“I love you, Lilith. I would rather be unmade than live in a world without you in it. If anyone tries to hurt you, promise me you won’t hesitate to use that on them.”
“I promise,” I whispered, and he leaned forward to press his lips against mine softly.
His lips were soft and warm, and the scent of frankincense flooded my nose. After a moment, he pulled away and brushed my hair over my shoulder before straightening.
“I need to go to this meeting. If you need anything while Shem and I are busy, ask Art,” he said by way of parting, and he left me there, holding the Aetherium dagger.
I strappedthe blade to my thigh and forced myself to focus on my research. I wanted more than anything to find a way to take Yahweh out. The other version of me, who I was becoming more and more acquainted with as the days passed, fed me glimmers of memories and forgotten pieces of knowledge. These little hints and clues were extremely helpful and gave me a surprisingly strong background to a history not recorded by mankind.
I was currently digging into the different types of gods that had reigned before Yahweh had somehow managed to take over. I learned that there had once been a god or a goddess for everything. In Norse mythology, there was a Goddess of Night named Nótt. In Egypt, there was the god Ra, the Sun God… I remembered seeing his tomb in the cemetery.
There were so many Greek gods and goddesses that my mind whirled as I read. There was Asclepius, the God of Healing and Medicine. Hecate, the Goddess of Crossroads and The Moon; apparently, she was also often associated with witchcraft. I remembered Shem pausing by her grave when we had visited the cemetery. He seemed so sad when we passed her tomb. What sort of relationship did the two of them have?
I found myself daydreaming about what types of mischief Shem and Hecate might have gotten into when I came across a paragraph on Hypnos, the Greek God of Sleep. I paused, frowning. I didn’t remember seeing a grave for Hypnos in the cemetery.
To be fair, I hadn’t really been looking for anyone specific while we had been there. I would need to ask Shem or Ramel if they knew where Hypnos was buried.
I spent the rest of the day learning how Heaven and Hell worked. I figured if I was going to dismantle Yahweh’s reign, the best place to start would be at the beginning.
I quickly learned why Shem, Ramel, Raf, and Jezebel all worked at Voodoo. Confessions powered Yahweh’s Sorter of Souls. He used to be able to run the machine off of confessions from loyal churchgoers. However, over the years, Christianity and Catholicism had fallen out of favor, and He had needed to find a new way to power the Soul Sorter.
It was clever, really. Stealing drunken confessions from mortals who didn’t understand the power of their own words. I had to hand it to the creator; it was an eloquent solution to a complex problem.
What I was having trouble understanding waswhyit was a problem for Him. Outside of the fact that without the Sorter of Souls, mankind would no longer reincarnate, why was it important to Yahweh that it continued to run?
He didn’t strikeme as the type of being who particularly cared about the well-being of His creations. The Bible is riddled with examples of Him completely wiping out or punishing mankind when they strayed from what He considered to be the path of ‘righteousness.’ He was not a benevolent god, so why did it matter to Him if mankind regenerated?
Perhaps He just enjoyed controlling them, but that didn’t seem like it was worth the hassle when He also had an entire race of angels at His disposal.
No. I had a feeling it was something more than His clear need for absolute control.
‘Power.’The other Lilith whispered into my mind.
Power? Like, in the literal sense?
Feeling as if I were on the cusp of a discovery, I stood and wandered through the stacks. I needed to know more about how Yahweh had risen to power. Clearly there had been many gods and goddesses who managed the world before Him. Where had He come from? How had He managed to wipe out the rest of these divine beings and take control?
My fingers brushed against a thick dusty volume and that voice in my head whispered for me to read the spine.
I frowned at the title.‘The Divine Usurpation: Unveiling the Tyranny of Heaven’
This seemed promising. I pulled the book from the shelf and settled back down at my table to read. I was starting to feel like I had all the pieces to the puzzle; now, it was just a matter of figuring out how they all fit together.
‘You’re close.’That little voice chimed in my mind, and I frowned, recognizing it as that mean little voice that had followed me my whole life. Thinking back, maybe the voice hadn’t been mean at all. Maybe the voice had just been honest, and I hadn’t been ready to face the truth.
“We’reclose,” I whispered to the other Lilith, and I felt her smile in my mind.
‘We are,’she agreed, and together, we dug into the tomb that documented Yahweh’s rise to power.
“God is a kid with an ant farm, lady. He’s not planning anything.”
—JULES WINNFIELD, PULP FICTION (1994)
“He’s fucking late,” I growled at Shem as I claimed one of his pawns. We had been waiting in the office for Gabriel for nearly three hours.
Three hours.I could have been in the library with Lilith. Shem had told me to go back to her several times, but her comment about how Jezebel would have been a distraction rang in my ears. I would likely be an even worse distraction, and I wanted her to have space if she needed it.
At first, I hadn’t really put much thought into what it would mean for her to have a purpose. However, after the first day in the library with her, it was like I was spending time with the old Lilith.
