Crushed Seraphim (10 page)

“He was with her,” she whispered, and the evil one began nodding.

Satan straddled Emma again, aroused.
“H
e was with her.
He
was in her. She
wanted
him!” He clenched his fists, and Emma wasn’t sure he’d remember where he was. “So you see, angel, I did what I had to do. God asked me to forgive Gabriel.” Satan punched his own hand. He barely moved his lips when he added, “I refused.”

Satan said nothing as he ran through the old battle in his head for a moment. “And then I plotted, like the bastard I knew I was.” The smoke pulsated with his anger, like a trained pet. “So after I tore shit up, I got
this
lovely promotion. I get to live amongst unimaginable savageness. And I get to fuck every girl that walks in my door. I
have
to fuck every girl that walks in my door. They can’t resist me, nor I them. Fitting, isn’t it?”

He looked again at her face. He wasn’t seeing her anymore. “But
you
…you came here, and you’re fighting me like you shouldn’t. You look like her, a little tiny bit. And you’ve got that same heavenly smell. And I want to do to you, Emma, what I never got to do with her.”

He put his lips on hers. His scruffy face tickled as he poured his ardor over her like syrup. His passion tasted fantastic, like honey and spice. Emma could scarcely breathe. He
was
an angel, just a bad one.

Angel.
Angel!
Everett’s plan hit her like a bolt of lightning.

“Oh my God!” she shouted.

The Devil took her exclamation for desire. She had to shake her head violently to get him to back up. He cocked his head, puzzled.

“Is she still there? Your angel?” Emma tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her move.

He nodded and swallowed some pain.

“Satan, Everett is throwing angels from Heaven. You know that, right? Even the seraphim — destroying them one by one.” Emma watched as he came to the same conclusion she had.

“What?” He hopped up from her and stood at the foot of the couch.

Emma tried to give him the information softly. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know if she’s been among them.” Sympathy surged through her, greater even than the passion she’d felt.

“What?” He seemed to be struggling to get his mind around Claudette’s possible destruction.

She hated herself a little because this could help her, but she pointed out the obvious. “Everett could be holding on to her as a bargaining chip. Seraph Gabriel has also been thrown from Heaven. I saw him among the falling stars.”

Satan was enraged. “I’ll make him cry. I’ll kill him so many times.” He began plucking a horrible array of weapons out of the choppy smoke.

The room reflected his darkening mood. The red lights grew blacker, and the smoke began churning into tiny hurricanes.

“Wait! Let God go. He’ll help you.” Emma had managed to sit up, though her hands were still above her head. The handcuffs were chained to something.

Satan stopped cold and turned his head slowly toward Emma. “You think I’d trust Him? After all He did to me? My Claudette is safer with
me
to protect her.”

He began strapping an ammunition belt around his waist.

“Well, at least let me come with you,” Emma said. “I don’t have my wings, but I’ll have your back. I want Everett for my own reasons.” Emma missed her wings and hated her hate, but it had come on fast, like a force of nature.

Shaking his head, Satan strode quickly to a wooden door that appeared in the smoke and locked it firmly. Then he turned and in an instant was headed out the metal door Emma had entered. He paused for a last glance at her. “God stays put because I don’t trust Him. You stay put because…” He gave her a reverent nod. “I know you’re safe here.” He waved a hand in her direction and closed the door behind him. The smoke followed him out, seeping through the cracks between the hinges.

“Gah! Damn it. Damn him!” Emma kicked and noticed the Devil had changed her outfit. She now wore a full, red-leather dominatrix get-up and a matching pair of neck-breaking stilettos.

She was useless. She yanked on her handcuffs.

“That’s just hilarious. The Devil thinks he’s protecting
me.”
Emma stomped her foot against the red velvet of the lounge chair. A bit of dust made a tiny cloud. “And he dressed me like a slut!
Humper.”

She tried the handcuffs again. Nothing moved. She bit her lip and tried to think of a way out. She heard a crackling, like a faraway vintage radio had been turned on and tuned in. A voice drifted into the huge room.

“God, please do this for her. Where she is now I can’t even imagine…”

Emma knew his voice. It was sweet and silky. He sounded so sincere.

She shouted into the deep room. “Jason? Where are you? Can you hear me? Jason! I need help!”

“…She needs strength right now. Take mine — I have too much. Take it all…”

He wasn’t in the room, but his words were. “Jason. You remembered me.” Emma felt a lump in her throat. It took so much courage for an unbeliever to pray. She was so proud of him.

“…Amen. And thank you, Jason Parish.”

“No, thank you, Jason.” Emma smiled at the sound of his voice.

The transmission stopped, and the crackle faded away. She tried her handcuffs again, and they tumbled off in a noisy clatter. She pulled her hands in front of her, astounded. Jason’s prayers had unlocked her shackles like a key.

“Yes! Yes!” She stood on the wobbly heels and waited.

She wasn’t sure if the Devil had an alarm system. It could be anything really — a dragon, a giant spider, anything. A shiver went down her spine. She took a huge breath and hoped it contained some more of Jason’s strength as she sprinted for the metal door.

“If this is locked, I’m screwed.” Emma yanked on the handle, imagining every type of evil at her heels.

The door opened with a loud creak. She closed it behind her and looked around. In front of her was the thick void she’d fallen through to get here in the first place. To her left was a long, cement hallway. Satan had hollered in that direction when he was speaking to God.

Emma had a choice: she could try to find her way out and join the Devil in fighting Everett, or stay true to God and seek Him out to try to release Him.

The Hallway had to be her choice. When would she ever be left unattended in Hell again?

The void was pierced with screaming.
Was it someone coming in or the Devil getting out?

There was a loud bang and a sharp flash, and the screaming stopped. Being wingless and human made Emma feel weak. She wasn’t used to her body reacting to fear, stress, and worry. Being an angel had been the most delicious drug. It was pure good, radiating all the time.

She whispered “good luck” to the Devil, wherever he might be, and tiptoed to the Hallway’s entrance. It looked so plain — just cement walls and more metal doors, each with a window to peer into. Then she noticed the note handwritten in a hurried scrawl and tacked to the wall.

Can only open one door!

Emma could see at least thirty doors, but she could look through the window in each before making her choice. Right? The fluorescent track lighting flickered malevolently.
This looks easy. Too easy.

Satan would never safeguard God behind just a door. There had to be more to it, but for now she could hope for ease. Her heels click-clocked as she took a few steps. She was busy trying to figure out where the Devil would put God strategically, and she eyed the last doors in the Hallway as the first plague hit. Nothing in the Hallway changed visibly. The cement was still cold, and the doors were still a rusty gray. But inside. Oh crap, inside.

It was hunger. The most crippling, inane need to eat. Emma lost her focus entirely. She staggered forward, dreaming of food. Perhaps a delicious hunk of cheese… She began gnawing the flesh of her arm, just to give her ravenous teeth something to chomp on, but they were unable to break the skin. Even self-destruction offered no relief.

Door. Look in the window.
She tried to make her feet move, but the pain of the famine crowded her brain, short wiring it to picture apples, bread, watermelon.
Feed me. Please feed me.

The searching, primitive instinct to find prey finally brought her to the door — not any reasonable plan to find God. She pressed herself against the metal and the desperate hunger eased.

Tricky bastard
. She maintained contact with the door and peered in the window. The room beyond it was pitch black. There was a light switch to her left. She knew she had to turn it on. With complete ease, she flicked it into position. The inside of the cell was instantly visible, clear and sparse. There was one small, horrible-looking bed and no inhabitants.

Emma was about to turn off the light when something dropped from the ceiling.
Holy crap!

She had to consciously focus on getting her now-human heart to beat again. Adrenaline lit her eyes on fire as she took in the bizarre, stringy being. It was mostly teeth and saliva. Like a nightmare set to a body, it banged its head against the glass and snarled. Emma turned off the light with a childish hope of making it go away.

The room went silent.

Emma stepped back from the door and shook her head. The hunger attacked her immediately and she staggered on down the hall. Between the doors was another respite from the hunger pangs. In the calm, Emma tried to orient herself. The relief from the hunger was likely worse for her resolve than the plague itself. Her brain and body begged her to stop, and a part of her began to doubt her devotion.

Clearing her head, Emma shook out her arms and stretched them as if preparing to run a race. With her next step, she encountered the Devil’s second challenge.

Depression overwhelmed her, smothered her. There was no escaping it, so why bother to try? It took Emma forever to convince her eyes to blink. It seemed like a waste of energy to keep them wet. Steps weren’t worth taking. She would never be able to do this anyway. Each new criticism seemed to smack her head before it took root in her body.

Stupid
. She was so very stupid.

Hated
. Everyone who ever saw her hated her.

Guilty
. Every choice she’d ever made killed her all over again.

Unloved
. No one loved her. Sam didn’t even choose to be with her.

She was stagnant. There was no primal instinct to propel her forward now. Depression had stopped her completely. Her taunting brain showed her future Jason’s selfish eyes. Demented eyes that had changed a good soul into something he’d rather die than be.

She dragged a boot forward. The other came after, but it was slow going.

Boot drag, boot drag. Slow, not steady, dull.

Her progress had no focus, but finally she collided with the second door. It touched her instead of the other way around. Nevertheless, when her fingertips felt the metal, the wet, heavy cloud of doom lifted.

Emma now had trouble keeping her eyes open — the emotional marathon had left her exhausted. She flipped the light switch and braced herself for a jump-inducing scare. Instead she had a shock of a different kind. Her father sat on the bed in the cell. He was holding his chin, looking right at her, but he didn’t smile.

Daddy’s in Hell?

His piercing gray eyes, so like her own, showed recognition, but no pride. His face didn’t light up like it did for his sons. She could hear his voice clearly when he decided to talk.

“Emma, you won’t open this door. I can’t trust you to watch out for me.
You
take care of
you
best. Go on with you. Go open someone else’s door.” Hate emanated from him, and each word rippled from his mouth, like water after a pebble is thrown in a pond.

By the time the ripples reached Emma, the words were crashing waves. This wasn’t a Devil-manufactured emotion. She felt real disappointment that she’d let her father down, let her brothers down.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy. Everett was a bad man. I couldn’t make myself be with him after what happened to Sam.” She had trouble touching the door now; his words had made it hot. She wanted to cuddle her knees and be far, far away from her father’s judgmental eyes.

“Agh. Yeah, sure. Piss on me. Did Sam feed you? Did Sam give you clothes? Who bought your goddamn horse? Sam? No. You treat your own family like shit because you wanted to whore it out to that horny asshole.” Her father stood and swaggered to the glass.

It’s not him.
Daddy loved Feisty, and he never cursed. His voice seemed too high-pitched, different than she remembered.

But she treated him as she would her father. “Daddy, I forgive you for your words, even though they hurt me now. I love you. The decisions you made were a product of the information you had then. I forgive you.”

With her forgiveness, the lifelike hologram of her father warbled and changed. He was distorted by her love. Soon his resemblance dissolved like sugar in hot water. Emma felt peace. Her father wasn’t in Hell. She wouldn’t have to choose to save him or save God.

She stepped back into the depression again, slowly, agonizingly. When she got to the next respite of peace, she knew she had to change her tactic. The hall was so long. Her gut told her God would be at the end of the hall. That’s where she’d put him if she were the Devil. The expanse of cement looked to be far from an easy passage now.

Internal obstacles. That sexy bastard
.

She couldn’t experience whatever Satan had laid out for her at a walking pace. She needed to run — take a chance that she could get through whatever lay ahead. Common sense said to go slowly because the test was surely too much. Whatever she would face in the next hundred feet would collapse her sanity like a broken tent — especially if she took it on all at once. But God was trapped, possibly being tortured by the same things she was feeling.

I’m going to take the strength Jason prayed to give me, and I’m going to run — no matter what. I’m not going to stumble. I won’t fall. I’ll run.

She rolled her head on her neck and took a deep breath. Her heart pounded, and her palms were slick with sweat. The space looked so innocuous, but she’d learned quickly that looks were deceiving.

Go!

Emma took off sprinting in her high-heeled, red leather boots. An observer would have been fascinated by the way she twitched and flailed at apparently nothing, but despite it all, she kept running.

In her mind — in her quaking, reeling mind — there was only disaster. First was fear. Paralyzing fear. She ran even when she started to shake. When the reprieve came, she ran through it as well, refusing to relish the peace.

Up next was anger. Devastating, murdering, raging anger. Her fingernails dug into her palms and she screamed as her wrath demanded she hit something, kill something. The moments of peace were growing shorter or she was running faster. She prayed she was faster.

The confusion was horrible.
Who am I? What am I doing?
Emma was only able to keep running because she had so much momentum. Surely she’d have forgotten how to breathe had she been walking.

She was close to the end of the hall now, and finally her brain made her feet stop. There were two doors against the back wall. She looked over her shoulder and wiped her mouth. Emma convulsed as if she’d been electrocuted.

My brain is melting. Oh God. Please, just make it stop.

She stepped toward the door on the left because it was closer.

Love. She was filled with such overwhelming love. She felt like flying. Everything was prettier. She took a deep breath and felt replenished, rejuvenated.

This is God’s door. It has to be.

She reveled in the love and flipped the light switch, excited to see His face, open His door.

Sam sat on the bed in the cell. The love overwhelmed her.
Sam! Of course I’ll save Sam. My love, my sweet. His arms were so warm when I hugged him. His skin always smelled so sweet. Sam. Sam.

She touched the door before reaching for the knob. Her fingers against the metal broke her spell, and the infatuation subsided a bit.

He stood and came to the window.

Sam, my Sam.

“Emma, beautiful Emma. I’ve missed your face so much. Please, please let me out. I love you. You’re all I’ve ever wanted! I’m so scared in here. I love you.”

His hair was the perfect color, and his deep brown skin begged to be touched. He looked so relieved and waited expectantly to be released from his cell. “But why didn’t you come to me?” Emma began. “You chose reincarnation — ”

“You can only open one door,” Sam interrupted. “You can’t leave me here. I can’t stay here. I’m in pain all the time.”

To punctuate his dilemma, a gunshot roared in her ears and Sam’s chest exploded in blood. He died all over again — the gasping, the gurgling, the light fading from his eyes.

Emma screamed like she had when she was human — like she had when his death had killed the part of her that was innocent.

The blood on his chest receded like the tide, the hole closing up like a film being rewound. He began to blink and wince. As he staggered to stand up, he put a hand to his chest.

“Emma, that keeps happening. I get better just long enough to be afraid again. Please, I’m so terrified. Only you can save me, Emma.”

The gunshot rang out again, and she grabbed the knob with both hands. Again he crumpled, again he died, again he bled. She could barely stop herself from flinging open the door. She had to think.

Sam was getting up again. “Emma, take me with you. Let me be with you. I keep having to die.” Then her beautiful, brave Sam started to cry. After a moment he continued. “You’re not going to save me. I can’t keep dying. It’s Hell. It’s Hell.”

Gunshot.

The whole cell filled with his death again. It was a relentless loop of the worst seconds of his life.

It’s Hell. It’s Hell.
She tried not to watch as Sam breathed his last again and again.
Daddy wasn’t real. Sam’s not real. This isn’t real.

Emma hated her nagging conscience that told her it could be Sam. If his spirit had risen and received Judgment from Everett, this could be Sam.

And what if the sign was a fake? What if I can open two doors?

Gunshot.

Sam experienced his death again before he came to the window and looked in her eyes. “Do what you have to. I do love you, my sweet girl. You’ve always been my warrior.”

He was himself then, in that moment. She knew it in her soul. He really was behind this door, and she had to open it. But not yet. Carefully Emma stepped back, keeping her fingers in contact with the door.

“Emma, don’t leave me! I’ll come with you.” Sam clawed at the window, trying to get to her, desperate to get out.

“I’ll get God first. Then I’ll be right back. I promise. I won’t leave you — ”

Emma gasped as the gunshot intruded on her pledge. He fell again. She let go of his door. The only thing giving her courage now was that God could do anything.

She heard the Devil’s voice in her ear.
“Then why isn’t He out of Hell, pretty child?”

The overwhelming love hit her again. She clawed at her chest; her heart was so full of love for Sam. She dropped to her knees so she couldn’t hear his gasps or see his never-ending death. She had to crawl because she couldn’t trust herself to be level with the doorknob.

The gunshots came faster, over and over and over. Soon it sounded like machine-gun fire.

Sam, Sam, Sam. I’m so evil to leave you here.

She crawled into the reprieve, the peace. But there was no silence here. The life-ending cracks kept her on her hands and knees.

One last door. And if she was wrong, she’d have to go back to each of the doors she’d run past. There were so many. She’d never survive it on her own. She had to pray. She had no one else to turn to.

In this time of need, strengthen me. You are my strength and my shield.

Her mind filled with Jason’s face, and she saw his despondency at his future. She stood, and although the gunshot kept sounding, she focused on the last door. She reached her hand out in front of her.