Evenstar (66 page)

***

Ifrit slept in fire.
 
His dreams sent volcanoes into eruptions of steam and molten rock.
 
He felt the pulse of Gaea and Chronos within his dream.
 
He roiled in fire and awoke.
 
He felt at once the heat of the Light Bringer, his father.
 
He smiled.
 
Steam vented in geysers along the ocean, and fire warmed hot springs around the world.
 
Dead volcanoes churned to life.
 

Ifrit shrugged his shoulders and sent a chain of underwater mountains into rumblings as fault lines unsettled.
 
He took his angelic form and stepped out onto the lava fields of Hawaii, a winged fiery man.
 
He looked around, not having come to the surface in some time.
 
His body glowed red from the heat; his eyes were sapphires.
 
Ifrit smiled.

A hand of stone grabbed his ankle and pulled.
 

Ifrit kicked at Titan.

Titan laughed and the islands shook.
 
He punched through the rock and came to the surface.
 
Both brothers looked towards the horizon.
 

Ifrit pointed.
 
“I can see Ouroboros.”
 
Titan rumbled and howled, still a wolf.
 
Ifrit spread his wings of flame and the brothers raced to meet with the others.
 

***

Michael gripped his spear and stared at the changing landscape of the planet below.
 
“What is going on?”
 
The other Archangels flew by his side watching the shifting landscape.

Raphael shrugged.
 
“They are healing what was broken.”

Michael sighed.
 
“What do you mean?
 
Who?”

“That is what I mean.”

Michael swung the spear at him, and Raphael backed off.
 
Gabriel took his place.
 
“I think it obvious, Michael.”

“What?”

“Lucifer is healed.
 
Ladriam has been found.
 
They are having sex.”

The Archangels made faces.
 
Michael scowled at the planet.
 
“That is all they
ever
did!”

Jegudiel smiled as his ward was fulfilled.
 
“
Love
.”

Uriel grabbed Jegudiel and wrenched his arm.
 
“Why are you so happy about that!”
 

Selaphiel punched Uriel, launching him towards the moon.
 
“Do not lay your foul hands upon my brother!”

Uriel charged back.
 
Michael stepped between the two.
 
“Uriel, stop.
 
Jegudiel cannot help the way he was made.
 
Just as you cannot.”
 
He looked at the planet, then at Gabriel.
 
“Get it ready.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
 
“I thought—”

“Do not.
 
Make it ready, fire it, and obliterate this disgusting place.”
 
Michael looked at Uriel.
 
“Get your soldiers ready, we have pendants enough now to invade.”

Uriel grinned, gleeful, and left.
 
Michael turned his back on the planet.
 
“I cannot watch anymore of this.”
 
He looked at Selaphiel, Jegudiel, and Raphael.
 
“You
will
participate this time.
 
He has ordered it so.
 
Disobey and you suffer the fate of the wingless.”

The three nodded and vanished.
 
Michael followed.
 
Barachiel and Gabriel stared at the planet.
 
Barachiel held his register in front of him.
 
“I do not want to go there again.”

“Tough.”
 
Gabriel rubbed his temples.

Barachiel glared at Gabriel and vanished.

Gabriel sighed.
 
He squinted down at the Earth, confused.
 
He shook his head and left

***

Lucifer stroked Dahlia’s sweat-soaked hair with one hand; his other traced a pattern lazily on her shoulder.
 
She lay on his chest, resting her head on his skin.
 
She kissed his flesh.
 
He stared at her while her red eyes flitted up and down his body.
 
She was just as entranced by him as he was of her, as it had been before when they were together.

The pain of guilt still throbbed inside, but the sharp agony had faded, the self-loathing lessened.
 
He could not hate himself intensely when she so clearly did not.
 
He massaged her shoulder and felt better, not complete, certainly not whole, but improved.
 
His memories of her imprisonment and of his hand in it still present, but they had lost some their immediacy in the afterglow of very good and much needed makeup sex.

Dahlia smiled.
 
“You are no longer despairing.”

He nodded, his words soft and cautious, “To despair would be to insult what just occurred between us.”
 
Lucifer smiled slightly.
 
“You are divine.”

She pushed up on her elbows and he pulled her into a kiss.
 
She smiled.
 
“You have taken a look outside your prison.”

He frowned slightly.
 
“You have shown me a glimpse.”

“There is much more.”

Lucifer stroked her cheek.
 
“I remember the time before.”
 
His eyes grew pained.
 
“Our happiness.”

She hugged him.
 
“A step at a time and we will both be free.
 
Can you do something for me?”

“I will try.”

“Be happy now, in the moment.
 
Give me a day to show you.”

“What will you show me?”

“That you have much to live and be happy for.
 
I want you to be whole, Lucifer.
 
I want to move forward with you.
 
Be here with me, do not get lost in the past, at least for this day.”

He nodded.
 
“This I can give to you.”

Dahlia smiled and kissed him.
 
He kissed her back and let the memories fade.
 
She nipped his lip.
 
He laughed and slapped her bottom.
 
She squeezed him tight and rested her head against his neck.
 
Her heart beat in time with his.
 
The beat moved along with the song he heard emanating from her, the lovely lullaby he had missed for so long.
 

He let it lull him into complacency.
 
He yawned.

She laughed and looked up at him.
 
“Did you just yawn?”

He covered his mouth.
 
“Maybe.”
 
He flipped her on her back.
 
“You are tiresome.”
 
He kissed her shoulder and worked his way to her neck.

Dahlia smiled and mussed his hair.
 
“Good.”
 
She laughed.
 
“Do you know what I want right now?”

“What?”

“A Bartlett Pear, a ripe one, a perfect pear.
 
That sounds delicious.”
 
She kissed his forehead.
 
“But I will settle for you I guess.”
 
A pear dropped from Gaea’s tree and hit Lucifer in the back.
 
He looked up as an orange hit his shoulder.
 
A strawberry bounced off his nose.
 
Dahlia laughed and grabbed the pear.
 
“Ask and ye shall receive apparently.”

Gaea’s tree glowed; the branches carried every kind of fruit Dahlia had ever seen.
 
She bit into the pear and sat up with Lucifer.
 
He caught blueberries as a banana smacked him in the face.
 
Cherries rained down, and an apple bounced off her head.
 

He glanced up at the tree.
 
“
Stop
.”
 
The tree stopped dropping fruit.
 
Dahlia finished her pear and tossed the core to the side.
 
Lucifer leaned over and picked berries out of her hair.
 
“I wonder what we did this time?”

She smashed a lemon against his chest.
 
“Made fruit.”
 
She stretched and yawned.
 

He pushed at her.
 
“Now who is tired?”

Dahlia got up and threw an orange at his head.
 
“I get sleepy when I eat okay?”

He tossed a coconut at her.
 
Dahlia punched the shell and it splattered them both in coconut milk.
 
Lucifer grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the grass.
 
She hit him the face with a ripe kiwi.
 
He kissed her and brushed her hair back.
 
They were both sticky and rainbow-colored.
 
He smiled.
 
“Rain.”

The rock ceiling above them split and warm water hit Dahlia’s lower back.
 
She gasped and sat back, letting the water pour onto her head.
 
Lucifer scooted over until they sat under the waterfall.
 
He found an apple and bit into it.
 
He wrapped one arm around her waist.

Dahlia looked at him through the wet locks of her hair.
 
“What now?”

“Hmm?”

“What will we do now?
 
Not right now, but going forward?”

Lucifer chewed and mulled it over.
 
“Before Furcas gave me the extra memory I would have been content with this, with being here with you and making up for time lost.
 
My desires never went farther than having you free and with me.”

“And now?”

He threw the apple at the wall.
 
“I must make Him suffer for what He did.”
 
His face grew cold.
 
“There was no just reason, no justice.
 
I am not the betrayer, He is.”

She picked pieces of fruit off the ground as the warm water came to a stop.
 
“That is good, because He will not be content to let us be free.
 
We will not be left to our planet.
 
I think you know now that He cannot stand us together; we are doing what we did before to anger Him.
 
He will seek to run us out of this place.”

Lucifer frowned.
 
“What do you mean?”

She leaned on him.
 
“Surely you know that He has been planning on destroying this planet for quite some time.”

He nodded.
 
“Yes, but He has not succeeded.”

“He can though.”

“How?”

“The humans.”

Lucifer snorted.
 
“We have been fighting them off.
 
I was thinking of using the violin to destroy the rest, now that I have it again.”
 
He frowned.
 
“Well, now that Paimon has it.”

She shook her head.
 
“You must not.
 
We cannot kill any more of them.”

“Why?
 
They seek out our children!”

Dahlia kissed his cheek.
 
“I know.”

“They are a plague!”

She nodded.
 
“Agreed, they are, but in killing them you are handing the Archangels ammunition.”

He frowned.
 
“What do you mean?”

Dahlia looked grim.
 
“Gabriel took pieces of me and formed the humans.
 
It is why they could come here in the first place.
 
It is why destroying them gave Gaea my energy.
 
The only thing that can get through my barrier and attack the planet is
my
energy.
 
The humans are here to hurt our children yes, but also to absorb my energy through their natural lives.
 
The angels have been reaping it since the beginning, storing it.”

Lucifer looked nauseous.
 
“But we had to kill them to defend our children.”

“Exactly, you had to.
 
Gabriel engineered it that way.”

“And this energy would allow them to attack through the shield?”

“Yes.”

“If they created this thing why have they not used it?”

She shrugged and closed her eyes.
 
“I think they do not know the consequences.
 
Gabriel designed it, but he cannot predict exactly what it will do to the planet or to us.
 
Our destruction is a theory.”