Charlotte pressed my hand into the glass, following it with the second as I tried to understand what was happening. Pain exploded through the ends of my fingers, burning as if I’d stuck my hands into the flames of Hell itself. My tentative touch straightened, the glass pulling me from the other side as Charlotte covered my hands with hers.
“Whatever you do, do not let go until I tell you,” she said, her face twisted with the same pain that consumed me. Flames spread up my arms, leaving my skin unmarked, but the pain that twisted my body was no different. “You’ll die if you do.”
The mirror shattered beneath my hands, glass falling into an endless pit below us. It went on for eternity, fading into darkness as it dropped. A single light shone through, spreading through the chasm as magic spread. A spiral set of stairs appeared slowly, step by step, as it lowered into that growing pit. Only when the light of them touched the bottom did my horror at what I was looking at truly hit.
“Then let me die,” I said, pulling on my hands. Even though the glass was gone, it wouldn’t release me.
“You must live. You must live because you are the only hope of fixing what I have done,” Charlotte said, her voice horrified as the first of the creatures placed his foot on the bottom step. “I’m so sorry.”
He was almost human-like as he turned his shocking red eyes up to me, ascending the stairs slowly. The wings of a bat curved around his shoulders, draping and nearly dragging against the ground as he climbed. I didn’t know why he didn’t just fly, but I swallowed as I tried yet again to let go of the magic opening the pits of Hell to earth.
Beelzebub crested the top of the stairs, thrusting a hand up onto the floor of the Tribunal room and pulling himself out with a roll of his neck. The leathery texture of his wing brushed against my cheek as he emerged, stepping forward so that the one who followed on his heel had room to move.
Satanus followed behind him, his body larger than the winged being who had come before. His chest was broader than two men combined, his body taller than any I’d seen. He shrank slightly as he pulled himself up from the pits, but the horns atop his head set him apart, anyway.
Leviathan came next, carrying the end of some kind of cot behind him. The fingers he’d wrapped around the post he carried were long, spindly things with too much webbing between the fingers. The talons there were monstrous, like something pulled from the depths. But it was the sleeping figure upon the cot that stole the breath from my lungs.
Facedown upon it, the open, weeping wounds where wings should have been were an identical match for the portrait in Gray’s office. He didn’t move, his chest didn’t rise or fall, even as Belphegor carried the other end of the cot. They maneuvered Lucifer up and out of the pits. The male form lying sprawled on the cot in front of me was dead, entirely devoid of life.
But the devil couldn’t die.
“Why is he like that? Why isn’t he moving?” I asked Charlotte, refusing to look into the pits and watch as the remaining of the seven archdemons of Hell made their way for the hole between realms.
The one I’d opened when I broke the seal.
She smiled sadly, holding my horrified stare with a soft expression.
“Oh, sweetheart, because His soul is already here.”
40
WILLOW
Mammon and Asmodeus emerged from the pit as I stared at Charlotte, trying to make sense of her words. Her lips pressed into a thin line as Gray dropped his hand to my shoulder, brushing his touch against the mark of the devil’s eye on my skin. I jolted, pressing forward to get away from the touch, as I spun to look at him over my shoulder.
Those steely eyes held no apology as he watched me, as he watched understanding dawn on me. “You once asked me my true name,” he said, the cruelty in those words sinking into my gut. “Are you ready for the answer yet, wife?”
I turned forward, staring at Charlotte as my jaw set tight, and my teeth clenched together.
No.
Charlotte smiled again, squeezing her fingers over my hands. “It’s time to let go now,” she said, staring down into the pit below. Lesser demons climbed up the stairs, rallying to the surface now that the archdemons weren’t there to fight them off. The souls of the damned would spread across the earth if I didn’t let go of the magic, but I didn’t know how.
Charlotte’s legs evaporated into mist slowly, blowing away even though there was no wind within the Tribunal room.
“I don’t know how,” I said, shaking my head. More and more of her vanished, until she was nothing but arms and a head and neck floating in the air.
All the sacrifice to bring her back, and she faded into the magic of the mirror.
“Please don’t go,” I begged, latching on to the one kindness. On to the one person who would help me.
I didn’t know how I was so certain she would, given everything that had been taken to bring her here in the first place. Only that she would.
“I’m always with you,” she said. She raised her hand from mine, her flesh fading to dust.
“No,” I said, staring at the other hand as she lifted it finally.
“Now, Willow!” she screamed.
I grimaced as I pulled at my hands with all my strength. The seal held me tight. My scream echoed along with hers as Gray wrapped his arms around my waist. He yanked me back, tearing my hands from the glass as it reformed.
Charlotte faded away, smiling peacefully as she became ashes on the wind.
I scrambled away from Gray’s touch, staring at the repaired glass of the mirror and finding only my own reflection in it. The bones around my neck rattled as if they felt her leaving, drawing a strangled sob from me that I couldn’t seem to suppress.
I tucked my knees beneath my body, curling my torso over them and squeezing tightly. I didn’t dare to look behind me, to look at the seven monsters I’d set free upon the world.
The first of them stepped up beside me, holding out a hand that I ignored.
“Come, Willow,” Gray said. The steely command in that voice brought my rage to the surface burning away my horror.
“I will never forgive you for this,” I seethed, ignoring his offered hand.
“You will,” he said softly, running his knuckles down the side of my cheek and drawing my attention to him. “In time, you’ll realize just how fleeting human life is. How little it matters. When everyone you know has died and lies rotting in the earth, you and I will remain. You will find that anything can be forgiven, if given the time for memory to fade.”
“I’m human. I will die like all the rest,” I said, pushing to my feet and ignoring his outstretched hand.
“You will not remain that way for long,” he said, reaching down to take my hand.
I couldn’t think about the promise in those words, about what they meant for my future, as he guided me toward the cot where Lucifer slept. They’d turned him to his back since carrying him out of Hell, his sleeping face visible as we approached his side.