I directed what was left of my angelfire into her cold flesh. There was a chance I could heal her body. But her soul was gone.
“Blue,” I whispered.
All the light disappeared from the world.
58
Lex
I stood on one side of the river of souls. Azrael graced the other bank. “So this is it?” I said. A brush of fingers across my neck revealed that I was whole again. “It’s not so bad.”
His hooded head shook. “Even now you joke.”
I shrugged. How else was I supposed to react to dying? I watched a silvery soul slip past. “Shouldn’t I be swimming in there with them?”
Azrael just waited. I rolled the balls of my feet. Maybe I should whistle to pass the time?
Something punched me in the chest. I lurched forward. A rush of green light curled around me. One foot sank into the banks of the river. I couldn’t yank it out again.
For the first time since I landed here, panic gripped me. I couldn’t move. “Azrael?”
He pulled the hood down. Lucifer smiled at me. My non-existent heart stuttered. Oh, great. Now this bastard could imitate voices!
I gasped and tried to get away. My foot wouldn’t budge. It might have looked like water, but my damned foot felt like it was stuck in cement. “Did you think you would be welcomed in the afterlife?” Lucifer asked me. “In the same place where the innocent are laid to rest?”
“Do you always have to talk so much?” I spat. I yanked at the stupid foot. Where was Morning Star? If I was dead, there was no harm in cutting my leg off, right?
He laughed. It was a low chuckle that had my molars aching.
Upon death, Michael’s seal had dissipated. I glanced at the pool of my magic and everything stilled. All I could see was green.
“What the hell is this?” My tone was accusatory.
Lucifer actually held his arms up in a placating gesture. “Credit where credit is due,” he said. “This one belongs to the boy.”
He waved his arms and a tapestry of light appeared in the sky. It shimmered and then solidified into an image of Kai sitting in pitch darkness holding my limp body in his arms. The only visible light came off the hand he pressed against my semi-severed neck. It bathed his features in an eerie, fractured glow. His eyes were hollow. I might be the dead one, but he was the one without hope. My heart withered. I didn’t want him to see me like that.
“He’s so tiny and pitiful,” Lucifer observed.
The last thing I remembered was being thrown through a portal. Kai hadn’t been there when it happened. “How?”
“It seems he bonded with you without anyone else’s knowledge. A Nephilim bond creates a connection.”
“So he could track me?” My left eye twitched. I thought of the way my magic had changed colour. That jackass had tagged me like a science experiment.
Lucifer chuckled as he read my thoughts. “Only you would see it like that.”
How could anyone see it any other way? I turned away from the image. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”
“You insult me,” he said. “You think I would waste my time on something like this?”
“All you do is sleep. You have plenty of time.”
The wolfish grin was a warning. A reminder that I was the key to his freedom. Except now I was dead. It occurred to me that in a roundabout way, he might actually be displeased about it.
“Why am I here?”
He shrugged off the replica of Azrael’s nondescript cloak. Golden light burst out from underneath it. I had to shield my eyes from the sudden glare. He wore a fitted navy three-piece suit. His skin was radiant. Morning Star indeed. Pompous idiot.
“You are here because this is where your soul belongs,” he said. He nodded at where the river had ingested my foot. “Fighting it will only make it stronger.”
I fought it anyway.
The incessant tugging of Kai’s angelfire was beginning to make my skin burn. A tingle warmed my throat. I wrapped my own magic around it thinking it would dampen the touch. The bone magic latched on to Kai’s essence and sighed. It fed the connection until every inch of me felt too sensitive. Why could nothing go my way for once?
Lucifer grew contemplative. “You would have said yes.”
“Eh?”
He came closer. His feet hit the water. It sloshed around him. Why wouldn’t this damn thing budge for me? “The bond. You would have eventually agreed to it.” There was an edge to his voice. It was subtle. The slightest hint of sharpness.
“What does it matter? I’m dead now.” I cast around at the barren, grey landscape. Hell was kind of boring. An eternity of this and I would probably end up as crazy as he was.
I could have gotten frostbite from the sudden chill in his eyes. “This isn’t death,” he said. “This is stubbornness. His bond held your soul in place. The same way your magic refused to let him go. Poetic, but ultimately worthless.”
“You mean like this diatribe?”
I literally had no filter here. The shots of terror that burst in my chest at his approach made me blurt things out.
“Careful,” he said.
“Or what?” Okay, now that wasn’t from a place of fear.
The world flickered around me. My foot slid forward. I hopped out of the river like it was electrified. A grin split my face. Lucifer matched it. All of my bravado shrivelled.
Step away from the smiling serpent, my brain compelled.
He glided over the expanse of water. Another figure materialised beside him. Jacob Buchanan watched me with a flat expression. Everything about him was thicker than the picture on his dust jacket. But I knew him the second I laid eyes on him.
“You’ve gained weight,” I said. “Hell must agree with you.”
The flatness was replaced by dislike. I had a real knack for pissing people off. Lucifer laughed. “Proof that she’s mine,” he commented.
“Amusing,” Jacob said.
