Evenstar (27 page)

Ceres smiled.
 
“Let someone else help for once, stop carrying everything on your shoulders.”
 
She enveloped him in ice.
 
The fire on his skin died and his eyelids closed.
 
She glanced at the King and Queen.
 
“I need my cousins,
immediately
, I cannot do this alone.
 
Summon them, Morgan.”

The King bowed.
 
“Yes, Mother.”

The air around her blurred and Ceres moved through the palace into the Sanctuary.
 
The Sanctuary was a small round room hidden in the center of the palace.
 
The room was sparse; its only furniture was a raised dais in the center.
 
Two doors broke up the mirror smooth walls.  One door led in from the palace, it was closed, long unused.
 
The other door was fused into the stone and remained ever locked, behind it was the heart of the City and no one entered there.

The Sanctuary throbbed with energy, glowing as Ceres and Lucifer appeared.
 
She positioned his body on the dais and unwrapped his wounds.
 
She hissed at the sight of scorched flesh.
 
Ceres, mother of summer and winter, poured the strength of both seasons into his limbs.
 
The dais iced over, keeping his body cold and putting him into stasis.
 
She sat on the ground and waited for the others.
 

A blast of sunshine and Phoenix appeared, her body in constantly changing colored light.
 
She saw Lucifer and trembled.
 
“The Spear of Light makes me hate the duty I bear.”

Ceres clucked her tongue.
 
“You should be proud to carry on as the Light Bringer.
 
Sit with me.”
 
She patted the place by her side.
 

Her younger cousin sat down and brought her knees to her chest.
 
“He looks worse than what we were told of the time before.”
 

Ceres nodded.
 
“It
is
worse.”

Hephaestus stepped out of the wall, and Thanatos followed on his heels.
 
Hephaestus nodded to his cousins and took up vigil around his grandfather.
 
Thanatos leaned over Lucifer, keeping physical decay at bay.
 

Neptune came in a breeze of mist; Agni in a burst of flame.
 

Shalim appeared in a veil of shadows and voices.
 
He looked around for his twin.
 
“Where is Spider?”

Ceres concentrated on Lucifer.
 
“She has not made her presence known.
 
Set is also not here.”

“Am now.”
 
The dark-skinned boy arrived in miniature storms.
 
“I will find Spider.”
 
He blinked out of existence.

The cousins focused their attention on Lucifer.
 
Along the dais, imbedded stones glowed with their energy.
 
Outside the room, the City lights fluctuated.
 
Millions of Lilliam took up vigil in their homes, in the streets, and in the makeshift medical centers that covered the miles of cavern.
 
They gave their energy to the earth and through the earth to the gods that surrounded Lucifer.
 

The Lilliam waited and prayed.
 

***

Thursday

Dahlia came out of her nightmares into regular sleep.
 
The pain had not been as bad; the cold had come and gone.
 
For the first time in her unbroken prison, Dahlia had been held.
 
A presence stayed and comforted her, blocked the pain and made her know not to give up.
 
She knew it was Furcas, but did not know why or how.
 
He had stayed with her until the nightmare ended.

Consciousness brought a new form of pain and worry.
 
It was the sore feeling of bruises and pulled muscles, of sitting in the wrong position for hours.
 
She was on her stomach, face down; her hands were pulled behind her back.
 
A warm body covered her and pressed her into hard concrete.
 
Her eyes were gummy, her mouth swollen and dry; her face was cut where she’d been struck with the gun.
 
She wrinkled her nose until her eyes came unstuck.
 
She opened one eye, then another.
 

Whitney breathed into her ear.
 
“Don’t move, Dahlia.”

Dahlia looked up at Whitney.
 
Her friend was pale, her face bruised and crusted with dried blood.
 
Whitney looked at the floor as if asleep.
 
A door opened and closed out of their sight.
 
Whitney opened her eyes all the way; her lips touched Dahlia’s ear.
 
“We have three guards, but they’re out for the moment.
 
I’d get off you but we’re tied together.
 
We’re in some kind of cage cell thing.
 
Can you move at all?”

Dahlia nodded and flinched at the pain.
 
She felt along the length of biting plastic that bound her to Whitney.
 
They were dressed; Dahlia still wore her pendant and bracelets.
 
She swallowed.
 
“They’ve left us alone?”

“For now.”

“How is your leg?”

“I can tolerate it.
 
It’s not that bad compared…”
 
Whitney closed her eyes.
 
“They’ve done…
things
to the others.
 
Things that make my injury look like a scratch.”
 
She gagged and couldn’t continue.
  

Dahlia rotated her shoulders slowly and moved her neck.
 
She looked around for the first time.
 
Half of her line of sight was concrete, broken by metal bars imbedded in the floor.
 
They were on one end of a narrow room, situated by the door the guards had gone out of.  She shifted and looked down her nose.  Nukka’s face stared back at her…blank, dead, and not attached to the rest of her.
 
Dahlia’s eyes flicked up.
 
An operating table sat against the opposite wall and dripped clotting blood.
 
Nukka’s arms and legs were wrapped in plastic and tagged.
 
Her organs were in stages of being measured and put into containers.
 
Dahlia’s stomach churned, but she was too weak to vomit.
 

Whitney squeezed her.
 
“Breathe.
 
Do not scream.
 
They don’t know we’re awake yet.”
 

Dahlia had no desire to scream.
 
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Nukka’s face.
 
The nausea faded, replaced with guilt.
 
“This is my fault.”

Somewhere towards her feet, low sobs started up.
 

Whitney cringed.
 
“
Shh
, baby.”

Helion tore at his hair.
 
“I am so
sorry
, Andy!
 
I couldn’t control myself!
 
What have I caused?
 
Andy, I’m sorry!”
 
Helion’s voice cracked, raw from talking for hours.

Dahlia shifted slowly to turn and look at the fallen angel.
 
Helion sat unbound on the concrete.
 
His eyes locked on something on the shadowed side of the room.
 
Heat wafted from that direction with a strange smell, but the area was dark and indistinct.
 

Whitney’s voice was fast and sharp, “Do
not
look that way anymore.”

Dahlia searched her friend’s eyes.
 
“Why?”

Whitney blinked back tears.
 
“Just
don’t
, Dahlia.”

Clicking drew Dahlia’s gaze back to the dark area and Helion.
 
Helion’s sobs began anew.
 
“Andrealphus, I’m so sorry!”

The clicking stopped.
 
Flames erupted from the floor.
 
A dark mass lay in the middle of the inferno.

Dahlia felt as if her air had been sucked away.
 
“
Andy
!”

Fire had eaten away his clothes, hair, and skin.
 
Dahlia watched as another round of timed flame scorched away the bits that had healed.
 
She pushed at the ground, but Whitney held her still.
 
Dahlia whispered, “Why can’t he escape?”

“They have him chained inside a metal circle.”

Dahlia’s mind raced.
 
“Draw it.”

Whitney bent her nose to the floor and made a rough sketch out of blood and dirt.
 
She looked at her own design.
 
“I can’t do the squiggles without my fingers.”

Dahlia did not need to see the details.
 
“It’s a seal, or a summoning circle.”
 
She closed her eyes recalling the passages that went along with it.
 
“We need to break the line.”

“It’s imbedded in the floor.
 
The flames are coming up from the bottom of it; it’s like a metal grate or something.”

The fire died.
 
Andy’s head wobbled.
 
Helion trembled.
 
“
Andy
.
 
I’m so sorry!”

Andy’s tongue snaked out between his lips.
 
“Helion.
 
Shut the fuck up already.”

Dahlia gagged.
 
“Oh God, he’s
conscious
.”

Andy heard her.
 
He turned his head, flaking off dead skin.
 
His eye sockets were desiccated pits.
 
He addressed her, “You will not do or say anything that could put your life in jeopardy.
 
Do you understand?”

Dahlia whispered, “Yes.
 
Andy, I’m so sorry—”

“Will everyone stop saying that?
 
It doesn’t make me feel any better.”
 
Andy shifted in his chains.
 
Metal scraped away at blistered skin.
 
“This looks worse than it is.
 
I can heal while you cannot.
 
Remember that
.”

The door swung open and a man in an iron-latticed lab coat walked in.
 
He ignored the girls in the cage and looked at Helion.
 
“Demon, are you ready to tell me where the City is or shall we continue to burn this one?”

Helion’s eyes blurred with tears.
 
“I do not know!”
 

The man did not look convinced.
 
“Where is the burning demon’s lamin?”

Helion shook his head.
 
“I do not know!
 
I don’t know what that is!”

“Where were you headed before we got you?”

Helion struggled to hold the words in.
 
“The City.”

“But you do not know where it is?”

“No!”

The man hit a set of controls and the fire raged under Andy.
 
Andy flinched, but did not make a sound.
 
The snap and pop of burning flesh filled the air along with Helion’s renewed crying.
 
Dahlia held in the curses that threatened to spill out of her mouth.
 
The man leaned over Helion, and she saw the flash of Helion’s lamin around the man’s neck.
 
Her eyes fixed on it.

The fire stopped.
 
Andy sagged.

The man smiled, intrigued by Helion.
 
“I understand you have recently joined the Fallen.
 
Why did you slip from the perfection that is Heaven?”

Helion screwed his mouth shut.
 
His body shook.
 
Blood dripped out of his nose and ears.
 

Andy hissed.
 
“Helion speak, you weaken yourself unnecessarily!”

Dahlia eyed Andy.
 
One of his eyeballs reformed and he looked at her, the command to stay silent clear.
 
“Helion, stop!”

Helion listened to Andy; the words tumbled out of his mouth, “To stop them from doing it again!”

“Doing what?”

“Imprisoning her.”

“Who’s
her
?”
 
The man consulted a clipboard.

“Ladriam!”

The man had heard this name.
 
He referred to a piece of paper.
 
“Where
is
Ladriam?
 
We need her.
 
Michael seeks her out.
 
I can stop the pain for you both if you tell me where she is.”
 
He looked between Helion and Andy.