by S. J. West
We decided to play a game of poker to keep our minds off of things. I completely sucked at the game which wasn’t a big surprise to anyone.
“You’ve never had a poker face,” Tara said with a shake of her head like she pitied me. “Everything you think is written all over your face.”
I took a sideways glance at Brand sitting beside me.
“Oh no,” Tara said, shaking a finger at me. “We don’t have time for you and Prince Charming to go find an empty corner, Lilly Rayne. Just get that thought out of your head.”
Everyone looked at me making me want to hide under the table.
“Stop picking on my wife,” Brand said, taking one of my hands and kissing it. “Like I’ve said before, she can’t help it if she finds me irresistible.”
“Could we please not talk about your sex life at this exact moment?” Malcolm begged. “But, since you brought the subject up, do you need any more condoms? I have a large stock pile at home I haven’t been using if you need more. I’m sure the box Abby and Angela gave you is gone by now.”
“I’ve got money, Malcolm,” Brand said matter of factly. “I can afford to buy my own stockpile.”
“Ok, you guys are just making me too uncomfortable,” Will said, looking a bit nauseas. He threw his cards into the pile and stood. “Come get me when the apocalypse begins. I think that would be easier to handle than this conversation.”
“I am all in with you there, Will,” Malik said tossing his cards in and giving his chips to Tara who greedily added them to her horde of chips. Malik stood and he and Will walked out of the room saying they were hungry and going to the kitchen.
“Bring me something back,” Tara yelled at Malik. “I don’t plan to leave this table until all the chips are mine!”
It always tickled me how competitive Tara was when you played any game with her. Her specialty was of course Monopoly, but poker was her second favorite. I always thought she should try the professional poker tour. She had the best luck at games of anyone I knew.
Sometime around one in the morning, I decided I needed some sleep. I went to use the bathroom and found Tara practically glued to my side.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“Going to the bathroom with you. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I’m not two years old, Mom. I don’t need your help.”
“You are not supposed to go anywhere alone,” Tara said. “And I’m not about to just let you go in there without someone watching you.”
“No,” I said adamantly. “You are not going in and you are most definitely not watching me go to the bathroom.”
“Brand!” Tara called, looking for back up.
Brand phased in beside us.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately looking for danger.
“Lilly refuses to let me go to the bathroom with her.”
“I think I can go to the bathroom without being abducted. Besides, it’s not like I can’t phase back here even if someone does try to grab me.”
“She’s right, Tara,” Brand said coming to my defense. “Lilly can phase anywhere she wants.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Tara huffed, even though she knew we were making sense. “Go on then, Lilly Rayne. We’ll wait right here until you get finished.”
Before I closed the door, I silently mouthed, ‘Thank you’ to my husband. He winked at me and smiled.
His beautiful face was the last thing I saw before I noticed the jewels embedded in King Solomon’s ring begin to glow.
I stared at the ring, completely hypnotized by its luminous beauty.
“Come to me,” I heard the voice inside my head say. “Come to me.”
Without phasing or having someone phase me, I found myself standing on the snowy plain of Lucifer’s vision surrounded by a massive mountain range.
Lucifer, wearing his human suit of Lucas, stood in front of me smiling.
“That was easier than I thought it would be,” he said, holding out a thick white padded coat. “Put your arms in the coat, Lilly, like a good girl. All I need you to do is freeze to death when I’m so close to winning.”
I did what he said without even thinking about it, like I wasn’t in control of my own body. The wind was biting cold even though the sun was high in the clear blue sky overhead. Lucifer walked around me and began to button the coat for me.
“You know,” he began, “when I saw you with King Solomon’s ring that night at the restaurant, I couldn’t believe my luck. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure what I would do to get you when the time was right. It was like the universe handed me the keys to its own destruction on a shiny silver platter. How did you find it?”
“Horace told us where it was,” I said, not having any control over what I was saying. It was like whatever Lucifer commanded, I did automatically. He must have seen the confusion I felt in my expression because he began to laugh.
“You have no idea what’s going on do you?”
“No,” I answered.
“Who do you think made that ring, Lilly?”
“I don’t know.”
“I made it to control the angels under my command. I lost it in battle and assumed it had been destroyed by Michael or one of the other arch angels after I was banished from Heaven. By that time I didn’t really care though, the fallen who came to Earth with me were completely under my control anyway. I didn’t need the ring anymore. Imagine my surprise when it was given to King Solomon to use against the angels and jinn under my command. I ordered everyone to stay away from Solomon while he had possession of the ring but in truth it was my way to weed out the weak. Those who thought they knew better than me and wanted to take possession of the ring for themselves went after it only to find themselves trapped with Solomon for all eternity. Only someone with a pure soul could have taken the ring from them. I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised you were the one who was able to get it. Lucky for me you kept wearing the ring which made you controllable by me, its original owner.”
He smiled and I died a little inside.
“I would never forge a ring I couldn’t call to me if I wanted it. I simply didn’t need to call it to me until now.”
Lucifer cocked his head to the side as he looked at me. “You look like you want to ask me something. Go ahead and ask, I’ll answer anything you want to know. We have a couple of minutes until the end of the universe.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“So I can win. I thought that would be obvious.”
“But you’ll die too. Why would you want to?”
“Death is better than living on this God forsaken planet with you little monkeys. You can’t imagine what its like to have the one person you love the most order you to bow down to creatures completely beneath you in every possible aspect. I’m finally going to do what he should have done a long time ago. If I have to sacrifice myself in the process, so be it. Think of it as giving the universe a chance to start over. He’ll have a clean slate to begin again.”
“Why are you so jealous of us?”
“I’m not jealous!” Lucifer became livid, his face turning red. “It’s hatred I feel. Not jealousy. Now shut up so I can do what needs to be done.”
I tried to make my body do something, anything, but I couldn’t even twitch my little finger much less phase myself somewhere safe. In the back of my mind I could hear Tara tell me, “I told you so, girl.” If I had let her come into the bathroom with me she probably would have ripped the ring off my finger when it began to glow saving me from being under Lucifer’s control.
Even though I knew the circumstances I found myself in looked hopeless, I didn’t loose faith everything would work out in the end. A vision of my daughter floated in the ether of my memories. Her face was crystal clear in my mind like she was standing right in front of me. I knew I would survive this day somehow because I had too much to live for.
Something which looked like a circular rainbow formed in the sky over
head. I heard Lucifer laugh and the body of Lucas Hunter collapsed to the ground. Lucifer stood before me in his true form looking much like Uriel had, completely translucent only casting a slight shimmer against the white snow, but I could feel his presence now, no longer hidden by the skin of a human body.
I stood helpless as he floated closer to me, intent on possessing my body to tear the universe apart. The world around me faded to black like it was a scene in a movie and all I could hear was silence.
Chapter 24: Brand’s Point of ViewI watched as Lilly closed the door. Her soft lips moved in a silent ‘Thank you’ to me. I couldn’t repress my smile or miss an opportunity to wink at her secretly. I stood there, staring at the door, marveling at how the meaning of my life had changed in such a short period of time.
My wife. My love. My life. Lilly had become all those things to me, and I couldn’t imagine trying to live in a world where she didn’t exist. It was a concept I refused to even consider as a possibility.
“You two are too cute sometimes,” Tara said to me. “I swear I’ve never seen Lilly so happy.”
“I will always strive to keep her happy,” I promised Tara. “I hope you know that.”
“Yeah,” Tara said, a slow smile spreading her lips. “I know that Prince Charming.”
“Brand!”
I turned to the voice of Will calling me from the front of my home instantly knowing what he was going to tell me. I could sense the presence of the others just as well as he.
I grabbed Tara and phased her to my home in Lakewood.
“What the…”
“Stay here,” I told her. “It’s not safe for you back there. I’ll send Malik as soon as I can.”
She looked at me stunned, only one word issuing from her lips, “Lilly…”
“We’ll protect her,” I promised, before phasing back to the outside of my London home’s front door.
I found Will standing just inside the house at the open door, staring straight ahead of him to the front lawn. All of the Watchers stood behind him in the foyer. When I turned to look at what was coming, I saw a multitude of fallen rebellion angels like Will staring back at us with only one thing on their collective minds: war.
“How many?” I asked.
“All of them,” Will replied.
“Well, I guess he’s playing for keeps this time,” Mason said, as he and Malcolm came to stand with us.
“This should be fun.” Malcolm smiled. “I haven’t had a good fight since the last war.”
“But I don’t think Lucifer is here,” Will said. “I can sense him anywhere when he’s not in a human body, but even if he were here in the Lucas form, I should be able to sense him if he were that close.”
“Could this be a distraction?” Mason questioned.
“Where is Lilly?” Malcolm asked.
I phased to the bathroom. Lilly was gone but there wasn’t a phase trail. I refused to let panic set in. More than likely she had just stepped out and I just missed her leaving. I went back to the others.
“She’s not where I left her,” I told them. “But there isn’t a phase trail there either. She has to be somewhere in the house. Help me find her.”
We phased all over the house, calling out her name. When I came across Malik, he began to ask me what was going on, but I didn’t have time to tell him. I phased him to Lakewood to be with Tara and continued to search for Lilly back in London.
I phased back into my den, knowing how much she loved the couch there. More often than not she would seek it out and curl up on its soft leather to nap on.
I didn’t find Lilly there but I did find Will.
“Any luck?” I asked him.
Will turned to me. The fear in his eyes told me something was terribly wrong.
“I feel him,” Will whispered, before grabbing my arm and phasing us.
The sun glared off the hard packed snow all around us. A calm biting wind yawned against the open plain. In the distance, the jagged black edges of a mountain range could be seen.
“No!” Will screamed, falling to his knees in front of me.
I followed his gaze and watched helplessly as Lucifer, in his true angelic form approached Lilly. Why wasn’t she phasing away? Why was she just standing there allowing Lucifer to come closer to possess her? I knew in those split seconds something was wrong but not what.
The body once belonging to Will Kilpatrick crumbled to the snow lifeless. I watched as the fallen angel who had possessed Will so long ago and who had fallen in love with a human flew across the ice with unimaginable speed propelling himself against Lucifer gifting me with the few seconds I needed to phase to Lilly.
I grabbed her arm and attempted to phase us back to London but something counteracted my power.
“Lilly!” I yelled at her, shaking her to wake her of whatever trance Lucifer had placed her under. “Lilly!” Still no response.
I looked up into the far reaches of the sky and saw Will and Lucifer in a firestorm of battle.
“Do you really think just because you love her it makes you stronger than me?” Lucifer taunted Will.
“Her love for me has given me something you were never able to after we were exiled here,” Will yelled back, knowing he was in a loosing battle but doing what he could to buy me time to figure out how to phase Lilly out of harms way.
“And what exactly did her love for you give you?” Lucifer asked snidely.
“A reason to die.”
Lucifer laughed menacingly. “Well, far be it for me not fulfill your final wish.”
I watched as Lucifer used the power all arch angels possess to turn Will into a pile of black ash onto the pristine white snow below.
As I kept attempting to phase Lilly to safety, to no avail, Lucifer descended to the snow beside me.
I felt him use his power against me to fling me a few yards away, forcing me to my knees and making me lift my head to watch him.
“I want you to watch what your God has made me do,” he said to me.
I tried to break the bonds of his power keeping me where I was, forcing me to act as a silent observer to my deepest nightmare as he entered the body of the woman I had intended to die with.
Secretly, I had already made the decision to ask Lilly to end my life with her arch angel powers when she was close to death. Spending an eternity without her would have been my own personal Hell on Earth. I assumed she would resist the idea at first, but knew her love for me would make her end my torment before she left me forever.
The face I loved looked at me now with fire in her eyes and the malicious smile of Lucifer laughed at my torment. I watched as Lilly’s vision of herself came true. Lucifer raised her arms to the sky, now possessing the combined power of two arch angels. The air around me crackled with the force of that power as streams of fire shot from Lilly’s arms tearing through the sky above to harness the added strength from the sun’s solar storm as it passed over the Earth. A ribbon of white light appeared in the sky continuing to grow wider. I watched in horror as two planets, one blue and one orange, appeared within the opened tear. The first tear to end the universe had been made.
The promise I made to Lilly begged me to go through with what she wanted. I knew I had promised her if Lucifer found a way to take control of her I would end her life before the universe could be destroyed. Her soul would no longer be in her body now, already being pushed out by Lucifer. But that knowledge didn’t make it any easier for me to do what I knew needed to be done.
Being preoccupied with destroying the universe, Lucifer’s power over me dwindled. I gripped the hilt of the serrated blade hanging at my side, filled with an overpowering hatred. I would not let Lucifer desecrate Lilly’s body. I would fulfill her request to end her torment and stop Lucifer before he had a chance to phase into Heaven and destroy everything my father loved.
I quickly phased to stand in front of Lilly, her face contorted by Lucifer’s malevolence, no longer recognizable as the woman I had given my heart and soul to
. In one swift motion I pulled my dagger from its sheath and raised it above her heart swinging down towards her chest with all my might.
Chapter 25I found myself sitting on the swing on the front porch of my Colorado home. I tried to think of what my last waking memory was and realized it was of Lucifer in his angelic form floating towards me, intent on possessing my body. But, I never actually saw him do it. Before he reached me, I completely blacked out.
“You did well.”
I looked beside me and saw God sitting on the swing, smiling at me.
“But he won. I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.”
God smiled. “Search your heart. Do you really think he won?”
I sat there, thinking back over the last scene I remembered.
“I said your heart, Lilly,” God gently reminded me. “Not your mind.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to do as he suggested.
My heart swelled with so much love and hope it brought tears to my eyes. Without him having to tell me, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, Lucifer had not been completely victorious. Somehow, by some miracle, he failed to destroy what God had made.
I opened my eyes, “How?” I asked.
“Your faith in your family and the love you share with Brand stopped him. It’s something I had hoped Lucifer would have learned by now after spending so much time on Earth.”
“What did you hope he would learn?”
“That love, not hatred and jealousy, gives you the strength you need to make anything happen. It’s a lesson you taught to many of my children but one in particular.
God looked to the other end of the porch and I followed his gaze. Will stood there smiling at me. I jumped out of the swing and ran to him. He held his arms out to me and hugged me tightly to him.
I felt the warmth of his love for me like a warm blanket protecting me from the cold.
But, why was Will here?
I pulled away from him slightly.
“Why are you in my dream?” I asked.
“Because I’m dead, Lilly.”