Chapter Twelve
Serenity
Over the next few days, I practice my powers. They have so much potential to be used in so many helpful ways. Lucifer is the one who mainly teaches me to control them, since all of his sons have been occupied with trying to find out who is behind all the beings missing from Hell.
Lucifer has yet to summon his friend Bernael. I’m unsure why. I will find out though. Reading Lucifer isn’t as easy as reading his sons. I have spent time touching their hands or shoulders to try my powers.
I can read some of them pretty easily, but Leopold and Lorenzo have kept me out.
I don’t know what it is about them that makes them able to block me, but I will eventually get through.
I know Lucifer is very powerful, and he is basically the reason I have these powers, so it would make sense that he’s so much stronger than I am.
I haven’t been able to practice my healing abilities that much, but I find my other power much more interesting right now. There haven’t been any opportunities to practice healing anyway, considering how no one will let me get even remotely near any potential danger.
I know Silas feels bad he can’t spend as much time with me right now, but I get it. We do have pretty much forever to spend together anyway. We both just want to find who is after me, and the rest of the brides who will unfortunately be targets once they are discovered.
Silas and I have still made time each day to do something intimate. So far, it’s only hands, but he reassures me that he can wait.
I feel no anger behind his words, which helps put me at ease.
Part of me wants to wait for the official bonding ceremony to give myself to him completely. Maybe it seems silly, but it will be my first time and I want it to be special. I haven’t had a lot of special moments in my life, and I want to give myself something special.
I’m currently sitting in the main room with Lucifer who is letting me help brainstorm who could be behind everything. I’m glad he’s letting me be included.
“I miss my puppies,” I tell him with a sigh.
He chuckles.
“They aren’t puppies; they are fierce beings of great power,” he replies.
I wave a hand dismissively.
“They are still my precious puppies,” I say lovingly.
“We will get them back. Hellhounds are very hard to kill,” he tells me with a serious tone.
I think about them very hard and, all of a sudden, there is a light in the room that forces me to look away for a second. When I turn my head back, my eyes widen at what I see before me.
The hellhounds are all there. They are bone-thin and have whip marks and blood on their bodies. When they open their eyes, they have no energy to greet Lucifer and me. Anger grows inside of me.
Whoever did this to them will pay.
“How did they get here?” I gasp while rushing to their side. Lucifer and I get there at the same time. The hellhounds whimper when we touch them.
“It must be the connection we have to them. Usually, I can summon them on my own, but whoever is after us has me blocked somehow. Now that you are connected to them too, it seems we were strong enough to break through whatever block they had and call them to us,” Lucifer states.
“We need a healer. Something is draining their power and life force,” he states.
I feel the power and rage grow in the room.
All of a sudden, Silas and his brothers are in the room.
“What’s going on? I felt a shift in power,” Lorenzo says, and they all look at me and Lucifer cradling the hellhounds.
“What the fuck? It takes a lot of fucking power to do this to them,” Lorenzo states.
The guys help get the hellhounds on the family table so they can be examined.
“Can you read anything off of them?” Silas asks me.
“I can, but I won’t know who anyone’s faces are, so I don’t know how much help it would be,” I tell him.
“We have to show her portraits of everyone; we should have thought of it before. Then she can tell us who is behind all of this,” Otis says.
“Go show her where they are,” Lucifer demands.
I follow Silas, Otis, Gareth, and Fredrick to where these portraits are. This place is huge, so I probably would have never found them on my own.
I follow them down several hallways that feel like a maze. I know I won’t be able to find my way back now.
They open a room that looks like a museum.
“Holy fuck,” I say before slapping a hand over my mouth.
“It’s a big room,” Gareth says with a laugh.
I look around and see portraits of fallen angels and other beings of great power who are close to this family.
“What is the difference between the black and red frames?” I ask.
“The red ones mean they are still here, and the black ones mean they are dead. It’s not often we lose someone in a battle, but it does happen,” Silas tells me.
I don’t recognize anyone on the side I’m looking at. I come to the middle and see each sin still looking the same as ever. In the middle is Lucifer and a woman who I’m assuming is Lilith.
“She’s beautiful,” I whisper in awe.
“She is. It’s too bad none of us had gotten to meet her,” Gareth says. They all take a moment to look at Lucifer’s bride; the woman that would have been their mother.
“Do the beings get recycled, or are they just gone forever?” I ask.
“Usually recycled as a mortal. There is a myth that says if a being finds their way back home, their memories and powers are restored. I have never seen it happen, so I can’t say for sure that it’s true,” Otis says.
“So, Lilith could just be getting recycled over and over again until she finds her way home?” I ask.
Silas nods. “Yes, we have never found her though. There are too many people up top.”
“That’s so sad. She could be up there now, not knowing she has family waiting for her to come home,” I whisper.
“We hope to bring her home one day,” Fredrick says.
“We will,” I state.
“Let’s keep looking so you can get a good look at everyone; we need to know who is after our family,” Gareth says.
I nod my head before turning again to look through the portraits.
The guys are talking amongst themselves and sharing different stories about different beings in the portraits. Suddenly, I freeze.
I feel instant terror and find myself brought back to that night when I was attacked. It had to have been a year ago now.
His frame is black.
They must have realized I was no longer walking.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Silas asks, rushing to me.
“Furcas,” I whisper.
“Baby, he’s been dead for centuries. My father and Bernael battled with him over a thousand years ago. He died in battle,” Silas says.
“You said, You said,” I start hyperventilating.
“Breathe, baby,” Silas says, trying to calm me down.
“You guys just said that when a being finds home, they get their memories and powers back. You just said that,” I say panicking.
“We did, but we would have known if Furcas came back,” Fredrick says.
I shake my head. “This is the man that attacked me last year. I would recognize his face anywhere.”
My knees go weak. I almost fall to the floor, but Silas catches me. My eyes don’t move from the portrait.
They bring me back to Lucifer as I start crying in Silas’s arms.
Silas
I’m carrying a crying Serenity back to the family room, and my father and brothers instantly go on alert when they see her.
“What is it? What did she see?” my father asks when I take a seat with Serenity in my arms.
“Her attacker was Furcas,” I state, looking my father in the eyes.
“That’s impossible,” Lorenzo says.
I shake my head.
“She’s not lying. The fear I saw in her eyes was real,” I declare.
“I didn’t mean I didn’t believe her, but we would have known if he found his way back and regained memories or powers.
We would have felt the shift; no being returns without every being in hell feeling the shift in power.
It was made that way so we would all know when someone came back,” Lorenzo says.
“What if he never died?” Leopold asks.
“I watched him die,” Lucifer says, dropping to the seat beside me.
“Which battle did you lose him?” Otis asks.
“The one where I lost your mother,” my father says sadly.
“Maybe your grief made you lose focus,” Jasper says quietly.
“I felt the power shift then,” my father says while shaking his head.
“What if that was just Lilith’s power?” I ask.
Serenity stops crying, sits up, and turns to my father.
“Let me see,” she whispers as tears fall down her cheeks.
My father seems to gather himself and nods his head. I know it will take him a lot to remember that day. He always told us that losing Lilith was the worst day of his existence.
Lucifer
Thousands of years ago…
Someone is after Lilith’s and my thrown.
There is always someone after it. This time, they are close.
I have my close friends with Lilith and me. Bernael and Furcas are up front with us followed by more beings that are on our side.
Lilith and I were about to create our children. We had been talking about it for years. We had decided what we wanted for each child. We both put a piece of ourselves in each vial to create our boys; the seven deadly sins.
It seems as though someone had felt that we were ready because that’s when the attacks had started.
We locked the vials up so that no one could access them except Lilith and me. That way, no one could steal a part of us for themselves.
We are weakened by it, but it shouldn’t be enough for someone to overthrow us.
I slash and maim anything in my way. I use my sword that I had infused with a couple extra boosts for the beings to feel an extra bite of pain with each slash.
It burns whomever is weak enough to ash in seconds. Some of the beings take a bit of extra care to kill.
This is the closest anyone has come to taking the thrown. I couldn’t let anyone take what I have built.
I lose track of Lilith as I’m focusing on killing everything in my path when I feel it.
I freeze with my sword in the gut of a demon. Everything fades into the background, and I look for where I feel the power shift.
Lilith is already looking at me with tears falling down and devastation in her eyes.
I slice anything that is in my way to Lilith. Every step towards her feels like it’s taking too long.
I manage to catch her before she falls, but her blood is draining from her. I feel her heartbeat slowing down with each choked out breath.
“Lilith, stay strong,” I rasp as I feel her life force slipping away.
She puts her hand on my cheek as sorrow fills her expression.
“I will love you in every lifetime. I’ll find you one day, and I’ll come back to you.”
“Please don’t leave me,” I choke out.
When her hand slips from my face and her spirit is gone, I feel devastation and loss.
Her mortal body disappears from my arms, and I know that she’s gone.
A feeling of uncontrollable rage fills me as I stand up and look around at all the destruction.
My Lilith is gone.
Those words repeat over and over in my head as I unleash my rage.
One by one, beings go down. I can’t stop myself from destroying anything in my path.
I feel arms pull me from my trance, and I look over to see Bernael who looks at me with wide eyes.
“She’s gone,” I say roughly.
“I know. We will find her again. Furcas seems to be gone as well,” he says.
I look around and see that most of the enemy force is gone, and those who haven’t died are being killed by my army right now.
I don’t see Furcas anywhere. We have lost a lot today.
I lost my reason for existing.
Silas
I stand back and watch as my woman and father join hands, and he takes her back to his most painful time.
It doesn’t take long before tears fall down her cheeks.
When she pulls away, she gasps like she can’t believe what she just saw.
“I’m so sorry,” Serenity whispers.
“It has been a long time,” my father whispers back.
“What do you think?” Jasper asks.
“He never saw Furcas die; he just went off of what his other friend had told him. He had to have died; his frame is black,” she says while looking at my father in confusion.
“It turned black that same day. That’s why I never questioned it,” my father admits.
“Maybe he did die, but he found his way back home and regained his memories and powers,” Otis states.
“Then why would his frame not change back?” Serenity asks.
“He had to have figured out a way to keep it black. This is something we will have to look into,” my dad says.
“For now, let’s focus on your bonding ceremony, in addition to making sure we don’t have any spies for Furcas amongst our soldiers,” Lorenzo says.
“I don’t want to rush a bonding ceremony. We can’t push Serenity into something like that,” I tell my family.
“I’m ready to start planning it,” Serenity says so quietly that I’m questioning if I heard her correctly, but everyone has the same surprised look on their faces so it is clear that she actually said what I had thought she had said.
“Are you sure?” I ask, walking over to her with hope and taking her hands in mine.
She nods her head and gives me a shy smile.
“Yes, I have been sure for awhile. I want this with you. It’s the one thing I know I don’t have to question. I can feel that what you feel for me is real and genuine. I trust in you, and I trust in us. I’m not fighting it anymore.”
I pick her up and kiss her hard on the lips. I don’t remember the last time I felt this happy.