Chapter Two - Lucifer
CHAPTER TWO
Lucifer
IT TOOK THREE days to get her to speak to me. Three days of walking the length of the pier, up the salt-worn planks, past the neon vendors and shrieking gulls, searching for a presence that felt like a wrinkle in the air.
And there she was. A hunched old woman with stringy hair, pushing a grocery cart overflowing with trash—mismatched shoes, busted radios, dirty blankets, newspaper bundles so soaked with seawater they’d fossilized into shapes.
The string lights overhead warped as I approached her, their glow bending inward as if they were being quietly swallowed, without dimming.
The shadow beneath her cart stretched the wrong way, angling toward the ocean instead of away from it, as if the pier itself couldn’t agree on where she belonged.
Magic does that when it’s being strangled, when something ancient is pretending to be something small. I slowed without meaning to.
She muttered to herself, scolded passing pigeons, and barked at the ocean as if it had personally offended her. Her muttering wasn’t nonsense. It was unfinished. Sentences without verbs. Names that stopped halfway out of her mouth. Words swallowed hard, like they hurt to hold too long.
Mortals gave her a wide berth, eyes skipping over her like she wasn’t real. But I couldn’t ignore the way the light bent around her. It bent the way magic does when it’s trying very hard not to be noticed.
“Can you help me?” I asked.
She didn’t even look at me. “Go away,” she snapped, waving a crooked hand. “You’re too tall and full of the wrong kind of darkness. Shoo.”
On the second day, the pier was full of noise—arcade bells, distant laughter, the ocean rolling beneath it all, like something enormous pretending to sleep. Neon smeared across the fog. Sugar clung to the air.
I found her on a bench facing the water, wrapped in mismatched layers, hair wild in the wind, a paper boat of churros in her lap like an offering she had no interest in accepting. She didn’t look up when I stopped in front of her.
She just kept eating, slow, unimpressed, as if the end of the world wasn’t worth pausing for. Then, she paused mid-chew, as if she’d almost said something and thought better of it. Her jaw tightened. The word stayed locked behind her teeth.
“I think I need your help,” I said.
“Everybody needs somebody,” she muttered. “Go find a therapist.”
“No,” I said. “I need an Oracle.”
That got her attention. She looked up at last, eyes sliding over me with the kind of stare that didn’t just see through the suit, but straight through the skin I wore like a lie.
“You don’t need an Oracle,” she said. “You need a long nap. And possibly a hobby.”
I laughed once. No humor in it. Just teeth. “Tell me how to kill a god.”
For a heartbeat, the boardwalk seemed to go still around us. Even the water sounded farther away.
Then she snorted, as if I’d asked her whether it might rain.
“Kill a god,” she repeated. “Sweetheart, you can’t even kill your ego.”
“What’s your price?” I asked. My voice came out low, too controlled, which was always when I was closest to losing it.
She took another bite. I stared at her, at the churros, at the casual indifference of it, and felt my patience peel back another layer. She snapped off a piece, took one bite, then flicked the remaining chunk at my chest like she was swatting a fly.
It struck my lapel and sugar crystals went everywhere, clinging to the black of my suit jacket like tiny, glittering accusations. A few caught in the weave near my collar, sticking to my chest.
The piece dropped between us. A seagull screamed, and for half a second after the churro hit the planks, there was no sound. It wasn’t quiet. It was just missing like the world had swallowed it.
I barely had time to blink before a white blur dive-bombed the ground, wings slapping air, beak snapping. It went for the churro, missed, and turned its wrath on the nearest warm body—me.
The bird lunged at my face like it had a personal grudge.
I jerked back, hand coming up on instinct, my sleeve slicing through fog as my dignity collapsed in real time.
Another seagull swooped in, then another, until it was a sudden cyclone of feathers and fury, shrieking so loud it made my teeth ache.
I backpedaled, swatting and snarling while tourists laughed, and some kid pointed like I was the entertainment. She didn’t even flinch. She sat there, calm as a tidepool, watching me get nearly pecked to death over a pastry I hadn’t asked for.
When the birds finally tore the churro to crumbs and scattered, I stood there breathing hard, hair in my eyes with sugar crystals all over my fingers, and rage bright behind my eyes.
She waved both hands at me like I was a stray cat creeping toward her food.
“I said GO,” she crowed, loud enough to carry over the pier. “You wear darkness like a bad cologne. Go stink up someone else’s morning.”
I stared at her, stunned in a way I hadn’t been in centuries. Not because of the insult, I’d been insulted by better, but because she’d said it like I was nothing, like I was just another man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Like she didn’t feel the power in my bones at all.
I tried again, slower. Dangerous, even. “You know who I am.”
She barked a laugh, sharp and merciless. “Oh, I know exactly who you are.”
Then she leaned forward, eyes narrowing, and pointed down the boardwalk like she was directing traffic. “And I also know you can walk,” she said. “So walk. Go haunt somebody else’s bench.”
I didn’t move.
She reached into her paper boat, snapped off another piece of churro, and held it up like a threat. “Last warning,” she said. “I can feed you to the birds all day.”
For the first time since Evie was taken, something almost unfamiliar flickered in my chest. I’d been numb for days, but this wasn’t fear.
It was… humiliation. And beneath it, the tiniest, sharpest spark of hope.
Because if she could chase me off like I was nobody, then maybe she wasn’t afraid of gods either. Maybe she knew how to break one.
By the third day, the pier felt tired, worn thin, like even the fog had stayed up too late and regretted it. The empty Ferris wheel turned slowly, creaking. The ocean kept breathing, indifferent to my predicament.
As I stepped onto the planks, pressure tightened behind my eyes like something I couldn’t shake. The Ferris wheel’s lights haloed too brightly, like the universe was overexposing itself. There was something otherworldly here, and I wasn’t sure if it was just the Oracle.
Then, I saw her. She was on the same bench, same paper boat of churros. Still watching the water. The light bent around her again, more noticeably now, as if the world was tired of pretending she wasn’t a problem.
This was beginning to feel pointless. She wasn’t ever going to help me. I stopped a few steps away and said nothing. I’d learned that much.
But I couldn’t give up. I’d never give up. I needed to get to Evie. So this time… this time, I didn’t ask for her help. I didn’t ask about Evie. I didn’t even ask how to kill a god. I just walked over and sat down next to her.
She didn’t look at me. “If you ask me how to kill Him,” she said mildly, “I’m throwing food again. The birds liked you.”
I exhaled slowly through my nose. “I’m not here to kill Him,” I said.
That earned me a glance—one sharp eye, measuring.
“I’m here… to get her back.” I tried to hide the catch in my throat.
She snorted. “Of course, you are.”
“She’s being kept,” I said, my jaw tight. “Like she belongs to Him.”
“Mm,” she hummed, noncommittal.
“I need to know how to break His hold,” I said. “What kind of god does that? What does He fear?”
She finally turned fully toward me. All of her attention settled, heavy as weather.
“You think He did this just once,” she said.
The words didn’t register at first. “I think He took her,” I replied carefully.
She tilted her head. “And you believe she was the first?”
Something cold slid down my spine. “There are rumors He has others,” I said. “The Beloved. I know that.”
She laughed then, short and sharp, like a bark. “Oh, Little Star. That’s not an answer. That’s a shelf.”
My hands curled. “Then tell me what I’m missing.”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, eyes locking onto mine like she meant to pin me in place.
“You’re staring at the bruise,” she said, “and refusing to look at the body.”
My pulse picked up. “Speak plainly.”
“You’re treating this like a riddle. It isn’t. It’s a lock, and I’m missing teeth.” Her mouth twitched, like she hadn’t meant to say that much. One of her hands rose and pressed two fingers to her lips, as if holding something in.
I looked over at her, “What did He steal?”
Everything stilled. The ocean froze mid-crash. The Ferris wheel instantly stopped moving, and the air tightened like it held its breath. Even the gulls stopped in place, suspended in the air.
Slowly, she turned. Her clouded eyes cleared into something vast and ancient—light cutting through them like twin blades.
Her back straightened. Her skin shimmered, blue as deep ocean.
Her rags peeled away into jeweled armor.
Multiple arms unfurled like wings made of fire and memory.
Some bent the wrong way at the joint. Others flickered, phasing in and out, like the universe couldn’t agree they were allowed to exist.
She was beautiful in the way storms were beautiful. In the way monsters are beautiful. Awe-inspiring and yet… dangerous. But… there was something wrong in the way broken instruments are wrong—still powerful, but unable to play a clean note.
She smiled at me. “Everything,” she said. “And you finally remembered to ask the only question that matters.”
My breath caught. “Oracle.”
She nodded once. “You want to know how to stop Him,” she said. “How to topple that dusty Lamp?”
One of her hands began to raise, flickering out of view, and the world began to move again.
“He keeps them close,” she continued, “because proximity makes the lie feel holy. Makes theft feel like devotion.”
My chest tightened. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying your girl isn’t special because she was chosen,” the Oracle said gently, and for the first time, not cruelly. “She’s special because she’s an anomaly.”
Anger flared, hot and immediate. “Watch your mouth.”
She raised a brow. “You asked.”
I glanced at her and forced myself to breathe. “Anomaly?”
She straightened, six hands lifting slowly, like a glitch, like she was arranging something invisible between us.
“He takes what reminds Him, He’s incomplete,” she said. “Beauty. Will. Creation. Things that answer back when touched.”
The ocean crashed harder, as if punctuating the thought.
“He keeps them still,” she went on. “Because if they move freely, the truth leaks.”
My voice came out rough. “The truth of what?”
“That He isn’t the source. He is the creator of nothing,” she replied. “Only the Spotlight.”
I stared at her, the shape of it starting to form, ugly and enormous.
“You think you’re fighting an all-powerful creator,” she said softly. “You’re fighting a curator. He doesn’t make things. He names them, shelves them, and calls the collection divine.”
Silence stretched. The Ferris wheel creaked.
“How do I save her?” I asked. Not loud. Not pleading. Focused. “Because if He’s done this before, then there’s a system. And systems can be broken.”
Her lips curved. “And there it is.”
She stood, movements unhurried, and stepped closer than she had before as a breeze rattled her cart.
“You can’t break this alone,” she said. “Not because you’re weak, but because He didn’t build it alone.”
My brow furrowed. “Explain.”
“He didn’t always act unchecked,” she said. “Others watched Him. Others went in after Him, wearing borrowed lives, waiting for the moment they could pull the thread.”
“How many?” I asked.
“You keep thinking in twelves,” she said. “It will begin with just two, and then four, maybe eight.” Her gaze flicked, sharp. Measuring me.
“Two.” My heart thudded once, hard. “I need… two? Where are they? H—how do I find them?”
“Sleeping,” she said. “Inside the world you walk through every day. Sleeping to forget why they ever cared.”
“And they can help me,” I said. Not a question.
“They’re the only reason help still exists,” she replied.
I swallowed. “How do I wake them?”
She shook her head. “Wrong question.”
Frustration surged, but I forced it down and tried again. “What wakes them,” I said, slower, “when nothing else has?”
Her smile was small. Earned.
“Contradiction,” she said. “Where a lie fails. Where theft is named. Where something stolen refuses to stay still.”
My thoughts went immediately, painfully, to Evie.
“And her?” I asked.
The Oracle’s expression softened, just a fraction, as if the world had briefly remembered mercy.
“She’ll make it,” she said quietly. “She’ll come back to you threefold.”
Her gaze slid away, toward the black water, toward a place where secrets go to drown.
“She will… loosen things,” she added, careful with every word, like she was handling glass. “For them, it will be easier.”
My throat tightened. “And for her?”
The Oracle swallowed. When she looked back at me, her eyes were gentler than the truth. “Sometimes,” she murmured, “what keeps you alive is the same thing that leaves a crack.”
Something hot tore through my ribs. My hands curled without permission, nails biting into my palms as if pain could anchor me.
My vision tunneled, the pier falling away until there was only Evie, only the idea of her dragged through something sharp and holy-looking and wrong, the wrong that smiles while it ruins you.
“Help her, save her, protect her,” my mind screamed, useless and frantic.
And underneath it, darker, louder, older, the part of me that remembered thrones and punishment and what it felt like to make the world afraid whispered one clear thing, “If He has touched her, I will burn His light out of the sky.”
The thought burned hot and fast, threatening to split me open if I let it. I drew it in instead, packed it down where fury has always lived best, dense and contained, a blade rather than a blaze. Rage could wait. Evie couldn’t.
I lifted my head. “What do I do first?”
She stepped back, the distance between us returning like a held breath released.
“Wake the two,” she said. “One who knows how to open what’s sealed. One who can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s bright.”
I met her eyes. “And then?”
She glitched back into the old woman, the transformation stuttering, armor tearing into rags mid-motion, as if her true form couldn’t hold under the weight of being seen.
She picked up her paper boat, already turning away. “Then,” she said lightly, “you stop thinking this is about rescuing one woman.”
She glanced over her shoulder, her stringy hair blowing in the wind with a black-toothed grin sharp as glass as she slowly pushed her cart away. “And you realize, this was always your destiny.”
The fog rolled in thicker, swallowing the bench, and she was gone. And the pier felt much, much smaller than it had three days ago.