Astaroth sat beside me, staring at me dreamily and caressing my hair with a clawed hand.

“Please don’t touch me,” I murmured, finally finding my breath.

He made a face at me and said, “Because you said ‘please.’” He placed his hand on his lap and continued to stare at me longingly, and I felt a bubble of Azazel’s memories floating up to the surface.

I remembered him as her, and the first time I had seen him. He was forcing himself on a human woman when Azazel first saw him, and my stomach churned. He had the ability to manipulate a person into wanting him, but he preferred the violence instead. The woman’s face flashed to my mind, and she looked suspiciously like Mrs. Ronson, but the first time Azazel had met Astaroth was more than a thousand years ago.

“Ah, what’s with the look on your face?” he crooned at me.

“I remember you,” I answered, my heart racing then.

“Ah,” he chuckled. “You remember when Azazel knew me, hm?”

Without saying a word, I nodded, and he leaned in close to me, almost to where his nose touched mine. He stared deep into my eyes, eliciting an unwanted reaction, before pushing his face closer to mine and bringing us almost cheek-to-cheek.

He whispered in my ear, “The only reason I don’t do that to you is because I crave the look of incomprehensible pleasure on your face far more than I want to hear you begging me to stop. One day you will want me, and crave me, and beg for me, and I will be there to take you to places you never knew existed.”

“You’re a monster,” I said in a hollow gasp before I let the words fully sink in.

Leaning back, he let out a low snicker and said, “No, I’m Fallen.” In that moment, I could hear Azazel being dragged across the floor, her body fighting savagely against the chains, and then the sound of a rising dais beside me. Looking over, Mammon roughly grabbed her and threw her on the dais, and in a second, chains sprouted from the dais and held her firmly in place. Looking over at her, I could see that her eyes had blackened as they had before, and black pulsing veins sprouted around her eyes and her arms as she went on fighting against the restraints.

“Are you in there?” I whispered, feeling my heart ache at watching her like this.

“She’s long gone, sweetie,” Astaroth answered beside me, resuming his hair stroking. Looking up at an endless ceiling, I remembered the pieces of hers, and that dark place where Azrael stayed, and I could almost feel them inside me. Pressing my lips together, I would hold on to this thought. Azazel was not gone. Azazel was broken, and I was the one chosen to take care of her pieces.

Astaroth stood then, and he moved to the head of the dais’. Pythius stood at my lower right corner, and Merihem stood to Azazel’s lower left. Raising their arms, Mammon said somewhere else that I could not see, “Commence.”

Astaroth placed a hand on my and Azazel’s forehead, and my body seized as a bright light opened above me. Everything was nothing but light for a moment. I couldn’t feel anything. There was nothing to be heard or felt. It was all just light.

When it finally settled, I was kneeling down before Astaroth, and he was naked, and I realized I was completely naked, and beside me, so was Azazel. There was someone else kneeling as well. Looking at her, her skin was like magma beneath rock. Though her skin was black as night, there were waves of fiery red pulsing up and about here and there, moving beneath her skin. She had no hair and no mouth. Her eyes were closed, and when she finally felt my stare, she opened them to reveal lava colored eyes, and she turned to look at me, and I panicked, throwing myself backward.

I fell hard on my wing. The woman was still looking back at me with those lava eyes, but I avoided them as much as I could. It took me only a second to realize that she was the corruption that had taken over my body and Azazel’s. In her gaze, there was an immeasurable pain and hatred, and I felt it through all my lives, condensed into a single entity. Astaroth laughed, looking over at me with his devilish crimson eyes. Azazel was still, unmoving, but staring straight up. Her wing was limp behind her, and Astaroth leaned down to take her hand up in his. He helped her to her feet and held her close then, and I jumped to my feet and yelled, “Get away from her!” but no sound came from my mouth. Astaroth looked up above Azazel’s head at me, and he said, “This is my world. You will speak when I allow you to do so.”

He leaned his head down again, burying his face in the top of her head and breathing her in deeply. Attempting to move toward them, my hands were bound to my sides then, and black vines snaked up from a blank white ground to wrap around my legs and pull me down. Opening my mouth to scream out, no sound came, and I watched helplessly as he turned her face up to him. He was whispering something to her, and I was surprised I could hear it, as if he was speaking to me.

He said, “I would give up everything, relinquish my title, give up my place here and put a bounty on my head. I would repent and be a Destroyer with you, I would even become human for you, if you only would look at me the way you gaze upon Azrael.” He leaned down then, closing his eyes and placing a gentle kiss on her lips, and she just went on staring up past him at nothing. He pulled her close again, and he asked, “Where did you go, my angel?”

The magma woman continued to stare, but eventually turned to look down at the ground, seeming to resign herself to a place I couldn’t possibly guess.

Astaroth reluctantly released Azazel, and he placed a hand on this woman’s head. Speaking, he said, “Rise,” and she stood. Still looking down, he said, “Consume her,” and he gestured to Azazel. In an instant, she raised her head and turned to Azazel. Her face suddenly cracked open, opening farther than naturally possible, and inside her face was nothing but a pulsing, searing fire that I could feel even from the distance I was at, and she fell upon Azazel with this unhinged jaw, clamping down on her shoulder and tearing away easily.

“No!” I roared, commanding with all my force and will to grab her attention, the corruption’s attention. She went on, chomping down swiftly and tearing Azazel down more and more. It almost seemed unreal as I watched helplessly as Azazel was consumed by our corruption. Watching her savagely tearing into Azazel’s body, I felt nauseous, and before I knew it, she was done. There was nothing left of her except her beautiful wing. There was no blood, there was no mess. There was just her wing then, and I felt a silent desperation as I thought that I might be the only connection Azazel had left to this world. Having been devoured by our own corruption, I was the last chance at her survival. An image of her shattered pieces came to my mind again, and I fought ferociously against the bindings. Astaroth watched on silently, a sort of grave expression on his face.

The corruption held Azazel’s wing in her magma hands and opened her jaw again to begin to devour the piece, but I screamed out again. I would not let her disappear like this. If I could help it, I would make this choice, and I would protect her with my life. As I reached out with my mind, I could feel from the distance an insatiable anger and hunger and fear and pain. It burned and it was terrible, worse than I could have ever felt in my life, but I pressed on past that. Pushing out with my will, forcing my reigns around hers and taking control of this corruption I had no doubt added to.

I roared out, “No!”

An immense pressure fell upon my head then, and I felt my body buckling underneath the restraints. Concentrating on her, I focused on everything I did, everything that made me feel terrible and brought me pain, and I forced myself to relive it all. This was mine to bear, and mine alone.

She froze, her mouth inches from the wing in her hands, and I called out, “Stop!” in my mind, as I tried to concentrate on this pain, there were memories from time passed in my life that threatened to drag me down, but adamant on owning and controlling this, I held on. Azazel needed me then. She needed me to survive this, and I would do whatever it took to protect her, even if it meant my life. This was my choice to make, and I was making it.

Astaroth looked up at me, a blank expression on his face, and placing one a hand on her shoulder, he said, “Devour her.”

Dropping the wing, she turned and lunged at me, mouth agape and ready. Bracing myself, I focused hard on Azazel, on staying alive for her. The corruption’s movement was suddenly halted. Above me, her arms were splayed out, ready to grab me up and hold me still as she devoured me. In a fit of surprise, Astaroth had loosened his control on the ropes holding me down just long enough for me to get free and grab her face up in my hands.

She was burning hot. She was hotter than I could touch, and her skin burned the palms of my hands, but I held her face in mine as she grabbed my face in hers. My skin on fire then and melting beneath her touch, she began to slam her head against mine, and with each beat, there was another painful memory I had suffered in one of my lives. One right after another, there was the beat and the pain of each memory, and though I tried to stand firmly against her, I was falling then under her strength, and she continued to slam her face to mine. I thought I could feel her breaking through my porcelain face then, and I let her.

I let her beat her face violently against mine, cracking and demolishing my own face more and more until I finally caved in and gave in to her, but I wasn’t giving in to her. I was accepting her, and when my arms rose up to wrap around her body, she disintegrated into me. My face, my body, my soul erupted in flames then, and I let out a long and harrowing howl as I let these flames engulf my entire being.

Writhing beneath the immense amount of energy, of rage and fury from lives I’d lived and, I struggled to contain it within me, within my body and soul. Like a raging bull, the energy from the corruption of our soul threatened to overthrow me, to overpower and devour me as it had Azazel. I had to control this. I had to control her. I had to overcome the corruption and prevail. I had to win. I had to win. I had to win. I had to win I had to win I had to win I had to win I had to win.

The fire rose in temperature, reaching levels of pain I never thought I could experience, and I realized as I forced myself to walk these coals, to swallow this fire and throwing myself further into the inferno, this was the full enormity of all the lives I’d lived. It wasn’t just fury I was letting wash through me. It was passion, all of the atrocities I had committed as everyone I had been born as in the name of passion, of anger, of fury, of guilt, of sadness. This was me, and all of me, and all the bad I’d lived as all the different people I was, and in the pain of everything I’d done and had done onto me, I forced myself to remember who I was.

I was Amor. I was a daughter. I was a deeply loved daughter. I was a friend. I was a very treasured friend. I was a sister. I was a loving sister. I was a worker. I was a dedicated worker. I was a teenager. I was an angst ridden teenager. I was a girl. I was a girl like any other. I was Amor, made special by the chance of circumstance, and though I was drowning in the fire, I was breathing it all in, and I was becoming it all and making it my own, because I had been all of those people, but I was still Amor. That was all that mattered was that I was me, I was Amor, and I had the will to live, and I was going to live.

Despite this all, despite my resolve to survive and win, there was something out of my hands, some vital part of me that was still falling into the corruption and catching fire. As much as I struggled to find a firm grasp on the energy that surged through my body, mind, and soul, it seemed as if there was a part of me being held, suspended in a space so far away from me, I could even find it. Olivier’s face echoed through the my mind briefly, and I cursed both him and myself.

Astaroth called to me ominously as I writhed ceaselessly on my feet, “No matter what, you cannot cheat a deal with a devil.”

You should just kill yourself, a deceptively smooth voice whispered through my mind, slithering forth like a cold, dark snake.

My hands shooting to my head, I thrashed back and forth savagely as the corruption began to blacken my mind and my resolve. Like a cancer, it spread through my thoughts, poisoning and destroying them all, both good and bad. Throwing my head back, I howled in pain as my sanity fell away from me, and there was nothing but the fire and the corruption. Desperately, I latched on to my thoughts, I grasped onto my resolve, but faster than I could put the words together, my thought sizzled away.

“There has to be a way! There has to be a way!” I cried out, shaking back and forth uncontrollably. “There has to be a way!”

“There is no way,” Astaroth called. “Give in. Let her consume you.”

“No!” I howled. Time seemed to stretch on as I fought violently for control over my mind. The corruption was no longer a female, no longer a person. It had become an opposing and powerful force that refused me as its bearer. It fought with me visciously, desperate to take my body, consume my entire being, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let it win, I couldn’t let them win. I couldn’t let Azazel just disappear. Convinced I was all that was left of her, I was set on keeping her alive by fighting this with all my might.

What would you do to win? A voice asked, piercing through the struggle, and I screamed out, “Anything.”

Would you harm yourself?

The question had caught me off guard and frozen me mid-motion. My head thrown back, I stared straight up, caught in the agony of what I imagined a dissolving soul, deterorating mind, and burning body was, and trying to find an answer for that simple question. Self-harm had never been a question; it was either I did or struggled to not do. To be asked something so simple but with so much weight on it . . . The fire licked at my vision and my face, and though it continued to eat away at my body, I was struck.

Would you harm yourself? The voice repeated.

In my mind then, I had no desire to harm myself. Past all of the numbness and the sorrow and the pain, I was in a place where all I wanted was to prevail; not to die. I had promised myself at least a year ago, I would never hurt myself again, and I had kept true to that promise. False. Previous iterations of that promise, I had already broken more times than I could count. Struggling with intimacy with people, I’d already broken so many promises to both the outside world and myself. This was the one thing I wanted to keep for myself, to prove to myself I wasn’t a completely worthless, flake of a person. I owed it to myself to be true to myself. But that was all before I stopped being normal.

Things were very different now, and though I was certain no one wanted to see any fresh wounds on my skin anymore, would they blame me considering what I faced now? Staring my impending corruption down the nose, what would I do to save myself? Would I hurt myself to win this? Was that what it took to prevail?

A numbness crept into my body then, and the pain of the fire slithered away from. The corruption raged on, tearing my thoughts apart bit by bit, piece by piece, but I was transfixed on what I would do next. Deaf to the deceitful whispers of thoughts disguised under the name “coping”, I listened only to my own voice in my head. Was I going to break this promise to myself? Was I willing to do that to win? To protect myself? To save Azazel?

A decision was made, then. Looking down and leveling my gaze with Astaroth, I walked to him, and he asked, “Have you given in?”

Moving deliberately, I spoke in a hollow and deadened voice, “I know what I have to do.”

Without so much as a gesture of warning, I pounced on him and tackled him to the ground. Letting out a cry of surprise, he yelled out, “What are you doing?”

Taking his clawed hand in mine, my wrists suddenly felt so tender. They tingled eagerly and there was a familiar thought that settled into me as I gazed down at his hands, at the sharpness of the claws.

It wouldn’t be hard. It would only hurt for a second. A second of pain, a quick motion for this win, for this achievement. This was what I needed to do. This was what people did in times of crisis. Some people. Special people. Terrifying people. Because I was a terrifying person.

“I’m winning,” I answered monotonously as I dragged one sharp claw down the length of my arm. The pain was instant and satisfying, and I even let out a sigh as I sat back and stared at my work. In an instant, I was back in my room as a thirteen-year-old, the room my fourteen-year-old self had tried to strangle me in. That room, as it had been laid out, was the image forever engraved as the day, the moment it all went downhill. That was the room was where I had convinced myself that self-harm was a good idea. When I’d used to hurt myself before, I would often saw back and forth, methodically and deliberately. The goal hadn’t always been to see my blood, to make sure I was alive. Before, it had been to give me sensation, so I could feel something. Then over time it changed. I started playing with death, taking sharper and sharper knives and using fewer and fewer motions, just so see how fast I could produce the most blood out of a single wound.

Here I was now, watching my blood pour down my arm in rivulets, and as it poured from my arm and spilled onto my body, the flames extinguished. The corruption stopped as soon as I’d cut myself, and as I bled out, more of my thoughts and myself broke free of the corruption. Slowly reclaiming myself, I exerted more of my control over the corruption, until I was standing, bloody and naked before Astaroth. Flames gone, I felt glorious.

This was my decision to make, this was the choice I made.

He just looked up at me, awestruck, and I said, as the world around us blackened, “Deals with the devil are voided if I can’t keep a deal with myself.”

 

Opening my eyes, my arm stung slightly, and sitting up, I saw that there was a new, angry scar looking particularly fresh among similar, smaller, dark cracks in the honey skin. It was pink and puckered, and it ran the length of my arm as I had cut myself in the trance. Instead of feeling dread and disgust, I looked down at it with awe.

It stung, and it was angrier than any of the others could have possibly been. As it stood there on my skin, then, reddening to the same shade as the triangles that sat on my face, I felt an odd sort of pride. This was the mark of my choice. This was not the result of pain and apathy; this was a choice I weighed and measured and decided. This was what needed to be done, and though there was part of me that felt I had set myself back in my internal progress, there was an even bigger part telling me that I had won.

“You are getting on my last nerve,” Pythius snarled. Looking up quickly, one of his tendrils struck out to pierce me through, but with lightning speed, I jumped up and backwards, and my wings—not my wing—carried me high into the air.

Looking back in shock, I saw two glorious, full sized wings sprouting from my back and working hard and diligently to keep me aloft. I could feel every inch of both of them, every muscle and fiber and feather, and oddly enough, it made me feel whole. I felt complete as I stared down at Astaroth, Merihem, and Pythius.

“What did you do?” Merihem hissed at Astaroth. He just shrugged at her and said, “She’s a tough cookie.”

“How can you be so casual about this!” she raged, jumping high in the air. To my surprise, she reached me and wrapped both of her arms around my waist. Caught off guard by the sudden added weight, I plummeted to the ground. Her arms still encasing my body, she twisted around swiftly, forcing me to land hard on both my wings. Crying out, I pushed her off with more strength than I had, and she skidded back and away from me, surprised at the feat as well as I was.

“What’s going on over there?” Satan called from across the cavern. Mammon appeared in an instant, charging at me and sounding like a hundred rampage bulls. Throwing myself to the side, I propelled my body across the cavern to where Satan stood with Beelzebub, Olivier, and Asmodeus around Jo, Agatha, Bond and the triplet angels.

“Astaroth failed!” Pythius bellowed in a subtly triumphant voice.

“Get away from them,” I screamed, crashing directly into Satan and Beelzebub. They both let out cries of surprise as we all went tumbling to the ground, and Pythius was on me in an instant, stabbing me through the gut and pulling me off of both of them. Letting out an agonized, exasperated cry, I snatched his tendrils out of my stomach, and holding onto them in a steel-like grip, I swung him around and sent him crashing into Asmodeus, Mammon and Merihem.

“What did you do?” Beelzebub shouted, his voice sounding painfully hoarse and dry as he strained his vocal chords. Across the way, Astaroth again shrugged casually.

Attention focused intently on my people, I rushed over to them and looked them over. Bond’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head and Agatha was now convulsing and shaking gently on the slab. Jo was perfectly still in an awkward, contorted position. Rushing to her, I placed two fingers on the side of her neck checking for a pulse. For a terse and anxious moment, I waited for the gentle beat against my fingers, and found just a faint butterfly.

“I have to get you guys out of here,” I muttered to myself quickly, immediately going to work on the bindings and chains holding them down.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Satan’s voice bellowed to me, sounding distorted and horrendous behind me. Whipping around, my body fell instantly into a defensive position, and I studied them with a calculated and dire expression. As they rose before me, my ears tuned in to the Lords moving behind me, and as my senses grew acquainted to the beings around me, a complicated and intricate list of actions streamed through my mind, taking into account each individual person.

For a brief moment, I felt as if I were in Azazel’s body with how naturally this defense came to me. My body seemed to move on its own as I sprung into motion, my main objective to stay near my people and protect them. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t in control of my own body, or even that my movements weren’t my own. The interesting thing that seemed to be happening was merely that it felt as if my body were shadowing Azazel’s. I could feel my own movements, and I could feel my limbs making these movements, but it was also simultaneously as I felt her behind me, pressed against my skin like a shadow. Maybe a puppeteer.

My body danced gracefully and dangerously around the Lords, who had sprung at me all at once in an attempt to stop me from taking them. But even as I was moving and fighting and punching and jabbing and dodging and parrying and kicking, I couldn’t escape the one thought that was like an insistent itch at the back of my head: What would I do if I managed to make it out of this? Where would I go? How would I escape? I had no idea where I was, or any idea of how I got there, let alone how to get out.

Lingering a little too long on my thoughts, I was caught off guard by a sucker punch that slammed straight to the center of my nose. A flash of white blinked in front of my eyes before I stumbled back, falling onto my butt hard. Containing a yell of pain, I stared hard at Mammon and Asmodeus, who had driven stakes through each of my wings. Before I could think to do anything else, or not do anything, I went to move my arms to push myself up, but found that they were paralyzed by both the pain in either wing as well as by their own immobility.

With a silent fit of rage, I jerked my head to the side to wipe my bleeding nose on my shoulder. Eight of the Lords of Hell stood around me then, a dark and terrible tension rolling off of them collectively. In the dimness of the cave, their eyes seemed to glow and stare down at me, made even more horrible by the blackness of their eyes. Pythius, unmoving, looked down at me with a sort of hatred that I couldn’t possibly imagine. His hatred for me had already been difficult to handle by himself, but there was something else, something ancient and old, then, that seemed to take control of not just him, but everyone, as he gazed down at me, seething, and said in a dull and toneless voice, “You’ve done it now.”

The very next moment, each of the eight Lords jerked in unison, their head shooting straight up as the cavern exploded in flames. Curling in on myself, I tried to shield my face from the fire, but someone—Merihem—snatched my face in her hand and jerked me upward. Letting out a cry, my wings had come free from the stakes as she lifted me above her head with a single arm. The Lords stood behind her in a sort of half circle, and Satan stepped forward, his eyes glowing a color I couldn’t describe. The only way I could describe the color of its eyes then, the color of all of their eyes, was the feeling it elicited out of me.

Unbridled, uninterrupted, unending, inexplicable terror.

Opening his mouth, a dark and disgustingly smooth voice slipped from his lips, but did not sync with the movement. There was something else there, then, controlling them all, and it spoke, “Amor Elise Johns, thirty-third incarnation of the Destroyer Angel Azazel, Second of the Final Trinity, Maiden of Arms, Bearer of the Divine Fire, and Protector of Man, you have transgressed against us. So as done to us, shall be done to you, and as you have taken one of our own, so shall we take one of yours.”

My head immediately shot to the right, where Agatha, Bond, and Jo were lying directly across from Sola, Selin, and Aio. None of them were moving then, but Olivier walked to them mechanically. The wounds on my wings had closed enough to allow some movement to my arms. Frantically, I fought against Merihem’s vicelike grip, clawing and swinging at her unmoving arms, all the while staring at Olivier as he moved to stand before Aio. Her beautiful face had been sullied by the appearance of black, pulsing veins that started at her eyes but spread up around her forehead and neck. Her wings had lost some of their color, turning a pale cream instead of their scorching scarlet and black.

“No!” I called out to Oliver, one of my hands shooting out to him, but I may as well have been talking to a wall. He was completely unfazed by my cry, as were the others. The only thing I could really hear then were my own useless struggles against Merihem and the fire crackling steadily all around us. Silently, Olivier withdrew a knife from a belt slung around his waist, and my eyes widened as my cries grew insistent and panicked.

“Olivier! No! Stop! That’s your brother! Stop!” I cried out, tears flooding my eyes as I fought savagely against Merihem, but nothing happened. No one said anything. Merihem did not move. Olivier did not stop moving. My cries to him didn’t stop even as he brought the knife high above his head, and then brought it slamming down into the smoothness of Aio’s stomach.

“No!” I shouted shrilly, my own movements stopping then.

Aio’s body jerked up, all of his limbs stiffening outward and his head flung back, eyes wide open. I saw then that his eyes had blackened, all except the yellow of his irises. The sunshine of his irises. He stayed like that, frozen for a second, the dagger sticking out of his stomach, and dark shimmering blood pouring from the blade. After a second, he slackened and seemed to look at the dagger sticking out of his body, his hands moving to almost encase them, but his head fell back before they could touch the blade. His eyes met mine.

“Aio,” I whispered, horrified.

His hand reached out to me weakly, trembling, and he uttered out, a steady stream of blood dripping from his mouth, “Sister.”

His hand dropped, and a single, bloody tear fell from his eye as the light flicked out in his eyes. Agatha began screaming then. She let out bloody and agonized cries as her body convulsed against the chains holding her down, and I yelled out, “What did you do to her? What did you do?”

“It’s all according to plan,” Pythius said dismissively, the fire blinking away and out of existence. My eyes darting to him, Merihem dropped me suddenly, and I scrambled over to Agatha hurriedly.

“Agatha, come on,” I said hastily, my hands shaking as I stared down at her. Her eyes were fighting to either roll back or roll forward in her head, but I could at least see how bloodshot they were as she slammed her head against the stone she was lying atop. Her nose slowly started to bleed, and I grabbed her head between my hands as I tried to speak to her, tried to calm her down.

“Come on, please, Agatha. You have to fight this,” I whispered frantically, looking into her pained face.

“A-Amo-or,” she choked out between clenched teeth. Her jaw had snapped shut. She was fighting to keep it closed as the veins popped out along her neck and as she threw her head back as far as her neck would allow. “A-Amo-or.”

“It’s no use, love. We’ve already got her,” Astaroth said, coming from behind me and placing a hand on my waist. Instincitvely, I threw his hand from my body. His tone was difficult to read. I was sickened by him regardless, but I thought I could pick up a tinge of sympathy covered by a mass smugness. Jerking my head to look at him, I bellowed out, “Get the fuck away from me you goddamned monster.”

Quickly turning back to Agatha, I didn’t get a chance to see his expression, but I could hear his steps receding. Looking up, Olivier was standing at the end of Aio’s slab, where her pale, delicate corpse lay limp, her eyes still staring off at nothing.

“Your brother!” I howled, feeling the haunting ghost of a heartbreak echoing against my soul.

Olivier was staring down at her, but he didn’t really seem to be seeing her. His hands hung limply at his sides then, but he did nothing and continued to gaze blankly down at her. Moving to cover Agatha with my body more, as if that would protect her from the agony she was facing then, I shouted at him again, “You killed your brother, Olivier.”

He looked up then, upon hearing his name. He looked at me first, an unreadable, stale expression on his face, then his eyes drifted over to Aio’s frozen face.

He shrugged.

“I am Olivier, Destroyer of Angels,” he said nonchalantly.

Shock stabbed straight through my body as my jaw dropped, and I stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He moved to her head then and slowly adjusted her so that she was looking straight up then. He closed her mouth and her eyes and gazed down at her a second longer, and then he looked back up at me and said, “I knew this would happen when I took Abaddon’s place.”

There was a suspiciously familiar plume of fire that erupted from within me as I shot up and over Agatha’s body toward Olivier, a Warcry in my throat that shook the cavern, but as my arms reached to grab him, someone else reached out to grab hold of my wings and yanked me back and against their chest. Astaroth wrapped his arms around mine and pressed me against his body as he purred into my ear, “My, my, my, you’re acting more and more like her as the seconds go by. How fascinating.”

“Get off of me!” I screeched out, my wings beating against his body as I tried to pull myself free of him, but his arms just tightened, and there was a disgustingly suspicious hardening somewhere lower. “You pervert!”

“And you are Amor, yes. Is there anything else you wanted to state,” he said huskily into my ear.

“Keep it in your pants, hamster,” Pythius snapped, sauntering to us. He walked around to Agatha and lowered himself down to her level. Taking a hand, he gently stroked her hair, tears streaming down her face, and in a woman’s voice, he said, “Aggy, it’s okay. You don’t have to keep fighting.”

“M-mom?” she asked, her head turning awkwardly to the sound of Pythius’ voice. Staring, slack jawed, I couldn’t muster the words to say anything else as I watched, somewhat fascinated, completely taken aback, as Pythius spoke, “Yes, Aggy. It’s me. It’s mom. I just wanted to let you know that I’m very proud of you, and you don’t have to keep fighting like this. You’ve been fighting a long time, and you don’t have to keep going on like this. It’s okay to rest now. You’ve done enough.”

Agatha had slowly begun to calm as she listened more to the sound of Pythius’ voice, and when he’d finished talking, she began weeping gently, saying, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, honey,” Pythius said in the woman’s voice, stroking her hair some more. Her eyes rolled back into place slowly, but she was having a hard time concentrating on anything. Her pupils had dilated almost to cover the whole iris.

Snapping out of the shock, I screamed out, “Agatha! No, that’s not your mom! It’s a demon! Fight it! Fight it!”

“I’m so tired, Mom,” Agatha cried softly, turning her head to Pythius but not seeing him. “I’m so tired.”

“It’s okay, honey,” Pythius repeated. “It’s okay. Just let go. I’ll be here for you, alright? I’ll be right here.”

“You will?” she asked, her head raising slightly, a betraying look of recognition coming over her face.

“Yes,” Pythius said softly, his expression stale and unchanging during the whole exchange.

“Agatha! No!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, but she’d already set her head down and closed her eyes. She let out a breath then, and she laid very still.

A few moments of a pregnant silence filled the cave. “Is it done?” Beelzebub asked, watching ominously.

“Yes, this one is finished,” Pythius said mildly, straightening. Taking a deep breath, he clapped his hands together and said, “Alright, on to the next one.”

“Jesus Christ, stop this!” I yelled, my voice cracking.

Pythius turned to look at me, an expression as if he’d cocked his eyebrows on his face. “Oh, you don’t like this?”

“No! I don’t like any of this!”

“Poor baby. Astaroth, why don’t you bring her here,” he said, gesturing to the stone slab Agatha was on.

“Sure,” he said, raising me up and carrying me over to the slab.

“Ah, jeez, you really couldn’t contain yourself,” Pythius scowled, reaching out to cover Astaroth’s lower region from his sight.

“Not when I’m this close to this beauty, here,” he murmured in my ear, nipping at it.

“Goddammit, stop touching me!” I screamed out wildly, flailing my arms. Pythius snickered before me, and then bent down to look me in the face and said, “I want you to see firsthand everything that will happen. I want you to understand that this is all your fault.”

He moved to Sola then, the twin with the red triangle. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Pythius gestured to Olivier and said, “Angel Killer. You have another angel to kill.”

Olivier had been staring at Aio’s dead body the whole time, but upon hearing Pythius, pulled the dagger from Aio’s belly and moved toward Sola. Astaroth adjusted himself around me to where he was still holding me firmly in place, but he was now leaning his head against my shoulder affectionately. My stomach churned.

The blood was quickly draining from my body as I watched Olivier move to Sola, and I whispered underneath my breath, “That’s your sister, Olivier.”

“So too was Abel Cain’s brother,” Olivier said back, not missing a beat as he brought his hand high above his head. Pythius watched with a somber expression, and though I wanted to shout, scream, fight, even look away, I did nothing but stare.

I was losing. I was going to lose. I was going to lose everything. I’d already lost Azazel, then Aio and Agatha, and now I was about to watch them kill Sola and take Joana from me, too.

Olivier quickly struck down then, but Sola shot up then, snatching Olivier’s hand and jerking it to the side, throwing him off balance. Olivier let out a cry of surprise and dropped the knife. Sola shouted at me in a ragged, burned out voice, “The pearl!”

My body responded before I could think. My arm shot back, jabbing Astaroth hard in the stomach, and caught off guard by the attack, he crumpled into himself. Jumping up from the slab, I darted to Joana as Pythius pounced on Sol. Snatching at the knife that Oliver had dropped, I stabbed down hard on the chains, which gave way almost instantly. Slapping her face, I called out, “Jo, come on, Jo, wake up!”

She stirred slightly, and finally moaned out hoarsely, “Ama?”

My face melted in relief, and I said, “Yeah, it’s me. C’mon. We have to get out of here.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Merihem snapped, appearing before me suddenly.

“Amor, the pearl!” I heard Sola call out again. Glancing over at her, I saw that she was behind held down by Pythius, Olivier, Asmodeus, and Mammon. Sola was weak, then, but even in her weakened state, it took four Lords of Hell to hold her down. Turning back to Merihem, I quickly tucked the knife into my stomach and lunged forward, stabbing her just off to the side of her belly. She let out a cry that sounded like an alligator’s hiss at the same time, and she fell back. Quickly, I got behind her and held the knife to her throat as I jabbed a hand into the wound and used that as leverage to hold her close to me. All movement stopped as eyes fell on me. Astaroth, Beelzebub, and Satan had been in the midst of moving toward me before I had taken her in my arms, and there was silence where the other four were entangled with Sol.

Meeting Astaroth, Satan, and Beelzebub’s eyes, I said in a steely and dry voice, “Let Sola go or I swear I will murder Merihem.”

“You won’t do anything,” Pythius said, standing and staring straight at me. There was uncertainty in his eyes.

“Are you really trying to call my bluff?” I snapped, glaring hard at him.

“Yeah, I am, because I know you better than anyone else here. I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone here if you had the choice,” he said, crossing his arms. A quick flare of anger shot through me, and I twisted my hand in her wound. Her blood was thick and black, and it was burning my hand like battery acid. She let out a suppressed groan of pain, and assuming they must have had a higher pain tolerance, twisted my hand until she let out a shrill cry. Feeling cold and tense, I stared squarely at Pythius and said in an icy tone, “I must not have the choice then.”

Looking back at Satan and Beelzebub, I said, “Let Sola go or I swear I will kill her.”

They both looked at me steadily with calculating expressions. Merihem said nothing, but I paid the most attention to her. She was the closest Fallen to me, which meant if I wasn’t careful at every single moment, she could easily turn the tables on me. Any slight movement she made that wasn’t a breath of air, I jabbed her wound in a little more.

After a few more tense and anxious moments, Satan finally said in a grinding tone, “Let the angel go.”

Without hesitation, Olivier, Mammon, and Asmodeus all stood from Sol, and she scrambled over to me and reached into my pocket and pulled out the black pearl that Pythius had given me. I had forgotten all about it.

“The pearl,” Sola said frantically, looking deep into my eyes.

“Sola, what am I supposed to do with this?” I hissed, looking at her. Two things happened then.

Merihem elbowed me straight in the stomach as I had done with Astaroth, and Pythius stabbed Sola through the chest then. Her blood sprayed across my body as she fell backwards.

“Sola!” I cried out, crawling over to her through the pain in my stomach.

“Sister,” she gurgled, her shimmering blood pouring from her mouth. Her hand reached out, clenching the pearl, and she said once more, the light quickly fading from her eyes, “The pearl.”

“Sola, goddammit!” I cried out past my tears as I took the pearl in my hand. Jo’s body began convulsing then, and I moved to her quickly, cupping her face in mine, and I cried out, “Joana! You cannot give in!”

“Olivier. Selin,” Pythius said with a snap of his fingers, and my head shot up. Panic coursed through my body like electricity as I looked up between Olivier and Jo, not knowing what to do or who to go to. My hand clenched tighter around the peal, feeling all of the options slipping from my hands one by one. I looked down at Sola, whose eyes were still open and staring, and I let out a frustrated groan, the weight of all the helplessness dragging me down. Part of my mind dissolved into the panic, flitting frantically back and forth between Jo and Olivier, and things seemed to move in slow motion as I watched him and watched her.

“It’s over, sweetie, we won,” Pythius spoke in Evelyn’s voice to my ear, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“No!” I snarled, throwing an elbow backwards in his direction, but he wasn’t there anymore, and all I could really do then was place my forehead on Jo’s, and I whispered in her ear over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Despite her shaking, convulsing body, her hand reached up to touch mine, and I looked down at her, my tears dripping on her face.

“I’m so sorry, Jo,” I whispered, my voice cracking as I held her closer, “This is all my fault. This is all my fault.”

She closed her hand in mine, and she choked out around a clenched throat, “This was my choice.”

Before I could realize what she was doing, she took the black pearl from my hand and forced it in her mouth and swallowed. Her body instantly stopped moving, and Pythius let out a strangled cry. Olivier stopped mid motion and looked over to Pythius, as did everyone else. I was shocked to see his body boiling then. His skin was literally boiling over his bones as steam escaped through his mouth, his eyes, anywhere it could, and when that wasn’t enough, it began to plume up from holes created by the heat building inside his body.

“What did you do?” Merihem snarled, her hand shooting out and grasping my neck, crushing my throat closed. Before I could answer, Pythius’ body exploded behind her. A bright light filled the entire cave, and there was a loud piercing noise that disintegrated into a high pitched ringing that disoriented me. I know that Merihem had dropped me, and I had crumpled to the ground, but I had no idea what happened after that.

All I knew then was that I couldn’t save my best friend.