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“Then let me help you find him,” I said, reaching for his chest through the bars. “Let me help you find the angel who risked his life for me in Heaven, the angel who broke the back of an archangel for hurting me, the angel who would do anything to find his way back to me.”
Abaddon let his forehead drop against the bars. He shut his eyes and breathed deeply. I felt his heart beating gently under the palm of my hand. “This I will do,” he said.
I let my own forehead rest against the same bar. “I missed you,” I said. “All I had to keep me going were thoughts of you.”
“You survived Hell,” he said. “I cannot imagine your ordeal.”
“I’ll tell you about it if we survive this.”
The door to the dungeons opened suddenly, and in the doorway appeared Azrael clad in her rose-tinted full-plate armor. She glanced at me, then stared at Abaddon—at the monster she had caged up and was about to release.
“He’s here,” she said.
“Lucifer…” said Abaddon, his jaw tightening.
Azrael moved towards the cell, and with a wave of her hand she made the doors unlock. Just like that, Abaddon was free to leave—and perhaps Azrael expected him to. Instead, he came up to her, shoulders rolling, and lowered his head.
“You are the commander of this bastion,” he said to her. “Command me.”
Azrael’s entire body tensed at their proximity. She didn’t want him here, didn’t want him anywhere near here, but she understood the tactical significance of having him on our side.
“You’re the only one who has spent time with Lucifer,” she said. “I need you to tell me everything you know about him. And if you twitch, even a little bit…”
“My allegiance is to Sarakiel. Come, I will tell you what I know.”
Abaddon started up the stairs, and Azrael followed. I trailed them, unable to keep dread from icing my stomach. This was it. The last stand, the last fight. The battle for the very soul of the world. It was time to end this, once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ihad heard this song before. The last time I was here, when Medrion was seen barreling towards this place with a legion of angels at his back… I remembered how this place felt. The buzz in the air, tension so thick it felt like I was moving through cobwebs. Dread.
Fear.
It felt the same in many ways, but it was also different in so many other—far more meaningful ways. Outwardly, Medrion always pretended to be an angel. He put on the visage of this honorable, misunderstood creature who only wanted what was best for all of us. He probably believed every word he ever said, too; as did many, many other angels.
If he hadn’t turned out to be a sadist and a psychopath, he may have been someone all of Angelkind could’ve rallied behind. A leader, someone who would guide us back into grace, or the closest to grace that we could achieve.
Lucifer, though. Lucifer was only interested in himself, in saving his own skin, in consolidating his own power. He didn’t care whether he was leading an army of demons or an army of angels, he didn’t care if he had to burn down every human settlement he could find. If it meant gaining ultimate dominion over everything in the cosmos, Lucifer was ready to do whatever he needed to do to get it.
And the worst part was, he was leagues more powerful than Medrion. He was more powerful than all of us, maybe even all of us combined. Abaddon had faced Lucifer in single combat and survived, but I suspected that was only because Lucifer was surprised that he had been made to bleed.
I had no doubt in my mind, if that confrontation had continued, that Abaddon would’ve been vaporized.
In the end, we were putting all of our hope into the hands of a single cherub. Micah. Though he was a powerful celestial being, looking at him you would be hard pressed to see anything more than a boyish looking man with curly blond hair. This all felt like it was too much for him, like he was banking on making a one-in-a-million shot that he wanted all of us to believe he truly could make.
Even now, with Lucifer at our doorstep, he was frantically preparing the ritual he thought we would be able to use to bring Lucifer down and put him back where he belonged. As I arrived at the courtyard, though, it was clear… Micah needed more time.
The sigils weren’t ready, and Micah himself was desperately trying to draw out an intricately detailed circle right in the center of the courtyard. I realized as I approached that this circle, and the symbols within it, looked more like an impossibly complicated mathematical equation than an occult angelic scripture.
“He’s going to see this,” Micah said to himself, sweat pouring from his forehead. “He’s going to see me drawing this into the ground, and then it’s all over.”
I rushed up to him, knelt beside him, and placed my hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “What do you need?”
“Time,” he breathed. “More time.”
“How much more? Azrael said he’s already here.”
“As much as you can give me. He can’t see this ritual circle, do you understand? He can’t.”
