I had denied Camael once, long ago, back when he had been young with a penchant for blood and sparring. Like the Roman Mars, he was boorish and bloodthirsty. He had no intention of ruling over the Principalities with grace or justice.
It would seem that I would be the only grace in his presence for the next thousand years.
“What are you going to do to them?” I pulled away from him and wrapped my arms around myself, a subconscious habit I had no intention of breaking now. The sheer, pink, chiffon sleeves were more for decoration than anything else, bringing even more femininity to my otherwise simple gown. The material ruched around my breasts, sweetheart style, before falling around me like a waterfall of pink and coral.
It seemed strange for Camael to exhibit any sort of kindness. Whatever favor he thought he was doing me, I still didn’t know. The last gown I remembered wearing was the one the hospital gave me. Ages had passed since I had last worn something so overly feminine, and I knew it was most definitely not in Hell.
The last time I had been here, it had not been pretty. Camael had spent weeks, months even, hunting me down after my self-imposed exile from Heaven. Raphael, along with the few others I could trust, had hidden and blocked me from the sight and senses of other Celestials. Not even the Seraphim could find me. At least not the ones who didn’t need to know.
And it infuriated Camael to no end.
Now standing there next to him, the bane of both my mortal and immortal existence, the underlying smugness in his demeanor pissed me off.
He had finally succeeded in dominating his prey. And I hated him for it, so much that it made me want to vomit all over him. I hated him; I wanted to kill him for what he had done to us.
To me.
I had never been his, and he had only ever wanted me for his own. Now I was, and I would kill him the first chance I got.
“Do to whom?” He smiled in my direction, immediately making me fear that he had heard me. But if he did, so what? At least we both understood the odds. He enjoyed these games, I’m sure, amusing him in some way.
“To the Spheres. The Realms.” I stepped away from the balustrade, doing my best to ignore the horror beneath me.
But I couldn’t.
Soldiers by the hundreds, thousands even, stood flanked across the vast, empty expanse that Gehenna comprised. They had flooded in droves, flocked to him like moths to a flame, rallied to his cause like addicts hungry for their next hit. They were ready, and they would come with spears and swords; they would come with fire and brimstone to raze the Celestial realm to the ground.
And there would be blood.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Do you think she knows?” David asked as he lowered his bow, having hit his mark for target practice.
Emil stood next to him and eyed his own target, more than a hundred yards away, with contempt. “Do I think she knows what?”
The younger angel’s body stiffened, as if his whole body seized in an attempt to gather the right words. “I don’t know . . . about what happened.” His pitch dropped to almost a whisper as he leaned in closer to Emil’s row.
The swordsman sighed. “Why does it matter? Frankly, why do you even care? It’s not your business.” He eyed the target down the length of his arm before releasing the drawstring. As expected, the fletching wagged at him several feet below his mark.
“Of course it is.” David grabbed another arrow, nocked it, and found it staring back at him from the bulls-eye seconds later. “She went to Hell after him. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Yeah,” Emil grumbled, now even more pissed. “A way to use Raphael and the rest of us. Camael and she probably had this worked out eons ago, literally. Use Adam to get her memories back and seek vengeance on Araboth for hunting down their traitorous heads.” His next arrow flew true to its course, its tip touching David’s previous bulls-eye.
“I think that’s a little harsh, Emil. You saw her, talked to her even. Did she seem malevolent to you?”
Emil’s back stiffened. “People are never what they seem. No one can say I didn’t warn them when the time comes.”
It was the archer’s turn to scowl. “You know, Emil, you’re unbelievable. Raphael believes in her. That should be enough for you.”
Emil raised his bow one final time, exhaled with a huff, and released the tension in the string, firing the arrow so that it split David’s lower one in twain. “Yeah, well, it’s not. Not by a long shot.”
Ω
It had been three months in the human world. Demons and angels walked the earth every second of every day, and no one was ever the wiser. Their appearance, sometimes distracting but usually unremarkable, barely registered with most people unless it was necessary to reveal the truth. Most people did not take kindly to such supernaturals; it meant their greatest fears were real.
Angels. Demons. Heaven. Hell.
Every bad thing they had ever done would be weighed and measured, all to test their countenance, their humility, to test what they had learned in each lifetime. Most people enjoyed their ignorance, wishing that the only reality was the one they faced on a daily basis. The realization that consequences were far more than a slap on the wrist proved more than enough for most people.
But Adam, one of the oldest beings on the planet, was not most people. After he had pleaded with Raphael to strip Eve’s memories and hide her, Adam had petitioned the Archangel to approach the Seraphim on his behalf. With Eve gone, there would be little need, nor use, for him in Vilon. So he elected to become one of the Grigori, the Watchers who guarded Earth like owls in the night.
Ever vigilant. Hidden. Unapproachable.
And so, as Eve disappeared into the ambiguous pool of humanity, eternally reincarnating and undetectable by Camael and the Seven, Adam disappeared too. No one would even know they were alive. All save for the lowly Archangel Raphael, who would forever remain the couple’s only ally, watching over them as Adam watched over humanity.
With both Adam and Eve now exiled from the Celestial Realms, in the years to come it would be known as “their punishment.” Between Camael’s insatiable blood lust and the Three Sphere’s lack of knowledge over the ordeal, stigma built up that Adam and Eve were responsible for the Fall of Man, the loss of life to the void of pain and sorrow.
Adam and Raphael had been right when they agreed there were more than a few reasons to protect Eve’s identity. She was Pandora herself.
Adam sighed as he leaned against one of the large, unruly branches splitting an ash tree into two forks. He had been sitting there for what felt like hours, possibly days. Time moved differently here in the celestial realm. A person could get lost in their thoughts, their minds aging lifetimes when their bodies aged none.
She was gone. I’m sorry, Adam.
Why had she gone? Hadn’t she known there were other venues, other options. She had fought the darkness for so long; she didn’t have to give herself to it.
Winged or not, he was still an angel.
By submitting to the Grigori, he had lost his angelic abilities, and with them his heralded wings of white. With his new position came his sable, feathery downs; like someone getting a new identity, he had to look the part so that the lies became truth.
His abilities would be tethered to his position, that much he and Raphael had agreed upon. What choice did he have when Eve’s life hung in the balance? Every part of him ached, throbbed, and hurt with an emptiness that swallowed him whole and left him raw.
Camael.
Adam would kill Camael and free Eve from his tyranny. She had fled from him the first time and evaded his grasp for millennia, all until Adam’s mistake. His humanity and his love had gotten the better of him. He could not watch her die again, could not let her slip away without knowing who they had been, both to each other and to the world.
She had been hesitant at first, as he had expected. Though through all of it, she had been receptive to him and the stories he told her. He knew his words resounded as trut
h somewhere inside of her. There hadn’t been much coaxing necessary; all he had needed was to stage their course.
The book. The feather. The wings. All carefully orchestrated. And she would piece it together just as expected, only to be interrupted by Camael and his men.
He sank down a little, his back pressing against the rough bark, the sharpness of the object nothing compared to the stinging in his soul. It had stripped him of his will, his raison d’etre. She had consumed the past six thousand years of his immortal existence, having been watched over by him in every earthly incarnation.
He had loved her, even then. Even now.
I’m sorry, Adam.
The words haunted him like a ghost on the wind, a poison that struck him cold with each beat of his heart. His breath grew heavy as he leaned there, praying briefly that he could forget any of this had ever happened and simply go back to the way things were, back to when she had no recollection of the truth.
Would he have made the same mistake again? It was a foolish thought. He would have told her the truth no matter what.
He and the others would not be able to keep her secret much longer. Soon the Principalities would discover that Eve was alive, returned to Grace, and sided with Hell, and the Council would then have to gather to decide all of their fate.
What should I have done? he thought.
Had this been the breaking point, the fuel Camael had been waiting for to launch a full-scale war against the Spheres?
Lucifer had tried the same thing once before, though for completely different reasons.
Mia. He closed his eyes. You’ve all but tied my hands this time.
The Principalities would be coming soon.
Hours, maybe, if he was lucky.
But luck, it seemed, had never been his thing.
Ω
War was expensive, consuming endless amounts of time and resources in a place with little sense of time already. Camael had asked me to join him at the Council of the Fallen Hosts, Gehenna’s advisers and electoral board. Comprised of names as famous as Raphael and Michael themselves, my first awareness of such high-level demons did not go as expected.
Then again, I didn’t know what to expect.
Like anyone with any semblance of human reality in the past several centuries, I fully expected the Hosts to be the cruelest, most defaced, grotesque beings in the universe. Instead, I found myself at a stone table in a semi-circle design. It seemed more appropriate in a corporate setting than within the hierarchy of Hell, but I guessed that even demons had board meetings.
Camael had not left my side since we had entered Sheol, the capital of the Underworld. He had held onto my wrist during the entry check onto the complex, whispering under his breath that the Fallen Hosts were a force to be reckoned with, and one wrong move from either of us would spell our doom. That thought sounded more and more appealing with each passing second.
The guards had heckled Camael for the briefest of seconds, a passive warning that told the fallen Seraphim that, while they were backing him in his ambitions, he should never forget that there were older forces in Gehenna and Sheol than himself.
Older and far more powerful. Like a viper coiled back waiting to strike, the Council would only allow Camael to lead if he were callous and methodical enough to do the job.
In order to control the Council, he had to control the demons.
And in order to do that, I was in their crosshairs. My submission was everything, a killing blow to the Celestials, and like a masterful game of chess, a strong, succinct offense would garner them great advantage.
We passed through the monstrous gate; its tall pillars pinned us on either side as we filed into the marble hallway beyond. On one side, the world was dark and abysmal, an apt description for a place that was an endless visage of rocks and crevices, dirt and blood.
The other side, however, was a stark contrast against the dismal backdrop.
Sheol was endless halls of white and gray in either direction. There were no colors, no distinction, save for the ambiguous, empty, silent chambers. There were no noises, not even the decisive clip of my heels striking the marble tile as we made our way to the meeting.
On my left, Camael stood adjacent to the empty portion of the semi-circle ready to lead, his hands tightly balled behind his back, his body rigid like a soldier waiting for orders.
Surprisingly, he had not threatened or harmed me the entire time I had been here save for my continual detainment. For all anyone knew, including myself, I was his guest, and his guest I would remain.
Over the next couple of minutes, several others filed in, each of them taking their respective seats in the semi-circle. A squirrelly, olive skinned grease-bucket of a man sat across from me, his black eyes piercing through the sheer, cornflower chiffon Camael’s dressmakers had chosen for me.
Thankfully, they had given me a small crocheted shawl that I took the liberty of wrapping myself within. A part of me wondered if it even mattered. If angels had powers, then I was sure so did demons.
The chamber doors burst open and a thin, wheat-haired vixen with eyes like ice sauntered into the room, taking her place equidistant from both the grease-man and myself. Her sour expression changed long enough to grin widely at Camael before scowling at me. It was obvious by her deliberate movements in her high-back chair that her icy gaze held no cares except to draw the awareness of the men in the room. The way her lips pursed into an unpleasant grimace every time Camael leaned down to notify me of each Host entering the chambers proved my hypothesis.
“Na’amah,” he whispered into my ear as to not draw her attention.
“What?” I blurted out, only to be nudged sharply, a signal to remember his warning.
“One of the Four Queens, one whom never fails to remind me that we have a history together. Do not speak to her unless she addresses you directly, but do not fail to meet her gaze should she look at you. Consider yourself in the wild; we have no allies, only predators, ones who won’t hesitate to snatch you by the throat and eat you whole.”
“Oh, come now,” a feminine voice cooed in my other ear, forcing me to jump back into Camael. “Don’t scare the girl,” Na’amah beamed her wide-mouthed smile in our direction, straightening at the waist, her voluptuousness unfolding for all to see.
Before I could even stop myself, I clutched the corn-shell shawl even tighter, my smaller, less curvaceous frame, dwarfed in comparison to the demon beside me.
She burst into a childlike laugh, shrill like wind chimes banging against a closed window. “She’s fun. I like her, Camael. Don’t worry, dear. We don’t bite unless you want us to.”
“Leave her alone, Na’amah,” Camael hissed, instinctively shifting around the basaltic back of my chair. “She’s none of your concern.”
She laughed again, this time more of a bark. “Oh, she is definitely my concern, love. She’s all of our concern, Camael, or isn’t that why you’ve called us to this little summit?”
Much to Camael’s dismay I barged my way past him, my face inches from hers, and I couldn’t help but notice the faint smell of mothballs as she fumed in front of me.
Surprise flashed over her painted features, obviously alarmed that I had seen through her disguise. My own lack of alarm that she could read my thoughts brought an even wider grin to her face once the fear washed away, quick enough that I half-wondered if I’d imagined it.
The ice blue gaze remained glued in my direction. “Oh, I stand corrected. You are going to be so much fun,” she cooed. “I can’t wait.”
“Enough,” a deep, percussive voice hissed behind the lot of us.
Camael stiffened immediately, straightening his back as he waited for Na’amah to distance herself from me. They acted like two lions waiting to attack over the desiccated corpse on the plains of Africa. Na’amah snorted as she slunk back to her seat, barely paying attention to the two figures standing in the doorway.
One tall, one wide, they eyed Camael and me with great interest. The
older man, almost seven feet tall, towered over the two of us. He was a wisp of a man, middle-aged, pale, and dwarfed by a black leather duster that seemed to move almost like a second skin.
His companion could have been a Viking in his human life. His hands could probably wrap around my waist twice, his long hair like a whispering wheat field. Like most others in Sheol and Gehenna, he had stark, bright, blue diamond eyes. It was unnerving. No one’s eyes should have been that blue, like cerulean mixed with the first frost of the year.
Cold. Empty. Dead.
It was something that ran rampant here.
“There are more things to deal with than your trite wantons, Camael,” the tall man said, nodding to the fallen angel before outstretching his arms in my direction. “Lilith, my dear, it’s been ages but, as always, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
I simply nodded.
Camael slid his hand over mine. “You too, Ba’al. Please have a seat. We’re still waiting for the others.” He pointed to the still vacant area.
“Who’s missing?” the Viking asked, slipping next to Na’amah and slouching down into the stone chair.
Ba’al glanced between Camael and me, silently taking notice of our hands still locked as his gaze diverted to his companion. “Azazel. Abaddon. Belial.”
“Asmodeus,” Na’amah chimed in, her attention focused solely on the Viking who ignored her.
“Rolf,” Camael said.
“Rolf?” I repeated slowly.
“Lucifuge,” escaped Na’amah’s sour face. “Lucifuge Rofocale, some of us call him Rolf.”
For a second, neither Camael nor I could believe she had helped us in any way.
I nodded, playing into the role as Ba’al’s gaze weighed heavily on the three of us.
And for a moment, I didn’t know which bothered me more: the fact that it didn’t piss me off to be holding the demon leader’s hand, or the fact that I was now one of them.
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