by SJ West
“Is Cade with him?” I closely watch her reaction to my question, but she gives nothing away with her impassive expression.
“All of your War Angel guards are with him,” she replies smoothly, not singling Cade out in any way. “Jered is with him and …” Her lips form a pleased smile. “Well, guess who decided to come back to me? My dearest Watcher pet, Slade. I do so miss my play time with him.” Helena’s brows converge as she looks confused by something else she senses. “There seem to be two other souls with him, but I can’t quite place them. How interesting …”
“Is that unusual for you?”
“Very,” she says, excited by this new development. “I’m sorry, Anna, but this little tête-à-tête of ours will have to be postponed. It seems I have some new toys to amuse myself with for a little while.”
“What are you going to do to them?” I ask. Helena’s apparent elation only fills my heart with dread.
“Play with them, of course,” she replies with a devious smile.
Malcolm has to know that Helena has complete control over what happens in her domain. How does he plan to outwit her long enough to find me? I try to think if there’s any way I can help him. Maybe if I can keep her distracted with something else, it will aid Malcolm’s search for us. It suddenly dawns on me that she’s already given me the key to keeping her preoccupied.
“Is torturing them more important than spending time with me?” I ask her. “I thought you were going to show me my life as Seraphina.”
Helena laughs. “Oh please, don’t think I can’t see straight through your ploy, Anna. You’re under the misguided perception that I can’t do two things at once. This is my home, and you all have to abide by my rules while you’re here.”
“And what are the rules?”
“That I can do anything I want and you’re at my mercy.”
“Doesn’t seem very sporting of you. I thought you would at least make things more interesting for yourself.”
Helena narrows her eyes at me while she crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you suggesting we make this a game, where the others actually have a chance to win your freedom? Interesting …”
“Are you up for it?” I challenge. “Throw your worst at Malcolm and the others, but if they survive it, you have to let us all go.”
“And what happens if they can’t handle my trials? What do I get in return?”
“What do you want?”
“Your firstborn child.”
I let out a small laugh because her request sounds like something only an archvillain in a movie would ask for, but Helena stares at me with a stone-cold look.
“You can’t be serious,” I say in disbelief. “I’m not going to wager the life of one of my children on some sadistic game you devise.”
“All right,” Helena says, considering my objection. “What if I let you help formulate the rules of the game? I’ll even allow for the possibility that Malcolm and the others can win it. I won’t do anything to stack the chips in my favor, as it were.”
“I’m not doing this with you,” I tell her resolutely. “I refuse to wager the life of one of my children. You’ll have to come up with something else that you want.”
Helena lifts her right hand up with the pads of her middle finger and thumb pressed together like she’s about to snap them.
“With one thought, I can kill them all in an instant,” she says, a hard edge to her voice. The look in her eyes tells me that she’s close to fulfilling her statement and that I shouldn’t take it as a bluff. “Give me a reason to keep them alive, Anna, or be the reason your husband and friends die.”
Helena doesn’t make idle threats, and I know she’ll do exactly what she says.
“So if I refuse your offer, you’ll kill them? But if I agree to play your game, you’ll give them a fighting chance to save me and my children?” I ask just to clarify the terms Helena is setting in place.
“That’s about the gist of it, sister. How confident are you that Malcolm can defeat what I set in his path?”
“I have total faith in my husband,” I tell her with conviction.
“Then you have the chance to win everything your little heart desires, Anna. If you have that much confidence in him, then you’re really not risking anything, are you?”
“It isn’t right to gamble the life of a child,” I tell her, attempting to make her see how outrageous her demand is.
“But you don’t think you’ll lose!” Helena says, throwing her hands up into the air in exasperation. “According to you, Malcolm will win. You have everything to gain in this scenario. Or do you really have as much confidence in your husband as you protest? Seems to me that, if you did, you would make the wager in a heartbeat and not have any doubts about the outcome. Poor Malcolm, does he know you don’t trust him?”
“I trust him with my life.”
“But apparently you don’t trust him with your children’s lives. It’s no wonder they keep coming to me. They must sense your doubt in Malcolm’s ability to keep them safe. It’s quite pitiful really.”
I know what Helena is trying to do. She’s trying to goad me into making a rash decision. But she did make some good points. Do I doubt Malcolm? I don’t think so, but why am I hesitating to make this deal with her if I’m confident he can save us?
“Will you really kill them all if I refuse to play your game?” I ask.
“If that threat helps ease your guilt about gambling away one of your children, then yes, Anna. Either play or they all die. You really don’t have much of a choice.”
I realize, in a weird sort of way, Helena is attempting to ease the burden of responsibility from my shoulders. Only she would consider the threat of mass murder a kindness.
“Then I’ll play your game,” I tell her, placing a protective hand on my belly, as if such an action will shield the lives of my babies from her. “And Malcolm will win it to save us.”
Helena smiles as if she’s already won, and I realize I’ve made a deal with a new kind of devil.
Chapter 3
(Malcolm’s Point of View)
As soon as I step inside the next chamber, I feel a wave of intense heat ram into my body like a physical entity. I quickly turn to look behind me to make sure the hellhounds aren’t following us inside. I soon discover that the entryway I just passed through no longer exists. The interior of the cavernous space Helena’s minions herded us into is composed of a glossy black rock, which resembles marble. The rock is alive with red-orange flames dancing across its surface in a random pattern, yet the blaze doesn’t actually seem to be burning anything, only producing a wellspring of heat. The pyrotechnics seem to be more for show than posing any real threat to our lives. Besides us, the space is empty.
“Well, this is certainly anticlimactic,” Jered quips as he looks around the room. I notice him tighten his grip on the hilt of his sword. He knows as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time before Helena throws something at us that we’ll have to fight.
“She didn’t lead us in here for no reason,” Cade says assuredly.
“Maybe she’s trying to figure out what to do with us,” Gideon suggests, resting the steel shaft of his large silver-etched war hammer over his right shoulder. “I doubt she planned ahead for our visit.”
“Let’s see if we can find a way out of here,” I say as I begin to walk around the perimeter of the room.
It doesn’t take us long to figure out there isn’t any way to escape.
“Looks like we’ll just have to wait for her to decide to show up,” Jess says as we all gather in the middle of the room to form a large circle.
Without warning, Helena appears in the center of our group. A single shaft of white light from some unknown source shines down from the direction of the ceiling to illuminate her. She’s wearing a red dress, but I only take time to make note of the color.
“Where is my family?” I demand as I stride up to her, determined to get an answer one way or another.
; “They’re safe,” she informs me coolly, looking me up and down in an appraising manner. She meets my steely gaze with one of her own. “I would never harm them, Malcolm. You should know that about me by now. If I wanted them dead, I would have had them killed ages ago.”
“Then give them back to me,” I order.
“You make it sound like I’m the one who brought them here in the first place. I’ll have you know that it was the babies’ decision to come to me. I had nothing to do with their unexpected arrival.”
“I’m fully aware of that fact,” I growl, “but you’re the one preventing them from leaving.”
“True, I have suspended the ability for angels to simply phase into my home, but that was just a precautionary measure to prevent the rebellion angels from phasing here to kill Anna and your precious little cherubs. Though, I’m sure even someone as dense as you would be able to figure that much out on your own.”
“Anna doesn’t want to be here. That much I know for a fact,” I say confidently.
“No, she doesn’t,” Helena concedes with an exasperated sigh, “and she seems to have a great deal of faith in your ability to rescue her. I, on the other hand, have very little confidence in you.”
“You say that like I care what your opinion of me is. I assure you that I don’t.”
She grins tight-lipped at me but doesn’t make a reply. Instead, she allows her gaze to travel over my shoulder to the people standing directly behind me.
“Well, well, well,” Helena says as she scowls at Jess and Mason, “I wondered why I couldn’t identify your souls. What an unwelcome surprise. Did God kick you out of Heaven? Were you disrupting its tranquility with your incessant need for matches and marshmallows?”
“We came to help Malcolm,” Jess tells her, unaffected by her barbs. “Since you’re a complete psycho, we thought he could use all the help he could get to deal with your unique type of crazy.”
“I see spending time in Heaven hasn’t curbed that smart mouth of yours, Jess,” Helena retorts. “You don’t know the joy I felt when you died and I finally got Lucifer back. I would have danced on your grave if I’d been corporeal back then. I can’t say it was very smart of you to come here, though. What makes you think I’ll ever let you leave?”
A corner of Jess’ mouth quirks up in a sardonic smile. “And here I thought Lucifer had the worst god complex I’d ever seen. You’re even worse than he was, because you actually think you are a god.”
“Lucifer never had the gumption to harness real power,” Helena says scathingly. “He was too short-sighted to take what he needed to succeed and too afraid to do anything that might make him completely lose his soul.”
Jess cocks her head as she looks at Helena. “What is it that you want to succeed at doing, Helena? What exactly is your endgame here?”
“Funny you should mention a game,” she says, looking back at me with an excited twinkle in her eyes. “Do you love your family enough to play a game with me to get them back, Malcolm? I sure hope so, because Anna has already agreed to my terms. I would hate to have to go back and tell her that you weren’t up for the challenge.”
I look over at Cade. “Is she telling me the truth? Did Anna make a deal with her?”
For the first time, Helena lets her eyes travel to where he is standing and meets the steady gaze he’s had on her since she phased into the room. The connection between them is undeniable; even I can feel it as they look at one another. I thought it wasn’t possible for me to feel sorry for Cade any more than I do concerning his plight with Helena, but seeing them together like this makes me realize just how hopeless his predicament is.
“Yes, she’s telling you the truth about Anna,” he answers, never taking his eyes off his soul mate. It’s not his intimate connection to her that I’m relying on, but his angelic ability to know when someone is lying. “Why can’t you just let them go, Helena?” he pleads.
“What would be the fun in that?” she asks, shaking her head at Cade as if she pities him. “You won’t survive this unscathed. If I were you, I would leave now before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late for me,” Cade tells her, and I know he isn’t just talking about the sadistic game Helena is about to force us to play in her realm.
Helena doesn’t make a reply. She turns away from Cade and looks back at me.
“Do you accept the terms Anna and I have agreed upon?”
“What exactly are the terms?” I ask.
“To play the game, that’s not something you need to know. If you trust your wife, then you know she did her best to negotiate on your behalf.”
I look over at Cade to see if he can confirm what Helena is telling us. He nods his head once, letting me know I can trust what she’s said so far to be the truth.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done to get them back,” I state.
I trust that Anna has already weighed all the options and decided this is the best course of action for us. She knows I’ll conquer any challenge Helena places before me.
“Wonderful,” she says with a genuine smile. “I wish I’d had more time to prepare for this opportunity. I’m afraid your first challenge won’t be very imaginative, but I promise to come up with some more interesting obstacles as we go along.”
“What type of tests can we expect?” Ethan asks.
Helena takes two steps closer to Ethan. I see him flinch and close his eyes, as if he’s experiencing a great deal of pain.
She casts her gaze around at all of us, only Jess and Mason don’t seem affected by what she’s doing. When she looks back at me, I feel a sensation similar to the first time I traveled to Hell to beg Anna to come home and abandon her efforts to torture Levi to death. I know Helena is using her powers to delve into my guilt, teasing out memories I would rather keep buried. The pain isn’t debilitating, and I know she’s being gentle for some reason. She isn’t using her full power to feed on our guilt, only learn from it.
“Ahh,” she says with a pleased grin, “I almost forgot about that one, Malcolm.”
“I have thousands of things that I regret doing during my life. You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that if you want me to figure out which one in particular you’re referring to.”
“Oh, don’t worry that pretty little head of yours about it. You’ll be reminded soon enough,” she says mockingly. “But for now, let’s put this game into terms even you can understand.”
Helena lifts her right hand and snaps her fingers.
The room’s illusion of flaming walls suddenly crumbles away like ashes in the wind, revealing a barren landscape. The sky above us crackles with lightning, infusing the air with the smell of ozone and the promise of a rainstorm that will never come. The parched earth beneath our feet adds a sense of desolation, which seems to be the way Helena wants us to feel. Far in the distance, I see a black version of the palace in Cirrus.
“I’m going to be kind and tell you exactly what you need to do,” she tells us in a benevolent tone. “Make your way to the castle. If you can all make it to Anna within twenty-four hours, I’ll let her and Lucas leave with you.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Mason says, “what happens if we don’t make it there in time? What do you win if we lose?”
“What’s at stake here is between my sister and me.”
“It doesn’t matter what Anna wagered,” I tell Mason. “We won’t fail.”
“That’s what Anna seems to believe, too, but unfortunately for her, she doesn’t know all the things that I do.”
“And what is it that you think you know?” Jered asks.
“Oh, I know everything,” she says with a lilt of pure glee in her voice. “Many of you have quite a few secrets that you’ve been hiding from each other. I can’t wait to share them to see just how strong your friendships truly are.”
“There’s nothing you can show us that will tear us apart,” Cade assures her.
“I suggest you keep that confident outlook, de
ar heart, because you’re going to need it when you find out the things I know.”
“Why don’t you get on with it, Helena?” I say, becoming more irate with every passing second. “The sooner you start this game of yours, the sooner I can get my family away from you.”
“As you wish,” she says. “Like I said earlier, we’re going to start off with something simple. All of you, except Jess of course, seem to share a common thread of guilt about the war in Heaven.”
“What we did back then had to be done,” Ethan informs her. “We had no choice.”
“Yes, yes,” Helena says, sounding bored, “I know the story. You War Angels were made specifically to ensure that Lucifer would lose the war. Yada, yada, yada. Talk about the Almighty stacking the deck against my father. Lucifer should have known he didn’t have a chance of defeating an army designed by God Himself. It was his arrogance in thinking he could win that cost him everything in the end. Even though you all understood what was expected of you, none of you came out of the war unscathed. Some of you,” Helena looks pointedly at Xander, “seem to still have nightmares about the lives you took back then. Is it true that when an angel dies in Heaven, they’re dead forever?”
No one says anything, because we all tried to forget that consequence. It was true. The energy of the angelic dead in Heaven returned to the universe to be used to make something else. Any angel who died during the war met a true death and wasn’t given the opportunity to have an afterlife. That was one of the major reasons the war affected us all so deeply. We had to kill to protect God’s realm, but in doing so, we doomed thousands of souls to nonexistence.
“You know it’s true,” Xander replies curtly, reverting to anger to protect his heart and his sanity.
I’ve always known that his bad attitude is a coping mechanism for his guilt. He was one of the most proficient fighters in Heaven during the war. He was good at what he did, and being a killing machine never sat well with him. I’m glad it doesn’t, but there has to be a point where you let go of your guilt over things that were beyond your control. Xander hasn’t come to terms with that fact yet, and it’s the main reason I give him so much slack when it comes to his whoring and drinking. I assume he’ll reach rock bottom at some point and realize that his actions are only damaging his soul even more than it already is. Once he decides to leave the path leading him to his own self-destruction, all he can do is go up from there.