Chapter Sixteen
Serenity
I wake up with energy, ready to meet my two other sisters. Lucifer checks in with the brothers, and they seem to be doing fine; although I don’t really have any idea what they are doing.
“Where are we going now?” I ask once I am finished getting ready.
“Breakfast,” he says.
We do the same thing we have done every morning; we go through several portals so that we don’t get caught.
We don’t want anyone harming these women before it’s time.
We head towards a diner. The place looks like it has seen better days, but it’s got that charming family feel to it.
The woman who serves us barely lifts her head to acknowledge us and take our orders. I look towards Lucifer and see his face drawn into a frown.
“Something is wrong,” I whisper to him.
He nods his head. “She didn’t look like that the last time I was here,” he says lowly.
She comes back with our coffees. I look at her, and she looks like she’s on the verge of tears. We don’t say anything until she walks away again.
“What do we do?” I ask him.
“We will eat and then follow her when her shift is done,” Lucifer says.
I nod my head in agreement.
We eat in silence. I keep looking at the woman. She looks like she’s doing everything to hold herself together.
We wait until her shift is done before we follow her.
Lucifer puts a cloak on us so she can’t see us.
Now I have to wonder how many times he did that to me.
I know he didn’t look all the time, which is how I got attacked and he didn’t know until it was over, but he must have sometimes been there with me while wearing the cloak so I couldn’t see him.
I frown as we seem to be walking forever; this is a long way to walk to work.
She walks to a yard which I assume is her house, but she collapses before she can make it to the steps.
We both take off in a run, and Lucifer checks her over before picking her up.
He gets us inside her home.
“You need to read her,” he says while placing her on the couch.
I look at him in shock.
“Why? That wouldn’t be fair to her,” I tell him.
“It’s not, but something is going on. I can feel her still breathing, but it’s like her life is clinging by a thread,” he says.
I glance over at him and can see that he is filled with desperation.
I finally understand; losing any one of his kids would break him. He lost the love of his life and losing any of us would be devastating. That’s why he checks up on the brides.
I reluctantly kneel beside the couch and look over at my sister. She looks pale and thin. I take a deep breath before grabbing her hand.
Everything tries to come to me at once.
She’s alone like I was before Silas came to me. All her family isn’t gone, but they gave her up as a baby. She has no idea who they are. She has no close friends or lover; it’s like she’s just living life to get by and survive.
I push through for her recent details. Seems she went to the doctor. She had a miscarriage, and her body hasn’t healed right. It is like she is infected on the inside.
I tug at my other power by placing my hand on her womb. I feel the sickness inside. Her body is close to giving up, the infection is so bad.
She can’t afford to miss work, so she hasn’t taken herself in.
I heal her without second guessing myself. I have a sense she isn’t next. If I don’t heal her then she will have to be recycled again before meeting her sin. That can’t happen.
I pull back and look over at Lucifer.
“She had an infection that would have killed her in a couple days, but I healed it,” I state.
He blows out a breath. “You did what you had to do. Now, she will be able to make it until her sin comes.”
I nod my head.
“We should go before she wakes and sees us,” I suggest.
“Come on, daughter. We have one more daughter to check in on,” he says before holding out his hand to me.
I grab his hand, and he portals us a couple times before we end up at some crowded place. Seems like someone is raising money for charity.
A woman walks up to us with a kind smile.
“Thank you joining us. Any donation is appreciated,” she tells us.
“What’s the charity for?” I ask.
“It’s for women who are needing help escaping domestic violence, or help from any type of assault,” she tells me.
“Where can we make a donation?” Lucifer asks.
“Just over here,” she says, gesturing to a desk.
We walk over with her, and Lucifer places an obscene amount of money down.
“Wow, you don’t need to donate that much,” the woman gasps.
“It’s for a good cause,” he says.
“Can I get your names?” she asks, looking at us in awe.
“I’m Seri and this is my dad, Luci,” I say with a smile. I feel a bit of annoyance coming from him for calling him Luci.
We stay for a little bit and chat, but then Lucifer stills. I look at him and he snaps out of it.
“We need to go; the boys need us,” he says and rushes us somewhere private so we can portal.
I start panicking because I haven’t seen that look on his face before. We enter back in Hell to what looks like level four.
All I see is chaos around as the guys seem to be fighting a bunch of beings.
Silas
The days we have spent hunting down Piasa have been long. We have managed to locate it, but we seem to have come across some rebels.
Some of the demons who we knew were missing have seemed to be gathered here.
They seem to come out of nowhere but, when I look at the direction they are running from, it seems they are cloaked; probably by Furcas.
Demons need Hell to survive. They need to come here to recharge basically.
It seems he was hiding them in plain sight.
“Fuck, of course they are in the mountains,” Lorenzo growls.
Rebels are coming from all angles. We are good fighters, but there seems to be more missing demons than I had realized.
I have four of them trying to fight me off right now that seem to have more strength than they should have.
The next thing I know, I’m being stabbed from behind. It stuns me for a moment, and the demon in front of me takes advantage of my pause to slash me across the abdomen. I wince from the pain. The blades seem to be laced with something that is making it impossible for me to heal.
My eyes widen as I catch a glimpse of my bride screaming my name from behind the demon.
She pulls out one of her daggers, jumps on the demons back, and stabs him in the head.
A look of pure rage takes over her face as my body falls to the ground.
Demons start coming for her. I want to help keep her safe, but I feel weak. I’m trying my hardest to keep my eyes open, and it’s taking everything I have in me not to lose consciousness.
I keep my gaze on her. I don’t notice that the fight is over until she comes running to me. She drops beside me as tears start falling.
“Silas, baby. You need to heal,” she cries out.
“I can’t. Some sort of magic is stopping me from healing,” I rasp.
“You can’t leave. We aren’t ready to leave this world yet,” she shouts.
I watch her hands glow as she places them on my body. I can actually feel her power trying to fight the magic on the blade.
When she beats the magic, I feel my skin putting itself back together and my strength returning.
It takes longer than it normally does, but I am now able to focus enough to see that my family fought the last of the demons and they are all gathering around. They are all injured in some way.
When Serenity pulls back, she looks at me with anger.
“You are lucky I love you or I would have left your guts all over the place,” she hisses.
Lucifer smirks and then portals us back to the palace.
I don’t think that Serenity realized she had just told me she loves me for the first time. I have been waiting forever to hear those words out of her mouth.
I know that I will bring it up later. Right now, she’s scolding each of my brothers as she sees their injuries.
“Their blades are cursed with something. That’s why none of you are healing. I had to fight like hell to get Silas healed, but I think it’s because his wound was huge. Breaking the curse on the rest of you shouldn’t be as hard,” she says.
“I took one of their blades. Here, maybe you can look it over,” Otis says before handing father the blade.
“We need to find out who is helping him. Furcas knew he needed assistance killing you guys, so he has a witch cursing the blades,” Lucifer says as he grabs the blade.
Serenity walks around healing every single injury of ours.
“What were you guys thinking?” she asks, putting her hands on her hips.
“We were trying to capture a Piasa for the zoo,” Gareth admits under her stare.
“Why would you do that?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
“It has been missing for some time, and we needed another animal for the zoo,” Gareth says with a shrug.
“You guys should have summoned help the second you had seen the rebels. What’s the point of having your own Hell army if you guys aren’t going to use them?” she asks, throwing her hands in the air.
“We thought we could handle it ourselves,” Leopold says.
She lets out a humourless chuckle.
“Handle over a hundred beings trying to kill you with cursed blades?” she asks frantically.
“We didn’t know the blades were cursed,” Fredrick chimes in.
“Even if they weren’t, you shouldn’t try to handle that many beings without calling for your army. I know most of you have egos, but you should still have some sense,” she says.
“I don’t think we have ever been scolded before,” Otis whispers.
“Then you obviously deserve it. Now I don’t have to feel bad that I met all of your brides,” she hisses.
Everyone stares at her with wide eyes. I look over at my dad who smirks at me and nods.
“You met our brides!” Gareth shouts and jumps up from where he is sitting.
Serenity looks at him with a grin. “I sure did. That was my father/daughter weekend; seeing my sisters.”
“What are they like?” Otis asks.
“I’m not telling you guys shit. Y’all are in the doghouse,” she says, waving her hand and walking towards the dining room.
“You have to tell us!” Gareth shouts, running after her.
“No, I don’t. I can keep it all to myself if I want to. None of you have my power, so you can’t get any info out of me that I don’t want to share,” she says while looking back at him.
“Why is she immune to our powers, but we aren’t to hers?” Gareth asks, looking at our dad in anger.
He laughs. “I think that was Lilith’s doing. I think she did more to their souls than she had told me.”
“Let’s get some food in this bitch. Healing your weak asses has me starving,” Serenity shouts from her chair in the dining room.
I let out a chuckle. We all follow Serenity into the dining room. While we eat, my brothers try to get information on their brides.
I can tell she’s not going to tell them anything.
Serenity
After dinner, we all go our separate ways. I was exhausted from healing everyone. I didn’t realize how much energy it took; I should have eaten something in between healings.
I look over at Silas who has a smug grin on his face. He shuts the door.
“I’ve been waiting for us to be alone,” he states.
I give him a weird look.
“Why? We need to rest after everything,” I say, confused.
“Because my bride told me she loved me today,” he says.
I freeze at his words. Did I let that slip? I think about the whole day and realize that I had told him. I knew I loved him for awhile, but I was afraid to say it first.
“I do,” I whisper softly.
This look of pure happiness crosses his face. He looks like he has been waiting his whole life to hear those words.
“I love you so much, baby. I never thought I would ever get the chance to feel this way for someone,” he says and pulls me into his arms.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss him softly.
He pulls away and tucks a stray hair behind my ear.
“Let’s have a shower and then head to bed. I can tell you are barely keeping your eyes open,” he states.
I smile gratefully at him. It’s not that I don’t want to have fun times with him, but I am exhausted from using so much of my power today.
Showering together has become one of my favourite things.
Sometimes it’s just the act of washing each other; we are both vulnerable without our clothes on, but nothing feels better than feeling his skin on mine.
When I wash him, I get to feel his body the whole time. I take extra care and give a lot of attention to all the parts of my man while I clean him.
I believe we have built intimacy without sex, and I know that the next step will be sex. We just are waiting for our bonding night.
We have a shower and climb into bed. My thoughts keep racing and it’s hard to fall asleep.
“How was meeting your sisters?” Silas asks.
“It was amazing. I can tell they all have their own stories, but I only touched one. She collapsed and was days away from dying, so I needed to find out what was wrong with her,” I tell him.
“Did you heal her?” he asks.
“Yeah, I did. I know that their souls are ready to be claimed by your brothers, and she would have been recycled soon. It was important I did it since we don’t know when the opportunity would come again,” I say.
“I’m glad you got to do that. I know there has to be an order for them to come home,” he says.
“Yeah, I don’t quite understand why yet, but I know there is a reason for everything.
I think it would be too much if we all came and had to learn our powers at the same time.
It’s better to handle one bride at a time because no one knows who they are right now; it’s safer that way.
This way, we aren’t all vulnerable at once,” I say with a sigh.
“That makes a lot of sense though. Our bonding ceremony is in a couple weeks, and then you can tell everyone who is next,” he says.
“It’s only nine days away. Then there won’t be any way you can get rid of me,” I tell him.
“Baby, I won’t ever want to get rid of you. The past few days without you were hard to get through. My brothers kept making fun of me because I wanted to see you. They will understand when their time comes though.”
“I find it so crazy that last year, I didn’t even know you. You have become very important to me. Everything can really change in an instant,” I tell him.
“I waited centuries for you, and I would have waited longer if I had to. I’m so glad you are by my side forever,” he says.
I smile to myself. The bonding ceremony is something that I have really been looking forward to, and I fall asleep thinking about the day our bond will be complete.