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With two of us, we were able to move much faster than I was by myself. We opened every door we passed and checked for people, both shadow and corporeal. A few rooms did have people in them. Only at these spots did we stop. Nearly everyone we came across was injured or possessed, and sometimes both. Gabriel called for the evacuation crews as I either exorcised the demon in the person or tried to send whatever animal had injured them back across the Divide, if it was still in the room. Most weren’t, though. In one room, we found four shadow people towering over two women. They were on opposite sides of the room and kept the shadow people in sight between them, neither daring to move. Even after I sent the shadow people across, they seemed fearful of moving, and it took Gabriel a few minutes of coaxing to assure them they were now safe. One woman had a large gash to her arm and was missing her entire sleeve. The other had a stab wound to the back. I guessed shadow people didn’t have compunctions about stabbing people from behind since it was impossible for them to do it eye to eye.
We opened the door to the last office and we both just stopped moving. There was a woman in the room, a woman with a thread and over-sized golden scissors. She was whittling the thread down with the scissors, moving it back and forth across the thread slowly. I frowned at the woman. The man called for help again and I suddenly realized why I hadn’t been sure it was a person; she was whittling away his life by running the scissors over the fraying thread, and with each swipe he grew visibly older. I’d put his age at around a thousand when we opened the door and as she ran the scissors blade along the thread one more time, he aged even more.
“Is that a fate?” I asked.
“No, it’s a fury,” Gabriel replied.
“That’s not possible. Fates and furies are both Leviathan’s creations.” I frowned harder. They were also never animals that once belonged to this plane. They were souls that had bargained with Leviathan for something they wanted. They got it, but it had come at a steep price. Forever damned to either decide the fate of a person or take vengeance upon them.
The incubi and succubae we’d encountered were of Ashtoreth’s bloodline, not Leviathan’s. A demon box couldn’t bring forth spawns of different demons. I’d read about it in one of Uriel’s books on demon boxes. Then again, I sort of felt like these demon boxes weren’t like the ones in Uriel’s books, so maybe it could be done. I stepped forward and the fury took hold of each end of the thread. She stared at the scissors sitting in her lap and stuck one end of the thread in her mouth, leaving one hand free to pick the scissors back up to cut the thread. I knew if she did that, we would have at least one casualty of today’s events. I pushed magic as hard as I could. Shoving it out toward her, it slammed into her and she fell from the desk, losing the thread. As it fell from her grasp, the aging began to reverse itself and the thread began to mend. She reached for the scissors, and I pushed more magic and imagined her crossing the Divide. She winked out of existence.
“There were three,” the man gasped and collapsed to the floor.
“Suggestions?” I looked at Gabriel. Gabriel shrugged and ran to the window. I grabbed the thread and scissors, shoved both into my jeans pocket and felt the scissors prick my thigh. The world swam and I scrambled to dig them back out. I didn’t know what the repercussions would be from being nicked by the scissors of the furies, but I doubted it was good. Damn it! I shouted in my head as I felt my knee give out on that leg. Gabriel rushed to me and I pushed him away, because I knew what I needed to do, and he couldn’t be touching me when I did it. I felt myself tear through the fabric of this plane, and I thought of Leviathan as I crossed the Divide. The Divide isn’t exactly a real or physical thing. But it required a name because of its significance. I entered the stone fortress I’d been in the other day with Aurora. Leviathan sat on a great stone throne as I entered his home.
“Niece, this is a surprise. The furies...” He looked at me. His brow was furrowed. His eyes wide. His mouth pulled down into a deep expressive frown.
“I accidentally cut myself with the scissors of a fury!” I gasped to Leviathan. “What do I do?”
“If there is no reason for the Furies to exact vengeance upon you, the poison will not harm you. However, if you have wronged many, the poison will age you until you die. Only one of the other furies can purify you. Which one did you get hurt by?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I felt a pain rip through my lower abdomen and shoot to my back. I tried to be a good person, but do we often even know when we’ve wronged someone? I didn’t think we did, and the pain got sharper. I fell to my knees. “There is nothing you can do?” I tried not to sound like I was pleading. Especially since the furies were about wrongs, which were morally ambiguous. I mean, I had broken up with a boy when I was 15 because he’d told everyone at school we were having sex and we weren’t, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was slutty. In my opinion, he had wronged me, but in his opinion my refusals to have sex with him and then breaking up with him might have wronged him.
“The pain is the poison of vengeance, go find one of the other furies and become purified,” Leviathan told me and I pulled magic around me and brought myself back across the Divide. I gasped for breath and threw up on the floor of the office I’d left just moments earlier.
“I need to find one of the other furies and have her purify me,” I said quickly to Gabriel. He blinked at me, but stood up and helped me to do the same after a heartbeat. “Leviathan can’t help me with the poison of vengeance.”
Gabriel picked me up. “Alecto, Megaero, come to us. I want to strike a deal!” he shouted down the hallway. A woman appeared at the end of the hallway, seeming to come from nowhere. She was unnaturally tall, thin in a feminine way, scantily dressed, and radiantly beautiful. At first, I thought she was a succubae in true form, but I wasn’t filled with desire at the sight of her and I didn’t think Gabriel was either.
“A deal, archangel? What kind of deal?” the woman said, and her voice felt like nails being drawn across my brain.
“My niece was poisoned by Tisiphone’s scissors. Leviathan told us to find either Alecto or Megaero for purification.”
“Leviathan sent her to be purified?” The tall, beautiful woman glided closer to us. “If she is a good person, there is no reason for purification.”
“We both know that the furies do not deal in justice or injustice. Even the saintliest of us have wronged other people.”
“I am listening, but I do not want a deal with you, Archangel Gabriel. I will make it directly with your niece if she truly wants to purify herself.”
“She is young, Nix. She does not know your ways or understand them.” Gabriel said.
“She is young,” the tall, beautiful woman said, and I now understood who she was and what she was. “What say you, archangel?” Nix said, bringing her face close to mine, close enough for me to feel her breath move my hair. “Will you take your chances with the poison of vengeance, or would you like to make a deal with the Goddess Nix for your purification?”
I considered this and slowed my own breathing. Nix was no more a goddess than Cha’ac was a god. She had once been a living, breathing, normal being. I didn’t know if she was a human or a supernatural, only that she had wanted more power than she was capable of claiming and wielding. To get it, she had traded her soul to Leviathan to do with as he pleased once she was dead. She wasn’t a demon either, not really. Leviathan’s monsters were only sort of demons, and I sometimes wondered if he collected the traded souls before the person or supernatural had died.
“No, I will not barter with you. Your master told me to seek a fury for purification. You are not a fury, but the furies are yours to command, and you can purify me. As such, I will not barter for purification; you will do it because your master commanded it,” I told her. She pursed her lips together.
“I have no master,” she said to me with a sneer.
“Then you have chosen to endure Leviathan’s wrath of your own accord.” I grabbed her, pulling her even closer to me. Her eyes widened as I pulled my magic together, I felt her will crumble, and the pain left me. “Good choice,” I whispered and sent her back across the Divide. Gabriel set me back on my feet.
“I’m glad she decided to bargain with you instead of me.” Gabriel sighed. “Let’s go figure out what’s left.” I walked with a limp for the first couple of steps, but once I stopped thinking about the scissor jab, the limp also disappeared. I sent 12 more shadow people across the Divide, as well as another bunch of sun scarabs. One woman told us someone had triggered the fire alarm but she was trapped in her office when the shadow person I just exorcised entered the room and she was unable to sneak past it to leave. She was terrified she was going to burn to death at first, but she called her husband, who was a police officer, and he told her it was a demon box, not a fire.
In total, there were 33 people on that floor that we had to call rescue services to help. I felt good about all the people we got out of the building, but I hadn’t checked the second floor, and Jerome and Remiel were still working on the fifth. My father sent a text that he was on the second floor clearing it, and I was needed in the lobby. After clearing out the third floor, Gabriel and I headed to the lobby via the stairs. We opened the lobby door and immediately slammed it shut and retreated. There was a bennu in the lobby and it didn’t seem to understand what to do about the doors or the magic on the other side, but it had burst into flames at least once and the concrete was starting to melt.
“Do you see a pattern to these things?” Gabriel asked me.
“Nope,” I said. “I also saw a furry, weird creature that I didn’t recognize. It looked sort of like a rat and sort of like a kangaroo. It had fangs and perfectly white eyes.”
“A manticore, maybe,” Gabriel suggested.
“It was small, like slightly larger than a rat, but smaller than a possum.”
“A manticore, probably,” Gabriel said.
“I expect things nicknamed ‘man-eater’ to be at least big enough to do it,” I said.
“They go into feeding frenzies and a pack of them can eat everything including bones. Individually, they are less ambitious and eat small prey.”
“I only saw one and I thought it might be a wombat, so I didn’t do anything to it.”
“Well, we’ll have to search for it once we figure out what to do about the bennu,” Gabriel said. “Do you know much about bennus?”
“They burst into flames and from the ashes two bennus rise. The myths say it happens every thousand years, but Uriel’s books on Stygian wildlife says it happens after they have had enough to eat.”
“Yes, they do it when they have had enough to eat,” Gabriel confirmed.
“It’s the fire that is dangerous,” I said, and Gabriel nodded. “The book doesn’t say what it eats, but I’m guessing people, given that it stretches from floor to ceiling.”
“Nope, it eats magic,” Gabriel said. “The witches and wizards on the outside put wards in place to trap it inside, so it is limited to feeding on the magic already in the building.”
“Ah,” I said, finally getting the explanation as to why no one had stormed the building.
“Yeah, they hang around the hell princes and eat their excess magic. On Earth we don’t have hell princes, so I don’t know how much magic it will eat of yours or mine or Jerome’s before it is full again and makes another.”
“Does that mean I can’t hit it with magic spells?” I asked.
“That would be bad. If we can send it across with as little magic as possible, that would be ideal. They have been known to eat entire portals too, just as a FYI.” I nodded at this. I was already gathering magic and wondering how exactly to make a phoenix cross the Divide without forcing it, and then I had an idea.
“So, on a stupid idea scale, how dumb is it to summon a hell prince for it to feed on and then send the hell prince back across with it?” I asked.
“Uh, well,” Gabriel paused. “I don’t know.”
“It might work then?”
“It might. Or it might get full and immediately produce a second bennu.”
“Okay, here goes.” I felt the fabric rip as I pulled Leviathan across the Divide. I brought Leviathan into the lobby, and Gabriel and I exited the stairwell. Leviathan’s head was bent against the ceiling and I understood why his fortress was so big. He didn’t seem as large in the Stygian as he did on this plane. He looked at me, then at Gabriel, and then at the bennu. He reached out and grabbed the huge bird by the wings and started plucking its feathers. Whatever I was expecting Leviathan to do, this wasn’t it. I stared in shock, unable to complete my plan. The door to the north stairwell opened, Raphael, Remiel, and Jerome appeared next to Leviathan, and the already cramped lobby felt even smaller. The three newcomers walked around to join Gabriel and me.
“Soleil?” Gabriel said. “Send them back?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said, shaking my head. I focused my magic on Leviathan and felt it falter as I realized he was smiling as if he were plucking a giant chicken to make soft beds, or pillows, or maybe dinner. I shook my head again and began gathering power one more time. I felt it get a small boost and knew a sun symbol had appeared under my feet. The phoenix burst into flames and ashes started to fall like snow around Leviathan’s legs as I pushed the magic to Leviathan and sent them back across the Divide.
“Well, I’m glad we didn’t miss that,” Remiel said.
“That was weird.” Jerome stated. I agreed silently. The last two, or was it three, days were all very fucking weird.