Part Three: Morning Star

Chapter Two: Monsters

I don't intend to wage war.
Wars are fought by warriors.

Massacres, though—
those are fought by monsters.

June 1st, 2011

Vetis and Adrienne poured over a map, trying to decide where the Devils's Gates were most likely to be. Using a black sharpie, Vetis marked a point on the map in southern Wyoming. "There's definitely one here. I remember Azazel opened it in 2007 to free Lilith." Taking a red sharpie, he marked four different points. "And it's generally believed that there's one at each of the poles, as well as at least two points on the equator. Apart from that, they could be..." Vetis trailed off, not sure what to say.

Adrienne lifted an eyebrow at him. "They could be…?"

"Well, anywhere really. All we really know is that Azazel opened one in Wyoming, and a few places where they're likely, or believed to be, but they could be literally be anywhere on earth."

"So what you're saying is, we're screwed?"

Vetis shrugged weakly. "Not necessarily. There's probably one in L.A. for example—"

"Probably."

"—and I would know for certain if I were within about a tenth of a mile of one."

"Well that's super helpful," Adrienne said dryly. "Do we at least know how many there are?"

Vetis thought about it for a moment. "Four? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?"

"A thousand, ten thousand, fifty billion?"

"...I know you're being sarcastic, but that's actually possible. It's not likely, but it's definitely a possibility."

Adrienne's hand twitched. She closed her eyes, taking in a few long breaths, and opened them. Vetis was startled by her white eyes that seemed to reflect a rainbow of colors now, red the most prominent, brown nonexistent. The first time he'd seen them yesterday, but he doubted he'd ever get used to them. They weren't the same as her pure white eyes, which came from the angel in her and showed her power, or her old brown ones, which were warm and laughing. For all their beauty, these were cold and foreign, and he was scared every time he saw them again. He wondered if something had died in her that day at Stull Cemetery, something that could never be brought back, and if he should have let her die then.

He resisted the urge to shake his head as he thought, No. He'd done the right thing, saving her — the only thing he could have done. It was just those eyes that were making him doubt her, nothing else. He would just have to get used to them.

Adrienne sighed in frustration. Drawing her hands over her face, she tried to focus on the positive. "Well, at least we know how to open the gates."

Vetis sat in silence.

Adrienne looked at the angel, and immediately noticed the nervous look on his face. "We do know how to open the gates, right?"

"...To be fair, this was your idea."

In hindsight, that was a pretty stupid thing to say.

Adrienne growled, her eyes glowing white. "Are you kidding me?!"

Vetis tried (and failed) not to cower. "I really wish I was, but the fact is that only those in Lucifer's innermost circle were ever told about those things. People like Azazel and Lilith." After a moment, he added, "Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure they were the only ones who knew anything about it."

Adrienne made an irritated noise, and threw her hands up in the air. For a moment, gold sparks flew from them. Luckily, Adrienne got them under control after a moment, closing her hand into a fist and counting backwards from a thousand. After a few seconds, she calmed down enough to open her eyes, and they were plain white and black again (though Vetis wasn't sure that that was an improvement).

"Okay," she said, breathing carefully controlling her breathing, "How do we find out how to open the gates?"

Vetis thought about it for a minute. "The only thing I can think of is the Demon Tablet." At the sight of her confused look, he explained, "Before God left, he wrote a set of tablets for different beings — angels, leviathans, demons. The demons tablet would tell us how to completely open and shut the gates at will. In fact, we could probably use the angel tablet to open the gates of heaven."

Adrienne studied his expression, and while he did seem to be telling the truth, there was a note of hesitation in his voice. "Why am I sensing a 'but' coming up?"

Vetis sighed. "No one knows exactly where the tablets are, just that they're being kept underground somewhere. I've tried to track them before using magic, but to no avail." He almost didn't tell her the next part, but knew it couldn't be avoided. "And they can only be read by a prophet of the Lord."

Adrienne perked up the tiniest bit at that. "Well that's good at least. We already have a prophet, we can make him translate it. What's his name again? Kyle? Devin?"

"Kevin," he said reluctantly. He was half tempted to go and kill the boy now — God knows having the threat of him telling Adrienne everything had already felt like having an axe ready to cut his head off at any moment — but it was better to keep the boy close and under his control than take the risk of not being able to find the next prophet. Or worse — risk Adrienne's wrath.

"Perfect. Now we just have ten million things to do instead of twenty. I feel so much better." Adrienne studied the maps again. "Alright, sticking to what we actually do know. Could we just re-open the gate in Wyoming?"

Vetis shook his head. "No. The only one who knew how to open that was Azazel, and the Winchesters killed him a while ago."

Adrienne's eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. "Well, can't we just summon his spirit? We did that before with my dad."

Vetis was surprised to hear her mention Josef so casually, but decided not to mention it. "That doesn't work with angels and demons. We don't have souls to summon."

Adrienne frowned. "Then what happens to them when they die?"

Vetis thought about it for a moment before admitting, "I don't know. As far as I can tell we just sort of...cease to exist."

Vetis turned his attention back to the map, but Adrienne sat staring at him in horror.

Vetis continued talking. "We're definitely going to want to at least try to find one in America. Preferably near a big city so that the demons will be able to infect plenty of people."

When Adrienne didn't respond, he looked up, frowning when he saw her look of shock and fear. "What's wrong?"

"I...I just can't imagine it. That one minute you're here, and then the next, you just...stop." Honestly, that sounded worse than Hell, at least to her. Hell was horrific, but at some point it ended, and you became a demon. But to be completely erased from existence, like you were never there at all was something she couldn't even imagine.

Adrienne realized almost before she'd stopped talking that this was what would happen to Vetis if he ever died, and the thought was more than she could handle. Her skin paled and gripped the table as she imagined Vetis lying cold and unmoving on the floor, the life completely drained from his brown eyes.

Vetis wanted to shrug it off, assure her that next to Hell, nothing was pretty good. But he could tell that it would only make her feel worse. So, he did the next best thing. He walked over to her, kneeling down next to her chair, and enveloped her in his arms so that her face was pressed into his shoulder.

"Don't think about that. I'm here, and nothing is going to take me from you."

Adrienne forced back the tears that fought to escape, trying to smile. It didn't work. "Nothing but death."

"I'd like to see him try." He smiled, and his face lit up as he brushed the hair back from her face. "Why don't we try to work on finding the gates, yeah?"

Adrienne agreed to return to work, but without the release of a good cry, she was too wound-up to concentrate, and her irritation overcame her before an hour had passed.

Snapping suddenly, she grabbed her map and threw it off the table. Then when it wouldn't fall neatly, she lit it on fire, and ashes covered the floor in an instant. "Ugh, there's too much! How are we supposed to find even one gate if they could be literally anywhere on the planet?!" Adrienne bonelessly collapsed into her chair. "It's too much, it's just too much!"

By now, Vetis was getting pretty irritated himself, and was only a step away from from snapping at her. Still, there was venom in his tone, and though he was sure she heard it, he didn't care. "We're spread too thin. We don't have enough demons on earth to look for the tablets and the gates, and we can't do it all ourselves. We need allies, we need a way to get more demons on land, or—" Vetis caught himself when he saw the look on Adrienne's face — a sly sort of smile that seemed to bring some of the life back to her eyes. "What?"

Adrienne thought about what he'd said. Allies. "I just had a really clever idea."

The alpha vampire walked through the dark halls of his mansion to the great hall. A month ago, something had been happening to his descendants — someone had been capturing and killing them en masse, but whoever had been doing it had stopped. Killed, most likely. Good. He hoped it was slow.

When he opened the door, he immediately wished he hadn't. He could feel the power of the the two people calmly sitting at his table. The girl was sitting at the head of the table, calmly sipping from a glass of wine. Her eyes were white with tiny black dots at the center. They were cold and utterly terrifying.

The man at her side was an angel — that much was obvious — but his grace was dim and corroded. A fallen angel then.

He tried to back out of the door, but it slammed shut behind him. The girl put her glass down and gestured to the sit across from the angel. "Sit. Please."

Reluctantly, he sat down. The angel smirked at him, his eyes red. He looked at the girl again. She was definitely part human, but there was something angelic in her — a sort of powerful hum right under the surface of her skin. Careful not to show his surprise, he remembered who she was.

"You're Adrienne," he said respectfully. "The Antichrist."

Adrienne grinned. "I'm surprised you know me."

"One hears things." He looked at the angel. "And this must be Vetis." The angel gave a sarcastic little wave that perfectly matched his smug grin. He nodded politely in return before looking back at Adrienne. "It's an honor to meet you both."

"Oh please, let's not do this," Vetis said, "I hate being polite. It's exhausting. Can't we just say why we're here and get it over with?"

Adrienne frowned at him, but the vampire stopped her before she could reprimand him. "I agree. Why are you here, if I might ask?"

Adrienne frowned for a moment before returning to her polite, easy-going smile. "We're looking for something. A few things actually, here on earth. But the problem with that is that I have so few demons topside, and I can hardly be expected to do all the work myself. I'm a busy woman, after all."

"Well that certainly sounds like a problem for you, I hardly see how it has any relation to me."

"She was getting to that," Vetis said bitingly. He wasn't smiling now, and his red eyes were glowing dimly. Adrienne placed one of her hands on top of his.

"He makes a good point Vetis. I'm not doing a very good job of making my point clear." She turned back to face him. He barely had time to steel himself to avoid flinching at her eyes. It didn't matter as she realized his fear anyways and allowed a small smile to grace her features. "I want us to make an alliance. You will order your vampires to aid me in finding these items, and when I take over the earth, I will allow you free reign to hunt humans as you wish. There will be no hunters to stop you. I think that's fair."

The vampire eyes her. "And if I refuse?"

Without missing a beat, Adrienne said, "Then I'll find, torture, and kill each and every last vampire in front of you and leave you chained up in a basement for all eternity." She shrugged, in a 'what can you do sort of way' that was all the creepier for how casual it was.

"That's not very much of a choice then, is it?"

"I felt it was incredibly generous. I'm giving you everything you ever wanted, and all I get in return are a couple of old clay blocks. Maybe I should ask for something else. A helicopter maybe."

The vampire frowned. 'Old clay blocks'? "What exactly are my people supposed to be looking for?"

"Don't worry, we'll explain it to you before we start. But first I need you to tell me something. Where can I find the other alphas?"

The poem at the beginning of this chapter is "i'll stain your white flags red" by dvoyd on tumblr.