Chapter 20 Lucifer
Lucifer
Lucifer cut through the air like a rising sword as he flew back to the house, leaving Levi and Galilee in the garden. He knew
Michael would be on the rooftop terrace of the house—his brother liked high places, the sinless soldier of Heaven gazing down
at a thousand potential battlefields. Lucifer also knew that he couldn’t let Michael anywhere near Galilee. The archangel’s
knee-jerk reaction to power he didn’t approve of was always destruction. It was such a waste, such a foolish culling, but
Heaven had never cared about anyone’s potential as long as they could be seen as a threat, and Michael was nothing if not
God’s lash.
There had been a time when Lucifer would have trusted no one but the archangel he called brother, but he’d learned the hard way that Michael was loyal only to Heaven, nothing and no one else.
It had been a devastating shock then, the betrayal, but it was familiar now.
Michael might kill Galilee outright, but if he thought it would please Heaven, he’d easily take her apart and cut her into little pieces to find out where her power lay.
He certainly wouldn’t give a fuck about Lucifer’s feelings on it, and yet, despite everything that had happened—the betrayals, the war, the Fall—Lucifer was still plagued by tangled emotions toward his brother, lifetime after lifetime, so old that they had fermented into a lingering hate edged with bitter grief.
The rooftop terrace was filled with flowers that Asmodeus insisted on growing where they could be seen from the sky. Michael
was already there, broad and stocky as he walked through the blooms. His wings were nowhere in sight, and he wore no armor,
only a loose shirt over cotton trousers. He didn’t have his sword on him. It was all a calculated insult, telling Lucifer
that he had nothing to fear from the Devil or his princes. Lucifer landed and folded his wings, but Michael didn’t even look
up. The archangel brushed his thick fingers over a tight calendula bloom and watched as it unfurled into speckled yellow and
white.
“Asmodeus still loves these transient beauties,” he murmured, oceans swirling through his voice. “So weak, so fickle.”
“I didn’t see you come in.” Lucifer kept his tone bland. Michael would pick up on any fear lurking in his voice, and Lucifer
would be damned twice again before he gave the archangel that pleasure. “Thought you liked to see the views.”
“I came straight through, but I’ll take the scenic way back,” the archangel replied. When he looked up, his coffee eyes were
as endlessly calm as they’d always been, even in that horrible moment when he’d thrown Lucifer out of Heaven. Lucifer would
never trust that calm again. “It really is quite beautiful here if you follow the river.”
It had to have been Galilee’s flare of power that brought him through so quickly. Lucifer circled the flowers slowly and made
his voice cold and cutting. “What do you want?”
Michael sighed. “You’re never hospitable, Luci.”
As if he deserved a welcome. Michael was always unfailingly cordial, but deep in his gaze, there was a tiny ember of hatred burning there.
Had it been there from the beginning? Had it flared into existence when Lucifer was named the Morningstar, when Heaven shuddered in awe of his beauty?
Michael had watched with all the grace of a war hammer, Heaven’s tool, while they gazed at Lucifer for the sake of beauty itself.
Had it been Lucifer’s questions? His adventures in the flesh?
The banked resentment in his brother’s eyes was a slippery thing, but Lucifer trusted it far more than Michael’s charm.
“Why would I be hospitable? You always mean harm.”
“Harm?” Michael scoffed. “I’m an archangel, little brother.”
Lucifer spread out his palms and gave a broad dead smile. “I believe you make my point.”
Michael chuckled, and the sound twisted a knife in Lucifer’s chest. “I hear you’re having trouble with a hellgate,” the archangel
remarked casually, his eyes sharp under his lashes.
“That’s hardly Heaven’s concern.”
“Mm.” His brother touched a dead bloom, and it resurrected in a splash of color. “It will be if the gate fails.”
There was a thread of malicious pleasure in Michael’s voice, like he was waiting for Lucifer to fail along with his gate,
so Heaven could strike at him again. As if the Fall hadn’t been enough. They wanted pounds and pounds of flesh, into eternity,
it seemed.
“Surely you have better things to do than bother with this?” Lucifer countered.
Michael gave him a sorrowful look. “All this hostility, Luci. Must we dance around each other so?”
“If you prefer me to be direct, then by all means, let me oblige.” Lucifer let his eyes go black as his voice layered over
itself. “Fuck off, archangel.”
Michael laughed out loud, a cathedral crashing into the earth. “There’s my little brother,” he said fondly, creases forming
in his dark skin as he smiled. “And to think, I came here to help.”
The untruth tasted foul in the air, and Lucifer couldn’t help but push back. “You don’t help. You never have.” Michael carried out orders, he enforced the will of Heaven, he cut down anyone who rebelled against it,
and he was terribly, horrifically good at his job. He certainly didn’t help anyone, and his presence was unlikely to mean anything good for Lucifer. “I assume you’re not here in an official capacity,” Lucifer continued, gesturing at his brother’s clothes.
“No, no. Heaven didn’t send me.” Michael laced his hands together in front of him. He almost looked like a priest if one had
never seen him in battle, seen the multifarious glory of his true form, the zeal that transformed him. “Heaven is aware of the information I bring, though.”
“Ah, I see.” Lucifer gave a smile with no humor in it. “You’re all watching a game play out, and you’ve decided to interfere.
Was it taking too long?”
Michael paused, and that alone was concerning.
“Why isn’t Heaven making a move?” Lucifer asked carefully. “Why come to me?”
“We’re watching for now,” Michael replied. “Much rests on a fulcrum.”
“Stop being so fucking vague,” Lucifer snapped. “Just tell me your side’s stake in all this.”
Michael was watching him discreetly, just like he always did, even when he pretended to be casual. The archangel was a general
with razored eyes, always scheming and gathering data, always seeking reactions when he plunged his blade into his enemy.
“It’s the angel,” he said. “The one who touched your hellgate.”
It took a moment, but then a disbelieving rage furled its burning arms around Lucifer. “It’s one of yours,” he bit out in furious understanding.
“Alas.” Michael gave a small smile and spread out his arms. “Like I said, I’m here to help.”
“Bullshit. Going after this angel would be helping. Stopping them would be helping. I’m surprised you’re not punishing them already—tampering with a hellgate surely breaks your fucking
code, and we all know how conscientious you are, brother.”
“Oh, Morningstar.” Michael dropped his arms and resumed his stroll through the flowers, letting his gaze drift slightly off Lucifer. “You act as if there is no compassion in Heaven. What if I told you salvation is always possible, even at the final moments, a redemption like an unexpected dawn.”
The archangel glanced at Lucifer as he said the last few words, and bile gathered in Lucifer’s throat. “I’d say you were a
fucking liar as always,” he answered, forcing his voice to be steady.
Michael gave him a sorrowful look. “Deziel doesn’t have to end up like you,” he said, and an ocean fell out of the sky and
crashed onto Lucifer’s head, roaring around his ears.
“Deziel?”
The name choked him in a cloud of magnolia, a helix of light exploding in his memory, a sparkling laugh haunting his sleep.
The knife in his chest twisted again with a serrated determination, and he could form no other words. Michael was watching
his shocked reaction with a cruel hunger hidden not far beneath the falsely solicitous look he was wearing.
“Oh, that’s right. You used to be close, yes? Before the war.”
Lucifer couldn’t respond. Deziel, his love, his viper, his comrade. Deziel, who had stretched through the universe with Lucifer,
only to stand behind Michael to watch the Morningstar’s Fall, with angelic ichor splashed on her armor and absolutely nothing
in her eyes. Even between his screams, Lucifer hadn’t recognized her. The Deziel he’d known, the one he’d loved, she was bright
and effervescent and curious. She’d followed him down to earth and taken bodies because she wanted to know what it was like
to be made of flesh. They had been lovers, companions, friends, and though Michael would never admit to the sin of envy, Lucifer knew he’d coveted that. He’d seen the way Michael looked
at Deziel, and when Michael finally had her, when she turned to the archangel and helped him throw the Morningstar out of
Heaven, Lucifer had also seen the fierce flash of possessive satisfaction in Michael’s face with Deziel by his side.
Before then, Lucifer had thought he was safe with Deziel: safe to share the thoughts he was having, the questions he wanted
to bring to God like burnt offerings. Here, he’d wanted to say, you made us, and we would like to talk to you, truly talk, about the things we are instructed to do and the humans you want us to kill with all this water.
Lucifer had considered it reasonable worship, to engage in this way.
Michael had thought it was blasphemy, and Deziel—his
lovely wondering angel—she had drawn the line and she had drawn it in flame. She’d told Michael the things Lucifer shared with her in confidence, and whether she admitted it or not, a war had spawned because she
didn’t hold her tongue.
“Deziel is the one fucking with my hellgate?” It made more painful sense than Lucifer would have liked. Even from the pits of Hell,