Never had making a deal seemed so appealing to Emil. He had made a deal for himself at one point in his life, but that paled to the burning, itching desire to rectify this that was coursing it’s way under his skin. As he held Carmen, as she wheezed horribly under the weight of a crushed windpipe, he knew there was only one thing he could do.
“I want to make a deal with the Shadow Devil and Archangel Michael themselves!” he shouted towards the ceiling.
The moon-faced woman blinked for a moment, for the first time fear and concern causing her brow to sink low on her face. “You can’t—“
“I can and I will,” Emil said coldly, not even bothering to look at her as he stroked Carmen’s hair back. “You have no qualms taking a life, but I do. I will see you destroyed and I will see her spared at any and all cost.”
“Any and all cost?” a voice from the shadows murmured, echoing in the chamber until the room fell still.
If Emil hadn’t seen it happen, he might not have believed it if anyone had told him, but he watched as time around him slowed until every other person in the room stood frozen against their own will. Only Emil and Carmen remained in motion, although Carmen’s own movement was beginning to slow as life leeched from her body. “Please stay,” Emil told her. “Just hold on for a moment longer.”
Carmen blinked unseeingly at him as she continued to struggle for air.
The shadow that has spoken moved further into the room, only it never took a shape. Instead of a person walking into the middle of the circle to join them, what appeared to be a stream of smoke with constantly shifting faces and humanoid forms stood before him. “You do understand what you are asking, Emil Baudelaire?”
Emil swallowed, the corner of his eyes hot as he fought tears. “She needs to be saved. She tried to save the city.”
The shadow shifted around him, surveying him from every impossible angle as the face of a woman took brief shape to consider him. “And what if she was the sacrifice to ensure the gates do not open?”
“I offer a better sacrifice then.” Emil couldn’t lose Carmen. Not now, not ever. There still needed to be time to explore what lay between them, to understand the mark she had left on his heart from the moment she first kissed him. He couldn’t say for sure he loved her, that he lusted for her. All he understood was that she had a place in his life and he wanted to keep her there for however long it took for him to know that she was it.
After decades of wandering the earth alone, after decades of brief interludes but never anything long standing, here was an opportunity to explore the depths of a woman who was fierce as she was curious, adaptable as she was willing to understand a world more complicated because creatures like Emil existed.
“And what do you have to offer?” a new voice calmly asked directly behind Emil. Emil noticed the room became brighter at the entrance of the new voice, causing even the Shadow Devil, now with the face of a child, to wince against the glare.
Archangel Michael had arrived.
Carmen let out a soul-crushing gasp, her arms flailing at her throat, her feet kicking out in front of her as she fought for her life. He tried to steady her, calm her as she thrashed against him, but after a few more moments of struggle, she went shockingly still. Those watchful dark eyes stopped blinking, stopped looking for anything in the room. Those eyes could see no more.
Looking briefly at the moon-faced woman, still and frozen, he saw that her golden eyes had grown wide in fear. It must have been hell to be trapped in one’s own body while watching the ultimate pact devil and a God’s holy warrior standing mere feet from you.
However, Emil wasn’t afraid. He was ready.
“I give what remains of my soul to the Shadow Devil.” His eyes flicked to the smoke clinging to the shadows, now stirring in place with the face of a wizened old man. “And you, Michael, bring her back.”
Michael, statuesque with a crown of golden curls, walked around Emil and Carmen’s body until he was finally facing the lower pact devil. Without a word, he dropped into a graceful crouch until he was at eye level with Emil. “Understand, if you do this, she no longer belongs to you. She will belong to me.”
“Anything, so long as she lives.” Emil swallowed hard. He was resolute in his decision to make this pact, but he also wished Carmen was here to have a say in what would happen to her. He knew the price, but her life was worth any price, no matter what he could afford. Her life would be different from the life she had, but it would be a life rather than a death at the hands of a devil.
Michael stood quietly before walking over to the Shadow Devil. Emil paid no mind to their hushed conversation, instead, trying to keep his heart from breaking as he pulled Carmen’s body closer to him, however awkwardly. He buried his face into the crook of her neck, breathing in the light flowery scent of her perfume one last time before he knew he would have to let her go forever.
Even as time stood still around him, it felt like an insufferable eternity before finally Michael and the Shadow Devil approached him. Light and dark, together in a deal for souls. This moment felt biblical as much as it felt blasphemous.
Emil lowered Carmen’s body to the floor before standing to face both forces, his jaw set, his eyes steely. “Do we have a deal?”
Michael’s eyes gleamed as he beamed too brightly at him. “We have a deal.”
With that, the Shadow Devil lept at him, engulfing him in sulphurous smoke that finally caused the tears to fall from his eyes in twin rivers. He gasped for air, breathing in the noxious fumes and feeling himself burn from the inside out. This felt very different from when he was made into a pact devil. Instead he was being shorn of the last remnant of his humanity and Emil wanted nothing more than to be completely, wholly dead. He screamed, he cried, he writhed until finally, the smoke let up and he dropped to his knees, gasping for air.
He dropped to his knees to find himself kneeling in front of a standing Carmen. Her copper skin shone slightly even against Michael’s radiance and her dark eyes featured a new steely glint that Emil hadn’t seen before. Emil looked at her in awe, realizing as he studied her that he had never seen an avenging angel until now and what a sight she was. He could not look away, even as dark spots began to form around his line of sight from staring too long.
Carmen didn’t look at him, but rather straight past him towards the moon-faced woman now visibly trembling at the sight before her. She stepped around him and wordlessly made her way towards her prey. The moon-faced woman’s eyes started to sparkle as a single red tear dropped from the corner. But Carmen, while making her way towards her, remained unmoved.
“I asked you to stop and you refused,” Carmen said calmly. “I asked you to spare this city any more heartache and you refused.”
The other woman’s eyes strained as she tried to regain any movement to fight or to flee, but slowly her eyes dripped more tears the more she realized there was no saving her from Michael’s newly-endowed fury.
Carmen unflinchingly wrapped her hands around the woman’s skull, her thumbs poised over both of her eyes. “You embraced your darkest side. Live in darkness forever.” She pressed her thumbs into both eye sockets, pressing further and further inwards as the woman wordlessly writhed in his grip, unable to scream, unable to fight back.
And still, Emil could not look away, as the woman who had marked him destroyed the woman who had destroyed her.
She let the woman drop to the ground before turning yet again to face the blank faced women of the coven. “Take her and take this chance to find the best hiding places in the city. You will do nothing for All Saint’s Day and when it passes, I will hunt each and every one of you down without mercy. Consider this what mercy I have left.”
The women scrambled to collect their leader, bloody and sobbing on the floor. They formed a litter with their hands and hurriedly made their way out of the ossuary and into the deepest reaches of the tunnels, quiet sobs echoing throughout the chamber until faded away into eternal silence.
Emil looked around, only to find that he was alone in the ossuary with Carmen. The Shadow Devil and Michael had wordlessly left them to reconcile his end of the deal.
Carmen blinked, as though seeing the room for the first time. She looked around in a panic at the empty room before resting her eyes on Emil. She leapt for him, dropping to her knees trying to wrap her arms around him, only to find that she couldn’t. She fell backwards, clutching her burning hand to her chest.
“Emil?” Tears welled up along the bottom curve of her eyes before dripping down until her cheek shone lightly more brightly with wetness. “Emil, what is this?”
“I made a deal to spare your life. This,” he reached out gently towards her but not quite reaching her. “Is the price. You are no longer mine to keep.”
“No, no that can’t be right. That price is too high.” Carmen’s tears fell harder now, shifting from a soft cry into harder, heartrending sobs. “Emil, I can’t be apart from you, not like this.”
Emil crawled to her, reaching his hand closer until he could just feel the heat emanating off of her skin. “Mon adorée, we saved Paris. Don’t you think we can try to save ourselves as well?”
She blinked at him. “Deal?”
Emil smiled, despite the emptiness he felt where his soul used to reside. He smiled despite the distance between them now. He smiled because he would defy Michael’s every order, every centimeter of distance between them if that meant he would have her once again.
“Deal.”