“So what, you’re saying Dakota’s my soulmate?”
“Yes, but not in the sense you’re thinking of,” said Lucifer. “Deep, emotional ties, these are what link souls together. Not only lovers, but family and friends as well. When a person is in danger, someone connected to their soul may suddenly feel a deep sense of dread and not understand why.”
“And you think Dakota and I have that connection?”
“You’re different from the last time we met. There was something empty inside you. You had no real compassion anymore. Now I sense that’s no longer the case,” said Lucifer. “But before this recent change or reversion, what did you feel when you learned Dakota could be in danger?”
“I wanted to help.”
“Exactly. The darkness inside you caused you to turn your back on everyone you cared for.” Lucifer held up his index finger. “With one exception. Your soul’s connection to her is stronger than its connection to anyone else.”
“Okay, Dr. Phil, let’s just get this over with,” I said. “Don’t know how long it’s gonna be before Asmodeus breaks Chuck and I want to be by Dakota’s side by the time he gets there.”
“Of course.”
Lucifer held his hands out to the side and looked up to the ceiling. His wings flapped, raising him off the ground. I watched as he began chanting in Enochian, his yellow eyes glowing brighter than normal, and the effect increasing with each word that came out of his mouth. Soon, his entire body started to shine with unbelievable brightness. It started to hurt my eyes, but not even closing them stopped the blinding effect. I covered my face with my arm, but it was still too bright.
But then, just as soon as it happened, it was over. The brightness was more bearable now and I opened my eyes. I was standing on a beach, and there was a small house just a few steps away. I walked up to the front door and I saw symbols carved in the wood. Symbols intended to ward off both angels and demons.
I rapped my knuckles on the wood. No answer. I knocked harder this time. Still nothing. That’s when I decided to hell with it and kicked the door in. I stepped inside the foyer and heard a sound coming from my right. I turned to find myself staring down the twin barrels of a shotgun, held by a young woman who was easily half my size, her long, dark hair tied behind her head. But despite our difference in height, she had a grim determination in her eyes.
“I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but you’d better get the hell out now before I paint the wall with your brains,” she said.
I couldn’t help the smile tugging at my lips. Girl had spunk, had to give that to her. Raziel did well when he chose who should watch over Dakota. Though would’ve preferred he put a bit more firepower down here.
“Take it easy, I’m here to see Dakota,” I said.
“No Dakota here. Get out.”
Her body stiffened when I mentioned Dakota. She was lying. Didn’t matter much to me. Had to convince her I was one of the good guys.
“Listen, I’m a friend of hers. Also a friend of Raziel and Morrison. You can trust me,” I said. “My name is Luther Cross. Morrison said Dakota mentioned me before.”
She swallowed, another sign of dishonesty. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, we don’t have time for this.”
I grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and yanked it from her grip. She looked surprised, but that look was quickly replaced by one of anger. Her hand went behind her back and she drew a revolver just as I pointed the shotgun at her.
“Drop it,” she said.
“You first,” I said. “Look at me. Look at my eyes. I’m Luther Cross, I’m a friend of Dakota’s and I came here to help.”
“Bullshit.”
“Shelly…?”
A new voice came from the room behind the woman, who I supposed was Shelly. We both looked towards the door and it slowly opened. And that was when I saw Dakota Reed for the first time in months. She looked almost exactly the same as that first night I found her in my apartment, right down to the white dress. Except there was something very different about her this time, too. Before, she was a scared, frightened child. Now, she stood with confidence I’d never seen her possess before.
Her face brightened when she laid eyes on me and she ran towards me from the doorway, throwing her arms around my torso. She didn’t seem even a little concerned about the Mexican stand-off she’d just walked in on.
“Good to see you, too,” I said, taking a chance and lowering the shotgun. Shelly hesitated, but then she followed my lead and put the gun behind her back, presumably sliding it into the waistband of her jeans.
“Wait.” Dakota broke the hug and looked up at me with concern in her eyes. “Where’s Charles? Isn’t he with you?”
“Yeah…about that…” I sighed. “We’re gonna need to have a talk. There’s a lot to catch you up on.”
Dakota nodded in understanding. “I’ll make some coffee and you can tell me all about it.”
Shelly gave us privacy to talk, and then I laid it all out on the table for Dakota as we sat together in the small living room. Purgatory, Asmodeus’ capture, the changes I went through, Lilith, Lucifer, all the way up to the current situation, recapping the past several days. It took a good hour to get through.
Dakota remained quiet and attentive the whole time, her face showing almost no reaction to the bombshells I’d dropped on her. It was more than a little unsettling. Last year, she would’ve ran out of the room screaming after hearing even half of what I’d just told her. But now, she took it all in stride. Nothing seemed to surprise her anymore.
That didn’t sit well with me. This was the kind of stuff that would justifiably freak out normal people. Dakota used to be normal, just a regular college student. That was before some asshole preacher and a bastard angel decided to use her to resurrect the nephilim. Now she was a single mother in hiding, all because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“That pretty much brings us up to the present,” I said. “Chuck’s been captured by Asmodeus, and it won’t be long before they break him. They’ll show up looking for you and the kid. And when that happens, I’ve got a way to get rid of him for good.”
“That you got…from Lucifer…”
Dakota was raised in a devoutly Christian household. People like that tend to either fully embrace the faith or turn their backs on it, and she was the former. When she came to me, at first we thought she was like my mother, pregnant with the child of a demon. Wasn’t until later that we learned it was an angel. And now we were getting help from Satan himself, the very same being that Dakota had grown up believing to be the ultimate evil in the universe.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “But I think you know things aren’t as black-and-white as you grew up believing.”
She nodded and sipped her coffee. “You’re right. It’s just…after twenty years of hearing one thing—believing one thing—it’s difficult to accept something different.”
“I’m skeptical myself, but I’m also out of options,” I said. “I don’t think Lucifer’s the bad guy here, but I also don’t think he’s exactly good, either. What I do know is Asmodeus will come. And we have to be ready.”
“You’re right.” She sighed. “I trust you, Luther. You helped me when no one else did.”
“What happened after Raziel took you?” I asked.
“He brought me here. Said I’d be safe and then he brought Shelly and Charles to watch over me,” she said. “Not much else really happened over the past few months. Days were pretty normal. Raziel showed up every now and then to check in on us, but he wouldn’t really tell us anything about what was going on.”
“He never mentioned going to Purgatory?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Whenever I’d ask if he found Luxton, all he would say was things are in motion.”
I scoffed. “Good ol’ Raz, loves being cryptic.”
“And then he stopped coming. Charles tried summoning him when I went into labo
r, but he never came. After the baby was born, he kept trying, but nothing.”
“That’s when you sent Chuck to find me,” I said.
She nodded. “I figured if anyone knew what had happened to Raziel, if anyone could help us, it would be you. I was starting to worry that something had happened to him.”
“It did.” I looked away from Dakota, staring down at my untouched coffee sitting on the table. I was responsible for this. If I hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in my own business, I might’ve realized sooner that Raziel was gone. I should’ve dropped everything and came here the second Morrison approached me in the Signature Lounge.
“What about your bodyguard in the other room?” I asked, deciding to try and change the subject.
Dakota smiled. “Shelly. She’s great. She’s been a big help.”
“Don’t think she likes me much.”
“She’s just a bit overprotective, but she means well.”
“Maybe I’ll win her over yet,” I said with a grin.
Dakota pointed at me. “Don’t get any ideas. She’s a nun.”
I blinked. “What? What kind of nun answers the door with a shotgun and has a pistol tucked behind her back?”
“The kind you should be nice to,” said Dakota. “Now…do you want to meet him?”
“I hadn’t even—yeah, I suppose I probably should.”
Dakota smiled and stood. “Just make sure you keep those cigarettes of yours in your pocket. If you light up around my son, I’ll feed you to Shelly. And you don’t want a gun-toting nun on your bad side.”
She beckoned for me to follow and I did. We walked from the living room, through the kitchen, and into a small hallway. There were four doors off the hall and Dakota explained that one was Morrison’s room, the other was Shelly’s, the bathroom, and then the one she stopped in front of.
“In here. This is our room.”
She opened the door and we stepped inside. There was a twin bed in one corner of the room and a basinet beside it. Next to the basinet, Shelly sat in a rocking chair, holding what looked like a mass of blankets in her arms. Once I entered, Shelly wouldn’t stop staring at me, her eyes intense and distrustful.
Dakota walked up to Shelly and took the baby from her. She looked down at him, smiling and cooing at her son before bringing him over to me.
“This is him,” she said. “Malcolm Luther Reed. After everything you did for me, I thought it was fitting.”
She passed the child over to me, much to my surprise. I’d never held a baby before, but I accepted him anyway, feeling awkward with a child in my arms. I looked down at his face. It was just like Morrison had said—he looked no different from any other baby. Looking at his face, you’d never know he wasn’t completely human.
And then his eyes opened. He looked up at me and I was surprised. I probably shouldn’t have been. Half-breeds tended to have some signature mark that separated us from humanity. In my case, it was my red eyes. But for Malcolm, his eyes were violet, and they shimmered with a soft glow.
The child stared at me, looking at my face with curiosity. He reached a tiny hand towards me and opened his mouth, making a little sound. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to say something, if he felt some connection between us, or if he was just making random noises.
The kid stirred something in me, though. There was a possibility he could end up being a destroyer. Someone who’d wreak havoc on humanity and the planet itself. The harbinger of a war that no one would survive. The smart move would be to kill him right now, before he grew to adulthood and discovered his power.
But the same could easily have been said of me. I was standing in the exact position Alistair was decades ago. Common sense no doubt told him I was too dangerous to live. And yet, he chose a different path.
Now it was my turn to pay it forward and do the same for someone else.
33
Shelly led me to a small shed by the side of the house. It was kept locked and had warding sigils carved into the wood on just about every possible inch. She opened the combination lock and we entered. When she turned on the light, I was stunned to see all four walls were covered with weapons.
“Damn, girl, what the hell kinda nun are you?” I asked.
“The kind you don’t wanna piss off.” She took one of the handguns off the wall and held it up for me to see. I looked close and saw the same markings along the barrel that were on my revolver. “A little more sophisticated than what you carry around.”
“True.” I drew the revolver from the holster beneath my jacket. “But I’ve got a thing for the classics.”
She put the gun back in place and showed me some other stuff. She opened a box and there were several round grenades inside. “Fragmentation grenades, except instead of steel, they release iron.”
I picked up one of the grenades and inspected it. Had a good heft to it. “Not bad. But unfortunately, Asmodeus isn’t the typical demon. He’s one of the Fallen, so a lot of the things you may be used to using won’t do much other than piss him off.”
“What do you suggest then?” she asked.
“We gotta get him close enough so I can use the blade. Only got one shot at this.”
“So I distract him while you get close enough to use that thing. And a face-full of iron certainly seems like a good way to distract him.”
I looked down at the grenade. He might’ve been able to shrug it off, but it would definitely get his attention. I set the grenade back in the box with the others. “I like the way you think, Shelly.”
“Maybe we should send Dakota and Malcolm away for a few days,” she said. “Remove even the possibility of Asmodeus getting to them.”
I shook my head. “He’s got a connection to her now, both after what he learned when he was in my head and through Chuck. And you should also know that he might not be alone. There’s another demon running with him, guy by the name of Iblis.”
“Is he one of the Fallen as well?”
“No,” I said and looked around the shack. “So this stuff should work just fine on him. But archdemon or not, he’s no pushover.”
“Neither am I,” said Shelly.
I scoffed. “Listen, I appreciate that you know how to handle a gun, but this is a little bit different than slapping around some unruly Catholic school kids with a ruler.”
The next thing I knew, Shelly’s arm lashed out at me and struck me in my throat. I had trouble breathing and as I tried, she elbowed me across the face, which spun me around and then she kicked my leg out from under me, which dropped me to the floor. I rolled onto my back and saw she had a gun pointed right at me.
“What the—what the hell was that?” I asked once I could breathe again.
“I was trained in the Philippine Marine Corps. When I dedicated my life to the church, it wasn’t exactly the kind of convent where we taught students or did charity work. Our order has a bit more of a specific mission.”
She lowered the gun and offered her hand. I took it and she helped me to my feet. I was still amazed that this five-foot-nothing woman with no supernatural powers was able to drop me to my knees.
“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’re going up against demons,” I said.
“Are you kidding? Half of the ruling political party in this country are possessed by demons.”
“Probably the same in America, too,” I said. “Okay, I get it. You’re a qualified badass. But Iblis isn’t any bottom-feeder. He’s powerful enough to generate his own human form, so he doesn’t have to possess anyone. Be ready for him.”
She nodded. “I will.”
“Don’t suppose you know any spells as well? Could come in handy.”
Shelly shook her head. “Sorry. Good with weapons, bad with magic.”
“No problem, I’ll take care of that part,” I said. “Okay, you keep Iblis and Asmodeus on their toes, then I come in and deliver the killing blow, so to speak.” I took out the knife Lucifer gave me. “This should guarantee he never causes us any troub
le again.”
“Then there’s just one more question,” said Shelly. “How do we know when he’s coming?”
“I’ve got a way to take care of that.”
My method of knowing when to expect Asmodeus meant pushing my supernatural senses to their limit. Whenever teleportation is used, it creates a disturbance, just like throwing a rock into a pond creates ripples. If I could expand my senses to detect when that disturbance was coming, we could be ready.
But doing that wasn’t so simple. It required tapping into the Earth’s ley lines, spiritual energy that circled the globe. Mostly thought of as pseudoscience, but it held real meaning for practitioners of the occult. By tapping into the energy of the ley lines, I could sense disturbances along them and sense when something was on the way. Think of it as a kind of supernatural long-range radar.
To tap into the ley lines, I first had to reach out and grab ‘hold’ of the closest one, so I could feel any disturbances along it. It meant being out in the open on the beach without anything to interfere. I drew a sigil in the sand designed to focus and boost my senses and when I was ready, I sat in the middle. I told Shelly to stand by in the house with Dakota and some weapons on-hand.
And then I began meditating. I induced a trance in myself, trying to connect my energy with the planet’s. Sensing the connections the ley lines established across the globe. How long would it all take? That was anyone’s guess. I didn’t even know how close Asmodeus was to breaking Morrison, if he hadn’t already.
But I could sense the connections, and that was important. I was tapped into the power of the ley lines, sensing things all along them. Images started flashing in front of my mind’s eye. I was seeing demons in many different places all around the world. Their eyes glowed with yellow energy as they sensed my presence, too.
Not only demons, though. I could also sense what few angels were present on Earth. Blue eyes flashed at me, warning me to keep my distance. And then others like me. The supernatural half-breeds like vampires, werewolves, and other changelings. Spirits as well, trapped inside the veil, trying desperately to find a way out.
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