River

Many things in my life had astounded me, but when Caim announced this, I was pretty sure someone could have pushed me over with a finger. His eyes held mine, the varied colors within them coalescing together. His jet-black hair stuck to his forehead from the sweat running down his flushed face. The black clothes that had transformed from raven to angel form with him stuck to his skin. I realized that, like me, the heat of the oracle affected him more than the demons. That was the reason the angels hadn’t been seen near it before.

“Interesting,” Magnus murmured.

“Or a lie,” Kobal replied and stepped toward Caim.

I grasped his arm, halting him before he could go any closer. The hounds released another low rumble and bared their fangs. “Wait,” I said.

“We can’t trust him,” Corson said.

“The angels are nothing more than flying rats!” Lix declared from across the way.

“I am part flying rat,” I reminded Lix.

Lix ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. “We like you,” he muttered before pulling the top off his flask and taking a swig.

I turned my attention back to Caim, whose gaze remained on me. “How did Lucifer open the gate from Earth into Hell?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“Lie,” Bale hissed.

Caim didn’t look at Bale as he replied. “It’s not a lie. My brother is the only one who knows what he did to open the gateway. He would never tell us. There is power in the mystery, and Lucifer won’t give up an ounce of power.”

“Can I close it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I do know my brother wants you for himself, badly. It leads me to believe you are capable of many things.”

“Why are you willing to help us? Aren’t all the fallen angels not evil, but ah… looking to rule or enslave humans and demons?”

Caim lifted his wings from the ground and closed them behind him once more. “Not all of us, or at least not me. What Lucifer plans is madness. He refuses to see that he could destroy everything if he continues on this path.”

“So this is a save-your-own-ass type of situation?” Hawk asked.

Caim snorted. “Is there any other kind?”

“Yes, there is,” I said. “There is protecting the ones you love and there is a greater good.”

“I have never been like the rest of my fallen brethren, but that is a woe-filled tale best kept for another day,” Caim said. “However, your tender heart will not survive my brother. Perhaps you should let some of your humanity go and face the truth; you must be vicious to live through this.”

“I faced that truth a long time ago,” I retorted. “But I will not give up what makes me me. I will defend and protect my loved ones no matter what it takes. I will not become like you.”

“The sad thing is, you remind me of myself before the fall. So idealistic, so certain you can make it all better, so determined to do so, but nothing can ever be all better again. The fall taught me that.”

“Is the fall what severed the angels’ bond to life?” I asked, desperate to know the answer and to keep it from happening to me.

“Ah, child, that was a mixture of steps taken that never should have been taken. Once taken they could never be reversed,” Caim replied with a flick of his fingers.

“What steps?” I demanded.

The casual way Caim assessed me reminded me of a bird. I had no idea how he had shifted into a raven, but it was clear the bird was a part of him, even in his angel-form. “You fear it happening to you,” he murmured.

Kobal took another step toward him. My hand tightened on his arm. There was no way I was going to keep him held back if he decided to go for Caim, but I had so many questions, and I needed answers. I doubted all of what Caim revealed would be the truth, but if even a fraction of it was, then I had to hear it.

“Kobal, don’t,” I pleaded.

Flames flickered to life around his fingers and rose to his wrists as he froze before me. The hounds stayed low to the ground as they crept closer to Caim. I took an unsteady step forward, not realizing how weak I was until my legs nearly gave out. I locked my knees into place and defiantly held Caim’s gaze.

“I think it could happen to me,” I admitted to Caim.

“You do not wish to be like your father Lucifer.”

“He’s not my father,” I grated. “I’ve had the misfortune of meeting my father in this place, and he’s dead now.”

“A soul cannot be destroyed,” Caim stated.

“His was,” Kobal replied, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bale edging closer to the ocean of fire and trying to come up along the side of Caim.

Caim glanced nonchalantly at Bale before focusing on Kobal again. “That’s a first. My brother must be pissed you took his toy away.”

“My father’s soul wasn’t a toy!” I retorted.

Caim shifted so that he stood half in and half out of the shadows. “Your father is Lucifer, my brother. His blood runs strong in you. It has forged you and your line. It will forge your children’s line too. If you live to have children.”

The sound Kobal made caused Caim to slip further into the dark and the skelleins to raise their swords. “Wait!” I gasped, knowing Caim was preparing to leave. “I deserve answers!”

Caim’s face reemerged. I blinked as the shadows surrounding him created the effect of a disembodied head. Then, he rippled his wings, and I realized it wasn’t the shadows creating the effect. His body had transformed into a raven, while his head remained a man’s.

“The fall started the break in the connection,” Caim said. “The shearing of our wings made it so only the slightest of threads remained between us and life. I can still recall my desperation to hold onto that thread with everything in me.”

A look of yearning spread across his face, and his head bowed for a minute. “Some of my fellow fallen made choices that severed the last of their thread while we were still on Earth. Others lost it when we followed Lucifer from the human realm into this one.”

He lifted his head and those multi-hued ebony eyes met mine. “I felt the snapping of the connection when the gate closed behind us. It was a loss so profound that only madness could follow, and follow it did, for all of us.”

“And are you no longer mad?” I asked.

“Sometimes even the lost soul of a monster can rise from the madness to see the truth.”

“What is the truth?” Kobal inquired.

“That to continue this path and do nothing to stop it would make me something far worse than a monster. If Lucifer succeeds, he will annihilate all the realms and all those who reside in them. I may be one of the fallen, but I will not be a part of that. I love my brothers and sisters, but I cannot allow them to continue this destruction.”

Everything in me screamed that none of the fallen angels could be trusted, that he was most likely here for Lucifer and to manipulate us, but the desperation in Caim’s gaze pulled at me. I found myself believing him.

“So you want to know if the severing of the bond can happen to you. It can,” Caim continued. “One wrong step can weaken it, and with each weakening, it becomes easier and easier to take those wrong steps until one day it’s gone, and all you’re left with is…”

“Emptiness,” I said at the same time he did.

A small smile curved the edges of Caim’s full mouth. He didn’t possess the ethereal beauty of Lucifer, but his near perfect features and raven wings were striking.

“Why are your wings different than the others?” I asked.

“I sliced the wings from my body to try to survive on the human realm. However, I could never sever my bond to the raven within me. All angels were created with small differences to give us something unique when not much is unique in Heaven. I am one of the few who possessed a significant difference from my siblings. That difference is my ability to embrace the raven’s spirit and form. It’s a bond that survived all the things I’ve done. The raven has made it so I can see past the insanity the loss of my connection to life created. Perhaps it is that bond which also allows me to retain a piece of the benevolence that once ruled me. There are always endless questions, but there are never answers for all of them.”

My fingers dug into Kobal’s skin as Caim slid further into the shadows again. “If I choose to join Kobal, if I died and became a demon, would it sever my bond to life?” I blurted before he could leave.

This time Caim didn’t remerge from the dark as he uttered his reply. “Yes.”

My heart sank. I wanted to scream denials at him, but I knew he was right. Kobal had known it for a while now. A crushing sensation squeezed my heart as my last bit of hope for an eternity with Kobal burst like a bubble.

“You cannot embrace your demon side without experiencing the madness,” Caim continued. I heard a flutter of wings, and then a shadow rose to swoop across the ceiling of the cavern. “Know that you have someone working with you from the inside now.”

The raven dipped to the side before vanishing out of the cavern over the heads of the skelleins. Stunned silence followed his disappearance.

“He could be lying about the experiencing madness thing,” Corson finally said, and I knew he was only trying to give Kobal and me some hope.

“He’s not.” I tore my attention away from where Caim had been and to Kobal. His eyes eased from their amber color to their pure, obsidian depths. “He may be lying about turning against Lucifer, and he probably is, but he’s not lying about the severing of the bond.” I placed my hand against my chest, over my heart. “I feel the truth of his words.”

Kobal wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled me against his chest. Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to shed them. I clung to him, my fingers digging into the solid flesh of his back.

He bent his head and rested his lips against my ear. “We have to get out of here. He could be bringing Lucifer back.”

I reluctantly released him and leaned against his side as he led me away from the oracle.