by Rae Foxx
Mary nodded. "Where does it stop? Hell?"
"After the soul is forced to relive the worst moments of their lives, all the times they made the worst choices, they go to Purgatory," Luc said. "Therefore, some souls, who maybe only made a few truly bad choices, move through quickly, and some take a very long time." He shook his head. He didn't understand it either. "But souls of Angels aren't meant to be in Purgatory or the River at all. It can disrupt the entire system. Mess with the magic of it all."
He looked at Mary. "It's a very delicate balance. Magic is picky."
She nodded as if she understood completely. "That it is." They exchanged a look, and I wondered if she was beginning to soften toward the King of Abaddon a bit. But then she sniffed and gave him a haughty look before turning her attention back to Cecilio.
"Are you well, Brujo Blanco?" Mary asked. "We can stay with you."
He shook his head. "I am fine. It's like it didn't happen. Go. Save the world."
"We are in your debt, even with the way things went wrong," Lucifer said. I knew it was difficult for him to admit that Cecilio had been helpful after nearly killing him.
We had no time to waste. If Vincent was in the River, we had to get to him before he got to Purgatory, and though it wasn't a literal river, it was a massive flow of souls. So many that it was difficult to pinpoint just one soul in the mix.
There was one question that had bothered me since we saw our sleeping quarters the night before. “Cecilio, there’s one question that I have to ask,” I said. “If it’s none of my business, tell me and I’ll never speak of it again.”
He furrowed his brow waiting for my question.
I pointed to his odd home. “Why the enormous, luxurious, somehow laws-of-gravity defying home?”
He smiled, but his eyes were full of sadness and regret. “I used to have a very large family.”
He didn’t expand. I wondered if he meant a wife and kids, or if he was talking about his angelic parentage. But, I’d asked enough invasive questions for one day. "Come. We have to get to the edge of the wards," I said. "Any chance you can lift them for a few minutes while we disappear?"
Cecilio shook his head. "It would take hours to stop them all and hours to put them back. Faster to walk."
"Okay, then. Luc and Mary in the middle." I led the way this time.
It was nice that Gabriel and Michael had carved a path in for us, but this time I knew where we were going. I was more powerful than all of them, and I needed to get to the River. It was time to take charge.
The walk was shorter, as most of the path carved on the way in was still there. The vines were still broken and leaves pushed aside. The undergrowth already threatened to take the path over again, but all in all, it was easier.
Of course, demons continued to harass us, but they came one or two at a time, so it was nearly laughable. Like being attacked by a toddler. More annoying than dangerous. As we walked, I considered everything.
I'd read Vincent's aura and killed him pretty quickly. What if I'd moved too soon or too rashly? Did he have more to say?
And who had sent the words to Cecilio? It could've been Vincent himself. "I haven't heard of an angel or demon making it to the River before," I mused.
Gabe was closest to me. "Yeah, but I've also never heard of a soul like his being held in Elysium, so this is a time for firsts."
"I guess." I blasted a vine out of the way, then sent another bolt of energy toward an approaching demon.
"Has anyone checked on Jellybean since we started all this?" I asked. "Is he acting as crazy as the rest of them?"
"He was fine when we left the house," Gabe said. "We can pop in and check on him before we go to the river." Gabe walked beside me for a while but shuddered. "Do we have to go to the River? It's so creepy."
I laughed and pushed at his shoulder. "You're so silly. They're just souls."
"I hate it there," he said under his breath.
"It's not like you have to go often. And if Vincent is in the limbo area, we've got to get him out of it and away from possibly entering Purgatory."
While all the demons were freed from Abaddon, the souls were piling up in Purgatory. I knew that, but there was nothing to be done for it. We had all our Fallen wrangling demons and trying to at least keep them invisible.
The souls that were in Abaddon were another story. I had no idea where they were. Hopefully still in Abaddon, but if they figured out how to get out, they'd become ghosts on Earth. We tried to keep ghosts to a bare minimum because, in this day and age, technology made it too dangerous to have a rogue specter roaming around.
I guessed the cat was out of the bag now, though. Humans knew all about demons. If we could get enough magic, maybe we could reset it all. Change the course of what happened.
Humans were supposed to make their choices without absolute knowledge of what came after. They weren't supposed to be scared into submission. They were supposed to choose to be good, to be noble and honorable on their own. Not because they were terrified of Abaddon.
But now they knew. It was all changed.
I hacked more vines away and increased my speed. We had to hurry. Once again, I tried to move with magic, but Cecilio's wards were too strong. He'd spent years layering them on. Even we would've had to work hard to get past them. Like he said. It was faster to walk.
"They appointed me caretaker, did I tell you?" Michael asked. "When Raphael went rogue, his responsibilities were reassigned." The plane that housed the River was technically the same as the demons while invisible on Earth, but it was sealed off with stronger magic than any of us had. God had been involved with it.
Only a few were able to access it at all. That made it all the stranger that an angel's soul had gone into it. Luc and I of the fallen alone could go there, and of the angels, only Joel and Michael.
Another demon launched at us, this one a flier. He looked a bit like a bat, but I knew. I waved my hand and sent him to Abaddon without a second thought.
The ward's weight lifted as soon as I stepped past its boundaries. I knew instantly we were free. Turning, I grabbed Lucifer's hand. "We'll take Mary home. You guys go check on Jellybean. We'll meet you at the house." They nodded and disappeared.
"Ready?" I asked Mary.
She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Queenie, you've got work to do."
We blinked to her living room, where her grandson lounged on the couch. He didn't even flinch when we appeared out of thin air in front of him. "There you are, Granny. Mama wants you to come for dinner."
Mary reached down and pinched his cheek. "Tell her I'll bring dessert." He jumped up and ran out the door, sidestepping me and Luc.
"Mary, what do you get up to that he didn't think twice about us appearing out of the blue?"
She laughed and walked toward the kitchen. "Wouldn't you like to know?”
11
Jellybean laid in the middle of the kitchen, gnawing on a huge steak when we arrived at the house. "He's fine," Michael said. "He was in the back yard and he fed himself. He did break the back door to get out."
I knelt beside the big beast. "I'm so glad you've not gone crazy like the rest of them," I said in a baby voice. Jellybean stopped gnawing on his steak and cocked his ears at me. His tail wagged, slapping against the refrigerator. "Did you hunt yourself some dinner? That's a good boy." I rubbed his head and he resumed his big treat for being a good doggy.
"Can we send him to Mary?" I asked. "I don't like him being here alone, but if he goes back to Abaddon, we might lose him."
Lucifer stared at me.
"What?" I asked.
"I forget sometimes what a softie you are at heart," he said. "You love that big dog, don't you?"
"Of course I do." I gave him another head rub and spoke to Jellybean again. "Don't I? You big wubby-wub."
"Come on, JB," Michael said. "Let's go see if Mary needs a guard dog."
Jellybean finished his steak then walked to Michael. He sat beside him like the goodest good
boy and they both disappeared. "Meet you at the River," Michael said before blinking out of the kitchen.
"Anybody need to do anything before we go?" I asked.
Lucifer and Gabriel shook their heads. They'd both have to hold on tight to me to get into the River plane. Gabe couldn't get in at all without me, and Luc didn't have the magic to do it.
"Here we go." We clasped hands, and I pictured where we needed to go. We'd have to start at the beginning and work our way down until we found Vincent's soul. There was no other option.
As we moved from one plane to another, all three of us spread our wings.
The River's plane was tiny compared to the size of souls that ran through it. There was enough space above them to hover and fly, but if someone came here without wings—like Mary—they'd have to wade through the souls, walking amongst them.
And that was an unsettling experience. Walking through the River meant walking through the souls, and when passing through, their memories inundated us. We'd see whatever they were seeing at the moment, and it was never happy. We'd all tried it once, the curiosity too much to contain.
I was pretty sure nobody had ever tried it twice. I'd jumped out of the River as fast as I could get my wings spread when I tried it.
"Look for a soul of grays and browns. Very dark black, and red. He's done some horrible things on Earth. And of course, you're looking for an angel's soul."
They shined brighter than humans. Even with the coloring, Vincent's should've stood out like a beacon.
Unfortunately, though the River of the Damned was contained in a narrow plane, it was incredibly long. We had a lot of flying to do.
Michael caught up to us after a little while. "Mary is keeping Jellybean for us. Surprisingly enough, she loved him. And he went nuts over her. She was feeding him treats when I left."
I smiled. At least that was one bit of good news in this horrible day...week...month? How long had it been? I'd lost all track.
Our job of finding Vincent was bleak, to begin with, but every few minutes, we'd see a soul that burned a bit brighter than the rest. We couldn't be sure it wasn't Vincent, so we had to stop and check.
The first one was the hardest. "Go ahead," I said. "Someone see if it's him." No way did I want to touch that soul. It floated very slowly as other souls passed it by. That meant it had more bad memories to relive than most of the other souls. It burned brightly, too, meaning it could've been Vincent.
"You're the Queen, you do it," Gabriel said. He held his hands close to his chest and his wings beat hard, keeping him as high in the air as the realm allowed. He truly hated being here, more than the rest of us. But he had a tendency to be empathetic, so the pain in the air that was a passing thought to me was a physical reaction for him.
"I think someone else should do the honors," I said gently. "Luc?"
He spread his hands out as his black wings beat slowly behind him. "No magic. I'm not sure I'd even be able to see if it's him."
Michael grimaced and hid behind Gabe.
"Ack." I waved my hands at them. "You're a bunch of babies." They talked a big game, but when push came to shove, they were like a child running from a spider.
I hovered over the soul and touched the tip of my finger to its aura. It was sticky, like tar. Ugh. The evilest souls felt like that. Thick and gloppy. The purest were light and like touching a spring rain.
I was thrown into a memory, and even though I only touched him with the tip of my finger, it sucked me in completely.
In my head, I knew I wasn't literally there. But the memory was so vivid it wasn't easy to keep a grasp on reality. I looked around.
I was in a small bedroom. A man was chained to the bed, naked and pitiful. He looked half-starved. The walls were dingy, and a strong stench permeated the room. My stomach lurched. Instantly, I wanted out of here. I didn't want to relive this memory, whoever it belonged to. I didn't know if it was the man's on the bed or someone else.
As I stood there trying to figure out how to pull myself from this horror, a rattling sound surprised me. I jumped and whirled around to find a wooden door, and the handle rattled again. The sound of keys on the other side told me this man had been locked in here.
I didn't know why. He was chained to the bed very well. There was no way he could've broken through the restraints, especially in this emaciated condition.
"Hello, my pet. Are you ready for our lesson today?"
The man on the bed whimpered. His legs pulled up. They weren't tied down. He tried to twist onto his side, and he hadn't even opened his eyes yet. As I stood, helpless, the man that entered picked up a knife I hadn't noticed from the table. As he moved toward the pitiful naked man on the bed, I yelled. "Stop it!"
I didn't recognize the man with the knife, but I knew neither of the people in the dream was Vincent. I didn't have to be here experiencing this, the worst of this man's obviously horrible, tainted memories. "Stop!" I ran forward and tried to grab his hand as the knife cut into the naked man's thigh. A ribbon of blood bloomed on his pale skin.
"No," I moaned.
The torture of innocence always made me sick. I could punish the worst sinner without blinking an eye. I could cut an evil person, dismember them slowly and carefully so they lived through most of it.
But the innocent? I couldn't abide their torture.
As suddenly as I was sucked into the memory, I was pulled out.
I sucked in a deep breath and wrapped my arms around Michael. "Shit," I hissed. "What took you so long?"
"We didn't want to interfere until you yelled," he explained.
"Could you hear me?"
"Yeah." He wrapped his arms tighter around me. "I'm sorry. I'll go next."
"Damn right you will," I whispered. "And we need a word."
"Bananas," Lucifer said. "There's no reason we'd say bananas for any other reason while in one of these dreams."
"Ugh, I hate torture dreams," I said. I spent another minute wrapped around Michael as his wings held us up, then I spread my own and put my big girl panties back on. "Let's keep going."
True to his word, Michael sighed and touched the next soul that looked like Vincent's. Within seconds, he yelled. "Banana! Banana!"
Gabe yanked on him and pulled him away from the souls. "Shit," he said. "Some serious fucked up shit."
"What?" I asked. I didn't want to see it, but my curiosity couldn't be contained.
Michael looked at the soul darkly. "He liked animals." He shuddered. "In a really gross way."
"Eww," Luc said. He looked disgusted. "Oh, those people are the worst."
I thought pedos were the worst myself, but that was a close second. Yuck.
"Gabe? You or Luc next?" I asked. I needed more time to recuperate from the torture scene before diving in again.
Luc sighed. "I'll try, but I don't know if it'll work."
It took nearly ten minutes to find another soul that might've been Vincent.
Luc's shoulders slumped as he looked down at the mass of swirling colors. All dark, all evil. "This one looks heinous."
He dove down and touched the soul but went quiet. After several minutes, he called out. "Banana."
Michael and Gabe grabbed his arms and hauled him up. He recovered pretty easily. "Politician," he explained.
We all nodded understandingly. We knew the type. The man probably hadn't any memories that involved direct torture. There wasn't blood on his hands literally.
Only figuratively.
We passed one that might've been Vincent, but when I got close enough, I knew it was female, so we kept going.
With the next, Gabe stuck out his lip. "Please don't be animals," he whispered and lowered himself to touch the soul.
It only took a few moments for him to yell the safe word. We pulled him out and he wrapped his arms around me. "Serial killer," he said. "He was never caught, either."
I hugged him tightly, giving him all the comfort I could. "Did you see the act?"
"No, I saw him c
ataloging his trophies. He killed hundreds of people all over the world. He was so random with it, nobody ever connected him."
I gave him another moment to gather his thoughts, then we continued.
And it was my damn turn again. Shit.
The worst souls always did the worst things. There was slim to no chance that what I'd see wouldn't put a tiny scar on my heart.
And this was my punishment. We saw the worst. In Abaddon, we were able to farm out the work, keep from seeing these things, and keep our people from seeing them directly. Once a soul was judged and sent to Abaddon, we let the demons do their work and punish the soul. Or rehabilitate it.
And all in all, there weren't all that many souls like these. We just happened to be looking for one of the worst of the bunch.
And our punishment, as rebels, as heretics, was just this. We were tortured by doing the torturing. It was our job. It was our destiny. And we took it very seriously.
I dove in headfirst and fell into the middle of a courtroom. Oh, thank goodness. Surely nothing too bad could happen in the middle of a courtroom.
This courtroom was full of people of all ages, races, and sexes. A man sat on the witness stand.
"How do you plead?" The judge asked in a British accent.
Okay, so we were in England.
"He's guilty!" someone in the crowd screamed. The sound of a gunshot ricocheted around us. I ducked instinctively and whirled around.
A woman stood in the middle of the crowd with a small handgun pointed at the man on the stand. "He did it! He killed my little girl."
Police poured in and subdued the woman as the man on the stand stared at his chest in shock. Red blood seeped out of him and soaked the cloth of his white button-down shirt. He gasped for air and slumped over.
The scene changed. He'd relived his death, and now his memories were starting over.