Entice: An Ignite Novella (15 page)

“I was thinking,” he says, staring at his own dark stone, “that if I could find another one, we could connect them somehow. Like our minds, but a more physical tie.”

I imagine a tether between the two stones, an invisible stretch of lightning. It would connect us in a stronger way; our minds could connect from greater distances.

“But then everything happened with Adam. I ran out of time to look.” He shrugs. “You said you read something before about threading objects together into one consciousness, didn’t you?”

I nod. “I don’t know how. I’m not practiced at performing spells, only reading them.”

“That’s where I come in.”

This is why we work well, I realize. Azael and I are different sides of the same coin. Where I lack, he excels, and vice versa. We balance one another. It’s our differences that make us—until recently—successful. I sit down on the edge of my bed, sliding over a precariously stacked tower of books with my booted foot.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell him.

“I figured you’d like it. Although now, it’s not quite a celebration of our success. More of a reminder of our failure, I suppose.” His voice is rough, laced with bitterness. “I’ll wear it every day for the rest of my life so I don’t forget the thin line separating victory and defeat.”

He drops his chin to his chest, closes his eyes, and works his jaw. Another piece of him breaks, and I wonder where the pieces fall. The small sliver of light that remained within him darkens. I doubt I will ever be able to repair it again.

Eden will stay with him until he ceases to be entirely. He’ll never go anywhere without remembering his failure, how near he came to greatness in Hell. The end result of Eden is all he cares about; nothing else matters.

“Azael, do you truly think everything is as black and white as we’re told?” I prompt, trying to save what dim light is left of him. Maybe if he sees that things do not have to be on either side of the spectrum of good and evil, he can find stability somewhere in the middle. “It cannot be only right or only wrong, can it? There has to be something in between... A sort of middle ground.”

“There’s Heaven or Hell, Pen. Upstairs or downstairs.”

“But now there’s Earth. A center, something to find an equilibrium between the worlds.”

He shakes his head. “Earth is an abomination that needs to be wiped clean. I can only imagine what humans will turn it into.”

“So there’s no chance to be anything better than what we are now?” I try to keep the heavy feeling of dread I feel in my bones out of my words.

Azael can’t know how important it is for me to have hope to cling to, but I also can’t let him become as dark as he thinks he should be. I think I’ll be walking the line between Heaven and Hell forever—swaying toward the darkness but always reaching to the light. Azael will only see my shadow self.

“None.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.” He sets the onyx stone on his nightstand and replaces it in his hand with his scythe. He lies down and twists the point of the blade into each of his fingers, drawing the smallest amount of blood.

After stewing in silence for a few minutes, he jumps out of bed and storms out of the room, calling over his shoulder that he’ll be in the armory. I’m not surprised. Destruction brings him peace. Maybe now he’ll finally let his temper leach through his skin, the sweat from fighting ridding him of the dark poison of disgruntlement.

He leaves me alone in my room of words. In a way, he’s always left me alone with my words.

I clutch the amethyst crystal tighter in my hand, letting the jagged edges of the stone threaten to cut my palm. A book on divination I was reading before our trip to Eden still lies open on my pillow. One small sentence in the densely covered page catches my eye.

Nothing is absolute.

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T
HE FUTURE SHIFTS
. I
T SLANTS
, crooked, and veers to the right. The other path fades away, the ink erasing from the heavy pages of my notebook. My visions are knocked off balanced as new destinies replace the old.

Failure. Fallen. Defamation.

Penemuel’s and Azael’s paths twist through words of warnings. They’ll be at the bottom of the ladder again, start from nothing. I hope they’ve made the best of their time in Eden. They’re ranked so low that they will not get another glimpse of Earth for centuries, at the very least. Maybe their next excursion won’t be quite so disastrous.

Every possibility of the future blurs through my mind all at once, clogging up my vision. There’s too much information fighting for dominance. What will overthrows what could, leaving what won’t to die in the shadows of their prophecy.

It’s difficult to see anything straight when there are so many options. Left right left right. Then the direction of the future changes again. Too many people are making too many decisions all at once, distorting the path again and again until it’s a jumble I can only just barely make sense of. There’s one thread of possibility darker than the others, thick with confident ink.

I flip to the back of the notebook again, circling their fates with my finger. Pen’s is more defined now, less shaky than before. The perhaps has now become certain, the possible hardening into inevitable. Her death is tied with her brothers, their lives bound together. When one ends, as does the other.

They fell together; they will die together.

Their fates are written in different handwriting, neither my own. Azael’s is sharper, smaller, harder to read in its scrawled fashion. Pen’s, however, loops. The letters are thin but tall, modest but strong. The words tangle together with her brother’s, and I follow the path that predicts their downfall. I’m not surprised at what I find: they will destroy each other.

Snapping the notebook closed, I hide it away in my pocket as I approach the two Greater Demons standing guard at Lucifer’s chambers. The future is for my eyes alone.

“Were you summoned?” asks the one with knobby knees and scraggly fingers. He clutches his weapon closer to his chest, and I get flashes of his future. Wings, dark skies, betrayal. He’ll be slain in battle, but the rest is unclear. I try not to look into his destiny too closely. It’s too much.

I nod, training my eyes on the dark skulls set into the door. They have no future left to read. In that way, the dead are much easier to keep company amongst.

“Enter,” he says as the doors open. I find the instruction unnecessary.

I’m surprised not to find Lucifer on his throne. It sits empty, its black metal abandoned to the cold. In this state, it reminds me even more of the golden chair in Heaven. Each sits without an occupant, one much more permanent in its emptiness than the other.

I clear my throat. “Sir?” The cave echoes my voice and I cringe. I hate the sound of my voice. I hate echoes. I hate the distorted remainder of my words. The past has no right to remain for longer than an instant.

Lucifer slides through an archway that leads deeper into the wing of Hell he resides in. I know what lies within the first and second chamber of the annex, but what waits beyond is a mystery. His hair, I notice, is particularly white today, his smile unusually wide.

“How nice of you to join me.”

“But of course, sir.” I bend at the waist in a quick, formal bow. “Every day at the same hour, as ordered. Today, I assume, is no different.”

He doesn’t bother to climb onto his throne. He knows I understand his power without him seated above me. The throne is just a prop, a reminder to those who forget. He need not be as formal with me now that I’m seated on his council.

“There is where you are wrong, Gusion.”

I arch an eyebrow but say nothing.

Without any explanation, he waves me over to him, into the first chamber of charcoaled ice. It’s cold and black, devoid of all color and heat. I walk behind him as he leads me to the large, heavy book of fates I’ve compiled for him. Its pages are heavy and wet with the destinies I remember divining from my time in Heaven and what new ones have spun off since the fall to Hell.

I wish my handwriting was neater, easier to read—I would hate for someone to misread a fate—but he insists I be the only one who knows of the book. The only contributor to its pages. This book holds everything I know to be true. Or possible. There are a few impossibilities thrown in here and there, too, for Lucifer’s sake. He’s as fixated on the events that will never happen as those that might or will.

“Today could not be more different! Eden has sunk in grief. Adam has been exiled from Paradise. Hell has won its second battle.”

His thin fingers turn the page to the vision I’d written of Eden. Dozens of sentences and phrases are scratched out and the text works its way around the page in a spiral. If I don’t look closely, the text unites into a shadow of an image—hedges, maybe. A forest of greenery, turned black by ink.

“Congratulations, sir. Your plan was executed perfectly.”

“No thanks to your new pupils.” He clicks his tongue. “It’s a shame they did not listen to your advice. Perhaps they could have avoided this misstep. They may have sat on my side, joined you at the table of advisors.”

“I understand. I’ve done what I could.”

“So I’ve heard.” He studies me. “But we knew that was never to be.”

“Not as seen in the fates, sir.”

“The fates, which are never wrong.”

I nod. Tap my fingers twice on my leg, marking the seconds of silence.

“Which is what brings me to what I must discuss with you today...”

He finds the ribbon in the book of fates and turns to the marked page. Pen’s picture is crudely drawn, along with her short history of noteworthy actions. There’s nothing much: a few documented thefts—mostly books, parchment, and elixirs of the divine—and her misconduct toward the angels. She speaks out of turn time and time again, as documented by multiple sources. She’s stubborn, disobedient. Difficult to tame. But she’s nothing compared to her brother.

“I’m confused,” I admit, reaching toward my notebook again. I stop short, though, not needing to divine a fate. A simple question will do. “What must I divine about Penemuel? I assumed Azael would be the topic of discussion.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “Of course not. Azael, I understand. He is simple, driven by anger and pride. His temper may cause him trouble in the future, but I’ve no doubt I could bend his fury to use as a weapon. His sister, though... She’s problematic.”

I lean over the page, rereading what I’ve already seen in hopes of finding something new. I don’t. “Problematic,” I repeat.

“She thinks too much, which in itself is nothing to worry about. What’s troublesome is the nature of her thoughts. They could lead to...rebellion, were anyone to listen.”

The page fills with more invisible text before my eyes. It’s her future, spiraling out, around, and under her past. I sit down to trace the futures I see, Lucifer watching over my shoulder. His prying eyes are distracting.

“So you see now.”

I nod, ink flowing from my pen onto the paper faster than I can read. In detail, I outline her conflicted nature. The struggle she fights within herself of belonging. The uncertainty, hesitation.

“She does not appear to move her thoughts into actions,” I tell him when the unwritten fates are gone and I can see what’s really there again. I turn to face him. “They’re only words to her. Notions. Something’s holding her back from actually doing anything with them.”

Lucifer smiles, knowingly. “For now.”

“Whatever it is, she will not risk rebellion. The item at stake—it’s unclear what it is exactly—is too valuable to her.” But I see he already knows this. The item in play is already under his control.

“All the same,” he says, stepping back. “Keep an eye on her. She isn’t who she pretends to be. There’s a part of her that is still resisting.”

He moves to another tunnel that leads to a chamber I have never entered. The darkness beyond the entrance is so thick that I do not think I want to know what waits inside.

“The girl is very strong-willed,” I agree. His fixation on her is fascinating; she’s not a threat to him in the futures I’ve seen. She will hardly cross paths with him before she dies. Perhaps he knows something I do not.

With a lingering look that chills me through my bones, he nods. “Everyone breaks eventually.” He turns to leave but stops and raises a finger, as if suddenly struck by brilliance. “She has a way with those daggers of hers, does she not?”

I swallow the dark laugh at the memory of her blades pinning me to their dormitory door. “She does, indeed. But her brother is the better fighter. He’s ruthless, can separate act from thought.”

His mouth twists. “Not necessarily a good thing.”

“Is it not?”

“They must be aware of their actions. I want the evil to leach through them like slow-acting poison.”

I stand and fold my arms behind my back, waiting for his instructions. I see the idea form in his mind before he does, but I allow him to deliver it himself.

“The girl will be my assassin. Azael can collect the souls afterward, build our army further. Adam will not be the last man to defy the angels, as you well know.”

“Penemuel, as an assassin? Does she have the appetite for that?”

The image of her spending the rest of her life killing—ending more lives than she can even imagine will exist—delights him. “She’ll have to learn.” He smiles and nods again. “She will break beyond repair. She will obey.”

The maw of the dark chamber devours him and I am left with visions of futures, some written in ink and others in erasable graphite. It is all too much to consider, and I close the book, sealing in the fates to untangle another day.

Tomorrows are heavy with possibilities.

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I
T
’
S BEEN ONE HELL OF
a year, and I could not have done it alone. So, strap in, because I have a few people I need to thank for helping me survive this journey to publishing my second (!!) book.

Mickey Reed, the best editor I’ve ever worked with. I have no idea how you do what you do in the time that you do it. Your encouragement has kicked my butt into gear on more than one occasion, and I know this book would be nowhere near the quality it is now without all of your help. Thanks for inspiring me with your amazing editing know-how. Seriously, if anyone needs an angel of an editor, she’s your girl.
http://mickeyreedediting.com