I gasped as he slapped me, a strictly muscular reaction. I had been fading, losing consciousness. I hurt everywhere. Ribs cracked, face cut, gashes all over my body. My shirt was entirely gone now. I didn’t remember when it had been sliced away. The cool breeze caressing my exposed breasts felt like a lover’s lips, a mockery of the pain racking my body.

I blinked, staring at Johnathan. He was drooling, eyes wild with lust. I spat on the ground. It was more blood than spit. “What… what is Gabriel doing here?” I rasped, remembering that question, if nothing else.

“Like I said, a stand in for your father. I found him following you around town. A Nephilim.”

I just blinked at him. Surely that should have given me a reaction of some kind, but I was beyond the ability to show surprise. My father was a Nephilim, so my mother must have given me my magic. A wizard. I let out a shallow breath. It hurt to breathe deeply. I only wanted to die. I was helpless. Roland was helpless. My dad was helpless. Gabriel was helpless.

Death was all that waited for me, now.

Unless… Where was Nate? He knew things. He should have found me by now. Monsters were scared of him. I dove deep within my core, and imagined my feather to wash out the pain, wanting to die with at least some semblance of beauty around me. The calm of my mental feather came quickly, as if knowing I didn’t have time to achieve it all by myself. I let out a shuddering breath, feeling lighter, abandoning my burdens, accepting my fate.

In that calm, I managed a grim smile, remembering Johnathan’s reaction from earlier. “I wish…” Johnathan leaned closer, eager to hear me beg. “I could explain how good it felt to taste Nate’s tongue—”

He slapped me again, and I felt a tooth loosen. But it didn’t hurt as badly as it should have, as if my mental feather had absorbed some of that pain from me. I looked up to see him panting. I smiled at him, feeling blood dribble down my lips.

“What am I to you?” I managed, wanting to at least hear why he despised me so much.

“You’re what I need, Callie. What I need. A slice of heaven…” he smiled. “Well, enough games, I guess. Time to get to work.”

The feather in my mind quivered at mention of a sudden timetable, and then began to rotate in a circle, faster, and faster. Blurring at the edges. Words poured from my mouth without thought.

“He’s coming! The fifth one rides. On hooves of fire with whips of Hope…” my voice rang clearly, strongly, despite my agonized body.

Johnathan snarled, staring out at our surroundings, and then looking up to the sky. “He can’t. We’re blocked away. No one is coming to save you, Callie. This is where you die. No Rider. No Hope. Just death,” but he did look concerned, glancing over my shoulder several more times.

Where had those words come from? Was I delirious? It wasn’t surprising, what with the pain and the drugs in my system. But… Johnathan had understood, or at least feared what I said.

But I knew he was right. No one was coming for me. They would have already done so.

I groaned, squeezing out the last of my strength to rattle my chains, pulling deep, straining for my magic. I reached closer, but it was still too far away. Like trying to grasp the sun. Or a star. Or a falling feather.

“No use, my sweet,” Johnathan smiled. “Those chains block your magic, and you aren’t strong enough for the other thing. Especially without a patron.”

I struggled anyway, knowing he was right. Even if I broke free, all I would do is fall to the ground in a bloody heap. I was bleeding out. I was sure of it.

Johnathan walked over to Roland, nodding hungrily. “Yes, he dies. Soon. Minutes, maybe…” Then he buried one of the wooden pieces of the spear into his stomach, leaving it there. Roland gasped, eyes rolling for a moment before his head slouched back down. Bloody saliva dripped from his lips as he whimpered incoherently. My void rocked at the unexpected violence.

Then he did the same with my dad, despite me screaming, rattling my chains, even begging. It was as if he didn’t hear me. He buried the other piece of wood in my dad’s stomach, receiving a similar reaction from the already dying man. I sobbed, whimpering, pathetic.

I felt a dark power surrounding me, and saw a small, living shadow hovering before the piece of wood in my dad’s stomach. It quivered as if alive, feeding on the wound. I saw Roland’s spear doing the same. Both men were silent, now, still breathing. But barely.

Johnathan came back before me, studying the last piece of the spear in his hand, nodding to himself. The tip. Then he dipped the blade deep into my stomach with no more care than if he had been idly wiping up a spill on a counter. I gasped, twitching, muscles protesting the blade.

Then he slowly pulled it out, looked down at it, and turned to stand before the fourth cross, the one with the feather. Blood poured down my leggings, making a puddle at my toes.

“Now for the fireworks,” he said. And he began to carve open the feather with the tip of the spear, as precisely as a scientist would dissect a worm with a razor blade, even though I knew the spear hadn’t looked keen enough to make so fine a cut.

Light washed over the clearing, almost the same color as the moon, and then it began to throb into a darker purplish color, like a violent bruise.

Nate would come. Someone would come. The Vatican would know Roland was dying and send help. An Angel would save us. A Demon was here. An Angel had to come. A Nephilim was bleeding out beside us. What better time for one of God’s children to make an appearance than now?

But other than the darkening purple glow, nothing changed.

I heard the three men on the cross let out a last breath, sagging lifelessly in unison. Without the void and my feather, I would have screamed. But I didn’t. I was the void. The feather.

The purple glow had darkened further at their deaths.

I was all alone. They were all dead. Those who had given me magic, love, and… a slice of heaven… whatever that meant. A Nephilim.

No one was coming to save me. I had asked not to be saved.

No Angels. Just a Demon.

No daddy. Even though I had four of them.

No Nate. Just an arrogant young girl of a wizard with white hair.

It was just me. And… all I could do now was to ruin the spell.

In the void with my feather, I accepted that fact, abandoning my pride, my arrogance, my self.

Only a sacrifice could stop Johnathan, now.

I dove deep within my void with the feather, content to do something, anything to ruin this ritual of madness. If I could kill myself, maybe that would be enough. Rituals like this were precise, and the smallest thing could ruin them. I was dying anyway, but maybe the timing of my death mattered. Because I hadn’t died with the other three. So, he still needed me alive.

I wouldn’t have time to feel guilty at suicide, but at least I could stop Johnathan. Even if it was only by dying before my appointed time. Stopping him from opening the Gates to Hell. I desperately focused on the feather in my mind. I saw Johnathan freeze, spinning to stare at Roland and then my dad. “What trickery is this?” he snarled to no one in particular.

I ignored him, closing my eyes as I fed my feather the last of my pain. The last of my self.

“No matter. I can still make this part work, at least,” I heard Johnathan say.

My feather began tugging at my soul, pulling deeper than I thought possible, drinking in a pain that I hadn’t offered to it.

My nightmare.

My feather consumed it in one metaphysical gulp.

And I realized that I had never truly known peace until that moment — utterly free of burdens.

I opened my eyes, and they burned as if doused with gasoline.

I stared at the feather before Johnathan. To represent everyone’s Father, he had said. God. A large feather. Could it be… an Angel’s feather? The quill of the feather was split open, now, and inside was a single drop of silver, like blood. Heavenly blood. Angel blood.

I focused on it, connecting it to my imagined feather without consciously deciding to do so. If that feather could fight, so could mine. Together. Free will.

The silver drop… rippled, and Johnathan froze. Then he whirled, staring at me in disbelief.

I heard laughter.

And it was my own.

The drop of silver rippled again. And again.

And again.

Faster now.

Johnathan screamed in fury, bursting into his full Demon form — a twelve-foot-tall devil with glittering, black scales that covered him from horns to navel. His suddenly long hair was living fire, and his lower body was that of a wild goat. A pool of yellow smoke eddied around his hooves, and he bleated at my laughter.

Then he raced towards me, fire splashing around his hooves like he was stomping in puddles of napalm. But I was still laughing, cackling now, each sound like the piercing ring of a trumpet into a cave, triumphant, powerful, and joyful.

The silver drop of Angel’s blood rippled one last time, and then flew from the feather and struck me, splashing over my forehead as my face shot to the sky. Light washed down on me from the heavens, my skin itching, twisting, and quivering as my wounds bound themselves back together in a heartbeat.

The world seemed to slow as I stared back down at Johnathan. He moved as if underwater. I felt a… power encase the chains still attached to my wrist. The strange power forged with the chains, strengthening them, adding onto them, creating something new. Something white and terribly breathtaking that sparked my memory. No. Not my memory. Callie Penrose’s memory, because I suddenly felt like two different people.

My shoulders suddenly ached, erupting with fire, and I yanked my hands down diagonally, crossing them before my bare breasts. I felt the chains snap free as easily as breaking a spider’s web, but I didn’t crash to the ground, and the chains had detached from the wood, not my wrists.

They slashed in front of me as the world kicked back to full speed, and they cut through the Demon like a razor blade through paper. Fire shot from his mouth, his eyes, and I finally fell to my knees.

He crashed down before me, leaving us facing each other, both kneeling. His fire washed over me, bathing me in greasy flame, but I felt no heat. I just stared into the fiery caverns of his eyes, and I saw a dark silhouette deep within.

A shadowy figure on a throne, massive wings of smoke and shards of glass flaring over his shoulders, glaring at me with a universe of hatred. Then Johnathan collapsed into a pile of burning coals that scattered on the earth before me.

I caught a figure in my peripheral vision, someone darting between the trees in the distance, but as I lifted my hand to smite them, a light winked out of me, and I collapsed.

Only silence remained, but I imagined I heard sounds of a great lumbering beast, rocking the cages of his prison deep beneath my knees — rocking me to sleep like the sweetest lullaby…