Dancing With the Devil (9 page)

Somewhere around the time I lost
my underwear and experienced what can only be described in heavenly terms as ‘jubilation’,
I decided purgatory wasn’t all that bad.

In fact, my purgatory kicked ass.

The horror movie monsters had
gone bye-bye. My magic was stronger than ever and I had used it for good, not
evil, to heal Luc. (That is, of course, if you disregard the fact Luc embodies
evil, but hey, he was my slave now, so I could keep him on the straight and
narrow, right?)

The Mark was gone. The souls I’d
brokered were free, except for my mother’s, which I intended to do something
about as soon as I had all the facts.

And the cherry on top of this purgatory
sundae? Luc was with me. Nothing could keep us apart here. Not God, not
Michael…not even my previous failings as a witch.

I fell asleep in Luc’s arms
inside the cave. While we were making love, my magic came to the rescue,
carpeting the cave’s floor with a soft, thick moss. Overhead, dozens of
fireflies clung to the ceiling, casting soft light in undulating pulses. Sweet-smelling
herbs and night-blooming flowers burst to life at each spot Luc and I christened
with our bodies.

I woke sometime later to see Luc
standing at the cave’s entrance, backlit by a glow in the forest. Shallow
disappointment flashed through me when I noticed he was dressed in a suit and
tie. Where had those clothes come from? Had he gotten his magic back?

My own magic reached for his, but
felt nothing. Too weird.

Not that he didn’t rock the
high-end designer runway look. As always, no matter what clothes he wore, sex
and power oozed out of him. This look, however, all business and I had hoped
he’d still be naked.

He’s much more fun without
clothes.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I sat
up and tugged on my sweater and jeans. “Hey.”

He didn’t look at me, just
continued to stare out the entrance. His hands were on his hips in a protective
stance. “Good. You’re awake.”

“What is it?”

Leaving his spot, he took my
hand, kissed it and interlaced our fingers. “Come see.”

He drew me outside and my breath
caught in my throat. The moss inside the cave had trailed out and turned the
blackened forest into a lush meadow filled with healthy trees, white-petaled
flowers and a bubbling stream that wound its way past my mother’s tree.

She was no longer leafless, and
instead, sported a full head of shiny green leaves that reflected a sky
jam-packed with stars. Deer gathered at the stream to drink. Frogs, crickets
and other nocturnal creatures hummed and crooned in the warm night air.

Peace.

This was what peace felt like. What
it looked like. I drew a deep breath and leaned into Luc’s chest. How ironic,
the two of us had brought peace to purgatory.

Hey, God. How’s that for
universal balance?

Luc kissed the top of my head,
stepped away. “This is all my fault.”

This? As in utopia? “It’s
amazing. I never dreamed our combined magics could create so much peace and
beauty. The only thing it needs is a big ol’ ice cream shop down there by my
mom’s tree.”

Luc frowned. “
Combined
magics? I have no magic, and you’re in purgatory, Amy. There is no peace or
beauty here.”

One man’s purgatory was another
man’s Heaven. “Of course there is. Just look at it. It’s…perfect.”

He searched my face, the corners
of his eyes pinching. “Whatever you’re seeing is an illusion.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“But there are flowers and deer.”
I pointed at the center of the meadow. “A pretty little stream and my mother’s
tree…”

Luc waved a hand in front of my
face as if testing my vision. I flinched and stepped back. The look on his face
told me he thought my Happy Meal was short about a dozen fries.

My heart dropped. “You honestly
don’t see any of that?”

The corners of his lips dipped.
Once more, he took my hand and led me forward, down the moss-covered—at least
to me—hill and into the meadow. We headed toward my mother’s tree, me pulling
up short at the edge of the stream while Luc marched across, walking on top of
the water.

On the other side, he motioned me
to come. Wondering how deep the stream was or if it really was all an illusion
and the water was as solid as the ground I stood on, I hesitated. “God’s
playing a joke on me, isn’t He?”

“Forget God,” Luc said. He held
out a hand. “Come to me.”

My heart and magic tugged me
forward. “Are you an illusion too? Did I dream you up along with the rest of
this?”

He didn’t answer, just continued
to offer his hand.

Reaching for it, I closed my eyes
and gingerly stuck my foot in the water, waiting for it to soak through my
shoe.

The ground underfoot remained
firm and nothing cold or wet touched my skin. I opened my eyes, saw utopia
slowly slide away. The deer vanished; the flowers curled up and dropped to the
ground. The stream became a thick line of burnt grass.

The leaves on my mother’s tree
turned black and disappeared. The bark split into deep crevices. The devastated
forest grew dark and ominous as the stars evaporated behind dark thunderheads.

Double damn. “This is what I get
for calling God a traitor.”

Luc quirked an eyebrow but didn’t
ask. Drawing me to him, he put one hand around my waist and guided me to the
tree.

There, he pressed my hand against
the trunk. My palm tingled and itched, making my magic fidget. I jerked away,
but Luc commandeered my hand again and forced it back to the bark, pressing the
palm against it. “This is the Tree of Knowledge. It’s time you remembered the
truth.”

“Truth about what?”

He spooned his body behind mine,
wrapping his free arm around my waist and bracing me. “This is going to hurt,”
he murmured. “But I’ll be with you all the way.”

His mouth was close to my ear and
goose bumps raced down the back of my neck. My nipples tingled and I
instinctively leaned into him. “Why is this going to hur—oww!”

A powerful stinger poked my palm,
ripping through the skin and prodding the tendons and bones. On its heels, a
volt of very strong, very powerful magic rushed up my arm. I lurched backwards
but there was nowhere to go. The solid wall known as Luc held firm.

I planted my feet and shoved. “Let
go!”

“Open your mind, Amy.” Luc’s
voice was liquid heat, filling my head. My legs went weak, my resistance
dissolving as I floated for a moment in that heat.

“Remember,” he said again.

The volt of magic wormed its way
through my system and stabbed my heart. The pain I’d felt when the Axeman was
cutting down the tree exploded in my chest all over again.

It subsided as fast as it came,
the volt moving on to stab my magic next. A new type of pain.

I cried out.

The sound drove the magic
straight to my brain. A warm rushing sensation flowed through my system. Images
flooded my mind.

Luc, with his flame-tipped wings
as an angel, stood on a battlefield at the head of an army of angels—hoards of
them, all with flaming swords and other weapons I didn’t recognize. From across
the expanse, he looked at me for a long moment, his dark eyes seeming to soak
me up. Satisfied, he smiled and nodded his head. I returned the smile and the
nod and raised the sword in my hand over my head.

Wait, where did that come from?

I felt a fresh rush of warmth in
my veins. The rush of knowledge.

This was it. The Great War.

Battle cries pierced the air, stabbing
at my eardrums as the armies rushed toward a mountain. The opposing army
descended in a flash of light and sound. As the two met, the clash of metal on
metal set my teeth on edge. A putrid smell clogged my nose and I realized it
was the smell of burning feathers.

Before me, angels dropped to the
ground and bled gold.

The scene shifted.

No more cries of defeat or
success. The ground under my feet was sticky with the blood of my fellow
combatants. Those angels still standing looked at me for direction.

And then some of them fell.
Pushed really. Thrown out of Heaven by a powerful force. They tumbled from the
battlefield, through the air and down, down, down.

Instinctively I reached for them.
“No! Wait!”

But they were gone. I stood on the
edge of Heaven, my heart bleeding out as I watched those I loved being cast out
from God’s presence.

And then I was falling with them.

Not falling so much as jumped. I
jumped
from the heavens and joined my brothers and sisters dropping toward the earth,
and…

“Amo!” Lucifer’s voice rang out,
shaking the air, slowing my fall as if he’d commanded it to pillow me.

I was there, in the memory.
Floating, and angry that he would try to stop me, even as his arms felt right
as they cradled me to him. Gritting my teeth, I spread my wings and fought
against his hold. One of my wings was broken and refused to open. I struggled
anyway.

I will not abandon them, Light
Bearer.

Luc’s voice snaked into my mind.
Then I shall go with you
.

A bright reddish-orange light
burst around me and I was wrapped in my lover’s fiery wings.

Together we fell from grace.

In purgatory, my magic roared,
cutting off the tree’s probe and shoving it away.

My free hand dug into Luc’s arm,
still around my waist, and I shook my head to clear the images burned there.

Angel.

Me.

No. Witchy. Way.

Those had to be someone else’s
memories. Someone else’s thoughts. Someone else’s broken wing.

Not mine
. I shook my head
again. Damn, I needed a Dove in a bad way. Hell, I needed a freakin truckload
of Dove chocolates at this point.

This was a mistake. A terrible
joke.

A definite psychotic break.

But then I felt that warm rush of
knowledge and I couldn’t fight it. My knees buckled. My body fell hard and
fast. So fast, Luc almost didn’t catch me before my butt hit the ground.

He did, though. Like always, the
Devil saved me.

“I’ve got you.” He eased us both
down to the ragged ground under the tree. Aging roots buckled the earth. He situated
us between two large protruding roots, cradled me in his lap and enclosed me
inside his strong arms. “I’ll never let you fall.”

My voice shook. “Too late.”

One of his hands caressed my hair.
He tucked my head under his chin. “'The truth will set you free.’”

Truth. Highly overrated. “Seems
like you have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Too much, I’m afraid. We’ve been
together an eternity already. You just don’t remember it. Yet. Everything will
come back to you in time, now that you’ve been reunited with the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

My body shook. Cold or fear? I
glanced up at the towering tree. “Thought it was supposed to be an apple tree.”

“The apple was symbolic. The real
thing never bared fruit. Only the truth.”

My teeth chattered. I clamped my
jaws together until I could regain my composure. “So the punch line is I’m
a…fallen angel? Like you?”

“Your name in Heaven was Amo. It
means ‘I love’. You embodied love in all its forms.”

My stomach threatened to revolt. Mostly
because it was all starting to make sense. Why the other angels kept calling me
Amo. Why God, Gabriel and Cephiel wouldn’t leave me alone. Why Adam had
subconsciously chosen me to be his modern-day Eve before the real thing showed
up. Why Samson and Delilah had come to me for a weird version of couples
counseling.

Oh, jeez. “I’m a cupid?”

Luc chuckled. “More like a
goddess of love. The Greek’s and Roman’s deities were based on you.”

Uh-huh. “Keisha’s the matchmaker,
not me.”

I shifted to look him in the eye.
Was he real? Was anything I’d seen in those visions real? Or was this all part
of purgatory? Suddenly, everything seemed suspect. “If I’m all lovey dovey, why
was I swinging a sword in those visions?”

“You’re a fierce warrior, Amo. Your
two sides are equally balanced.”

Universal balance. Each angel
embodied it until the Great War in Heaven.

I shook him off, stood and paced
to the place where the stream had been. “We lost the war, but I didn’t fall
with the others. Neither did you. We jumped.”

“You jumped. I followed.”

At my exasperated look, he
shrugged. “The war wasn’t about me.
I
wasn’t the one who wanted to be
like the Most High or planned to exalt my altar above His. That’s the
modern-day fairy tale version of the real story.”

“You’re saying
I’m
the one
who wanted to be above God?”

“You didn’t like the way He ran
things.”

Big surprise there.

The weight of all this knowledge
hit. This was no joke. A sick coldness stole up my spine even as my insides
felt like they were on fire. “Maybe you better start at the beginning.”

Luc patted the ground next to
him. “You might want to sit down again.”

O-
kay
. Pretty sure I didn’t
wanted to hear what he had to say.

I plopped down anyway, and he
started talking. “In the beginning…”

Realizing this could take a
while, I interrupted. “Cliff Notes version, okay?”

He nodded. “Let’s see. How to
condense this…God, Heaven, lots of angels. You and I fell in love, and when
you
fall in love, you don’t mess around. We were overly…passionate. Obsessed might
be a better word. We started to exalt each other over God.”

“And He got jealous.”

“God wasn’t the only one. Our
love was all-consuming. It caused other angels to feel desire and lust. Greed
and jealousy.”

“But those are sins. Sin doesn’t
exist in Heaven.”

“It didn’t…” He leaned close,
stroked a hair off my cheek. “Until you and I created it.”

Well, well. That explained a lot.
“
We
”—I waved a finger between his chest and mine—”created sin?”

“Our love was so pure, so
god-like in its existence, God, Himself, was forced to respond by creating its
opposite.”

“But the opposite of love is
hate.”

He nodded. “Hate, anger, fear. All
of these sins grew out of our love.”

The revelations kept coming and
yet they created more questions. My brain ran on a hamster wheel, whirling and
whirling.

Intuitively, I knew the answers to
all those questions. Or maybe the answers came from my encounter with the Tree.
Either way, it was quite a story. One that pissed me off as much as it saddened
me. “God separated us. He thought He could kill our love for each other.”

“He put you in purgatory. I broke
you out. That rebellion started a war. THE war.”

“Star-crossed lovers.” I snorted
softly. “Keisha’s always talking about the various wars and how many of them
actually started because of a pair of doomed lovers.”

Doomed
maybe wasn’t the
best word. “There have been many.”

Silence hung between us. As I
stared at the charred forest, I replayed the memories the Tree of Knowledge had
coughed up. The image of the angels toppling out of Heaven flashed through my
mind and constricted my chest. “What happened to our brothers and sisters? Our
friends?”

Luc heaved a tired sigh, stood and
brushed ash from his pants. “There’s something you should see.”

Oh, crud. “Do I have to?”

He offered his hand, helped me
up. “This won’t hurt like the Tree of Knowledge.”

He was wrong.

On the far side of the charred
forest was a wide desert. Scorching wind, blowing sand, and endless mirages. Heads
down, we trooped through the sand, the weight of it tiring my legs and wearing
me down.

The mirages rose in front of me
as we walked. Me, as a baby, in my mother’s arms. Emilia and I playing Barbies.
I accidently set one of the doll’s hair on fire with my magic. Running away
from my aunt’s home, causing trouble in school, performing magic with Keisha,
and finally, meeting Lucifer at the feet of the Venus di Milo statue in Paris.

Luc trudged a foot or two in
front of me, seemingly oblivious to the images purgatory was vomiting at me. “God
has tried many ways to keep us apart. We always find our way back to each
other.”

I stared at the Memorex version
of my life rising out of the sand and couldn’t help the self-satisfied grin
lifting my lips. “Even as a human, I’ve done nothing but rebel against Him.”

“As the Fallen, we were together.
He couldn’t let that stand, so He offered a reward and one of the Fallen
kidnapped you and returned you to Heaven. There, He chained you up, knowing
Heaven is the one place I cannot enter. Your soul was dying there. Well…” He
paused. “You’re an angel and technically you can’t die, but your love, the very
essence of your soul, was shriveling up and morphing into the sins of what we
had created. I couldn’t bear it, so I struck a deal. I agreed to stay away from
you if He allowed your soul to enter a human body.”

“But you couldn’t stay away from
me.”

“Keisha cast the spell that
brought us back together.” Luc stretched out his arms. “And here we are.”

Keisha was a powerful witch.
There was no denying that. But in my heart, I knew Luc and I would have found
each other regardless.

Side by side, we climbed a sandy
hill and stood at the top. I was breathing heavy even though I didn’t really
need to breathe at all. Down below, a marble city sat half buried in sand.
Another ghost town.

Nothing moved but the sand. All
was silent. And creepy. I glanced around for the monster I expected to come
rushing out at us. “Where are we? What is the place?”

“You asked where our angel
warriors went.” Luc pointed at the marble columns, crumbling buildings and
eroded statues jutting up from the sand. “This, my love, is the City of Lost
Angels.”