‘Alright. We’re right behind you.’
‘Hazai… be careful; they have managed to craft arrows out of the same material as the scepters. Don’t get shot.’
Hazai fell silent for a beat before finally responding.
‘Who did they kill?’
‘Jezebel.’
‘Fuck… that means…’
‘Yeah,’I growled.‘Artwas the fucking rat.’
I madeit to the Fountain of Death in record time. If I was going to take on God’s armies alone, I was going to need a boost. No one had done what I was about to do, and I wasn’t really sure what the consequences would be.
I knew Lilith’s blood was deadly to mortals, but no one knew what would happen if a demon stepped into the inky pool of her magic. I had felt the way the scythe’s magic had blended with my own when I needed it to fight Yahweh. Something told me this would be the same. I was not afraid of Lilith’s magic. If anything, I craved it. I was her Reaper. Yahweh had been right when he said I was a vessel. I was a vessel of carnage and fucking death and he was about to learn what that truly meant.
Her blood gathered around me as I stepped into the creek. It was as if a current suddenly formed, and the midnight liquid swirled around me in a twisting vortex of ecstasy. It felt so fucking good against my skin. Her blood soaked through my flesh, and I felt my body fill with her magic as if I were a dry sponge.
I continued to walk deeper into the spring until I was fully submerged. Opening my mouth, I swallowed large mouthfuls of her, ensuring every single cell in my body was baptized in her power—she tasted like honey and salt. As her essence slid down my throat, a thirst awakened within me that felt nearly unquenchable. I craved each mouthful more than the last, and I wondered how I had managed to survive this long without her blood.
I held myself under until I was humming with power. Finally, I broke through the surface and shot through the air, strings of moldy rot and decay trailing behind me like the tail of a comet as I ripped toward the gates of Heaven. The blade of my scythe gleamed in the starlight, and I felt my consciousness melt away.
I was no longer Ramel.
I was only Death, and even God’s angels wouldn’t survive me.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
—WILLIAM CONGREVE
Dying was the most profound yet painful experience of my existence. As my mortal body took its final breaths, my consciousness slammed into the mind of my immortal self. The collision released an explosion of memories so vibrant and colorful that I felt I might twirl and dance through them forever.
Tears welled in my eyes as an eternity filled with quiet ‘I love you’s’ was laid out before me in a tranquil mosaic, showing me every detail of the life that was stolen from us.
I was blessed with visions of Ramel returning from battle with a smile on his face and a bouquet of deadly flowers in his black hands.
I remembered countless nights spent curled between Ramel and Shemhazai and witnessed the hundreds of evenings that Ramel had spent reverently brushing my hair. I relearned the endless stories Shem had told us about his adventures on Earth.
I recalled the years of working together to build a safe space for displaced angels who wished to start over as demons.
The thousands of Samhain feasts I had spent dancing in the arms of my Reaper.
The millions of hours spent reading in Hell’s library blended with trillions of toe-curling moments filled with passion.
All these beautiful snapshots were neatly wrapped up in several millennia of being cherished and loved by my two demons.
As sweet as these memories were, there were darker ones too—my time spent in purgatory was a relentless expanse of nothing. I had floated alone, but I hadn’t been afraid. My sacrifice had spared them. I had done it to save them, and that had been enough for me to survive the torture of never-ending solitude.
The worst thing that could happen to the living was not death. The worst thing that could happen to the living was to move through life without love, and to live in a world without Ramel or Shem would have been no life at all.
Alexa, play‘CODE MISTAKE’by CORPSE, Bring Me The Horizon
Rough hands randown my bare arms, and I smiled, expecting to see Ramel’s face as I was reborn. My heart plummeted, however, as I took my first breath in my new immortal body to find Rafael crouched over me instead. He was snarling like some sort of clumsy, angry primate.
The power that hummed through my veins was deadly and eternal, but with the noose wrapped around my wrists, I could not release my magic. It could only exist within me, and try as I might, I could not wield it.
The other Lilith was not gone, but she was no longer a voice in my head. She was me, and I was her. Her memories were mine, and my experiences were hers. We were no longer separate entities, only an evolved version of who we had been before. Like how an adult is a version of the child they were before, changed and shaped by life experiences, so were the two versions of us.
