Bittersweet Seraphim (28 page)

Jason dusted himself off and gestured with two annoyed hands for Jack to continue leading the way to the entrance where his siblings were waiting. “We need to just walk, or run, or something other than you trying to dry hump me every other minute.”

Jack growled and proceeded down through the cave. “Even though I’m sure you have a couple of pretty, pink vaginas hidden on your body, I still wouldn’t screw you.”

“Let’s just get this over with so I can get to Kate.” He turned and slugged Jack in the face.

Jack held up a hand to stop him from landing another blow. “The whole damn world is going to die because you can’t stop touching me. Can we please just get on with it?” He stomped forward, and Jason followed.

He knew they should be out there fighting everything else but each other. “Do you think she’ll become the Devil?” Jason had to ask again.

Jack shook his head. “No. Although I want to because that means she’ll live. I’m stuck here, so I can’t get out to protect her. She needs to fly back in here so I can fight this fucking battle with her.”

The dirty pond where Lucifer lived came into view, and both men stopped, their mouths hanging open. A crowd stood around the pond, which now glowed red.

“What the fu…” Jason breathed.

“Our guys lost. The old fart vampire must have opened the stone in the shed. That’s the only way these half-breeds would be in here. Shit.” Jack put his hands on his knees and breathed deeply, with focus.

“Seri, Dean, and Violent? They lost?” Jason put it together. Chances are they were dead. His heart crumbled. It had been the three of them for so long.

Jack glanced at him. “Listen, asshole. It doesn’t mean they’re dead. I’ve learned you got to…believe.” He stood and seemed to get purpose back into his step.

Before Jason could stop him, Jack walked right up to the pond and cleared his throat. The half-breeds turned in a daze. They seemed high from the force of the power coming from the muck.

“What happened to the half-breeds that were running from you sludge buckets?” Jack looked from one to the other.

A small girl spoke up. “We left them at the mating.” She turned her head back to the pond, mesmerized as the water started to swirl. “To come here. It called.” She pointed a shaking finger at the pond, which now seemed to be forming a hurricane.

Jack backed up and slapped Jason’s arm to get him to come with. Jason ignored him. The relief that his siblings were alive was suppressed by the fact that they were taken to a “mating.” His grandfather’s deepest wish was coming true.

Jack pulled his hair and slapped his face. “You know who lives in there. Do you want to watch as he rises after sticking his head in the sand for thousands of years? You’ve got discipline enough to resist his call, don’t you?”

Jason backed up as Jack yanked on him again. “Now what?” he asked irritably.

“Too late to leave,” Jack muttered. He and Jason managed to move a distance away while Lucifer emerged from the pond as the scariest thing in the universe. His black wings were slick, and his hot, red body was more horse-like than human. The half-breeds collapsed, prostrate. Lucifer’s beautiful evil coerced them instantly.

One after another began to burn as Lucifer stomped through their gathering. Everything he touched burst into the deepest red flames, punctuated by horrible screams.

“What a horrible way to die,” Jason whispered.

Jack’s eyes were hard when he told Jason the worst part. “They’ll never die. Only burn.”

Lucifer’s eyes were swirls of flame, and he set them on Jack and Jason. Jason felt his knees bend of their own volition, and he shook his head in grudging respect as he watched Jack casually approach the thing that had come up out of the pond.

“Lucy, you’re looking chipper.” Jack held out a cigarette, and Lucifer’s sheer nearness lit the end.

“Hell collapses because you fail. You’re weak. Now an angel will run my home? How will that work?” Lucifer’s voice sounded like a hundred men yelling in synchronicity.

Lucifer was so close now. Jason was positive his ears were bleeding from the volume. He thought about sneaking away, but Lucifer seemed able to look at one person while focusing on another—he also wasn’t exactly certain he could move.

“You can’t hide from this, Lucy. Now’s the time to find out exactly what you want—besides someone else doing your fucking job. You think she’s winning?” Jack’s hands were steady as the beast growled.

“I know she can win. I feel it. She’s contaminating everything.” Lucifer turned his massive head and breathed on a new crowd of half-breeds. They joined the others as flaming, living torches.

“So now what?” Jack stepped forward like an idiot, ready to brawl.

Jason grabbed his leather jacket and dragged him back a step.

Lucifer flared his nostrils. “I’m going out there to decide who wins the battle.”

The evil thing flew, its giant wingspan displacing enough air to knock Jack on top of Jason. Lucifer disappeared right out the exit by Kate’s house. Jason looked at Jack for an answer, but he was busy recovering the cigarette that had been flung by the wind. He took a long inhale and stared into the distance.

Jason prepared to yell at him for angering Lucifer when he saw a single tear slip down Jack’s cheek. He turned his head and pretended not to see. Because seeing Jack cry could only mean Emma was in worse danger than before: a hopeless kind.

Chapter 31

Jack knew what he couldn’t do. He couldn’t leave Hell. He’d given his soul to hold God in place. Then Emma’s wings had held his soul in his body, allowing him to be human, but the second she put them back on, it was over. He was bound to this place. A being needed at least a soul. Hell was like his artificial heart now, its energy keeping him animated. If he stepped out of one of the exits, it’d be over.

He wished he didn’t know. Otherwise he would’ve followed Lucifer right out of Hell to help Emma. Instead, he walked to the exit by Kate’s house. He crouched as he smoked the last of his cigarette, his old motorcycle boots at the ragged edge of Hell’s boundary.

Emma swooped up. Damn it, she looked amazing: covered in black, wearing a black mask. Like she’d changed. Like wearing a new outfit would make her ready to be the Devil. He knew better. Everett hit his angel, and Jack stood. Everything in him boiled. Suddenly Jason ran past him too fast to comment. Jack felt it then and almost cut the bastard some slack. Lucy was calling his beasts home—the battle must be brewing for real now—and there was nothing Jason could do to stop himself. All the minions and half-breeds on Earth and from Hell were returning to Lucifer’s feet.

Returning his eyes to the sky, Jack stumbled a bit when he saw Emma take a paralyzing blow. She shook it off and came at Everett again. “That’s my girl.” He glanced down and realized one boot was out of Hell.

It shouldn’t have happened. It couldn’t happen. But he edged his other boot out of Hell and closed his eyes. He was alive. He ran before he could comprehend the miracle of his ability to exit. He needed to get to Emma. He had to challenge Everett again. He had to get Lucifer to leave her be.

Jack skidded to a stop underneath the battle. Angel versus Devil. What a change of events. Now he would be solidly rooting for the Heavenly other side.

Everett deflected her sword, so Emma whipped around to kick him in the side. She wasn’t a pretty fighter, but she channeled everything she had toward him. She began splitting his soul from his body, tearing it away with her mind while she hacked at him with her sword. Then he pulled her other sword from his chest and used it against her, engulfed in flames. On a too-close pass he chopped off half of her right wing. Mercury-colored love poured from the feathers, bleeding down onto Earth. She sliced away at his left leg in retaliation. It was harder to fly now that she was off balance, and his leg regenerated immediately. His flaming wings hissed as she threw a handful of snow tainted with prayers at him.

She watched as the love leaving her mesmerized the minions below. They stilled just to watch it splash down around them. As she turned back to her battle, she realized it had probably been ages, eons, even longer, since some of those minions had known anything resembling love. The sounds and scenes of an angel fighting to be the Devil must be a spectacular show, but the simple presence of love was what they longed for. How could she not fight for them? Renewing her focus, she pulled starlight and bits of Heaven’s clouds from the sky. Everett called on darkness and fear. Above and below them, their colliding elements threw off light that put the aurora borealis to shame.

Yet when she glanced down again, many of the minions remained totally transfixed by the drops of love they’d located—and completely distracted from their fighting, which meant they weren’t faring too well. And that would surely piss Everett off. If she lost this war—
oh please, God, I need to win
—who knew what horrific punishment he might exact on them. Unsure whether she acted as angel or Devil, but suddenly sure of what she needed to do, Emma pulled the dreams floating around the atmosphere into a tight bubble around her and Everett. This gave them a sealed area to fight in and shielded those below from any additional drops of love.

Everett bared his teeth at the enclosure. Emma stopped her awkward flying and landed on the bubble. She pulled out handfuls of her black feathers and was about to name them into a weapon when the whole bubble rocked. She froze as she found a huge, red horse-like monster rising before her. His eyes were horrible. Everett used her distraction to his advantage. She lost her footing when he landed behind her and swiveled her into a restraint. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the beast, or to hear more taunts from Everett, but nether happened.

Everett spoke to the thing. “Lucifer, I’m guessing. I love this promotion. Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”

Emma looked around and found her dragon silhouetted against the moon. At least Smoosh looked happy. She watched as it flamed up and lit the sky like a firework.

“You’re a catastrophe,” the thing’s impossibly loud voice responded. “Everything is ruined because of you.”

The bubble shook again, and Emma wasn’t sure it would hold. The minions and half-breeds below had taken a knee and bowed their heads in Lucifer’s presence. She felt Everett quiet behind her after the verbal blow. “Look at that. You even suck at being evil,” she said with a smile. She rolled her hips a bit to see how balanced he was.

Smoosh turned and flew straight at the bubble. She wasn’t sure if the dragon was helping her, coming to Lucifer’s aid, or just doing a fly-by. Everett bit her ear. She pictured spike heels on her feet and sunk one into his shin.

He screamed and let go. Emma dropped to the bubble and braced herself. Smoosh hit Lucifer at full dragon speed, just like a devoted guard dog should. The bubble rumbled with the collision, and Everett fell to his knees. Emma still had a handful of feathers, so she pictured “bondage” and tossed them. The feathers restrained Everett’s feet and hands, turning into leather cuffs.

Emma looked below her at the countless minion and half-breed eyes now fixed on the bubble. The dragon had chased Lucifer beyond the horizon. She pictured a dagger, and it appeared, glistening in the moonlight. The bubble of dreams hummed, a million shades of crystal. The dagger had a cross embedded on its hilt.

“Do it! Oh please. Kill me. I think I’ll come when you murder me. Be just like me, whore. Do it.”

Deep bruises bloomed on Everett’s body, and blood seeped from several lacerations, but Emma knew that unbound, he’d be raring to fight.

The beings below her frothed at the possibility. Seeing an angel be terrible was riveting. She held the blade above his heart—or where that organ should be anyway. She’d always doubted he had one.

He began thrusting his pelvis like the sick freak he was. It was time to end him. She’d thought the mask and the black outfit would help, but they hadn’t made her forget who she was, what she stood for.

The minions and half-breeds needed to see goodness, not more death and domination. Their stupefied wonderment at the love raining from her wounds had sparked her angel’s compassion, and now purpose dawned on her like a thousand suns: She could teach everything in the underworld how things should be done, how they should treat each other, what love looked like. They were hungry for this message. She closed her eyes and changed her clothes back to official angel garb: a long, satin dress and silver sandals.