I leave.

I don’t know what I expected from Lucifer. I’m not naïve enough to think myself his match in this fight, but I want to do something more than sit quietly in a hotel room while he hunts my family’s murderer.

All because I’m something far too valuable to be risked as bait.

To the angels, I’m a thing. Something to be protected or used but not an equal. Never an equal.

They leave me behind to search the city, Lucifer ordering me to “stay put” like I was a pet.

Sit.

Stay.

Play dead.

Lucifer has his own vendetta against Michael and the rest of Heaven, and he no doubt thinks he’s shielding me from the wrath of angels, but there’s no way I’m sitting on the sidelines of my own life anymore.

As an afterthought, I dig the little red flannel bag from the recesses of my purse and tuck the iron coin in my pocket before rushing after them.

Tracking two men on foot in a city this size is easier said than done. By the time I reach the street, they’re both long gone. I pause in the doorway of The Saint, scanning the packed streets for any signs of the two fallen angels and coming up empty.

I glance over my shoulder at the glass doorway that would take me back to the hotel, to the comfortable room where I could wait in relative safety for my future to unfold around me.

No. Not this time. Not ever again.

Instead, I duck out into the crowd, my feet finding the well-trod path that I’ve followed far too many times in the last few weeks, seeking the cold comfort that only the dead can bring.

The iron gates of Lafayette Cemetery loom ahead, and I follow the path, the stones under my feet cracked from the endless parade of tourists that come to gawk at the city of the dead.

The cemetery is quiet today. I pass the familiar tombs, idly ticking off Augustin, Bellard, and Cavaille before I reach Celestin.

The family mausoleum is large, one of the few that is a small building rather than just an above-ground grave. Tucked in one of the lesser used thoroughfares of the cemetery, it escapes the notice of most passersby.

A stone angel perches on the peaked roof, staring coldly down at me as I slip into the chilly darkness.

Funny, I used to find that angel’s presence comforting.

Out of habit, I run my fingers over the verse carved into the arching doorway.

Fear not

I am the first and the Last

I am she that liveth, and was dead

and, behold, I am alive for evermore

and have the keys of hell and of death.

Revelations. As a teenager, I'd ascribed the gender change in the verse on an ancestor more concerned with female pride than possible blasphemy, but beyond that bit of trivia, I had paid no attention to the words. I press my fingertips against Last, the cool dampness of the stone sinking into my skin.

She had known. They had all known.

I sink down on the stone bench that rests in the center of the mausoleum, trying to wrap my head around the realization that my mother knew the truth of our bloodline and made the choice to hide it from me.

Name after name lines the tombs.

Arelia

Genevieve

Rose

Serafine

All Celestin. Not a single woman in our family has ever taken her husband’s name.

The few men buried here all bore different last names.

Ducrest

Lacour

Anderson

And then there are the two tombs closest to the back - the stone newer, the sheen of the modern hewn marble still only a few years old.

Marianne Celestin

William Murphy

"Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad," I say, softly. "So things have gotten pretty crazy in the past few days. I met someone who seems to know more about my family than I do." I fall silent, staring unseeingly at the quiet stone, breathing in the faint smell of decay from last week's wilting roses.

“I don’t know why I thought I would get answers here. I guess I just felt like this would be a safe place to think.” Almost unconsciously I pull Lucifer’s coin from my pocket, my fingertips making the now familiar circuit of the angular symbol.

“How is Lucifer the only person who has been honest with me in my entire life?” I demand. “How could you keep this from me?”

Hindsight always is 20/20, and when I think back to my carefree teenage years, there are so many little isolated events that all lead back to this tomb and the cursed Celestin bloodline.

---

Talismans of faiths that most of the world has long forgotten always filled our house. Once a pencil rolled across the floor, and a quick glance upward while retrieving it revealed an elaborate symbol spanning the underside of our kitchen table, whorls of red chalk creating stylized hearts and crosses that grew into the same image I'd seen carved into Erzulie's door.

The bundles of herbs and flowers hung over the windows, the bright sunlight fading the fragrant bundles to a brittle yellow until my mother replaced them with new herbs. The old bunches were tossed in the fireplace, filling the room with sweet, herbal smoke.

My father would smile even more than usual on those days. “My Creole witch is brewing something again,” he’d say, tapping one of the fresh bundles, drawing out more of the sharp, green scent.

My mother would laugh and say something about how chemical air fresheners were toxic and wasn’t this so much nicer. I never noticed how the smile never quite reached her eyes on those days.

The trips to the voodoo shops didn’t end when I was a child, but I was included less and less. She would slide in behind the wheel of the Jeep, sunlight glinting off the glass beads of the carved wooden rosary that hung from the rearview mirror, and drive away, disappearing into the back rooms of the voodoo shops.

She avoided churches. Unlike most of my peers, I didn’t spend my Sunday mornings in a droning Latin mass. Over the years a few baptisms or weddings demanded our presence, and she was always skittish and wary, the tense line of her shoulders belying the happy smile pasted across her lips.

"She's too young. It's too soon." She was sitting on the front stoop, the cordless phone pressed against her ear and lines of strain crisscrossing her face. Her voice pitched low, hiding the discussion from my father. She never knew that I was sitting in the shadows by the open window. "I just want her to have a normal life for a bit longer. She deserves that."

They died a day later.

It’s funny the things you remember.

---

“Why were you so afraid of churches?” I wonder aloud, but the stones give no answer. “If we’d be safe anywhere I’d think it would be on holy ground.”

“You would think that.”

I freeze at the unfamiliar voice at my back, every part of me going cold.

“But she knew entering God’s house would make her more visible to His soldiers.”

I scramble to my feet, pressing myself against the back wall of the mausoleum. A man stands in the doorway, the fading light of the setting sun silhouetting him in a blaze of orange and gold.

The first thing I notice is his size. Lucifer is all compact muscles, his strength hidden from a casual glance, but this man – angel, my mind corrects absently – is built like a battering ram.

The grey suit he wears does little to conceal the thick muscles of his chest and arms. A build designed for brute force isn’t made for a suit. While the inky fabric Lucifer clothes himself in flows around his form like a second skin, this one’s jacket is ill-fitting, the seams fighting to contain him. His sandy blond hair is cut in a military crop, and his dark blue eyes briefly meet mine with a cold intensity of an assassin focusing on his target.

It has to be Michael. God’s most fearsome warrior.

And I’m alone.

Michael seems to barely acknowledge my presence as he takes another step inside. His eyes sweep around the tomb, pausing on each name that catches his eye. “Arelia Celestin. She was a feisty one. Red hair and a mouth that would fit in more today than her time. It was 1921 when she died. That fire took out half the quarter. Her beloved husband Ducrest succumbed to the burns from the blaze a few days later.”

“Genevieve was just 14 and only she made it out unscathed. We lost track of that one for far too long. This country was thick into a World War when she drowned in the Mississippi in ’44. Her paramour Lacour went mad from grief and hung himself a month later, so dear sweet Rose was left to fend for herself.”

Michael never pauses in his narrative as he moves closer to me, always blocking the door with his bulk.

“Rose was luckier than most at first. Her golden hair and sweet smiles caught the eye of a wealthy man. Sacriste owned half the ports in the city back then, but he wasn’t loyal. When she told him of her family lineage, he tossed her in a madhouse and married again. Sweet Rose never stopped trying to get back to her daughter though, and she almost made it, but years in an asylum had sapped her strength. She lost her footing as she tried to climb through a window, shattering her body on the stones below.”

“Serafine never stopped hating her father for what he had done to Rose. Her crafty mother had planned ahead though, leaving sheaves of papers with every word of the Celestin history written in her careful hand hidden with a trusted friend unknown to Sacriste. Your grandmother fled the city for the West. She met Anderson in California, and he was everything her father wasn’t. She vowed never to come back, but New Orleans kept calling for her return. The power in this city called to her blood, so she packed up her family and made the long trek back.”

I know who is coming next, and I want to scream at him to stop. I never want to hear their names cross his murdering lips, but Michael presses on as he takes another agonizingly slow step closer to me.

“Serafine was unique. She was the first to live long enough to see her grandchild born. You were just a tiny creature, the very image of her daughter when she was taken, but for one blissful year she believed that the curse had ended with you and with Marianne.

“As for Marianne and dear Will Murphy, I think you know what happened to them.”

The thick glass vase on the ground by my feet shatters, sending shards of glass and wilting flowers flying. Michael quirks an eyebrow, looking slightly impressed. "So it's true then, you really are the Last. You would do well to come with me now."

“Like hell I am,” I spit. I know I have little recourse against Michael, but there’s no way I’m going to make it easy for him. “He knows where I am. He’ll come for me,” I bluff.

“No, he won’t. Do you think Lucifer cares for you, child?” Michael asks, his lip curling in a sneer at Lucifer’s name. “I can smell his stink all over you. Do you think humanity matters to him at all? You’re nothing but a tool to him. Something he can use and play with. He’s the enemy here, not me.”

Michael’s words prick at the lingering doubts in the back of my mind about Lucifer’s intentions with me, and I falter for just an instant. Michael notices and grabs my shoulder, preparing to drag me outside into the darkening cemetery.

I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing myself for a killing blow that never comes. Instead, I feel something buried so deeply within me that I never knew it existed awaken.

Fire courses through my veins, waking up senses and nerves dulled by generations of mortality. The glass cage that held me back shatters, and I just know what I need to do.

I push against Michael, a man who even without angelic strength easily outweighs me by a hundred and fifty pounds. He flies backward, his body impacting with the side of the mausoleum. A long crack splits the face of one of the graves, cutting Serafine's name in half.

I stare down at my hands in shock, the power coursing through them feeling like tiny insects crawling up my skin. I glance back at Michael. The blow had dazed him, but I won’t be lucky enough to surprise him twice.

I run.

Thankful for a city that values ambiance over modern convenience, I duck down one of the darkened thoroughfares into the cemetery. The only streetlights are by the main gate, but I spent my childhood walking among these stones. I don’t need light to find the paths.

“You’re making a mistake Grace!” Michael’s voice echoes through the cemetery, far too close for comfort. His heavy boots crunch on the loose gravel as he searches for me, making no effort for silence, and I don’t exactly disagree with his bravado. Those blazing bright streetlights mean making a stealthy exit is impossible.

Hopefully, Michael doesn’t know about the back gate. Much less stately than the main entrance, the back gate is a half-forgotten door in the high iron fence used by caretakers and bored teenagers looking for a place to smoke pot at night.

Silently I pick my way through the rows of mausoleums. Michael has fallen silent, and my ears strain for any sign of him. My knees buckle under me and I clutch at the edge of a grave to keep from hitting the ground as my head swims. The stone creaks under my fingers as the pressure cracks the hundred-year-old marble.

I try to catch my breath, try to push down the forces tearing through my very cells. I bite my lip until I taste copper, all the while screaming MOVE inside my head.

A hand clamps over my mouth and yanks me back into the deeper darkness between two mausoleums. I struggle on reflex, trying to twist away from the grasping hands until a familiar voice hisses in my ear. “It’s me. Be still.”

Lucifer.

I sag against him, not even trying to hide the trembling that has nothing to do with fear or cold and everything to do with my body’s realization that I’m something other.

I blink, and Lucifer has a blade in his hand. Long and thin and wickedly sharp, it glints in the faint streams of moonlight that filter to our hiding place. "Wait here," he mouths and takes a step back towards the path and Michael.

Another wave rushes over me, and I know that without the solid stone against my back I’d be on the ground. Before Lucifer can move any further away I grasp his wrist, digging my fingers into his arm and silently pleading him to not leave me.

Lucifer hesitates, glancing back at the path.

Sounding like he’s only a few rows away, Michael’s shouts reach us. “You’re nothing to him Grace! Lucifer will destroy you.”

With an indecipherable look on his face at Michael's accusations, Lucifer stows his blade and helps me stand, half-carrying, half-dragging me through the labyrinth of graves and past the gate into the city.

“You could have been killed.”

I expect him to yell. To roar and rail at me for risking his plan and forcing him to choose saving me over killing Michael. I expect anything but this.

His grip on my arm as he drags me through the deserted hotel lobby is strong enough to bruise, but I barely notice it. The traces of power crackle over my skin, heightening every sensation and making that rough touch feel like a caress.

For the first time in a very long time, I feel alive.

Lucifer pulls me through the door of the suite, slamming it behind us, plywood and metal giving the illusion of safety.

He abruptly releases my arm but makes no move to take a step back. His dark eyes bore into mine, seething with anger and something else I can’t identify.

“You could have been killed,” he repeats, and I realize just what that rage is masking.

Fear.

He’s so close. Fallen or not, angels don't seem to quite understand the concept of personal space and the heady mix of my burgeoning abilities and his proximity has my head swimming. Heat radiates from his body, and I can smell the intoxicating scent that seems to come from his very skin, smoke and spice, something dark and forbidden.

Lucifer is still, his face cast in shadow. The bright neon lights filtering in through the uncovered window offer the only illumination. My back against the wall and the actual Devil in front of me, but the only thing I feel is safe.

“He could have killed you,” he breathes, the anger draining from him. He sounds desperate. Unsure. A far cry from the powerful creature that shattered half the windows on my street just by speaking.

His eyes dart down to my lips, just for an instant, and a jolt runs through me.

I don’t know which of us moves first, but Lucifer's lips are on mine. The touch is bare, so subtle they hardly seem to brush my own, just the play of breath on flesh. My hand grips the front of his shirt, crushing the black fabric between my fingers as I urge him closer.

Lucifer surges forward, pressing me to the wall with his larger frame, and for once in my life, I stop overthinking. I follow the instincts that threw me down this insane rabbit hole of angels and demons.

Those instincts tell me to kiss him back as hard as I can.

He tastes like sin and power and everything I’ve ever wanted.

And far too quickly it’s over.

He pulls back, just enough to break the contact between us. His breath ghosts over my lips, and I want more.

“Stay here,” he says, his voice unreadable.

Then he’s gone, the door slamming in his wake.