Harley looked like she’d been slapped. “I’m not a demon,” she snarled.
Aurum tipped his head. “Of course not. But Shade powers do come from them and the darkest fallen angel to ever grace the universe, and so excuse me for speculating.”
Unshed tears filled Harley’s vision, but she blinked them back. I wanted to stick up for her, but he was right. She did have powers given to her by demons.
“How do I heal her?” Harley snapped.
“You just touch her,” I told her, my voice soft and supportive.
Harley’s mouth was set into a grim line as she stepped forward and reached for the woman.
“I’m going to heal you now. It’s okay,” Harley said, trying to be reassuring when I was sure she felt anything but confident.
The woman glanced at Aurum, and after a nod of encouragement from him, she tentatively reached for Harley with hope in her gaze, but when Harley’s hand passed through her nothing happened.
“As I thought,” Aurum stated.
Harley pulled back her hand like she’d been burned.
“Your turn,” Aurum told me.
Oh great, make me go after her. If it worked, it’d look like I was showing off.
I knew Aurum’s time was valuable, so I stepped forward and reached for Genevieve without saying a word. My hand passed through hers and a shot of purple power left my body and struck her right in the chest. She fell to her knees, sobbing as her body glowed with purple light and then the holes in her spirit slowly filled. As they did, her corporal form turned solid until she kneeled before me as a normal-looking human.
“Thank you!” she cried.
“You’re welcome,” I told her, and then backed away.
I turned to face Aurum and Harley and was saddened by the hurt on Harley’s face. It wasn’t my fault I could heal. Harley had lots of abilities I didn’t. Right now I’d trade healing for her ability to control hellhounds in a hot second.
“Just as I suspected,” Aurum said.
“Mr. Know it All,” Harley jibed.
I ignored my sister and looked to my guardian. “What do you suspect?”
“Only Harley will be able to bring down the concealment spell, and only you will be able to heal the souls. You both will need to trust and work together to pull this off as you both have very different abilities.”
Harley perked up a little at that. Knowing she had her own role in this hopefully made her feel important.
I chewed my lip, thinking through everything we needed to figure out.
“How am I going to bring the souls over from the Netherworld though?” I asked, hoping Aurum had an answer. Healing souls would take a lot of energy, but at least it was something I didn’t really need to think about. Moving souls from one realm to another was completely foreign to me. I’d never done anything like that before.
“I’ve talked extensively with Cael and some of the other archangels, and we think you bring the souls back the same way Apollyon brought them here, using that stone.”
Aurum nodded toward something over my shoulder and I turned to look at the black cube I’d watched Apollyon use to divert the souls to the Netherworld in his memories. I looked at it more closely, squinting to see the fine black threads of magic that no doubt connected Tartarus to the Netherworld. Even now I could see bright lights zooming through the black threads as the cube sucked in the souls of the recently deceased and transported them to the Netherworld.
My stomach soured as I thought about what that must be like for people to die and then wake up in the Netherworld—a literal Hell—and find out they’re nothing more than sustenance for its evil ruler.
“Yeah, what is that?” Harley asked. “I noticed it earlier. It’s giving off some crazy dark energy.”
I quickly explained how I saw Apollyon use the cube to steal souls from Tartarus, growing more powerful as time went on, eventually gaining enough strength to create the Netherworld and lock the angels of Avalon out of Tartarus for good. At least until now. With Harley’s ability to break through Apollyon’s dark magic, and my ability to heal souls, everything was about to change.
Harley frowned as she listened to more of the details of how diabolical and vile our father truly was.
She took another look at the stone and then started toward it. “Well, we can solve one problem today. Let’s put this magic soul sucking cube out of order.”
