The Seven Lives of Lucifer
SNOW
"Seven. Seven can give others magic," I say it so quietly, I’m not even sure I absorb what I’m saying.
I look over Two’s shoulder to where Lucifer is trotting off across the street before he leaps onto a dumpster.
"What happened?" My eyes linger on the cat.
Two's grip loosens on my wrists, but he doesn't step away.
"I was five years old. Still...whole." His voice is raw and rough like it hurts to say the words, but he still has to.
"Mother was walking me through this neighborhood on the way to one of her fundraisers when I saw a black cat dead by the curb.
" His throat works. "I touched him before Mother could stop me.
He gasped back to life right as she grabbed my arm. "
The woman who detests magic saw her son raise an animal from the dead. I wonder if she'd been prejudiced against magic before that or after.
"What did she do?"
"She was horrified." Two breaks away from me to rake his hands through his hair. "I didn’t understand why. I didn’t know magic was wrong yet." His gaze cuts to Lucifer, who hasn't moved off the dumpster.
"I was rushed to a private facility for testing, and so was the cat." He sucks in a sharp breath, as if the memory is physically paining him. "They found out I'd given him the power of revivification. He can't die. He'll just get up again. Indefinitely. "
I shudder knowing there is only one likely way they tested the cat for that.
Two’s mouth twists. "At first, they made me watch."
My stomach drops. "Two."
"They wanted to see if the magic reacted differently when I was close." His gaze stays fixed on Lucifer, but his eyes have gone glassy in a way that makes my skin hurt.
The words sit between us, small and awful.
"How is he just walking around now though? Did they just let him go?"
Two drops his arms and puts space between us, eyes on the ground. "One day, I snuck in and let him out of the cage.”
Holy faefucks, I actually feel bad for the little black ball of hatred.
He should be hateful toward humans. Years of experimentation and torture...not that I think pissing in my boots is a fair response to me, but he terrorizes everyone equally.
"And he came back here," I whisper.
"To the place I gave him magic."
"I..." When he looks up, his eyes are pink. Three, the dream walker. "I felt how miserable he was. I was miserable too, being locked up for so many years and being experimented on."
"Years?" A lump forms in my throat. I work to swallow it down to find my words. "Did they hurt you like that too?" I ask before I can stop myself.
"Cats are weak and small. He didn’t understand what they were doing." His fingers flex once at his sides. "But we could be strong. We could help the doctors find out what was wrong with me by letting them...do whatever it was that they needed."
My throat closes.
"And flesh heals," he adds so quietly I almost don't hear it.
"Three, is this how you were fractured?"
He nods, looking away again. "They were trying to help, and they'd never seen so many level five powers show up, much less in someone so young.
And no one had ever been marked with the ability to give others magic.
I did it a few more times with plants and smaller animals.
" The shame fills his voice as he looks down at his hands as if remembering what they could do.
Three blinks multiple times and shakes his head until his eyes turn green.
His shoulders straighten. It's as if the story is too heavy and he needs to call on the more logical, unemotional part of himself to finish telling me what happened.
"Our mother worked closely with the scientists on a treatment that should have fixed me.
Instead, my powers and my personality," he opens his arms, "split. "
My eyes shut a moment, my brain overwhelmed as I try to take it all in. Then I look at Lucifer. At the sleek black fur. The yellow eyes. The fact that he is here, breathing, alive, is impossible.
Something hot and hungry opens in me.
"Could Seven do that for a person?" I ask.
The Seven goes utterly still.
The air between us thins.
"Don’t," he says.
"I’m just asking a question."
"No, you’re not."
I swallow, but the words are already there, clawing their way up. "Could Seven do it for me?"
"You want magic so badly..." His voice is soft now. Deadly soft. Six’s face changes as his eyes shutter to purple. Two is back in lead.
His mouth curves, but there is nothing soft in it. "There it is."
He’s not shocked or angry, but that smile tells me it’s far worse. Something makes my skin prickle with heat.
My stomach drops. "What?"
"All those pretty words last night." His voice lowers. "All that talk about loving us as we are. But what you really want is him."
"That’s not what I’m saying," I rush to protest.
"You want Seven to crack open his veins and pour magic into you," he says over me with such conviction I feel I’ve already lost the fight he’s played out twenty steps ahead of me.
I retreat a step. "Stop."
The fire in my belly kicks up with an almost deafening roar as I try to pretend it’s not hungry for what Seven can do for me. But it burns with such an aching ferocity, I’m left shaking.
I could have magic. Finally.
"You want the worst part of us because it can give you something," he practically sneers.
"That’s not fair." I love him. Them. All of them. Including their powers.
But part of me knows I spoke out of selfishness, that it’s exactly what I want. I want Seven to give me everything I’ve always thought should have been mine. Magic.
I tell myself it's because I would use the power to help find my friends, but that’s not the entire truth. I can’t even lie to myself. Even if it was a dumb power, any power would be better than what I have now. Nothing.
His laugh is ugly. "Fair? You looked at that cat like Seven performed a miracle."
"Because he did. It is. I don’t think anyone has known of someone to have that power. I only know of someone who can strip the powers from others, but you, Seven...it is a miracle."
"No." His body crowds closer, eyes flashing so fast I can’t tell who is looking at me anymore. "He made something that can’t die. He created a thing that was captured, cut open, tested, and tortured because magic doesn’t save anything. It corrupts everything it touches."
I stare up at him, unblinking. "That isn’t magic. That’s people."
His lips peel back. "You don’t know what you’re talking about."
"I know Carolee didn’t die because she had magic."
His face goes blank.
I keep going, because I’m furious now. Because my heart is pounding and Lucifer is alive and this beautiful, impossible man in front of me keeps talking about himself like he is a plague.
"She died because someone hurt her. And I’m starting to suspect Rosie died because someone wanted to hurt her too.
" I wipe angrily at the wetness on my cheeks. The way they both looked in death. It can’t be a coincidence, their grayed pallor, the way life seemed to be sucked out of them...
"People are disappearing because someone is taking them. Magic isn’t the sickness here. "
"You think that because you don’t have it."
The words punch straight through me. My throat burns even as I glare at him.
He sees it land. I know he does.
Still, he keeps going.
"You romanticize it. You gorge yourself on those vile snack cakes and chase anything and anyone magic because you think being close to that power will make you special. You don’t love magic.
You worship it because you feel so painfully ordinary compared to everyone around you, and you can’t stand it. "
My eyes sting, and my whole face goes hot. It's true. It's been true since I was a kid.
"Stop it," I yell.
"Why? Because it’s true?" he shouts back.
"No. Because I’m not the only one who’s obsessed with thinking that I need to be fixed.
How do you really think it would feel? Not to have your magic?
You think it’d be a relief? My friend Red has the power to strip powers from others, and she is forbidden by law to ever use that power again.
Even if she could, she says she wouldn’t unless she absolutely had to.
Do you know why? Because it’s a violation.
Because she knows taking someone’s powers is the same as using a stick to blind someone or pierce their eardrums so completely they go deaf.
If any of those parts were taken from you, I don’t think you would be happy.
I think you’d mourn and wish you’d realized what you had. "
Something flickers over his face. Gone fast.
"And honestly?" I push on. "You repeat the words that magic is bad like a broken record someone else recorded for you. Magic is bad, magic is wrong, magic needs to be cured." My voice shakes, but I don’t stop. "Those words, those thoughts, they are your mother’s. Her prejudices."
His green eyes flare as his jaw tenses. "Don’t talk about her."
There’s a warning in his voice, but I can’t stop.
"At least one of you knows your mother is wrong. Is it Five? Three? Maybe even you know, Six. Because they probably sense through their feelings she’s wrong, and you can detect bullshit with your logical side, enough to know there is no real excuse for her to stop loving you.
That you aren’t the problem, but she is. The way she thinks is wrong."
The green sharpens, and black bleeds through the center.
"Enough," he says, voice too low. It ripples over my skin with force.
My feet move on their own.
His whole body locks even as the black drains out, leaving Six’s green gaze. Neither of us speaks as the air pulls tight around us.
Then he steps back, and the green washes to white like a door slamming shut.
"We’re done."
"No," I say. Panic rises in me as a strange feeling of him slipping through my fingers like sand overcomes me. "You don’t get to say that."
He turns away, pulling his hood up. I want to rip it right off again, take away his protective shell that he so easily recedes into.
I grab his sleeve. "Don’t you dare walk away from me."
One looks down at my hand on him. He removes it in such an uncharacteristically gentle way that my heart plummets to the pit of my stomach.
Somehow it hurts worse than when he tries to push me away. Like I’m not worth the energy anymore.
"You love the idea of us," One says.
There’s almost a sadness brimming in his eyes. As if I broke their hearts, when he’s the one breaking mine.
"But you don’t know what lives underneath," he says. "And if you did, you would run because you know eventually my darkness would consume you."
My mouth parts, but he’s gone.
Not walking.
Gone.
I stand on the sidewalk with my hand still raised, my fingers curled around empty air.
Across the street, Lucifer watches me from the dumpster as if knowing this is how things would turn out all along.