Open season.
Another Forsaken hovered nearby. Someone Brochan had worked with both as a Sent One and as a Fallen One. Farrow. She dressed in the white robes of their former comrades and reminded him of Samantha and Rebecca. Soft-spoken. Tenderhearted. Even a bit meek. He couldn’t imagine her doing anything worthy of banishment from the skies.
Although she’d fallen from the skies for reasons unknown, she’d never mutated into a beast, as Viola liked to call him. No, Farrow had only grown more beautiful. A mass of black hair tumbled over a light brown shoulder. Lips as red as her crimson wings hid straight pearly whites. Dark, uptilted eyes remained hooded and looked sleepy as if she were forever ready for bed.
“What have you tried since my last visit?” he asked.
“I launched a nuclear bomb here. Not that anyone can tell.” She pointed to an unblemished spot on the veil. Maybe she wasn’t so tenderhearted and meek, after all. “And your quest? How did it go with your goddess?”
He hesitated to respond. Farrow knew about Viola’s key. They kept each other informed on their ideas and errors; the reason Brochan intended to escort her into Nevaeh when he took McCadden. Now he wasn’t sure he wished to discuss the goddess with anyone.
Ultimately, he grudgingly admitted, “I now have her in my keeping.”
She gasped and glided closer. “Does she own a key, as suspected?”
“She does.” Why did he feel as if he were betraying Viola? Because of a single kiss? He scoffed at such a ludicrous idea. “She keeps it hidden. For now.”
During the shower, Viola had mentioned a temporary truce. A partnership to destroy Midian and Joseph. Brochan was tempted to accept. The two planned bad things for her, and they must be dealt with. Soon.
“I wish to meet her.” Excitement pulsed from Farrow. “Perhaps I can convince her to part with the key.”
A denial roared inside his head. Viola was his prisoner, in his fortress, in his world. She owed him. Her very life depended on his goodwill. And that was just the way he wanted it.
On the other hand, McCadden’s life depended on that key.
He grappled with indecision before huffing a breath. “Not yet.” He had a plan, and he would see it through. “I have set a scheme in motion.”
Two or three weeks of isolation, and Narcissism would turn on the goddess. Demons always required a victim. Viola’s confidence would crumble. In desperation, she would give Brochan anything he demanded.
He ignored the hot burn of guilt in his chest. “Until its completion,” he told Farrow, “we’ll hit the veil with everything we’ve got.”
Chapter Six
Viola tiptoed through the fortress, her stomach in knots. Of course, her stomach was never not in knots nowadays. Brochan had been absent for an endless eternity! Six days of wretched despair, unrelenting loneliness and frantic worry. Basically, her worst nightmares come to life. Everything she’d battled as a child, times ten.
She’d searched the palace for anyone living or dead and found nothing. Absolutely nothing! As a goddess of the Afterlife, she could do things most other deities could not. Feed on souls. Well, she used to feed on souls, before her possession. But she could still traverse any plane, see spirits of the dead and communicate with ghosts. To her horror, even the spirits had vacated this realm. No other worlds existed around it, as if the land had been cursed. As if the planet itself had been severed from the highways of the galaxies and left to float across an endless void.
A metaphor for her host’s existence?
Or her own?
Tears gathered, blurring her vision. Lonely beyond reason, she’d resorted to uncovering the portraits hanging on the walls just to have people to speak to. Her audience consisted of the stern, painted faces of long-deceased warlocks and witches of old, known by the faint, swirling lines etched across their foreheads.
Viola pulled at the metal cuff Brochan had secured around her wrist. As usual, it didn’t budge. Just then, she loathed Brochan with the heat of a thousand suns. How dare he do this to her!? She had no one to speak to but herself. And even though she was stellar company—the best—she couldn’t rally her customary confidence. Self-loathing bombarded her daily. And okay, yes, maybe she didn’t hate Brochan with the heat of a thousand suns. Maybe only a few hundred.
In a secret part of her heart, however, she suspected she only loathed herself.
What if she was the worst person ever born? What if the worlds would be better off without her?
Would she die alone as she deserved? Would anyone but Fluffy remember her fondly?
Her friend Cameo might entertain a few delightful recollections about her. The first and only friend Viola had made outside of Fluffy. A woman once oppressed by Misery, a demon almost as horrid as Narcissism. Cameo was newly wed to the love of her life, Lazarus, and finally living her happily ever after.