Redemption (Book 4, The Redemption Series) (21 page)

Guns had been banned since the Great War. Every single one had been melted down and disposed of. If you happened to find one kept by a collector, it was useless. There was no ammunition to fire in it. There hadn’t been a war since, but most people agreed that had more to do with the absolute control the cloud cities had over every aspect of the down-worlders' lives than the availability of guns. Now if you wanted to fight, it had to be face to face in direct physical combat.

“I’ll be right back,” Malcolm tells me, kissing me chastely. “I just need to grab a new shirt and your sword.”

Malcolm phases to our bedroom.

“How is Alto doing, Brutus?” I ask. “Is Kyna all right?”

“Alto is doing as well as can be expected,” Brutus says, looking worried. “But, I have some bad news. Rafael Rossi’s body was found in some of the wreckage. I guess Baal didn’t want to give you the opportunity to kill him or give Lucifer a chance to trap his soul. I doubt he takes another form anytime soon.”

Malcolm phases back into the room with a black t-shirt on this time. He slips the baldric with my sword over my shoulders.

With mention of Baal, it makes me wonder about another Prince of Hell.

“Is Levi still in Hell where I left him?” I ask Lucifer, fastening the belt of the baldric around my waist.

By his expression, I can tell Lucifer was counting on my being preoccupied with what was going on and forget to ask about Levi. His eyes tell me he doesn’t want to say what he’s about to.

“I …released him from that body. I couldn’t take the chance of you returning there to finish the job. I’m sorry if you think that was wrong of me, but I simply couldn’t risk your soul over a piece of scum like him.”

“I understand,” I tell him. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have gone back to kill him.”

“Anna?”

I turn to see Vala and Luna walk into the room with Giles between them.

I kneel down and Vala comes up to me. I hug her around the neck and kiss her head.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had much time for you lately,” I apologize. “I’ll make it up to you both after this is all over.”

“Just be careful, Anna,” Vala says, unable to keep the worry out of her voice. “And watch your back. These princes haven’t exactly proven themselves to be trustworthy.”

“I’m so close to being through with my mission, Vala. After this, maybe we can go back to something resembling our old life.”

“No,” Vala says with certainty. “I don’t think we ever will, Anna. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You’ll have control of Cirrus and the people of this down-world need you to help them. You’ll have a lot of work to do, but you can count on me to always remain by your side.”

“I’ll need you,” I tell her, giving her one last hug.

Luna comes up to me, and I pick the hellhound pup up in my arms. When I turn to look at the men in the room, they’re all staring at me oddly.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Has something else changed about me?”

Jered clears his throat. “Is it just me or do Anna and Luna look very similar now?”

I look down at Luna, and she looks up at me. White hair, blue eyes. We really do look a lot alike now.

“Is anyone else going to mention the
other
thing?” Brutus says.

“What other thing?” I ask, perplexed by the meaning behind his question.

“You look,” my papa says staring at me with a conflicted look on his face, “all grown up. I feel like I left a girl and came back to find a woman in her place.”

“I think part of the problem is the hair,” Desmond says sagely, nodding his head as if he agrees with himself.

“Does it make me look old?” I ask, worried the white hair may have aged me before my time.

“It’s not that exactly,” Brutus says, shifting his feet and looking uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation, even though he started it. “It makes you look…uh… I can’t even say the word with both your fathers standing in the room.”

Malcolm smiles at me. “I think what Brutus is trying to say is that it makes you look sexy. I, of course, have no problem saying the word. You’re my wife. I should find you sexy. But I think it's making the others feel a bit uncomfortable.”

I feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment and decide to change the subject. I kiss Luna on the top of her head and put her back down beside Vala.

“Is it time to go yet?” I ask, desperately wanting to get Mammon’s seal and finally finish my mission.

“We can go now if you want,” Malcolm tells me, “but we’ll be a few minutes early.”

I walk over to Malcolm and take one of his hands with my own.

“I know it’s not in your nature to be somewhere early, but I would really like to go now if you don’t mind. I’m ready to get this over with.”

“Be careful, Anna,” my papa says, coming up to me and giving me a kiss on the cheek. “I'll be waiting here for you.”

“Hopefully, this won't take very long,” I tell him. “We'll be back as soon as we can.”

Malcolm phases us to the spot in the Sahara desert that was once the Earthly birthplace of the Watchers, my devoted friends and protectors. I realize that this moment isn’t just the last step in my mission but theirs as well. They’ve protected the lineage of my family for a thousand years, and after such a long vigil, their promise to Caylin will finally be fulfilled.

It’s nighttime in the desert. The full moon’s light shines against the snow covered dunes giving them the illusion of sheets of ice.

After everyone phases in, we wait.

“How much longer?” I ask Malcolm.

“Couple of minutes,” he tells me, squeezing my hand reassuringly. “How are you feeling?”

“Excited but worried at the same time.”

“Hopefully, after this is over, all you’ll feel is relieved.”

“Do you think the people of Cirrus will accept me as their ruler?” I ask, not forgetting that after this mission is over I have another one waiting for me.

“Sorry for eavesdropping,” Jered says behind us, “but I actually know the answer to that question.”

Both Malcolm and I turn around to look at Jered and the others.

“How?” I ask.

“After you and Malcolm went to get Lucas, I went to Stratus to tell Travis he could stop his search. When we got to Travis’ workshop, Gladson and Barlow were there waiting for him. I guess they’ve been working on the next propaganda video Gladson wants to air. Apparently, the citizens of Cirrus have been less than pleased with their emperor of late. Levi implemented martial law over the city soon after we got you out of there. He’s been arresting people on trumped up charges for no apparent reason, except to create fear and chaos. Almost everyone there has been saying you were the smart one to leave when you did. They want you back so you can take control away from Levi. After you announce the death of the Emperor of Cirrus, the people will most certainly want you to take charge. Since there isn’t a male heir, there won’t be anyone to fight you for the throne.”

Jered’s words alleviated at least one of my worries. I had my doubts about the populace of Cirrus willingly accepting me as their ruler. I wasn’t an Amador by blood, and the family had ruled Cirrus pretty much since it first floated into the sky. At any rate, my plan to rule Cirrus and bring its citizens into a new age seemed to be one thing I didn’t have to worry about too much.

“Well, well, well,” I hear Mammon say behind me, “what a welcoming committee. The last remaining Watchers on Earth all in one place. I feel flattered all of you wanted to come see me.”

“We’re not here for you, you egotistical bastard,” Desmond says, not even trying to hide his disgust for Mammon. “We just want to make sure you don’t try to back out of this deal or use it to hurt Anna in some way.”

Mammon holds one hand up and pledges, “I, in no way, will harm a hair on Anna's beautiful head. You have my word.”

“Which doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to us              ,” Brutus grumbles. “We know you, Mammon.”

Mammon shrugs his shoulders like he isn’t worried in the slightest what the others think about him.

“Why don’t we just get this done so I can leave,” Mammon suggests, holding his hand out to me.

Without hesitation, I walk up to him and take the hand he’s holding out. He isn’t the only one who wants to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Mammon wastes no time. I immediately feel the pain associated with a seal transfer hit my body like a mountain crashing down on top of me. I fall to my knees but Mammon doesn’t let go of my hand until the transfer is complete. Once it is, he removes his hand from mine.

Malcolm kneels down behind me and gently begins to rub my back, doing what he can to alleviate a small portion of the pain.

“I’ve kept my word to your daughter, Lucifer,” I hear Mammon say, as if to make sure my father remembers that important fact.

“I won’t trap your soul,” Lucifer promises, his voice getting closer as he walks over to me.

“Then I’ll take my leave,” Mammon responds, sounding pleased that the terms of our agreement have been met.

Mammon phases away, and Lucifer kneels down in front of me.

“Anna,” he says gently, “do you want to wait until this pain subsides before I give you my seal?”

I shake my head vigorously.

“No,” I say, struggling to take in a breath, “give it to me now so I can be done with this.”

“All right.” Lucifer covers one of my hands with his. “Phase to Heaven as soon as the transfer is complete. My father will take care of the rest once you get there.”

When I feel Lucifer’s seal enter my body, I scream out in pain and squeeze my eyes shut. My body feels like it’s about to explode because all of my internal organs have just been lit on fire.

“Malcolm,” I hear Lucifer say, “stop touching her. She’s almost ready to phase.”

I feel Malcolm’s hand move away from my back.

After the seal has been completely transferred, Lucifer takes his hand away, and I immediately phase to Heaven.

I feel someone grab a fist full of my hair and yank my head backwards so hard I'm surprised my neck doesn’t snap in two like a twig.

When I open my eyes, I see the smiling face of the one person I didn’t expect to see, at least not in Heaven.

“Hello, sister,” Helena says.

Chapter 20

I begin to wonder if the pain from the seals is causing me to hallucinate. If they are, I suddenly find myself in a hellish nightmare. It isn’t possible for Helena to be in Heaven. Yet, she’s standing right over me pulling my head back so far I start to make choking sounds.

Past Helena’s smiling face, all I see is darkness. It’s only then that I realize I’m not in Heaven. I’m in Hell.

I hear the loud boom I heard the last time I was in Hell when Lucifer kept trying to phase down. The sound tells me that someone is desperately trying to get into Hell, but Helena is stoutly refusing to let that person inside.

“You poor thing,” Helena croons sympathetically as she stares down at me. “All those seals crammed inside your frail little human body. It must hurt like the devil.”

Helena giggles at her own twisted version of a joke as she continues to look at me.

“I love the hair and eyes by the way, sister. I suppose you assumed the seals led to your stunning transformation. At least, that’s what I was counting on. I hoped you wouldn’t figure out the truth before I was ready. All that lovely anger and hatred you lavished on me while you tortured poor Levi helped make me stronger than I’ve ever been before. After every seal you’ve absorbed, our link to one another was made stronger. And with the added power you gave me while you were here with Levi, I was able to use it to intensify our connection. That’s how I was able to make you phase to Hell instead of Heaven. You were too weakened by the seals to even realize what was happening until it was too late. Now that our bond to one another is complete, you’ll always feel me, Anna. Well, at least for as long as you live anyway…”

I feel one of Helena’s hands caress the side of my face as if she’s attempting to bring me comfort, but I know her better than that. Her hand slides down the front of my exposed neck and slips underneath my shirt until it comes to rest over my heart.

“Here,” she says, “let me help take away all your pain.”

I scream out in agony as I feel her hand punch through my chest and grab hold of my heart, squeezing.

Helena begins to laugh, as if the act of torturing me tickles her. I feel as though she’s draining the life out of me, but I realize she’s doing something even worse. She’s taking the seals. I feel their power begin to flow out of me like water from a faucet. As she steals the seals from my body, I also feel my life force begin to slip away.

“Oh sister,” Helena says, sounding as if she’s experiencing an immense amount of pleasure, “I knew you could do it. I had faith you could use our father’s love for you to persuade him to give you his seal. He never would have given it up so freely to me, but I can certainly take it from you easily enough. Our souls have never been so connected to one another. All that anger and hate you were feeling before wasn’t just from the seals, you know. It was from me too. Now, it’s time for you to share part of yourself with me, sister. I need the seals more than you do. I need their combined power to help me escape this place. Our father has kept me prisoner here for far too long.”

I scream again in agony. It's almost as if Helena is tearing not only my body but also my soul to shreds.

“That’s it,” Helena moans. “I almost have them.”

Helena opens her eyes and a look of utter shock contorts her face as she looks down at me.

“How are you doing that?” she demands angrily, removing her hand from my chest and shoving my head forward as she finally lets me go.

I cough uncontrollably while trying to take in a deep breath to assuage my burning lungs.

“How are you keeping them from me?” she demands again, kicking me hard in the stomach with one dainty foot.

I’m so weak I can’t even muster up enough strength to defend myself. Instead, I simply roll over onto my side and look up at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a raspy voice as I stare at her.

“How are you keeping some of the seals for yourself?” she demands hysterically.

I close my eyes because I have no idea what she’s talking about and feel too tired to care.

Helena leans down over me and places a gentle, cool hand against one of my cheeks.

Almost instantly, I feel reinvigorated.

When I open my eyes again, I feel no pain and my exhaustion has faded, leaving me feeling normal again. I look down at my chest half expecting to see a gaping hole there, but I guess it just felt like Helena put her hand inside me. Outwardly, I look undamaged.

I stand to my feet and face Helena.

“Better?” she asks sarcastically.

“Yes,” I say. “How did you do that?”

Helena rolls her eyes at me. “We’re connected, Anna. Weren’t you paying any attention to what I was saying? I just gave you some of my strength because I need answers from you. Now,” she says, holding out one of her hands to me, “give me the seals you have left, and I might just let you live.”

“Even if I knew how to give them to you, I wouldn’t,” I say stubbornly.

I hear the boom again of someone trying to phase into Hell.

“I really wish they would stop doing that!” Helena says irritably. “It’s interrupting my concentration!”

“How long can you keep Lucifer from phasing down here?” I ask.

Helena looks at me in surprise and then begins to laugh hysterically as if what I just said is the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life.

“It’s not Lucifer, sister. It’s Malcolm and the others. Lucifer is already here.”

I notice Helena’s gaze shift to something behind me. When I turn to see what she’s staring at, I see Lucifer sitting on the bench in the replica of Malcolm’s courtyard. Snow covers him, and he looks frozen into place as he watches us with unblinking eyes.

“Dad?” I say, but receive no response.

Helena giggles behind me, drawing my attention back to her.

“He can hear you and see you,” she tells me, “but he’s completely trapped now.”

“Trapped?” I ask, feeling my heart sink with dread. “What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t you know the definition of trapped?” Helena asks sarcastically. “Trapped… the act of preventing something or someone from escaping a certain place. Lucifer has kept me trapped here since I was conceived. He’s only reaping his due reward from being so cruel. Now he’s the one who can’t leave, ever.”

“How are you able to do that to him?” I ask.

“The power of the seals, dear sister. They’re inside me now, or at least the ones I could take from you are.” Helena phases over to me and thrusts her face so close to mine I can feel her breath on my face. “Now give me the rest!”

I feel my hands tighten into fists at my sides. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I bring one fist up quickly and hit Helena hard under her chin. The force of the blow lifts her a few feet into the air. She comes crashing back down to the floor sprawled onto her back.

I hear her moan in pain. Slowly, she sits up and rubs her jaw where I hit her, grimacing. She spits out a spray of blood and just sits there staring at the star shaped pattern it made on the floor.

Helena begins to cackle with glee. I almost ask her what she finds so funny.

Then realization dawns.

Helena is bleeding, like a real person.

Helena looks up at me as she wipes the last traces of blood from her lips with the palm of her right hand. She holds the hand in front of her face before turning it towards me.

“Do you know what this means?” she says in wonder. “I’m a real girl now, sister. I’m real!”

I begin shaking my head in disbelief, refusing to believe what I’m witnessing.

“That can’t be,” I say, hoping that if I reject what I see it will simply go away. “You can’t be real.”

Helena stands to her feet.

She smiles at me, but it ends up looking more like a red gash splitting her face in two because of the blood covering her teeth.

“I’m as real as you are,” she says, excitedly. “Do you realize what this means?”

I shake my head because I have no idea what the ramifications of Helena having a corporeal body means in the grand scheme of things.

“It means I’m finally free,” she says right before phasing.

From her phase trail, I can see that she’s phased to the desert.

I look over my shoulder at Lucifer, not wanting to leave him but also knowing nothing good can come of Helena being on Earth.

“I’ll come back for you,” I promise him.

When I phase back to the desert, I see Helena skipping across the dune Malcolm and the others are still standing on.

Malcolm sees me first.

“Thank God you’re all right,” he says taking me into his arms as I walk up to him.

“I’m fine,” I reassure him, giving him a quick hug before letting him go.

I turn to watch Helena act like a child playing in the snow as she bends over to grab handfuls of it to make a snowball.

“Who the hell is that?” Brutus asks.

“Helena,” I reply. “She’s real now.”

“How did that happen?” Jered asks.

“She took some of the seals from me. She says I still have some left that she can’t seem to reach.”

A snowball hits Desmond directly in the face causing him to sputter.

We all hear Helena laugh heartily at her own antics.

“If she’s real, we can kill her, right?” Jered whispers, only…it isn’t quite soft enough.

Helena’s laughter dies and all becomes quiet. The only sound that can be heard is the desert wind.

“I won’t be that easy to kill,” she tells us. “I’ve waited far too long for this moment. Do you know everything that went into orchestrating my own freedom? If you think I’m just going to stand here and let that happen, think again.”

In the blink of an eye, we find ourselves surrounded by creatures I can only assume Helena brought up from the depths of Hell itself. They look like they might have been human at one time, but their bodies have been corrupted into malformed shapes after spending so much time in Hell.

All of us pull out our swords and stand ready to defend ourselves.

“Should we phase?” I ask those around me.

“We can’t allow these things to live,” Malcolm tells me. “If we leave them here, they’ll kill every human they cross paths with. Phasing should only be used as a last resort.”

“Kill them!” Helena yells to her minions.

All at once, the hellspawn run straight for us from all sides.

It seems like the more we kill, the more hellspawn Helena brings up. As soon as we kill one, their body disappears into a cloud of black smoke, making a clear path for the next attacker. I chance a glance away from the creature in front of me as I slice its head off and feel a sense of helplessness as I see an ocean of Helena’s minions coming for us. I’ve completely lost sight of Helena in the horde and don’t even know if she’s still here.

“We can’t fight this many alone!” Brutus yells as we stay in the tight circle we’re in fending off the bloodthirsty demons in front of us.

Before I can even swing my sword at it, the hellspawn in front of me screams out in pain. I see the tip of a short blade protruding from the middle of its chest just before it disappears into a cloud of black smoke. I look up and see a large man with a black tattoo covering his left shoulder. I instantly recognize him from one of my trips to Hell. He was the Watcher who traded in his soul and accepted an eternity in Hell because he couldn't take the pain of a hellhound bite.

“You’re not alone, Brutus,” the man says. “We’re here to help.”

“Slade?” I hear Brutus say in surprise. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“Funny you should mention Hell,” Slade says, turning to thrust his dagger into the minion coming up behind him.

Slade joins our defensive circle and uses the dagger in his hand to kill more of the hellspawn. More men, possibly twenty, like Slade join our circle to help us kill the thousands of creatures attacking us, but we’re still desperately out numbered.

A loud boom sounds accompanied by a blinding flash of white light. The earth shakes, forcing us all to plant our feet just to maintain our balance. As my eyes adjust to the dazzling brightness, I find its source just beyond the sea of minions in front of me.

Standing just outside the perimeter of hellspawn are at least two-thousand men. All of them are wearing black feather cloaks, leather pants and boots like the outfit Malcolm wore to our wedding. The only difference is that their cloaks are a mixture of black and white feathers.

“War Angels,” Malcolm says beside me, sounding surprised by the presence of our new arrivals.

One of the War Angels stands out in front of them all. I recognize him as the man I saw in the crowd of partygoers in Stratus and again at Brutus’ wedding to Kyna in Alto.

I watch as the man pulls out a large sword from the scabbard at his side and charges forward into the legion of hellspawn. The men behind him follow his lead and begin slicing their way through Helena’s horde with incredible speed. In a matter of minutes, the creatures are dispatched back to Hell, and we’re left standing side by side on the dune. Helena, not surprisingly, is nowhere to be found afterwards.