by J. L. Myers
Cyrus roared over the sudden quiet as Michael snatched the angel blade back. “Slaughter every single angel,” the old king barked as the soldiers and hellions grew twitchy, hissing and growling with the need to kill. “Cut their wings from their backs and lay them at my feet. Then we shall all play a game of hunt and seek. Whoever brings me Lucifer’s and Michael’s heads will be rewarded as the new ruler of Hell.”
The battle broke out at once, the noise deafening as Cyrus continued to scream. Lucifer retrieved the sword that he lost when Darius stabbed him, but Michael pulled him back before he could join the assault.
“He knew all along. My dream was a vision from God,” Michael said as he ripped a feather from his wing and looked directly into Lucifer’s eyes.
The unmasked depression in their silvery depths haunted Lucifer. “What in hell are you talking about?”
Michael shook the look away, letting his black tangled hair shield his eyes as he stared down at the bloody ground. All around the noise grew louder as more and more bodies fell. There was no time for this. “I will return.”
Lucifer balked. “You are leaving?” They were already outnumbered. God was gone. And then Michael vanished along with Azrael and Remiel, the click of their fingers lost to sounds of anarchy.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Any and all sounds from above had ceased, leaving a deathly quiet silence that made Gabriel’s ears hum. The columns shook around them, the tremors threatening to bring the blackening light from above down on her head. The water shimmered over the looking glass that they sat beside, reacting to the wave that descended upon them.
Patting her daughter’s wet hair, a sense of fierce protectiveness made Gabriel’s heart gallop. She clung to her daughter with numb arms as cheers cut through all the quiet.
Cheers of greedy malice that were edged with rabid snarls and unearthly hisses.
They’d lost the battle?
Breathing harder as blood fired through her veins, Gabriel set her sights on the bloody weapons that lay discarded beside fallen bodies. No matter what was coming, no matter how drained she was from helping heal Evangeline, she would protect her child. Kill, flee, it did not matter. Gabriel would do anything to keep her safe.
Looking down at Evangeline’s face, the profound sadness Gabriel saw that was more ancient than anything this young child should be capable of surprised her. “What has happened?” Gabriel asked, though the turning of her stomach promised she already knew. The gash across Evangeline’s neck was no longer gushing, but it was not what threatened them now at this moment. The light above was almost gone, the dim hue turning the last of the glow to a dirty gray.
Tears pooled and fell from Evangeline’s eyes, now bright violet after siphoning Gabriel’s essence. “Heaven is lost. He…needs…”
A flurry of vibration rippled through Gabriel then, and she gasped along with her daughter. With both their eyes wide, the voice of God was like a whisper in Gabriel’s mind, so faint and so far away, so weak. “The end is near and the battle I have lost. Though this is not how we end. There is hope for us yet. A sacrifice of self to set things right…”
Gabriel’s arms around her daughter tightened despite the tingles that attacked them, trying to keep her close as a flurry of questions formed on her tongue.
Not a single one left Gabriel’s lips though as a frail old man appeared beside them. So thin and aged, breaths wheezed from his cracked lips. His milky eyes were surrounded by wrinkled loose skin and were so dull they reminded her of a corpse as he stared at her daughter. Gabriel knew who this was, who he had once been. Even through the aged shell that kneeled before them, an air of power radiated from all around him, haloing his hunched form in pulses that slowed as if in time with the heart he had never possessed.
Gabriel bowed her head. “My dear God.”
Evangeline withdrew from Gabriel’s trapping arms, sliding down to her own knees right before the maker of all but her. Her small hands came up, her soft palms cupping his dry, weathered face. She nodded as if answering some unspoken question between them. “I will. I will be your weapon. I choose light.”
“Evangeline!” Gabriel grabbed her daughter and tugged her back, remembering God’s words of a sacrifice. She hugged her child to her chest. “Whatever you need, use me. Not her. She is only a child. Use me!”
Renewed noises boomed down the long stairway, sending a chill down Gabriel’s spine as blood-curdling screams, clattering metal, and wet thumps and cracks resumed. The last of their kind was still up there, battling to the death. The gray above turned ever darker, each flash of light stealing from all that remained.
God’s bony hand grazed Gabriel’s face as his breath hitched unnaturally in time with his fading light. This time his lips did move, the words being whispered with such strain that they were a barely audible rasp. “All this time I thought your child would be our undoing. I hid her away in fear of what she was and what she could one day cause. Now I see…I was so very wrong.” A small smile broke out across his thin lips and he sighed. “Only a culmination of Above and Below can save us now. Evangeline is our only hope. Our last hope. There is no other way…without her, all that is light will fade to darkness.”
An angel’s lifeless body tumbled down the stairs before vanishing through the ground. Gabriel startled, and God’s touch fell from her face. Soon all that remained up there would come down here for them too.
Thoughts of fleeing raced through Gabriel’s mind once more, tempting her to grab her child and plunge through the looking glass and down to Earth. But then what? Without the light of Heaven and the ability to heal, their survival was on a countdown. Their lives would be a progression of running, hiding, and eventually, being caught and tortured or brutally murdered. Behind Gabriel’s blinking eyes, she saw the carnage, the world turning as black as Heaven until it too resembled Hell. Everywhere would be Hell. There would be no escaping it. Another blink brought her worst fear to mind, the image of her daughter broken and beaten, covered in lashes and bite marks, used and abused until her small body could no longer take it.
Radiating warmth brought Gabriel out of her worst nightmare to see Evangeline’s hand resting on her forearm before it slipped away. “This is the reason for my existence,” Evangeline said calmly, her words centuries wise despite her short fourteen years of life. “The reason God saved me from Hell in the beginning. I saw it all in the garden, Michael taught me the rest, and now is the time. I am ready to serve my purpose. I want to do this. I want to save Heaven.”
“You cannot understand what you are agreeing to.” Gabriel gathered up her daughter’s hands, her eyes pleading for Evangeline to understand the gravity of what she was accepting. “A sacrifice means life to give. Your…life…” Gabriel struggled to complete the sentence as the air in her lungs grew thin. Evangeline’s hands in hers heated up, flashes of blue filigrees coiling out from her tight fingers. Gabriel’s body flared with pain while numbness stripped any mobility away from her.
“I know, Mother. I know.” Evangeline tugged her hands away, determination in her eyes as she kneeled before God.
Gabriel slumped, momentarily paralyzed despite how loud she screamed for her body to fight. Sweat sprouted and her hands pressed into the darkening ground, barely holding her body up, painstakingly creeping her fingers forward to snag the hem of Evangeline’s robe. “No,” Gabriel gasped.
“From one child to another…” God’s words were like a whisper amidst the sounds of chaos above, barely breaking through the panic in Gabriel’s mind as she fisted the material but failed to tug on it. “…forgive me this burden I must instill upon you.”
With a nod, Evangeline captured God’s wrinkled face between her palms. Her eyes met his as Gabriel reclaimed the ability to move and suck air. She reached for her daughter, tears streaming as she cried out.
But it was too late.
With blue glowing from Evangeline’s small hands, the light that hummed around God absorbed back into his hunche
d body—and shot out his milky eyes and into Evangeline’s.
Power and light pulsed out, blasting Gabriel back off the ground. Her wings hit a wall between pillars and her head snapped back, skull cracking and spots dancing in her eyes.
Then it was all over as she hit the ground.
The light vanished as Gabriel rolled sideways and struggled to her feet, eyelids fluttering to clear the blinding flashes from her stinging eyes. The darkness slowly returned, bringing shadow and definition to the circular room and the resettling water of the looking glass.
“Oh my God.” Gabriel stumbled forward and fell to her knees—right in front of her daughter that now glowed like a star. She wasn’t gone. She wasn’t sacrificed to feed God’s power. Now fully healed, Evangeline was his catalyst. His weapon.
And God was no more.
His brilliant essence vanished without a trace, now residing in the small child before her. His final words returned to Gabriel: Only a culmination of Above and Below can save us now. God had never intended to take Evangeline’s life and power into himself. He needed her as a vessel to send his own fading light into, a being that could contain both light and darkness.
Now Evangeline was the biggest target in all of the realms, a child among so much evil.
A child with the weight of all existence on her slight shoulders.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The carnage that surrounded Lucifer tripped him up at every step. The gouges and gashes that marred his body were only partly to blame with blood loss making his head spin and his reflexes slow. Dead bodies were everywhere, twitching hellions lying in twisted heaps among the dwindling angels that fell through the blackening floor. There was no winning this war.
The future was set—and it was grim.
But nothing could make Lucifer surrender. Despite the threat and the losing battle, Lucifer would continue to fight until his dying breath. Chest heaving, sweat pouring, and blood leaking, so long as there was breath in his body, he would never give up. He had too much to fight for. Too much to lose.
Watching from God’s throne, Cyrus screamed, his face burning red with rage. “Get him. Get him now! Break him but bring him to me alive. His life and his death are mine. I am going to kill you!”
Zachias smiled as he led the assault, his red eyes set on Lucifer through the veil. The squealing hellions cut through the remaining angels to gain on Lucifer, closing in tighter by the second. Cyrus may have taken Zachias’s head, but he was clearly going to pass on the favor this time. And he’d gladly offer it up—if it meant securing the safety of the two beings that each held half of his heart.
A sudden cry cut through Lucifer sharper than any blade ever could. He arched his sword out to beat back the hellions that clambered over the dead to get to him. But the scream had not come from Heaven. He knew that young voice in all its agony and shrillness down to his very soul, so identical to her mother… “Evangeline.”
A pang of something that tasted like poison in his throat made Lucifer feel a fresh wave of hate toward himself. Guilt. It was seeping through his veins like ice—because he could no longer stay. He wouldn’t. Gabriel and Evangeline came first. And they needed him.
Backing away, Lucifer knew his time was up. Staying to fight while that coward Michael had fled would make no difference now. God was gone and Heaven was won…by the enemy.
“Stop him!” Cyrus screamed, seeing his retreat.
Lucifer spun, leaping over the dead and dying to get to the stairs. He barely evaded the sweep of Zachias’s sword. Hellions closed in around him, crushing bodies as they neared with stomping wet cracks to leave a grotesque barricade in their wake. Soldiers moved too, strengthening the barrier. Claws swiped and wide mouths lined with jagged teeth snapped—
Lucifer pushed up with a mighty sweep of his black wings. The air tasted like death, and sudden pain in one wing had him falling.
Lucifer landed outside the barrier beyond a thin line of angels. He dodged a hellion that looked like a man-bull, and tucked his wings in tight as he stabbed him, spinning around another hellion with scales and talons for fingers. His sword lopped the second hellion’s head off. The stairs to the Realm of Light appeared, the hellion’s head bouncing down—as Michael rematerialized right in front of Lucifer. A rush of bodies and wielded metal rushed up the steps and sped past Lucifer into the fray as hellions broke through the line of angels.
Michael’s expression was fraught with shock at the scene, which swiftly turned to blind determination. “Told you I would return.” Breath labored, his wings were patchy, so many white feathers missing as if plucked.
Lucifer realized then who the arriving men and women were and how Michael had gotten them all up into Heaven. Most were vampires, created ones and the twelve originals, but the rest…Lucifer’s own grown children armed and rushing into battle. Torn—between the two that owned his heart and the angel hybrids he’d created without even knowing it. There was no other word for it. “You delivered my own here to die?” Lucifer grabbed Michael by the neck, so ready to snap his head sideways.
Thanatos appeared as a fresh scream from below brought Lucifer back into the thick of it all and out of his murderous haze. “There is no time for this,” his son said, clutching Lucifer’s bicep sympathetically. His face was bruised, and more discolorations and cuts marked his arms and legs, likely from battling the vampires before Michael intervened. “They are both dying.”
Still clutching Michael’s neck, Lucifer saw over the archangel’s shoulder down the bloody stairs to a sight he would never forget. His daughter lay in Gabriel’s arms, her mouth gaping with choked screams and tears rushing down her face in never-ending twin streams. Gabriel cried too, her body growing thin and her silvery hair graying. He saw the cause next, the phenomenon of siphoned power and vitality. Their child’s arms were hooked up around her mother’s that held her, her small hands pressed to Gabriel’s forearms and glowing blue. “What is happening?”
“Gabriel lives?” Shoved back, Michael broke free of Lucifer’s chokehold, his sudden shock at seeing Gabriel alive vanishing. “God infused his light in Evangeline. But she is not strong enough.”
Flashes of light redirected Lucifer’s attention as all of Michael’s nephilim materialized with a feather disappearing from each of their hands. Azrael and Remiel appeared too, their wings similarly mottled like Michael’s. With a dark look from Azrael and a sincere one from Remiel, they brandished their swords and joined the battle.
“If Heaven dies, so will your daughter. And if she dies, Heaven will be no more. But she could save us all…” Michael glanced sidelong to his nephilim as they fought the hellions back with the added protection of Azrael and Remiel. The sigh and look of defeat in Michael’s face spoke of unrelenting grief and damning acceptance as he shared a solemn look with Micah. His eyes hardened before leveling back on Lucifer. “With the right help, we can still win this.”
“What do you mean?” How will they help? What will happen?”
Crunching broke through the sounds of battle as hellions devoured dying angels before the ground swallowed them whole.
That shrill cry pierced the air came again.
“There is no time. Go to Evangeline. Keep her alive—and deliver her up here. For once, Lucifer, trust me.”
“Not on your life.” Lucifer slammed his palms into Michael’s chest, ready to do the unthinkable so he could get to his child and flee.
Michael stumbled, a falling vampire getting in the way as blood spurted from its clawed neck. But the man that caught Lucifer’s arms with an iron grip stopped his escape. “Michael speaks the truth. I have seen it. If you do not do this, every one of us dies. Even you.” Bathory peered down at Evangeline as a fresh shriek peeled from her gaping mouth. “Even her. Time is running out. You must act now.”
“Trust in this, Father,” Thanatos implored. “It is our only chance.”
Torn between his head and his heart, Lucifer nodded.
With a glare, Michael
followed Thanatos into battle. Bathory turned away with a final nod, screaming out for the original vampires to use their abilities to gain an advantage. Pops of fire shot up all around. Shards of impaling ice flew, spearing hellions. Tremors shook Heaven, and whirls of wind threw the hellions and soldiers back from the angels and nephilim. They began to level the balance. But it still wasn’t enough. The enemy’s numbers were too great.
Lucifer backed away, terror making his heart pound so hard it was ready to burst. He whirled from the battle, not knowing if he was making the right choice. Not knowing if this would save or slaughter them all. Feet clapping the blackening stairs, his wings flung out as he leaped down, landing in a crouch right beside the looking glass where Gabriel clung to their daughter. Unhooking Evangeline’s strong arms that now glowed blue, Lucifer nodded to Gabriel. “I have got her. I will be her strength.”
Determination not to let go along with a fear of what would happen if she did burned in Gabriel’s hollow eyes. “No, Lucifer…please,” her voice was barely a whisper. “What. If. They. Are…wrong?” She had heard the discussion from above. They both knew what Lucifer was going to do. God’s light, his life, for their child and all of Heaven. And a sacrifice…when Lucifer delivered his child to the battle. But Gabriel was too weak to deny him pulling Evangeline from her lap as she released and crumpled to the graying ground.
“Forgive me if I am wrong. I only want to save you both.”
“F-father?” Evangeline managed to gasp as her eyes fluttered open. Her body jerked with every flare of light that burned out above. “W-what are…you…?” Her lids pinned shut as Lucifer pressed her palms into his chest, right over his heart, and her mouth gaped with a silent scream.
“What I should have done all along. Fighting for light,” Lucifer grated through clenched teeth. He lowered his voice, struggling to form the words through the torture that attacked his entire body. “Fighting to save—what I love.”