Chapter 93
Alexa, play ‘Little Girl Gone,’ by Chinchilla
“I am the storm.”
—OLIVIA CRAIN, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
C link, grind, whrrrlll.
Silence stretched out in the aftermath of Ramel’s death; only the sound of Yahweh’s Sorter of Souls interrupted the echoing quiet.
I sat, staring at my dead husband, unable to accept the reality of what had just happened. Finally, Yahweh began to clap.
“Encore, encore. What a show you’ve put on for us,” Yahweh drawled. I stared down at Ramel’s lifeless face and felt myself shake with grief and rage.
They had won…
I could feel my magic now coursing through me. I had the power to eviscerate them. I had begged Ramel not to kill Yahweh, and now I was paying the consequences. I looked up and allowed my magic to continue to flow through me, but I froze as I found Art pointing another golden arrow directly at my head.
What would happen if I was struck? I was a goddess… Could the arrow kill me as easily as a demon?
“Get her back on the cross,” Yahweh ordered, and his few remaining angels moved to grab me. Yahweh and Art crept closer to me, the Sorter of Souls clinking and grinding relentlessly behind them. The sound was pushing my barely controlled rage dangerously close to its breaking point.
They were dead. They were all fucking dead.
I eyed the arrow Art had trained on me warily, my mind racing. I needed a distraction. I needed to take them out before they could inhibit my magic again, but how?
The two angels flanked me and grabbed my arms, dragging me away from Ramel’s body. I screamed in rage and let my rot seep from my body, forcing it up and into their hands, but Art snarled.
“Rot them, and I’ll put this arrow through your skull, Lilith,” he threatened, and I screeched at him, black decay seeping through my feet and staining the clouds beneath me.
“If you kill me, Shem will never forgive you, and this will all have been for nothing!” I snarled, and Art narrowed his eyes at me in anger.
“We don’t know if the arrow will kill you, but we know it will certainly make it easier to get you on the damn cross,” Art hissed. “Bring me the scythe,” he snapped, and one of the three surviving angels snatched it up from where it had fallen next to Ramel’s corpse.
I strained against the hold of my captors as the angel moved to bring the scythe to Art. He stepped over Ramel’s body as if he were nothing, and a long, piercing wail of sorrow erupted from my throat before I could stop myself.
Art laughed as he reached for the scythe, but his laughter was abruptly interrupted as the angel’s head exploded in a mess of black sludge. There was a blur of black, gold, and auburn, and suddenly Gabriel was skating through the clouds — the scythe gripped in one hand and his bloody scepter clutched in the other. Art spun, aiming his arrow at the dark angel, but Gabriel was so fast my eyes could barely track him. He flapped his midnight wings and was instantly on the other side of the Soul Sorter before the unmade angel even hit the ground.
Yahweh roared in anger as Gabriel landed gracefully behind Shemhazai, who stood at the edge of Yahweh’s pit-like machine with his hands in his pockets and a look on his face that promised murder and mayhem. Gabriel handed Shem the scythe, and he took it without taking his eyes off Art. Shem dropped the weapon at his feet, balancing it precariously close to the edge of the celestial machine. The corner of his mouth tilted up as he nudged it closer to the pit with his boot.
Everyone froze.
If the scythe went into the pit, the natural way of death would be severely altered. The Soul Sorter would likely break as the gears chewed through the Aetherium blade, making it impossible to sort the constant influx of souls.
Shemhazai’s gaze fell on Ramel’s corpse, and the brief look of devastation and pain that flashed through his eyes told me that he didn’t care about the consequences — he would do it. He would push the scythe into Yahweh’s Sorter of Souls and throw the entire universe into chaos without a second thought.
“Well, it seems we missed the party,” Shem purred, toeing the shaft of the scythe idly with his boot.
“Shemhazai…” Art said, his voice tight. “Move away from the Soul Sorter; you don’t want to do this.”
Shem’s eyes snapped to the snake demon, and an angry hiss escaped his lips.
“You dare to assume to know what I want, Arteqoph?”
Art looked like he was in physical pain. He took a step toward the Soul Sorter and Shem pushed the scythe another inch closer to the pit, causing Art to stop in his tracks.
“I know you don’t want the world to end, Shemhazai. You love fucking with the humans too much.”
Yahweh made an angry sound at this, making it clear what he thought of Shem’s continued antics in the human world.
“I did this for us, Shemhazai. With Lilith and Ramel out of the picture, I will rule Hell with you at my side. You will have free reign of the human realm. Yahweh just wants his vengeance, and then he has agreed to leave us in peace.”
Shem laughed, but the sound was not joyful. It was an angry laugh and was somehow filled with a bleeding sort of anguish. I shivered against the sound, my heart breaking for my demon lover, who was clearly as devastated as I was to have lost Ramel.
“You think I care about mankind? You think I care about you?” Shem chuckled as if the idea were ludicrous. “The only fucking reason I ever gave a shit about mankind was because the thought of innocent souls suffering upsets Lilith. The only reason I ever kept you around was because you’re a warm hole for my cock to fill.” His cruel words drained the color from Art’s face.
“You don’t mean that…” Art whispered, and Shemhazai sneered at him.
“Oh, but I do, Art. You’re nothing to me, and now that you have hurt my family, you are less than nothing, and I will personally unmake you for betraying us.”
Gabriel slung his scepter over one shoulder and stepped closer to Shemhazai, a nefarious grin plastered on his lips. He leaned in close to Shem’s ear, looking directly at Art as he spoke.
“Things have been so boring with everything running so smoothly… Think of how exciting it would be to fuck everything up a little bit? Do it, Shem. Push it in.”
Shem grinned and reached up to stroke Gabriel’s face. “Now, this is a male who understands the way to my heart,” Shem said, kissing the angel sensually. He slowly ran his tongue over Gabriel’s lips, and the angel parted for him. Art and Yahweh could do nothing but watch as Shemhazai explored Gabriel’s mouth so thoroughly I nearly felt I could taste the angel myself.
They broke away from each other and turned to look at Art and Yahweh .
“You’re an abomination,” Yahweh snarled at Gabriel. The dark angel just grinned and licked his lips.
“You never told me sin could taste so sweet, Yahweh,” he sneered.
“Release Lilith,” Shem snapped at the angels who held me. “Release her, or I will end this now.”
The angels that flanked my shoulders moved to do as he ordered, but Yahweh hissed at them.
“ I give the orders! You will stay where you are. He will not do it. I created him. I know him better than he knows himself.”
Shem laughed and punted the scythe hard enough that the blade hovered right over the edge. It dangled so precariously that a gentle breeze could have sent it plummeting into the machine.
“You don’t know Shemhazai at all, Yahweh, if you think he would pass up an opportunity to poke something off a ledge,” I remarked dryly.
Shem gave me a dazzling smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. I didn’t miss the way his gaze kept dropping to Ramel’s corpse at my feet. I could nearly feel his pain like it was a living thing.
Their love for each other was beyond friendship, even beyond brotherhood. They had been two sides of the same coin. Twin flames, bound and destined to change and push each other for all eternity.
“Bring Lilith to me, or I will fuck you both so hard up the ass you’ll shit blood,” he threatened, still smiling at the angels who held me.
They exchanged a look and glanced at Yahweh, clearly trying to decide who they feared more. However, with the fate of the universe dangling over Yahweh’s Sorter of Souls, their fear of Shem won, and they dragged me by my arms through the clouds and around the pit, tossing me at Shem’s feet.
He grinned at them and cocked his head to the side.
“Thank you.” The angels looked confused for a moment at Shem’s politeness. “Gabe... Kill them,” he said it so cordially that it took a moment for the angels to understand that he had just ordered their deaths.
So quickly I barely saw him move, Gabe slammed his scepter through their skulls. He hit them hard enough that it only took one strike for them both to crumble to their knees.
Their brains splattered across the clouds in clumps of black, and my eyes widened in surprise.
Shem crouched down to help me to my feet, his green eyes cataloging the damage to my hands and my ripped dress.
He kissed me softly on the lips, cupping the side of my face.
“I’m so sorry I was late. I will fix this. Do you trust me?” he asked so quietly the others wouldn’t hear.
A hot tear slid down my cheek, and he wiped it away as I nodded .
“I trust you.”
He smiled at me and dropped another kiss on my head.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured. Frowning, he suddenly looked at something over my shoulder. I turned to see what it was he was looking at, but there was nothing there. Just the empty, bloody bridge to Hell behind us.
“What do you see?” I asked, but Shem just smirked at me.
“One thing at a time, Lilith,” he said cryptically before turning back to face Yahweh, Art, and the one remaining angel.
“How much more time do we have?” Gabriel asked, and I frowned.
Time for what?
Shem pretended to check the non-existent watch on his wrist.
“We have a few more minutes.”
“Enough time to kill Art?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Shem turned to me. “Would you like to do the honors, sweetheart? He did crucify you after all.”
I looked across the pit of golden gears at the demon who had murdered my Reaper.
My husband. My lover of a thousand lives. Art had fucking taken something from me that could never be replaced, no matter how many more lifetimes I lived.
“Yes. I want to kill him,” I whispered, and Shem ran his fingers through my hair, tucking it gently behind my ear.
“Go ahead, sweetheart. Take out the angel too; we don’t need him.” He gave me one of his most vicious smiles. “Make it hurt.”
“Shemhazai… please,” Art begged, tears suddenly spilling down his beautiful face. “I love you,” he whispered. Shem looked at him like he was something disgusting he had found beneath his shoe.
“It’s not me you should be begging, Arteqoph,” he hissed. He rolled his sole over the hilt of the scythe, causing it to twirl precariously along the edge of the pit. “Though I don’t know that begging will help you now. I have the feeling Lilith is in no mood for mercy.”
He was right.
Even in my past life, I rarely used my magic for battle or vengeance. I had never wanted anything other than harmony and balance for Yahweh’s creations, as well as my own.
However, even if you back the softest kitten into a corner, you’re likely to get scratched. My magic ripped out of me, and I didn’t bother trying to control it. I let it spread through Heaven and relished in the corruption as it tainted every speck of light it touched. One moment, we were in a shining, bleak expanse of never-ending white. In seconds, the crisp white wisps turned to angry black storm clouds as I soaked them through with rot .
Art screamed as he died, and I ripped his demon out of his body as he perished. We watched him crumble into a wet pile of nothing next to the nameless angel who had tried to take the scythe from me.
Only Yahweh was able to withstand the blast, but I had known he would. Shem had not said to destroy him, which led me to believe he had plans for the God of Creation yet.
My assumption was proven correct when Shem started counting backward from ten as my death magic continued to tear into the well-dead Arteqoph.
Yahweh’s many faces contorted in rage and desperation as he weathered the storm of my power.
“ Ten ,” Shem began counting down, an evil smile curling across his lips.
With his forces destroyed, Yahweh seemed to have realized he truly had lost. With the look of someone who had nothing else to lose, he let his own magic explode from his body. The mist of his dead army gathered around him in a storm of flesh and bone. He wielded the storm of biomatter as viciously as I wielded my churning sea of rot and decay.
Our magics slammed into each other. Flocks of living birds exploded from Yahweh’s river of flesh, only to be torn down and turned to mold as they flew toward me.
“ Nine ,” Shem continued. I waited for Shemhazai to kick the scythe into the pit as Yahweh attacked, but he seemed confident in my ability to hold him off until he had finished his countdown.
Yahweh continued to grow more and more desperate as Shemhazai counted. He created larger and more violent creatures to attack us.
“ Eight .” A great white shark swam through the air at breakneck speed only to explode into a spray of white decay.
“ Seven .” A tyrannosaurus rex roared and stomped through the clouds with the force of a detonating skyscraper. I melted it into a puddle of ink.
“ Six .” A nest of black widows appeared, and the spiders crawled up my legs, burying their vicious little fangs into my flesh. I laughed. Their venom could not harm me.
“ Five .” A pack of saber-toothed tigers. I reduced them to wet chunks of rancid flesh.
“ Four .” An entire fucking herd of elephants. I laughed as I forced them to crumble into nothing.
“What is it they say about insanity, Yahweh? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” I taunted the angry god as I vanquished another slew of his creations.
“ Three ,” Shem continued. We were too evenly matched, and the angrier Yahweh became, the sloppier his attacks were .
“ Two .” A violent troop of gorillas beating their chests. They barely made it a step before I reduced them to dust.
“ One .” Shem finished.
Yahweh was mid-cast when his body jerked in agony. I held back on my next attack, watching curiously as the might of his magic flickered and then dwindled down to nearly a third of what it had been moments before.
What had been a violent cacophony of noise suddenly turned to a bone-crushing silence as our battle ground to a stop.
My eyes flickered down to the Sorter of Souls, and I gasped and realized it was slowing down.
Clink, grind, whrrrlll.
Clink… grind… whrrrlll.
Clink… grinnnnndddd….
Whrrrrrrrrlllllllllllllll…
The machine slowed to a near stop. Shem winked at me, and with a snap of his fingers, his shadowy hellcats manifested and swarmed Yahweh as he screamed. Without the power he collected from the Sorter of Souls, he was no longer strong enough to defend against Shem’s attack. I watched in awe as his shadow cats dragged the screaming god back toward the cross that Art had tried to crucify me to.
“Gabe, be a good boy and get him strung up. Lilith and I will be there in a moment.”
Gabriel nodded and followed the feral colony of hellcats deeper into Heaven, his bloody scepter slung over his shoulder as he walked.
Shem slipped the toe of his boot under the handle of the scythe and kicked it up into the air, catching it deftly before sliding up beside me.
The adrenaline that had been keeping me upright bled away, and I suddenly felt weak on my feet. Shemhazai wrapped an arm around my shoulders, steadying me.
“It’s okay, Lilith. It’s over. You can rest now.”
I stumbled away from him, making my way back toward Ramel’s corpse. I got halfway to him before I collapsed to my hands and knees. Ignoring the bone-shattering pain in my hands, I crawled through the clouds to his side with tears streaming down my cheeks.
Shem followed me and knelt on his other side. He pursed his lips as I wept over my dead husband.
“Lilith.” I glanced up at my cat demon, and he reached out across Ramel’s body, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I told you I was going to fix this. When are you going to learn to trust me?”
“How can you fix this, Shemhazai?” I choked. “Even I can’t bring back an immortal soul.”
Shem’s mouth cocked up at the side, and his too-green eyes settled on something over my shoulder again. I twisted around, looking for whatever it was he was staring at, but I still couldn’t see anything.
“No. You can’t bring him back, Lilith,” Shem confirmed, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest. “But I bet you the God of Creation can.”