by Emma Slate
Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the pole, wondering how I was supposed to get out of this mess. And more importantly, how I was supposed to take a giant by surprise.
I heard the flapping of wings.
Great.
A large bird of prey was going to make a nest out of my hair or eat me whole.
“You really got yourself into it, didn’t you?”
My eyes flipped open and I gasped. Jax hovered in front of me, his stone wings beating the air. His smile was wide in amusement.
“How did—where did—”
“You didn’t really think a harpy could do me in, did you?”
Tears prickled my eyes. “No. Lucifer told me you’d be back to yourself soon. I—I’m very glad to see you, Jax.”
“Even though we were fighting right before the harpy witch pummeled me into rubble?”
“Friends fight. They make up.” I smiled tremulously, offering the olive branch.
He took it when he grinned back. “You don’t look like yourself. What happened to you?”
“Long story.” I paused. “He finally broke the chains, didn’t he?”
He nodded and I swallowed. I was suddenly cold despite the sun.
Lucifer was coming for me.
“How did you get here before he did?” I asked.
“I had a head start.”
“How did you find me?”
“When I tore Lucifer’s mark from your body, I swallowed some of your blood and since then I’ve been able to sense you.” He cocked his head to the side. “Why are you tied up here?”
“Can I answer that as you spring me?” I demanded. “There’s a giant due back any moment and—”
“Giant? Did you say giant?” Jax’s naturally gray complexion seemed to turn even grayer. He flapped his wings, flying forward so he could disentangle me.
He scooped me into his arms. “We have to get out of here,” he said, looking around, unsure.
“We can’t. He has the last pearl. And if I don’t get it—”
Jax cursed.
“Why are you so afraid of a giant?”
“Wait, is he a giant or a Cyclops?” Jax demanded.
I blinked. “There’s a difference?”
“Yes. Giants are stupid. Cyclopes—”
“Are brothers of the Titans,” boomed a terrible voice so loud it hurt my ears.
“Oh God,” I whispered, my eyes widening as I took in the cyclops that was trekking across the meadow toward us at an astounding rate.
Cyclops’s hand whipped out, disturbing the air, forcing Jax to steady himself, but he wasn’t fast enough. Cyclops hit Jax’s wing, which fractured and crumpled.
We fell from the sky. Jax somehow maneuvered his body beneath mine. He hit the ground first. My skull reverberated and I bit my tongue, tasting blood.
“I’ve got to stop doing that,” Jax moaned. His stone body and wings were broken. “Sorry, kid. I’m out. Run, Stella.”
“Stella?” Cyclops thundered. “Your name is Stella?”
“Run,” Jax urged again.
I scrambled up off of my broken friend and darted for the jungle. Cyclops was trailing me and I heard a sickening crunch. He’d stepped on Jax, silencing him. My friend, a gargoyle, had sacrificed himself a second time. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t dead; he’d saved me more than once.
I sprinted as fast as I could, but it didn’t matter. My tiny legs were no match for Cyclops and his size. He caught up to me with ease.
“I’ve been banished to this island,” Cyclops yelled as he approached. “Zeus killed one of my brothers. And your father killed the other. Now, I will kill you!”
I felt his brawny fingers wrap around my body and start squeezing as he lifted me in the air toward his face.
“You can’t kill me,” I gasped, feeling the bones of my ribs digging into organs and flesh.
Cyclops grinned, his white, pearl eye iridescent in the light. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll crush you until you die, wait for your bones to heal, and then crush you again.”
He brought me to his mouth.
“Or maybe I will swallow you whole. Let’s see if you can find your way out of the dark.”
Why were monsters so obsessed with the idea of eating me?
His breath smelled like death and rotten meat.
I would’ve gagged, but I could hardly breathe, let alone vomit. I was nearly inside his cavernous mouth when I saw another enormous beast knock him to the ground.
Cyclops went down.
As he fell, his hand bounced off the land and his fingers opened, and I rolled out of his palm. I clambered up, taking in the form of the beast that had unknowingly rescued me. Its skin was flaming red, and it had a set of curved horns like a ram’s. Its eyes were yellow, demonic. A forked tongue slithered out from thin reptilian lips.
Wings with knobby protrusions and translucent black webbing unfurled from its body.
Cyclops tried to sit up, but the brute placed a clawed foot to his neck. “Enough!” the devil roared.
The giant trembled in fear.
I felt like Gulliver, small and inconsequential. The barbarian’s gaze landed on me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide.
“Stella,” he purred.
I swallowed. “Lucifer.”
Chapter 33
“You look…different,” I said, attempting to stall for time.
He flashed a grin but it wasn’t in humor. “The only way to break Prometheus’s chains was to change into my true form.”
I swallowed.
“Go ahead,” he sneered. “Look upon me in all my hideousness. Do you lust for me now, my starlight?”
“Lust was never our problem, Lucifer,” I pointed out. I examined him while he still held Cyclops down with his clawed foot. The giant actually whimpered in fear. Stupid bully. Only afraid when someone bigger and badder came along.
“You’re still you,” I said. It felt strange, to be having an intimate discussion with a twenty-foot-tall monster.
“It’s over.” His eyes flashed yellow fire. “You failed. You will come home with me.”
Defeat settled in my chest. His words were truth. Even now, there was no way to retrieve the last pearl. Lucifer barred my path. I was miniscule.
“And what will you do to me?” I asked, my voice soft. “What will you do to me for attempting to gain my freedom?”
His forked tongue slithered out to taste the air. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” My tone was flat. “For all the trouble I’ve caused you?”
His smile was wide and cruel. “You’re still bound to me, Stella. I win. No matter what.”
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I swallowed the lump of sadness in my throat.
He lifted his foot off of Cyclops, who sat up but made no move to stand. He rubbed his throat and said to Lucifer, “I am your humble servant.”
“Where are your living brothers?” Lucifer demanded. “I will free them too. You will all have reign of Earth.”
Fear for the world overtook every other emotion I was feeling. Lucifer was making it so easy to hate him. To loathe him. And maybe, that was the problem. Maybe he wanted me to despise him.
I was about to call out to him, to tell him that I loved him, no matter how wicked he claimed to be, no matter that he couldn’t control his nature. But before I could get the words out, the sky suddenly darkened.
A army of gargoyles swooped down to distract and maim. They spared neither Lucifer nor Cyclops. Cyclops shrieked in pain as gargoyle claws sliced his skin to ribbons. Lucifer roared, breathing fire into the blue sky in an attempt to defend himself.
I lifted Aloysius’s knife from its sheath and ran as fast as I could for the giant who had the final pearl, who held my last chance at true freedom. I couldn’t climb up his body—I might’ve had a chance if he’d been still. But he bucked and shook off the gargoyles, flicking them aside like they were flies as they tore into him.
Suddenly, I was airborne
. “Come on, kid, I’ve got you,” Jax said. “We’ve got one shot to do this. Are you ready?”
“Yes!” Adrenaline zinged through my veins and I gripped the knife harder.
Jax darted and weaved, and for once, luck seemed to be on our side, because no demon fire blasted us, no rough fist knocked us out of the air.
“I can’t get closer,” he said as he flew in circles five feet over Cyclops’s face. Jax angled his body to one side so we wouldn’t be hit by a gargoyle’s broken wing, which was hurtling through the air, detached from its body.
“Drop me!”
Without any hesitation, Jax let me go. I fell onto a massive, fleshy cheek. Cyclops attempted to swat me away, but he was too busy fending off Jax and other dive-bombing gargoyles.
I scaled up the bridge of his nose and looked at my reflection in the white pearl. I didn’t think—with both hands, I drove the knife underneath Cyclops’s eye.
He scream was a sonic boom and my ears started to bleed.
The grapefruit-sized white pearl released from the socket with a loud pop. It was bloody and slick, and when I tried to grasp it, it slipped from my fingers. I dove off Cyclops’s face and launched myself at the pearl. I caught it when I was mid-air and pressed it to my chest as I dropped to the ground. My teeth rattled in my skull and my vision danced.
“Stella!” Lucifer bellowed.
I peered up at the fallen angel, the beast, the Prince of Darkness. I kept my eyes on his as I pressed the pearl to the gold bangle at my wrist. The bracelet moaned and vibrated and then split open in the center and widened enough to swallow the pearl, which disappeared into glimmering gold.
The sky darkened, but this time it wasn’t from the swarm of gargoyles. Storm clouds unleashed rain, thunder, and lightning. Static in the air teased my windswept hair and I felt my skin prick with electricity flowing through my body.
A yell of triumph ripped through my throat as my essence, the part of it bound and held by Lucifer, snapped back inside of me. I stumbled when it slammed home.
My gaze was locked on Lucifer’s. Even though I was victorious, I couldn’t stop the dimming of my smile as betrayal and sadness blazed in his eyes.
He leaned his head back and bellowed to the heavens. Then with a flap of his bat-like wings he was airborne, and then he was gone.
“What do you want to do with him?” Jax asked, coming to stand by my side, jarring me back to the moment.
I reluctantly took my eyes off the empty sky and looked at Cyclops who was now the one who was bound. His wound where I’d torn the pearl from his skin had stopped bleeding and was already scabbing over.
It made me sick, thinking about what I’d had to do to get it, but then again, if Cyclops had had his way, I’d be somewhere in the bottom of his belly.
“I don’t know,” I said. A gargoyle approached me, holding out Aloysius’s blade. I smiled gratefully and stuck it back in its sheath.
Truthfully, I wasn’t just sick over what I’d done to Cyclops. The sorrow in Lucifer’s eyes had nearly brought me to my knees.
But how could he have ever thought I’d choose him? Not after what he’d done, not after promising Cyclops and his brothers could have free reign over Earth.
“Stella?” Jax prodded.
Gargoyles stood guard and kept Cyclops in line. His mouth wasn’t gagged and whenever he felt the need to grumble and shout and spew hateful words, the gargoyles had no problem subduing him with their stone fists.
Bloodthirsty bunch.
“Why are you asking me what to do with him?” I looked at Jax, eyebrow raised.
“Because you’re the Commander in Chief.”
“Excuse me?”
He gestured to the other gargoyles. “I asked a few of them to come. My close friends. But they all came. You have an army of gargoyles at your back, Stella. We will do your bidding.”
I blinked. “But—but—why?”
Jax’s eyes were the color of ash. “We are the damned, and we haven’t believed in anything for a very long time. You”—he paused, searching for his words—“didn’t judge me. For my past. For the terrible things I’d done. We have all done terrible things.”
“What is legend and what is history?” I asked. “Isn’t it all a game of telephone?”
“I don’t follow.”
I bit my lip in pensive thought. “You were there. During the Trojan War. You sacked a legendary city. You claim to be damned, wicked. And perhaps you are. Maybe you did terrible things when you were human.” I placed my hand on his arm. “But you helped me in my quest even though you didn’t have to.”
“I am a killer.”
“You were,” I agreed. “If you kill him—I pointed to Cyclops—you will be again. And you will prove that nature doesn’t change. That we are who we are and that not even millennia can change that fact.”
“Is this even about me at all? Or is it about him?”
I swallowed. “Both, I think.”
“He has sowed seeds of discontent that have raged into long, bloody wars. He has taken what does not belong to him. He is evil and wicked, and the reason for so much strife in the world.”
“I know,” I murmured. “And if I were anyone else, if my nature were different, then I wouldn’t love him. But I do. I do love him.”
“Why?”
“Because there is more to him than the evil he has done. Just like you are more than the man who spilled from the belly of the Trojan Horse and killed.
“I believe we change, Jax. Yes, I believe we essentially are who we are, but I also believe we’re capable of change. If we really desire that change.”
I fell silent. We stared at Cyclops who was now weeping softly, tears seeping from his scabbed wound.
“What will you do now?” Jax asked.
“I’d like to go to Purgatory. I haven’t been there in a few years.”
“Would you like me to fly you across the sea?”
I looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you. But no. There’s a ship, just off the coast of the island.”
I needed some time to process everything. Time to sort out my messy emotions where Lucifer was concerned. I wondered if I’d ever be able to figure them out.
“I think we should let him go,” I said, nodding my chin at Cyclops. “He can’t hurt us. He’s blind and alone. And I think he’s bound to this island without the ability to ever leave. That’s punishment enough, don’t you think?”
“Hmm. It would be a mercy kill.” Jax shook his head. “And that would be too good for him.”
I looked to the jungle, not wishing to have to walk for days through it again.
“I will take you up on the offer of a flight, though,” I said with a rueful smile. “Just to the beach?”
“That I can do.” He cocked his head to the side. “You look like yourself again.”
“How’s that?”
“Fair skin. Curly dark hair.”
I looked down at the bangle on my wrist. I moved it up my arm to see the pale skin.
“I wonder why I’ve changed back,” I said.
“I know not the ways of magic.” He shrugged. “But according to you, we can change, so why wouldn’t your appearance?”
What changes had I really gone through while wandering in the desert? Plagued by insanity, sun-blistered skin… Did I feel different in my own body? Not really. But I was more honest with myself, no longer afraid to admit the things that might’ve caused me shame in the past.
“We love who we love,” Jax said softly. “Right or wrong.”
I swallowed. “Yes. But love isn’t enough.”
Chapter 34
Jax flew me to the beach. He fluttered to the ground, and despite his stone form, he was quite graceful and light on his feet.
“I don’t see a ship.” He looked around, frowning.
“The mist. It rolls in and rolls out. The ship is still there.” I gestured vaguely, knowing I’d find the ship eventually. Aloysius wouldn’t have left. He was a man of h
is word. He had honor.
Suddenly, I felt so incredibly weary, and it was finally my turn to collapse under the weight of all the burdens I carried.
“Stella?”
“Yeah?” I injected a note of false cheer into my voice and forced a smile.
Jax frowned. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “There’s just a lot going on… Anyway, thank you, Jax. For everything. I mean it.”
He rested his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.
“Will you all be safe if you go back to Hell?” I asked him.
“I think so, yes.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“If you need anything, just send a carrier pigeon,” he said.
“A carrier pigeon. Really?”
“How else do you expect to get ahold of me? It’s not like I carry a cellphone around. And even if I did, it wouldn’t work in Hell. Or you know, you could send me a message through our bond.”
I shook my head and felt a smile pull across my lips. Abruptly, he tugged me into an awkward, loose hug. “See ya around, kid.”
He released me and then jumped into the air to fly away. I watched him careen over the jungle canopy, and then he was out of sight.
I turned back to the sea. The mist was thick and looked like it wasn’t going to dissipate any time soon. The bangle at my wrist tightened against my skin. When I looked down, it was gleaming. I hadn’t been able to remove the bracelet since it slid over onto my wrist, but for some reason, I knew it would come off now.
I tugged it over my hand and let it rest in my palm for a moment before hurling it into the gentle waves. The ghost ship appeared through the curtain of mist. I dropped to my knees, relief curling through me. Pressing my hands to my eyes, I finally let out all the emotion warring inside of me.
I didn’t know how long I sat weeping on the sand.
“Stella?” I looked up into the tender gaze of Aloysius. “You look different,” he said in way of greeting.
I hastily brushed the tears from my cheeks and then took his hand to rise. “I’m the same.”
He cocked his head to the side to study me. “No. I don’t think you are.”