Chapter 30 #2
Ugh, no, not Daddy Dearest. Give me Satan over my snooty archangel father, who had been absent most of my life but now enjoyed sticking his nose into my business and making judgements of my every decision.
“Abbadon, get your ass down here. We’ve got a soul discrepancy,” Lucifer demanded.
“How does that work?” Rebecca asked. “You just shout to each other across dimensions?”
“We can do it because we are linked through celestial blood,” I said. The house groaned as the weight of Heaven pressed against it.
“Going for the dramatic entrance, I see,” Dave mumbled, folding his arms.
A wash of golden light skimmed over us, and the spirits in the sitting room gasped when the angel of death appeared, a smug look on his face at being summoned. “I was at Harrods in London, not a different dimension.”
“Ooh, I love Harrods,” Rebecca said with a wistful look on her face.
What was Harrods? Ugh, never mind.
“What is the problem?” my father asked.
Lucifer passed him the note. “This.”
A frown crumpled Abaddon’s face as he read it. “You are right.”
I opened my mouth, but the words melted on my tongue as the world contracted around us, darkened, and spat us back out into a dimly lit rainy alleyway with the distinct smell of cheap roasted meat and sewage wafting from the vents.
“I hate New York,” Lucifer grumbled.
“It was better in the 20s,” Abbadon agreed. Their eyes both glazed over while they basked in a shared memory.
Rebecca snapped her fingers. “Hey! Since when am I part of the investigation gang? You know I’m a home bird.”
Abbadon blinked and focused on the vampire princess. “You were in the general vicinity.”
Rebecca huffed. “I would have gotten changed into my badass warrior princess outfit.”
“Save it for Ezra,” I advised with a wink.
Hudson and Dave stalked down the alleyway toward a dinged red metal door. I could sense that death had occurred, and the shifters could smell it.
Rebecca’s nose twitched. “Bloodshed,” she decided. “A lot of it.”
Great.
We followed the shifters. Hudson yanked on the handle, breaking the lock. It creaked as it opened, and I stepped forward, but Hudson’s arm shot out, blocking me. “I’ll go first.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and sighed. My mate still thought I was weak.
“I don’t think you are weak, Cora. But it doesn’t lessen the protective instinct. When you can, let me lead.”
“Fine,” I said. I could understand his point, but I didn’t like it.
He gave me a quick peck before diving through the shadowy doorway.
I followed with the rest of the gang filtering in behind me.
The darkness pressed in on all sides, so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of me.
I stumbled over something on the floor and cursed under my breath. A hand closed around mine and squeezed.
“Hold my belt loop until we get out of the dark,” Hudson advised.
Where were my supernatural senses? I think I was owed them. I twisted my finger in the back of his jeans and followed.
“You hear that?” Dave asked.
I tilted my head, hearing nothing but our breaths and footsteps. Hudson came to an abrupt stop, and I smacked my face into his back. “A little warning,” I grumbled, rubbing my aching nose.
“I hear it,” Rebecca whispered. “And I can smell it.”
That wasn’t a good sign.
“It’s behind this wall,” Hudson declared.
“How do we get in there?” I asked. My answer came in the form of a loud thud, and a hole appeared in the wall. Light filtered out, shining on Hudson’s face as he tore his fist free from the drywall.
“That’s one way,” Lucifer muttered. Then, without warning, we were squeezed once more through space and time and emerged on the other side of the wall. “That’s a more elegant method.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” Rebecca said.
Lucifer smirked. “I haven’t even begun, darling.”
Ugh. Nope. My life does not need a love affair between my uncle and my vampire friend, when said vampire is currently claimed by a territorial shifter.
“Cora, pay attention,” Abaddon snapped. “Tap into your celestial side. You can sense their souls, each one being born and each one ending.”
I could, but I found it rather overwhelming, much like opening an email address you forgot you had a decade ago and realizing there were thousands of unread ones waiting for you.
“Ignore the noise,” Lucifer advised.
“Is the lesson really needed right now?” Dave asked.
“It is. She needs to stop shying away from this side of herself,” Lucifer said.
Yes, because this was the side they needed to determine the course of the future. The side that had choices to make on behalf of humanity. This was the terrifying side.
“The noise is rather loud,” I muttered as I looked around the unremarkable hallway with stained, peeling wallpaper and flaky paintwork.
“We don’t need magic to find the horror,” Hudson said as his hand pressed against my back and guided me forward with him. “It’s right around the corner.”
We rounded a corner to find a large open seating area.
A dusty chandelier flickered with power, sending shadows dancing across the blood-spattered walls.
Death littered the room in a macabre display of bodies draped over sofas, slumped in chairs, and curled on the carpet tiles.
Although this was a recent slaughter, I couldn’t register the dead.
“There’s nothing,” I whispered.
“Agreed,” Abaddon said as he stalked around the room.
Rebecca’s arms curled around herself, but she didn’t look away.
“What happened here?” Dave wondered.
I squeezed my eyes closed and fisted my hands while they traded theories and observations, yet none of them mentioned the obvious elephant in the room.
I could tell them what happened; I just needed to be brave.
It had been a hot minute since I’d performed a retro read, since the dead that showed up these days came with their stories intact.
But not these—there was no soul residue left.
It was as if they’d been torn from their bodies.
I dropped to my knees and grabbed the nearest arm.
“Cora, no,” my father snapped.
Too late.
My vision tunneled, and my power grappled with the echo of death that should be here. All living things left a residue, but this was equivalent to being bleached. Where are you? I poked at the darkness, and eventually it poked back. I grabbed it and yanked.
My grandmother’s face snapped into view, but I was no longer in the room of death.
I was in an unfamiliar room with rows and rows of tall shelves.
Eloise smirked at something in her hand.
“Another for my collection,” she muttered.
“You had no purpose in life, but in death you shall be a part of the new age.”
Give me a break. This was like Evil Overlord 101.
A golden tendril twisted and swelled around her finger, and I felt the push against the veil as Heaven and Hell bent to look at the sins of the recently deceased.
I inched closer, not sure if I was in the past or the present.
Eloise didn’t react though, so whichever it was, I was still hidden in a dimension she couldn’t pierce.
She chuckled as the tendril tried to lift from her finger. “Sorry, but the afterlife you deserve is right here.” She twirled the shimmering strand around before stuffing it inside a small glass jar and popping a cork in the top. It shivered and slammed against the glass.
My breath caught in my throat. She wouldn’t dare.
Of course she would.
She was coming up against the barriers of the veil and needed the souls to continue to power her uprising. Lucifer and Abaddon wouldn’t tolerate her, so she was orchestrating deaths and plucking the souls as they took their last breaths.
“What have you done?” I whispered.
It wasn’t just a crime against humanity; it was a crime against the fabric of the universe. She was playing God, and the power Donn had fed her corrupted her soul. It was eating her from the inside out.
My gaze lifted and tracked the hundreds of trapped souls. How long had she been doing this? My chest tightened. I needed Donn to remove his power from her, to strip her defenses so I could fix this crime.
Sadness rippled across the room as the souls pleaded for release. They were confused, in pain, and lost. Death was a single journey, the only one we had to perform alone. Stopping it wasn’t just messing with the natural order; it was fucking with fate and destiny, two gods you never crossed.
Oh, Grandmother, I hope you know what you’ve unleashed in your single-minded mission to rule the world.
Eloise smiled and tapped her fingernail on the glass, taunting the trapped soul. The prisoners pressed forward.
I swallowed.
She might have harvested souls, pure and tainted alike. But this was warping them into something terrifying that she had no hope of controlling.
I squeezed my eyes closed and let go of the death echo.
Hudson’s face was the first I saw leaning over me. “You good?”
“Sugar,” I croaked.
Rebecca shoved a juice box at me. Where did she find that? Oh, we were back in my apartment. I snatched it and gulped down the syrupy liquid while taking the opportunity to look around. Oh, goodie, the gang was all here, and my angelic family members had stayed for the show.
Abbadon glared at me. “You need to listen, Daughter.”
I leaned back and grumbled under my breath.
“What was that?” Lucifer snapped.
“I said, spare me the warnings and fatherly care. You are a day short and a dollar late. But you two need to listen up, because I have some answers while you didn’t even notice there was a problem.”
“Oof, schooled by your child,” Dave said.
“Tell us then,” Lucifer said. “Dazzle us with your knowledge.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yes.”
“Good. The reason you can’t sense those souls is because Eloise Roberts didn’t just murder them, she snagged their souls at the moment of death and harvested them.”
“Impossible,” Abbadon snapped. “Only those with the power of death can do such a thing.”
I waited for him to catch up.
“Shit,” Rebecca breathed. “Donn.”
“That god needs to go back to whatever corner of the universe he’s been rotting in,” Abbadon said.
That would solve so much, but it was also very unlikely.
“In the absence of that,” I said with a sigh, “it looks like I need a date with a god.”