24
The sun cut through the clouds at the horizon, spilling blood into the gleaming ocean. Out here, where the blue depths stretched endlessly in every direction, Captain Johnson felt most at home.
He strode along the railing of the ship, the brine-mist licking his cheeks and dampening his gray beard. A lifetime at sea – few men could boast about such things nowadays. It was a simple life, one that his father had led before him, and his father before him.
The sails of the three masts pulled the ship straight toward the setting sun. Evangeline was a large boat for two people, but Johnson’s wife had become a proficient sailor over the years. And together they braved the winds and the waves.
“I never grow bored of this view,” Johnson muttered, the furrows in his face deepened by the last beams of the day.
As the night finally settled in, he wandered over to the prow, gazing down into the starlit water. He’d always wondered what the world would look like without the sea. People living on mountain plateaus called continents. So much lay forever hidden beneath the churning waters.
He waved at his shadow. It bent and bucked with the surface. It waved back, but with less vigor than usual. Its sunken shoulders and crooked back no longer belonged to a strong, young sailor. Its eyes, however, shone like fallen stars.
Johnson held his breath. Shadows didn’t have eyes.
With his heart thudding in his chest, he reached for the navigation light, turning it straight down into the murky depths. The powerful beam pierced the water, and more eyes appeared. Only, they weren’t eyes, just a long pattern – golden dots that sat in pairs at regular intervals.
Then they all moved at the same time, and Johnson almost lost his balance.
“Margaret!” he cried, as a massive shadow slithered below the ship.
In all his time at sea, Johnson had never seen anything like it. He’d seen orcas, great whites, and sperm whales – he’d even encountered a giant squid once – but that thing, with the golden dots along its body, dwarfed them all in size.
Johnson wasn’t usually a man who lost his cool, but the tall tales that he’d both heard and told over the years when the rum flowed freely, suddenly sprung to mind. The ocean floor was barely explored and…
Evangeline rocked violently.
Johnson’s knees hit the deck. Margaret stumbled out of the cabin, only to fall flat as the ship swayed again. Water splashed up over the railings and the ocean cooked. Johnson heard his wife screaming, but his mind filtered it out, all too focused on comprehending what rose out of the depths. Teeth the size of traffic cones, scales like saucers, and giant purple eyes. Ten horns of bleached bone. Seven crowns of golden fins. Seven heads – one dripping pus from a deep wound. Johnson saw it and wept.
Then the sea swallowed everything.
***
Amanda slumped over the desk in the royal records chamber. She’d spent hours going through history books and anything else that might give her a clue on the whereabouts of the fallen angels. So far, however, she’d come up with nothing.
Inside the flame of the candle, the smoldering plains rolled by on the other side of Grubnub’s eye. Amanda sighed. If only she’d have access to the main library of the castle, then maybe it’d be easier to study the angels. All these useless ledgers filled with Marc’s deals provided her with little actual information about these creatures.
“Grubnub, do you have the main library saved in your head? Blink once for yes, and twice for no.”
The flame blinked one time. And then a second. Amanda pouted. She rubbed her eyes and then put her head on the desk. She had so little to work with. She was just a mortal with nothing, just like all the people in these records – just like all the people who had sold their souls.
An idea struck her. She rose from the chair so fast that it fell over. She picked up the first ledger with deals. Perhaps she’d been looking at it the wrong way. She leafed through the pages.
“Ha!” she exclaimed and spread the book open.
There, in perfect detail, she found a breakdown of a ‘Deal with the Devil.’ A mortal often wished for something badly enough to look for it in dark places. Surprisingly, not much was needed to summon a demon – just a strong desire, a bit of blood drawn into a pentagram, and a name.
Amanda had all of those.
She took an empty page and pricked her finger with the tip of the quill. Blood dripped onto the paper. She drew the symbols and then the name.
Lix Tetrax
She clenched her fists, thought about Sarah and Lucifer and how she refused to be a pawn any longer. The letters written in blood flared, but nothing else happened. Perhaps there was a difference between fallen angels and demons that she didn’t know about. Perhaps she’d messed up the ritual somehow.
Sucking on her fingertip, she reached for a new blank page. Amanda nearly jumped out of her skin when a quiet snicker suddenly hit her eardrums. The shadows shifted in the corner of the room, and a tall woman stepped out. Wispy raven hair fell in coils down her sides, dragging behind her on the floor like the train of a bizarre wedding dress. Her bony featherless wings crawled along the walls and stretched into the ceiling of the room.
The fallen angel grinned. If she had eyes, they were buried beneath the hair, much like the rest of her body.
“Lix Tetrax?” Amanda said, struggling to keep her voice steady.
The only response was a shrill titter as the creature drifted forward. A strange wind tugged at Amanda’s clothes and flipped through the pages of the ledgers. The tiny flame of the candle danced nervously.
“I… I want to make a deal,” Amanda said, feeling every hair on her body stand up.
“Deeeaaaaaal?” the angel hissed.
“I’m the one who banished Uriel and released you from the Pit.”
The angel drew closer still. Amanda could almost feel the long black hair, choking the air out of the room.
“I want to make a deal!” Amanda said again, urgency seeping into her words.
The fallen angel leaned in and nodded.
Amanda tensed up, her muscles trembling. “I want you to side with me against Lucifer.”
Lix Tetrax nodded again. She was so close now that her hair tickled Amanda’s face.
“And in return, um… I guess you want my soul?” Amanda said, nervously.
Another titter echoed between the walls, but the angel shook her head.
“What then?” Amanda said.
The long hair brushed up against Amanda’s face. The angel’s voice was barely a gust of wind in her ear. The whispered words made her stomach turn.
Without breathing, Amanda managed to squeeze out, “Deal.”
Lix Tetrax smiled again and nodded. She took a step back, and the long tendrils of hair merged with the shadows of the room. And then, in a whoosh of air, the fallen angel vanished.
Amanda sunk to the floor, panting, her body releasing sweat and tears. Another wave of shivers rolled through her. For several minutes she just stared at the ceiling. Then she steeled herself.
One down.