I need to threaten you far more often, fledgling. Lucifer's thought.
I'll try to control my trembling enough to shoot straight.
Jonah closed his eyes as the banter continued, comments put in from his captains, as well as a couple of daring snippets from the un-ranked soldiers. The normal prebattle banter of men who might be dead in the next hour. During his vision quest, he'd thought the immersion in blood was an escape from the overwhelming agony of facing the darkness that had taken over his soul. It had not been an escape, but rather an embracing of that darkness.
But this time, this battle was the escape he needed, with those angels who chose to fight at his side. When this day was over, if he survived, he would have to face that he was responsible for Anna's death, and that of her friend. As well as the fact that he would never again feel Anna's touch, hear her teasing, see her smile fall upon him. See the absolute love in her eyes that somehow a week had created between them. Whatever else he had to resolve with the Lady, he did not deny that kind of love was one of Her miracles.
This would help him deal with it. He could do what he knew best, for the right reasons, and then maybe, when it was over, the cleansing power of fighting without the darkness in his soul would help him face the loss. The sense of loneliness tearing at the edges of him even now.
He focused as Lucifer turned his head toward him. As he said nothing, Jonah knew somehow that Lucifer understood all that was going through him, even the thoughts Jonah was choosing not to share. It was a surprising feeling, comforting and disturbing at once.
There also was another note of power to it, one he'd never detected before . . . stronger. One he realized Lucifer was deliberately letting him feel. Lucifer cocked his head, and his dark eyes held Jonah's.
"You know now," he said quietly. "Where the humans come from."
Jonah nodded.
Lucifer glanced back across the chasm. "Every time She sends Her angels out to fight them, She suffers. Sometimes, She gets an insane notion to join the battle Herself, but you and I both know the effect of Dark Ones on female energy. If the Dark Ones' energy overwhelms the human soul, drowns that spark . . . In Her mind, you're fighting for the humans. But I tell you here and now, you have always been fighting for Her. You understand?"
Jonah studied him, trying to wrap his mind around not only what Lucifer was saying, but why it was Lucifer saying it.
Lucifer knew. Had always known. Just as She had.
"In one moment of compassion," the Lord of the Underworld continued, "you can do the right thing and create tragedy. Or you can compromise your soul and life goes on. Have you ever thought of what the consequences are of compromising a Goddess's soul?
"She knows much we do not, but it doesn't mean She doesn't feel pain, loss or anger. She is all love, Jonah. And like your little mermaid, love is a tapestry against which pain can imprint itself again and again, giving it scars as well as richness."
As Lucifer's gaze locked with Jonah's, he was captured in the moment with the Dark Lord of the Underworld, even as the captains commanded the angels to draw weapons, to ready for the charge that would come in moments.
Everything is a balance . . . Female energy is feeling; male is structure . . .
What would be the balance to the Lady? Why would She have faith in love above all things? Why had Lucifer always championed Her so fiercely . . . Why had Jonah always sensed the lingering touch of fire upon Her?
Because Lucifer was Her Champion.
It hit Jonah so powerfully, it was like he'd opened his mouth and taken a gulp of water too fast. He drew in a painful breath. The warrior arm of the Lady, Her protection, Her balance. The Lord and the Lady, something that was almost a legend among the angels. Never doubted, but the Lord was illusory, such that the angels had not really thought to question His identity any more than they had the fact of His existence.
He was facing the Lord. Her Consort.
Lucifer gave a slight nod, his dark gaze flickering. Then, as if nothing momentous had happened, he glanced over at the still smoking ledge across the canyon. "Don't suppose you could do that again, about twice as strong, and save us all some trouble?"
"It . . . I've never had the ability to control that level of power so accurately before." Nor had he ever felt as he did when he did it. Not hatred. He'd had the fierce adrenaline he always felt during a fight, but he hadn't felt the dragging weight of hatred or despair he'd been feeling for so long. If one Dark One had asked him for mercy, a choice, he would have given it. Justice with compassion . . .
He was Jonah, Prime Legion Commander, and he would help keep the Goddess's earth safe for purple flowers, laughing mermaids, surly witches, children with pink backpacks, husbands and wives trying to find their way to the true path of love and light, migrant workers offering soda to stray hitchhikers . . .
He was an angel, soldier of the Lady, and he knew his cause was just, not just because of what he knew, but what he felt . . . how he loved.
Because he did it for Anna, he could do it for the world.
"Let's finish this," he said. Lucifer nodded and deliberately adjusted to his right, meeting Jonah's eye. Drawing his sword, Jonah took his proper position at the front of the army that was ready to follow its Prime Legion Commander wherever he would lead them.
Twenty-five
IT was the largest battle David had yet witnessed. Though they'd failed to gain a captive angel, the Dark Ones foolishly believed, despite his burst of fiery energy, that Jonah might be weakened and they still had a chance. Courage was something the Dark Ones didn't lack, though David preferred to call it mindless bloodlust. Once they had it in their nose, they did not typically back off, even when things were against them, as they were now.
Watching Michael, Jonah and Lucifer fight as a unit was like watching an ethereal, fierce ballet, the most perfect inner workings of a living body. The interweaving of drops, turns, spins and twists as they struck and dove within inches of each other, one scything through an opponent as another cut off the attack of someone else, was so mesmerizing that for once David was glad he wasn't in the thick of it. Instead he was afforded the occasional awe-inspiring glimpse as he notched another flying arrow and shot a Dark One out of the sky.
Whether she'd acknowledge it or not at this point, the seawitch was too weak to participate further, not that he was so sure she would have. When Anna had died and Jonah had surged off the rock with her, she'd collapsed, her magic spent and purpose done. Even knowing she was mortally wounded, David had sent an urgent call for Raphael, though it wasn't likely the healing angel would put a Dark Spawn and the request of a junior lieutenant over other higher-ranking calls on this blood-soaked day.
Then Anna's ashes had fallen to the ledge and the seawitch had cried out in protest. He'd turned to see her trying to stave off the glittering shower that seemed to be . . . Yes, they were settling onto the cuts, healing them, sinking into her skin, limning her lips where they liquefied, forcing themselves down her throat. Mina had been caught somewhere half between
dragon and human forms, too weak to complete the change in either direction. However, now, as the last dragon vestiges disappeared, her mercreature form reappeared, the long black tentacles and harlequin-scarred body. The gold ash melted into her skin, over the scars. The ones she'd gotten from this battle disappeared while the gold remained, forming swirling patterns on older scars and in the sleek black flesh of her tentacles, imprinting itself in protection symbols. Her struggles had increased.
"No, Anna . . ." Astonished, David saw tears coming out of Mina's eyes, running with the gold, giving her a macabre mask. It was oddly beautiful, like a temple goddess cast in bronze where the bronze was breaking away, showing the living woman beneath.
Following instinct, he'd dropped to one knee, caught her up to still her struggles. Of course, being Mina, her violence increased at his touch so he had to release her to calm her. He did manage to pull her inside the shelter of the shallow hollow, now that she was in a more diminutive form. While she didn't seem to be suffering from lack of water, the rain had stopped, so he put her next to the trickle of underground water, her tentacles receiving a constant flow of moisture, the only thing he could do for her.
"Liar," Mina had muttered. "She's such a liar. Never take any choices away from each other . . ."
A battle cry from above, a thunder of drums, and he'd had to shove aside his worry for her in the face of the more immediate task of protecting their ledge from attack as the battle engaged. His men had held well. Though they didn't like the duty of protecting a Dark Spawn, none shirked it, and every Dark One they smote was one less to engage their fellows above.
When next he could spare a glance back, he was somewhat relieved to see Mina had at last settled. She held two fistfuls of Anna's remains in her hands, the glitter of the gold faded so she was simply left with metallic ash that stained her hands with dust. At some point, perhaps she'd buried her face in her hands, for her face was marked with gold fingerprints.
He had the unexpected wish to offer her comfort, though he couldn't imagine what type she'd welcome.