End Chapter 1

Lucifer turned and looked at his shadow, glowered at it until the wings disappeared. They seemed to fight him on it. Lucia suddenly thought of a puppy whining at punishment it didn’t understand. She shook her head, but the sound lingered in the air, though Lucifer’s shadow was entirely gone.

“What was that?”

Lucifer turned, too quickly, nothing was that quick, and for a moment his eyes, corneas and all, were flames made of the sort of darkness found only in caves where the sun never reaches. Then he blinked, for the first time, Lucia realized, and they were utterly normal eyes again. In an entirely inhuman face.

“It’s not easy for me to manifest on this plane. I am forbidden it by Yhwh, after all,” he explained, his face settling into something somewhat less human than before. It was the first time Lucia had ever heard “Yhwh” pronounced exactly as it was spelled- without any vowels. Which was more than a little odd, considering that Hebrew did have vowel sounds, they just weren’t written down.

“So, correctly pronouncing the name of God actually does cause Him to manifest?”

For a moment, Lucifer was a caricature of sly. Lucia wondered if he actually felt human emotions or if he just imitated them, poorly. “It does rather attract His attention, which I’d rather not at the moment.”

Lucia sat down across from him, her suspicion and terror replaced with fascination. “Why now? Why does God want to end it all now? And why do you care what He does?”

Lucifer sighed, a sound so weary Lucia could only imagine the millennia behind it. He ran a hand through his hair and looked, for the first time, human. He was still beautiful beyond measure, but the unnatural perfection had disappeared, leaving behind slight wrinkles around his eyes, the barest hint of sagging at the jaw line. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his shoulders drooped. More theatre? Which was real, the inhuman monster with black flames for eyes or the dignified, if very weary, middle-aged man? Neither?

“I assume you’ve read Paradise Lost and the Inferno?” Lucia nodded. “Well, then, the War in Heaven, the sin of my pride, my insatiable jealousy of the inferior creations my master loved best.” He grinned without joy. “Forget all that. The truth is both far less grand and far less flattering to our creator.

“I don’t have much time, so I’ll stick to the short version. Yhwh did create us both, the angels first, the humans second. We angels were made perfect, or at least as close to perfect as anything could be. Humans were-“ Lucifer paused, his eyes focused far beyond Lucia. “Humans couldn’t be left alone. He learned that after the Garden of Eden incident, which is not at all what you’ve heard.”

He raised a hand to forestall the inevitable question. “Time. Tick tock. Not in our favor. Anyway, in order for humans to do whatever it is Yhwh wants them to do- and no, I have no idea what that is- he needs to direct them individually. That is where we parted ways.”

Lucia frowned. It wasn’t that she disbelieved his story, who was she to argue history with Satan, but it didn’t make sense, didn’t mesh with what she knew. “What about free will? What do you mean by ‘directed’?”

“Oh, individual humans do have free will. That’s part of the goal, actually. However, in the course of exercising free will, some humans happen upon what Yhwh wants of them. These humans must be allowed to do what they intend to do to bring about Yhwh’s plan, but in order for that to happen, other humans must be stopped.”

It was the way Lucifer said “stopped” with such cold finality. “Wait. Just- wait. God’s plan? You mean the way some people have the easiest time ever and some people just get shit on by life from the moment they’re born? That?” It made perfect sense, and it was so . . . evil, evil was the only word for it.

Lucifer’s smile was sad. “Yes. Some humans have to suffer so that others will fulfill His plan. It’s just so cruel. Why this one and not that one? Why not just tell them what the plan is, give them some sort of hint, anything to stop it? This one, not that one, this child gets raped, that mother gets beaten to death and that man wins the lottery. I just couldn’t bear it after a while. So I tried to make him stop.”

“You tried to stop God? You tried to stop an omnipotent, omniscient being? I’m surprised you’re here at all- He’s not omnipotent or omniscient, is He?” Lucia realized just how much “knowledge” she was going to have to forget.

“No, He’s neither omnipotent nor omniscient, but He is powerful enough in comparison to humans that the distinction doesn’t matter. As to your other question, why end the world now, it has to do with what I have been able to accomplish.

“I have been able to protect some humans from the consequences of God’s Plan and seduce others away from it-“

“Job!” Lucia exclaimed.

“What?”

“Job. That was you testing your ability to defy Yhwh, mess with his Plan, right?” Lucia asked.

“Yes, unfortunately I wasn’t able to do much for poor Job, or his family, but I did learn enough to be able to help others. The secret is subtlety. This world, all the people in it, is a chaos system. You know what a chaos system is, right?” Lucia nodded. She didn’t mention that her knowledge of chaos systems came directly from Jurassic Park. “It’s impossible for even Yhwh to keep track of every part of a chaos system simultaneously, so He doesn’t. He monitors trends instead.

“As long as I keep my actions subtle, just a tiny nudge here, a little tug there, He can’t catch me at it. One or two humans protected or kept off the path would seem like nothing in the grand scheme of things, but over time, it adds up.”

“So you’ve managed to ensure that His plan can’t be fulfilled, He’s figured it out and now He’s ending it all, Revelation style?” Lucia summed it up for him.

Lucifer gave her a wry look. “Well, you certainly didn’t get that from me.”

“Get what?”

“Pithyness. You are correct. The events of Revelation, the Apocalypse, are about to occur. If you don’t stop it, this world will end in a little over seven years.”

“But how do I stop the Apocalypse? I mean, you’re Satan, an angel, and you can’t do it, I’m just me,” said Lucia, her voice a whisper at the end. She couldn’t even manage to move out of Southside to somewhere safer, how could she save the world?

A finger under her chin lifted her head up. Lucifer’s touch was impossibly hot and skin-bitingly cold at once. Lucia wondered what he looked like wherever it was he belonged. He cupped her chin with her hand and laid his other over the top of her head. She bit back a whine of pain and ruthlessly beat back the question of how he ever had sex with her mother. Picturing Tanny Harris having sex was worse than the burning, freezing pain of Lucifer’s touch.

Lucia would have screamed at what Lucifer did next if she had could have breathed. Ever nerve in her body was pure pain, her bones crunching- not at all the sound in movies- her tendons snapping, her muscles spasming, her eyes, she was sure, were melting, and then- nothing. The pain ended so abruptly she was left swaying and gasping, clutching at Satan’s shirt.

“What, what was that?” she finally got out, the words feeling as unfamiliar as if she’d never spoken English before.

He took her hands and guided her to a chair. His touch no longer hurt, it just left a mild tingling on her skin. “I’ve been hiding you, remember? Keeping you human, or as human as I could. I removed it. You are nephalim now.”

Lucia laughed, held one hand out in front of her and examined it. It looked the same, from the winter-chewed cuticles on her fingers to the beginnings of wrinkles around the knuckles. Now that the endorphin rush was passing, she felt the same, too. She turned quickly to look behind her.

“No wings?”

Lucifer sighed. “What is it with my children and wings? You all ask that.”

“All? I have brothers and sisters?” Lucia was delighted. She’d always wanted a sister, maybe a brother. She’d seen sisters and brothers together and despite the bickering there was always a closeness, an acceptance and love, she envied.

“Not currently alive, no. I make sure to have one child living at all times, for just such occasions as these. You’re only the second one I’ve had to awaken.”

“Oh. So what did I get?” He had mentioned setting bullies ablaze, pyrokinesis would be almost as good as siblings.

“Well, you are much more resistant to damage than the average human, you heal significantly faster,” Lucifer counted the modifications on his fingers. “You are immune to disease and resistant to radiation, though not completely immune, so don’t go exploring Chernobyl.” He paused.

“Anything fun?”

“Fun?”

“You know, like pyrokinesis or stopping time or flying or something.” Immunity to disease would certainly be useful during flu season, but it wasn’t really what Lucia was expecting from being the daughter of Satan.

“You watch too much TV,” he replied huffily.

“Yhwh flooded the whole damn world to kill the nephalim because they were somewhat resistant to radiation?”

Lucifer sighed again, ran a hand through his hair. “He didn’t flood the entire world, just the area around Judea and any nephalim would be potentially dangerous to His plans. Nephalim just won’t obey. But yes, you do have two abilities in your favor.”

“What is it?” Tick tock before, but now he couldn’t spit it out?

“You can affect random chance in your favor and you are, well, I suppose ‘persuasive’ is the word.” Lucifer was suddenly quite fascinated by the cuff of his shirt.

“What does that mean, affect random chance? Should I move to Vegas?”

“You are just the soul of pithy, aren’t you?” Lucifer smiled brightly. “That and you should probably be very careful what you say from now on.” He turned away from her. “I cannot stay much longer and neither can you. Yhwh has already noticed what I just did, I guarantee it.”

Lucia stared at him in disbelief. “That’s it? Here’s some craptastic abilities that wouldn’t get me sidekick status in the Marvel universe, go stop the Apocalypse, see you later?”

It was too late. Lucifer had already begun to dim, pulling the shadows of the room with him.

“Wait! Couldn’t I have that?” Lucia had so many questions, a lifetime of them, and now her father was leaving.

He paused for a moment, a man shaped piece of perfect darkness in a now blinding room. “I’ll send help. The agents of Yhwh are on there way, just get out of her-“ He was gone. The room bobbled, straight lines curving, curves impossibly sharp, corners warped, then everything snapped back to normal, leaving Lucia blinking away nausea.

She sighed. Send help? She wasn’t waiting around for it. “Well, God helps those who help themselves, hopefully Satan does, too.”

            Lucia turned off the coffee pot, put the mugs in the sink and, grabbing her purse and her environmentally friendly cloth shopping bag, a giveaway from a local store on Earth Day, walked to the bedroom. Her coworkers made comments sometimes, but she certainly wouldn’t leave anything of value, like her iPad, at her house. There was a reason she didn’t own a TV. Junkies weren’t stopped by deadbolts any more than Lucifer had been. So she already had most of what she owned on her. A few more outfits, her other pair of shoes, various toiletries, and she was done. Lucia said a mournful goodbye to her blowdryer and straightening iron. They wouldn’t fit and weren’t as important as underwear or toothpaste, but she didn’t look forward to the inevitable frizz.

            “What the hell?” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair, which had been dark brown and straightened last time she looked, was now a mass of brilliant red curls, shot through with gold streaks, down her back. And her eyes were red. “Oh, that’s subtle. No one will notice that at all . . .” She had pulled her hair back to examine her eyes only to uncover newly pointed ears.  “Unbelievable.”

            Lucia stared at her new reflection, pondering whether or not she had gained a cup size and how creepy was that considering her father had done it, though he was Satan, so maybe that lessened the creepy factor, when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She turned around, fully expecting to see someone right behind her, but there was nothing. Nevertheless, a chill ran up her back and down her arms, leaving her fingers trembling.

            “I am not sticking around to see what that’s all about,” Lucia thought, picked up her purse and her bag and walked to the front door. She was almost touching the doorknob, her fingers an inch away, when she suddenly had the impression that the doorknob was a spider. A big, hairy spider. A wiggling, big, hairy spider possibly covered in goo. She just couldn’t bring herself to touch it, no matter how much she knew the doorknob was not a spider.

            “Right. He could have mentioned that. Or I’m just insane. Which would explain a lot, really.” Lucia was almost certain that what she was feeling was the “agents of Yhwh” stopping by. Big, spidery agents of Yhwh, covered in goo.

            Yielding to the impression that the entire living room was now made of big hairy spiders covered in goo, Lucia retreated to the bedroom, in the back of her small apartment. Unfortunately, her apartment was on the third floor and the only exit was the gooey spider door. “’Resistant to damage’,” muttered Lucia, biting her lip as she thought. Below her bedroom window was a one story garage. It would be a two story drop, but that was only one more story than the average human could hope to jump without serious injury. Twice the distance, to be exact, but she had to leave and the front door wasn’t an option.

            The creeping feeling had spread into the bedroom and Lucia was certain whoever or whatever was after her was at the front door. “Fuck it.” She tried to open the window, but the wood of the frame was swollen with humidity and it opened half an inch and then stuck. She could fit her fingers under it, but not anything else.

            The windows all over the building stuck like this any time it rained. It was bad enough in the stifling heat of a rainy summer day, but Lucia was half wild with the unshakable belief that the entire room was made of big, gooey, wiggling spiders, so she did what anyone arachnophobic person obsessed with comics and action movies would do, she backed up and jumped right through the glass. As the glass shattered, Lucia had a moment of perfect clarity in which she realized that her window, being over 100 years old, was not made of shatterproof glass, then she was falling, driving all thoughts of advancements in safety technology out of her mind.

            Just before she hit the roof of the garage she noticed a man standing there, dressed all in black, long black hair blowing in the wind, gaping up at her. She had time to think that it was odd that she hadn’t noticed him before and then she crashed into him.

            For a moment, everything went black as Lucia struggled to breathe. She had landed stomach first onto the man’s crooked knee, her face in his crotch. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t broken anything, but she couldn’t get enough air to even roll away from what had to be the most singularly embarrassing position to meet someone from.

            “You just had the wind knocked out of you, come along, in a short moment you will be fine,” he said, pulling her up until she was face to face with him- and laying pressed up against his body. As she gasped for air, she noticed that he had purple eyes and fangs.

            “Are- you- okay?” She managed to asked in between convincing her lungs that breathing still remained a good idea.

            He smiled, far too broadly, almost literally ear to ear, exposing more shiny, white fangs. “It would take more than that to harm me.” He glanced up at the broken window and the smile dropped off his face. “Though I’m quite sure they will be happy to bring more than that.” He stood up, pulling Lucia with him. She pushed away from him, tottering to the side, but staying upright.

            “Hey, let me help you.” He reached out a hand and Lucia stepped back and waved her arms around her.

            “Personal space, please stay out of it.” She picked up her purse and bag and stumbled to the edge of the roof. After the last jump, this didn’t look so bad. She hopped down, quickly followed by purple-eyed man.

            “I’m here to help you, you know,” he said, clearly aggrieved.

            Lucia trotted past the apartment building behind hers, nervous at being funneled down a three foot wide space littered with trash between two apartment buildings. Well, one apartment building and a crack house to be precise. There was no overwhelming sense of spiders or goo coming from the street ahead of her, so she stepped out onto the sidewalk confidently.

            The purple eyed man grabbed her arm, pulled her back into the shadows and up against his body and whispered, “Careful! We need to-“

            Without thinking, Lucia slammed on heel down onto his instep while simultaneously hitting him in the stomach with an elbow and twisting out of his grasp. He let go and hopped back, glaring at her. Before he could speak, she hissed, “Personal fucking space!” She pointed at the crack house, an otherwise unremarkable moldering Victorian home. “That is a crack house. If we go running by, all the junkies and their dealers will want to know what we’re running from. They may get insistent about knowing what we’re running from. We don’t want that sort of attention. Now shut up and follow me, just keep about two feet away from me.”

            Lucia didn’t bother to see if he was following her or still trying to argue the point or plotting to kill her, she just turned and walked out onto the sidewalk as if it were any other day and she needed something from the corner store.

            “But-“

            “Later!”

            She strode down the street, surreptitiously picking shards of glass out of her hair and then she noticed it. It was a lovely Spring night, sun just setting, air still arm and the streets were empty. There should have drug dealers casually pretending to wait for nothing, prostitutes rather obviously waiting for something, junkies looking to score and residents enjoying the few remaining minutes of twilight before barricading themselves in their apartments. That she and the purple eyed man were alone was eerie.

            She began cutting into alleys and back yards at random, reasoning that if she didn’t know where she was going, neither would Yhwh’s agents. It wasn’t like she had any idea where she was going. The Martz bus station in Center City would provide a way out of town, but one day before payday she didn’t have any money and she was willing to bet her companion didn’t have any ID. Still, Center City seemed the best goal, at least she could stop by work in the morning and pick up her paycheck, if nothing else.

            Two blocks away from her apartment, the tingling at the back of her neck disappeared and people were out and about- but avoiding the two blocks surrounding Lucia’s apartment absolutely and without seeming to realize it. They would reach an invisible barrier and simply turn aside, not seeming to notice that they had changed their direction, their goals, completely. Nobody witnessing it, and people did, seemed to find anything odd in it.

            Lucia wondered if this had ever happened to her and realized that it could have happened a thousand times before, and judging from the looks on everyone’s faces, she wouldn’t have noticed or remembered a thing.

            Nobody seemed to notice Lucia’s newly red eyes or pointed ears, or her companion’s purple eyes and fangs. She watched eyes quickly scan her face and move away, displaying neither interest nor alarm. South Side wasn’t the place to question other people’s fashion choices, but it wasn’t Manhattan, either. A couple sporting impossibly colored eyes, pointed ears and fangs should have elicited double takes if nothing else, but judging by the lack of reaction, both Lucia and her companion were as normal as could be.

            Eventually they reached the bridge over the Lackawanna River between South Side and the Hill Section, one of two bridges connecting South Side to the rest of Scranton. Lucia stopped in the backyard of a condemned apartment building, hiding behind untrimmed forsythia that stretched ten feet tall, not exactly eager to step out over the span, even under the cover of darkness. It didn’t seem too likely that Yhwh’s agents would automatically assume she had no way out of town besides the bus, but maybe they did. If they did, all they had to do was watch this bridge and the Central Scranton Expressway bridge to catch her.

            A throbbing pain above her right knee caught Lucia’s attention as she watched the bridge and tried to feel as far as she could for spiders. She looked down and gasped. A piece of glass the size of her hand was sticking out of her thigh, blood dripping off of it. Her blood. She sat down on the grass heavily, lightheaded.

            “I tried to tell you.” Lucia started when her companion spoke. He had given up even trying an hour ago. He knelt down on one knee and paused. Lucia nodded her head, then regretted it as the world spun. He pulled of his black button down shirt and set it down on the ground next to her, then he removed the black t-shirt beneath it and held it in his hands.

            “Is that some sort of uniform?” asked Lucia. Her voice sounded odd in her ears, far away.

            He glanced at her, his eyes almost glowing in the filtered light of a street lamp. “What?” He grabbed the piece of glass and pulled it out in one quick motion, immediately pressing his t-shirt down on the wound.

            “Ow!” Lucia resisted the urge to lay down. It wouldn’t be good. He had the sort of sculpted muscles she’d only seen on movies stars. Wouldn’t be good at all. “Your black . . . my dad dresses like that . . . wha’s your name?”

            “Finsternis.” He pulled her bag over to him, never letting the pressure up on her wound. “You have anything to eat or drink in here?”

            “Ga’r’ade . . . b’ue!” Lucia managed. She giggled. She sounded drunk for some reason. She wondered if she could even get drunk anymore. Not that she wanted to, but still . . .

            “Take this.” Finsternis handed her the Gatorade bottle. Lucia took it with one hand and stared at it, unable to divine its significance. “Drink it, Little Light.”

            Lucia drank it, or at least some of it, most of it ended up pouring down her neck and over her chest. She decided that there was no time like the present to take a nap and closed her eyes.