I was on my back, and the demon sunk its teeth into my shoulder and then shook its head, tearing my flesh from the muscle and my bone from the socket. I cried out, feeling even more human than before.
“Here!” Petra said, gaining the tag’s attention. “I am your slave no more, demon! You failed! I am free!”
I turned onto my stomach as the demon shrieked and then ran to my mother, pouncing and taking her to the ground.
“Mamá!” I cried.
She wrestled for just a few seconds before the demon grabbed her neck and pulled. Her body went limp the same time Eden sailed through the air, sinking the blade into the tag’s back before it had a chance to reattach.
The monster shrieked, and a slosh of dark liquid splashed at Eden’s feet before its entire body turned to ash.
I stared at Mamá’s lifeless body on the ground, most of her throat gone, her eyes staring above, vacant. “Mamá?” I called.
Eden checked Mamá, kissed her forehead, and then rushed to me.
“We have to go,” she said softly. “Your father’s coming.”
We phased back to Earth’s plane, where Claire, Jared, and Nina had stopped chanting. Jared was tending to his exhausted wife, Agatha was detaching tubes and monitors from my mother, and Cynthia was covering her with cheese cloth.
“Wait,” I said, limping to Mamá’s side.
I was unable to take my eyes off my mother, knowing it would be the last time in this life. “Eden?”
“She’s conflicted,” Eden said, her eyes closed. “She’s right outside the Eighth Gate. This is her chance at a sacrifice, at seeing you in eternity outside of Hell. But she doesn’t want to leave you.”
“Go, Mamá,” I said, kissing her cheek. “You can go now,” I said, attempting a reassuring smile. I put my palm on her forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”
“He knows,” Bex said. “This is war, you know.”
I held Mamá’s hand in both of mine. A tear fell from the outside corner of her eye and across her temple to her dark hairline. She had always been beautiful, and even after fighting for her life, she was beautiful still. I had been afraid of her death since I was a boy, knowing her fate, but now that she had the possibility of something different…
“Mamá,” I began. I brushed back her hair with my fingers. “You leave me now, but we’ll be together again.” My face crumbled.
“She’s in,” Eden said with a relieved sigh. “She’s safe.”
My head fell forward, and my shoulders trembled with my silent sobs. I sucked in a breath, trying to steady my voice.
Eden’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I…”
“My father was coming. She had to get beyond the safety of the gates before he could get to her.” I reached up to place my hand over Mamá’s eyes, closing them completely. “It was quick. For that I’m grateful.”
“You gave her eternity in Heaven, Levi. You know as well as anyone that was the most selfless thing you could do,” Cynthia said, twisting off the knob of the oxygen tank next to the bed. “Your father never would have allowed it. She had to die during a sacrifice.”
I lifted my mother in my arms, her blouse still sticky and wet with her blood, and then lay her back gently, covering her with the thin white cloth Cynthia had provided.
Jared began a beautiful prayer in Hebrew. She was God’s now.
“Levi?” Eden said, calling after me as I passed her.
“I need to bury her,” I replied, heading for the garden to retrieve a shovel.
Chapter Fifteen
Eden
For a being who’d existed with him for eons, I didn’t know how to behave around Levi. He’d been quiet, but not brooding. Mourning, but not sad. It was difficult to know what to say, if I should apologize again, even though I’d done it at least a dozen times. He didn’t want or need to hear it, and although I knew how he felt and what words made his heart speed up with anxiety or slow as my words or presence calmed him, guilt clouded everything.
At the same time, I longed to be there for him, to help him, save him, to take away his pain, but then the guilt and the awkwardness of my human side would take over, and I’d let him walk the halls of my grandmother’s house alone.
The unique sound of glass hitting Grandmother’s marble countertop echoed, pulling me from my self-loathing. Agatha lightly kicked the wooden leg of my stool, and I sat up taller, watching from the kitchen as my grandmother clicked across the dining room in six-inch snakeskin Louboutin’s.
Agatha began filling the goblet in front of me with dark red wine.
“I’m eighteen,” I said. “Does that not count since I’m immortal?”
“No one is too young for the blood of Christ,” she said in her thick Scottish accent, pouring her own. “Pretend it’s communion and drink up.”
“So you’ve known this whole time? About all of us?” I asked before holding the glass to my nose and smelling the rancid grape concoction.
“I know what I need to know. It’s dangerous to know too much here.”
I took a sip, then a gulp.
Agatha clinked her glass to mine before I placed it on the counter. “May the power of Christ compel ya.”
I breathed out a laugh, then took another drink.
Agatha pulled my hair from the tie that held it back and ran her fingers through the light blonde strands like she did when I was a girl. I closed my eyes and inhaled, letting the memory take over. Agatha had always had a calming aura about her. She had always been neutral, the perfect middle ground of my mother and grandmother. Not too sweet, not too tough. Never judging or taking a side. Agatha was the unsung hero of my story and my mother’s, too.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. It was Petra’s choice, maybe her only choice not to spend eternity in darkness.”
“Anyone who’s been there wouldn’t want to return.
“Levi understands that.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“What is it like?” she asked, but then shivered.
“Do you really want to know?”
“No … yes. Yes, I want to know.”
“It’s grotesque. Worse than a nightmare. Every breath you take burns. Sulphur fills your nose, your lungs. The heat sizzles your skin, like standing too close to a fire and not being able to step away. The landscape is barren. Everything is red, or orange … or black. But the things there, not everything is human. It’s a place where evil from everywhere goes. And, whatever they were, you’d never recognize it on its plane because they’re all misshapen. Hate, bitterness, regret, and pain change you from the inside out. Humans are in the millions, and they’re piled on top of one another, consumed and manufactured and tortured and writhing in misery. They reach to the dark sky, to the speck of light above.”