Much faster than at the hospital, darkness enveloped her. Chloe managed to stumble forward two steps, but then she was no longer in control of her limbs. No chance to activate her own flare. She had sight a little longer — or thought she did at least. Not that it mattered. All she could see was a mass of black, all around her.
The sensation of cold spread through her body. Just like at the hospital. But there at least there had been some light to see by. Here it was all one uniform blackness.
A warm weight touched her shoulder. The cold spreading through her body disappeared instantly. The blackness in front of her, while it was still all black, appeared to have some movement to it. Chloe turned her head to the side where the warmth was touching her.
Just for an instant, what she saw was like dense smoke or soot, swirling around a light source. The few streaks of light breaking through were painfully bright. Then Chloe blinked and saw Lucifer standing next to her, one hand on her shoulder. He motioned with his free hand, sending a burst of light into the shadows that did nothing but lend some definition to the roiling mass before it faded out.
Another flare hissed, and Constantine became visible on her other side. His voice rang out with the gibberish syllables of a spell. The light from the flare spread around the three of them in a circle. It started fading even before Constantine had finished his spell. He lit another flare without breaking rhythm. It took two more flares before the circle held. Within the circle, Chloe could see the concrete floor of the warehouse. Outside of it, there was nothing but darkness. Not even the door — only a few feet away — was visible.
Spell finished, Constantine swore while digging in his bag for more flares. Lucifer turned so his back was to her and picked off threads of shadow as they impinged on their circle. Chloe pulled the activation cord on her own flare and watched the burst of light incinerate a strand of darkness.
Chloe used the breathing room to ask the most important question. "What's happening?"
Constantine found another flare. He spoke a few words, then flung the flare into the darkness. The arc of its motion revealed again a mass of shadows, constantly in motion. The general movement shifted to follow the flare's path as it flew. "We've got a bigger problem than we thought." The flare extinguished even before it landed. "There's not a few souls floating about in here. There's hundreds."
"Thousands," Lucifer corrected almost absentmindedly. He was still using flashes of light from his ring to keep the darkness at bay. "These aren't souls wandering through by accident. Someone planned this. That must have been Mr. Getty's warning."
"Why wasn't this happening at the hospital?" Chloe asked.
"The hospital is well lit, with lots of passersby. Any soul coming through there would either find a host or dissipate in short order. Not so here." Lucifer moved to deal with a shadow that had almost reached Chloe's back. She could see him wince as he did so. "And this portal is older. More so on the timescale of Hell."
"We can't leave it like this," Constantine said. He lit another flare and made complicated hand movements over it. The light went to reinforce the circle. "We won't even be able to get out at this rate."
Lucifer's arms fell to his side. He drew back his shoulders. He'd gone pale. "I could get you out of here," he told Chloe.
"And leave Constantine to deal with all of this on his own?" That didn't seem right. And for all that he was slinging around magic like no tomorrow, Constantine did look outmatched.
"You'd be safe."
"Can we stop schmoozing and do something?" Constantine interrupted as he pulled another flare. "I'll run out of these flares sooner, not later."
By now, Chloe was regretting not taking Lucifer's suggestion that she stay behind. But that was in the past. And letting Lucifer carry her off was out of the question. "What can we do?" Chloe had her gun, but…"Is shooting these things going to accomplish anything?"
"No." Lucifer's reply was short. "There is nothing for you to hit." He turned around and summoned more light between his fingers. Another shadow dissipated. Lucifer grimaced.
"Enough light will destroy them, by the looks of it," Constantine said. "If only we had more light." He looked at Lucifer meaningfully. "Any ideas?"
"Very funny, John," Lucifer said through his teeth.
"I'm not laughing, Lightbringer.
Lucifer growled at Constantine. For a second, it looked as if he was going to turn on the sorcerer. But then Lucifer's shoulders dropped and he nodded, resigned. He turned and swept one arm outside their circle. The light from his ring didn't penetrate past his fingertips. He repeated the movement until there did appear to be a reduction in thickness of the darkness. Enough that the floor became visible, strewn with debris of what had once been storage racks.
Lucifer stepped out of the circle into the space he'd created for himself. He bent down to pick up a piece of the debris — a length of scaffolding about as long as Chloe's arm. He stood back up and settled his shoulders, like he was steeling himself for something. His chest rose as he took a deep breath. Then he drew his shoulders back and let out his breath. As he did, he winced in pain.
Behind him, a pair of wings appeared.
They were white and faintly glowing, like the feathers she'd found. But also like the feathers, they sported brown stains.
Constantine had seen it, too. "What happened to him?" he asked. "Wasn't like that last time."
"I think he got shot," Chloe replied. Had that happened when he'd flown her away from Marcus's shootout? That had to have hurt. Was still hurting, from Lucifer's movements just now. Lucifer had always healed quickly. Even if he got hurt one day, he'd always be fine within the week. And those were just the cases where Chloe had seen him get hurt. He'd bounced back from dying within minutes, from Lucifer's own accounts.
Constantine frowned. "Bullets should have bounced off," he said. He took a breath to say more, but then had to redirect his focus to keep the darkness at bay.
Lucifer didn't wait out the conversation. With the dark starting to swirl around him, taking back the space he'd cleared, he folded his hands over the piece of metal he'd picked up. Now Lucifer bowed his head. If Chloe hadn't known better, she might have thought he was praying.
The faint glow of his wings intensified, blurring the edges of the brown patches. The swirls of darkness around Lucifer retreated. Or had they dissolved?
In the distance there seemed to be a suggestion of increased movement in the darkness. But the immediate area around Constantine's circle and Lucifer's wings had lightened.
Then the light from Lucifer's wings started to flow inward, into Lucifer. Or rather, into his hands. His wings now appeared a mottled grey. But pure, harsh blue-tinged light leaked from between Lucifer's fingers.
He pulled his hands apart along the length of scaffolding. Where his hands touched the metal, it was no longer — well — metal. Between his hands, Lucifer held a rod of concentrated light. He opened his eyes, but they were no longer their usual dark brown. Instead, they shone with the same kind of light he held in his hands. He nodded at her once, then jumped into the air.
The hangar had a lot of height, but still a single beat of those giant wings took Lucifer to the ceiling. Chloe could see the corrugated sheet that Lucifer hit — the rod he held gave off that much light.
A mass of shadows — souls — followed him upward, though they couldn't rise as high as him. As Lucifer started his descent again, angling away from Chloe and Constantine, the center of that mass of souls moved along Lucifer's path. He drew most of them to himself.
When Lucifer landed, the shades converged on him immediately. Lucifer was ready for them. He swept the rod in a flat arc, catching several of the dark shapes in their approach. As the rod touched them, their forms dissipated. His wings swept out and then forward, bringing more shadows into his range. They suffered a similar fate.
The shadows around Constantine's circle retreated further. Chloe could see most of the hangar again, dim as it was with only minimal light from the grimy windows high up near the ceiling. The souls that had been swirling around the three of them had followed Lucifer instead.
Souls reached out for light, Lucifer had said. The light from that rod of his, lethal as it was, was much, much brighter than anything else in the hangar. Brighter than the still diminishing light of the magic circle.
Brighter even than the fresh flare Constantine activated next to her, which dimmed as he started conjuring with it, strengthening the circle again and spreading its illumination through the room. Chloe pulled out her second flare, intending to use it to keep the shadows away from Constantine while he worked his magic.
With Lucifer drawing most of the shadowy mass's attention, it was apparent that most of these souls weren't actively trying to fight. They just stood — floated — outside the circle of light from the flares. Some stayed near the circle long enough that they disappeared on their own. Occasionally one did enter the circle, only to flow directly into the light of a flare.
The souls surrounding Lucifer were different, at least for a while. They were in true combat, trying to duck past the rod of light and evading the broad sweeps from Lucifer's wings. The passive ones were only faint, nondescript outlines. But the ones fighting Lucifer and managing to evade his attacks — they still had some definition. A Roman centurion's helmet crest rose above the crowd, and for a brief moment, Lucifer's rod was blocked by a medieval knight's shield. Then it swept through another shadow with the outline of a jackbooted uniform. A shape in an elaborate flowing robe only just avoided that sweep.
Lucifer kept fighting. Chloe hadn't seen him exert himself like this before. Even when she'd seen him in combat before, his movements had seemed effortless. Not here. Now, he was fighting a lot more opponents, but that didn't seem like it should cause so much strain. Dissipating one of these dark souls took him no effort. Again and again, as soon as the rod touched them, they were gone.
But he was generating that light from somewhere. Sustaining it had to take effort. Lucifer was breathing hard even as he kept up the slashing and sweeping.
"Look there," Constantine said beside Chloe. He was pointing somewhere away from Lucifer, to a spot where some racks still stood upright. Just in front of them, a smoky swirl spewed forth new shadows. Now that Chloe knew what to look for she could also see the flow from this spot to where Lucifer was fighting. "That must be the portal."
"So, that's why we're still surrounded. They're being replaced."
"Yep."
"Can we do something about it? Close the portal?"
"Not while there are still souls coming through, we can't." Constantine shook his head. "But I might have a temporary solution. Stem the tide, as it were." He paused while gauging the distance. "If we can get closer."
Lucifer had culled the more active fighters. The passive souls kept coming. They didn't try to evade Lucifer's weapon, or his wings. Instead they allowed themselves to be swept into the path of oblivion. The crush of souls that still continued to gather pushed the innermost circle ever closer.
Lucifer noticed the lack of resistance and slowed his movements. Still the shadows gathered around him, as if throwing themselves at the light source. Lucifer halted entirely, shoulders rising and falling with deep, panting breaths as he did nothing but hold out the rod. More souls approached him to fall into the light.
A large black mass still surrounded Lucifer, even with many of the souls already eliminated and more disappearing every second.
"Whatever we can do, let's do it," Chloe told Constantine.
Constantine nodded and dug a dozen flares out of his bag. He activated the first one and threw it outside their circle. "Come on, then," he said and stepped into the smaller pool of light provided by the flare. As soon as he got there, he activated another flare and threw it a few feet farther. Chloe followed, hopping from one bright spot to the next, closer to the hole in reality that was still spilling souls toward Lucifer.
Meanwhile, Lucifer had tired. He wasn't even holding out his weapon any more. Instead, he was leaning on it to stay upright. His wings were no longer working to sweep souls into range. They were folded close against his back.
He slumped further. The light from the rod faded back through his hands into his wings, which regained their faint glow. Without the space created by the light from the rod, the souls around Lucifer pressed in tighter.
Lucifer fell to his knees. The darkness surrounding him overwhelmed him, and he disappeared under the flood of souls rushing toward him. Chloe shouted his name, but it had no effect.
He went down.
Intermezzo
The doors to the morgue loom in front of me. The stranger is leaning against them, just as he leaned against the wall next to the door to my apartment. Had he moved? Had I? "Why are you here?" I ask.
The stranger examines me, head to toe. "Why are you?" He pushes away from the wall so he can walk around me. He waves a hand, twirling his finger to indicate our surroundings. "You brought us here. You must have a reason."
"My mother is in there," I say, as if that's important. "What do you mean I brought us here?"
"You," the stranger says with emphasis, "are in your own personal Hell." He looks around. "And it's remarkably mundane, for a torture chamber. Watching your mother's corpse? Is that truly what hurts so much?"
What he says is true. I don't know how I know that, but I do. If I close my eyes and think back, make myself see them, I can see the thousands of times I've walked through these doors and seen the sheet drawn back on my mother's body. But the anguish is fresh every single time. So is the agony of the grill of a car driving through my spine; of the airbag going off in my face. That's to come, right now. I shudder in anticipation.
But I can't do anything about it. All those times, things happened the same way. So it will be this time. And the stranger still hasn't answered my initial question. "If this is my Hell, why are you here?"
The stranger coughs and pulls back his lips to show teeth. "Some people are trying to be clever. They dumped me in here and closed the exits. Doors that should be open to me are closed."
I look at the door to the morgue. That one isn't closed. It also doesn't lead out of here. It's part of the cycle. But if there are doors, then that means… "There really is a way out of here?"
A nod. "There always is."
"Can you show me where?" Maybe breaking the loop is possible. My stomach starts tingling. Is this what hope feels like?
The stranger looks down on me and shakes his head. "You have to find it on your own, I'm afraid. Even if could take you out, you wouldn't like where those doors are going."
"It might be better than this, over and over again." I might be able to find my way to my mother. The real one, not this illusion of a body.
The stranger huffs a laugh. "Only if you enjoy literal cut-throat politics." He wipes his clean hands on his trousers. "And don't mind getting your hands dirty at them, either." He pauses, thinking. "I… can make it stop. Entirely."
"Evidently." The stranger casts a glance back at the morgue. The door has just opened from the inside. The familiar-looking policewoman checks outside. The stranger sighs. "Perhaps I could… nudge things." He holds out a hand. "Come on."
That was the same offer I had already turned down once. I don't want it to just stop. I wanted the loop to break. That was the only stop that was acceptable. "I need to keep going. I want see my mother again."
The stranger frowns at me. "Is seeing a dead body that important to you?"
"It's the only place I can still see her. All I want is another chance."
"So take it." The stranger makes another hand motion, indicating the universe at large. "This is Hell. What makes you think you're limited to any specific time period?" He steps away from the doors. "Just go back further. Find your mother there."
"I don't know how."
"Evidently." The stranger casts a glance back at the morgue. The door has just opened from the inside. The familiar-looking policewoman checks outside. The stranger sighs. "Perhaps I could… nudge things." He holds out a hand. "Come on."
As I take his hand, the world around me blurs. When it comes into focus again, we are no longer in front of the morgue. We're standing outside my childhood home, the one I ran out of at seventeen. My clothes are different, too. More like what I used to wear when I was younger.
The stranger lets go of my hand. "Here we are." He pulls at his vest, and sniffs. "I don't think my pesky captors will have thought to close the doors here. Given where they dumped me, I think they expected I wouldn't fight too hard to get out. More fool they." He nods at the door in front of us. "There's your second chance. Good luck." There's a flash of light, and the stranger is gone.
I face the door. Time to make a change.