Lord of Hell (Alex Holden) (12 page)

“God, I was freaking out. I keep imagining you getting killed by a mob of demons.”

“I’m not gonna lie. That is a possibility, but less and less likely all the time.” I told her about Naamah and the cult she’d started. Not that she would have called it that, but it was the best word for it. I left out the stuff about planning a war in Heaven. Not that I wanted to lie or to keep things from her; I’d been through all that before. But it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to talk about on the phone. That was an in-person kind of conversation.

A little voice in my head kept coming up with excuses and reasons why I shouldn’t tell her, most importantly because she would freak out. There was no way to tell her something like that and then tell her not to worry about me. I was doing my best to not have it be a suicide mission because if I died there was nothing standing between the mortal world and Jehovah’s hard-on for destruction. But still, the idea of trying to battle God into submission… Yeah, it might be a suicide mission.

Would it be okay to wait until I had a good plan before telling her about it? Or would it be best to tell her right away?

And a better question—how mad would she be if I kept things from her again? Even if I planned to tell her eventually?

“There’s some stuff I need to tell you. Do you have time to come get me so we can go somewhere and talk?” My heart trip-hammered as I said it.

“Sure.” I heard the nervousness in her voice.

I wanted to tell her not to worry, but really, how could I tell her not to worry about her boyfriend planning to attack God? “Come over and I’ll take us somewhere.” Even though I could go there and teleport both of us, I at least wanted it to look like she’d taken the car so her parents wouldn’t freak out about her disappearing. If she drove to my apartment, we could always say we’d gone somewhere.

“I’ll be right over.”

Hayley got to the apartment within minutes. I waited for her out on the front stoop of the building with Mew-Mew, filling him in on what had happened.

I want to talk to Lyriel. Ghost to ghost,
he said.
I’m sure she has a very interesting story to tell.

“Yeah. Let me know if you find out anything that can help.”

I’ll be back tonight.
Then he winked out. I still wasn’t used to him being able to do that. He used to travel the Cats’ Paths to get around, but now that he was a ghost, he could go anywhere I was since I was his anchor to the world. He’d also discovered that he could move freely between Hell and my apartment. Maybe because he was attached to me, and both those places were my domain.

I waved to Hayley as she pulled up to the curb.

“What is it?” she asked as she got out of the car.

“We should go somewhere first.”

“Where?”

“The field where I trained to fly.” It was a familiar place and therefore comforting.

“Okay.” She took my hand, her eyes full of worry.

It was hot in the field, so I stepped into the shade of the huge oak that grew in the center of it.

“So what is it?” She squeezed my hand.

I told her.

Hayley stared at me. “
What?
Are you fucking insane? You’re going to get yourself killed. What the hell are you thinking?”

See? I was right to worry about her freaking out. I tried to reverse the situation to see how I would feel if she were telling me something this crazy. Yeah, she was probably underreacting, if anything.

“I can’t let him end the world. The natural disasters will get worse and worse and happen closer together until the final battle, and then the world ends. Everyone dies except a tiny, tiny group of a select few. Sure, the dead get resurrected, but only the ones that are in Heaven. Everyone else is screwed. And there are a lot of good people that aren’t there.”

“But you can’t stop God. He’ll just kill you.” She clenched her fists, tears forming in her eyes.

“I killed Satan. He was a god. And now I’m a god, and I have an army of demons to fight for me.” I was trying to convince myself as much as her. “It’s not hopeless. I have to try.”

“No you don’t. It’s supposed to happen.”

“So you want this to happen? You want to die? You want everything to end?”

“No, I mean it’s impossible,” she said.

“So you don’t want me to die?”

“Of
course
I don’t.”

“Then I have to fight. The Bible says I get cast down into a lake of fire when this is all over. That means I die. No, wait. That means I suffer for eternity, which is even worse. So my choices are to fight now or suffer later. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.” There was the Satanist prophecy, that said Satan would win and I would rule beside him. Since Satan was dead and I refused to play my part in taking over the world, I figured that ending was far less likely. Maybe somehow at the end I’d be able to win, but how many people would die before then? How much of the world would already be in ruins? The Satanist prophecy didn’t care about any of that. It was only concerned with Satan ruling the world and his faithful followers being exalted above the rest of humanity, to rule over them and get whatever they wanted.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I can’t lose you.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “I can’t lose you, either. Which is why I have to do this. How long until something terrible happens here, like the earthquake in Indiana? Or a massive sinkhole, or a huge storm and a flash flood?” And what if I wasn’t here when it happened?

She pulled away, facing the tree. “This is all so unfair. I’m going to lose you no matter what, and then everyone dies. This fucking sucks.”

“Hey, don’t think like that. I’m doing everything I can to stop this. If I can figure out a plan for this war, we can defeat Jehovah, and then there’s no Apocalypse.”

“It just seems so impossible.”

“
Nothing
is impossible,” I said. “Nothing. There is no destiny. My destiny was supposed to be to take over the world. I was supposed to be evil and love evil shit, but I’m not. I’m not how I’m supposed to be, and I make my own choices.” I put my hand on her arm until she turned to face me. “Satan is all over those prophecies, but he’s dead now. I changed things, and I can change them again.”

“Then I want to fight with you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let me join the army.”

“Hayley, no. You can’t. You’re not a god or a demon or a demigod. You don’t have any special powers to help you fight or protect you.”

“But it’s like you said. I can’t just sit here and let it happen. I can’t do nothing and watch you go fight a war. I watched the devil take you and I was worried sick. I didn’t know where you were, what was happening to you, if you were alive or dead. I can’t do that again. I can’t.”

I tried to imagine what that had been like for her. How would I feel if she was kidnapped and I had no idea what was happening to her? How would I feel if I had no way to get to her, no way to save her? Still, I shook my head. “No way. You have no chance fighting against angels. I don’t even know if I could take a human to Heaven in the first place. Even if I could, you’d be killed in a second.” Even if she ended up in Hell so I could bring her to the Eternal Gardens, I still wanted her to be alive. I wanted her to have a long, full, happy life.

“So it’s impossible?”

“Yes.”

She glared. “You just said nothing is impossible.”

“Son of a bitch.” I just got caught in my own logic. I couldn’t pull the you’re-too-young card either, because we were the same age.

“So we’re going to figure out a way to get me superpowers so I can fight in your insane suicide-mission war.” She was making a face. I knew that face. It was the “I’ve made up my mind and this is how it is” face.

Just thinking about her fighting in the war made me feel like throwing up. “Yeah, fine. I’ll ask around.”

Chapter 15

I checked in on Semiazas. He was several pages into the translation but paused when I came in.

“It will take a few more days to complete the translation. I assume you will want to keep the translated copy in your office?”

“Yeah, and you can keep the original since you went to so much trouble to save it.”

He nodded. “There are a few things I can tell you without the need for details. The first problem we had is also the biggest: we were outnumbered. Lucifer was very persuasive, but most of the angels stayed loyal to Jehovah. We were outnumbered three to one.”

“Which means we’re still outnumbered, right? Or have a lot of demons been created since then?”

“Thousands have been, but most of those created are weaker than the fallen angels. And Jehovah has created angels to replace those who rebelled against him. Heaven’s forces, from the limited information I have, are at least twice as strong as ours.”

“So we need more warriors.”

“If possible, yes.”

I knew a few places I could try, at least. “I’ll get on that.”

***

I went to Stefan first. He was less upset than Hayley, and although he balked at the idea of going to war against Heaven, he still insisted on fighting by my side. Not that I wanted to put him in danger, but I needed help and I knew I could count on him.

“Let’s go ask your dad if he’ll help, too.” I had a damn good idea what the answer would be, but I still had to ask. If I kept asking, maybe one of the pantheons would say yes. Or they’d find a sneaky way to help, like the Morrigan had when she’d let me have Excalibur.

We went up to Asgard, and Odin welcomed me into his hall. It was even bigger than I remembered it. We went into a huge sitting room with a roaring fire, each of us sinking into large chairs. Well, Odin’s fit him. Me and Stefan looked like kids sitting in adult chairs.

I laid it out for old One Eye, doing my best to explain the situation and why I was choosing to fight now instead of letting the end of the world come. I figured if I could convince him the end of the world wasn’t inevitable, at least not this version of it, I could convince anyone.

Odin listened patiently, then nodded and leaned back in his chair. “I know well your desire to save the world. You were here only a year ago to save me from the jaws of Fenrir. But Ragnarok is inevitable. It is fated.”

“But it doesn’t have to be now. I proved that my actions, our actions, can change things. And this isn’t Ragnarok. This is the Apocalypse,” I said.

“They may be one and the same. The details may be different, but these two great events may exist in parallel. Chaotic, destructive events that lead to a great battle between the gods and the frost giants, or in your case the forces of Heaven and Hell, during which the world is destroyed. Then the world is created anew, a place of peace with a new order.”

Dammit. I knew this wouldn’t be easy. “But what if they aren’t?”

“What if they are,” Stefan asked.

I shot him a look. What the hell?

He held up a hand. “If this is Ragnarok and Alex starts the war now, then you should fight with us. If Ragnarok and the Apocalypse are the same, then all you need to do is choose which side you’re on. Choose to fight with us.”

I saw a glint in Odin’s eye and suspected he liked the idea of a war between gods. He was a warrior god, after all. “Even if the events are the same, we are of different pantheons and it is against the Law for us to interfere.”

That stupid Law had stopped the other gods from helping me last summer. “If this is the end of everything, then the Law doesn’t matter anyway. Fight with us. Even if we all die, at least we’ll go down swinging. We’ll go down together.”

Another brighter glint shone in his one good eye, and this time he smiled. “You speak like a true warrior, but I must abide by the Law. All the pantheons agreed to it, and I will not be the one to break the truce. If this is indeed Ragnarok, then we may meet on the battlefield after all, and I will gladly fight by your side, Alex, Lord of Hell.”

I sighed. I could keep arguing, but this was the second time I’d tried to convince him to fight to save the world, and it was clear he wasn’t going to budge this time, either.

In the following days, I went with Colin to talk to the Morrigan and Brigid, with Emily to talk to Ra, and after a lot of persuasion to even get a meeting, I went with Elliot to talk to Ares. All of them turned me down. All of them cited the Law that kept peace between the gods of the various pantheons. My chances of increasing my outnumbered army were looking worse and worse.

In the meantime, Semiazas finished his translation, Naamah got several other demons to get behind me and embrace the new order in Hell, and we had our first strategy meeting.

“It looks like we need to focus on how to win when the odds are against us. None of the other pantheons are willing to help. We’re on our own.”

Semiazas pointed out the second major problem with the War in Heaven: some of the angels had been following agendas of their own when they joined up with Lucifer. He wasn’t the only one to covet Jehovah’s throne. So after the first two early victories, where it looked like they might have a chance of winning, a few of the rebelling angels had made a power grab. The upper ranks had fallen into chaos, distracted by fighting each other. Lucifer had reasserted his dominance, but the infighting had cost them the next battle. The fourth engagement was a draw, with both forces drawing back to regroup. Then Jehovah’s forces had rallied and won the next fight. In the sixth battle, the rebels were defeated and thrown out of Heaven.

That’s it. The war lasted six battles, and Lucifer’s bid for the throne was over.

“So we have to worry about the same thing,” I said. “Some of the demons using this as a chance to grab power from me. Fucking great.” I rubbed my temple.

“We can do what we can to minimize that situation,” Braxis said. He was one of the demons Naamah had brought over to our side. “We can find the potential usurpers and identify them for you. Then you can eliminate them before they can cause problems during the war.”

“Further reducing our numbers.” I sighed. “I suppose that’s better than having them attack me in the middle of a battle.”