by Eva Brandt
Lucifer didn’t seem intimidated, but he stepped away from me anyway. “It looks like I need permission from your patron to court you now. My own former underlings are giving me a smack down. What’s the world coming to?”
“If you wanted them to be polite, maybe you shouldn’t have stopped being the devil,” I pointed out with a tiny grin.
Seconds later, I realized what I’d just said and to whom. I wanted to take my words back, but I didn’t get the chance. Lucifer burst into laughter, not offended in the slightest. “Touché, Alyssa. Yes, I suppose you are correct there. But I did have my reasons for doing that. Leviathan knows that. He’s just not very convinced I made the right choice, not anymore. But you and I are going to prove him wrong.”
He brushed his fingers over my neck, softly, gently, as if he was taking my pulse. “You are my hope. My dream. My happiness. Mine.” His hand withdrew and I felt the absence of his touch like a strange, physical blow. “I will claim you eventually, but in the meantime, a deal’s a deal.”
He extended his hand, and I realized he was still holding the apple that had fallen from the tree. When he flicked his finger, the fruit was split in two, as if a sword had sliced through it. Lucifer offered me the half he hadn’t bitten into. “Go ahead. Eat. It will help you return to your body. But be careful. You might not like what you find out there.”
“What?” I asked him, now alarmed. “Why?”
“Let’s just say your lovers haven’t been handling your condition very well. I can’t blame them. I might have been just as upset if I’d been placed in their position. But fortunately, I’m not. Now go ahead and eat the apple.”
Eating demonic food stuffs in a space that looked like The Garden of Eden, from Lucifer’s own hand, wasn’t a very good idea. But the deal we’d made went both ways, and so he was compelled to help me get out of here.
“Okay, but I hope you know that if this poisons me or something, I will find a way to come back to haunt you.”
“If anyone could do that, dearest, it’s you,” he replied. “But I think you know very well that I wouldn’t poison you.”
My heart skipped a beat. Not wanting to analyze the reason for the funny feeling too closely, I bit into the fruit.
In fairy tales, whenever Snow White ate the poisoned apple, she immediately fell to the ground, dead. I didn’t fall, nor did I die. Instead, I started floating, as if the damn apple had given me wings. For a few seconds, I lost my balance and flailed around mid-air. Lucifer just laughed at me, the bastard.
“Don’t panic. Let it happen. This is normal.”
“You have a fucked up definition of normal, you know that?” I asked him, knowing I shouldn’t continue defying him like this, but unable to control myself.
“I’m a fallen angel, formerly known as Satan. What did you expect?” He winked at me, as if this was a game and I wasn’t hovering between life and death. “Just trust me on this one, okay? You’re safe, I promise. Let go of your panic and the power will carry you home.”
I had no choice but to believe him. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax.
At first, I couldn’t get it right. I kept flailing about like a wounded bird, since the mental state of calm Lucifer had mentioned was impossible for me to reach. It was uncomfortably close to having a seizure, except I was aware of every second of it. I decided I couldn’t follow Lucifer’s advice, so instead, I needed a new approach. I channeled my fury and frustration into my core, turning it into pure determination. I remembered my lovers, my parents, my familiar, and how much I wanted to go back to them.
I hadn’t survived my hellish first year just to succumb to a demonic illness, for fuck’s sake. I was better than this. I might not have full control of my magic yet, but the power was there. I just needed to tame it, if only a little.
After what seemed like forever, I regained control of my body, enough, at least, that I was no longer adrift. I would’ve reveled in my success, but it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. As I started floating upwards, toward my own world, I could suddenly hear a woman screaming at the back of my mind. A whirlwind of incomprehensible energy assaulted me, threatening to tear me to pieces.
And then, a shield of bright stars surrounded me, protecting me from the onslaught of power. “Go on, dearest,” a voice whispered in my head. “You’re free. For now, you don’t belong here. But be prepared. I will come for you.”
That almost sounded like a threat, and I believed he fully meant it. There were so many other things I’d have liked to ask him. Why did he want me so badly? I was just a regular human. Leaving aside my ancestry, I wasn’t that special, not enough to warrant such attention from Lucifer, at least.
But the stars were ushering me along and Lucifer vanished back into the nothingness. As the blackness surrounded me again, I screamed, terrified that I would be lost and abandoned, trapped in my own head once again.
The sound echoed around me, much louder than I expected. The simple fact that I heard it shocked me to the core. I snapped my eyes open, only to find myself lying in a comfortable bed, in a room I didn’t recognize.
The unfamiliarity was a little unnerving, but still, it was clear Lucifer had kept his word. Of course he had. Demonic contracts were binding and he couldn’t have gone against it. Did that also mean that he’d been truthful in what he’d told me about my lovers? If so, I needed to get a move on, stat. Before I’d fallen ill, the school had been against Stefan and Mikael. I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned they’d gotten hurt in my absence.
With shaking hands, I tossed the quilt off myself and slid out of the bed. Just as I was about to stand, a familiar canine form manifested from the corner of the room. It was, of course, Shiro and he bounded to my side in a bundle of white fur and enthusiasm. “Lyssa!” he exclaimed, wagging his tail so hard his whole bottom half was shaking. “You’re back! Can you hear me? Can you understand me?”
“Uh… Yes. I’m fine, Shiro. And of course I can understand you.”
When he jumped on the bed, I hugged his neck and passed my hand through his fur. That was when I noticed something wasn’t right. He wasn’t as clean and cared for as usual. Worse still, I could feel his ribs through his coat, as if he’d lost a significant amount of weight. “Shiro? What’s wrong? Did someone harm you? Did they cast another spell on you?”
“Nobody hurt your familiar, Ms. Michaelis,” Professor Grim replied in Shiro’s stead. He manifested from the shadows, with his scythe hovering mid-air behind him. “He hurt himself. You’ve been unconscious for three months. And you’ll find a lot can change throughout that time.”
Acceptance
I’d always known being an epileptic was pretty shitty. I lost time often in my absence seizures and it wasn’t unusual to recover consciousness with no memory of the past hours of my life. But never had I believed that I’d experience a situation like the one I was currently in.
If Professor Grim was to be believed—and I had no reason to doubt him—three whole months had passed while I’d been in status epilepticus. It wasn’t impossible for coma to settle in under such circumstances, but the kind of brain damage I must’ve suffered throughout this time should’ve kept me from returning to my previous life.
And yet, I was standing and walking around fine, experiencing no discomfort. It was undoubtedly a side-effect of Lucifer’s magic.
It was also not something anyone at the academy had been capable of. “Morrigan tried to stabilize your condition and bring you back, but by the time she intervened, the damage was already done,” Professor Grim explained as he performed a complex series of incantations on me. “Humans don’t fare well here. Suffice to say, your lovers didn’t take that news well.”
“I heard,” I replied, feeling increasingly agitated. Professor Grim was refusing to let me out of his quarters and I was Not Happy. “What happened?”
“In a minute. Let me just complete this spell.”
I suppressed the urge to tap my foot and fidg
et impatiently. Professor Grim’s approach to diagnosis and healing was about as eccentric as he was. His scythe was currently swirling around me in a dizzying circle, threatening to take my head off if I moved a muscle.
I doubted he meant it as a threat, but I couldn’t forget Professor Grim was a unique entity with sensibilities very different from my own. If I underestimated him or made a mistake, my deals with Lucifer might be for nothing, as my life would come to an unpleasant end.
After what seemed like forever, the scythe stopped spinning and returned to his hands, dissipating into nothing. Professor Grim nodded in satisfaction. “I must congratulate you. You are unharmed—or as unharmed as you can be, considering your recent interaction with a certain fallen angel. Of course, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but for now, I suppose we should be happy you’re awake.”
“Yes, that does sound like a huge plus for me, Sir,” I replied, a little more bitingly than I’d have liked. “I think I’m needed here.”
“I can’t argue with you there. But be wary, Ms. Michaelis. Lucifer is far more than he seems. No matter what he tells you, he has his own agenda.”
“The same can be said for every single person in the world. Everyone just wants a little happiness, at any cost. I’m no different, Sir. Now, can you please tell me where I need to go to follow mine?”
“Yes, of course, Ms. Michaelis. How rude of me to keep you here like this. Simply go down the stairs, leave my humble abode, and you’ll see your lovers’ new lair straight ahead.”
Lair? What the fuck had happened when I’d been in a seizure-induced coma? Was he referring to Stefan’s cave or to something else entirely?
Deciding I could ask Shiro these questions, I thanked Professor Grim and left the room. As I sped down the winding staircase of the building, I asked, “Shiro, what’s going on?”
“Well, it’s like this, Lyssa. After you got sick, the Lady Morrigan decided you couldn’t stay in the academy any longer. She believed excessively demonic things might worsen your condition. There was some talk about transferring you to The Heavens, but we couldn’t do that, not unless the angels came after you again. So in the end, Professor Grim took you in his space, which is more like a neutral zone. It seemed to work since your worst seizures stopped, but it wasn’t a real solution.
“It also meant that he and Lady Morrigan were the only ones allowed to see you. I was included after much testing. I’m a hell hound, but my demonic nature is mostly latent, so it doesn’t affect you. Suffice to say, your males weren’t so lucky. They ended up waiting outside, although to this day, I’m not sure to what extent it was their idea.”
He sounded confused and uncomfortable, but I didn’t understand why until I left the building. A monstrous, bulging pustule had appeared a few dozen feet away from Professor Grim’s scythe-like tower. Its surface rippled and bubbled like boiling tar. As I watched, I could’ve sworn I caught a glimpse of twisted hands and faces reaching out to me from underneath the inky substance.
Instinctively, I took a step forward, my stomach turning at the thought that my lovers were stuck there. Shiro grabbed the hem of my new dress and stopped me. “Be careful, Lyssa. That thing… It tends to not react well when people approach. Just the other day, I heard it ate some students.”
“But that’s exactly why I have to go, Shiro,” I told him. “I need to help them.”
“No, you don’t understand, Lyssa. Your males are fine. They’re unharmed. It’s everyone else who is the problem. As I understand it, that thing is an expression of your males’ darkness. They’re inhabiting it and it’s hurting people.”
Wonderful. I was gone for three months and my lovers had decided to camp out in the cannibalistic, monstrous love child of a butterfly cocoon and a trailer. How was this my life?
I stared at the strange, disgusting pustule and took a deep breath. “Well, I guess that settles it then. I don’t think it’s dangerous for me.”
Shiro whimpered, his tail now between his legs. “But Lyssa…”
I hated worrying him, especially after just waking up from a long coma, but I had no choice. “They need me and I can’t fail them. Besides, Shiro, I trust them to not hurt me. And even if I didn’t, some things are more important than others.”
If they had surrounded themselves with such poison, I had to draw them out. Our relationship had suffered after what I’d found out from Archangel Michael, but in my heart, I had still hoped that something could be salvaged. That was why I’d reached out to them before I’d fallen ill. I hadn’t changed my mind. I would reach that goal, no matter what price I had to pay.
Decision made, I approached the pustule. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t what happened. The fleshy wall parted like a door, inviting me inside.
I’d seen this sort of thing before during my stay at the academy, the first time being on the day of my arrival here. But it was different now. When I walked into the depths of the strange cocoon, the dark edges of the wall extended like fingers, caressing my body.
It should’ve been terrifying, maybe even disgusting. To a certain extent, it made me uncomfortable. But at the same time, I felt echoes of my lovers’ magic within that touch, so it also encouraged me, telling me that they were waiting for me here.
Finding them turned out to be pretty easy. The cocoon wasn’t too big and only had two massive chambers. The first one I entered was empty, but in the second one, I found my targets.
Meph, Callum, and Stefan were all leaning over a kneeling Mikael, although I couldn’t immediately figure out why. Magic pulsed around them, vivid and bright, so powerful it felt alive. My breath caught and my knees went weak.
It hadn’t been that long since I’d seen them. For me, it felt like an hour, if that. Even so, they looked different. Like Shiro, they had physically changed, far more than I’d expected.
Mephistopheles was bulkier, his body having grown more demonic in my absence. His skin was a darker crimson and his wings boasted sharp, wicked spikes. His tail was longer and its triangular tip had turned as sharp as a razor. Similarly, Stefan seemed to have become a little more wolf-like. His fur was thicker and he wasn’t wearing clothes at all anymore.
Callum had changed less, from a physical point of view, but there was an aura of despair around him that hadn’t been there before. He’d always been a very sexual person, emanating lust wherever he went. Now, that feeling had been replaced by utter hopelessness.
And then, there was Mikael. He was on the floor, with his head bent and his naked back exposed. The stumps on his amputated wings were turning into new appendages, although they didn’t look like the ones he’d had before. Instead, shadows flickered over his bare skin, both pulling away and sliding into him. TB wriggled around next to him in impatient anguish.
Whatever my lovers were doing stopped mattering when they sensed my presence. Like one being, they turned toward me, and I froze as I found myself facing four pairs of dead eyes.
“Hi,” I somehow managed to say. “So… I’m back.”
The words came out stilted and inappropriate, insufficient for the depth of the moment. For a few seconds, we just stared at one another, the silence stretching between us awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to do, and they didn’t seem to have the courage to move or approach me.
At last, Shiro took the initiative and let out an angry bark. “That’s enough, foolish males. Yes, she’s alive. Yes, she’s really here. Do something, or I will deem you unworthy of her attention.”
I wasn’t sure any of them understood his words, but the bark alone was enough to convey the message and snap them out of their trance. Mikael shot to his feet, his eyes wide and his magic flailing around him in agitated waves. “But how? We were told the chances for your recovery were slim to none.”
I debated the merits of hiding what had happened earlier, and then remembered we’d promised one another to always be honest. “Lucifer. It seems he’s not done with me yet. He’s the o
ne who healed me.”
Meph pursed his lips, clearly displeased by my explanation. “I see. That makes sense.”
It didn’t, not to me. As far as I was concerned, everyone had started to behave in an illogical manner. He knew more about this whole story than he’d told me, and I’d drag it out of him by force if I had to.
But first, I had to make sure no one was irreversibly damaged by this disaster. “What are you guys up to? What’s all this?”
As I spoke, I waved a hand in Mikael’s general direction and pointed at the strange pulsing walls. “Why do I get the feeling you’ve been messing with things you shouldn’t have touched?”
“Because you’ve always been very smart.” Callum smiled sharply. “You might as well know, then. We were trying to extract Mikael’s demonic essence.”
“We knew we needed an angel to heal you, but after a month or so, it became obvious they weren’t willing to help out,” Stefan elaborated. “We even tried to move you to The Mortal Realm, but that just made it worse.”
Wow. Shiro hadn’t mentioned that.
“In the end, we realized we were on our own with this,” Mikael offered. “But if I regained my divine powers, if I managed to remove the demonic magic polluting me, I’d be able to heal you, to bring you back.”
It was the exact opposite of what he’d done to himself when we’d torn the familiar bond between us. I was horrified to think that he was willing to once again mutilate himself for my sake.
“Are you all crazy? Don’t you realize I would have never wanted something like that?”
“It’s not always about what you want, Alyssa,” Meph replied. “When someone suffers, that person is not the only one in pain. We’re selfish enough to not care about your wishes, as long as that pain stops, for us.”
His voice sounded deeper, rougher, and I realized Mikael wasn’t the only one affected by the process. Right. No wonder they looked different if they were extracting Mikael’s demonic energies. Their demonic qualities were becoming more pronounced. And Callum was undoubtedly having trouble because he was still carrying the familiar bond I’d rejected.