Chapter 4
My hand flew to my chest. My eyes burned but not with tears that I could never shed. I was torn between flinging myself forward and wrapping my child in an embrace and frozen in fear. Her silver eyes looked straight through me and rested on Luiz as if I was unimportant.
I understood that I had been dead, for all intents and purposes, but to have not even gauged a reaction was enough to tear my heart in two. Not that anyone would ever be able to tell from my facial expression. I remained glacial, shielding my heartache away into a tiny corner at the back of my mind where it would either fester or extinguish.
Luiz stepped around me as if I was a piece of furniture and began speaking in a low voice to my daughter. He smothered her long platinum hair away from her crown. I heard every word of his soft assurances as he bribed her to go and watch “Frozen.” She had not spoken a word in response but silently tottered away to what had once been my guest bedroom. I caught a glimpse of brightly coloured posters and soft toys resting in a line on the shelf. The walls had been painted to cornflower blue.
“She doesn’t know who I am,” I said, without inflection.
“Most historical portraits are inaccurate,” Luiz explained awkwardly. “I couldn’t exactly show a five-year-old the Hindu goddess of death, Kali Yuga. Petra gets nightmares.”
“She sleeps?” My voice was incredulous.
Luiz nodded. “She’s human. As far as I can see.”
I rubbed my hand over my face and pulled out one of the stools from under the kitchen island. I wanted a glass of wine terribly.
“Maybe you should put some clothes on,” Luiz suggested. “Just in case she comes back out?”
With a petulant and jerky motion, I rose and navigated my way to my walk-in closet. I succeeded in finding a backless dress that I pulled up my body to allow my wings their freedom. I turned around, and my sweeping golden feathers knocked a line of designer shoes from the shelf. I breathed deeply, to try and calm myself but it had little use. I could not bend down in the tight closet space to even think about putting a pair of shoes on. I surveyed my body in the mirror. The sleek black dress felt like it belonged to a me from the past. A me that had knocked back Sauvignon Blanc at the Connaught Bar in Mayfair and worried about trivial things.
I found a pair of leopard print Louboutin’s, and I carried them into the kitchen under my arm. I perched on the desk and placed the shoes on the counter. Without a word, Luiz ducked down and put them on my feet.
“Why is… Petra… with you? Why is she not in Hell?” I whispered, in case my child could hear me.
Luiz swallowed a lump in his throat, and his energy grew nervous as he straightened to his full height. He did not look me in the eye.
“Did Lucifer reject her?” Anger built around my voice like a shield of ice.
Luiz began to chew his thumbnail and still refused to make eye contact. My questions hung in the air without answers. I stood up and pulled Luiz’s thumb from his mouth. Filthy habit. I cocked my head to the side.
“It seems that you have forgotten that I do not enjoy it when I am ignored,” I said in a silky voice. I pulled Luiz’s orange eyes to meet my own, using my finger on his jaw to position his head.
“Lucifer did not reject Petra.” His voice was rough as if the words broken shards that scraped his throat on the way out. I nodded to myself, pleased.
“But…” He paused as if searching for something in my expression. Whatever he found, he did not like. Luiz slumped down and took the seat next to me. I placed my hand on his shoulder and patted it once awkwardly. He laughed without humour.
“You were my best friend.” Luiz rolled his eyes as if he found himself laughable. “The Ice Queen of Hell, whose emotional range goes from vengeful to positively glacial, and I knew that you would have killed for me.”
I nodded in agreement and stayed silent so that he would continue.
“It was the only way.” Luiz placed his hand over my own on his shoulder. His Hell magic sparked against my skin as if it searched for an escape. I had never seen Hell magic act as erratically before; it did not make sense.
“What happened… when I died?” I asked.
Luiz took a deep breath and found a spot on the ceiling to stare at so that he could avoid my gaze.
“Lucifer went mad, Dahlia,” Luiz explained in a measured tone. “Not just angry. Not just in search of retribution, but poisoned by his own madness.”
“One of the Angels told me that it had been five years,” I whispered.
Luiz gestured to my wings as if they were a disability that he couldn’t look directly at. “Angels?” His fear spiked and leaked into the room.
“I was in Heaven, Luiz.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Siete infernos,” He cursed. “Where should I begin?”
“The Devil has gone mad, and you have my daughter in my Penthouse in Knightsbridge. I was in Heaven, and the Lord gave me wings because I was ‘deemed worthy’ or some pious codswallop that I do not care to delve into. My daughter. Petra is unaware that I am alive, which is understandable. Considering that I was dead until a few days ago.” I counted each event off on my fingers, casually. “Did Asmodeus ever break through the Golden Seals of Hell? Damian was so excited about that.”
Luiz nodded in response. “Don’t even get me started on the whole Sophia Taylor, Asmodeus, Haage debacle.”
I rolled my head on my shoulders as if the influx of information had begun to give me a headache. Which was impossible, but humanity clung to me like a residue, and I found it affecting my actions. “Send her some Chanel number 5, for me? To congratulation her.”
“Am I still your personal assistant then?”
I snorted. It was unladylike. “I’m not going to call Meesha now, am I?”
Luiz pursed his lip.
“What?” I asked.
Luiz shook his head. “She went missing on the day that you—”
“It was her.” I supplied flippantly. Luiz’s entire face scrunched as if he consumed something sour.
“No one has seen her in five years.” He said.
I waved my hand as if swatting the notion of her existence away as if Meesha Patel was unimportant. Which she was. I had no idea why she had acted out in such a foolish way, but if I found her, then I would peel her skin away from her bones using a leather whip. A spark of excitement rippled through my body at the thought.
“Petra is here for her own safety?” I concluded, changing the subject abruptly.
Luiz nodded. “Abaddon sent her away when Lucifer began to decline.”
I tapped my fingers on the counter. “I cannot cross the borders into Hell,” I told him. I stared into space as my thoughts populated my mind so quickly that it was difficult to keep up. Naturally, I had to stay with my child. I needed to know her. The fact that we were separated by only a thin door was enough to make my skin itch. The only thing that stopped me from scooping her up was my insurmountable pile of issues that needed to be resolved.
Was she safe by my side? What would I even say to a five-year-old child?
I had missed the joyous and cute infant stage where I did not need to worry about whether my child liked me. It was a given with newborns. They needed their mothers.
The five-year-old in the other room, silent as a mouse as someone started to sing about building snowmen, did not need me. She had been doing fine without me. I trusted Luiz with my life, and I knew that my daughter had wanted for nothing. Affection, warmth, and any manner of physical artefacts.
“I don’t think that I should be introduced to her, just yet,” I said and kept my voice even as I disguised my fear over such a small being. Luiz nodded slowly, but his lip curled as if he wanted to argue with me.
Both of us jolted upright as a knock echoed through my penthouse apartment. Out of habit, both Luiz and stood up to answer the door. I laughed at my idiocy. I had not lived in the apartment for five years. Of course, it would not be for me.
I was proved wrong.
Luiz cleared his throat nervously, as the door swung open to reveal the Angelic figure of Uriah, next to the very canine Guardian.
With the knowledge of Luc’s madness weighing heavily on my mind, I did not allow the Angels into my home. Instead, I suggested that we take a walk.
I noticed that Uriah’s wings were neatly packed away, invisible to all and sundry. He wore a tailored black shirt, which highlighted his bronze skin. The Guardian was too large to pass for a typical canine, but the collar the Uriah had placed around his fluffy neck did help with the illusion somewhat.
“You need to tuck your wings away,” Uriah informed me. I gave him a no-nonsense stare and crossed my arms over my chest. I said nothing.
Uriah rolled his eyes and placed his hands on my shoulders. We stopped before we reached the private elevator that would lead us down to the streets of London.
“You can Lace, yes?”
I nodded, irritably.
“Then you can tuck your wings. Imagine the space between worlds as a pocket. Simply tuck your wings into that pocket.” He instructed calmly.
“I am no longer able to travel to Hell. I am not sure I can feel the space between world’s anymore.” I admitted with fear in my tone.
“You can access the Summerland and the in-between,” Uriah said with certainty.
I took a deep breath and imagined the way that my body felt as I Laced. I pulled back at the last minute and clasped onto the feeling of the airless in-between. My wings were gone when I opened my eyes. I still felt their weight and the way the air moved around them, but I could no longer see them. I allowed my hand to pass over where they would have been and found that it was as if they didn’t exist.
“At least I won’t need to replace my wardrobe with backless dresses.” I signed in relief.
“Must you pander to your vanity? You’re a peacock.” Uriah snarled and jabbed the elevator call button.
I could not tell if he was mocking me or joking with me. I pointed to my chest. “First Circle Demon. Treachery. Deceit. Lies. Pride.”
“Peacock.” Uriah pointed to my Louboutin’s.
I fluffed my hair and tossed it over my shoulder. “I have been called worse.”
“I can believe that.”
The Guardian loosened a growl from his chest and I reached out to pat the top of his head. He came up to my waist, even with heels.
The lift pinged open when we reached the ground floor. We both nodded to the doorman as we descended into my little pocket of London.
“Why are you here, Angel of Arrogance?” I waited for a black cab to pass before crossing the road. Uriah walked with me, with the same confidence that all Londoners had. The demeanour that implied that they expected traffic to stop for them.
“I have been tasked with watching over you,” Uriah explained. From the tightness around the corner of his mouth, he was not best pleased with that.
Every so often, someone would dart out of the way of the giant muscular male. I saw a few women eying him, as if he was a juicy steak.
That was perhaps one thing that I did miss about Humanity. The food. I was confident that if I tried to eat whilst inside my Demonic body, fully connected to Hell, then I would hold onto the food until it rotted in my disengaged digestive tract.
“Doesn’t the Lord trust me?” I clicked my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
“Is that a question that you expect an answer to? Or was it rhetorical?”
“I was under the impression that you had spent a lot of time around humans.”
“Yes.” He said but did not elaborate. “Where are we going?”
I found the familiar gold-plated doorway of the Connaught Bar after we walked for a good ten minutes. The soothing live piano music was as familiar as a warm bath on aching muscles. I sat at the bar and ordered their oldest bourbon. Holding up two fingers once I was reminded that Uriah was with me.
“You can’t have a dog in here.” The bartender eyed the Guardian as he poured a finger of bourbon into a crystal tumbler and slid it into my hand.
“He’s my seeing-eye dog.”
The bartender eyed me with open disbelief before walking away to fetch another glass for Uriah.
“You are not blind,” Uriah whispered.
“I could be.” I took a slow sip of my whiskey. “It’s a free country. I can be whatever I want to be.”
Uriah snorted and then jolted in shock at the sound. The Guardian curled himself around the feet of my barstool and closed his eyes. After a few moments, his breathing evened out and he appeared to be snoring.
The bartender arrived with Uriah’s drink and wisely said nothing else about my canine companion.
“The Lord hopes that once you have completed your business in London, that you will return to the Summerland.” He informed me.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
I took another sip of whiskey, inhaling the bitter scent and savouring it. “Another one of her trials? No thank you. I dislike being scarred without my consent.”
“You should wear your runes with pride.” Uriah took a sip of his own drink and winced when the taste hit his tongue.
“Would you like me to doodle on your chest in Cyclian?” I asked lightly. I tapped the bar idly as I waited for him to answer. Cyclian was the original language of Hell.
The Angel shifted uncomfortably, and his angular jaw grew taut. “I see your point.” He contested.
We sat in silence, and I had to admit that drinking next to Uriah was not a fun activity. Every time he took a sip of his drink, his minute flinch informed me that he did not enjoy the taste. I rapped my knuckles against the bar to draw the bartender’s attention.
“Espresso Martini,” I ordered without explanation. I turned to Uriah. “You enjoy coffee?”
He eyed me shrewdly but shrugged in response.
“Were you aware of the turmoil in Hell?” I asked as the bartender approached with a dark cocktail with a coffee bean floating on top. I slid it over to my Angelic companion and waited for his response.
“I have heard things, but like you, I cannot travel to Hell — only to the Summerland.” He took a small sip of his cocktail and his expression was surprised. He licked his bottom lip, clearly enjoying the drink.
I knocked back the rest of my whiskey, frustrated.
“Did you see your child?” Uriah asked, eying the rune on my wrists. Left side for forgiveness and right for sacrifice. I was unsure if humans could see the silvery lines of my Enochian scars, but each time I looked at them served as a reminder that I had been kicked out of my home. I had died.
“I do not wish to talk about that.” I tapped my heel against the brass rung of the bottom of my stool.
Uriah nodded and took another sip of his cocktail.
“Do you still plan to go to Hell?” He asked.
“Of course. Lucifer needs me.” I squashed the little voice that told me that I had to face my daughter. I could not put her in danger. I could not deal with my inadequacies as a parent, just yet.