Chapter 23 Leviathan #2
“Kill Levi if you need to,” Belial corrected. “We have a fucking job to do, even if both of them have been turned by some broken
angel-born bitch with a convincing cunt.”
Leviathan heard Lucifer stand up behind him, obsidian wings roaring. He flared his out as well and took a small step back
so he and Lucifer were back-to-back. Ten thousand memories crowded in, and Leviathan shoved them all out again, turning his
head to speak quietly. “She’s not lost to you, Luci. Forget the princes. Find her in there.”
Lucifer was silent, but then his wings brushed against Leviathan’s, prompting another wave of memories, naked flesh and wings
caressed by silk and mouths. “Don’t do that,” Leviathan snapped. “You know I hate it.”
“I know precisely how much you like it,” Lucifer replied, his voice soft and private. He was grounding himself, using Leviathan
as the anchor. “Just like I know you waited outside my room earlier.”
The Devil spoke easily, as if he hadn’t just been weeping, as if Galilee wasn’t spinning apart, as if Hell wasn’t being born into this realm.
Leviathan was glad that Lucifer was stable enough to flirt in the midst of chaos, but Lucifer’s words made him draw in a harsh breath, punched by quick memory.
True, he had come to the bedroom door when Galilee had been screaming Lucifer’s name with nothing but wild, shattering pleasure in her voice.
There’d been a time when Leviathan had sounded like that.
“You’re going to do this now?” he bit out. “Just stop her, Luci.”
“I intend to.”
Lucifer’s wings retreated, and fear swung its way into Leviathan’s throat as he watched the Devil step directly into Galilee’s blazing light storm. Beelzebub and Mephis had been approaching her, but now they stopped in their tracks and exchanged
uncomfortable looks. Leviathan whipped an arm out, slicing his sword in a showy arc scant inches away from their multiple
throats.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
Lucifer reached out and cupped what was left of Galilee’s face with both his hands, hissing softly as he made contact. Given
the way he’d described her touch before, Leviathan couldn’t imagine how much that contact burned right now.
“Beloved,” the Morningstar whispered, “are you there?”
The light howled and cut thin slashes into Lucifer’s cheeks. Fire scalded his face, bubbling the skin of his form.
“She’s attacking him,” Beelzebub hissed, glaring at Leviathan. She was a horned beast in her true form, three tongues lolling
out of her razored mouth. “You fail in your duty to protect the king.”
Leviathan shrugged, not lowering his sword. “He’ll be fine.”
Mephis was watching him closely, and Leviathan didn’t like it. Mephis was cunning, a cruel little trickster who had a knack
for picking out secrets. “What happened when you went up to the room?” they asked, eyes orbiting in the air around where their
head should have been.
“Who cares?” Beelzebub snapped.
“Or was it in the garden?” Mephis continued. “When it was just the three of you, so conveniently allied against us now?”
Leviathan ignored them. Galilee left her human form completely, forcing Lucifer to back away from her as she shifted fully into a maelstrom of fire and light.
A sharp spark sounded, and all the illumination in the room died.
It didn’t matter to anyone there—none of them needed light to see—but even as Belial and the others fought a groaning Hell, as Leviathan held Beelzebub and Mephis at bay, the core of the room was not the breaking gate but the tableau formed by the two entities.
Lucifer had his power emanating from his pores, pressing against the maelstrom that was Galilee.
Her light contracted, then blew a shock wave of power through the room.
Time stopped.
The gate froze in the middle of a scream, and the princes staggered back. A numb silence fell as tongues of fire flickered
into the air, floating around them all, and then the maelstrom spoke.
“You betrayed me,” it said to Lucifer, and its voice was piercing, sharp crystal echoing faintly with chimes.
Lucifer drew in a harsh breath. “I did,” he admitted. “I thought I could save you.”
Jagged tendrils of light reached out from the maelstrom and wrapped themselves around Lucifer, sinking into his skin. Leviathan’s
grip tightened on his sword as Lucifer winced with pain, his eyes bleeding black.
“I was wrong, Galilee.” His voice was rough. “I see it now.”
“You’re hurting him,” Leviathan said. Pale streaks of lightning were flaring through Lucifer’s flesh, and his power began
to stutter.
“No,” the maelstrom corrected. “I am wounding him.”
Lucifer coughed out a laugh. “Just like I taught you.”
“Yes,” the maelstrom replied. “You understand punishment.”
“Ah, Galilee, beloved.” Lucifer fell to one knee as ash began to form on his face. “You never needed me to save you.”
His princes were watching in horror, and even Leviathan felt the unease crawling over his skin. She was wounding the Morningstar. If Lucifer died . . .
“Stop this,” Belial growled. “Levi, we have to stop this.”
“Stand back,” Lucifer snapped at them.
“Morningstar, you’re the one who made sure your authority was no longer absolute,” Asmodeus shot back. “We will not stand by and let her destroy you.”
Leviathan let his wings unfold and loosened his hold on his form. His human skin slithered away, and then he was clotted leather
roaring out of an ocean once again. “You will obey the Morningstar,” he growled.
Asmodeus gave him a contemptuous glance. “Your loyalty is a farce if it leads to Luci’s death,” he pointed out. “She is killing him.”
“Lucifer knows what he’s doing.” Leviathan had no one to pray to, but he hoped with all his being that he was right, because
this hurt more than he had imagined possible, watching Galilee Kincaid torture the King of Hell. If Leviathan had ever wondered
about revenge for the harms Lucifer had visited upon him, that wonder was gone. He did not want this. I should have told him he was forgiven, he thought.
The maelstrom encircled Lucifer completely now, and the Devil’s power guttered even further. Asmodeus gave Leviathan a tight,
resentful nod, a good soldier accepting Leviathan’s order in the chain of command, but Belial let out a cry of rage that shook
the walls of the vault.
“Get him out of there!” she roared.
“Belial.” Lucifer’s voice was gasping now, punctuated by spare breaths. “There is nothing to fear.”
“Why do you lie to her?” asked the maelstrom. “How much of you was a lie?”
“I don’t lie,” Lucifer replied. His eyes were fanatically bright, a split and swirling abyss. “There is nothing to fear in
glory, Galilee.” He coughed, and darkness dripped from the corner of his mouth. “Your true form astonishes me. I am grateful
I got to see it.”
The maelstrom hesitated. “You are wounded,” it said. “You deserve it.”
“Undoubtedly. But I told you the truth, Galilee. I don’t care if you destroy me, if you obliterate me with feeling.” He laughed,
and his skin lost color. “What a way to go.”
Leviathan watched with horrified interest, his sword clear in his hand, his position fixed.
Was this all surrender, on all their parts?
He had never really trusted the new Lucifer, not when he’d been so intimate with the old one, but this—this was different.
The Devil was going to let Galilee annihilate him.
As what, as penance? If there was ever a time for Lucifer’s old self to reemerge, it would be now, when his very existence was being threatened.
Instead, he was smiling with death dripping from his mouth, accepting it with both hands.
“Change form, you suicidal bastard!” Belial yelled, as Asmodeus restrained her by a handful of scaled limbs. “She can’t defeat
you in your true form!”
“I won’t fight her,” Lucifer replied. “She was never my enemy.”
It was entirely too much, right there. Leviathan rolled his eyes and reverted to his human form. “That’s enough of that,”
he said, sheathing his sword as he stepped up to Lucifer, entering the maelstrom of light. Leviathan was moving faster than
he was thinking, but he was as sure as his blade, ringing bright and clear. Inside the maelstrom, heat washed over his skin
but it did not burn him. The storm that used to be Galilee Kincaid stopped moving, and Leviathan felt a tangible curiosity
lick over him.
“Why are you here?” the maelstrom asked.
Because he would not watch the King of Hell become a martyr when it wasn’t necessary. “You don’t actually want to wound Lucifer,”
Leviathan replied, thinking of the girl in the garden with wide, dark eyes. “Luci won’t say anything to stop you because he
thinks he deserves it, but Galilee Kincaid is careful, even with monsters.”
He reached down and stroked damp curls off Lucifer’s forehead. The Morningstar was in a bad way.
“Things have changed,” the maelstrom said.
“They have,” agreed Leviathan. “And you are angry and hurt, and no one prepared you for this power. No one taught you how
to hold it. They hid you from yourself, and they made you into a weapon, and right now, Galilee? You’re nothing but a sword
in Deziel’s hand, and she isn’t even in this room.”
The world was teetering on a fine edge. Leviathan could taste it like salt on the inside of his cheek.
“Things have changed,” he continued. “And they can change again. The Devil kneels before you, dying, just to make a point while you torture him.”
A ripple passed through the storm. “It is not torture.”
Leviathan gave an unamused chuckle. “Look at him, Galilee. You’re crushing the Morningstar under your heel. His power is going to go out. And you can justify it however
you want, but look at a true thing while you do it. You are making him suffer because you can, because you have the power to.” To his surprise, Leviathan felt grief for all of them. “You are everything I feared you
would be for him, you know that? A fresh damnation, and still he goes willingly.”