The subject of my hatred moved toward me now, as Anna held me still. Still and completely helpless. Lucifer stood then and shook his head at Alexander, whose eyes flickered in surprise for a moment before stepping back. The Devil took my arm and pulled something from within the folds of his tunic. It was not so much a blade as a sharp shard of cloudy black crystal about ten inches in length. He turned my arm so my palm faced upwards, then he pressed the tip of the shard into the soft flesh of my wrist and began to cut.
I screamed as unfathomable pain shot up my arm. Or at least, I screamed on the inside, which made a strange strangled noise in my throat like an animal trapped inside my body. Where the blade dragged across my skin, a glowing red line appeared, but no blood, as if the cut cauterized as it was being made. Lucifer turned my arm as he finished the first circle around my wrist.
I had nowhere to look but at my sister. And she seemed to have nowhere to look but at me; it seemed eye contact was crucial to her control. Or maybe she just wanted to see me suffer. I couldn’t be sure. Her eyes were empty and dead, like she was looking at a stranger. I had to believe this absence of emotion had to do with her demonic binding. Surely my own sister couldn’t care this little about me unless compelled not to?
As Lucifer began his second loop around my forearm, another wave of agony ripped through me, like he was severing my arm from my body. Maybe he was. Maybe pieces of me were breaking off and flying away, gone forever. I had never cried from physical pain, but I felt my eyes glisten with tears. If I had anything resembling a soul left in me, it would now definitely belong to the Devil.
Then I saw Anna’s eyes flicker. Just for a moment, but it was something. She felt something. Seeing this happen to me had caused some sort of reaction.
Then, with both Lucifer and Alexander fixated entirely on me, my sister closed her eyes. Just for a couple moments. An extra long blink, really. But in that split second, I could feel power over my body return to me. And in that split second, I reached into the space between spaces, the interdimensional paths, and I stepped into them.
But right as I was vanishing, holding the black paths with the white trees firmly in my mind, my sister’s eyes reopened, and I remembered us as little girls together. So when my body popped across dimensions, I didn’t land on the black paths between. I landed in another dimension entirely.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I lay in a bright meadow, all sun glinting off lime-colored shafts of grass and flashes of periwinkle sky. On my back, the warm earth beneath me and the hot sun above me, I stared at the sky until my vision blurred and I saw nothing but spots.
“Look.” Anna’s voice. I realized she lay in the grass next to me.
I rolled over on my elbows, my honey blonde hair spilling down around my face. A ladybug crawled over Anna’s knuckles. We giggled as it opened its wings and flitted away into the sky.
Rolling back over, I closed my eyes and let the sun dance on my eyelids. “What do you think you’ll be when you grow up?” I asked Anna.
I could hear the puzzlement in her voice. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I want to be an artist and travel to London and Paris and have big parties. So, what do you want to do?” I glanced over at her.
Anna sighed as she tried to weave together two long pieces of grass. “I just want to be a lady.”
I giggled. “Well that’s boring.”
Anna frowned. “Well, what do you think I should be?”
“A poet,” I declared. “You should be a poet, and I’ll be an artist, and we’ll travel everywhere together.”
“For always?” Anna’s blue eyes were wide open like the sky.
“For always. Two sisters on a grand adventure.” I took a deep breath, contented, and closed my eyes again.
Time passed and I kept no track of it. The afternoon sky faded from daffodil to goldenrod. I listened to the hum of the dragonflies and the weaving of the wind through the grass. Sometime later I awoke, when the sun was melting into the horizon like orange pudding. Anna was gone. I felt a moment of alarm that I quickly pushed aside. There was no reason to worry. Not about anything.
Climbing to my feet, I stretched languorously and looked across the meadow. A white church sat on the far side. A light glowed inside. I crossed the meadow and passed through a wrought iron gate into the neatly trimmed yard around the little chapel. A large wooden door led into the building, and it stood open. I walked through.
Inside, the lighting was very dim and the air still and quiet. A peaceful quiet though, not a scary one. Something stirred in my mind, like it’d been a very long time since I’d been here. But of course that wasn’t right. I’d been here just last week with mother and father and Anna. I looked down the aisle of the church. Someone sat on the very front row. I began to walk toward the figure, the stone floor cold beneath my bare feet. It wasn’t until I stood parallel to the person that he turned his golden-haired head toward me.
“Hello, Kaitlyn.” His voice was deep and kind.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Elijah. I’m here to take you home.”
“Are you one of my father’s friends?” My brow wrinkled, trying to figure out who this stranger was. “You seem familiar.”
“No, I’m not your father’s friend. I’m your friend. Don’t you remember?” His eyes were a funny color. Like lavender buds.
“I’m not sure,” I said after a moment’s hesitation.
“Do you trust me?” He asked.
“To do what?”
“To walk you home.” He smiled reassuringly.
“I suppose. If you think it would be okay with mother and father.”
“I don’t think they’d mind.” He stood, reaching out a hand to take mine. His skin was very warm. “It’s this way.”
We walked past the altar and underneath the stained glass windows at the back of the church. Elijah opened another wooden door. The night sky met us on the other side. It had gotten dark very quickly. We stepped out into the evening air.
Which melted away into a simple room with polished wood floors, a bed, and an overflowing bookshelf.
I spun away from the person standing next to me. Then I saw who it was. “Eli!” And a moment later, “What’s happening?”
He lifted his arms slowly in a calming gesture. “We’re at HR headquarters. You got lost in another dimension.”
I sucked in several deep breaths. As memory flooded back to me, my hands trembled a bit. And one arm stung like shit. I didn’t want to look down at it, because I knew what I would see. “How did you know where to find me? Or even that I was gone?”
“You’ve been missing for four days.” He met my wild eyes with a steady gaze.
“Four days? No, I was down in Hell for like an hour, and then—”
“Wait, what?”
I swallowed hard. “Hell. You know, brimstone, lava, evil, etc. And a rather amazing beach.” I tried for my usual humor, but my voice came out strained.
“How did you get there?” Eli’s expression was so startled I almost laughed. Except none of this was funny.
“Anna called me and said she wanted to meet—”
“So you agreed? What the heck, Zyan!” Now he just looked pissed.
“Save your lecture, okay? There’s some important shit going down. Intel on Hell invading.” I narrowed my eyes at him.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, then said, “Fine. Go on.”
“I met Anna. Alexander was there, too. They tricked me—” Eli gave me a “big surprise” roll of his eyes. “And took me to Hell. Apparently they’re both working for Lucifer. So we went to his personal corner of Hell, which is lovely by the way. He offered me a job. I declined. And then…”
“Then what?” Eli asked impatiently.
“He tried to bond me to him.” I lifted my right arm. A faint red line still wrapped around my wrist, curving about an inch or so up my forearm.
Eli just stared at it. “Did he complete the bond?”
“I don’t think so. Alexander and Anna each have a spiral going all the way to their elbow, and demonic runes in between the lines.” I took another deep breath and closed my eyes for a second. “They’re both part demon now. My sister’s part demon, Eli.”
He hesitated a moment before reaching out and squeezing my hand. “I’m sorry, Zy.”
“She has power over supes. Mind control and stuff. That’s why Alexander’s been using her, how they broke in to HQ. And I’m sure this whole demon thing is what’s gotten her to hate me so much. He can control her with this bond.” I paused to catch my breath. I felt light-headed. “But she let me escape. When they weren’t looking, she released her hold on me. I know she did it on purpose. And I tried to step onto the between paths, but I lost concentration, and ended up… well, I don’t know where.”
Eli’s eyes were soft. “There’s a dimension where people can recreate events from their past. You summoned a memory of time spent with your sister in the meadow by your house.” He paused. “Time passes differently there, though. People can wither away in their own dreams of days gone by.”
“There are worse ways to die,” I said quietly, wistfully.
He ignored my last comment. “Quinn called me when you didn’t come back the other night. We looked all around the city, and on the second day of looking I decided to visit the interdimensional paths to see if I could pick up your track. I felt you instantly, but it took me a couple more days to pinpoint you exactly. The realm of the past shifts constantly. It isn’t an easy place to find.”
I felt very tired all of a sudden and went to sit down on the bed. “Is this your room?”
“Yeah,” Eli said, looking around almost self-consciously. “Okay, so got more details about a Hell invasion?”
“Lucifer’s been behind everything. The assassination attempts, the riot, the portal breaches. He says he doesn’t like the terms of The Agreement, and wants his children to be able to roam freely in any dimension. He tried to make it sound like he was fighting for equality or something, so all us eternally damned immortals don’t have to stay in Hell when we die, but I could tell he was full of it.” I went back and relayed the entire chain of events, trying to remember everything he and Alexander had said.
When I was done, Eli looked pensive. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was he like?”
I could understand an angel’s fascination with the Devil. Who used to be one of them but was now their eternal enemy. “Beautiful. And terrible. He tried to come across as the good guy, all charming and hospitable. But underneath it all I could feel his darkness, and his power. Like he could crush me with a single thought.”
“And yet you turned him down.” Eli sounded impressed.
I cringed. “I hate to bust your high opinion, but I found I couldn’t lie to him. He has the power to compel truth, I guess.”
Eli shrugged. “Well, still, it’s good to know you’re truly on our side.”
Hmm. I hadn’t really thought of it like that, but I guess he was right. Something else struck me. “Don’t forget I could be part demon now, too.”
His eyes darkened. “I guess we need to take you to see one of our healers.”
As we walked for the door I said, “So I guess all of the angels in this area have to live in HR headquarters, huh?” I cast my eyes around. “Makes it kind of hard to bring home a hot date.”
Eli chuckled, and for some reason I found myself wondering if he’d slept with Commander Hunter. Or wanted to. And then I wondered why I was wondering that. Uhhh, I really needed some sleep. And maybe another soul. I was getting delirious. “I’m major tired and hungry,” I said pointedly.
“Maybe I can get you some ambrosia. It’s very nourishing to all life forms.”
“No thanks. Lucifer made me drink that shit.”
Eli glanced over at me. “Well, sorry.”
“I get very cranky when I’m hungry. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You’re always cranky.” Eli pushed open the door to what appeared to be a small medical ward.
“No, I’m feisty. You’re cranky. There’s a difference.”
Eli walked up to a counter and rang a bell. It had a sonorous tone instead of the high-pitched DING! of a usual bell.
A female angel with olive skin and wavy black hair emerged from the adjoining room. “How can I help you?”
“I had a run-in with Lucifer,” I answered.
She smiled at what she thought was bad humor.
Eli sighed deeply and shook his head at me. “Unfortunately, she’s not joking. Zyan has just returned from the Hell dimension, where Lucifer attempted a demon bond on her.”
I lifted my arm as evidence. The healer’s eyes widened. “Okay, let’s take a closer look.”
She led us into a small room which looked like a science lab or military testing compound. High-tech equipment littered the room, along with some interesting looking tools made of different crystals; amethyst and citrine and malachite, among others I didn’t recognize. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing toward a chair that appeared to be made of titanium with small round panels of glass all over it.
As soon as I sat down, the discs of glass began to light up and beep softly. Most of the discs turned bright blue, but the ones under my right arm turned red. I saw the muscles in Eli’s jaw clench and unclench. “What does the red light mean?”
“It senses demon energies,” the healer said in an emotionless tone.
“So I am part demon, then.” My own tone was dead, flat.
“He didn’t finish the bond, though,” Eli protested, shaking his head in denial.
“It’s true that the bond is incomplete,” said the healer. “The spiral must be complete, as well as the addition of demonic runes.”
Yep, that was about right. She knew her demon bonding. “So, what does this partial bond mean?”
The healer looked at me and shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never seen a partial bond. It is clear that you now possess some demon essence, or the lights would not glow. However, the part we need to worry about is how much control Lucifer now has over you. With a normal bond, he has almost complete power. With this—I just don’t know.”
I felt like I was going to throw up.
“But if Lucifer’s bond was that strong, he would have been able to find you in the other realms. Or forced you to return to him so he could complete the bond,” Eli argued.
“Commander, may I speak to you in private for a moment?” The healer asked.
“Uh, sure.” He cast me an apologetic look as he followed her into the next room.
I stared at the door. I knew what she must be saying. That I couldn’t be trusted anymore. Especially not with the HR. I got out of the chair and paced around the room.
Eli reappeared back in the doorway. “Zyan, the doctor says we should probably keep you here for observation.”
“For how long?” I placed my hands on my hips and glared at him. Not that it was his fault, but still…
“Well, I’m sure you’re really sleepy anyways, so why don’t you just take a nap in the chair and we’ll see after that?” His face was neutral, his tone calming.
Well, he had a point there. I was pretty exhausted. “I need you to call Quinn. Oh, and I need some pillows.” Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you think this chair looks cozy?”
“No, I suppose not,” he agreed.
“Well, those are my conditions. Take it or leave it.”
“Fine. I’ll be back in a few.”
He strode out of the room and I plunked down in the chair. I noticed the doctor was too scared to come back in here. What the fuck ever.
Within thirty seconds of sitting down, sleep overtook me.
The red glow of the monitors was the first thing I saw when I awoke. The second thing was Eli, sleeping in a chair across the room. So, I guess he did sleep every now and then. Lightly though, because all I did was shift my weight to sit up, and his eyes opened.
&nb
sp; “Rise and shine, Wings.”
“How do you feel?” He rose fluidly from his chair, completely alert as if he had never been asleep.
“Fine.” I noticed there were two pillows tucked around me. He must have brought them while I slept. “So, am I off house arrest?”
His eyes flickered. “There were no surges of demonic energy while you slept. So, we’ll just need to keep a really close eye on it. If anything feels strange, anything at all—”
“Yeah, yeah, if I start sprouting leathery wings and a tail I’ll let you know.” I rolled my eyes.
Eli’s expression made it clear he did not appreciate my lack of acknowledgement of the severity of the matter. “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off, and we’ll get together tomorrow?”
“Oh, so I’m on probation now?”
“No, you’ve just been through a lot. Go home and take it easy.”
I felt a surge of anger. “Fine.” I got up and stalked out of the clinic. Eli trotted behind me. “I can find my way out,” I snapped.
“Zy, don’t be mad. It’s for your own good.”
“Sure, whatev.”
“Don’t you want me to take you home?”
“I think I can handle it, Eli.” We were at the front doors. I shoved them open, startling the guards on the other side, and took the steps to the parking lot two at a time.
“Okay, well call me if you need anything.”
God, he was annoying the shit out of me. I strode off into the darkness without responding. If this was how he was going to act from now on, our little partnership was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Quinn and Riley greeted me at the door with anxious faces. “Do not hug me and do not ask if I’m okay,” I growled.
A moment of silence. “Okay, how about a martini?” Riley asked.
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