by Dianna Hardy
Holy hell – is that actually fairy dust?
“Not in this home,” bit out Elena, her own anger evident. “You’ve already ruined one.”
“Two, actually,” threw in Paul, flatly.
The fairy queen ignored them, Lucifer still the centre of her attention. “How do we stop it?” she demanded.
“We don’t stop Armageddon – nothing stops Armageddon, except…”
All eyes were on him.
“Except…?”
And now, the first signs of stress were evident in his gait. “Killing the Dragon will not stop the apocalypse, but since it is now apparent that the Dragon is tied to humans and not to the fay, it will most likely end mankind if the Dragon dies. If they do survive the Dragon’s death, they will be void of protection and guidance; they will tumble forward, blinded, into a Dark Age. As for angels, the fay, the demons … there’s no way out, regardless. We’re on the last train outta here.”
Elena spoke. “So, we don’t kill the Dragon, right?”
“Right, Lucifer?” added Morgana, snidely. “Exactly whose side are you on? Maybe you want to see humans stumble around in darkness; maybe it gets you off.”
Katherine glanced briefly at Lucifer, a strange look on her face, but Lucifer held Morgana’s gaze. “And what about you? You’ve fought for the Dragon to rise for an eternity and a day – who’s side are you on? Whether the Dragon lives or not, millions die. Will it be by your hand?
What the hell is going on? “Wait,” interrupted Amy. “My baby?”
The fallen angel nodded at her. “If the Dragon dies, so does the baby, or so it would seem if he is aligning himself with it.”
“So, we don’t kill the Dragon,” repeated Elena, steel in her voice, as she stared at Lucifer for confirmation.
“That’s right,” said Lucifer, silkily, although Amy could tell that no one believed him, or Morgana, right at this second. “But I’m afraid we have another prob—”
A commotion on the balcony caused all heads to turn that way, everyone on high alert. After another second, the screen door slid open with force and some large, blond bloke Amy had never seen before stepped into the living room carrying a pile of clothes in his hands – a pile of glowing clothes.
“We have a problem,” he said in a rush and out of breath before anyone could utter a word.
“Archangel Michael, how lovely to finally meet you – I’ve heard so much about you.” Lucifer brought another apple out from wherever he kept them. “I was just about to explain the circumstances we find ourselves in, but it seems you’re one step ahead of me.” He crunched into the fruit, his eyes on the clothes.
“And what is the fucking problem?” Elena all but shouted, clearly on her last nerves.
The blond guy looked at them all, then answered Elena’s question directly. “It seems Gawaine’s blood flows in the body of another – he has a son.”
“Gawaine?” asked Elena.
Lucifer mumbled as he chewed. “He means Gwain – some angels prefer the traditional pronunciations. He’s referring to Gwain’s son.”
Elena turned back to Michael. “His son’s name is Karl.”
He met her glare with a frantic one of his own. “God wants the Dragon and mankind dead so that he can start over – eliminate his mistakes and start creation from scratch… Karl has Gawaine’s sword.”
Everyone except Lucifer stared blankly at the archangel, realisation only dawning when he spelled it out with his next words. “Gawaine was created using more of God’s will than any other angel – his blood offers a direct connection to God – his son carries his blood…”
“Oh, no,” whispered Elena.
“God has attached himself to…” he held up the clothing… “No – it appears he’s fused with him somehow. At some point, God must have been made aware of the existence of Gawaine’s bloodline – the trail he left is clear: God is now merged with, and working through Karl.”
Chapter Fifteen
All hell broke loose at Michael’s revelation, accusations and fury flying, and Morgan le Fey was crushed – wounded in a way she had never thought possible; had never even considered could be felt. And the feeling was … hurt. A hurt so deep she wasn’t sure it could ever be repaired.
Among the fay, trust is something not thought about, because you were all tied to the web of existence and to each other, able to connect in such a rooted way. There was no need to trust - trust simply was.
But Lucifer … she had given him her trust. Just as she had given it to the stranger at the very beginning, who had tumbled onto her land, lost and desperate. He hadn’t been known as ‘God’ then.
She had given of herself; she had given her home.
For nothing… It’s all been for nothing.
It was over. She would disappear, perish the way mortals do and then what? What happened next?
NO!
She had to hold on … she had to—
“The past is past. Gods come, and gods go … and so do we, my friend.”
Neesa had known; had tried to warn her.
Had everyone known but her?
She felt cheated; lied to.
A sharp pain burst from her palms and she looked down to find she had cut them with her nails, her hands balled into small fists to keep from damaging everyone in her immediate surroundings – her magic dust could turn giants to stone. The same cold stone that now encased her human-like heart – cracking…
“Absolutely not!” That was the Shanka witch, looking as enraged as she felt, and skirting on the edge of a similar desperation.
“There’s no alternative,” insisted Lucifer as everyone else looked unsure of which argument to side with.
“You’re not even looking for an alternative! If it were any of you, Karl would be the first to search for a way out – he has done. And you’re giving up on him?”
“The Dragon’s birth is imminent. To ensure the safety of both it and the baby and the survival of the human race, Karl has to be eliminated.”
“Allowing the Dragon to live will ensure your annihilation. Do you expect me to believe you won’t turn around and kill the Dragon yourself when we’re not looking?”
“To what end? Even with the Dragon dead, non-humans will still be destroyed, and don’t assume you know my intentions – what makes you think I’m not willing to die to save humanity?”
“So you have known all along,” Morgana threw in, her fury climbing the betrayal for a better position. “Is this what you’ve been after? Saving humanity?” Knowing it would destroy the rest of us!
She was completely ignored.
“Oh, give me a break!” Elena spit out, angrily.
“I am giving you a fucking break – take it! Your boyfriend is currently the greatest threat to the human race – FACT. He has to be destroyed.”
“God has to be destroyed, not Karl!”
“Karl is God now!”
And the witch laughed. It burst from her in a maniacal way, the tell-tale signs of sanity slipping, and then she suddenly turned and slammed the heels of her palms into the wall, creating two small dents; plaster falling…
“Elena…” said her mother.
But she held up a hand and shook her head, the emotional fortress around her hardening.
Morgana’s eyes prickled with heat. What an uncomfortably familiar sight.
Elena’s shoulders sagged. “How did this happen.”
It was a whispered, rhetorical question, Morgana was sure, but Michael answered it anyway. “There must have been a trigger – usually just knowing is enough for angels and some demons to trace something back to a source. The moment Karl knew about his connection to Gawaine, would have been the moment that line of thought would have been accessible to God.”
“Yes,” replied Elena, almost too quietly for anyone to hear. “It’s the same reason I was never allowed to know about my demon lineage, isn’t it? The Shanka would have picked up on my simply knowing it, all the way back to me.” She str
aightened up and turned to face everyone. “It was about three weeks ago when he found out, and it was about three weeks ago when he started changing … becoming distant.”
“And now we’ve run out of time,” added Lucifer, bringing the point home.
Elena looked desperately at Pueblo. “Can you stop time so Karl can—”
He shook his head. “Events now are unfolding so fast in an order I’m not sure is safe to disrupt. To stop the Dragon – an entire era – from surfacing when it should? I can’t, it’s too great, and,” he added softly, apologetically, “I’m not sure I’d want to if there’s a chance it could hurt my son in the process.”
Elena shook her head in disbelief.
Amy stared at her, imploringly. “We have to protect our son, you know that.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to do, too. God wants to kill the Dragon, and we all want it to live. If I could just have some time to—”
“And what will you do if killing Karl is the only way to save the Dragon?”
The two witches glared at each other, Elena unable to answer; Amy upset, but determined.
“Will you be able to kill him?” she pressed. “Will you let anyone else do it?”
Elena faltered and looked at Pueblo instead. “Karl helped you. Just a month ago—”
“It was fifty-five years ago for me.”
And now it was Amy’s turn to look shocked. “What?” she whispered, realisation taking place behind her eyes – eyes which clouded over once more with a wet sheen. “Fifty-five years?”
“I said we had a lot to talk about,” he replied, gently.
Morgana almost left right then. It was one thing to live with her own suffocating emotions, but to feel everyone else’s … when had empathy been one of her gifts? It hadn’t – this was too much. Things just needed to go back to normal somehow… “Change is the only constant, my friend.”
She wanted to curl up into a ball and scream her tears until the scream wrenched her from her body and rendered her numb – something else she had witnessed human women do, and some men, but mostly women.
She had become a woman. With a heart that pounded against her conscience every second, and somehow went on pounding whilst crushed and broken.
Elena looked around the room, her open wound of anguish like a hook that snared Morgana and reeled her in.
Katarra stepped forward and placed her hand on the small of Elena’s back. Her voice held a tenderness that was completely out of place for the Brujii. “We’ll find a way to save him. I’ll help you. It’s not like I’m gonna be around much longer anyway – I’d rather go out with a bang, you know?”
The witch turned to her, tear-stricken, grateful – all but beaten.
“I’m with you too.” Her mother, the twelfth generation witch, took place to her left and linked her hand through hers. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that boy – I wouldn’t have gotten to see you again. I’ve watched him grow from a child to a man, just as I’ve watched you grow. He would never give up on you if the situation was reversed, and you shouldn’t have to give up on him.”
Elena fell into a hug with her mother, her arms wrapped around her in a vice, and Morgana wondered what it would be like to have a mother.
“I’m in too.”
“No!” countered Amy. Her eyes met Paul’s, and her radiating feelings of treachery echoed Morgana’s own.
Her legs might give way now with all the hurt, anger and desperation trying to drag her under, and she wasn’t sure her wings would hold her up – she wasn’t even sure if they worked anymore.
“Paul … how could—”
“Amy, don’t.” And his voice was stricken, yet firm. “I’m not abandoning you by helping Elena – I never will, and believe me when I say I will do everything I can to make sure our child is born…” But it was his next words said so nakedly, so truthfully, and breaking on the first sentence, that reached the woman’s compassion and overrode the betrayal. “Elena’s my granddaughter. She watched him die once, and I wasn’t there. I won’t let her go through it again if I can help it, if there’s even a way… Once is enough for one lifetime, wouldn’t you say?”
Her face crumpled in both understanding and grief, and she collapsed into the Dessec’s chest, his arms holding her up, and Morgana grabbed the back of a dining chair as she swayed, knocked back by the stifling mix of both betrayal and compassion felt in such great amounts. Her own fury had been smothered by everyone else’s emotions – her sense of self, denied.
“Oh, this is so fucking Oprah I want to write a book.” Lucifer crossed his arms over his chest. “Michael, why don’t you inform the Let Karl Live Brigade of the flaw to their great plan before I vomit.”
Everyone stared at the archangel and he cleared his throat. “I don’t know if Gawaine’s son can be saved at all.” He looked at Elena. “I’m sorry. It’s not like a possession where you can just rid his body of the entity – it’s not a demon that’s taken hold of him: it’s God … and with the angel blood… Mergence is a forever kind of thing for angels. Granted, this isn’t your traditional mergence, but…” he sighed with a heaviness that had Morgana wondering what he’d been through since the Bleeding. “Elena, his fusion with Karl is most likely permanent.”
A chilling stillness permeated the room.
“Permanent?” asked Elena, her voice solidifying the word in the most horrific way.
“God took physical form when he fell – he needed food and nourishment just like any other, or at least, I thought he needed food … turns out, he was feeding off Karl’s energy, I just didn’t know it. When I went back to find him, just before I came here, he was gone.”
“Gone?”
To watch all hope drain from someone was not a metaphorical thing. Elena turned pale, then green; she swayed and Katarra caught her around the waist and arm to keep her upright.
“God was gone,” continued Michael, “his physical form, I mean. All that was left was this.” He threw the clothes – their golden glow now fading – onto the table. They landed next to the apple. “With something like a demon possession, the demon has a body to come back to. But this … there’s nothing here – his body’s gone. God has no intention of coming back. He’s merged himself with Karl in every way – cells, tissue, blood – he’s a part of him now. I don’t think there’s a way to separate them without killing them both.”
~*~
The next fifteen minutes saw everyone fall into a heavy silence that clung to the air like smog. They went their separate ways within the apartment, Amy and Pueblo to the east of the building, Elena, Katherine and Katarra to the opposite side, Paul had retreated into his bedroom, and Michael and Lucifer had disappeared. Morgana had avoided everyone by stepping out onto the balcony that adjoined the living room. It was crushing how they were all thrown together, and yet, torn apart.
Amy’s eyes landed on the ‘interesting’ apparel Pueblo wore around his neck. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was made of. “It doesn’t quite shine like the sapphire one you gave me.”
He looked at her, puzzled. “Excuse me?”
She nodded to his neckline.
“Ahhh, the Dessec crown.”
“Aren’t crowns usually worn on the head?”
“Would you like me to wear it on my head?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “No. So … guess you really are the king now.”
“Guess so. Not much of the Dessec left to rule over though.”
“Guess not.”
“Just as well. Not sure ruling’s my thing – never was the nagging type.”
Her smile grew wider and she repositioned herself against the wall she was leaning on.
“Would you like to sit?”
“No. Thanks.”
The pause between them stretched.
“Amy—”
“Fifty-five years?”
He didn’t let his gaze waver.
“You must’ve all but forgotten about me.”
“Never. Every time we dreamt—”
“Oh, so those were real? The dreams?”
“Of course they were.”
She nodded, gulping back the persistent lump in her throat. “But if you’ve been gone for fifty-five years … for every night I dreamt was it … what? How long for you?”
“Maybe five years; maybe less.”
“Oh, wow…” she exhaled in defeat; the futility of it all…
“Hey, it’s oka—”
“No, it’s not! All right? It’s not.” Then she laughed. “I have two men in my heart and both of them have lived entire lives, entire worlds, without me, and then you both come back, telling me it’s all okay? Expecting me to just accept it and be here for you?”
“No one’s expecting anything of you.”
“Well, you’ll have to excuse me if that’s not what it feels like. The child in my womb needs his mother and you both helped to put him there – if that’s not an expectation, then I don’t know what is. Shit.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. Her attitude wasn’t helping. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and worried.”
“I know. Come here.” He pulled her into his chest, and she froze for the briefest of seconds before relaxing into him. “I still love you, Amy, even more now than I did before. Fifty-five years hasn’t changed that – not for me.”
She heaved a sigh and sank deeper into the feel of him. “I still love you too. I’ve missed you so much.”
His arms stiffened around her for a second and then softened again as he placed a kiss on the top of her head. “I don’t want to stay here tonight.”
She looked up at him, quizzically. “Where should we go? Back to my flat?”
“No, I mean…” He hesitated, then met her eyes with ones that were both sad, but sure. “I don’t want to spend the night with you, and just listen to me for a minute before laying into me, okay?”
“I haven’t seen you for over three weeks; you haven’t seen me for fifty-five years and you don’t want to—”
“Listen, Amy.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” She shoved herself away from him, only to have him grip her arms and pull her closer.