Chapter 23 #2
She continued to thrash for a moment, too frantic and disoriented to process what was happening, until she slowly came to her senses.
Her breathing slowly regulated as she pressed her forehead to Luce’s throat, taking in the steady pulse under his jaw as if to reassure herself he was still living and breathing.
Her hands came up to twist in the fabric of his shirt, and she lifted wide, tear-filled eyes to his.
“Tell me what you saw,” he murmured.
“He…Foster,” she broke off in a whimper.
“Is he alright?” Luce felt his pulse quicken, some primal combination of fear and concern.
Mags chewed her lip. “He completed another sacrifice.”
A violent wave of power rocked the room, and Mags clung to Luce like a small child.
“Is that what these power surges are?”
She nodded. “We’re too late. He’s crossing the threshold, Lucifer. I don’t know if we have any other choice now.”
Remi picked at the frayed cuff of her sweater, picking at loose threads and widening the hole her thumb poked through. “I know we wanted to try and save him, but this…”
The room trembled under the onslaught of power.
“It’s too wild,” Rag frowned. “He’s coming unglued because he doesn’t know how to handle the power. No one was meant to control this much alone.”
Lucifer turned, inexplicably, to Michael. The blond cleared his throat to address the room. “He did not choose this path spontaneously.”
“He’s right,” Luce pulled back from Mags’s grip to meet her eyes. “Are you well enough to conduit?”
She paused, mentally assessing herself, then nodded. “I can, if it’s brief.”
“What do you mean?” Glory cocked her head to the side quizzically, considering Michael.
“Foster was always good,” Michael said slowly. “Has anyone stopped to ask how he even knew about the Gospel of Lazarus? He was almost certainly pushed down this path.”
“And I think we have proof of who’s responsible,” Luce muttered darkly
“Someone who has been orchestrating a puppet show all this time,” Michael grumbled.
“Someone playing a long enough game that he had the foresight to have my wings stripped.”
Mags looked between the two men, a smile flickering at the edges of her lips. “I see you found a common enemy.”
“More than you might realize, my dear.” Luce shook his head. “Are you ready?”
“I’ll need a basin.” She released him and sat up straighter, smoothing the blankets over her lap. “Fill it with cool water and set it in my lap, please.”
Glory was closest to the table and dutifully followed her instructions. Luce could feel the tension rolling off everyone as they clustered around, trying not to appear as stressed and anxious as they all were.
Mags brought him back to reality with a soft touch on his wrist. “One hand in the water, please.”
He dipped his fingers in the bowl, letting them splay over Mags’s own submerged hand.
“Ready?”
He nodded and reached for the recent memories of his trip into the past. Digging deep, he focused on the last few moments before they had been ejected.
The water began to warm, and he glanced down.
Mags’s skin emitted a soft glow beneath the surface.
Her eyelids were shut as she prepared to receive the vision, and for a moment he felt a stab of guilt over asking her to do this right now. But it had to be done.
He closed his own eyes as the water grew warmer still, bordering on uncomfortable. He pictured the clearing, glimpsed between the trunks of the trees, with early evening light filtering into the space. Pale skin, dark hair, the stolen guise discarded on the grass.
The water began to boil around their hands, somehow without causing pain. Then it started to steam, and as the steam rose it condensed together and became opaque. Luce opened his eyes to watch the scene from his memories play out—and, if he was being honest, he wanted to see the reactions.
Oh, there were reactions.
Remi was the first to comprehend the revelation, and she turned a most fascinating shade of burgundy.
If it had been a cartoon, steam would be pouring out of her ears.
She began to tremble as her face settled into a furious snarl, and when she opened her mouth, a noise like a teakettle poured out in place of words.
Rag blinked slowly in astonishment and then looked around the room.
He nodded decisively, then stalked to the window and smashed it with his fist.
Gloriana fainted, but Cami caught her before she fell off the edge of the infirmary bed and fanned her rapidly. Sachi seemed stunned into silence, gaping at the scene.
Mags herself opened her eyes and turned to Lucifer, expression somewhere between astonishment and vindication. She had never trusted Gabriel but had often wondered if she was just being petty. Now she realized it had been her intuition seeing past his sleek and charming facade.
Michael raised a single golden brow, as if to ask Luce ‘was this really the best way to tell them?’ and Luce shrugged slightly as if to answer, ‘no, but didn’t it work?’
Mags removed her hand from the basin, and the steam dissipated. “So, you think this is another plot?”
“No, I believe it’s the same plot.” Luce frowned. “I think this has all been one long con on the part of my backbiting snake of a ‘friend’.”
There was a scuttling commotion at the doors to the infirmary, drawing every eye to Cwall as he burst inside. “There ya are!”
He flew inside, Balthazar and Judas hot on his trail, and Lucifer jerked to his feet, nearly toppling the bowl of water as he hurried to meet them.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Judas panted, bending to rest his hands on his knees. “Gabriel has violated your edict.”
“What?” Lucifer’s expression darkened. As if he didn’t have enough reasons to wring Gabriel’s slimy neck.
“I was watchin’, like ya wanted,” Cwall was hovering in place, wings working frantically to expend his obvious nerves. “I swear I came right ta find ya.”
“We were in a portal,” Luce said, trying to reassure the imp so he would get to the point.
“Fos was at the hospital, an’ Gabe convinced ‘im ta kill the old lady.”
“No,” Luce shrank back, horrified. “Foster adores her.”
“I know,” Cwall said, uncharacteristically serious.
Taking a life was hard enough. Luce had hated himself every time he had needed to do so, and that was with veritable strangers. This act would take a heavy toll on his son. His fury for Gabriel mounted impossibly higher in that moment, burning through him in a blistering torrent.
He turned to Michael. The angel took in his expression, nodding without a word. Luce turned back to his Fallen. “Wait for word from me, but prepare for a fight. I can’t predict how Gabriel will respond to this confrontation.”
Remi stepped forward, slamming her closed fist to her chest in a salute. “We’ll be ready, my King.”
Luce laid a hand on her shoulder, then swept his gaze over the others. “Thank you...my friends.”
Then he turned and swept from the room, Michael slipping back into his familiar position at the King’s side.
Gabe stood in the middle of a wrecked hospital room, watching a young man fall to pieces. Foster wasn’t simply having an emotional breakdown; he was quite literally falling to pieces. Long strips of flesh tore from any areas of exposed skin only to be quickly regrown.
Still, the violent wind whipping the hospital room continued to rip at his clothing and body. His t-shirt hung in tatters; his previously distressed jeans were now completely shredded. Gabe remained untouched in a small pocket of space he had shaped around himself in the nick of time.
“Foster,” he called out, trying to amplify his voice over the chaos, but the boy didn’t seem to hear him.
The fluorescent lights flashed wildly, one of them burned completely out with its pieces shattered on the ground.
The candles were long since snuffed out.
Violent waves of power sputtered out from Foster in inconsistent intervals as his body hit its limit, tried to burn off the excess, and then repeated the process.
Foster dropped to his knees on the floor, the center of the room cleared as the furniture had been flung to the walls. The hospital bed lay empty; the old woman’s body had disintegrated in a blinding flash at the moment of Foster’s strike.
The boy wailed, “What’s happening?”
Gabe moved towards him, the wind and power lashing at the fragile bubble he’d created. A particularly strong blast buffeted him hard enough to make him stumble, falling a few steps to the side.
“I didn’t anticipate her life force to be this strong!
” Gabe called back to him, fighting against the windstorm to reach Foster’s side.
He knelt beside him, pressing his palm to the wall between them.
Foster lifted his head, but his arms felt too heavy to do the same.
Gabe let his hand fall back to his side.
“Gabe,” Foster pulled air through battered lungs in deep, slow, rasping gasps, “what...is happening?”
“These rituals.” Gabe wrung his hands as he tried to find words that would not only explain, but hopefully comfort Foster as well. “They’re meant to make you stronger. Strong enough to bend the laws of reality and bring a soul back from the void.”
Cracks appeared in the plaster as waves of spiraling power demolished the room. Only the layers of wards to isolate their hospital room kept the power from spilling beyond this space. If not for the precautions Gabe had taken, the entire floor of the hospital would have been at risk of destruction.
“I didn’t—I mean, I knew a stronger connection and a stronger host were ideal.” Gabe raked his hands through his hair. “No one has done this before, Foster, you have to understand. I couldn’t know.”
“Gabe,” Foster pleaded, forcing his hand up to press it against the force field surrounding the angel.
The angel closed his eyes and lifted his hand to press back. “I knew your Divine blood was the key to surviving these trials, but the sacrifice was stronger than I anticipated. The energy she provided might be too much for your mortal lineage.”
“I’m…dying?” His voice was weak, laced with fear, and something in it gripped Gabe’s immortal heart with an icy fist.
“Not if you fight.” Blue eyes flashed open, as deep and fathomless as midnight tides. “Fight, Foster. Think of your mother. Draw on your power. Control this energy like you would your own.”
There was something wary and so very young in the way Foster met and held his gaze.
Then he closed his eyes as he dropped his hand and curled his arms around his abdomen.
Bending at the waist, so low his forehead almost touched the floor, the younger man began to scream, so raw and full of pain that Gabe winced to hear it.
He continued screaming as the wind reached a tumultuous peak, buffeting the window hard enough to shatter the safety glass. The storm blew outwards, and in the sudden silence, Foster’s agonized wails sounded twice as grotesque.
Gabe slowly approached the boy kneeling before him.
The power surges coming from the young demigod were slowing; weakening.
That was either a very good or very bad sign.
Gabe dissolved his protective bubble and dug deep into his own reserves of power, resting both hands on Foster’s shoulders.
He gave a concentrated push, sending tendrils of his own life energy out to bolster the younger man.
He cannot die, Gabe thought determinedly, and redoubled his push. I need you, Foster. Stay with me.
The screaming stopped. Or rather, it petered out into a mix of whimpers and gasps as Foster collapsed to the floor and began to convulse.
“No,” Gabe yanked him up, cradling him to his chest tightly. “You are going to live, dammit!”
He gave a final, desperate jolt of his own energy to the other man.
The world went a bit gray at the edges, and he worried for a moment that he had expended a bit too much.
But then things stopped wavering on the fringes of his vision, Foster stopped trembling in his arms, and the world went very, very quiet.
Foster slumped against him where they knelt on the tile, and Gabe relaxed only when he felt the boy resume consistent, steady breathing.
“Am I…alive?” Foster’s voice came out as a croak, and Gabe leaned him back to smile down at him.
“I’m not sure. You’re looking at an angel, after all. That’s usually a bad sign.”
The boy laughed weakly, and it turned into a cough. Gabe softened and smoothed the dark curls back from Foster’s sweaty brow.
“Foster,” he murmured. “You did so good, son.”
“Speaking of,” a new voice sounded at the shattered window, and Gabe startled. They were on the third floor of the hospital. “I thought I told you to stay away from my son.”