by Ching, G. P.
Her immortal friend was right. As hard as this was going to be for all of them, she had to close ranks and wait. Lucifer expected an immediate response. He’d be counting on a fast, sloppy retaliation. If Abigail was the bait, Lucifer might want nothing more than to flush the Soulkeepers from hiding, all for naught. None of them could travel to Hell to save Abigail. Malini needed to act smart not fast. Perfect timing was their only hope of helping God win this challenge.
“Thank you, Fatima.” With a hasty goodbye, Malini journeyed back to Earth, making the agonizing fall into her body in the maple grove. Thankfully, Jacob was there to pull her weeping face into his shoulder.
* * * * *
On the second floor of the Eden School for Soulkeepers, Malini stood at the head of the conference table. Gideon Newman, the former angel turned human, sat in the seat to her left, pale and hunched. Lillian Lau, Horseman and leader of field operations, chose the chair next to him, squeezing his hand to offer emotional support. Master Lee, Helper and martial arts expert, found a spot across the table but perched on the side of the chair as if ready for a fight. And Grace Guillian, Helper and mother to twin Horsemen Bonnie and Samantha, fidgeted nervously in the seat to Malini’s right.
“Thank you for convening on such short notice,” Malini began.
“Did you find her? Can we get her back?” Gideon leaned across the table, jaw clenched. The skin around his green eyes held the worn and bloated look of an overused paper bag.
“I’m sorry. No.”
Gideon scrubbed his face with his hands.
Malini glanced around the table. So much pain. So much worry. “Abigail has been taken by Lucifer as we suspected.”
“To Hell, like Dane?” Grace asked.
Malini nodded. “It appears so. And worse, I’ve learned Lucifer and his Watchers can now travel anywhere, without a portal.”
A sharp intake of breath came from Lillian’s direction. “But he … can’t! He can’t stay on Earth. There are laws. Ancient, God-made laws. How could the Watchers be here? What about the sun? They can’t—”
“Until now,” Malini interrupted. “The compact has been nullified.”
Grace covered her mouth with her small freckled hands. “Why?”
“Lucifer and his Watchers were granted access to Earth as a consequence of Fate making Dane a Soulkeeper.” Malini paused, rubbing her palms together. “According to Fate, God and Lucifer have engaged in a battle for human souls, winner take all for one thousand years. Lucifer will release six temptations, God six gifts. Each is meant to win the hearts of humans. Upon the last gift, the balance of human souls will mark the winner. I saw the scorekeeper myself. The challenge has already begun.”
As if she might bust out of her skin if she held still, Grace erupted from her chair and paced the room. “So stupid. So irresponsible. What was she thinking making Dane a Soulkeeper?”
Master Lee sighed, rubbing his milky eye, a Soulkeeper’s gift that allowed him to see through a Watcher’s illusion. “She was thinking, save a life. Dane would have died without her intervention. Any of us might have done the same.”
“It’s not fair, Lee,” Grace snapped. “Lucifer forced Fate to break the rules. If he hadn’t cheated and targeted Dane in the first place, she wouldn’t have had to save him. Lucifer was not supposed to tamper directly with human lives. Dane was human. He tampered. Fate was justified.”
“Maybe that’s why God posed the challenge,” Malini said quietly. The others turned to face her one by one. “For thousands of years, God has kept the compact while Lucifer ignored it. Evil does as it pleases. Perhaps this challenge is a way to end an agreement that wasn’t working.”
The five stared at each other, a whole lot of blinking and fidgeting in place of any real progress. Malini needed to bring them back to the task at hand, but she couldn’t focus. For the first time since becoming the Healer, she was flying blind, working off intuition rather than her power.
Lillian spoke first. “When you were In Between, did you see any hope of getting Abigail back?”
“No. Lucifer stole her life’s thread. I can’t see her past or her future.”
Gideon let out a shaky breath, and Malini put her hand on his shoulder. “Chances are he’s using her as bait. If we wait, he’ll send me a ransom note like he did with Dane. Remember? He pulled my soul into Hell to demand the list of Soulkeepers. He’ll probably do the same with Abigail, and when he does, I’ll bargain for her.”
“So we wait? We do nothing while Lucifer tortures my wife?” Gideon spat. Despite Malini’s healing comfort, Gideon dropped a fist to the table, rattling the wood and the spirits of everyone seated around it.
“We have no other choice. Lucifer is going to expect us to respond immediately. He’s counting on it. He wants to flush us out of Eden. That’s been his plan all along. When he approached Cheveyo to act as his Trojan horse, he did it because he knows this is the only place we’re safe from him.”
“This is bullshit,” Gideon said, the first curse Malini had ever heard him use. He shrugged from under her hand and stood, knocking back his chair.
“Remember, Gideon, that Lucifer has the list that Abigail conjured. He knows the names of every Soulkeeper on that list. He knows where we live and where we go to school. The only place we are safe is in Eden.”
“So?”
“So, he probably took Abigail to smoke us out. Watchers could be anywhere. Too aggressive and we play into his hands. He already knows Jacob, Dane, and I live in Paris. If he suspects the entrance to Eden is here, the town will be crawling with Watchers in no time. He’ll pluck us off one by one. Without the Soulkeepers in the way, his chances of winning this challenge are vastly improved. No, we need to be smart about this. Lucifer will get impatient and careless. He’ll make a mistake and that’s when we’ll move in—when he least expects it. I have to believe that our best bet of getting Abigail back from Hell is helping God win this challenge.”
“What about the challenge, Malini?” Lee asked. “How do we prepare when we have no idea what the six temptations will be?”
Suddenly, her upper body felt heavy, and she pitched forward, catching herself on the table. Lee’s words echoed in her head. Her heart thumped in her throat. How could they prepare? They were all caught up in some giant chess game between God and the devil, pawns in a contest she could barely hope to understand, let alone influence. Sweat gathered at the back of her neck. The room was too hot, closing in.
A soft touch on her back gave her comfort. Grace was at her side, rubbing circles over her spine. “It’s okay, Malini,” she whispered next to her cheek. “No one could possibly answer that question. Even Soulkeepers are only human.”
With her head still spinning, Malini tilted her face up to look at Lee. “I don’t know what’s coming, but I do know how we should prepare. The same way we always have. We train. We get better at defending ourselves and working together. From now on we train harder and faster than we ever have before.”
Lillian rose from her seat, pointing a finger at Malini. “We can and we will. Once we get Cheveyo up to speed, this will be the strongest team you’ve ever seen.”
“Good,” Malini said. “Because we can’t think of ourselves as observers. We might not have control over the challenge or the form of Lucifer’s temptations, but we are part of this war, and I for one intend to be on the winning side.”
Chapter 6
The First Curse
One week later…
Abigail paced in front the wall of windows overlooking the city. She’d become all too familiar with the sprawling penthouse. In a space that took up the entire top floor of the building, she’d counted six massive bedrooms, seven bathrooms and two powder rooms, a gourmet kitchen, a great room large enough to double as a ballroom, and a smattering of specialized areas for entertaining. She couldn’t enjoy any of them.
One of the rooms was a library, chock-full of leather-bound books in multiple languages. She suspected the previous own
er had left the collection, as Lucifer had never shown any interest in reading. Abigail yearned to pass the time by taking one down and curling up in a plush chair to read, but Lucifer’s curse made that particular act impossible. Her hand passed through the binding as it did the telephone, the television, and any pen or paper she wished to employ. He’d turned her into a ghost.
The only exception to her plight was when he fed her. Twice a day he’d provide a meal and at that time his sorcery would break, and she could lift the fork and drink from a glass. Enough to keep her alive, yes, but with no human interaction, she could feel herself slipping away. The ghost world she lived in was a torture like no other.
She tried to focus on the certain hope that the Soulkeepers would find her. Even if Malini couldn’t follow her thread and predict where she’d be, Gideon would never give up. He’d find a way to track her down. She just needed to be patient. They’d have her out of here in a few days.
The sound of the front door opening sent her scurrying from the library into the great room, fully expecting to see her rescuers. Instead, Lucifer paraded through the front door, Auriel and Cord following on his heels. He did not spare a glance for Abigail. This was part of her torture. The one being who could see her refused to look at her.
“Hello, Abigail!” Cord yelled to the opposite corner of the room.
Asshole. She raised her middle finger toward the back of his head. If Lucifer saw her crude gesture, he didn’t respond. He approached the wall of windows, clasping his hands behind his back. The city, shrouded in night, provided a spectacle of shimmering lights but somehow seemed dwarfed by the devil’s silhouette.
“I’ve brought you both here tonight because I am prepared to release the first temptation.” Lucifer’s voice took on the rasp and crackle inherent beneath his illusion. The sound made Abigail’s scalp prickle.
Auriel clapped her hands and skipped to his side, smoothing her sweater and short skirt. “Brilliant, My Lord. The world will be yours when you say the word. What will you tempt the humans with? Wealth? Power?”
“The obvious choices, but too direct.”
“Lust, My Lord,” Cord offered. “An illusion to entice even the most prudent soul.”
“Another excellent suggestion but difficult to deliver discreetly. It is to our advantage to remain insidious. The Great Oppressive Deity will expect us to be careless and out ourselves to the humans and the Soulkeepers.”
“How will you win them to you then?” Auriel asked.
“Wealth, power, and lust only appeal to those with dark hearts. What we need is a temptation that wins the hearts of the good. Nothing breeds darkness like snuffing out the light.”
Cord straightened his tie. “Tempt the good?”
“By pretending to be the thing we are not. Harrington Enterprises must become a blessing to the cursed.” Lucifer turned on his heel and crossed the sprawling living area to the kitchen island, where he shuffled through a wine rack and selected a bottle. Three champagne flutes appeared on the counter, and he filled them halfway with thick red liquid. Abigail could smell the dank copper stench from across the room. Blood—fresh and raw—with a slight bubble she assumed Lucifer added for affect.
“Join me in a drink, and I’ll explain.” He handed a glass to Cord and another to Auriel, taking up the third himself. “The first temptation will be pestilence, a virus as crippling as the Black Death.”
“Pestilence, My Lord? To win human hearts?”
Lucifer grinned. “It won’t be the disease that wins their hearts, Auriel. It will be the cure.”
“A cure for the pestilence we’ve created?” Cord looked confused.
“Auriel, you will go to Harrington’s pharmaceutical division and give them a direct order from their new CEO, Mr. Milton Blake.” He placed an open hand on his chest. “All manufacturing facilities are to produce nothing but the cure for a new and dangerous virus.” With a wave of his hand, a medication bottle filled with glowing blue pills appeared on the countertop.
Auriel palmed the bottle and gave a slight curtsy. “Will the humans know how to replicate this?”
“Good point, Auriel. Their idiocy is infallible. Best use sorcery to teach them the recipe.”
She grinned.
“And now for the disease,” Lucifer said. Shaking his right hand, the illusion of humanity fell away, exposing black skin and long, sharp talons. He dug into his own chest, the flesh and bone parting to expose the blackness where his heart should have been. A pinch and tug and a piece of that blackness worked between his talons like rancid bubblegum, pulling and stretching. The opening in his chest stitched closed while the blackness in his hand expanded. When Lucifer’s molding was complete, a great winged beast perched on his outstretched arm. Mangy black feathers, a sharp hooked beak, and eyes as red as the blood in the champagne flutes marked the bird’s appearance. The animal glared at Abigail and rolled its black tongue.
Lucifer motioned to Cord. “Meet my new pet, Affliction. This bird will fly fast and far. Ensure he is released in a populated area. Anyone who looks upon him will be afflicted with my pestilence.”
Cord extended his arm, and the bird hopped to his new perch.
“Genius. The bird doles out the disease. Only Harrington will have the cure and with it the loyalty of the cured.” Auriel laughed and raised her glass.
“Exactly.” Lucifer followed her lead. “A toast to a new age. Soon the world will be ours and everyone in it our plaything.”
Cord lifted his blood cocktail and joined in clinking glasses. The three drained the red liquid in a few gulps. With a loud smack of his lips, Cord moved for the door, making kissing noises toward Affliction. “Come, sweet bird. Let me introduce you to the city.”
Auriel opened the door for him and then followed Cord out of it.
Abigail desperately wanted to warn the Soulkeepers, but her desire was useless. Every attempt at communication had failed; her hand slipped right through the phone. As hopeless as she was helpless, she paced in front of the windows.
Lucifer watched her, elbows resting on the kitchen counter. The pads of his fingers tapped together under his chin. “Do you miss it, Abigail, being part of a team? You could have been where Auriel is today.”
She stopped and turned to face him, anger warming her ghostly body. What did she have to lose? “I do miss being part of a team, but not yours, Lucifer. I miss being a Soulkeeper. And as for taking Auriel’s place, no one deserves what you have to give more than she does.”
His face reddened, and his grin morphed into a scowl. Stomping toward the exit, he didn’t bother to look in her direction as he crossed the threshold. “No meal tonight,” he said, slamming the door behind him.
Utterly and truly alone, Abigail watched Cord and Auriel emerge from the building, two tiny dots on the street below. Cord raised his arm, and Affliction took flight.
Chapter 7
Sick and Tired
Two weeks later…
Within the circle of Jacob’s arms, Malini swayed to the ballad the DJ played from the corner of the gym. At times like this, with her head rested on his chest, it was easy to forget their house of cards could tumble at any moment. She expected Lucifer’s first temptation to come sooner rather than later. All of the Soulkeepers practiced daily, ready to defend against an onslaught. This waiting promised a more sinister enemy, silent, invisible, deadly. Perhaps already among them. She pressed her eyes closed. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t ruin homecoming worrying about the inevitable.
“What’s wrong?” Jacob asked. He kissed the top of her head. How did he know?
“Thinking about what I promised I wouldn’t think about.”
“Well, don’t think about it.”
“I’m trying but now you are talking about it, thereby making me think about it even more.”
Jacob pushed her to arm’s length and met her eyes. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. How do you like the homecoming decorations?”
Malini ra
ised her chin to take in the gossamer curtains, the flat wooden cutout of a horse-drawn carriage, and the stage-set balcony reused from the schools earlier production of Romeo and Juliet. The theme was Wishes Do Come True, complete with a shooting star that sparkled from the ceiling. “I love them. Dane did an incredible job, as always. It’s too bad so many people missed it because of the bird flu.”
“Yeah, Katrina has it too. The symptoms are so bad she came home from college. I guess the entire student health service is overrun. She’s spent the week tossing her cookies, and I mean that figuratively because she can’t eat anything.”
Malini stopped dancing and looked Jacob in the eye. “Is she going to be all right?”
“I think so. Dr. Howard has some new drug to treat it, Elysium. Said she should be fine in a couple days.”
“Hey, I thought we weren’t going to talk about anything serious,” Malini teased.
“You brought it up.” Jacob pulled her back into his chest and started to sway. “So, the decorations. Technically, Samantha came up with the idea while she was acting as Dane, but Dane did most of the work. I wish he could enjoy it a bit more.”
“Maybe I should ask him to dance.” Malini glanced over at the round table where they’d had dinner. Dane, dateless again, was folding origami cranes out of a stack of cocktail napkins.
“Yeah. I need a break anyway.” Jacob threaded his fingers into hers and led her to the table. “Hey, Dane, uh, I’m beat. Do you want to take over for a while?” Jacob pointed a finger at Malini.
“Do you want to dance, Dane?” Malini asked.
Dane scowled. “You guys are sweet but unconvincing. I think I’ll pass on the pity dance, thank you.”
“Dane—”
“It’s cool, Mal. I’m fine right where I am.”