Birth of a Demon

by Rae Foxx

  Unfortunately, those magical creatures did not exist. "Can I touch it?" I sank onto the couch between Gabriel and Michael, peering down at the innocuous object.

  "Yeah. Don't be rough with it or anything, but you can touch." Michael reached a finger into the box and pressed the wood. "See?"

  I carefully lifted the wood out of the box and let it rest on my fingertips.

  I'd used magical objects many times. Many were where the lore about wands originated. Magical objects were generally used as focus points. They helped magic users funnel their magic to a direct point. The concept was not lost on me.

  Novices generally needed a magical object. I hadn't used one in a millennium or more. Of course, in my human body I couldn't do much of anything, but when I got my ethereal body back, look out. Whoever did this to Lucian would have a reckoning.

  This magical object, however, was exceedingly rare. "I understand now why more magic users don't try to steal this." I couldn't feel a thing from it. "They'd think it fake."

  "That's the consensus." Gabe reached over and ran a finger over it. "Feels like a piece of wood. Nothing more."

  "How will you use it? Funnel magic through it or draw power from it?" There were other ways to use Objects, of course, but these two were the most common. They could consume part of it, meditate with it, or— "Channel through it, we think." Michael interrupted my musings, and I realized I was almost entranced by it.

  "Oh, I found one way to know it's real," I said. They gave me a quizzical look. "I became very wrapped up in thinking about different ways to use Objects."

  They still didn't get it. "Almost like a trance," I explained.

  Recognition dawned on their faces. "Oh, I haven't experienced that," Gabe said.

  "Me either." Michael shook his head, then stared intently at the wood. I waited a few seconds but didn't look at the Crucis for fear of it drawing me in again. After a bit, he shrugged. "Nothing."

  The box was the best place for it, so I settled it inside again. "Maybe it's because I'm in a human body. You two may be better able to resist its call."

  "I bet the big one is hard to resist," Michael said. "The one Raphael has."

  I gave him a confused look. He'd talked like it was no big deal before. "I thought you'd been around the bigger piece before."

  Gabe nodded. "We have, but I can't recall a time when I held it. It's always locked up in a case in Raphael's weapons room."

  "Why his?" I asked.

  Gabe took the jewelry box from me and tucked it into his pocket. "Raph is obsessed with weapons. He loves them. He has spent his life collecting them. He has several different Objects, but none nearly as powerful as the Lignum Crucis.”

  "Does he have any that are more powerful than this piece?" I pointed to Gabe's pocket and the small box.

  "Debatable," Michael said. "You'd have some argue yes he does, and some argue that these are more powerful. In any event, if this piece doesn't work, we can try one of the other Objects. It was surprisingly easy to get into his home and weapons room. As if he left without caring, which is unlike him."

  I checked my phone. "Lucian will be home soon. Michael, you should look like Adam, and you can introduce him to Gabe. We'll see if we can do this without traumatizing Lucian too much. He'll still be human, and he's going to remember everything, including Ariel. It'll be heartbreaking."

  Gabriel nodded. "I feel for the guy." That was a miracle, given they usually enjoyed giving each other all the crap they could.

  Michael stood. "Okay, I'm going to run to town and pick up pizzas. Gabe and I will show up just as he comes home from work. When he's comfortable eating, I'll come up behind him and press the wood to his forehead, and we'll both funnel our power through."

  "I don't have much, but I'll help with what I've got," I said.

  Gabe nodded. "Let's go."

  I held out my cheek for a kiss, and they each pressed one to it before disappearing.

  Time passed quickly as I waited on Lucian to open the garage door. I tidied up the already tidy house, wiped down the kitchen counters, then grabbed a tennis ball and threw it in the back yard for Jellybean.

  He heard Lucian coming and bounded around the house. I followed and waved him into the garage. We were finally going to be able to make some progress.

  Beaming, I walked into the garage behind the car and pressed the button to close it. Lucian got out of the car to find me holding my arms out for a hug.

  I was so excited. Lucian's memories might give us insight to be able to kill him and get him back to Abaddon.

  "I talked to Adam." I grabbed his briefcase then held the door open for him. "He's bringing pizza and some guy he wants you to meet."

  Lucian sighed. "Ugh, I don't know if I'm up to company today. I've had a headache."

  I froze in the act of putting his briefcase down on the kitchen table. "A headache?" Lucian rarely complained of having a headache. I wondered if all our attempts to kill him had triggered his curse to somehow put a strain on him.

  Shit. This had better work.

  The doorbell rang before he could give me any more information about his head. Jellybean lost his mind and ran for the front door, barking at the top of his lungs. "Oh, well," he said. "I guess I'm having company whether I want it or not."

  He walked toward Jellybean, deftly avoiding his tail. I envied Lucian his innocence, even if it was only for a few more minutes.

  Hopefully.

  "Hey," Lucian said with a bright smile when he opened the door. "Come on in." Jellybean recognized Michael and Gabriel and tried to lick their hands, happy to see them.

  Adam walked into the foyer and slung his arm around me. "Connie, how ya doing?"

  "Oh, you know, Adam. Fine. Who's your friend?" I raised my eyebrows at Gabriel. He gave me a cheesy grin. It was hard not to roll my eyes at him.

  "Oh, yeah, sorry. Lucian, Constance, this is my cousin Gabriel. Gabe, these are my best friends."

  We all shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.

  Adam stepped back onto the porch and reappeared with a stack of pizzas. "Let's eat!"

  They waited until Lucian was on his second slice before Adam stood and pulled the jewelry box out of his pocket. "Check this out, Luc."

  Lucian trusted Adam with every fiber of his soul. He grinned and looked cross-eyed at the piece of wood as his good friend Adam pressed it to his forehead. "Is this like a mind-bender kind of game?"

  Michael chuckled. "Something like that."

  He looked at me and Gabriel. "Ready?"

  We nodded and focused on Lucian. "Do it," I said.

  I grabbed the thin string of my magic and focused it on the Lignum Crucis. I pushed it towards the wood. I gasped as I felt it connect with the magic from the wood. With the aid of the Object, I almost felt like I had the same amount of power I was used to in my ethereal body.

  Focusing on Lucifer, I thought one thing as I channeled the magic. Remember.

  Remember. Remember. Over and over, I fed my magic through the Object and told Lucifer to remember.

  When I was almost ready to give up, it happened. I felt a crack in Lucian's mind. Light flooded through his conscience, filling his mind with memories. Glancing at Michael and Gabriel, I raised my eyebrows. Should we have stopped?

  Gabriel shrugged, but Michael used his free hand to wave it in a go on motion. So, I grabbed even more of my limited power, straining my human body. If I took one iota more, my body would begin to burn.

  Lucian gasped and blinked his eyes rapidly. "How?" he said but went silent again and slammed his eyes shut.

  "Okay," Michael said. "Let's pull back and give him a second to process."

  I knew what Lucifer was going through. His human memories would be trying to crowd out his eternal memories. He'd be confused and resist the old memories crowding in.

  Too bad, my love. Time to remember.

  Lucian gasped again. Michael sat beside him

  It was time to start thinking of him as Lucifer again.
I couldn't believe this had worked. If we could've gotten the bigger Object that Raphael had hidden, we could've broken through the wall on his mind and destroyed his curse. But it had taken us so long to break through his memory block that I'd worried it wouldn't happen. We couldn't do more with this sliver of the True Cross.

  "Lilith." Lucifer looked at me with wide eyes. "Why do I remember?"

  His hands shook as he raised them to sweep his hair out of his eyes. He stopped and studied the skin on the back of his knuckles. "How old am I?"

  I chuckled and walked around the table to grab his hand. "We're in a pickle, Luc. What do you remember?"

  After blinking and looking at Gabe and Michael with a lot of confusion, he turned his gaze to me. "Everything, I guess. Shouldn't we be back in Abaddon?"

  Michael clapped him on the back. "That's why we're here, my friend."

  Lucian moved in slow motion, rubbing his hand across his face. "Why don't you just kill me? You had to do that once before."

  Gabriel chuckled. "You better believe I've tried. The last time you lived too long it was just a fluke. You've got a curse on you this time. I tried to kill you so hard I almost killed myself."

  "It's true," I whispered.

  "Curse," Lucifer muttered. "I remember." His eyes widened. "How do I remember?"

  I shrugged. "When did this happen?"

  He furrowed his brow and rubbed his face again. "In utero. I shouldn't be able to remember this."

  Wow. That was a new one to me. I'd never remembered anything from my human lives earlier than a normal human would. "Do you remember events after the curse?"

  He shook his head. "No, but I remember Raphael cursing me as plain as if it had happened yesterday."

  "Did he use the Lignum Crucis?" Gabriel asked. He leaned forward, eager to hear Lucifer's explanation.

  "Yeah, I think so. I couldn't see anything, but I heard him. And you know everyone's magic tastes and feels different." I nodded my head. Lucifer, Gabriel, and Michael would be able to pick my magic out of a lineup, and I theirs.

  "He had something that had the power of God. The True Cross would make sense." Lucifer stood. "We have to do something."

  He strode to the sink and grabbed a knife. Pressing it to his skin, he sliced, but the knife fell out of his hand and clattered into the sink, leaving only a thin red line behind. Lucifer hissed in a breath. "Damn, that stings."

  He slammed his hand down on the counter, then picked the knife up out of the sink. Turning the point toward him, he grunted then pulled it toward his neck in a fast, hard motion. I stood with my mouth open as the knife slid past his neck and flew across the kitchen. It landed in the opposite wall, the handle bobbing back and forth.

  "Of all the bullshit," Lucifer said.

  "Luc." I tried a gentle voice. "Honey, we need to talk. You'll get someone hurt trying to kill yourself. You can't just die."

  "Why?" he roared, upset and frustrated.

  I shrugged. "Curse."

  He looked me over for the first time. "Lilith." His face fell, and he held open his arms. "The baby. Oh, no."

  A sob bubbled up his throat and broke free as I wrapped my arms around him. "I know."

  "Is she safe?" he asked into my hair. Michael and Gabriel came and stood close, providing comfort as Lucifer realized his daughter was lost to him.

  "She is. And very well cared for."

  "I always wanted a daughter." He growled and punched the nearest wall before grabbing me and pulling my body into his tight embrace... "I wanted your daughter."

  My tears fell unchecked as my heart, barely holding together, cracked into pieces. "Me, too, Lucifer. Me, too."

  Angels and Fallen do not give up easily.

  23

  It took us several minutes to calm down. "Let's go sit down and see if we can piece things together." Gabriel put a little pressure on my back to get me to move in the direction of the living room. "We need to compare notes."

  Relief at finally having everything out in the open washed over me. I hadn't realized how much guilt I'd been carrying that Lucifer didn't know that I had Michael and Gabriel back.

  "I have no notes," I said as I sat up against Lucifer. He needed comfort right now. Hell, so did I. Jellybean settled at my feet. "For my part of it, Gabriel woke me up a few weeks ago. I was pregnant. I didn't want him to kill you until the baby was born. We managed to make it until Ariel was born, I found her a good family and..." I ran through the past few weeks to see if I was forgetting anything vital. "Then we tried to kill you, which didn't work."

  Gabe nodded. "Brief, but that's about it. You two were here on Earth with Michael, and I was waiting for you guys to come back at some point, but then the years stretched and stretched. When you hit thirty-five, I started searching for you. Took me awhile to find you, but once I did, I watched for a couple of days, then woke up Lilith's memories."

  Lucifer looked at Michael. "And you?"

  He shrugged. "I've had my memories since we were kids. I knew who Connie was, and you. I hoped that Connie would fall in love with me, not you, you big lug." He laughed and pushed at Lucifer, who grinned, but his heart wasn't in it.

  "The baby?"

  "Sandalphon," Michael said darkly. "He has been following Lilith's lack of children for eons, apparently." He rolled his eyes. "Thought he'd be helping by giving her a child."

  Lucifer grinned. "I'm glad he did. I know it’s bad timing and coincides with the curse and what the fuck we're going to do to solve it, but hot damn. I'm a father!"

  His words shot straight to my heart. I hadn't been looking at it that way.

  "You know it was Raphael, but why?"

  We stared at each other, all four of us at a loss. "Any ideas?"

  Lucian shook his head. "I can't see why an Archangel, one of the highest in the universe, would want the gates to fall. I don't know."

  The humans liked to believe the Archangels and Fallen were at a huge war with one another. We were, in some ways. The Fallen believed the humans deserved free will, the right to make choices, make mistakes. Abaddon worked as a reform school of sorts, with most of the souls that came to us being redeemable. They'd been hurt to the point of lunacy or born with a defect that made their mind work in strange and unsettling ways. Very rarely were they truly evil. Those that were, ended up being demons.

  "Does he want Hell on Earth?" I asked. "Could that be his end goal?"

  None of us knew. Until we heard from Raphael, his intent could've been anything.

  "So, how do we kill me?" Lucifer sat forward and put his face in his hands. "This is a nightmare."

  I put my hand on his back. He sighed and stood, pacing in front of the couch. Jellybean jumped up and followed his footsteps back and forth. "How bad are the gates?"

  "Bad," I said. "I obviously haven't seen them, but I've seen a low-level demon, and then there's Jellybean."

  Lucifer stopped and looked at me. "What about Jellybean?"

  Laughing, I waved off his silly questions. "Oh, stop."

  He turned around and stared at the dog, who still looked like a retriever. After a few seconds, he stepped back. "Oh. I didn't see that before."

  Gabriel waved his hand and the glamour on the Hellhound disappeared. He morphed from a cheery-looking golden retriever to a huge, black beast. His big jaws spread apart in a grotesque doggie grin. Lucifer gave me an incredulous look. "You named him Jellybean?"

  Laughing, I grabbed the pooch's head and kissed him. "No. You did, if you recall."

  Michael and Gabriel burst out laughing, and even Lucifer gave me a good chuckle. "But he showed up here out of the blue. If he got out of Abaddon, the gates are crumbling. There's no telling how many demons are roaming the world right now."

  Gabriel held up a hand. "Hundreds. We've got angels searching for them constantly. If we had a contact inside Abaddon, we'd enlist the help of your forces, but with you two here, we can't get in to talk to anyone."

  "Can we go see her?" Lucifer asked.

 
His question hurt my heart. I'd been afraid he'd ask it. "I've been avoiding going to her," I said. "If her adoptive mother thinks we're going to come whisk her away at any point, she might back out."

  "Could we sneak in when they don't know? I just want to see her." Lucifer took my hand and pulled me close to him. "Oh, Lil. What you must have gone through."

  I buried my face in his chest and tried not to burst into tears. "I wanted you there for the birth, but at that point, we were still trying to kill you. We couldn't have Lucian there, witnessing a birth assisted by magic."

  He tightened his hold on me. "I know. I understand. Maybe when it all calms down, Michael or Gabriel can share the memory with me."

  I nodded, rubbing my face on his suit jacket. He still looked like Lucian, but having my capable, strong husband back was a comfort.

  And it seemed he'd kept some of Lucian's heart with him. I couldn't remember the last time Lucifer had held me like this.

  We stood like that for several minutes, whispering words of love and regret, until Michael cleared his throat. "I could take you to see her. We can distract the parents so you can spend a few minutes with her."

  The thought of seeing my Ariel again brought more tears to my eyes and made my heart soar. "Please, Michael."

  Gabe hopped up. "I'll go see what they're doing and see if we can just make them sleep for a few minutes. Give me five and follow."

  He disappeared, and we walked into the kitchen. Now that I knew I was going to see Ariel, I was ravenously hungry. I munched on a slice of pizza and ignored the butterflies racing through my stomach at the thought of seeing my baby again. What if I couldn't leave her?

  "She's gone." Gabriel appeared and dropped that bomb without any of us realizing he was even in the room.

  I jumped a mile and whirled around. "What do you mean? Where are they?"

  He looked scared. "They're there. The baby is not."

  My heart froze. He had to be mistaken. "Take me there. Now."