by Kyoko M
“You’re right,” I mumbled. “I deserve to be here. Not you. You were the best of us. You were the symbol of light in the darkness. Without you, no one knows where to turn for hope, for faith, for purity. I should have been smarter, stronger, faster.”
“Yes. You should have been, but you weren’t. It’s too late. Give in, brother. Let Hell overwhelm you. Pay for your sins in blood and accept the things that you cannot overcome.”
My eyes shut. Yes. I could see it now. He was right. I could serve penance here for what I’d done. So many sins. I had to pay for my crimes.
“I…”
“You what?”
Say it, a slick voice droned in my ears. Admit defeat. No need to be proud, soldier. Lay down your arms. Embrace the end. No one can escape it, not even you. Stop fighting it.
My eyes flew open. Fight. That was it.
I stood. “You were right, but not about this. About something else. That’s the key to the Test. The only way to win is to not play. Inaction can sometimes win more battles than fighting. Maybe I will lose the Test. Maybe Jordan will too. But I didn’t come all the way down here to give in just because I’ve made mistakes in the past. That’s what forgiveness is truly about—giving yourself the time to fix what you’ve broken. I can never take back what Mulciber and Moloch have done to you, but I can bring you out of this hole and spend the rest of my days putting the pieces back together. I owe you my life, brother. Always. I’ll find some other way to square things with my soul.”
“You won’t win.”
“I don’t need to win. I just need to survive.”
The wind kicked up again, brushing the ends of my hair against my eyelashes. Gabriel’s visage flickered and then faded.
It was over.
Thank God.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JORDAN
The same stomach-lurching, kidney-drop-kicking, intestine-entangling sensation wormed through my body as the hellscape exited. I retched and gagged as it poured out of my nose, my mouth, my ears, gathering back into the disgusting intangible blob it had been when Mulciber sent it to me. As my vision cleared and my senses normalized, I realized it had all just been an illusion. My kneecaps were still intact and the lash marks on my back had vanished.
The archdemon held out both hands, cupping them, and the blob hovered there between them. She spoke in low tones to the orb as if it were sentient, and I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Michael and Gabriel were frozen in place, their eyes glowing orange like the inside of a flame. I’d finished my Test first. Did that mean I had less baggage than the two of them? Scary to think so.
“No,” Mulciber said, her serpentine eyes flicking over to me. “She didn’t. She couldn’t have. It’s not possible. She’s just a girl.”
The hellsphere dissipated into an ash cloud. Mulciber’s shoulders tightened and she stomped towards me. With a flick of her wrist, the chain connected to my manacle wrapped around my throat and squeezed. I grabbed at it as the rusted metal dug into my skin hard enough to leave bruises.
“What have you done?” she spat, plunging her hand into my hair and jerking my head back. “How did you survive the Test? Is this some sort of trickery? Did your Scribe find a way to circumvent your tormentors? If he did, so help me, I’ll rip out your intestines and knit them into a sweater, you pathetic scrap of crotch droppings!”
“Didn’t…cheat…” I gasped out. Red stars and pinwheels danced around my eyes. She was seconds away from killing me.
“You’re lying,” Mulciber growled. “I know the darkness of your soul. I’ve seen it. There is no way you overcame what you saw. You may be strong, but you’re not that strong. All it took to unravel you once was the death of someone you loved.”
“Character…development…”
She backhanded me so hard that I skidded a foot away through the dirt, leaving a trail. The chain clanged taut as I reached the end of it. Darkness crept into the corners of my vision as I asphyxiated.
Just before I could pass out, Mulciber let out a roar and waved her hand yet again. The chain fell slack in my lap. I gulped in air as fast as I could.
“Fine,” she said, as if speaking to herself. “Perhaps I underestimated you. You may have passed, but your husband and Gabriel will not. Just you wait. I may have lost Michael, but your soul is still mine for the taking.”
I coughed several times until my throat was raw. Then, Michael’s posture straightened as if he were regaining consciousness. He too bent over and dry-heaved as the hellscape poured out of him and formed a hovering globe of power. Mulciber strode over to it and started a conversation again.
I crawled over to my husband and rubbed his back while he recovered. “Hey, stranger.”
He offered me a weak smile. “Hey. Still alive?”
I rubbed my sore neck. There were small cuts and scrapes from where the chain dug in. “For now. Did you—”
Mulciber elicited a hideous shriek not unlike a vulture being gutted with a dull fishing hook. I winced and stuck my pinky in my ear to make sure it hadn’t been punctured by that sound. “Guess that answers that question.”
“Inconceivable!” she shouted as the hellscape vanished. “How did you beat my Test? You’ve slaughtered thousands in the name of your Lord. Your hands are just as dirty as mine, Prince of Heaven’s Army.”
Michael gave her nothing but a cool exterior and shrugged one broad shoulder. “Win some, lose some.”
“Laugh while you can, archangel. You and your wife may have prevailed, but I spent days laying into your sweet Gabriel. He has nothing left. I broke him. He won’t beat the Test and that means Jordan is my prisoner forever. Let me see you be cavalier about that.”
Michael said nothing, but he did reach over to hold my hand. Both were sweaty and smudged with dirt and blood, but it was still comforting nonetheless. We watched Gabriel’s motionless form with rapt attention. I didn’t know if God could hear me down here, but I prayed anyway. Gabriel was the embodiment of faith. I could believe in him a thousand times before I believed in myself. He had to come through. He just had to.
Time stretched like Laffy Taffy on a hot summer day. I gnawed a hole in my lip. It hurt. Come to think of it, it hurt a lot. My entire body was sore like I’d run a fifty mile marathon and then caught the flu the next day. My muscles, my joints, everything, burned like they’d been overexerted. What the hell was wrong with me?
I glanced down at my soul tether and then felt the blood drain out of my face. I could actually count how many threads were left—twelve. I couldn’t stay much longer or the Test wouldn’t matter. Without my body, my soul would be up for grabs, and I knew Mulciber would be the first to wrap her fingers around it.
At long last, Gabriel’s body shuddered violently and he expelled the hellscape in trembling gasps. Mulciber swept it up in her hands, which I noticed were visibly shaking, and engaged it. I tried to read Gabriel’s expression, but his face was slack and weary from pain. Michael’s hand clutched my own.
After a while, the sphere exploded into a puff of black dust. Mulciber stood stock still. I held my breath.
“You maggots,” she whispered. “All three of you passed.”
I closed my eyes. A sob of pure elation slipped from between my chapped lips. We’d done it. We’d won our souls.
Michael’s fingers squeezed mine in warning. I opened my eyes to see Mulciber’s left hand lifting towards her body. She tugged one of the vines covering her torso free and let it unfurl. As soon as it hit the ground, it burst into flames. She turned to face the two of us and her hair whipped around her like an angry cat’s tail.
“You have destroyed me. My master will unmake me because of what you’ve done. I don’t care about the deal. I can only promise you one thing. You will not leave Hell in one piece.”
With an anguished scream, she lashed the fiery whip at me. I rolled to the side and it seared clear through my chain, freeing me. Good. Now I just had a football field to run before she made sautéed
mincemeat out of me.
“Get Gabriel!” I told Michael as I rose to my feet. “I’ll keep her distracted.”
“Distracted?” Mulciber laughed. “Child, you have no idea what lies ahead for you. I am going to peel the flesh from your bones like beef jerky and feed it to my hellhounds.”
She swiped at me again. I threw myself into a back roll. “Mulciber, if you kill me, you’ll become a human soul. You’ll lose all of your power. Is that what you want?”
“That is nothing compared to what my master will do when he finds out what I’ve done. The only satisfaction I can still find is in tearing you limb from limb.”
She’d gone completely off the deep end. Okay. Time for a tactical retreat.
I sprinted towards the stands of the arena, searching for anything to defend myself with. I checked over my shoulder to see Michael carefully extracting Gabriel from the spikes. I needed to buy him a few minutes at the very least. Precious minutes slipping away like sand through an hourglass. Another pang of pain bolted through my chest. Another thread gone. Eleven left.
Mulciber’s whip hit the wall only inches from my right arm, sending sparks and bits of fire bouncing in all directions. I climbed onto the ledge and into the stone stands, scanning for anything to use for protection. Nothing yet, but the seats were so old that chunks of sandstone came away when I pulled.
I hurled one at her head with all my might. She flicked the whip around expertly and slashed it in half, but it created a cloud of dust. I scampered to my right while she was lost in the haze.
“Stop running and face your end!”
“I’m not running!” I said in between ragged breaths. “I’m advancing in the opposite direction.”
To my great joy, there was a statue at the top of the stairs that had an actual bow and quiver full of arrows for its decoration. I hadn’t much experience with archery—I’d taken a free class at my gym once—but I still had some of Zora’s residual memories. She was excellent with one, so I at least had a fighting chance. I wrenched it free and notched an arrow, kneeling as Mulciber took another shot at me. I dodged to the side as the edge of the whip burned furrows into the floor and let the arrow fly, aiming for her throat.
One of her hair tendrils batted it aside like a fly. Well, I tried.
“Jordan!” Michael called from down below. He had Gabriel’s arm around his shoulder and he was hurrying towards me, but Mulciber was closing in. If she killed me, the threads wouldn’t regenerate with my body. If I died, I’d be stuck here. However, the boys could still make it out. Fight or flight. Last chance.
“Farewell, Jordan,” Mulciber purred, raising her arm. “A flight of fallen angels sing thee to thy rest.”
“Up yours, twat-socket.” And I notched one more arrow just for good measure.
Just as I let it fly, a monstrous sound echoed overhead. I glanced upward to see the outline of demons’ wings and two bodies soaring over the open ceiling of Pandemonium. I recognized the spill of black hair to be Belial. He was swinging his katana with all his might at Moloch, who blocked his blows with a javelin, his massive sewage-green wings keeping him aloft. They were locked in a vicious aerial battle, trading blows like winged titans in the night sky.
Mulciber made a gurgling sound. I glanced back to see the arrow sticking out of her left eye. The archdemons’ battle had distracted her enough that my arrow made its mark. She let out a howl of agony and collapsed to her knees, her hair thrashing back and forth.
One of the thick strands slammed into my stomach and knocked me down the stone steps. I tried my best to brace, but I fell hard and whacked my head on the way down. Dizziness engulfed my aching skull. I touched my forehead and my fingers came away wet with blood.
“Jordan!” Michael called again. “We have to get out of here.”
“N-No…problem…” I mumbled, shoving my bruised body upward. My left arm had gone numb so I used my right one to pick up the arrows that had fallen out of my quiver and then to stick my fingers in my mouth. I whistled high and loud over the sounds of Belial and Moloch fighting.
Seconds later, the black horse we rode through the city whinnied and came running inside the arena, its fur shining in the light of the hellfire. He galloped towards us and tossed his head, blinking his great big brown eyes in greeting.
Michael heaved Gabriel on first, then climbed on after him. He offered me his hand and I jumped on last, clutching his midsection. The archangel dug his heels into the horse’s sides and let out a commanding, “Hyah!”
The horse lurched forward at breakneck speed, galloping towards the exit. We passed through it just as I heard the unmistakable whoosh of Mulciber’s wings. I turned my head to see her flying after us, her face a mask of blood and ruined eyeball fluid, pointing a finger in our direction.
“Stop them! Stop them at all cost!”
The horse’s hooves hit the streets and then every demon’s eyes turned on us. Mulciber’s cry had echoed for miles. They threw down what they were carrying and came for us, racing after the hellhorse to catch up. I ignored the stabbing pain in my chest and left arm and reached for more arrows.
“Try to keep him steady!” I told Michael, aiming at the closest demon. He was short and fat, but he ran like Usain Bolt in rocket boots. His hands had nearly closed around the horse’s tail when I shot him in the face. He fell back into the teeming masses of demons following us and disappeared, trampled by them.
Mulciber swooped down from above on her filthy mahogany wings and aimed for the horse’s legs. The beast sensed her nearing and jumped right as she slashed at him. I slapped her in the temple hard with the bow and she twisted in mid-air as the blow landed. Her wings caught her before she could hit the ground, flapping great gusts of ash-tainted air in my face.
“Jordan!” Michael said. I balanced on my knees and peeked around his shoulder to see an ogre-like demon standing about twenty feet ahead of us at the fork in the road. He stomped his clawed feet and let out a guttural bellow that shook the air.
I braced myself and took aim, waiting until we were close enough, and let another arrow fly. It had brought its arms up to block its face, so I changed direction at the last second. The arrow pierced the scrap of cloth hiding its genitals and the titanic creature screamed before crumpling to its knees. Michael guided the horse towards the right side of the fork, leading us back towards the dock at the River Styx.
“How are we going to convince the ferryman to let us across without Belial?” I asked as I picked off more stragglers following behind us. The road was a straight away now and we only had about half a mile to the riverbank. I could see the placid waters from here and they never looked more beautiful considering what was chasing us right now.
“Good question,” Michael yelled. “Think this horse can swim?”
I paled. “Michael Alexander O’Brien, don’t you dare.”
He shot me a look over his shoulder. “Do you have a better idea?”
“You can fly, ya nut!”
“I can only carry one of you. Gabriel’s too weak to fly.”
“The second we jump into the river, that serpent thing is going to swallow us whole.”
“Let me worry about that. You just hold onto Gabe and swim to the other side.”
“And when Mulciber catches up?”
He smiled fiercely. “Give her the hard goodbye.”
I shook my head and slid the bow around my shoulders as the horse reached the dock. The wooden planks shook violently under its thundering hooves. I couldn’t resist closing my eyes as it made the final leap into the river.
Icy water swallowed me from head to toe. I held my breath and wrapped my arms around Michael’s middle. For several terrifying seconds, I could see nothing but the inky water around me. Then the horse’s natural instincts kicked in and it swam up to the surface.
We burst through with collective gasps for air, and the horse let out an indignant whinny as it paddled towards the shore. I checked behind us to see the demons shouting
curses at us from the dock. Some of them considered jumping in after us, but as soon as the giant fin of the river monster glided past, they backed away.
I grabbed Michael’s shoulder and jerked a thumb at the mammoth-sized creature swimming straight for us. “Your turn, pretty boy.”
Michael twisted around, took one look at the massive fin closing in on us, and sighed. “God help me, this was a stupid idea. Once you reach the other side, keep heading towards the gates. I’ll catch up.”
I grabbed two wet handfuls of his shirt. “Don’t be late.”
I pulled him to me for a brief but steamy kiss and regretfully let go. He leapt off the horse with a large splash and swam towards the monster in the murky depths. I held onto Gabriel, forcing myself not to watch the ensuing battle.
A shadow swept over the murky surface of the river. Mulciber had returned. I touched Gabriel’s shoulder gingerly. “Can you hold him steady?”
He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
I reversed my seat on the horse’s back and notched another arrow as the archdemon returned for another go. She darted through the air like a wraith, swooping side to side to throw off my shot. The end of the whip flared and I had to duck. The heat brushed over the top of my head, close enough to singe a few hairs. I didn’t hesitate. I fired as soon as the whip missed. She went into a barrel roll and the arrow soared past her. Dammit.
She banked and came around again, aiming for Gabriel this time. The archangel brought his wings together to shield himself. The fiery whip ripped out a chunk of his golden feathers. I plucked up one before it floated into the river and pulled a stray thread from the edge of my torn shirt. I tied the feather to the tip of one of my arrows and shot it at Mulciber as she wheeled in the air.
It pierced right thigh. She squawked like a duck being hit with a load of buckshot. The wound burned bright white as the holy feather scorched her demonic soul and she plummeted into the lake.