without notice. They would have pretended to get the message about rebels and continued on as they had, slowly infecting the rest of the army until there was nothing I could do to stop them.
Because of Lilith, I had been able to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible, and I actually stood a chance of stopping this.
I hated it when she was right.
“Fine, so you do help. Sometimes. Why don’t you help me now?”
“I’ve already told you—”
“No, we’re done talking about that. I’m never going to talk to you about it again, in fact.” I made a chopping motion with my hand. “What I mean is, help me figure out what I need to do to find every infected person in my army.”
She frowned. “Well, I know how we can do that, but what good is it going to do? Or have you decided to kill them?”
“Far from it,” I said. “That’s actually how this whole revelation came to be in the first place. I went to visit Mana, and they taught me the spell Blair used on you. I was able to perform it accurately, and I pulled a piece of the taint from one of the infected. Don’t worry, I’ve already purged it. But now I can save them, and Cass.”
She broke into a full, brilliant smile. “Malphas, that’s fantastic! This is something to celebrate.”
“No, we’ll celebrate once Cass is cured,” I said, my mood darkening somewhat. “Every minute that goes by without her being cured is another minute the taint has to spread deeper within her. We don’t know that it can’t take over entirely, destroying whatever was left of her.”
“But you said she had only just started exhibiting signs. It would take quite a while for the taint to progress that far, and that’s assuming that kind of progression is even possible. We have time, Malphas.”
“Which is why I’m willing to press pause on that for the moment so I can secure the army. Unfortunately, the security of Hell is worth more than one angel, no matter how much I despise that logic.”
She nodded. The lives of many versus the life of one had always been a source of great debate between us. She never could admit that the lives of many could possibly outweigh the life of someone important to you.
But I had to be pragmatic. I had to be responsible.
I couldn’t let these new emotions rule me, because that was exactly how the humans had descended into chaos in the first place.
“So, what are we going to do?” I asked, straightening up.
She mirrored me, straightening her shoulders and stiffening her back. “I hate this idea, but I don’t see any other way around it. It’s the only way to be absolutely certain.”
I arched an eyebrow. “And what is that, then?”
“I’m going to Hell with you.”
Twenty-Four
Every demon we passed went on red alert the second they saw Lilith.
She moved through the compound with a kind of grace no one had ever seen before, her white gown swaying as she moved, her golden hair glinting in the dim lighting.
To them, she was a terrifying creature, an anomaly that couldn’t be explained. She was not the only succubus in existence—there were several succubi and incubi, but those had all been born of a Fallen and human copulation. And furthermore, they were rather uppity, almost entirely refusing to acknowledge that they were the same as the other nephilim.
Lilith was an altogether different creation, a human who had ascended to demonic status through her actions, rather than one who was born. And because of that, she had more power in her pinky finger than any of these creatures could ever hope to see in their entire lives.
As she walked, they scattered out of her way, their gaze dropping to the ground as soon as they saw her, and altogether tried to avoid her.
She hated them with every fiber of her being, in the same way she hated being in Hell. This was too much of a reminder for her of what she had once had in the Garden, what she had walked away from to keep her independence and liberty intact. It had been her choice, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt. I was sure she felt the same way about the angels, and she would have the same reaction to Heaven if she were ever allowed through the gates.
We walked in silence to the nephilim training center, the same place where I had conducted the initial interviews. As many of my soldiers as
could fit had been called in there, and they were standing in straight rows, awaiting further action.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked as we arrived.
She cast me a dark look. “I will never be ready to be here. Let’s get this over with.”
I nodded and gestured in front of me for her to take the lead. We started with the first line of soldiers. Lilith stood in front of the first one, and he refused to meet her eyes when she looked at him.
“Eyes front and center, soldier,” I barked.
As if the very act was painful for him, he dragged his eyes up to meet hers, his jaw clenched as he forced himself to hold her gaze. It felt like an eternity passed while she looked back at him, although her demeanor was rather calm.
At last, she nodded and stepped to the next soldier, and repeated the process.
On and on we went, down the row, allowing Lilith to check them for the taint that only she could recognize beyond a shadow of a doubt.
By the third row, I was growing a little impatient. She hadn’t spotted one yet, and I was beginning to doubt her. It didn’t make sense to me that we could have gone through so many of them already and not found a single one—and that was when it finally happened.
A soldier three positions down from the one she was in front of began to fidget, broke ranks and bolted towards the exit.
“Looks like we’ve found one,” I said dryly as I lifted a hand and clenched it into a fist. The soldier froze mid-movement, one foot still raised in the air. I nodded at a guard we had already checked, and she took the man from the room.
He would be contained, just as the original seven that I had found had been, and I would deal with him later.
“Why did he do that?” I asked Lilith, dropping my voice to a whisper.
“He knew I would see it in him. Fight or flight, Malphas. He chose flight.”
I nodded, accepting that as a reasonable response, and we continued down the line.
It was going to be a long day, but I no longer doubted that we would succeed.
Lilith was the secret weapon I had needed this whole time.
Twenty-Five
The day was almost done, but we had thirty new soldiers quarantined, and I was feeling good about that. We had gone through all the soldiers in the room, one by one, then emptied it and refilled it with new soldiers and passed through them as well. Not a stone lay unturned now, and I was certain that we had found every last one of the tainted individuals.
Now, they could be cured, and it was looking like this issue was going to be squashed before it could get out of hand.
But Lilith wanted to see me cure one of them, to ensure that I was doing it right. She didn’t want any doubts, and I understood that. I didn’t want to take the chance that the taint had somehow fooled me into thinking I’d gotten it right.
We walked into Jeziah’s cell together. It made sense to start with her again, as I had already worked on her, and therefore she was the closest one to being cured. With anyone else, we would be starting from scratch, a process that was going to take a long while. Lilith had been cured after several weeks, and I had an inkling that I might not be able to pull it off in the same timespan that Blair had.
Even I didn’t know the whole truth of what she was capable of, or whether or not she could best me. She had never really tried, no matter what she’d said when we were sparring.
“Be careful, Malphas,” Lilith said, laying a hand on my arm as I started towards the nephilim.
“Careful of what?”
“Don’t push too hard while you’re doing this. It almost killed me several times, if you’ll recall.”
I did remember that, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think she was exaggerating. How could you kill a person by curing them? It didn’t make sense.
“Of course,” I said to appease her, and then crouched in front of Jeziah.
She regarded me with reproachful eyes, trying to make herself as small as possible.
“Go away,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. This is for your own good.”
“I’d rather die.”
Lilith said the same thing. And look at her now—she’s cured and better than ever before, I thought, to chase away the small amount of guilt that had wormed its way into my heart. There was no room for anything like that, not when I was so close to curing her and proving I could cure Cass as well.
Without wasting any more time, I extended my hand and closed it into a fist in the same way that Blair had done, and began the chant to call the taint from her soul into my own.
It didn’t take long for the black ichor to begin to ebb out of her and flow into me, just as it had done the day before. At the same time, Jeziah arched away from the wall, howling in pain and clawing at her own skin as if she could somehow remove it just to get me to stop.
It hurt me to hurt her like this, and at first, I tried to push away that weakness. I knew this was for her benefit as much as mine, so why did I let it bother me? It wasn’t as if I was trying to hurt her. I was trying to help her.
But I recognized that this was a part of the spell, a necessary part of the spell. I had to allow myself to feel for her; otherwise, none of this would work.
So I shouldered her pain and pushed forward, pushing her harder than I had before. I wanted to get this done as quickly as possible, partially because some small part of me wanted to prove I was better than Blair, and because I was impatient to be done with this so I could move on to curing Cass. And then the other demons, of course. I couldn’t leave them in their current state.
“Malphas!” Lilith’s voice was sharp, and her hands were on my shoulders, yanking at me.
But she wasn’t strong enough to move me, and stubbornly I ignored her.
I didn’t want to listen to whatever she had to say, didn’t want to let her stop me. I had to do this, had to do it quickly, so I could save my friend.
Jeziah’s cries of anguish had died down, and her lips were now locked open in a silent scream. Only now did I notice the light fading from her eyes.
“Malphas, you’re killing her!” Lilith screamed, and then I felt a jolt as she sent her power into me, a blazing light that scorched me from the inside out.
I fell back on my ass, the spell dropping as she sent her magic into me. Jeziah immediately dropped back against the wall…and didn’t move.
Her chest didn’t rise and fall, and her eyes remained as empty as they had been during the spell.
Lilith rushed around me with a stream of curses in a number of ancient languages bursting out of her. She fell to her knees with her back to me so I couldn’t see what she was doing, only the light emanating from her.
I watched in horror, frozen on the ground by the implication of what had just happened.
I killed her. I killed Jeziah while I was trying to cure her.
Pain knifed through me anew, a different kind of pain than what I had encountered before, and I felt a sort of hopelessness begin to rise inside of me. I knew I needed to head that off before it got too far—the taint was inside me now, and I risked giving it a home—but I was helpless to do anything but watch.
At last, Lilith sat back, and I found the strength to stand so I could see.
Jeziah was breathing. She was alive.
Relief rushed through me.
I hadn’t killed her.
Twenty-Six
“You idiot!”
Those were the first words in English Lilith had spoken to me since we’d left Jeziah’s cell and headed back to my office. She’d been silent during the walk, but as soon as the door to my office had shut behind us, she had taken up the cursing again, a litany of words that only a few of us were able to understand, and all of them worse than anything anyone could think up in a modern language.
I didn’t try to defend myself. I knew there was no good to it, that Lilith wouldn’t listen to me, but I refused to feel the shame she tried to force on me.
In fact
, I was doing a damned good job of not feeling anything at the moment.
“Are you even listening to me?” She put her hands on her hips as she glared at me.
“By all means, continue to berate me if it makes you feel better,” I said.
“It doesn’t,” she snapped. “Because you don’t seem to understand what just happened.”
“I believe what just happened is that I pulled more of the taint from her than has been done before, and have speeded up the process of curing her.”
She gaped at me. “You almost killed her in the process. Do you have no respect for a life? She could have died in there. If I hadn’t been there to stop you, she would have!”
“But she didn’t die,” I said dismissively, raising my eyebrows. “So, why are you yelling at me?”
“Because I can’t be there to babysit you every time you try to cure one of these people. I can’t hold your hand through this, Malphas, and if you don’t learn how to do it properly, you’re going to kill Cassiel too.”
I stiffened. “Cassiel is not going to die.”
She raised her chin. “By your hand, she just might.”
“Enough of this, Lilith,” I said, a warning note slipping into my tone. “I don’t want to hear another word. Jeziah is alive and well, and if anything, I have learned a limit to what can be done. It was a very educative process, and I think we should be grateful for it.”
“Grateful for a woman almost dying?” She was seething now. “You complete and utter asshole.”
I shrugged. “Isn’t that how it’s always been? What do you expect from me?”
The look of pure fury on her face should have been enough to make me flinch, but at the moment I was only focused on the fact that I had learned more about the spell, and that I was going to be able to accomplish my goals. Everything was going to be fine, whether Lilith thought so or not.
I was going to save Cass, and as far as I was concerned, the situation with Hell was all but resolved. There was no need to worry about it anymore. We had quarantined the infected, and we knew how to cure them.