The Gates of Paradise Read online

  It was just as Jack used to say—one lead was all they needed—one light against the darkness and all would be illuminated. Jack…if only he were here with her now…but Schuyler couldn’t continue to dwell on his absence. She had vowed to move forward. There was that feeling again—that odd sensation that she was not alone—but she ignored it. She was just paranoid.

  So Schuyler returned their smiles, happy to bestow praise. “Happy New Year indeed.”

  TWO

  Mimi

  hat are you singing?” Jack asked, whispering.

  Mimi started. She hadn’t noticed she was humming out loud. She began to sing: “‘Leaving on a midnight train to Georgia…’” Her voice carried through the empty cabin, low and soft. They were on a train headed from the Ninth Circle of Hell back up to the gatepost at the crossing, back to their world, at their master’s bidding. Unlike the dirty subway car that had taken her back to the surface last time, now she was seated in a first-class carriage, complete with reclining seats and troll attendants on call. There was a difference in trying to escape from Hell and willingly leaving with its master’s permission.

  “‘Bought a one-way ticket to a life he once knew,’” Jack sang, his voice a complement to hers. When the song ended, they shared a rueful smile, identical down to the dimples on their chins. Just like looking in a mirror, Mimi thought, glancing at her twin. How could she have ever hated him? Jack was part of her, had always been. She didn’t know how she could have survived all these long years in the underworld without him by her side. Time was different down here: she understood it intellectually, but it was still disorienting to live outside of the circadian rhythms. There was no day, no night, just an endless present. She had no idea how long they had been away from their own world.

  Once again, they had been yoked to each other for a difficult task—Dark Angels secretly fighting for the Light, hiding their better natures in order to win their freedom from each other.

  She removed a jeweled compact from her purse and powdered her nose, admiring her reflection. She was the Mighty Azrael, Angel of the Apocalypse. The most beautiful girl in the underworld. Even the Dark Prince—that old rat bastard—had hinted that if she ever tired of Abbadon, he wouldn’t mind getting to know her a little better. How ironic that her legendary beauty had not been enough to keep her twin by her side.

  No, she had never been enough for Abbadon, which was why they shared this burden. She had loved him once, more than he had ever loved her, and the rejection still stung, but now it was like the buzzing of a gnat, a flea bite, inconsequential, annoying at best, merely a hairline crack in an otherwise formidable fortress. She had been living with it for so long—his worship of Gabrielle, casting his lot with that…Abomina— No, she couldn’t call her that anymore.…With Schuyler. There. Mimi could not bear to think her name even if they were adversaries no longer. Schuyler had won, for sure. Not that it mattered.

  It was too late to think of what might have been. She had committed to this task, and she would see it through. She looked out the window, the landscape a monotonous gray rock, the red-hot cinders from the Black Fire the only light for miles. It seemed like centuries since she had felt sunshine on her face, even though Jack had assured her they had been in Lucifer’s service for only a few months, and that when they reached aboveground it would be right around New Year’s.

  Do you think we’ll find it? she sent to Jack.

  I hope not.

  Don’t, she warned, alarmed at his cavalier attitude. They might hear.

  They can’t hear us, Mimi. I told you. Not when we talk like this. The bond allows us that privacy at least.

  He was her twin. The same dark star had birthed them. Bound to each other from the beginning. Sealed in blood and fire.

  The bond was the reason they were slaves to the Dark Prince in the first place. Its unbreaking had cost them an internship in Hell. Divorce lawyers had nothing on Lucifer. Mimi was appalled and yet amused at the same time. Was it worth it? They were playing a dangerous game. If Lucifer suspected they were false…She shuddered to think of the consequences. He held their very souls captive unless they delivered. They would pay the ultimate price if they did not.

  Whose idea was this, anyway? Mimi remembered how close she had been to destroying Jack, holding her sword aloft, ready for revenge. She could have struck him down. It was so tiring being good. Sacrifice just wasn’t her style.

  Oh, well. Too late now.

  At least they had each other. Mimi would have gone mad if she hadn’t had Jack to lean on. Their former commander had kept himself scarce. Lucifer was always thus, Mimi remembered—aloof, withdrawn, prone to seek his own counsel. And once they had returned to the dark fold, they had been surrounded by old comrades and enemies. Angels with whom they had fought side by side. Angels they had betrayed during that last terrible struggle for dominion of Paradise. Needless to say, they had been given a chilly reception.

  That first night back in the underworld they walked in to find a hostile crowd at the local watering hole. She and Oliver had frequented it during their sojourn, but the management had changed, and the place was not what it was.

  “Look, everyone—it’s the ones who lost the war for us,” Danel had said. He had been one of their oldest friends, a warrior, tall and golden and proud, beautiful as ever except for the ugly scar that bisected his face. Now he sneered at them. “If it wasn’t for you…”

  “Traitors. Thieves. Turncoats,” came the silky voice of the angel Barachiel. “Welcome to the underworld. You will find you are right at home here.” He smiled.

  “You are kidding yourselves if you think you can return to his service so easily,” hissed Tensi, a formidable avenging angel who had led the charge from the left flank all those millennia ago, when the world was young.

  But in the end the angels left them alone. They still feared Abbadon’s hammer, still cowered at the flaming sword of Azrael.

  “We have no place here,” Mimi had said to Jack later in their private quarters. The twins had merited a lavish suite in the palace, a rival to the ducal estate that Kingsley had once called home. “Michael and Gabrielle never trusted us—and neither does this sorry lot.”

  “They will come around. They have no choice.”

  Jack had turned out to be right. While the Silver Bloods were strong in number, they were also fearful and scattered. They still remembered the power of the White Fire of Heaven, the wrathful armies of Paradise, how they had been cast out of Elysium and into hellfire. Since Leviathan was tasked with assembling the demon army in the deep bowels of Hell, Jack had stepped into his former position as the head of the Dark Fallen.

  Every night Jack drank and feasted with them, singing old war songs, drinking the blood ale, skirmishing in the training courtyards, testing his strength against theirs, gaining their trust, their respect, their admiration, and whatever tenderness was left in their Corrupted souls that passed for love. He impressed them with the depth of the power at his command. Abbadon had truly returned to Hell, they said. Abbadon, Destroyer of Worlds. Hell’s true son.

  How strange that after their long and twisted history, Mimi and Jack were only just friends now, with a deep and abiding affection between them. They would always share their past, but their future together was unknown. She still loved him, she would always love him, but it was the kind of love that was muted, safely seen through the rearview window, like a place you used to call home but no longer visited. There would always be a wound there, but the healing had begun.

  All because of Kingsley Martin, the boy who loved her.

  How could she have lost her heart to a Silver Blood?

  If she was to have a future with anyone, she would have it with Kingsley. She held on to her love, to the memories of his wicked smile, to the feel of his strong arms around her, his soft tears on her cheek. She had broken him, he had broken her, there was no more posturing, no more lies. They had pledged their love to each other. It made the deception and the fear
easier to bear. What a naked fear it was. Azrael, Angel of Death, who was afraid of nothing and no one on earth, was afraid. She was afraid for her life, for her love. If the Dark Prince knew the truth…

  Lucifer could unmake her. He could unmake her and Jack both…would do to them what they had failed to do to each other.

  Was it worth it?

  All this for love?

  All this for Kingsley?

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Mimi sighed. The last time she’d seen him she had been soulless, and she had screamed at him to get away from her, had laughed in his face and mocked his love. Did this mean they would have to start all over again? She wondered what he was doing now. Having a great old time, probably. Kingsley Martin was never down for long.

  At least she and Jack had done something right. They had arrived in the underworld at just the right time. The demons of Hell had discovered the secret to a weapon that would stand up to the White Fire of Heaven—they aimed to create a godsfire of their own. But there was a catch. None of their tools, which had been wrought in the underworld, could be trusted to hold and direct the blaze.

  The Dark Prince needed the Holy Grail to hold his weapon. Only the sacred chalice would contain the righteous flame. And so Mimi and Jack had been dispatched to fetch it. There were many cups, many grails in the history of the world. The task was to find the right one.

  Once they crossed into their world, Mimi would make her way to a chapel in Scotland, while Jack would travel to Spain. And if they were successful in finding the Holy Grail, what then? Would they turn it over to the Dark Prince? Mimi wasn’t sure what Jack was planning, although he’d assured her he would never let that happen. If they found it, they would lie and say they had not, and Jack was counting on the knights to have hidden the grails well. Mimi was certain Lucifer would not be so understanding of their failure and would suspect treason, but Jack was adamant in his belief that it would all work out, that they would figure out a way to get what they wanted without forfeiting their souls or destroying Heaven and Hell in the process.

  The train reached its destination and stopped at the crossing. They disembarked, walking to the same barriers guarded by the same handful of trolls that she had encountered during her journey with Oliver. Once they got past the First Circle of Hell, then they would slip through the gates and find themselves back in mid-world.

  A troll slouched over to block their way. “Papers?”

  “Papers?” Mimi said, affronted. “Do you know who we work for?”

  “Helda hasn’t approved your transfer,” the troll sneered. “You’ll need to go back to get the right papers if you mean to leave the kingdom of the Queen of the Dead.”

  Without a word, Jack raised his hand and stunned the troll, sending him flying, crashing against the barrier. The other troll guards lifted their spears, but Jack stood his ground. “Let us pass. I shall not be so gentle next time.”

  Mimi was impressed. She was sure he would have turned back and done the right thing. But that was the old Jack Force. The former Venator, the one who used to follow the rules. There were no rules now.

  The trolls backed off, fear in their ugly faces.

  The Force twins stepped through the Gates of Hell.

  “Admit it, you enjoyed that. You like being evil again,” Mimi teased.

  Jack did not reply, but the sly smile on his face said it all. “Come on. Let’s find this thing and end it once and for all.”

  THREE

  Bliss

  merging from the Passages of Time was always a disconcerting experience, as if your entire being had been taken apart and then re-formed, the molecules and the memories haphazardly patched together. Bliss Llewellyn felt the familiar dizziness and disorientation, but it was worse now, since they were not just traveling through time but back to the underworld, back to her father’s domain, back to Hell, where the wolves were turned into Hellhounds, where Lawson and the pack had been kept in chains.

  She had come upon the boys by chance—had been shown a vision of a wolf in the glom, and had tracked it to a butcher shop in a small town in Ohio. There, she had befriended Lawson and his brothers, and together they had traveled to the dawn of Rome, to the beginning of the empire, to solve a mystery of the wolves’ ancestry. Lawson was revealed to be the wolf Fenrir, the greatest wolf of the underworld, and he had bested Romulus, the Beast of Hell, the Hound of Hounds; had killed him with Michael’s sword, an archangel’s blade. With the help of his pack, he had stopped the Sabine massacre, and in doing so had saved the wolves from extinction. Now they had returned to Hell to fulfill his promise to free his people from the Silver Blood demons.

  Lawson turned around, his dark eyes sparkling, and he smiled. The sigil on his cheek, the one that matched Bliss’s and marked them as part of the same pack, the blue crescent moon, shone in the dim light. “You okay back there?” he asked.

  Bliss nodded, keeping pace with his long step. She was scared but determined to see it through. This was what her mother had tasked her to do—to bring the wolves back into the fold, to help the vampires in their war against their enemies—but she had her own reasons for pursuing this quest. Bliss had a dark history behind her: for centuries upon centuries she had been an unknowing party to evil. As the vehicle for the Dark Prince, she had kept his spirit alive on earth, and in doing so had brought death and grief to the vampires. Bliss wanted not only redemption, but revenge.

  She had pinned her hopes on the pack—Lawson, impulsive, reckless, and powerfully strong, and his brothers—Edon, Rafe, and Malcolm—loyal soldiers all—along with Ahramin, the dark one—the wolf who had been turned into a hound and reclaimed her soul. They surrounded her now, and Bliss found solace in their number and strength. They were ready to fight.

  Lawson stumbled out of the passage, and everyone else followed after. Bliss looked around—steeling herself for the worst—expecting to breathe the smoke of the underworld—to see gray skies and barren lands—or to be met by a thousand demons with crimson eyes and burning tongues, wielding swords of dark flame.

  But what was this? There was grass beneath her feet. Trees forming a canopy over her head. The sweet smell of morning dew. This wasn’t the underworld.…This looked strangely familiar.…This was…Ohio?

  “Where are we?” she asked Lawson, who was standing next to her. She looked to the rest of the pack. Malcolm wiped his eyeglasses on his sleeve. Rafe appeared confused, and Ahramin and Edon were whispering to each other.

  “Guys?” she asked. “Um…are we where I think we are?”

  Lawson nodded grimly. “Yeah. We’re back in Hunting Valley.” He kicked a tree stump. “We must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

  They’d landed in the middle of rural suburbia, not far from where Bliss had found them in the beginning. This was the clearing in the woods, a few miles away from the center of town, where the boys lived above a butcher shop.

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go back in.” She removed the chronolog from her jeans pocket. The timekeeper was rotating, its hands spinning out of control. “Wait—there’s something wrong with it. Mac, can you look at it?”

  “Sure,” Malcolm said. He took it from her hand and studied it. “It looks like it’s trying to make a reading, but something’s preventing it from doing so.”

  Bliss looked back from where they came from. The passage had closed behind them. “Maybe because we’re out of the passage? Lawson, can you open it back up?”

  Lawson nodded; his face took on a look of deep concentration.

  They waited, but nothing happened.

  “Come on, Lawson, get on with it,” Ahramin said, a trace of annoyance in her voice.

  “I’m trying,” Lawson said. “Something’s wrong. I can’t open the portal.”

  “Are you doing something different?” Malcolm asked. “Can we help?”

  Of course he’d offer to help, Bliss thought. Malcolm was the youngest in the pack, and by far the sweetest. Bliss had come to adore him in
the time they’d spent together. Edon and Rafe had been tougher nuts to crack, though she felt close to them as well. As for Ahramin, the former Hellhound was one of them now, her past transgressions forgiven when she’d proved herself worthy of the pack by fighting against Romulus’s will and breaking her collar. They were a team, a unit, and if Bliss had any lingering suspicions concerning Ahramin, she chided herself for them. For if she felt that way about Ahramin, how could she expect anyone to forgive her for her own dark past? Ahramin was merely a former Hellhound, but Bliss was Lucifer’s daughter. The Dark Prince had cursed the wolves, had turned them into slaves. In the underworld, the Silver Bloods had been the wolves’ masters.

  “Tell us what you need us to do,” she urged Lawson.

  “This has never happened before,” he grumbled. “But sure, why not? Guys, everyone focus. We just need to clear our minds, imagine the passage opening. Maybe if we all work together we can do it.”

  The pack huddled together. Bliss pushed away her fear, pushed away her doubt, and pictured the Passages of Time opening before her. Her head ached, and she put her hands to her temples, feeling them throb and pulse, and for a moment she was convinced it was working. She could feel the passage opening behind her, felt the wind through the tunnels.

  Then it stopped.

  The feeling went away.

  She opened her eyes and looked around. Nothing had changed.

  They were still standing in the clearing.

  “What’s going on?” Rafe asked, frustrated.

  “Did you do something?” Ahramin asked Lawson. “Like accidentally seal the passage behind us when we went through?”

  “Why do you always assume it was me who did something wrong?” Lawson protested.