Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

I whipped my head around to gape at Azazel. “What?”

His eyes were fixed on Shekinah. “Earth is not meant to hold Death’s full power; is that it? If he stays there longer, his essence would leak out and kill every living thing around him.”

Shekinah nodded, her expression drenched in sadness. “He cannot help it,” she repeated.

“It is not something he controls,” Metatron clarified. “It is just his nature. It would happen automatically, without his conscious doing. God noticed it when Lucifer spent some time on Earth before his fall, and afterward, when he was looking for Lilith in the wastelands.”

“But—” I shook my head and waved my hands, trying to make sense of my chaotic thoughts. “What about Lilith? He spent time with her—and she didn’t die!”

“He was with her only in short intervals before the fall, not long enough for his power to kill her,” Metatron said. “And the life-giving magic of Eden will have lent her some protection. When Lucifer found her in the wastelands, she swiftly decided to follow him to Hell?—”

“Yes, what about that ?” I interjected. “How did she survive all this time there with him?”

“Because it is his realm,” Shekinah answered, “crafted from himself and made to hold his power. He might not have known what he was doing, but by creating Hell, he founded a dimension where everything bound or born within it would withstand the chill of Death. When Lilith bonded with him, it connected her to Hell, and that shielded her from the effects of his essence for a long time.” Her gaze glided to me. “Though not forever.”

I flinched, the breath getting stuck in my throat at the memory of how depressed and detached Lilith had been—by her own account—and how she’d likened that feeling to a frog getting slowly boiled alive and not realizing what was happening because the process was so gradual.

“She was dying inside ,” I whispered, shock stealing my voice. Sudden tears clouded my eyes, and I swallowed past a closing throat. “Her body might have been shielded and kept alive, but her spirit… He was killing her, little by little, and he didn’t even know it.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth, my heart shattering from the horrible understanding that swept through me.

He’d had no idea. Lucifer had never known that his soul mate, the woman he loved more than anything, was slowly dying from exposure to his true nature—Death—over the course of millennia. The protection their bond had granted her allowed her to survive for eons, but bit by bit, the power of death had chipped away at her anyway.

That was why she’d become so miserable. Why she’d felt as if she were in a coma, like parts of her had calcified.

Stifling a sob, I turned away, emotions choking me. For Lilith, who’d been dying for being close to the love of her life, and for Lucifer, who was doomed to kill the one person whom he loved so much that he’d forgotten himself to be with her.

The warmth of Azazel’s wing caressed my feathers. He’d stepped closer to me, his energy a soothing balm to my senses. He didn’t speak, didn’t need to, because there were no words that could ease the sorrow this revelation had caused in me.

“So, you see,” Metatron said with gravitas. “Lucifer truly cannot stay on Earth. Even if he intended to somehow control the power of death inside him, it would still leak out. It might take a day, but eventually his essence would slip through his control and taint the world around him. He would never make it to the point where his demon powers start to fade and he becomes human. By then, all living things in his vicinity—and beyond—would have perished.”

I sucked in a shuddering breath and turned back. “And if he takes Lilith to Hell after all, it would repeat her slow death over thousands of years.” I shook my head. “He’ll never do that. Not when he knows that he’s basically choking the life out of her with every minute he spends in her presence.” The tears spilled over now, drawing hot lines down my cheeks. “They’re the worst kind of star-crossed lovers, aren’t they? They’ll never get their happy end.”

Into the heavy silence, Azazel said, “The main problem remains, though. You are sending us back to Lucifer with the news that he cannot ever be on Earth, with no other viable option for him to reunite with Lilith. And with what you just revealed, the situation seems even more dire. I was concerned about the consequences of telling Lucifer he can’t be on Earth when I thought him merely the most powerful demon in existence. But now? If he is truly Death and holds that kind of power, his implosion would be ruinous for all the realms.”

“I agree,” Metatron said softly and with a helpless note to his voice.

“There must be a way.” I speared my fingers into my hair, massaging my temples with the balls of my hands. “You’re both the highest-ranking angels ever, and you have God’s ear, or, at least, you know more of his plans than anyone else. You must be chock-full of wisdom! Can’t you think of anything? Isn’t there a loophole, some trick, some sleight of hand that would make this work?”

Shekinah stared at me with disturbing force. Not aggressively, more…expectantly, almost.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I whispered.

“I am waiting,” she replied just as quietly.

“For what?”

She shook her head, her eyes still fixed on me without blinking. “I cannot say. But I feel it coming closer.”

“For me?” I whipped my head around and scanned the rooftop and the night sky in a sudden burst of dread before remembering that I was a badass demon now. Plus, it would be highly unlikely that anything would dare charge me with an archdemon and the two most powerful angels standing right here.

Sometimes, my human experience still got the better of me.

For a moment, my thoughts derailed, pondering all those transformations I’d gone through, from bonding with Azazel to having Lilith pass some of her power to me to dying and being ascended as an angel and then falling from grace and becoming a demon.

And then my mind snagged on something.

I closed my eyes to tune into it more, to grasp that fleeting thought, while Azazel quietly argued with Metatron about Lucifer’s power of death.

When I caught the idea, I opened my eyes, meeting Shekinah’s surreal white gaze. “Can he pass it on?”

A dazzling smile sparkled on her face. “There it is.”

Metatron and Azazel hadn’t heard me, so I turned to them and said more loudly, “What if Lucifer gives it to someone else?”

Their quiet conversation stopped, and both faced me with expressions of varying degrees of surprise and disbelief.

“Give what to someone else?” Azazel asked.

“The power of death. That”—I waved my hand vaguely—“essence.”

Azazel grimaced. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

Metatron scoffed, his black eyes resting on me. “What gave you that idea?”

I put both hands on my hips and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve read one too many fantasy books and that’s given me a naive view of what’s magically possible, but just now when I thought of how Lilith ripped a piece of her own essence, power, whatever, out of her and gave it to me, I was like, wait, if she did that, wouldn’t it possible for Lucifer to remove the death power from himself and pass it to someone else? I mean, before she did that, no one had done anything similar, but she just had this idea and rolled with it. So why wouldn’t a demon, or Lucifer, be able to do the same?”

Shekinah still smiled with all the brilliance of moonlight glistening on diamonds, while Metatron wore a skeptical scowl.

“God himself was not able to separate Death from Lucifer,” he said. “What makes you think?—”

“One cannot undo what the other did,” Azazel said quietly, paraphrasing Metatron’s earlier words, and as he spoke, his face slowly lit up with hope. “That is the limitation, yes? It doesn’t say anything about either of them being able to undo what they themselves did.”

Shekinah nodded vigorously even as I bounced in place with a surge of excitement.

“Yes,” I blurted. “God can’t separate Death from Lucifer, but what if Lucifer could separate the power of death from himself ? If we tell him who—what—he truly is, he’ll shed those limiting beliefs about himself and will be able to access his full powers again, right?”

“Which is precisely what we have been preventing for eons,” Metatron drawled with a surly note.

“Well, yeah, out of fear that he could use all that might against God to retaliate or take revenge or just be mean or whatever,” I said. “But he wouldn’t do that, not when he learns that he needs to rid himself of that power in order to be with Lilith. If there’s one thing I’ve come to understand about him, it’s that he puts Lilith and his love for her above anything else. Using that power against God won’t even be on his agenda once he knows it stands in his way of reuniting with Lilith.”

“Speaking of his love for Lilith,” Azazel interjected with a note of caution, “there are a few uncertainties here. If Death was so enamored with Lilith that he personified himself in Lucifer, then wouldn’t removing the power of death also remove the part of Lucifer that loves Lilith? Since it was such an integral factor of Death’s being before he made himself corporeal? In other words, how much of Lucifer is inextricably intertwined with the power of death, and how much of his identity and who he is would be left if that essence were to be extracted?”

I grimaced. “Good question.”

“Belief shapes reality,” Shekinah murmured, her expression untroubled. When we all looked at her, she spoke more loudly, “The answer lies in Death’s own might. When he crafted Lucifer’s identity and lost himself in it, he bound himself, his body, and his powers to the metaphysical laws that apply to angels. All parts of him that yearned to be someone became Lucifer. Note that he did not have a soul until he willed one into being. All of him that could be personified, he poured into Lucifer. That is what will remain. It works the same as when an angel or demon stays too long on Earth and slowly loses their powers—that does not change their personality, or who they are at their core; it only means they become human in strength and mortality. For Lucifer, it means that the who of Death has merged with him to the point that they are inextricable, but the what of Death—that essence that is the counterpart to Life—is one of his powers now and as such could be removed without killing him or altering who he is.” Her smile was gentle. “Once you tell him and he remembers, he will know how.”

“Hopefully,” Azazel muttered.

Metatron was silent for a long moment while the night wind whipped at us and carried the sounds of the city to and fro. With a heavy breath, he eventually said, “And to whom would Lucifer pass the power of death?”

I closed my mouth with an audible click, exhaling through my nose. Well, damn. I hadn’t thought that far.

“Who would carry that burden?” Metatron continued. “And the question is not only one of willingness, but of capability. Who would be strong enough to hold that kind of power?” He shook his head. “This is no small thing we are talking about. It is different from the power of a demon or an angel. This essence is one of the two founding forces of the universe. Lucifer could contain that kind of energy because he was crafted specifically for it by Death himself. A regular demon is either a fallen angel or descended from them, and angels are creations of Life. I fear if any of them were to hold that power, it would disintegrate them.”

“Unless”—Shekinah half closed her eyes and hummed—“they were his blood.”

Metatron whipped his head around to stare at her.

“Elaborate,” Azazel said with quiet sharpness.

“Did he not sire children?” Shekinah asked, her knowing gaze now resting on Azazel. “He is Death incarnate, and he procreated. First, he created his own body, and then he created life from himself, and by doing so, he passed on part of that which makes him able to hold the power of death. If anyone but him is capable of containing that essence, it would be one of his children.” She still held Azazel’s gaze, her expression intense. “Or their progeny.”

Oppressive silence reigned after that revelation.

My stomach sank with every second that ticked by, because I knew—and feared—the conclusion we’d all come to when we followed that thought to the end. Dread snaked its fingers around my spine, and my breath came faster.

Azazel opened his mouth to say something, but I caught his gaze and shook my head.

“No,” I whispered.

“Zoe—”

“Don’t.” More fear sliced into me, seeping into my veins and jumbling my thoughts. “You can’t .”

With panic icing my mind, I barely noticed how Azazel excused us for a moment, and then led me further away on the roof. There, in the shadow of an air vent, he pulled me into his arms and crushed me to him, squeezing me until those too-fast breaths stalled in my lungs.

He held me like that for a few dozen rapid beats of my heart, until some of the icy fog of panic cleared from my mind.

When he released me, he grasped me by the shoulders and hunched to be at eye level with me. “Breathe. Slowly.”

Just to be contrary, I sucked in a huge lungful of air.

He met my glare with an indulgent look and a small smile, which faded quickly, though, as he murmured, “It’s the only way.”

I shook my head. “There has to be someone else.”

“Who?” He raised his brows. “Naamah? She can’t very well take on the power of death when she needs to remain in the realm of Life.”

“Well, she’s not his only child, is she? He had five more!”

“Among them Samael, and the other four are nearly as rotten as he is.” His grim expression accentuated the hardness of his features. “I would trust none of them to hold and wield this kind of power. Naamah is the best of the lot, the only one who’s not self-serving and cruel for cruelty’s sake, but she’s out of the question for obvious reasons. And before you ask, my cousins aren’t better—they’re all very much like their parents. This power, in their hands…it would spell disaster. And in order to transfer this essence, they would have to be made privy to this entire conversation we just had, and they’d know exactly just how powerful they would become. With any of them, there’s a high risk that they would use this force for nefarious purposes.”

I grabbed the front of his tunic. “What about Azmodea? She’s your twin. She’d be just as eligible as you, and she’s a good person. Demon. Whatever.”

He seemed to weigh that for a moment. “You’re right. She’d be physically able to hold this power, and she wouldn’t use it for evil. If you wish, I will ask her.” He laid his hand on my cheek, his warmth sinking into me. “But consider this—I am already poised to ascend the throne and rule all of Hell. With what we know now, it stands to reason that the power of death might have been the factor that has given Lucifer the advantage all this time, the aspect that made him so incredibly powerful that he’s been able to hold the throne for thousands upon thousands of years. If that is the case, then the one thing we can do to ensure that we will live long and healthy lives as king and queen is for me to take the power of death from Lucifer.”

I bit my lip. “Well, crap, you’re making a lot of sense.”

“All this time, Lucifer has had no idea exactly how powerful he truly is. He has likely only scratched the surface of the potential of this force, and it already made him the strongest and most feared demon in Hell. If he’d known how to access all of it and what he could do with it? He probably wouldn’t have had to contend with any shit from the archdemons over the millennia.”

“Because he could have just killed them with a thought.”

Azazel nodded slowly, his eyes glowing with an inner fire. “No need for battles, for armies, for personally getting involved. As Death, all he needs is a whisper of intent, and his enemies would dissolve into light.” He snapped his fingers to accentuate his point.

“That is some Thanos shit right there.” I raised my brows.

He laughed softly. “Except Lucifer doesn’t need a glove with Infinity stones to make it happen.”

I shivered, rubbing my upper arms as if to warm myself, though the chill I felt came from within. From the thought of how the world had likely dodged a huge bullet by Lucifer not knowing that he held this kind of power all this time. “I think Metatron and Shekinah had a point in not telling him.”

“Yeah,” Azazel said roughly. “Especially with how he used to be in the past. And if he’d known his true power level when Lilith was killed, he would have razed the world in an instant. With how out of it he was, he wouldn’t have cared.”

I closed my eyes and gulped. “You’re right,” I said after a moment, meeting his stormy gaze. “About taking the power. Politically speaking, you are the best choice. I just… What if it hurts you? What if the part in you that is Lucifer’s blood is not strong enough to hold it all? You’re two generations removed from him. If this works like genetics do, then your heritage from Death is diluted twice, and that’s not taking into account that you’re half angel, which would work against that heritage to boot.”

His expression thoughtful, he considered my words. “That’s a valid concern,” he said eventually. “Though it would also apply to Azmodea as the only other option. She and I are both equally likely—or unlikely—to be able to hold that power safely, and of us both, it would make more sense for me to take it for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Every choice here has potentially dangerous ramifications—if Lucifer keeps the power and won’t be able to reunite with Lilith, it might just erase what is left of his sanity and make him implode completely, with fatal consequences for the world. If we give this power to any of his other descendants, they might use it for evil. And if I or Azmodea take it on, there’s a risk that it could destroy us.”

I covered my face with both hands and groaned. “I hate this.”

“Hey.” He gently pried my hands off my face. His expression was far too calm for the shit we were discussing, and across the bond, I only felt a quiet reassurance, none of the dread that soured my blood. “I never thought I’d say this,” he murmured, the hint of a grin on his lips, “but I think this is a matter of faith.”

I blinked at him. “Huh?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You know I’m not a fan of Heaven?—”

“Right there with ya.”

“And I am, by nature, skeptical of all things divine?—”

“That would include half of you, boo.”

“Quiet,” he said with a low laugh. “What I’m trying to say is that I believe this is…ordained to be.”

I sucked in a breath and leaned away from him. “Who are you, and what have you done with Azazel?” I narrowed my eyes. “And did you just shush me?”

His sly grin did things to my belly. “I like to live dangerously.” His expression turned serious. “The way Shekinah almost prompted you to come up with that idea, and looking at how she gave us the information that Lucifer’s descendants could take the power…” He shook his head. “I believe there’s a reason for it. If God isn’t entirely dormant, if he’s still watching and hasn’t gone completely hands-off, and if Metatron and especially Shekinah actually do have some connection left with him, then whatever divine afflatus she might have had just now would point her in the direction of solving this dilemma. Think about it. God wouldn’t want Lucifer-slash-Death to implode and take out the world. Nor would he want any of the other contenders to have access to that kind of power. Shekinah wouldn’t have suggested that I be able to hold that force if that option were doomed to fail. That wouldn’t be in God’s interest, would it?”

I chewed on my lip and pondered his explanation. “You think this is part of God’s grand plan?”

“I’m not sure he has a grand plan, no.” He tilted his head. “Not in the sense that he foresaw all of this happening at the beginning of time. It’s more likely that he’s making it up as we go along, but I think that he, more than anyone, could possess an intuition for how things will play out, a strategic sense of the possible outcomes of a situation. And he might just intervene enough to nudge the course of events in the direction that will deliver the outcome he desires. In our case, it would mean that the sudden insight he granted Shekinah—that I could take the power of death from Lucifer—indicates that I’d be successful with it. Otherwise, why show her the possibility of it? God would gain nothing from my failure to take the power. He needs that force to be contained, and by someone who won’t use it for evil. In that, our goals align.”

I uttered a dry laugh. “Look at us, being on the same page as God for once.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up in a sardonic smile. “The irony is not lost on me.”

“All right, then,” I said softly after a moment. “Let’s do it.”

He raised my hand and placed a kiss on my palm, his eyes tender as he looked at me. “So, do I have your permission to take on the mantle of Death, my love?”

“You don’t need my permission,” I whispered. “I’m not your boss.”

“But you’re my partner.” He still held my hand and now laid it over his heart. “And we decide matters of importance together. I will not steamroll over you, not now and not in the future, when you rule at my side.” Lightning flashed in his eyes. “My queen.”

My knees threatened to buckle. He was turning me into mush, one perfect word at a time. “I love you,” I said and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt to steady myself. “And I’ll have your back in this. Take the power, if that’s possible, and let’s hope it’ll help us secure our rule.”

With a nod, he turned, and together we walked back to Metatron and Shekinah. When we told them the news that Azazel had agreed to take the power of death from Lucifer, they both responded true to their respective character—Metatron with an expression somewhere between reluctant relief and skepticism, and Shekinah with dreamy joy.

“What I don’t understand,” I said, glancing between both, “is how you’ve kept this information secret from Lucifer for millennia—out of certainly justifiable fear of what he’d do with it—but you’re A-OK with us knowing it, with Azazel knowing it, when he’s the one who will have access to all that power now.” I squinted at Shekinah in particular, since she was the one who’d blurted out the secret, whereas Metatron would have kept a tight lid on that info. “You don’t have a problem with Azazel being aware of just how powerful he’ll become? Aren’t you—or God—afraid of what he’ll do with that knowledge?”

Shekinah shook her head, her smile bright and pure.

“Why not?”

“Because you care.”

I raised both brows and blinked rapidly. “Me? But I’m not the one who’ll hold that power.”

“You are the reason he will never use it to destroy the world.” Her pearl-colored eyes traced from me to Azazel and back. “That bond of yours is powerful. It will be the tether that keeps him grounded. Your heart is human still. I would wager it always will be. And since his heart is bound to yours, there will forever be a reason for him to care about humanity. Therefore”—she looked directly at Azazel—“we deem you safe to hold this power and the knowledge of it.”

Azazel inclined his head, then slid his gaze to me and murmured, “I told you—you’re a good influence.”

My cheeks blazed even as my heart jumped with happiness. Clearing my throat, I said, “Let’s go tell him, then.”