The Morning Star

by Debra Dunbar

  He spun about and left as I dropped the sack on the ground with a grunt. It clinked with a familiar sound. Coins. Opening the top of the bag I peered in to see flattened and mangled copper pennies, imprinted with touristy shit from different cities. I’d thought he was just making a handful of these, one or two from each place. Instead he seemed to have thousands of them.

  “Pretty money!” Lux appeared next to the bag, his wings outstretched as he dug in with both hands, holding the coins up then delighting in the noise as he dropped them back into the sack.

  Good grief, this was a stupid hobby. And what the fuck was I supposed to do with them? I guess maybe they would be worth something at a scrap metal place. Were pennies pure copper? I took one out of the bag and sent my personal energy into it, feeling out the structure and makeup of the coin.

  Fuck. Stupid things were mostly zinc. I doubted they’d even want them at the metal place. Maybe I could just bury them out back or something.

  “Oooh, Mistress! Are we going to throw those into the pool and wish on them?” Snip walked over from the door and bent down to examine the coins.

  “Money,” Lux informed him. “Special money.”

  The Low dug a hand into the bag and pulled a few out in his palm. “Look, these are from Seattle. There must be tens of thousands of them in that bag. That’s a lot of wishes.”

  “You’re not throwing them in my pool.”

  I could totally see these things screwing up my filter, or getting stuck in the vacuum and burning out the motor. I didn’t like the way Snip was eyeing them, but it wasn’t like I cared if he stole them or not. Although I doubt he would. Fucking bag weighed close to two hundred pounds by my estimate.

  “Just leave them here,” I told him. “I’ll deal with them once I get back from the battle.”

  Snip stood up, his expression grim. “There are about thirty Lows who are too injured to fight, Mistress. They are claiming that they are fit, and that they want to fight by your side, but if they go they will surely die.”

  We would all surely die. But there was no sense in my being the reason injured Lows got slaughtered on the battlefield.

  “Tell them I’ve ordered them to stay and protect Nyalla and Lux. Then go gather the rest of my household, because it’s time for us to go.”

  Time for us to go. And time for me to face this imposter, whether he was Luziel or not, and kill him.

  Chapter 23

  “Mistress?”

  Snip’s voice jolted me out of my daze and I shook my head, tearing my gaze from the pile of sand at my feet that lay next to the battered corporeal forms of two angels. I felt every demon that died, whether by my hand or not. And although I couldn’t sense their deaths, every time I came upon an angel that had lost its life, it shook me to the core.

  For every dead angel I saw, there were three demon deaths I felt. It wasn’t enough. The imposter’s army was pushing us back, small units breaking through but instead of dispersing and vanishing into the continent to continue with terrorist-style attacks, they were doubling back, hitting us from behind. They were flanking us, hemming us in as we’d tried to do to them. And we didn’t have a backup to turn the tide.

  “Mistress?”

  I raised my sword and beheaded the demon who had been about to fry Snip to a crisp from behind. His body fell, falling as a million grains of sand upon the ground while the head rolled to stop against the trunk of a crooked tree.

  I grimaced, feeling his death like the sharp sting of a bee. “What Snip? Not a good time, so hurry up and spit it out.”

  “Mistress, Barf and Rutter have lost ground and been pushed over to where Ahia and the werewolves are fighting.”

  I turned to swing at another demon and missed. He took one look at the sword, and took off. Good. One less that I had to kill. I hoped he’d run all the way back to Seattle and through the gate. I hoped he ran straight back to Hel. I wished they’d all do that, but with the fake-Samael prevailing, the demons weren’t showing any desire to abandon him for me. Although they did seem mighty intimidated by my sword.

  “Mistress?”

  “That’s good. Go help them. Stay a good distance from Ahia. When she’s fighting, she doesn’t always look where she’s swinging.”

  “But Mistress, we’re supposed to protect you, to fight by your side.”

  I could see glimpses of fake-Samael ahead, his white-blond hair reflecting the sunlight. He looked like a bad copy even from this distance. How could that have fooled Doriel, who I suspected had once had a very intimate glimpse of the real thing?

  He’d come out from his hiding spot behind the army, wanting a more prominent position now that they were winning. Still, he was surrounded by the strongest demons, three Ancients by his side. Fucking coward.

  I needed to work my way over there, to cut my way through those demons and Ancients and kill him. And I didn’t want vulnerable Lows at my side when I attempted that.

  “No. Go help Ahia with the others. I’ve got this.”

  Snip got that stubborn gleam in his beady little eyes and planted his feet.

  “That’s an order,” I told him, swinging at another demon and missing. Damn it. “An order. From your Mistress.”

  He darted off, grumbling, while I fought yet another warmonger in yet another lion/bear form. Couldn’t these guys be a little more creative? How about the occasional elephant/crocodile? Or a wasp/penguin?

  I finally managed to kill the guy, wincing from the bite of his death, then got another fix on fake-Samael’s position.

  We were losing. There were just too many demons, and our angels weren’t as skilled in fighting in physical form beyond some of the Grigori. I watched with helpless frustration, realizing that a sword wouldn’t do me much good against thirty thousand demons. I could kill maybe a dozen with the weapon, but in the end we’d be overwhelmed. Samael was right, being the Iblis wasn’t about the sword.

  And without the sword, I was just an imp.

  A demon rushed me, and I batted away his energy attack with the sword, meeting him head on. As I slashed upright with my blade, he pivoted, his clawed hand coming down on my wrist and digging in through the flesh and bone.

  The sword clattered to the ground. I opened my other hand to call it to me, but the demon stepped into me and jerked his head forward. I saw the horns coming for my face, and instead of calling my sword, I reached out and grabbed one. He twisted his head and I held tight, gritting my teeth as I struggled against his superior strength.

  “You need to go back to Hel,” I ground out, my feet slipping as he pushed me backward. “Go to Hel!”

  He jerked to a stop, his bovine eyes meeting mine. Something stretched between us, like a taut sinew, vibrating with the tension. I felt him. I felt them all, not as a faceless group, but as distinct individuals. Just as I had briefly in Hel, for a second, every single demon on that battlefield was like an extension of me. Every one of them was mine.

  Then the moment passed. The demon blinked, snorted, and pushed forward again, shaking his head to pull the horn free from my grasp. A clawed hand raked my side and I yelped, twisting to prevent myself from being disemboweled, all while struggling to hold his head in place. I felt the sting of torn skin, the warm wet of blood running down my hips and leg, a cold breeze from where he’d ripped the pants half off my body.

  Great. Now I was half-naked, like those fucking loser Spartans, only with me it was my lower half and not my top half. It’s not like I knew how to recreate clothing, either. A naked imp. How awe inspiring was that? But there were more important things to worry about—like keeping this demon from impaling my face with his fucking horn. I bent my head down for leverage and gripped tight, trying to twist the guy’s head enough to maybe break his neck, or at least break his horn. The tattered fabric of my jeans shifted and something fell from my torn pocket—something shiny, something copper.

  One of the flattened, stamped pennies. The Seattle one. Snip had insisted I take it for luck, because you
were supposed to wish on pennies.

  Tens of thousands of pennies. It was as if time stood still for a breath while I calculated the exact weight of that bag, the weight of the individual pennies, and came to a realization. Not ten thousand pennies. Thirty thousand pennies. All of them from cities where the seven gates from Hel resided. Most of them from Seattle. Pennies. One penny for each demon in the army.

  Humans with their short lives needed a focus. The sword was nothing but a focus. The amulets, the wands, the spells…this penny.

  It’s all in the focus. One penny for each demon. Pennies stamped with the cities representing the gateways.

  That sensation of connection returned. The coin at my feet glowed. Demon. Gateway. Hel. The coin that helped my mind tie it all together.

  “Go. To. Hel,” I commanded.

  The demon screamed, his knees buckling as he dropped to the ground. The horn snapped free in my hand. His claws scrabbled at the ground. The penny caught fire, then with a puff of white smoke, both were gone, through the gateway in Seattle. In the depths of my mind I saw the demon kneeling on the red sands, the city of Dis in the distance. I heard his bellow, and saw him rise and run, afraid, whatever loyalty he’d had to the fake-Samael broken.

  I stood, sword in my hand and looked around the battlefield where we were still losing. I felt every demon here, but couldn’t send them back home to Hel. This power was too new to me, too unfamiliar. I couldn’t channel it properly. I needed something to help me focus.

  I needed more pennies.

  “You okay?”

  I turned to see Raphael coming up behind me. He was covered in blood with a nasty slash across his chest that would have put a human in the hospital for a week. Bone showed through the torn flesh.

  “Me? What the fuck dude? Fix that wound before Ahia sees it and has a heart attack.” Which made me wonder where the other angel was. Raphael had been glued to her side from the moment we’d begun fighting.

  “She and your Lows went to get reinforcements.” Raphael pointed over to the north where a winged woman was fighting surrounded by Lows, wolves, and some giant prehistoric-looking bear. She was in good hands, which was fortuitous since I needed Rafi right now.

  “Can you hold this position for a few minutes?” I grimaced as I saw ten demons powering up the hill toward us. “Hate to stick you with these dudes, but I need to pop back to my house real quick.”

  “What, you left the stove on or something?” Raphael’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t it wait? We’re in the middle of a battle, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Right back. I promise.” Then before he could protest, I was back in my house. Hopefully he could hold off those guys coming up the hill until I got back.

  I’d appeared in front of the sofa. Lux and Nyalla were there watching some cartoon with flying pink unicorns and an alien princess cat. Nyalla shrieked when she saw me and clutched her chest.

  “Sam! I swear you’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”

  “Not now. I’m in a rush.” I ran around the sofa and skidded to a stop in front of my dining room table. Where the fuck had I put that bag of coins? Hadn’t I left it here? Dropping to my knees I crawled under the table to look for it, and came face-to-face with Lux.

  He was a golden-haired toddler right now, naked as always with his wings held tightly to his back his mismatched eyes looking solemnly at me.

  “Not now, Lux. I need something.”

  A stream of angel-speech raced through my brain at twice the speed of light, making me feel as if I’d shoved my head into a vice and a live wire into my ear.

  “Lux! I can’t…don’t do that. I don’t understand you. And I’m busy. Later.” I scooted out from under the table and raced into the kitchen. Where the fuck was that damned bag? I spun around and nearly trampled on Lux.

  “Wat-r.”

  “Ask Nyalla,” I told him as I reached down to disengage his chubby hands from my tattered pants. Damn. Maybe the kid shouldn’t be seeing me like this, sliced up and still bleeding with my clothes half off my body. Did infant angels get traumatized? Too late.

  “Wish-pool,” Lux insisted. “Lows wish.”

  I froze as Lux’s words penetrated my mind, and all the jumble of super-speed angel-speech suddenly made sense. I scooped him up and planted a big kiss on his cheek, hugging him tight before setting him on the floor and running toward the back door and the pool.

  “Go Ma!” I heard Lux squeal as I threw open the door. The bag was beside the pool, open, contents mostly still inside. I barely had time to contemplate the sparkling bits of copper on the bottom of my pool before I heaved the heavy thing into my arms and teleported back.

  I knew the moment I’d picked the bag up that there weren’t thirty thousand pennies inside. Those injured Lows I’d left behind to “guard” Lux and Nyalla must have done a whole lot of wishing, because the bag was about half empty.

  Fuck. I did a quick calculation and judged fake-Samael had…twenty-eight thousand two hundred and…something.

  Close enough. I upended the bag and dumped the pennies on the ground, pulling my sword, even though Raphael had some angelic backup and seemed to be holding his own. Then I closed my eyes and reached out, touching every single demon in Samael’s army.

  “Go to Hel.”

  The earth shook under my feet. I opened my eyes to find the pennies shaking and glowing. I felt my teeth sharpen to points, my eyes darken to black, my wings spread to their full expanse.

  “Go to Hel.”

  The demons paused. Everything fell silent, slowed and stopped as if all life was attentive to my words and will. I raised my sword and brought it down upon the pile of pennies.

  “Go to Hel!” I screamed.

  The pennies exploded into a fiery blast, waves of distorted light radiating out from them, bending trees and pulverizing their leaves like I’d just set off a nuclear blast. Raphael turned, his eyes wide with shock. The angels and werewolves were frozen in place.

  Suddenly eighteen thousand demons vanished from the battlefield, appearing in Hel and just as afraid as the earlier demon had been. As an added bonus, nearly five thousand demons turned and ran, ignoring fake-Samael’s screaming threats as they fled.

  Next time they’d obey me. And there better not be a fucking next time.

  This evened the odds quite a bit. The angels continued to fight, and more demons abandoned the battlefield as more were killed. And one-on-one, I found I could face down each foe, drive him to his knees, and teleport him back to Hel on his own, so terrified that I knew he’d not be returning.

  Before long we had them on the run, and the only ones who were left were a few scattered demons and the three Ancients remaining to support who they believed to be Samael. I faced them, my sword at my side. “Kneel.”

  They hesitated, blinking, staring at me in confusion before one-by-one complying.

  “Leave here, and go back to Hel until I allow you to leave.”

  The one with the crocodile head bowed. “Yes, Iblis.”

  As they rose to walk away I heard a scream of rage. Cold sharp energy flowed out like a powerful wave and I saw the imposter, wings unfurled, glowing as he approached a nearby angel. My breath caught in my throat, because that angel was Rafi.

  Raphael raised his sword, then hesitated, the blade shaking a bit as he lowered it. No! “It’s not him,” I screamed. “It’s an Ancient, an imposter. It’s Luziel.”

  The archangel lowered his head, just as I’d always feared Gregory would do. The imposter raised his sword. I caught my breath and everything slowed. Teleport. Block the strike with my sword. Shove my sword through this motherfucker.

  But I knew I’d be too late. That fraction of a second it would take me to get there would be too long.

  Then I heard Ahia’s panicked “No!”

  I screamed and felt the ground tremble beneath me. The demons who’d turned to leave dropped to the ground and began to grovel and cry. The imposter’s sword descend
ed as I teleported.

  There was a flash of light, blinding me as I appeared beside Raphael. Suddenly my own sword was no longer in my hand, it was blocking the imposter’s blade. And it was held by an incredibly beautiful Fallen angel with white hair, ice-blue eyes, golden skin, and tattered black and silver wings.

  “No one harms my brothers,” the angel snarled. Then he reversed the blade and plunged it into the imposter. The Ancient screamed, his beautiful form sloughing from him to reveal a slimy, orange insect with snapping mandibles and six barbed legs.

  Samael twisted the sword and yanked it free. Then he drew back his fist and slammed it into the imposter. The Ancient shattered, falling to the ground in a rain of fine, white sand.

  I stared, open-mouthed. Raphael was doing the same thing, his face full of confusion. Samael turned, completely ignoring his brother as he tossed the sword to me.

  “Here. I threw this fucking thing away two-and-a-half-million years ago. It’s yours if you want it. I hope to never see the damned thing ever again.” And with that he took two steps forward, wings brushing the ground as he vanished into a shimmer of air.

  Chapter 24

  “There are still six thousand demons this side of the gates.” Gabriel’s voice betrayed his extreme displeasure at this fact.

  I took a quick tally, discounting my own household. “Five thousand eight hundred sixty-four,” I corrected him. “And angels are to do nothing about that. If there’s an issue, it needs to come to my attention. I find out any angel, Grigori or otherwise, has been delivering vigilante justice, and they’re mine to punish.”

  I just flat out wouldn’t tolerate that shit. Not now. Not ever again. Demons had risked everything to fight side-by-side with angels. Not just my household, but Remiel’s, Doriel’s and several others. Ancients had stuck their neck out to help their former enemies. Never again would we be anything but equals deserving of respect.