The Holy Dark

by Kyoko M

  “No!” I shouted back.

  Aunt Carmen bared her teeth and swung again and again, slashing my back to ribbons. I lay there yelping into the dirt after every horrible blow, my entire world consumed in agony. She would never stop. She wanted me to suffer. What had I done to deserve this? Maybe she was right. Maybe I was insignificant.

  She finally stopped. I couldn’t move, and it took every ounce of my strength to keep breathing. “Have you had enough yet, Jordan? Are you willing to admit the truth?”

  “Maybe…” I whispered. “…maybe I’m not worthy of Michael. Maybe I’m not smart or powerful or compassionate. Maybe I hate myself more than I hate you or Mulciber or Belial. Maybe I am meant to spend the rest of my days in Hell with the other damned souls that have been trapped here.”

  I struggled with all my might to push up on my hands, wincing as the blood trickled down my arms to pool between my knuckles. I faced her with all the fury I could summon. “But that never gave you the right to treat me the way you did. I was a child. I should have been educated, not humiliated. Our family is small. We could have helped each other heal, but instead, you decided to take your past frustrations with my mother out on me. Well, guess what? It didn’t work. I’m still here, and my mother is in Heaven with her family where she belongs. So do your worst, tia. The only victory I can grasp is that no matter how low I sink…I will never be as wretched a person as you.”

  “Is that what you think will save you?” she sneered. “Your hatred? You are just proving that you deserve to rot with these other degenerates.”

  “It’s not hatred. It’s the truth. And the truth is…I forgave you after you sent me Andrew’s letters. You have nothing left to threaten me with other than physical pain. I won’t let you control my life any longer. I won’t give in to hatred because that’s exactly what you did, and I am not you. Do you hear me? I am not you.”

  Aunt Carmen released a screech of pure wrath, slashing at me one last time. I cringed, but just before the whip landed, she vanished in a flash of red light like a star going supernova. I shut my eyes to avoid being blinded. I almost didn’t want to see who had replaced her as my tormentor. As soon as I reopened them, I knew that the pain had only been an aperitif in comparison to what lay ahead.

  He was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Broad shoulders, big hands with smooth fingertips, solid muscle from years of playing basketball on the streets of Albany, chocolate brown eyes, and the second softest pair of lips I’d ever kissed. His skin was a couple shades darker than my own, but not quite as dark as my father’s. He wore a navy button up shirt, jeans, and a black tie with a single stripe down the middle that matched the color of his shirt. My favorite tie of his collection, in fact.

  “Hey, Jor,” my ex-boyfriend Terrell said.

  I shook my head until my hair nearly covered my entire face. “No. Not you. Please.”

  “Is that any way to greet an old friend? Your oldest friend, actually?” Unlike Andrew and Aunt Carmen’s projections, his voice wasn’t laced with malice. He sounded teasing and sly like his normal self. It sliced into my chest cavity like a surgeon’s scalpel.

  When I didn’t answer, he stepped closer. “Boy, they really worked you over, didn’t they? How are you still in one piece after that?”

  He paused as if remembering. “Then again, you always were a tough cookie. Toughest girl on the block, in fact. That’s what attracted me to you.”

  A weak giggle dripped out of my lips. “It had to be you, didn’t it? Andrew and my aunt weren’t bad enough. They had to bring you in to break me.”

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Michael told me not to bring baggage into Hell. I did my best. I prayed. I thought that maybe I could get myself to a better place before we came here.” I lifted my head enough to see him. “But I knew you’d still show up anyway.”

  He knelt, pushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Didn’t have much of a choice, really.”

  “So what are you going to do? Tell me to kill myself? Tell me to confess my sins to you? Remind me of what a terrible person I am for getting you killed?”

  “No need for violence. I don’t like getting my hands dirty. I’m actually here to offer you a choice.”

  “What choice?”

  “Hell is more than whips and chains, Jordan. You’ve seen all the big, theatrical circles and the grand torture that Lucifer created after he was cast out of Heaven. But the truth is that not every bit of Hell is about making you bleed. There are parts of it that aren’t so bad. There are parts of it more similar to Tartarus, which wasn’t completely a place of eternal torment, or the outermost circle described by Dante Alighieri. What if I told you that I had my own deal for you to make? One that would protect you from Mulciber, from Moloch, from Belial, and from Hell itself?”

  I eyed him. “You don’t have the power or the authority to do that.”

  “You’re underestimating the power of a soul. Each of us can make deals down here, and it doesn’t have to be with the archdemons or the common demons. My deal is simple. What if Gabriel fails the Test, but you and Michael prevail? You would be left down here alone. You’d be at the archdemons’ mercy until Judgment Day. You’d be torn apart and violated for every remaining second of your existence. Is that what you want? I can save you. Give me your soul and I can buy your safe passage. We can be given a small cottage on the outer circles where there is no torture. We could live together. We could be happy. You’d never be alone again. Isn’t that what you were always afraid of?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I’m afraid of. This is wrong. You’re asking me not to have faith in Gabriel. That’s the most selfish offer I’ve ever heard.”

  His brown eyes hardened into onyx. “You saw Gabriel’s state. He’s so weak. He’s a shell. All the trauma from being trapped here has worn him down. Can you truly tell me that somewhere deep inside, you don’t have doubts?”

  I tried to look away, but he caught my chin in his hand. “This is your existence we’re talking about. If he fails, then everything is lost. You’ll never get to see Lily grow up. You’ll never get to have that dream wedding you pretend you don’t want, but secretly do. Your story will end here and every single regret in your heart will suffocate you until the end of days. I’m offering you a way out. I love you, Jordan. I just want you to be safe.”

  I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. “P-Please, don’t say that to me. Please.”

  He smiled. “Come on, Jor. You know me better than that. I knew you didn’t love me back then. It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was my fault!” I cried. “I should’ve told you the truth instead of just leaving. You deserved to know. I was so cruel to you when I left just because I was afraid that I’d drag you down with me, and I still did it. And your family, God, they never knew that it was my fault you died. I see their faces in my nightmares. I have dreams where I’m the one in the coffin and they bury me alive because of what I did to you. I should have been there to stop Belial. I could’ve saved you, Terrell. I could’ve saved you.”

  Terrell shook his head. “It’s too late for that. The past is the past. I don’t care about being dead. I care about you. I care about your future. If you don’t want to do this for yourself, do this for me.”

  “What about Michael? He’d never let me stay here alone. He’d come back. He’d find a way to get me out.”

  “There is no other way to get you out. You know that. Once you’re here, Mulciber’s not going to let you go. If she loses the other two, Lucifer’s going to go postal on her and then she’ll take it out on you. Do you want that—all of her attention focused on you?”

  The very thought made me want to curl up into a little ball. My mind flashed back on the spikes protruding from Gabriel’s body at every angle, how agonizing it had to be for him to even breathe. I’d be worse off than that. She’d find a way to make it possible.

  “It’s not about me—”

  “—
shouldn’t it be? Look at what you’ve done to help someone you care about. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. Why is it that you can believe in everyone but yourself, Jordan? Why do you believe you’re not worth saving?”

  “Because I make a mess of everything. I couldn’t save Andrew, or my mother, or you. My life is a laundry list of failures. I have to make things right no matter what it does to me. That’s my responsibility as a Seer. I’m anointed. I’m supposed to help those in need, dead or alive.”

  “You can’t help anyone if you’re suffering. The only reason you’re fighting this is because you’re scared. I know you. I know you better than anyone. I was your first. You told me all the gory details of your past. You let me in because you trusted me, more than you trusted your own husband. You can be honest with me in a way that you can’t be honest with him. You can finally make up for your mistake if you stay with me. You can finally be freed of the biggest burden in your life. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

  He let the silence tell it all. I couldn’t deny that. I wanted him to forgive me more than anything. I’d never found out the details of how Belial killed him. I only knew that they’d exchanged final words and he told Belial to do what he had to do. He’d died brave. He was a better man than I deserved by far. I’d been carrying the weight of that guilt ever since I left him. What would it feel like to have those chains lifted?

  His offer made sense. It was reasonable, and it was something I actually wanted. Seers all died bloody. It was never an ‘if’—only a ‘when.’ The best we could hope for was to go out swinging and take some evil bastards down with us. If I did this, I could cheat Mulciber and Belial. I could make them pay for what they’d taken from me. I could finally win a battle against them on my own terms.

  “Terrell, I…I do think that it’s a good offer,” I whispered. “I’d rather have a small victory than no victory at all.”

  “Then just say it, baby, and be free.”

  “I…”

  I coughed as another ripple of pain shot through my ribs, hard enough that I shut my eyes to try and block it out. When I opened them, I saw the silver of my wedding band glinting at me, and the blood that had pooled beneath my hand. I lifted my hand and the blood had formed an odd pattern in the dirt—four tendrils whose shape reminded me of angel wings. Then I remembered why I was here. I remembered how my story began and how I told myself it would end.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I came here to save Gabriel, not myself. I’m not leaving without him.”

  “You would damn yourself for his sake?”

  I met his gaze with a fierceness that I had never previously known. “In a heartbeat.”

  “Then I have nothing left to say.”

  He stood. The wind kicked my hair up into my face. By the time it settled, he was gone. It was over.

  It was finally over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  MICHAEL

  I was unsure of what to expect after the hellscape entered my body. Long ago, my Father had taught me the importance of forgiveness—for myself, for my brothers and sisters, and for the human race. Before my time as a human, it became like a reflex to simply let things go. Then I lost my memory and lived as one of them for almost a year. I learned more during that brief amount of months than in an eternity in Heaven simply reading about them.

  It was never about selfishness. It was about fear and uncertainty. Both of those things festered inside the soul until it was impossible to see past their own sins, their own mistakes, their own failures. It was like a virus, spreading until everything was corrupted and destroyed.

  I opened my eyes to see the one person I never expected to be my first part of the Test.

  “Well, this is certainly a bit of a twist, isn’t it?” Belial asked in his usual posh voice.

  He wasn’t garbed in his elegant robes any longer. He was dressed in a crisp white suit with a powder blue tie and gold cufflinks. His hair was cropped short and slicked back with oil. I hadn’t seen him with that hair and clothing in millennia. Most importantly, though, the wings sprouting from his back were still snow-white rather than midnight black.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, standing up. The chains around my wrist were gone and it became rather hard not to grab him by the throat.

  He arched an eyebrow. “No pun intended?”

  “Answer the question, you son of a bitch. Is this another part of your plan?”

  “This has nothing to do with a plan, dear Michael. This has nothing to do with your wife or Gabriel. This is about you.”

  “What about me?”

  He folded his hands behind him and began to pace. “Do you remember the night before the rebellion in Heaven?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I came to you and asked you to join us. You refused.”

  “And?”

  He stopped and aimed his heavy gaze in my direction. “You told me not to go through with it. You told me that we were friends and you didn’t want to hurt me if it came to war. You said that if I changed my mind, you would protect me and ensure that I would not reap the punishment of my brethren.”

  “And you still said no, so what’s your point?”

  “You could have stopped it, Michael. You could have stopped me from falling.”

  I stilled. “What?”

  He marched closer. “Why do you think I came to you that night? It wasn’t just for an alliance, Michael. I wanted you to talk me out of it.”

  I stared at him and something inside me unfurled. Panic. Disbelief. Horror. “Belial, you were beyond insistent. We argued for hours. I listed why it was a bad idea and you refuted my claims. You wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “I never wanted reason,” he spat. “You were my older brother. Everyone looked up to you. I was charming and handsome and everyone loved me, but they respected you. I knew that if you truly believed in me, then I could stay in Heaven and become as great as you. But you didn’t. You didn’t fight to make me stay. You let me go.”

  “You chose this path of your own volition, Belial. You can’t pin this on me because you regret your choice.”

  “I was young. Impetuous. You knew better. Just tell the truth. You wanted me gone so you could rule unchallenged.”

  “That’s a lie!” I shouted.

  “We were both up for the spot of Commander. Tell me that wasn’t part of your motivation. Look me in the eyes and tell me you weren’t ambitious. Who could resist the title of Prince of Heaven’s Army? All the power and reverence you could ever desire came with that title. You sacrificed your own brother for glory.”

  He leaned in until we were only inches apart, his voice a mere hiss. “Tell me I’m lying.”

  My throat cinched closed. I couldn’t say the words because they just weren’t true.

  He searched my eyes for a long moment and then moved away. “So it is true. You allowed me to fall in order to secure your position in Heaven’s pantheon.”

  “I did want you to stay, Belial,” I said hoarsely. “But even if you had, the war still would have happened, and I knew that the angels could only win with me as their leader. You were a brilliant strategist and fighter, but we both know you weren’t ready.”

  Belial laughed. “And you figured that after I fell, I’d be made a Prince of Hell. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

  “You should have listened to me, brother.”

  “Yes, because we all know how wise and noble you are,” he sneered. “You’ve gone to great lengths to tell Jordan to let you in, but you never told her how close we were before the Fall. You never told her that you were tempted by the plan to rebel. Why is that, Michael?”

  I gritted my teeth. “She didn’t need to be any more confused than she already was.”

  “So you made a decision for her, despite chastising her for doing the same to you.”

  “It’s not like that—”

  “You can’t lie to me anymore. Not here. You were af
raid of how she would see you if she knew how well we got along. To her, I’ve been nothing but a monster all these years. She’d be horrified if she knew the truth, and you kept it from her because you selfishly wanted her for yourself. She thinks we hate each other because we’re on opposite sides, but it’s only because we’re so similar. Our situations could have been reversed. You could have become one of the Fallen and I could have been Commander once upon a time.”

  I shook my head. “No. That’s not true. I was faithful—I am faithful. I serve the Lord, not myself.”

  “Is that why you’re in Hell right now, in the midst of a deal with an archdemon? For His glory? Did the Father or the Son tell you to do this?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You have grown arrogant with power, Michael. Your actions are purely for your own interests. You no longer deserve the title of Commander.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “Admit it!” he roared. “The only reason you didn’t rebel was because you were power hungry. You weren’t an exceptional man until the day they handed you the sword and shield.”

  “Shut up!” I tackled him to the ground and then grabbed him by the collar, shaking him. “I am nothing like you! You were given the gift of eternal life and a place where you could be happy, but that wasn’t good enough for you. You wanted more. You wanted monuments built in your name. You wanted endless spoils that you didn’t deserve. It was your ego, not mine, that cast you out.”

  He didn’t try to free himself; instead glaring with those heathen eyes that seared clear through my skull. “Keep telling yourself that and someday you might believe it.”

  I raised my fist to punch him, but it hung there in the air as if it were frozen. My chest heaved with uneven breaths. My lungs felt shredded.

  Finally, I dropped my arm. “Damn you. I should have tried harder to stop you that night. I was wrong.”

  “Then confess your sins, brother. You know you deserve to be here. You let me fall so that you could rise. Hell has your name written all over it.”

  I hesitated, my brow furrowing deeper. “What?”