Chapter Sixteen Azrael
Chapter Sixteen
Azrael
I don’t know what kind of deal Charlotte managed to wheedle out of Belphegor—whose unsurprising and epic laziness speaks for itself in the fact he chooses to spend all his immortal days in Hawaiian shirts now, apparently—before Charlotte collapses onto the ground.
I become Nothing and shadow toward her.
Sloth rolls his eyes and raises both his hands over his head as if he’s been asked to perform his least favorite chore, and the massive tidal wave looming over the south side of the city parts. That lazy dickhead doesn’t so much as break a sweat.
But Charlotte is bleeding.
An unnatural resolve fills me.
If I could end him without messing this up for her, I would.
With a single touch.
Being in love makes me . . . unhinged clearly.
Possessive as all fucking get-out.
Bel huffs in annoyance like even that little bit of work physically pains him. At the same moment, I become corporeal again, tugging Charlotte down and into my arms to shield her.
“Lucifer, down!” I shout at the other rooftop, where a battle has broken out between Lucifer’s demons and Michael’s angels. Where the fuck is Greed? I drag Charlotte onto the ground.
Belphegor waves off what remains of the plague of locusts.
The sky above turns a sickening black.
Not the black of night like Charlotte’s or my ex’s shadows.
Darker. Hungrier.
Like ink bleeding through everything.
The chaos and terror raining down on the city explodes.
The sea parts, the locusts disappear, and thanks to that lazy fucker Sloth actually working toward something for once in his miserable existence, the water starts to recede, its retreat nearly as destructive as its onslaught, as the power of the third seal unlocks.
The few humans who managed to take refuge on the rooftops scream.
Humanity’s fate is being weighed and judged until . . .
Famine appears.
Not a person. Not a beast.
A force.
A force a lot like me. Only worse.
Just as God and Lilith created him to be.
The earth and the rooftop beneath us shake, and the pressure in the already cold air suddenly drops. The moral reckoning of the world is silent until—
“Fuck!” I roar, unable to cover my ears before they bleed.
My brother sweeps through the city.
Glass shatters. Skyscrapers moan, their steel bones rotting from the inside out.
The sound is sickening.
The sound of hunger given form.
The screech of God’s divine scales leveling.
And not in humanity’s favor.
I shield Charlotte as well as I can, pressing us both into the ground as I try not to allow myself to consider what this means.
This isn’t wrath. This is divine deprivation.
The collapse of everything humanity has known previously.
No lightning. No flames.
Just the slow, grinding halt of a world already starved of His love, of His intervention.
And no one—not me, my ex, or Charlotte—can put a stop to it.
I glance overhead, searching the darkened sky for the sight of my brother, the one God commanded Lilith to create in my image, before I spot the dark horse he’s riding.
The Black Rider.
I keep still, a feeling of dread overtaking me.
Unlike War, Famine doesn’t need to kill, because as soon as Charlotte opens the next seal . . .
He’ll have me to finish the job he just started, unfortunately.
Underneath me, Charlotte gasps, but it isn’t Famine she’s looking at as he rides off to wreak his terror upon the world.
I follow her gaze to the flood’s rapidly receding waters.
To where a human child and her mother desperately cling to the branch of a submerged tree.
The violent current thrashes against them, the city’s muck and debris surging with the reversed tide.
A crushed Citi Bike that’s hooked to a stray food cart heads straight for them, clipping the mother just enough that her grip loosens.
The child screams as her mother’s washed away.
Charlotte tears from beneath me before I can stop her, scrambling toward the building’s edge. “Azrael!” she shouts, gesturing to where the mother and so many others are now being washed out to sea, to the drowning onlookers, who were still on the street when the wave hit.
And the sides of the buildings, where there’re even more people pinned.
More victims, more deaths, more drowning.
More people trapped between pieces of debris.
I can’t possibly save all of them.
Even I can’t be everywhere at once.
And already I feel their ends drawing near.
The cut of fate’s string.
But I don’t turn away from her.
“Azrael!” she shouts again.
Not a request, but an order. An order from my queen.
One that goes directly against Lucifer’s.
I glance toward her then, between her and the rushing tide, flooded by the sense that the end of something significant is near.
She’s immortal now, but with what Michael’s done to this seal . . .
I can’t always see who I’m coming for until it’s imminent.
And I swore to stay by her side.
But I also swore I would be her choice, and that’s what this means.
Letting her make her own decisions, no matter what ill-fated consequence it may bring.
I’ve heard enough confessions from the dead and dying to know what regret is.
And I won’t regret her.
“I love you,” I growl just as I turn to go after the mother.
Though I hope, after last night, she already knows it.
But I learned from someone else never to leave anything unsaid.
For a moment, Charlotte smiles, the joy on her face even more radiant than her Lightbringer. “Tell me again tomorrow.”
She’s confident we’re going to make it through this.
Even if I’m not so certain.
She rushes toward the child.
Like the new guardian angel she’s becoming.
Lucifer’s bride. Our little siren.
An amused smile twists my lips as I become Nothing again.
Only He would’ve written a fate this impossible.