Darlings of New Midnight

by Andrea Speed

  Logan gave them a nod of thanks but couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to go through life never scared of anything. He didn’t want to say that Lyn or Alex had an easy life, because clearly not. But boy, it must have been nice to get up and not wonder if you were going to die today.

  Ceri and Esme started discussing how else they could maybe counter Lucifer while everyone else continued eating, and then there was this… feeling. Logan couldn’t exactly describe it, as he’d never had it before, but it was like a creeping dread crossed with a solid shock of adrenaline and ennui. What the fuck was that?

  Esme dropped her toast, and Ceri looked around, half rising from his chair. The alarm was evident on both their faces.

  “What the hell was that?” Alex asked.

  Oh, they caught it too. Logan glanced at Ahmed, who had been perched in the far corner giving them stink eye, and he looked like he’d been hit with a fish, so clearly he’d felt it as well.

  Lyn looked around. “What was what?”

  Ceri finally committed to standing all the way up. “The biggest wave of black magic I’ve ever felt. Speak of the devil.”

  “That was… seismic,” Ahmed said. “What the fuck did he do?”

  Esme said something under her breath and made a motion with her hands like she was rolling an invisible eight ball between them. Logan also thought he saw one of the enchanted sigils tattooed on her arm briefly light up. That was a trick of the light, right? “I’ve got a location for ground zero. Should we go?”

  Ceri looked around. “I’ll get Godslayer. Anyone else have any weapons they need to get?”

  “Can I have the Amulet of Azrael?” Ahmed asked. They all turned to look at him.

  Ceri kept his expression remarkably neutral, considering the magnitude of the ask. “You’re aware of how dangerous it is, yes?”

  Ahmed scowled. “Of course I am. I read about how to use it in The Blackburn Codex. The best part is I won’t pay much of a price for using it, because I’m already dead.”

  Logan still didn’t know much about the amulet, except it was dangerous as hell. He’d asked Ceri about it, and Ceri’d explained it was a cursed object that could pull the life force from something and drain it completely, but if you did it to someone, it would happen to you too. Part of the curse was it did to you what you asked it to do to others. But admittedly, Ahmed probably was a loophole here. Did mummies have a life force per se? Because he was sand. Somehow conscious and alive-ish, but not. He didn’t age, he didn’t eat, he didn’t breathe—he was a perfect case of living death. Still, would it even be effective on the devil?

  Answering his unspoken question, Ceri said, “I’m not sure it will have much effect on Lucifer.”

  Ahmed shrugged with a motion a bit like a wave of water moving across his shoulders. “There’s no time like the present to try, is there?”

  Point to Ahmed. Now was the time to throw everything they had and see what worked, if anything. It was time to activate all the Hail Marys. Ceri grimaced and looked at him, but Logan shrugged. No harm in it.

  Ceri sighed. “Fine. Don’t turn into a supervillain.” He left the room, probably to retrieve the amulet.

  “Oh, I wish,” Ahmed replied. “I wouldn’t wear spandex, anyway. So tacky.”

  Lyn gulped down the rest of her virgin mimosa—because of course Ceri made those—and stood up, wiping her hands on her faux-leather pants. Because of course she was wearing those. “I think we oughta get armored up. Satan’s gotta know we’ll be comin’ in hot, and there’s no way he wouldn’t be ready for that.”

  Esme nodded. “Yeah, that had occurred to me. I’ll cast the best protection spell I have before we head out.”

  The funny thing was, they could be as tooled up and armored as the best strike team, and Logan was sure they wouldn’t be ready for whatever Satan was going to throw at them. There was a reason he was an end-level boss.

  Ceri returned with Godslayer on his back and tossed Ahmed the amulet, which was still in its warded, protected bag. And soon as he took it out, Logan would swear he could feel the dark, pulsing energy of it like a phantom heart. Weird.

  They stood in a circle while Esme cast her protection spell, and Logan thought he could feel that too, misting down on them like a fine rain. He hoped it was enough but knew it was only a temporary solution. Satan would hit them hard. Suddenly his breakfast felt like lead in his stomach.

  They all put on their game faces and tensed as they formed their little teleportation circle before Esme and Ceri—and Cthylor—took them away.

  It was a blink. One moment they were in their dining room, and the next, they were in Hell. Only no, not Hell—just something that looked like it.

  Logan would swear he could sense the protection spell contracting around him as cold hit him. Cold and… heat? How? He looked around and thought it was night wherever they were, except he couldn’t see the sky at all. It was when something drifted down and touched his face that he realized he was looking up at a solid dark cloud layer that the sun had no hope of penetrating. Because they weren’t storm clouds—they were ash clouds.

  Logan needed a few moments to really contextualize where they had materialized. The crunch beneath his feet was from snow and ice, most of which was melting under the onslaught of hot ash salting down from the sky. A huge black plume of smoke was barely visible in the gloom and must have been the source of the ash. There were pine trees bending under the weight of all the precipitation. It looked like there was a fire up the slope.

  They weren’t simply in the mountains. They were in the mountains on an active volcano.

  A rumble under his feet seemed mild for an earthquake, but it was constant, like there was some great engine far beneath them, churning poison into the sky. The only reason they hadn’t suffocated was because they were being protected by Esme’s spell.

  “Where the fuck did you zap us, Mordor?” Lyn asked. Her arms were feathered, and her hands were still in the process of changing to talons.

  “It was supposed to be Washington State,” Esme responded. She was looking around, as confused as everyone else.

  But for Logan, the location gave him a certainty that hit him like a crosstown bus. “Holy shit, we’re on Mount St. Helens.”

  “No way,” Ahmed said. “That place doesn’t erupt anymore. I mean, I haven’t heard anything about it going off again.”

  “Because it’s only happening now,” a man said. Through the gloom of the false night—eight meters away from them and slightly higher up the slope—stood a man in a luminous, pristine white suit, untouched even as the ash swirled around him in a toxic fog. If nothing else said he was the devil, that did.

  Being Satan, he could look like anything. A coffee table, if he so desired. But today he had gone with a sort of hotter, younger David Bowie look, with blond hair and bluer-than-blue eyes. He looked perfect, which set off some alarm bells for Logan. Nothing you should trust was ever perfect. His hair even glowed, like maybe there was a halo underneath.

  Alex started toward him, holding out their hand. Before they could do anything, Lucifer said something that sounded like a bunch of consonants slammed together without any vowels, and Alex suddenly winked out of existence.

  It was stunning. Logan knew, from the looks on everyone’s faces, that this development was unanticipated.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Ceri asked, pulling out Godslayer and pointing it in his direction.

  Lucifer laughed. “I sent your little weapon of mass destruction away. I’m sure they’ll be fine, but they won’t be back for a while. You really think I didn’t know any protogods? I’ll have you know Nyarlathotep was a buddy of mine. Complete shithead, but he had the dirt on everyone, and he knew a trick or two. No one could kill Cthulhu, but they had work-arounds to avoid him, ’cause everyone needs a break from the buzzkill, you know?”

  “You realize you just massively pissed off Cthulhu, don’t you?” Lyn pointed out. “And he killed Heaven for a lesser offe
nse.”

  Lucifer grinned at them. His teeth were so blinding white and uniform, they looked fake. Not like dentures—like they were made of porcelain or china, something that couldn’t possibly be in someone’s mouth. And this was Satan, so the potential was there. “That’s what I like to call a tomorrow problem.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ceri demanded. “Why are you setting off a volcano?”

  Lucifer kept grinning, and it seemed almost too big for his face. “You know what the greatest thing I ever did was? Convince people I could be tricked or foiled in some way. I mean, I’m older than the human race itself—of course you can fool me. I know everything in the world except the one specific thing you brought up. Amazing, hey?”

  “What’s your point?” Ceri asked, scowling. The fire farther up the slope was making its way down, and trees were falling ahead of it and bursting into flames. It was a flow of lava, a river of hell making itself clear in the gloom. It wasn’t moving very fast, but still it was moving faster than would have been ideal. Could Esme’s protection spell stand up against lava?

  “My point, dear boy, is you were my plan for destroying the world. But you weren’t my only one.”

  “Setting off a volcano is your backup plan?” Lyn asked. She sounded as dubious as Logan felt.

  “Not only one, my fine feathered friend,” Lucifer replied, grinning like he’d won the lottery. “At least one in every country on Earth, and I’m lighting up the ring of fire around the Pacific. I’m even going to have Mount Everest break open—to swallow some of those jerkass mountain climbers. See, Cerberus, you would have ended the world clean and fast. So Plan B is a punishment. All the ash and toxic gasses spewing into the atmosphere at once? It’s going to cause a nuclear winter without the nuclear part. It’s the second mass extinction event since the meteor that took out the dinosaurs. The air will be unbreathable, and the sun will go away for a couple of decades at least. To counteract global warming, have the second ice age. Too bad nothing will survive to see it. Except cockroaches, rats… the usuals. The ones that can adapt to the harshest conditions imaginable. I suppose that means you harpies will make it. Having a god in your corner is always helpful in times like these. Too bad humanity doesn’t have one.”

  Logan was light-headed and assumed it was psychosomatic. This plan was diabolical and could totally work. Was totally working. Oh shit.

  They’d failed. The apocalypse had already begun.

  His knees were so weak, he considered sitting down, but he made himself lock his knees and stay upright. Logan felt a little better after noticing that everyone had paled, including Ahmed, which shouldn’t be possible since he was sand. But somehow he did.

  “You can’t have that much power,” Ceri said.

  Lucifer kept grinning as the lava crept ever closer, and his white suit remained pristine. “Oh, but I can. You know how the Necronomicon was a made-up book? It was. But it was based on a real tome of black magic—not The Blackburn Codex, but nice try, guys—that is just chock-full of nasty stuff that would kill any human who dared to try and use it. But I’m not human, am I? So the spells are only limited by my imagination.”

  “You’re not the only one who can do that,” Ceri said. He had his poker face on, but when he looked purely determined, Logan knew he was trying to pretend everything was okay when it wasn’t. This felt like the last straw to him. What had they fought so hard for? Only to lose it all today? Logan would have started crying except he didn’t want to give Lucifer the satisfaction. No! There had to be something they could do to stop this. He was the stupid human on this team, and he had to fucking think.

  “Perhaps not, sonny boy, but I’m the only one who can survive it. As impressive as your witch friend is—and honey, you are amazing—there’s some stuff where being any sort of human being is a liability. Ask your boyfriend.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” Ceri snapped.

  Lucifer simply smirked. “If I wanted to hurt your human pet, I could’ve done so at any time. Hell, I wouldn’t have set you up in the first place.”

  Now Logan felt as if he’d been punched in the face with a speeding train. “What?” He was surprised that broken teeth didn’t fall out of his mouth.

  Lucifer cocked his head, still grinning. “What, the angels were less than honest about the prophecy? Wow! Who knew angels could be liars! Anyhoo, the prophecy is pretty detailed and says very clearly that the Destroyer—which is you, Junior—falls for a mortal of a lost angel line. Which is a fuckload of people, let me tell you. So I went through a whole bunch of them until I found the prettiest one, which is you, Logan. You were prettier by far than even the female ones. And with your tragedy-porn backstory? Even I wanted to fuck you. But I saved you for my boy ’cause we had to get this prophecy kick-started, now, didn’t we?”

  Logan and Ceri shared a look of horror. It was possible Lucifer was making this up, because he was a fucking dick. But what if he wasn’t? Ceri decided to call his bluff. “You’re lying.”

  “About his tragedy-porn background? I most assuredly am not. Oh, you mean setting you two up? Why else did I bring him to Hell? It had nothing to do with the angels. We’ve been secretly working together for a while now to get that old apocalypse ball rolling. I brought him there so you two could have your meet-cute, and you could work that rebellion out of your system. Yes, I knew you’d kick up a fit at first. Rebellion is kinda my thing, and by extension, yours too.”

  Ceri looked furious, but Logan just felt hollow inside. Like the slightest push could make his chest cavity collapse.

  “You motherfucking bastard,” Ceri snapped.

  Lucifer did jazz hands and ended with his hands framing his beaming face. “Yep. Have you met me? I mean, you’re my spawn, so I figured you had.” Behind him more trees were falling, catching fire on their way down, and the river of lava headed their way was much clearer. Logan would swear the heat of it was reaching him now. He was beginning to think Esme’s protection spell might have met its match, but then again, were any of them expecting lava? Or any of this? Logan wanted to go home and collapse. On the floor, on a couch, on a bed—didn’t really matter. Maybe dying in a river of lava wouldn’t be so bad.

  “If you wanna fight still, I’m down,” Lucifer taunted. “It doesn’t change anything, but we might have to change locations. I mean, I don’t mind a dramatic lava backdrop, but I kinda get the feeling you do. See you later, alligators.” He blew them a kiss and winked out of existence.

  Ceri sheathed Godslayer. “Join hands. Now.” Everyone did, and Ceri got them back home.

  As soon as he could, Logan slid down the wall and sat on the floor. He almost felt like crying, but at the same time, that seemed like too much work. “Holy fuck. After all of this, we still lost.” So many things had been sacrificed along the way—hell, he’d lost his fucking sister—and in the end, it meant nothing. He might as well have stayed home and gotten drunk. Would have had the same outcome.

  “No,” Ceri insisted. “It’s not over yet. Admittedly we don’t have a lot of time, but we have a bit. We can’t let him win.”

  “Hasn’t he already won?” Ahmed said. He looked depressed, but it was a tiny adjustment of his normal facial expression. “We’re fucking boned.”

  Ceri clearly decided to ignore that. “Is there anything in the codex that might help us here?”

  “No. It didn’t seem to cover anything geological,” Ahmed replied.

  “You read the whole thing already?” Esme asked.

  “No, but I skimmed through what I didn’t read, and—”

  “Go back and double-check,” Esme said, running a hand through her hair. She looked no more cheerful than the rest of them but was apparently grasping at the same slender hope straw as Ceri.

  Ahmed rolled his eyes but disappeared in a drift of sand. The beauty part of that was he didn’t even need to open the basement door, he simply slid beneath the crack. Okay, it sounded like it was a kind of hell, but Logan could
n’t help but think there was an occasional upside to being made of sand.

  “How is this not all pointless?” Lyn asked, and it seemed like a genuine question. She hadn’t shaken any of her feathers out, so she was still in a half-transformed state.

  “If we can think of some way to put a stop to this before he sets off most of the volcanoes, the human race may still have a shot.”

  “How do we know they’re not all active now?” Lyn persisted. Logan was glad she was being devil’s advocate—so to speak—because Logan still had no energy for it. He should be mad, but again, that seemed like too much work.

  Ceri scoffed. “The sheer amount of energy used for the first spell was a lot even for him. Not that he would admit that. He’s not about to drain himself completely. Victory isn’t good enough; he needs enough energy to gloat, or there’s no point.”

  Lyn grimaced. “That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

  “No, but a little.” Ceri sighed like he was deflating and sat on the floor beside Logan. “My father is a liar. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I know. But….” Logan didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know what he felt, beyond tired and defeated.

  Ceri took his hand and squeezed it. “I love you more than anything. You are the world to me.”

  Logan squeezed his hand back, wanting to tell him the same thing, but now he was afraid to. What if he said it and it wasn’t true anymore? What would he do?

  Esme looked like she was about to say something, but then the hair on the back of Logan’s neck suddenly stood on end, and from the shocked expression that bounced between them all, he wasn’t alone in the sensation. Ceri and Esme looked toward the far wall, where a shadow appeared, a void darker and colder than the heart of space. Alex stumbled out of it, the shadows of tentacles appearing and disappearing within the space of seconds. “Where the hell is that greasy motherfucker?” they shouted, lips twisted into a sneer. “I’ll peel the skin from his bones and strangle him with it.”