Demon's Daughter

by Amy Braun

  I’d never seen a creature so mesmerizing, so extraordinary. For a moment I was frozen with fear and wonder. I didn’t know whether to run away screaming in terror, or to drop to the ground and kiss his feet. Power pulsed off him like a heartbeat, washing over my body and nearly crippling me. He could do anything to me, and I wouldn’t care. Whatever this demon was, he was stronger than anything I had ever known was able to exist. More than the angels. More than Dro.

  Isabel smiled. “Lord Lucifer,” she breathed. “You have come.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Lucifer. Satan. The Antichrist. She had summoned the fucking Devil.

  I might not know everything about angels and demons, but I knew Lucifer was the biggest and nastiest of them. He would crush me between his fingers before I could get within ten feet of stopping him.

  So I didn’t try to stop him. I went for Isabel.

  Everyone was so shocked that the Devil himself had been successfully called up, that I was able to raise the shotgun and aim it at Isabel.

  She was staring at Lucifer with wide, gleaming eyes, tears of joy shining down her grinning cheeks. She was so wrapped in bliss that I thought she wouldn’t see me preparing to blast a hole through her.

  I thought wrong. She raised her hands and threw a spell at me.

  I didn’t even have the chance to scream when an invisible hand gripped my heart, twisting and wrenching it brutally, trying to pull it from its valves. The shotgun clattered from my hands as I dropped and gasped in air, but I couldn’t breathe. It was excruciating, feeling the organ being jerked back and forth inside my chest. Isabel gave my heart another sharp squeeze and I thought for sure she had crushed it. I pinched my eyes shut, trying to focus. But the pain was too much.

  There was a blaze of light from the altar in front of me, so bright I could see it behind my closed eyelids. Isabel let out a sharp yelp. The grip on my heart was suddenly gone, expanding back to its normal size quickly and painfully. I forced myself to breathe and opened my eyes, looking up from the floor.

  Isabel was placing a hand over her face, stumbling around as if she’d been blinded. I looked to my right, and saw my little sister through the flames. She used her power to save my life. Her icy blue eyes were filled with emotions that moved too fast for me to read. Relief. Fear. Desperation. Regret.

  But she knew I was here, and that I was going to do everything I could to save her. I shot to my feet, my previous injuries numbed thanks to the painkillers. Adrenaline coursed through my veins to fuel me. I jumped up onto the stage, blood soaking the bottom of my boots. I looked at the flaming, bloody pentagram, trying to see how I could get past it.

  I turned my head, and then I was staring into the eyes of Lucifer.

  Fear and desire made me ache for him, and it took a huge amount of effort to resist his influence. His face was a stone as he read my eyes, but I didn’t care what the Devil thought of me. I wasn’t letting him near Dro.

  I was about to risk jumping over the flames when I heard a furious war cry behind me. I turned just as Isabel arched her arm and tried to stab me in the chest with a dagger. I pulled my hatchet out and hooked her on the blade. Then I punched her in the face once, twice.

  Lucifer was too powerful for me to do anything against, but Isabel was someone I could fight.

  I kicked Isabel in the stomach to get distance between us then looked over my shoulder, finding Max. He was staring at Lucifer with a mix of shock, awe, and horror.

  “Max!” I screamed. “Get Dro!”

  I didn’t care how he did it. Just that he would. As soon as I killed Isabel, I’d find a way to help him. Assuming Isabel didn’t kill me first.

  I wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape at the moment, and she was a way more competent fighter than I expected. She ducked and weaved from a lot of my strikes, lashing out with some nasty moves of her own. Like me, she fought dirty. Like me, she was determined to win.

  I swiped my hatchet at her head, but she ducked, staying low and trying to stab me in the ribs. I kicked her hand away, but the move exposed the other side of my body. She punched me in the kidneys, sharp pain filling my already damaged side. I hooked Isabel’s dagger with my hatchet again when she tried to cut my throat, pulling it away from me. I kicked the inside of her leg then pushed forward, driving my knee into her ribs a couple times. Isabel tried to stab me in the neck again, but I grabbed her wrist and held it down. Then I slammed my forehead into her nose, feeling it crunch under my skull.

  Then Isabel cheated and used another spell.

  I gasped and felt my body tighten as pain consumed me. It felt like a million flaming needles were prodding me over and over again. My nerves seared and my insides contracted sharply. Even if I wanted to scream, I don’t think I could have found the air to do so, given how brutally my lungs were burning. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t fight back.

  As suddenly as it happened, it ended. Isabel let me go and I dropped heavily onto the bloody floor. I heard Dro scream Max’s name and looked up. Max was crumpled on the stage, his back to me. He wasn’t moving. I tried to crawl to Max, but saw something shift out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head.

  Lucifer stepped through the fires into the pentagram, and stood by Dro’s side.

  I shot to my feet and lifted my hatchet, arching my arm to throw it at the fallen angel, but someone seized my arm and stopped me. I whirled my head and was punched in the face by Isabel. She had recovered her dagger and arched her arm to stab me with it.

  Desperation and rage fuelled me. I swatted her arm away and slashed up with my hatchet. The blade sliced along her chest, through her throat, and out of her chin. Her eyes went wide. I swiped with my hatchet again, the blade slicing across her neck and spraying more blood onto me. Isabel collapsed onto the ground, blood squirting out of her severed throat. After a couple seconds, her raspy breathing stopped and she stared up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

  I didn’t give her body a second look. I turned and hurled my hatchet at Lucifer.

  He caught the fucking weapon in his hand, not even needing to see it. Lucifer dropped my hatchet into the pentagram, then slowly turned his head to look at me.

  Suddenly, I was rooted to the spot. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him. His eyes narrowed, and then he was in my head. He searched through my brain and saw everything that made me who I was. He knew all my secrets, all my passions and fears. There wasn’t a fucking thing I could do to stop him, and part of me didn’t want to. I was human, and he was the most incredible, most terrifying being I had ever encountered. I loved that I wanted to hate him. I hated that I wanted to love him.

  I sucked in a heavy breath when he finished reading me, tasting the smoke, dust, and blood in the air. Fear crept back into my heart like it had when I was fourteen years old, desperately taking my sister away from the slaughter at Owl Creek.

  Lucifer’s black eyes never left mine, never blinked once. I clenched my fists, but I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Don’t fucking touch her,” I warned him.

  The tremor in my voice didn’t make me sound very tough, but I was talking to the Devil. Not being afraid would be moronic.

  Nothing passed over Lucifer’s face. No anger, no disdain, no amusement. If I hadn’t seen him grab my hatchet out of the air, I would have thought he was just a statue. A mesmerizing, fearsome statue.

  “Why do you love her?” Lucifer finally asked me.

  The perfection and power in his voice almost had my knees buckling. A flawless, rolling baritone that could belong to a commander as easily as a passionate lover. It was as beautiful as the rest of him.

  There’s no way I can fight him.

  But I wouldn’t leave Dro to him. I wouldn’t run.

  “She’s my sister,” I said, thinking that would explain everything to Lucifer.

  “She has brought you nothing but sorrow and pain. She is the reason your family is dead. The reason you became a killer. The reason you live in constant f
ear. The reason you are damned. Why do you love her?”

  Dro had said similar things to me not long ago. She thought my life would have been different if I had never found her. That I would have been safe and normal. But I wasn’t a person who spent much time imaging the ‘what-ifs’ and ‘maybes.’ There was no changing my actions. There was only dealing with the consequences. I was facing off with Lucifer, and there was going to be a consequence for it. Just as there would be if I did what Dro had suggested, and run.

  Living with the Devil as an enemy was easier than living without Dro. I couldn’t stop my fear, but I wouldn’t survive without her. She was the only person who kept me whole and sane. She was the only person who made me feel human.

  “Because she’s my sister,” I repeated.

  Lucifer stared at me for a long time. I desperately wanted to look away, though I never wanted to turn my eyes. I wanted to get Dro free, to do anything. But I couldn’t. I was in way over my head and a thousand miles from shore.

  “Do you think I love her any less?” Lucifer said. He slowly turned his head to Dro. “She is my child.”

  I didn’t take the time to comprehend what he said, because he reached out to touch Dro’s hair.

  “I said don’t fucking–”

  Lucifer lifted his hand. A huge force of energy slammed into my chest and hurled me across the stage into the wall. I crashed into it brutally and felt my ribs crack. Pain exploded everywhere when I landed on the ground. Then he lifted me up and threw me into the wall again. Something else cracked. Then he threw me one more time just because he could.

  “Stop!” Dro screamed.

  Lucifer dropped me. Now that the painkillers were wearing off, I felt like I’d been run over by a train. I was completely covered in blood from rolling on the stage floor, had who knew how many shattered ribs, and was all but immobilized by pain.

  Lucifer hadn’t moved from where he stood. He was looking at Dro like she held the key to all his dreams.

  “Please,” I heard Dro whisper shakily. “Please, let her go. Let them all go. I’ll stay. Just don’t hurt them.”

  My heart crumbled. Don’t do it, little sister. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up.

  Lucifer didn’t seem to have heard her desperate request. The demon continued to stroke her hair and face without emotion.

  “I have waited so long for you, my child,” he crooned. “You are exactly as I created you to be. So beautiful, so powerful. You are the key to saving those of your blood.”

  His hand slid down her throat, between her breasts, and stopped at her ribs.

  “Now it is time for you to bring them salvation.”

  It happened in the span of seconds, but that was all it took for my world to shatter. It would haunt me for the rest of my life, and there was nothing I could have done.

  Lucifer’s hand plunged into Dro’s side like a knife, disappearing up to his wrist. She screamed longer and louder than I thought possible. Her back arched and she strained against the cuffs holding her down, still screaming from a pain so agonizing I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.

  I crawled across the bloody floor as fast as I could. I pushed myself up and collapsed. I lifted my head again when Dro stopped screaming.

  Lucifer’s hand had left her body. He held one of her ribs in his fist.

  Sephiel’s words about the spell to open the Gates of Hell shot through my brain.

  Lucifer had chosen my sister to be the key to Hell on earth.

  I forced myself to my feet. My vision was swimming, but I had to do something. I had failed my little sister, but I couldn’t lie down on the floor and pray for it to be over quickly. I had to act, even if I had no fucking clue what to do. Even when I knew Lucifer would kill me with a flick of his wrist.

  He held my sister’s rib high in the air, then raked his fingernails along his chest. Black demon blood welled from the four scratches, but his face was empty. He smeared his blood on his clean hand, then ran it along the length of Dro’s rib.

  A blast of red fire consumed it, followed by a small explosion of white light. Dro’s rib shattered into a million tiny shards that dissolved into ash. A sudden wind picked up from Lucifer, flattening me onto the ground. I winced and rolled again, picking myself up. I was almost at the altar–

  Dro’s body arched again, a steady white glow coming from her chest. Lucifer was watching intently. White flame suddenly burst from Dro’s skin. She was living a nightmare.

  But she isn’t screaming.

  Panic filled my chest and I tried to run without passing out. I wasn’t moving nearly fast enough.

  The white-hot fire consuming my sister began to glow brighter. So bright I had to stop and cover my eyes so I wouldn’t be blinded. A high-pitched buzz followed. I dropped to my knees, squeezing my eyes shut and holding my ears.

  There was a crack in the air. Heat swelled in the room. It became so hot I could feel blisters forming on my skin. A blast of that light and heat rippled through the air, just over my head as I ducked down. I felt it slam into the stone walls around me, rising into the ceiling. I had never witnessed so much power come from Dro before.

  Suddenly it was over. The world went dark and the temperature dropped so rapidly I got goose bumps. My ears were ringing and I had to blink to adjust my eyesight, but I spotted the altar.

  The flames on the pentagram were out. Lucifer was gone. Dro was motionless on the stone.

  I got to my feet and shambled toward her, hearing a sharp crack. I turned my head and saw the wall across from me had a huge crease in it that was growing wider. I looked up. The roof had the same splintering lines running along it.

  I finally made it to the altar and looked at Dro. The chains had been melted off her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were closed and she looked deathly pale. Her hair was soaked with sweat and blood. The dress had a huge crimson stain spreading over it. I pulled off my jacket and tied it tightly around her torso, tears blurring my eyes. I pressed my hands against the wound. Rubble started dropping from the roof above me, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  There was no way we were going to survive this. But I could stay with Dro. I could do my best to protect her. I lifted Dro off the altar and slid onto the ground with her, my back pressed against the stone slab. I curled her under me, my chin resting on her head and my arms wrapped around her back and her shins. Her blood warmed my stomach.

  The pieces of the roof fell harder and in larger chunks. I thought I heard my name screamed once or twice. I closed my eyes and hugged my sister tightly, pressing one of my hands to the back of her head.

  I always knew it would end this way. That I would die with my sister in darkness and pain, covered in blood. I’d done my best. My only regret was that it hadn’t been enough.

  The roof collapsed, and everything went black.

  Chapter 18

  When I opened my eyes again, I was almost positive that I had broken every bone in my body. My head was pounding, and my limbs felt pinched and uncomfortable.

  I was holding something. Dro. She felt warm. If she was still warm, then she had to be alive.

  My fingers protested as I moved them. They were covered in blood and dust, but they found their way to Dro’s neck. There was a flicker of a pulse. We were both still alive. I could get her out of here.

  Holding my sister close to my chest, I felt around me. No light shone through the rubble covering us. We didn’t have a lot of air. Dro might be unconscious, but she was still breathing it in. I would have gladly died and given her all the air I could, but then she would be trapped in here to bleed to death. I didn’t know if Warrick, Max, or the angels had survived. I wasn’t going to be counting on them, either.

  The stone altar was still at my back, all the rubble forming a tight circle around it. It was possibly the only thing that had kept us from being completely crushed.

  I carefully shifted Dro so she was resting against the altar, tightening my jacket around her body to slow the blood flow. My
body felt rubbery and agonized as I struggled to move, but I crouched and started shifting rubble from the top of the altar. I had to be very careful and watch what I was doing. One wrong shift and I might move a supporting rock. After that, the rubble would drop onto my head and kill me.

  After countless minutes of moving rock and not having it cave in, I made room for more air. I stayed calm and breathed in as few breaths as possible. I couldn’t take more air than I was afforded, especially when Dro needed it, too. I kept digging, moving the rubble into crevices to make more space over my head. After another couple minutes, I made a space big enough to fit my arm through. I got in an uncomfortable squatting position, lifted my sore shoulder, and carefully slid my arm through the hole, gingerly feeling around above me.

  I was more than a little nervous. If I shifted my arm improperly, it might get trapped. Then I would be completely screwed. I wished I had a flashlight, but it was more than likely broken when Lucifer was throwing me around. His image ripped through my mind, standing tall and confident, holding my sister’s bloody rib in his hand while she screamed and burned…

  I pushed away the tumult in my chest and felt around. The tips of my fingers brushed dirt. I wiggled them a little more, turning my head so the dust wouldn’t go into my mouth or eyes. I kept moving my fingers, dirt tumbling down my shirt and dusting my aching shoulder. After a minute, more dirt than I expected crumbled down. I quickly yanked my hand back and landed on my ass. I scooted back next to Dro as dirt spilled through the hole I had made. I covered my hand with my mouth to control my breathing and keep from inhaling dirt. I shielded Dro and hoped I hadn’t caused a cave-in.

  After a few seconds, the flow stopped. I smoothed out the pile, spreading it flat on the floor. Once it was gone, I moved back to the hole and looked through. I carefully slid my arm back in the crevice and pushed up as high as I could, straining my shoulder. My fingernails caught dirt and pulled it away from the surface. More soil started crumbling down, and I moved back to Dro again.