Sorry I'm late! Been a challenge to juggle back-to-back shifts with writing. Hope you guys are doing well :)
Warning: Violence.
"We're going to rescue the others," Edvardiel said. He fumbled with the second lock, his hands unsteady.
Issa caught hold of her angel's arm, looking at his bloody wings and weakened state. "Wait. There's got to be a better way."
If her angel went down now, he wasn't going to make it back up. She'd seen enough injured Acolytes to know.
"There isn't." Jacob clutched his head, the whites of his eyes slowly swallowing the brown. He blocked the door, swaying slightly. "We don't have time to save them. The talisman. You need to destroy the—"
BOOM!
The earth shook and Issa drew her dagger. "What was that?"
Jacob was still clutching his head. "They're fighting up there. Killing each other. The ones who support you and the ones who imprisoned you." His eyes were screwed shut. "All part of Lilith's plan. I told you, she's got Edvardiel's blood. She's going to open the gates. You have to destroy the talisman, Issa, it's her key—"
BOOM!
Edvardiel's fingers were so slippery with blood that he couldn't grip the key. He turned. "I need your help."
Issa was torn.
She thought about Rosalie. Paul. Jessica and Mike. Then she thought about Alice. She thought about Lilith and their ravaged Earth.
Her angel had lost too much blood. It would be a miracle if they made it out on their own, let alone save the others.
Issa covered his hand with hers. "Edvardiel." Rosalie's face flashed before Issa's face, melding with Yassper's, and the next few words tasted like ash in her mouth. "We can't. You're injured, I'm injured—"
"You're not injured." Despite everything, Edvardiel's lips curved into a glimmer of a smile.
Issa touched her gunshot wound. Or where her wound used to be. "When did you—"
When they'd been fighting. That was the only time they'd touched. She'd threatened his life and he'd given her the strength to overpower him.
The damn empath.
BOOM!
This time, rocks came loose from the ceiling and Edvardiel grabbed her, his wings fanning out to shield them.
Issa gasped.
Long jagged gashes tore through his lovely wings—now broken and twisted—bleeding profusely where muscles and bones poked out. Sharp Edenium nails glinted from where they were still embedded in his flesh. But most horrifying of all was the blue patches staining the soft grey.
Lilith's poison had spread.
Her angel's eyes gentled and he rested his hand against the side of her face. His fingers left a trail of blood on her skin. "It looks worse than it is."
Issa saw the deep bruises across her face and her broken nose reflected in the glory of his eyes. Her skin warmed where he touched it and the bruises faded.
"Stop." She caught his wrist. "You need to save your energy."
He needed to stay safe. He needed to hide.
She needed to do this alone.
BOOM!
Issa crouched down and took the key from Edvardiel. "Jacob!" she shouted over the sound of the collapsing earth. "I need you to take Edvardiel and find somewhere to hide!"
But Jacob was standing limply in the centre of the tunnels, his glowing eyes fixed onto a spot in the ceiling.
"The talisman…" he mumbled.
Issa swore and ducked out from underneath Edvardiel's wings. "Jacob!"
She grabbed Jacob's arm and his neck turned slowly in her direction.
His eyes were faraway and entirely white.
"She's here," he whispered.
The hair on the back of Issa's neck stood.
An unnatural chill had fallen over the tunnels. A quiet crackling and snapping echoed across the tunnels as a sheet of ice began to form and harden on the walls.
Lilith.
Everything had gone eerily silent.
The door creaked open and a familiar figure cast a shadow upon them, her golden hair glittering with blood. Her rotting lips curved into a puppet smile. "Your arrogance is staggering, winged one."
Tanya had risen. Tanya was an Acolyte—or had been. Now Hell's Empress owned her corpse.
She descended the stairs, pieces of flesh dropping off her bones and maggots twitching in her eye sockets. The smell turned Issa's stomach.
"Do you truly think you can hold two of my own soldiers from me?"
Issa looked at Edvardiel's bloodied hands and realised he'd fed Jacob glory drenched in his blood. He'd made Jacob his Acolyte too.
Slowly, painfully, her angel straightened. "I'm doing it right now, aren't I?"
Tanya's corpse moved, sinuous and slithering, and Issa shifted to stand before her Keeper, her blades drawn. But the corpse came to stand behind the white-eyed Jacob, who was so still it looked as though he'd stopped breathing.
"You seraphs think you're so special," Lilith crooned, a decaying hand curling around Jacob's shoulder. "A Watcher is worth ten of you."
A shockwave of power rippled through the air and Edvardiel fell to the ground, gasping.
"Edvardiel!" Issa knelt beside her angel as he clutched his chest. His demonising flesh glowed blue, the colour spreading through his veins.
Jacob's glowing eyes flickered white and then blue and then white again before finally settling into a deep ocean blue.
Tanya's corpse gave Edvardiel a terrifying grin. "You must realise that a mere soldier of Heaven cannot win against Hell's empress. Even the king you serve has locked his gates for fear of me." It clawed Jacob's shoulder and pressed rotting lips to his ear. "Now, tell them exactly what you did to help me, my dear."
Jacob's lips moved mechanically.
"I made Tanya push you. I knew Edvardiel would fight for you—that was how we got his blood to open the gates." His glowing eyes watered. "When Tanya rose to be an Acolyte like we knew she would, I used her to spread different rumours… that Eden's son had been corrupted by you. That he wasn't truly Eden's son. That he was an angel and an impostor. That he was a tyrant who would ruin Eden." He sobbed. "I-I told Sue what you did. I was the one who told her to put Edenium in the cake. I gave her the gun with fake Edenium bullets."
Issa clenched her fists.
Lilith knew exactly how to use them. Whereas Issa had been used in the manner of a seraph—stabbing, killing—Jacob had been used in a much more insidious way.
She stared at her angel as Hell's blue poison spread through his body.
Hell had her angel.
Hell was in Eden.
Hell had come to them.
A more perfect opening couldn't have prevented itself but the Edenium in Issa's blood mocked her as it weighed down her limbs. She was slower. Weaker. Glory was out of the question.
Lilith had planned this. That was why she'd put them together. Why she'd allowed them to escape her demons unharmed. Why she'd waited.
I take away their favourite toy.
"Perfect. Perfect, my Watcher child. Now is the time to end the world." Tanya's eyeless corpse now turned its face to Issa, its jaw dangling by a few strands of flesh. "Summon your glory."
Issa braced herself to fight this order to the death—
Except there was nothing.
Lilith didn't try again—Hell's Empress knew her power was absolute.
Her commands always worked the first time. It meant only one thing.
Lilith's commands no longer worked on her.
Lilith's commands no longer worked on her.
Issa was so stunned by this revelation that she couldn't breathe.
A loud crackling and groaning echoed through the tunnels as the ice thickened rapidly on the walls. Tanya's corpse seemed to hover agitatedly on its awkwardly bent legs. The ice on the walls grew pointed and sharp. An army of what looked like shadows crawled down the dungeon stairs.
Light bounced off the scales glinting on their necks.
Demons.
"Tell me what you did," Lilith said to Jacob.
"R-render her powerless a-and b-bring her to me." Jacob's swollen eyes flashed with triumph.
And then it hit Issa. The Edenium. It had shut off her angel side. It rendered her powerless, but it also shut off the part of her that Lilith could control. The part of her Lilith was capable of controlling.
Issa was filled with both awe and horror.
Jacob had spectacularly obeyed and disobeyed at the same time.
Lilith's smile was cold, and Issa knew Hell's Empress well enough to know the depths of cruelty hidden behind it.
Issa reached for her gun, hoping to put Jacob out of his misery before Lilith began, but she didn't have a chance. A flash of silver was the only warning she had before the demons dove for her fallen angel.