Oblivion (The Watcher Chronicles #3), page 5
“Who are you really?” Lucifer asks. “I know you’re more than human but I can’t quite put my finger on what’s different about you.”
“Neither can your counterpart on my Earth, so don’t feel bad. You’re ignorant on two worlds.”
Lucifer scowls at me. “Insolent for a human.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that tonight already. Why don’t you tell me something useful like where my sister is?”
“In a safe place. If I get the answers I want, I’ll give her to you.”
“Alive?”
Lucifer grins. “Smart question for a monkey. Since you asked it, yes, I’ll give her back to you alive.”
“Jessica.”
I look to my right and see Michael.
“Tell him what you are,” Michael says.
“Are you crazy?” I ask.
“I’m beginning to think you might be,” Lucifer says, staring at the empty space I’m talking to.
I choose to ignore him.
“Think of it as a trial run,” Michael says, eyeing this alternate version of Lucifer warily. “Let’s see what he’ll do.”
“He might kill Faison,” I argue.
“I don’t think so. I don’t even think he has her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because if he did, he would have her here and torture her in front of you to get the information he wants.”
It made sense. It felt strange to be counting on Lucifer’s penchant for cruelty as a tool to measure his truthfulness by. But Michael was right. If this Lucifer had Faison, he would have shown her to me by now.
“Why do you want to tell him the truth?” I ask Michael.
“Because it might give us an idea of how our Lucifer will react if you tell him.”
“What does that gain us?”
“It will let us know if we shouldn’t do it with our Lucifer. If it goes badly here, then we’ll know what not to do back home.”
“Not much of a plan,” I complain.
“Don’t worry. You’re in no danger. I might have to take you over for a moment if things do go wrong, but I’ll only do it if I think you’re life is in peril.”
“All right,” I say, not wholeheartedly believing what we’re about to do will work in the slightest but placing my trust in Michael’s judgment.
I look at this Earth’s Lucifer who is still looking at me like I may have completely lost my mind.
“You want to know what I am?” I ask him.
“Yes, I believe that’s what I’ve been asking, isn’t it?”
“I’m a human vessel whose soul is bound with an archangel’s soul.”
“Which archangel?”
“Michael.”
Lucifer stands completely still. If he wasn’t breathing, you could have mistaken him easily for a statue.
“You’re lying.”
“No,” I say, “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I refuse to say no I’m not again. Otherwise, we’re going to start sounding like a couple of five year olds. You can either believe me or not.”
“I suppose you were talking to Michael just now?” Lucifer asks snidely, completely convinced I’m lying to him in some game of wits.
“Yes.”
“If you’re telling the truth, have him tell you what the last word I said to him was.”
I look over at Michael and raise an eyebrow at him because I know he heard the question for himself.
“He said ‘Go’,” Michael answers, looking at his one time best friend with pity.
“The last word you said was ‘go’.”
Lucifer stares at me like he’s trying to find his best friend in the depths of my eyes.
“Michael?”
“Tell him I’ve missed him,” Michael says to me.
“He misses you,” I tell Lucifer. “He misses your friendship.” I take in a deep breath. “I can feel his pain.”
“Pain?” Lucifer questions incredulously. “What could he know of pain? You just left me here,” Lucifer says, his eyes growing even darker than usual. “You’re no friend of mine. If you had been, you wouldn’t have left me to rot with the monkeys. You would have found a way to protect me from our father. He might have listened to you if you had begged him to give me another chance.”
“There was no chance to beg for,” I tell Lucifer, relaying what Michael tells me. “You went too far. Too many lives were lost because of you. God wouldn’t have allowed you to stay in Heaven even if Michael had begged on your behalf.”
“But you didn’t even try!” Lucifer storms.
“Michael couldn’t beg God to have mercy on you,” I tell Lucifer.
I look at Michael lifting both my eyebrows this time to make sure he truly does want me to say his next words.
“Seriously?” I ask Michael, knowing if I say what he wants me to I might as well just jump off the building for a quicker death than what Lucifer will do to me. “You’re sure you want me to say that to him?”
Michael nods.
I shake my head, not agreeing with his decision but trusting that he knows what he’s doing.
“Michael couldn’t beg God to show you mercy because he didn’t believe you deserved it. He thought you needed to spend time with humans if for nothing else than to teach you a lesson.”
Lucifer’s hands ignite with blue flames and he lunges for my throat.
The next few minutes move in slow motion for me, mostly because Michael takes control of my body. I watch as he spins my body away from Lucifer’s grasp and catapults us up the guard rail which is meant to keep people from falling off the top of the building. Michael stands on the railing completely balanced like a cat on a fence and looks down at Lucifer.
“Stop, Lucifer. She only said what I told her to say.”
Lucifer stops abruptly like he suddenly hit a brick wall. “Michael?”
“Yes, it’s me. Don’t harm Jess.”
“If I kill her, I kill you! It’s a win win situation for me.” Lucifer smiles maliciously.
“Do you really want to kill me, old friend?”
Lucifer looks emotionally torn.
“You were my only friend,” Lucifer says. I feel Michael’s pity for his friend inside my heart. “How could you just leave me? You never once came to see me or even tried to contact me. Why?”
“I hoped you would ask our father for repentance, Lucifer. There were so many times I yearned to speak with you and urge you to ask for his forgiveness. I hoped your time on Earth would lead you to realize on your own what a mistake you made leading the war against our father. I still have hope you will do that one day.”
“If anything, my time here has shown me how right I was,” Lucifer says scathingly. “The monkeys don’t need to be worshiped and protected. They need to be destroyed before they destroy everything He created.”
“That’s an old argument between us,” Michael says tiredly. “One I thought you would have out grown by now.”
“Old habits die hard I guess. What are you worried about? You won’t really die anyway. You’re soul will just go back to Heaven, along with this human’s.”
“But she deserves to have a life before she’s asked to give it up.”
“No, she doesn’t. She deserves to die.”
Just as Lucifer phases beside me and reaches for one of my arms, Michael jumps off the guard rail and we begin a freefall to the street below.
Chapter 5
Yeah, jumping off the Empire State building….this is a good plan.
Note to self: Do NOT to trust Michael the next time he says I should.
I want to scream at Michael but oddly enough he seems to be enjoying our death knell swan dive. He has my arms spread out like we’re a bird and is whooping it up like we’re on a joy ride. Just as I think my body is going to smash head long into the concrete pavement, I feel my body begin to glide and I realize I’m flying.
Michael puts my arms out in front of us and I wonder if I look like Superman as he flies us between the skyscrapers of New York City.
“How?” I ask him, though our communication is restricted to being completely mental.
“It’s one of my powers,” he tells me. “I felt it awaken when we joined with Leah.”
“You could have told me,” I accuse.
“Sorry, I wasn’t sure how you would react to flying. Are you ok?”
“Yes, I love it! Though, a little warning would have been nice. Will I be able to do this without you being in control?”
“Yes. I just wanted to show you a few moves that might come in handy.”
Michael shows me how to ricochet between objects, in this case buildings. I feel like a pinball as we bounce off each structure. I get the feeling that this little maneuver if more for fun than anything else though. He shows me how to land gracefully in a spinning rollout which, I have to admit, looks pretty cool. He makes sure I understand the basics of taking off and turning and landing. It’s one of the best times of my life.
“Can I phase?” I ask him.
“No, you’re still human. Phasing is reserved for angels only. Your body can’t handle going through folds in space too often.”
“Is that what their doing? Folding space?”
“Yes.”
Michael flies us over a street I recognize. A solitary figure stands on the sidewalk: Mason.
“He’s waiting for you,” Michael tells me. “Do you feel up for trying to land by yourself?”
“I think so,” not at all sure I can, but I have to try at some point.
“Ok, I’m going to let go now.”
Michael turns control back over to me, and I attempt to angle down towards Mason. He must sense me because he looks up. I smile at the surprised look on his face and attempt to land in front of him in the elegant rollout spin Michael taught me but it doesn’t come out quite as I planned. Instead of landing lightly on my feet I end up loosing my balance and spinning into Mason, knocking him to the ground with me sitting on top of his face.
I quickly move down so I’m not on his face but sitting around his waist.
“Sorry,” I say, but don’t get a chance to say anything else because Mason pulls my head down to his kissing me like there might not be a tomorrow.
Considering our luck, he might be right.
Mason sits up with me straddling his lap.
He pulls his lips away from mine to look at me.
“Why do you keep doing that to me?” He asks, planting small kisses all over my face, making me smile.
“Keep doing what?”
“Making me worry.”
“Well, I hate to admit it but it was a pointless thing to do. Lucifer didn’t have Faison.”
Mason stops kissing me to look into my eyes. “You’re flying now. That’s new.”
“Michael said it was one of his gifts.”
Mason nods. “Yes, he needed it to oversee the war.”
“That’s two powers of his that I have because of the war in Heaven: seeing aura’s and flying.”
“What happened with Lucifer?”
I tell him.
“Michael shouldn’t have done that,” Mason says glowering. “He put your life in danger unnecessarily.”
“But it gives us a good idea on how our Lucifer will react when he learns the truth about me.”
“Still, he put your life in danger. That’s not something I’ll ever condone no matter what information you might have gotten from it.”
“Don’t you remember what I told you earlier?”
“What?”
“That neither one of us would die today.”
“You never did answer my question. Since when do you have faith in anything God does?”
I sigh. “It’s a hard question for me to answer because I’m not sure. It just seemed illogical to send us here just to die. It wouldn’t make sense. Now we know the main reasons he let us come here. To find Leah and to make you realize what might have happened if you had never led the Watchers.”
“Now we just need to find Faison and go back home.”
“I know you don’t want to, but we need to go back to Malcolm’s. If Lucifer doesn’t have Faison, Malcolm has to have her. Lucifer said he passed out from his torture after we left. He might be hurt.”
“Malcolm would have regenerated by now. And I don’t agree with going to his penthouse again. It’s just too dangerous, especially now that Lucifer knows what you are. Let’s go back and talk to Brand and the others. They might know where Mason’s son used to live. I would rather try to find her on our own if we can.”
“All right,” I say. I’ve put Mason through enough for one night. I don’t intend on badgering him into taking me to Malcolm’s tonight. Not until we’ve exhausted all of our other options.
Mason phases us directly into Brand’s living quarters.
Brand is sitting at the dining table alone with a cup of coffee, which doesn’t look like it’s been touched, between his hands. Remy is sitting on the brown leather couch in the room with his head knocked back snoring. Leah has her head in Remy’s lap peacefully sleeping.
“Glad to see you made it back in one piece,” Brand says to me from his seat at the table.
Mason and I sit down across from him. I tell Brand what happened during my time with Lucifer, and I ask him about finding Faison.
“I’m not sure where Malcolm’s son used to live but I can try to find out. Josh is pretty good with computers. He can probably find the information you need fairly quickly.”
Brand grows quiet and stares down at his coffee. I get the feeling he wants to ask us something but doesn’t know how or possibly if he should. Finally, he sighs and looks back up at us.
“Could you tell me about this Lilly from your world? What kind of life do we have together? Is my immortality an issue?”
“You’re not immortal in our world,” Mason tells Brand. “You’re human.”
“How?” Brand asks, completely caught off guard by such a revelation. It’s something I didn’t know either, but it explains why he looks older.
“When Lilly stopped Lucifer, Brand asked God to make him human so he could live out a normal life with Lilly. God granted his wish. Lilly and Brand have three children now: Caylin, Will and Mae.”
“Three kids? Are they human?”
“Not completely. Caylin was conceived while you were still an angel and of course Lilly is still half archangel.”
“Is Caylin cursed? Does she become a werewolf?”
“No, God took away the curse from all the Watcher children who never drank human blood.”
“So Abby is human in your world?”
“Yes. She’s actually married to Malcolm’s son and they have two children.”
Brand laces the fingers of his hands in front of his face and rubs his temples with the pads of his thumbs. I wonder what he’s thinking. I want to ask who Abby is but I feel sure from Brand’s reaction it’s probably his daughter, still cursed in this reality to transform into a werewolf every night.
“You and Malcolm are friends, of sorts, in our reality too,” Mason reveals to Brand.
Brand lowers his hands and looks at Mason like he’s sure he misunderstood him.
“Malcolm and me friends?” Brand asks.
“At first it was only for Lilly’s sake,” Mason says, “she and Malcolm have been friends pretty much since the day they met. But since the Tear appeared, the two of you have become close because of your families. Our Brand trusts Malcolm to help keep his family safe. I don’t think I could give Malcolm any higher praise than that.”
“I suppose Baruch and Isaiah told you my thoughts about bringing Malcolm into the resistance?” I ask.
Brand nods. “I’m sorry but I just don’t see that as a possibility.”
“At least think about it,” I urge. “He has good in him. It’s just buried under a lot of bad baggage.”
“I am surprised he let you go,” Brand admits. “His only redeemable quality was his refusal to let Sebastian drink human blood. Mason told me you had to kill him when he traveled to your world.”
“Yes. I killed him with my sword.”
“At least it was a quick death then.”
Brand stands. “I’m sure the two of you are tired. We made up a room for you to stay in while you’re here. Was I right in assuming you would want to share the same room?”
Mason looks to me to answer the question.
“Yes, one room is all we need,” I answer, reaching for one of Mason’s hands, laying claim to my man.
We follow Brand out of the room into the hallway. We end up not having to walk too far. Brand opens a metal door which is only a couple of doors down from his quarters.
The room is sparse with one full size bed covered in white cotton sheets and a thin black wool blanket. A small metal table with a small lamp sits on the right side of the bed. There is a narrow bathroom off to the left with a metal chair sitting by the entrance.
“We don’t have a lot of visitors,” Brand says in way of explanation for the lack of décor.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “There’s a bed. That’s all we need.”
Mason raises an eyebrow in my direction and tries to hide a smile.
“Well, I hope it’s comfortable enough,” Brand says, seeming to become uncomfortable around us all of a sudden. “I’ll see you two in the morning.”
I let go of Mason’s hand and walk into the room trying to unbuckle the belt of the baldric from around my waist as quickly as I can. I hear Mason close the door behind me. For some reason my fingers feel like they’ve gone numb and my stomach suddenly feels like it’s a jar full of butterflies.
“Here,” Mason says, coming to stand in front of me, “let me help you with that. You’ve had a rough night. You need to get some rest.”
I look up at Mason who is concentrating on working the leather strap through the buckle.
“I don’t need rest,” I say, hoping he gets the subtle hint in my words without me having to spell it out for him.
A slow smile stretches his lips. “Should I be worried about my chastity tonight, Agent Riley?”
