Page 99 of Into Hell
I closed my eyes against her words, knowing they were true. Even then, I’d been seeking out life, and she had been the only supply available to me. It had to have been terrifying and exhausting for her.
For the first time in my life, I put myself in her shoes. Fifteen and pregnant with a baby she didn’t want, and who was draining her from the inside out. I couldn’t understand her hatred, but I understood her fear.
“What stopped you from going through with it?” I asked.
“The voices,” she whispered as her fingers dug into the chair. “I was waiting for my turn when they whispered to me for the first time. They told me I had to keep you alive, that I had to care for you, and that if I got rid of you they would kill me and I would burn in Hell for all eternity. So many times, I contemplated ridding myself of you and your evil over the years, and every time the voices returned to tell me to keep you safe or I would pay for it.”
I didn’t know what was worse, her hearing voices or the fact that she’d contemplated killing meoftenthroughout my life.
Corson, Raphael, Hawk, and Caim stepped into the doorway, drawing my attention to them. Raphael’s face remained blank, but Caim’s expression was curious as well as confused.
“When I told the voices there was somethingwrongwith you, that you were killing me, that you were evil, they told me to keep you safe anyway,” my mother continued. “I told them I believed you were the devil’s spawn, and they told me it didn’t matter; Lucifer’s child must live. They told me I could never tell anyone what they revealed, and I was too afraid to go against them. It doesn’t matter anymore though, everyone knows the truth now.”
“Son of a bitch,” I breathed as my gaze remained pinned on Raphael. Kobal’s head turned toward the angel and his eyes narrowed.
“Then, one day, they told me to turn you in, to get rid of you, and I wassohappy. Finally, it was over. I was free of you, but it was too late. You had already wrapped your evil around Gage, Bailey, and the rest of the town. You turned them all against me.”
Her words drew my attention back to her as a memory tugged at me. On the day she’d sold me to the soldiers, or the day she’d apparently beentoldto sell me to them, I had stood beside her just like this. I recalled thinking that despite her hair being a stringy, unwashed mess around her face and her near constant frown, she looked untouched by the years with her smooth, wrinkle-free skin.
Now, I looked past her unwashed hair and clothes again. Past the shadows under her eyes, her emaciated frame, and hollowed-out cheeks to her unlined, youthful skin. She’d been sixteen when she gave birth to me and twenty-five when the gateway opened. She was thirty-eight now, but there wasn’t so much as a laugh line next to her eyes or a crease in her brow.
My head spun as I tried to process this information. I lifted my hand to my forehead and swayed on my feet. Kobal steadied me as Magnus’s words from when we’d still been in Hell drifted through my mind. We’d been getting ready to travel to the seals, and he’d gone through the scrolls before pulling me and Kobal aside with some of the others…
“There is more to her,” Magnus said to us.
Thrown off by his words, I hadn’t known how to respond or what to expect. “What though?” I asked.
“I believe some of your vast power with life is because you have found each other and claimed the other as your Chosen. The discovery of a Chosen makes a demon stronger, even a mortal demon such as yourself,” Magnus told me and Kobal.
“What do you believe the rest of it is?” Kobal inquired.
“I don’t know,” Magnus replied. “What I do know is that she is unlike any who have walked before her, and I believe she will be the end of Lucifer.”
He’d gone on to say he believed me to be the firsttrueWorld Walker. The first angel offspring who could be capable of walking Earth, Hell, and Heaven, but he hadn’t known why.
I knew now.
Lowering my hand, I stared at my mother again. “You haven’t aged in thirteen years,” I breathed. “Not since the gateway opened.”
She blinked at me as if she hadn’t realized this, and perhaps she hadn’t. I didn’t think she had a clue as to what she was. Until recently, no one had known there would come a time when I would stop aging too.
“You are descended from the angels. That is who the voices belong to and why they can speak with you,” I said.
For a moment, a light bloomed over my mother’s face. A smile curved her mouth and her eyes warmed in a way I’d never seen before. “Angels,” she murmured. Then, her eyes dimmed and she slumped against the chair. “They want nothing to do with me, only you. Everything has always been aboutyou.”
I looked to where Raphael and Caim stood in the doorway. Raphael remained apathetic, but Caim looked like someone had socked him in the gut as he gazed from my mother to me and back again.
“She’s not descended from an angel. It’s impossible,” Caim muttered, though he looked as if he didn’t quite believe it. “We know our lines; we followed them. Few of us have any descendants left. I mean, I guess there could be a line we believed to be dead, or a child lost along the way, but I don’t think so. She must be insane.”
“No,” I said flatly. “No, she told me I had the devil’s eyes. She’s always known who I descended from and the voices…the angelstold her.”
Caim stared at my mother before focusing on Raphael. “Why would the angels talk to her?” Caim demanded. “Why would they—you—not want Lucifer’s line ended? Riveristhe last of his descendants. Why not let her mother have the abortion and be done with it?”
Raphael stared at me for a minute before his head tipped back and he gazed at the ceiling. When he looked at me again, he started speaking. “Before River was born, Ariel received a premonition revealing that she must survive. No matter what the cost.”
“The cost was her,” I said and waved my hand at my mother. “The angels broke her when they suddenly started speaking to her and told her to keep me when I wasfeedingoff her.”
“Some humans are not strong enough to handle the voice of the angels, but she had to know to keep you alive and to keep you with her. What happened to her was unfortunate but necessary.”
