Entice: An Ignite Novella (4 page)

“Who would ever want to be controlled?”

“Those who value their way of life. The ignorant.”

I’ll never be ignorant.

He studies me for a moment and grins. “You would do anything for your brother, would you not?”

I don’t answer him, but I don’t need to. Any answer he needs is written all over me, screaming from my soul—what little is left of it.

“I thought so.” He stands up and drifts away from the throne, pacing a large spiral around me until he’s so close I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. “And if he were in some sort of...trouble? What lengths would you go to in order to secure his safety?” He reappears in front of me, and when he breathes, I smell the rusty scent of blood.

“What do you want?” I ask again.

“I’ve already told you. I want to
trust
you. Because that brother of yours—I find him quite useful. Unquestioningly loyal, brutal, a great fighter. It’s not often I see those qualities in an angel.” He laughs again, and it sounds like nails peeling apart metal. He makes his way back to his throne. “Though, I suppose he isn’t an angel anymore, is he?”

I look down at my feet.

“And neither are you.”

“If there’s something you need from me, I would appreciate you getting to the point.”

“In a rush, are you?” He arches an eyebrow. “Eager to get back to pacing the halls? Or have you still not made it through that journal of yours? Last I saw, you were scribbling a rather fascinating diatribe about Hell.” His fingers draw invisible script in the air as he quotes my journal. “‘War has made a liar of us all, but none more than me. I arm myself not with morals, for those have been long trampled by the new arrogance of an old angel, but with fiction. Fictions of belonging; fictions of allegiance. I will become a character of falsehood.’”

My jaw is tight and my throat constricted. How does he know what I write? A creeping feeling crawls its way up my spine and spreads through my veins. I’m being watched.

His eyes glint, pleased to be able to unnerve me. “But if succinctness is what you desire, very well. I will, as you so crassly put, get to the point.”

There is a series of cracking, splintering sounds, like the ice is shattering below my feet. I have the sudden sensation that I am going to fall through the ice. Where would I fall though? There’s nothing below this level of Hell. Only oblivion.

I look down at my feet, but the ice is thick and perfectly smooth. The unsteadiness—the breaking—is happening only in my mind.

“You pose a threat,” he says, breaking into my thoughts. “Not to me, exactly, but to Azael. You have an interesting hold on what is left of his heart.” His words shrivel from his thin lips. “
Let it go.
”

“Excuse me?”

“Azael could be unbelievably powerful if you let him. But as long as you’re there, whispering in his ear and reminding him of his old life, of what he was in Heaven, he won’t become who he’s supposed to be. If you don’t let go of the light, neither will he. Not entirely. Do you understand?”

“You want me to...what? Forget about Heaven?” I narrow my eyes at him, but he only continues to watch me, amused. “Is that what you wanted Hell to be all along? Some dark contrast to Heaven’s light?”

His voice grows piercingly angry. “I want you to obey every order I hand down. I want you to listen instead of question, to bow your head in my presence instead of lift your chin. You are to give me your allegiance, not your opinion.”

“And why would I do that?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“Because your brother’s life is in my hands. If I do not see you adjust better to your new...
surroundings
, I will kill him.”

No.

“Yes,” he hisses.

“Why kill him? Wouldn’t it be easier to kill me?”

“It would. I’m half tempted to cut out that obstinate tongue of yours, but you’re not worth the effort. I would love to flay your skin open and wring every ounce of pain I could out of you. But you wouldn’t mind dying, would you?” He appraises me, balancing the worth of my life on some invisible scale that only he can calibrate. “You don’t fear for your life, isn’t that what you said?”

Ice leeches through my limbs. It climbs into me, cements me to the ground. I am frozen.

“Seeing your brother die would be much more torturous than any pain I could cause you.” He speaks slowly, letting his words pull my mind apart. “I could kill you a thousand times and it would be only a slight sting in comparison to you carrying the weight, the responsibility, the
blame
of your brother’s demise.”

I blink against the truth of his statement. Any amount of torture would seem like nothing if I knew Azael would live. Sacrificing my life for his wouldn’t require a second thought.

“What can I—how—” My words try to tie themselves to my tongue, but I cut the knot and throw them on the ground at Lucifer’s feet. With the simple knowledge he holds over me, of how my true allegiance will always lie with Azael, he has me beat. The fight drains out of me; I accept the ice that stirs within my veins. “How may I
serve
you?”

It’s hard to accept that it has come to this as I fall to my knee in a defeated bow. I bend my head and stitch my eyes closed, hiding my true feelings in the black pit of denial that wells within my chest.

There are several beats of satisfied silence before he answers in a proud, imperious tone. “I quite enjoy the image of your shoulders hunched at my feet.” I can taste the smile in his voice. “But you must look at me when you bow.”

My shoulders are stiff with fury, but I raise my face to him anyway. The ache of my neck throbs lazily, and I concentrate on the pain.

“Very good.” He grins, and I fight bile back down into my stomach. My throat burns with the acid of my disgust. “I am assigning Azael to a priority assignment, and I want you to join him. A test, of sorts. I will be watching, and if I do not believe you are fully committed to your orders—to
doing what you’re told
—he will be executed and you will be graced with a front-row seat.” He drags one slender, sharp finger along my jaw. “Do you understand?”

I swallow past a knot in my throat that has stolen all of my air. “I understand.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

“Yes...?” He smiles at me cruelly.

“Yes,
sir.
” I nearly choke on the word.

He claps his hands together and steeples them under his chin. “Wonderful. You may leave now. Go find Azael. He will tell you all about your new assignment.”

I unfold myself to my feet unsteadily and turn to leave, wanting to run out of the room as fast as I can but not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flee.

“Oh, and Penemuel,” he calls out as I step into the hallway. I stop but don’t face him again. He talks to my back. “If Azael does not believe you, if there’s any doubt left in him, he will die slowly.” He pulls the word thin, stretching it out until it peels back like paper curling away from flames. “You had best be convincing.”

I move forward again, turning the corner and disappearing from view. I sprint down the twisting maze of hallways until I’m back at the rough door of my dormitory, but I can’t bear to enter. I turn around and run the other way, finding a dark, vacant hallway to fall apart.

Throwing myself into the small corner of the passageway, I collapse onto the ground, out of breath and feeling sicker than I ever have before. The strangled sounds that wheeze in and out of my body betray my weakness. I’m an open wound, raw and inflamed.

But I have no choice but to heal. With Azael’s life in the balance, I will readily relinquish everything. I’ll drop my skepticism to the ground so it shatters apart like glass; I’ll tear apart my apprehension, mutate my disgust into delight. I’ll spin myself into the monster I should be, let Azael reflect his own image in mine.

Because I have no choice. I never really did.

––––––––

A
ZAEL HAS NEVER BEEN PATIENT
, so I’m not surprised when he rushes down the corridor and cuts me off with a scowl on his face.

“And where were you?” he asks, joining me as I make my way back to our dormitory.

He doesn’t see the redness of my eyes, isn’t aware of the hours I lost trying to put myself together again, puzzling myself into a new image. A darker Pen, more twisted. The five thousand twenty-five lives I took weigh heavy on my shoulders. The war lives on within me, but I paste on a smile.

“I thought you would have heard. I had a meeting with your—
our—
new boss.” I pick up my pace, curling around corners fast enough that Az has to jog to keep up.

My phrasing doesn’t slip past him unnoticed.
Our
boss. He grins. “Lucifer wanted to see you? For what?”

To threaten me, to degrade me into submission.
I chew on the words I want to spit out and swallow them like acid that churns in my stomach and burns under my skin. “He said I’m joining you on some new assignment.”

He stops and grabs my wrist, spinning me toward him. “Eden?”

I pull my hand free and continue walking. “He wouldn’t say. All he told me was that it was top priority. I’m assuming you’ll fill me in.”

“Pen,” Azael huffs, trying to keep up. “Slow down, will you?”

When I reach the door to our room, I notice it’s open a crack. I stop and hold out my hand to Azael, silencing him. I press myself up against the cold, rocky wall and pull out the dagger from my belt. Az slides up next to me on the wall, brandishing his own weapon, and nods.

Who’s inside?
he asks.

I peek through the crack and see a shadow shift across the room, long and thin.
I can’t see. You didn’t let anyone—?

Why would I let someone in our room?

A few seconds pass, and I hear the clinking sound of the vials in Azael’s nightstand roll into one another.

They’re touching my stuff!
He goes to push around me, but I hold him back with my arm, pinning him against the wall.

Shut up and wait a second.
I lean closer to the door, training my ears to pick up the muffled sound of shuffling footsteps. There’s a soft padding of rubber soles on ice just on the other side of the door, and I hold up three fingers for Az.
Ready?

He nods and tightens his grip on his scythe.

I spin my blade around in my palm, readjusting my hold, and lower one finger, then two.
Now!

Together, we throw our weight into the door, knocking over whomever waits on the other side for us. They go sliding across the ground and slam into the wall at the foot of Azael’s bed.

As I charge forward, I notice it’s a man with dark, unkempt hair, dressed plainly in black clothes. Before he can even raise his head to see us, we descend on him. I pin down his chest with my knee, shifting my weight into his ribs and holding my dagger to his throat as Azael steps on his arms, stopping them from scrabbling for purchase of something he could use as a weapon.

“Name?” Azael demands.

The man stops moving and lets out an annoyed sigh. “Could you let me sit up?”

“Give us a name and we’ll consider it,” I answer him, glancing at Azael.

“I see you two will be even more difficult than I was made aware.” The man tosses his head back, throwing the hair away from his face.

He’s younger than I would have guessed him to be, based on his height and posture. He has a mess of scruff across his narrow, pointed jaw and high cheekbones that give his face a sunken look. I notice his bright violet eyes and remember I’m staring back at him with similar ones.
Violent violet—the hue of the damned.

“My name is Gusion,” he finally answers, “and I would very much appreciate it if you let me go already.”

I shrug at Azael and he shakes his head.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, champ,” Azael hisses at him. “Wanna try explaining why you were rooting around our room?”

I scan Azael’s side of the room and see that his precise arrangement has been slightly altered. The drawer to his nightstand is maybe an inch ajar, the three vials on the table top angled at forty-five degrees instead of ninety, and the corner of his bed is wrinkled as if someone sat on it. Of course Azael would notice. He’s always compulsively keeping his things just so.

On my side, however, it is impossible to see what has been touched, opened, moved, or taken. It’s just as messy as I had left it. Toppling towers of parchment, knots of bedsheets... There’s nothing particularly valuable to be stolen from me. At least nothing irreplaceable.

“You two were late, and I got bored.” He blows air from his lips to shift the hair that has fallen back over his eyes. “Now could we please be civil about this?”

“Civil.” Azael scoffs. “Don’t know the meaning.”

“Adjective,” I inform him as I move to pick up the pocket-sized leather notebook just out of reach of Gusion’s fingers. The pinned demon’s eyes widen as I pull it close to me and flip through the first couple of pages. “Courteous and polite. As in, ‘The concept of civil behavior is foreign to Azael because he has never behaved in a courteous or polite manner a moment in his life.’”

He waves away my definition. “Sounds horrible.”

The thin pages of the notebook feel like brittle wings between my fingers, but the paper is pulpy and strong. I turn page after page, my eyes dancing over so much ink I’m surprised the entire book isn’t heavy with the weight of its contents. It’s full of illegible scribbles and symbols that layer over one another in a messy knot of ink. I open it and hold it out for Gusion.

“Gus—mind if I call you Gus?” I raise an eyebrow but don’t wait for an answer. “Want to explain what this says?”

His eyebrows pull together. “Classified.”

“We’ll see about that.” I look at the pages again and try to untangle the strange words. Sliding my dagger back through my belt, I turn through a few more pages, tracing the jagged lines of angry letters. “Does this say...” I chew on my lip. “Something about
man?
”

I feel him flinch under me and press my knee into the dip between his ribs harder.