When Spell Freezes Over (All My Exes Die From Hexes Book 4)

by Killian McRae

  Despite the scurry, Marc stopped dead in his tracks. “How did you...”

  “You weren’t exactly not on my radar,” she admitted as he caught up. “You are the son of one of my closest frenemies, after all. I’ve been watching you for some time.”

  “Why? I mean, besides a deadbeat dad I knew nothing about, what were you after?”

  Lucy shrugged, slowing so he wouldn’t struggle so much. “Hope, maybe? You know, Marc, you and I really aren’t so different.”

  The priest ran his eyes up and down a luxurious frame to catalog his doubt on that assertion. “Not so sure on that.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and turned the subject like a flapjack. “Do you find this body attractive?”

  He didn’t know how long his eyes had been bugging out on the delicious alpine scenery on Lucy’s chest when he felt her pinched fingers bring his eyes back up.

  “Eyes up here, bud. Now, do you think this is what I am, this body?” she asked. “Is this what makes me? Is this my true self?”

  “No, of course not!” A lifetime in service to the church and several years spent ministering to the dregs of street society had drilled that much in to him. Like someone had found his Priest.exe file and clicked it, the standard dialog popped up in his mouth. “The body is a vessel for the soul. That is why God can forgive so many of our sins, because these mortal flaws will pass away, and what remains is the soul. It can be tainted by our physical deeds, but it can always be washed clean again. It just takes faith, determination, humility, and grace.”

  Lucy mocked him with her glare. “So, you and me, about the same.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Do you think I lack faith, Marc? Do you think that’s why I’m here, because I don’t believe in everything you just said? Do you think that’s why they’re all here?” She motioned out to the wider city. “This is where we’re all cleansed. For some, it’s just a few years. For others, hundreds. For me, it’s been thousands. Others might dwell here forever, but that’s not my point. You’re not attracted to this body. Not really. Your draw to me? It’s because we’re both angels. We’re never stronger than when we’re connected to another. We’re like Lego blocks; when we stack we become a bigger unbreakable entity. The moments you’re drawn to me, are the moments your soul recognizes the likeness of mine, how we’d fit together so perfectly.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I wish I had more time. So much I could pass down. But in my defense, I always thought it was going to be Jerry.”

  “You always thought it was going to be Jerry to do what?”

  A sly grin lifted the color in her cheeks. “To take my place.”

  The meaning of what Lucy had said settled on him like volcanic ash. Hot, poisonous, burning truth filled his lungs. Once Marc had caught his breath again, he used it to laugh. “Wait, what? You think... You think I’m going to be the next devil?”

  “The prophecy about Riona included a message for me. Big Boss told me I’d done my penance. Since I learned of it, I’ve been looking for my replacement.” Lucy’s voice lacked any mirth. “I’ve chosen my successor. It will be up to you to see this transition through. I’m trusting you with that.”

  Marc threw his hands up in the air and paced, uncaring if it brought attention their way. “I’m not qualified. I could barely keep my spice drawer organized when I was human.”

  “Damnationals aren’t exactly paprika and chives.” When he seemed unconvinced, she continued. “I’ve been waiting eons for someone like you to come, Marc. Angel born, full of magic and faith, a man who understands that it’s never too late for redemption.”

  “Get off. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse and a fallen prince are currently plotting the end of the world. How do you expect me to keep order with that looming?”

  “Remember what I said about hellfire?”

  He retraced the info dump of just a few hours before. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “As a priest, and having never been married or run for public office, I assume you aren’t well versed in the ways of warfare. There are two critical aspects of winning any battle: First, superior fire power. All fallen angels have the ability to draw from hellfire, but only the devil can wield its full force. And second, have better, bigger allies than your enemies.”

  The details rumbled in his head, like loose rocks in a burlap sack. “And how would I get the Council of Seven to partner with me? According to what Ramiel says, they’re all a bunch of arrogant, careless blowhards.”

  Lucy balanced her chin on her balled up fist. “You know, I can’t fault my brother’s summation there. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the Pure Souls.”

  She had to be kidding. Actually had to be out-and-up-and-bent-over-the-counter fucking kidding.

  “And why would they partner with the enemy?”

  “Because it’s time for a change. And because Riona is leading them, and she’ll realize it’s the right thing to do.” Lucy’s head cocked to the side. “Why did you think I wanted her so badly?”

  “Because she’s the perfect woman?”

  The devil blinked away the sarcasm. “I needed to keep Az from carrying out whatever he was planning, but I could have just killed Riona if I only wanted her out of the way. No, I thought she’d be even better than Jerry. I wanted her to fill the roll. Now, you have to see this through. If you don’t, it is quite likely that the fuck-up five will find a way to succeed, possibly destroying you, the woman you love, and all of creation, but you know, no pressure.”

  “Right, none. Any chance this goes sour for me?”

  “I’d put it somewhere around sixty/forty. It depends on how successful you are at convincing her to trust you. Be the big, badass demon you were born to be. You fucked her? Good, even if you erased that memory, you can unlock it again. Memory can be a powerful weapon. Plus, she obviously has feelings for you still. Manipulate them. It may be the only way to save her, to save everyone.”

  Marc inhaled contemplation, and exhaled determination. Hadn’t he already died once to protect Riona? He was already condemned, why not be damned with all the possible advantages he could get? Maybe as the devil, he’d find a way for them to be together.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Accept it. Publicly, I mean.” Lucy scanned their surroundings. The street was empty, but they both knew the endless high rise apartment around them housed the eternally damned in droves. “We need witnesses.”

  She turned, holding her hands up to the blood-orange sky. Her chest expanded as she drew deep the scent on the air. Then, in a steady hum, she keened a low, skin-crawling tone that reverberated in Marc’s chest. A fracture tore across the firmament, out of which rolled an oily, thick, purple swell that began to stain the sky. Hell was never sunny; that old cliché proved true, but it was usually filled with a low level radiation that kept its environs eerily luminescent. Now, as Marc watched the sky turn inside out, he slowly became aware of the sounds of shifting feet. Hell had suddenly become the set of some low budget zombie film. From every door, alley, window, and coffee shop (yes, Hell had coffee shops, but they only served decaf), the bodiless souls of the wicked slithered.

  Marc stared as within moments a few became a dozen, a dozen became a few hundred, and a few hundred became a thousand.

  “You’re like the fucking Pied Piper.”

  Lucy’s arms dropped to her side, pulling her frame into a droop. She looked entirely spent. “They’ll follow the devil anywhere, Marc. When called by their Master, they must obey. It’s an awesome power, a great responsibility. Don’t forget.”

  The universe kept flipping his assumptions around as Lucy fell back. Marc managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

  “Okay, right, I’ll remember,” he said to satisfy her. “We got witnesses. The question is, for what?”

  She held out a pointed finger, tracing a circle, indicating different members of the crowd as she spoke. “Bare witness and testify, oh
ye of the Underworld. On this day, I, Lucifer, Sovereign of the Underworld and leader of the Fallen, sentenced here to serve a penance as the guardian of the unsanctified dead by my father, aka Big Boss, hereby declare that I choose as my successor this demon incarnate, formerly known as the human Marcello Angeletti, and that I yield to him all the rights, responsibilities, and... Well, you can infer the rest of that mumbo-jumbo shit. I think I made my point, right? Marc’s your king now.”

  A commotion in the back of the crowd drew Marc’s eyes as Lucy spoke. A very different set of beings broke through the crowd: four men and one woman who looked like the cast of a new HBO series about a biker gang that also moonlights as fashion models.

  “Figured a way out of prison, did you, Luc?” Michael hissed when he reached the front of the crowd, the Grigori forming ranks behind him. “Well, the Old Man still has some tricks up his sleeve.”

  “Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Marc, dear?”

  Azazel glared at his son. Which Marc took to mean he was doing something right.

  “Yup?”

  “You know that thing you showed me before when we were in the prison cell which made me say, ‘how in the hell did you get that’?”

  “Um...” Where was she going with this? Did she expect him to take on all five of their foes in some kind of suicide death match? Well, technically, he was already dead, but he could be tossed into the fires to burn at any Grigori’s whim, that had been made perfectly clear to him several times.

  “You’ll need that now.”

  “I can’t fight them all.”

  Lucy whipped her gaze back over her shoulder. “You’re not going to use it on them.”

  He flinched. “What?”

  “Quick, now, before the five stooges get in the way.”

  With reluctance, Marc reached down to his hip. He felt the familiar tingle in his hand, the throbbing tick in the veins in his wrist as he willed the thing into being. For a moment, nothingness. Then, just as completely as it wasn’t there, it was. He drew the blade into its full manifestation, holding it out before him, letting the Fallen across the way marvel.

  And marvel they did. Kochab’s hands flew over her mouth, stifling a gasp. Armaros and Samuel embraced like a comedy team facing an epic fate, which almost brought some levity to the moment. That was, until Marc caught the look on Michael’s face as his upper lip twisted, baring teeth in a doglike snarl and Azazel took on his manifestation as a pissed off dad who just found out his son had both crashed the family car and slept with the neighbor girl.

  “Where precisely did you get that, my little creation?”

  “From Riona.”

  It wasn’t Marc who answered, but Michael. “It is my heavenly blade, used by Molly Dade to slay me, then handed down to my daughter. And now, it seems she’s bestowed it on Marc.”

  Marc felt himself ruffle. “Or I could have stolen it from her.”

  A cackle cracked from Kochab’s ruby red lips. “Silly mortal. You cannot steal a heavenly blade. It can only be given.”

  Lucy scooted closer to Marc, forcing the tip of the dagger to roughen her ribs, but not yet break the skin. “You should really get with the stabbing before...”

  Azazel reached out an expectant hand. “Give it to me, demon. You are my creation. Your will is whatever I will it be. Give the blade to me.”

  Lucy completed her statement dryly. “Before he does that.”

  Lucy’s body fell back into the ground as a pull formed in the depths of Marc’s gut, a tugging, unyielding sensation that wired itself down into his legs and obligated that they step. First left, then right, though every fiber of his being rebelled. It was no good; Azazel’s control over him was too strong.

  Another step closer. “Lucy?”

  “Fight it, Marc!” the devil called. “You have the power. We all have the power. He owns your body, not your soul.”

  “But my body is what’s in play right now.” Marc grunted, working his will, trying to keep his muscles his own. Another step fell beneath him, but he fought on.

  “There’s never been a demon that could resist my power,” Azazel boasted. “You are no different, Marc. You will heed my command.”

  It was that hand with the perfectly polished fingernails that drew Marc’s attention now. He was no match for a Fallen. He never had been, even as a human who still had free will. Why would Kochab hold back her brother now, when it was so obvious that Azazel was master and Marc, slave.

  Lucy labored to make her voice heard. “Marc! You have the power of Heaven in your hands. Fight it.”

  “Yes, Marc, fight!”

  “You can do it. Kick his ass!”

  The shouts came not from behind him, or in front of him, but beside him.

  His feet continued to disobey; his arms and his grip on the blade stayed motionless, but Marc’s head could still turn of its own will. He looked left, looked right, and saw something he thought absent in this realm.

  Hope.

  The men and women of Hell began to swell with low-level mumbles, which grew into shouts of encouragement, which then erupted into cheering. Another footfall, and a smile brimmed across Marc’s face. Azazel’s eyes hungered for the blade, focused on it. Like a dog wanting a bone dangled before him but just out of reach, and like a chain, Kochab held him back. Held him back because...

  Another step.

  ...Because Kochab knew, Marc could resist. Marc could choose not to obey, and with a blade in his hand, he could kill Azazel just as soon as he reached him.

  “Do it for Riona, Marc!”

  The voice was Lucy’s. Why she simply hadn’t fallen upon the blade, he couldn’t guess. Maybe the move only counted if it was completely under Marc’s power. And he had power, didn’t he? He had the power to save his friend Dee, his mother who must know by now he’d died, his congregations who had frustrated him but for whom he cared. He had the power to offer hope to so many of the wayward souls around him. He had the power to defeat his father and Michael and the rest of the Grigori. He had the power to save Riona.

  He had the power to save himself.

  Marc let out a boisterous yowl, ripping himself from Azazel’s pull, and leapt towards Lucy on the ground. He blinked, and that moment proved to be all that it took for the weapon to find the devil’s heart.

  The struck angel faltered, her body planking on the ground. Marc fell in beside her, though why he should feel so much remorse over someone who until a few hours ago had been his lifelong enemy, he couldn’t understand. Lucy reached up and took Marc’s hand, pulling it down and encouraging his grip on the blade’s handle. She coaxed his fingers to grasp the bejeweled hilt.

  “Remember who your allies are,” she advised, blood speckling her chin as she spoke. How had she gone from the uber powerful ruler of Hell to a faltering, feeble bleeding woman in so short a time? It was like any magic she’d had had abandoned her. “Now do it. Release me.”

  The muscles in his arm shifted.

  The next thing Marc knew, Lucy’s form had ceased to exist. All that remained was a smoldering pile of ashes and dust. The very next second, his own body erupted into flames. Power filled him, raging through his blood, altering his very nature.

  He couldn’t escape the pull he felt in his gut, and when Azazel gave him yet another order, Marc obeyed. Whatever ability he’d found to resist his maker’s command had died along with Lucy. As he bent down and retrieved the blade from the space that moments ago had been Lucy’s pierced rack, he simultaneously felt the nature of his soul shifting. Hellfire, in all its full, horrific glory, melded with his consciousness. Suddenly, it was a part of him. It was no longer a tool he could use, he was the tool it could wield.

  Azazel barked out another demand, and his newfound strength ceded to one terrible fact. Marc had all the power, except the power to choose.

  Chapter 13

  “So your plan is for Jerry and Dee to overrun Hell.” Riona searched Ramiel’s face for signs of a smile, a tick at the corner of his li
ps, a lie in his eyes. Nothing. “There’s some advice regarding land wars in Asia that has less crazy to it than that. You can’t seriously think the two of them will be able to take on six fallen angels, one of whom happens to be my father.”

  Dee sighed and mumbled to himself. “Fratricide and the powers of hellfire up for grabs. Shakespeare would eat this up with a spoon.”

  The angel was quick to defend. “We’re not going to take it over. As much as I hate to say it, Lucifer does a pretty good job keeping everything ship-shape down there, present circumstances exempt, of course. Our objectives are to neutralize Azazel and Hades, and to create enough of a ruckus that the devil can bring the other Fallen into line.”

  “You keep saying we,” Jerry said, his eyes narrowing. “Since when do archangels get involved? You’re not allowed to fight. One of your predecessors drilled that into me as he watched a demon kill one of my pillars with a bucket of popcorn.”

  “Your pillar was killed by popcorn?”

  Jerry let his wife’s comment hang in the air, tethered to his ‘really’? glare.

  “Oh,” she said after a moment. “Never mind.”

  “The Accords let me fight directly with angels.” Ramiel coughed a laugh. “Not that I’m too concerned with what they say anymore. The accords told me I couldn’t be with Steph, and she and I managed to violate that provision a dozen times over the last two months.”

  “I don’t get it,” Anwen broke in. Just because she’d been convinced to sit out the battle didn’t mean she was about to withdraw from its planning. “The Council of Seven can kick the Fallen’s ass any day. Why is any of this necessary? Why doesn’t Gabriel, Sariel, or Raphael just descend from the heavenly realm and kill them all?”

  “One, let me remind you that there’s a revenge-driven Nephilim on the loose who just inherited her father’s ability to kill angels. And two, Raphael stepped down from the council. He was replaced by Larius.”

  “Larry,” said Jerry, supplementing Ramiel’s remarks. “His name is Larry. He only changed it to fit in with the rest of your classy, sounding names. That should give you some indication of his character. He’s all about the image, doesn’t care about the duties. It’s one of the reasons we demons—I mean, those demons—have been able to uptick so much activity for the last generation. You have a classic knob-polisher leading the pack.”