Lily had taken one of Ezekiel’s pathways. It had been a strategic risk. If she had summoned her kachinas to use a sipapu portal, she might have alerted Michael. This way she only risked running into the former daemon king, and though it felt like Russian roulette she hoped he would be too busy feeling triumphant to be traveling at 3:00 a.m. the first morning of his retirement.
It wasn’t until she dematerialized that she took out her flute. She’d known where to enter from observing the daemon king’s comings and goings, but she would need her affinity to guide her. She’d never tried to direct her travel, but she knew it was possible because of Grim. Regardless of where he dematerialized, he followed the paths to where he or his master needed to go. Lily had left her kachinas unwrapped in her bag. She played to call them in the same way that she “walked” between worlds. The idea of her flute and the idea of her hands and lips responded to the idea of playing even though she had no physical form.
She walked when she was sure she was being led in the direction she needed to go. It seemed a long time of wandering before her materializing feet finally met firm ground. She stepped into the gloaming light of an Arizona sunset with her silver flute in her hand and the last notes of a Hopi lullaby fading into the coming night.
But something was wrong.
She had expected to begin as she’d begun months before. Slipping into the desert to run and hide and run some more. She’d planned to continue her work to close the old sipapu portals until no more could be found. Then she’d planned to wander the world to escape detection.
She hadn’t expected to be met with a wall of Brimstone heat so fierce that it dried her eyes and stung her skin. It was as if she’d stepped into the glaring noonday sun instead of desert twilight. Lily griped her flute tightly. It was her only weapon. She didn’t have Grim or Michael by her side. She was no longer buffered by Ezekiel or his immense Gothic palace.
On the horizon, she sensed a stirring. She squinted and strained to see into the distance in spite of the waning light. Suddenly, the silhouettes clarified. One after another after another. She’d materialized in a canyon. Near her feet was what appeared to be a natural drought-caused crack in an ancient riverbed. Ezekiel’s portals often showed themselves in ways that mortal eyes wouldn’t understand. Disguised in plain sight.
But using this one had placed her at strategic disadvantage.
She was surrounded by an army of Rogues. She could sense their Brimstone and their hunger from a great distance. Time in the hell dimension was liquid and its anomalies often bled over into this world. They had known she was coming. Just as Ezekiel had built the palace for her before she was born. Mortals called it fate. Some religions called it predestination. Ezekiel was adept at reading the whispers that foretold the future as they came back through the pathways between worlds, but some whispers became shouts that anyone could sense and hear. Her affinity had radiated from this portal before she’d even known she would use it.
Lily was here. She was always going to be here. To face an army alone.
She knelt and shrugged out of her backpack. Her dolls rattled together without their wrappings. She took them out, looking at each one as if she might never have another chance. Her mother had carved each doll—Fire, Wind, Earth, Water. They held her mother’s love as well as her beliefs and her artistic heart.
Lily had never been alone.
She placed them carefully in a sacred circle. She missed her warrior angel. He should be here, too. To help her take a final stand against the darkness. A large full moon had begun to rise. The Rogues on the rim of the canyon were thrown into stark relief by its light. They knew she had come. She could feel their excitement as they were each alerted to her presence by her affinity.
Her song was back, full force. Whatever interference she’d experienced when she’d been resisting Lucifer’s wings had disappeared. A cool wash of adrenaline chilled and stiffened her spine. She crossed her legs, straightened her back and lifted her flute to her lips. This time she didn’t play a lullaby. She played a battle song. It wasn’t one she had played before. Knowledge of it rose from the kachina dolls as she played each note. And with it rode an energy she’d never experienced before. It was the aura of affinity in a loop. From her to the dolls and back again. From her to her ancestors and back again. From her to the elements and back again.
She didn’t understand the increased power until Michael and Grim materialized out of the shadows across from her glow. Grim’s hackles were already up and his legs were splayed wide. His intimidating maw was open and she’d never seen his teeth so large and jagged. He lifted his nose to the sky and howled. The noise rent the still night air into a million jagged pieces that seemed to stab her ears. But she continued to play. She rose to her feet as she played. Michael commanded the move by his presence. He didn’t howl at the moon or bare his teeth, but he was as ferocious as his hellhound. His eyes were flame and his fists were clenched around a sword she recognized. The empty suit of armor in the throne room stood without a weapon now.
Lucifer’s wings seemed to shriek in her senses.
“I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t let you run away again. Not without following you wherever you feel you have to go,” Michael said.
She wanted to step into his arms. She didn’t. Instead she played even louder. Using her affinity and the power she absorbed from Lucifer’s wings to amplify her sound. The Rogues on the horizon had begun charging down the ragged incline to attack. But her elemental spirits responded to her call.
Wind whipped her hair into her eyes.
Rain began to pour.
Before long the damp strands of hair were like stinging lashes against her skin.
And still she played.
Grim had rushed to meet the Rogues and their human slaves. Screams began to rip through the night as lightning flashed. Michael moved toward her instead of going to join Grim in his fight. Her song stuttered as her breath grew light. The wings were too close. Their power joined her aura. She couldn’t resist. The magnet was too strong.
“Stop resisting your heritage, Lily. Haven’t you learned anything from my mistakes?” Michael said. He came to her and looked down at her as she played her flute. He touched the side of her face. “Ezekiel sent me. We misunderstood all along. The throne was never meant for me.”
He stepped around her, being careful not to disturb her playing. But his firm, warm hands on her shoulders made her tremble, as did his breath against her ear when he leaned down to speak from behind her.
“Brace yourself. This is going to burn,” he warned.
She didn’t know what he intended to do until the fire settled heavily on her shoulders. She expressed her scream through her flute. And the Rogues began to burn. Only then did Michael join Grim. At first she thought that her warrior angel had somehow materialized from the walls of the palace because there were great shadowy wings outspread on either side of Michael’s tall, muscular form, but it was him, all him, as she’d known him to be all along.
He wielded a sword she’d only ever seen displayed on a suit of armor by the throne. But it was her song amplified by Lucifer’s wings that had set the sword into flames. Every Rogue he met with the blade disintegrated into ash, but there were so many. As she continued to play, she realized that Michael and Grim protected her in a determined circle just as they had before. Her guardians. Her protectors. While she waged war.
They would lose.
There were too many pressing down from the canyon walls against them. As Rogues and human slaves poured into the canyon, more replaced them in wave after wave. Lily played. Her elemental Fire spirit consumed Rogue after Rogue. Michael fought. Grim savaged. But they would lose. The numbers were against them even with the power in Lucifer’s wings magnifying her affinity.
Or was it? Her affinity was love. The wings had magnified her fire and her fury and, yes, those things were rooted in her heart, but she had yet to truly tap into the possibility that the power of her affinity could be increased.
She loved Michael. But long before she’d allowed herself to love him, she’d loved her mother, her warrior angel...and Ezekiel.
Lily continued to play, but she changed her intention. She infused her song with the ache of her emptiness—for the ones she’d lost, for the one she’d never had. She called. With all the affinity that Samuel Santiago had bequeathed his daughter. She called. Lucifer’s wings burned through the leather jacket she wore. They turned it to ash and it fell away in a sudden cloud of gray particles carried on the wind. Her T-shirt remained, but she could feel it scorch and she could smell burned cotton and flesh. She didn’t scream. Not even when the base of each wing fused with her naked skin.
She fell to her knees with the pain. She didn’t notice that the wings that had become a part of her were no longer bronze. They were bare and black as raven’s wings, but they were malleable. They folded behind her and draped on the ground. She didn’t scream because she continued to play. To an observer, she might have seemed a pied piper calling the Rogues to their doom as they poured over and down the cliff’s edge to the death of Michael’s sword or Grim’s teeth. But in reality, she called others. She called them with all her heart.
And they came.
The crack in the earth in front of her widened. It yawned wide and belched smoke like a wakening volcano, but from its depths, instead of lava came the Loyalist Army materializing out of the shadows in full battle regalia. Ezekiel led them. He wore his old armor like a second skin as scarred and hardened and strangely beautiful as his first. He rode forth on a pale horse that was second only to a hellhound in hideousness. Reaper. He was a mighty destrier more bone than flesh with flaming eyes and a mouth full of razor teeth. She’d fed him apples in his retirement, but now he looked more than ready to fight. Reaper shrieked and more of his fellows poured from the crack in the earth with Loyalists on their backs.
She didn’t see Victoria and Elizabeth, but she felt them. Somewhere Michael’s mother sang and her sister played her cello. Their affinity wasn’t as strong as Lily’s but it was persistent. Their husbands rode with the army. She glimpsed them flanking Ezekiel on either side. They were buoyed by their wives’ music. It strengthened the hint of Brimstone they both still had in their blood.
They were mortal. Coming to her aid was a horrible risk. Their courage sent a thrill of admiration through Lily’s veins.
But it was a giant icy shadow that followed the army that finally stilled her song. This time the winged shadow had manifested as if it, too, rode a horse, one made of smoke instead of bone. Her warrior angel had responded to her call. Her stillness interrupted his charge. He “rode” over to her kneeling form and folded his shadow wings at his side. The giant bowed to her tiny form and she shivered beneath the press of his chilling presence.
But then she found her breath and began to play again. And Michael’s father joined the fray. He leaped over her. The frigid air of his passing stiffened her fingers to the bone. There was only one who hadn’t responded. It was too soon for her mother to return. When her ceremonies called ancestors, it was ancient ancestors who responded to guide her with their wisdom. Yet her frozen fingers warmed more quickly than they should have and she didn’t feel alone. She suddenly had the sense that her mother had never left her.
* * *
His scars glowed with the light of a thousand suns and he allowed the fire to consume him. Once his body burned, every cell ignited and the flames channeled out through his father’s sword to cut down every Rogue in its path. The Brimstone was his heritage as much as the sword and they were both tools he used to protect his loved ones. He harmed no one, but those that deserved it. His scars weren’t a warning or a reminder of a time when he had no control. They were badges of honor. Crimson streaks on his skin that proclaimed him as the living embodiment of the flame that would protect the throne and the woman destined to sit upon it.
If he survived the conflagration.
The heat was agony as well as triumph and he was every bit as consumed as he’d been during his first Burn all those years ago. His battle cries were also cries of pain, but he didn’t pause. He would face annihilation to save the ones he loved. He’d always known it. Now, he lived it. They fought all around him—Grim, Adam, Severne, Ezekiel—and Lily. He wasn’t worried that his fire would harm them. He contained it except for the controlled bursts of power from his sword. He would die for them if he had to, turned to ash by the Brimstone he channeled to save them.
* * *
The carnage was complete.
The canyon floor was no longer sand and desert scrub. It was a field of ashes that shifted beneath the feet of the Loyalists in drifts they couldn’t avoid. Eventually it would blow away or simply settle and become a part of the dirt that had absorbed millennia of detritus—from dinosaurs to daemons.
The fighting was over. Loyalists returned the way they’d come. Ezekiel led the way. She blinked back emotion when she noted that he had survived. She searched but didn’t see Michael. The air was thick with ash and smoke. If he was hurt or worse, she was certain she’d feel the loss to her bones. She forced herself to kneel and pack her kachinas into her backpack. They had served her well. Her fingers shook when she placed her flute back into its velvet pouch.
“He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive,” she muttered the words aloud in a mantra of hopeful determination.
Grim had been by his side the last she’d seen. Severne and Turov would have risked their lives to help him. And the powerful spirit of his father would surely have prevented any harm coming to his son. Lily held her pack in front of her, curling her arms around it protectively, when she got back to her feet. Her shoulders were too tender to wear it the usual way even if the wings weren’t in the way. She was surrounded by soldiers and their mounts. There was no way to see above or around the crowd to search for Michael. And there was no staying in place against the mass of movement. She had to move as well or risk being crushed beneath mighty hooves. Visibility was so poor that she would be nearly invisible if she stayed. She hissed when the first step jarred her back. But then she took another and another, ignoring the pain.
She would find Michael and Grim in the palace. One last look behind her was all she spared time for when she came to the crack in the earth. Ash and smoke. Smoke and ash. No Michael. No Grim.
Lily traveled between worlds, one second surrounded by an army and the next alone. She knew the way. Better than she had before. She saw the path although she had no eyes. It glowed in her consciousness in a way she’d never experienced before. Was this how Grim navigated? Had her fusion with Lucifer’s wings given her this ability? If so, she could forgive the pain. She would heal in time and the gift of safe travel between worlds would be well worth whatever suffering she’d had to endure.
The palace welcomed her with a cacophony of confusion. The army channeled down hallways and corridors meant for much lighter traffic. Their passing stirred the denizens of the walls into a swirling torment of screeches and moans and grasping hands. In fact, when Lily materialized and saw the walls, she knew that much of the Rogue army they’d just defeated had found themselves trapped in stone.
Just as the wings had helped her see the pathway between the canyon and the palace, they helped her see that Michael had been right. She suddenly knew that the purgatory Ezekiel had caused to manifest in the palace walls was a reflection of his own loss and pain. He avenged Elizabeth’s death, but the weight of all the tortured souls was wrapped around his own heart and soul like the chains of damnation.
Lucifer hadn’t intended the hell dimension to be a place of darkness. He had wanted freedom. He had led others to seek the same. Allowing the imprisonment of Rogues and their human slaves to continue would make Lucifer’s followers no better than those they fought.
Lily stepped to the nearest writhing wall. She ignored the painful groping of violent stone fingers. Lucifer’s wings—her wings—spread out behind her so that she was protected from the press of the Loyalist army. She allowed her backpack to fall at her feet. Her hands trembled, but she pressed her palms against the wall. It—they—moved beneath her hands. She ignored the revulsion that tried to frighten her away from her task. She had given all she had to give during the canyon battle, but she searched deep within herself for more.
“Lily, no!” Michael shouted.
He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.
She didn’t turn from the wall, but she felt a surge of renewed energy when Michael materialized behind her. His Brimstone blood was a bright, hot source of power he no longer tried to keep tamped down to prevent their connection. His heat amplified her affinity and it flowed through her hands.
“This is Ezekiel’s pain. He’s corrupted the palace with his grief and fury. I’ve got to set them free,” Lily said. Her jaw was stiff and she spoke through tight lips. Her entire body had become as hard as the marble she forced her affinity to enter.
“It’s not safe. Let go. Come away,” Michael protested. He’d come as close as he could come to her without touching. He respected her choice and her interface with the wall even though his instinct was to warn her away from danger. His nearness bolstered her efforts. He supported even as he urged her to caution.
“It’s not safe. You’re right. They’re trying to take me with them,” Lily said.
When they became he, she sensed the change. Stone hands grasped hers with a punishing grip and a familiar face flowed into focus. Abaddon. The leader of the Rogues who had jumped off the skywalk when she used Lucifer’s wings to ignite his Brimstone blood. She couldn’t back away from the violent grimace on his marbled face, but even if he hadn’t been holding her, she wouldn’t give up. She tightened her own fingers and pressed her face closer. She met his stony gaze. She ignored the sudden lengthening of his clenched teeth as they became more like fangs. He had been a handsome daemon. But the carved representation of his soul revealed his predatory nature and the darkness that claimed him.
The other souls in the wall had drawn back, giving Abaddon deference. She immediately understood why. He wasn’t only holding her. He was draining her. His darkness was a bottomless pit soaking up her soul like a hungry sponge.
The malevolent vacuum threatened to pull her apart. Her body had lightened as if she was completely hollowed out inside. She was a shell. Her physical form was still in the hell dimension, but the rest of her was drawn elsewhere by Abaddon and the other entities she tried to send away. The bag that rested on her feet interfered with the vacuum. The kachina dolls held her. They rooted her to this world where she belonged. But their hold was tenuous. Lily could feel herself slipping away. She watched in sinking dread as black marble began to seep from Abaddon’s hands into her skin. It flowed like obsidian threads weaving into and replacing the flesh of her fingers and arms.
She cried out. Cold agony began to replace her human cells.
“No,” Michael said. He pressed one hand between the wings on her back. Her world was with him. She knew it body and soul, and the emptiness inside her was suddenly filled with a rush of warmth and belonging.
“Oblivion calls. Or heaven. Damnation is a choice, not a sentence. Your time in limbo is over,” Lily said.
Abaddon understood. His grimace turned to a silent scream. His grip loosened and his stone hands were absorbed back into the wall.
The threads of dark marble flowed out of her skin and back into the wall as well. But it didn’t stop there. The inky color continued to flow. It moved away from where her fingers splayed against the marble, leaving alabaster stone in its wake. Abaddon and the rest of the stone carvings were swept along with the black, rushing away from Lily’s hands and her braced figure. The former leader of the Rogues became one with the jumble of faces and figures as they turned into nothing but a mass of writhing, indistinct features and limbs. The hallway brightened as the walls lightened. Straggling soldiers stopped to stare. Several bony destriers reared and shrieked in surprise. In the distance, greater reactions rang out, giving evidence that the change in the walls flowed outward throughout the palace.
“It’s too much, Lily. You have to let go,” Michael said. But he didn’t try to force her away from the wall. She could feel him pouring more energy from his blood into her body.
“This won’t just cleanse the palace of Rogue taint. This will save Ezekiel. It will help him to let go of his loss and move on,” Lily ground between clenched teeth.
“I won’t let you die to save him,” Michael said. Both of his hands were spread on her back now. He was still giving her all he had to help rather than drag her away.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” Lily said. But she wasn’t certain. Her body was human in spite of the affinity and in spite of her new wings. Michael was only half daemon. He gave her the power of his Brimstone heat, but although he was mighty he had a human half, too.
Grim had appeared with Michael. She only noticed him at the edge of her perception when he pressed his great ugly body up against his master’s legs. From that contact, Lily felt a new surge of power, but it was much smaller than she needed to cleanse an entire palace. There were so many souls in the walls. She could sense each and every one as they flowed farther and farther away.
Michael’s father showed in perfect gray contrast against the white wall when he suddenly appeared before them. He loomed as he spread his giant wings. Their tips stretched far to the left and right above them. Her warrior angel had arrived. Lily gasped. Grim howled. Michael jerked, but his fingers didn’t lose contact with her body. She didn’t pull her hands from the wall although she instinctively feared the touch of the frigid shadow. She’d seen him kill by absorbing daemons’ Brimstone heat on the battlefield. He was hungrier than the force she’d resisted moments before. And she wasn’t free to cringe away from his touch.
“Don’t hurt her,” Michael ordered. Lily cried out again when Michael’s hands grew hotter than her tender flesh could withstand without pain, but then his power entered her and strengthened her and the pain faded away.
“He won’t. He won’t hurt me. He’s my warrior angel. He was always meant to save me,” Lily said. The shadow had reached for her with enormous hands that suddenly became a normal size just before they met hers. Suddenly, she saw a version of Michael in her mind that she’d never seen. His father. As he’d been before he died. Beautiful. So beautiful and familiar he made tears well up in her eyes. But unlike his son, Michael’s father had ancient eyes. He’d protected so many souls in his long life. And he’d died to protect the woman and the baby he’d loved more than any before. Somehow, Lily was a part of that love. He showed her that now. That he had always been meant to protect her because she would eventually love his son.
“Thank you,” Lily said. Michael’s touch kept her tears from falling. She could feel his hands shaking and she didn’t want this to hurt him more than it had to. “He’s going to help us, but it means we have to say goodbye.”
“I’m sorry I resisted your legacy as long as I did. I was wrong. You’ll always be a part of me. And I’m glad,” Michael said.
The hands on hers seemed to solidify and warm. They still looked like shadow, but it was if a living person held her. The feeling passed in a flash as her warrior angel reared back and grew immense. He filled the entire corridor. Then he disintegrated in a thousand shadowy pieces that flowed outward to chase and complete the cleansing that Lily had begun.
He magnified the force of her affinity and Michael’s Brimstone by a thousandfold and the force of his clash with the remaining souls sent shock waves back through the connection. Lily was thrown from the wall. Michael was shoved by the blast of energy and his hands fell from her back. Grim left claw marks in the marble floor as his body was forced several feet against his iron will.
Silence filled the palace halls. Lily lay beside her backpack, drained, but breathing. She appreciated the slow, steady inhale and exhale before the silence was replaced by the noise of stunned soldiers getting back to their feet.
Michael came and found her collapsed near the newly emptied wall. She was completely depleted, but there was a smile curving her lips. He lifted her into his arms. He was covered in Brimstone blood and ash, but his jaw was soft. He was no longer pained by the wings now that they had become a part of her. The mantle of the hell dimension was where it had always belonged.
“My queen,” he murmured against her ear. She wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Your father was a guardian angel, wasn’t he? Before he chose to follow Lucifer to the hell dimension?” Lily asked. She already knew the answer. Her warrior angel had always been a guardian of sorts. Even before it manifested any power at all. And when Michael had first appeared to her with shadow wings, they had been his actual wings and not an illusion after all. They were with him like an aura, a gift from his real father that showed only when he was fully connected to his purpose.
“Yes. And he watched over us one last time,” Michael said.
“Like father, like son,” Lilly replied. Her wings, no longer Lucifer’s wings, fluttered when he settled her closer against his chest. “Will you be the queen’s Guardian, Michael D’Arcy Turov? Till death do us part?”
“I resisted the throne because somehow I knew it wasn’t my destiny. I was always meant to follow in the footsteps of your warrior angel. But I’m no angel, Lily. I’m half daemon and I find my Brimstone blood drives me more than I ever knew it would. I burn for you. For the song we create together,” Michael said. “So I have to reply till death do us part...and longer. Far, far longer.”
“The queen of hell knows nothing of angels. I’ve spent my whole life in shadows, but Brimstone fire creates a light I can’t resist. I was going to. I was going to run away to keep you from being tied to the throne. I didn’t realize the throne was meant for me,” Lily said. Something in the way her grip around his neck changed alerted him to a sudden shift in her mood, and Michael stopped to look down at her face. The remaining Loyalist army was returning to the hell dimension through the widened portal she’d made. They parted like a sea around Michael where he stood. It was still an intimate moment. With Michael, the whole world disappeared while they flew alone.
“You are free to go. I would never force you to stay in the hell dimension with me,” Lily said. With the Rogue army defeated, she might be freer to come and go than she had ever been, but she was still determined to marry only for love. A tiny spark of hope in her heart reminded her that Ezekiel had always intended for her to assume the throne, but she’d loved him without being sure of a return of affection for too long not to be gun-shy. She hoped the empty walls would help him to heal and be able to give and receive the love he’d denied himself for so long.
“You’ll be my queen and my wife for as long as it makes you happy,” Michael replied. He leaned to kiss her and in spite of an entire army around them, Lily focused only on his wine-flavored lips until a very tired Grim bumped up against Michael’s legs. Her soon-to-be husband lifted his mouth from hers and Lily reached to ruffle the top of Grim’s smoky head.
“Ever after, then,” she promised.