Counting or swearing didn’t help. This was entirely my fault. I had trusted Nameless and he used me. I couldn’t rely on anyone helping me this time around. Cyril’s hands were tied too. My father didn’t give a damn and even if he did I knew that I had to figure the way out of this crappy situation myself.
Then, I was dragged out again, and carried somewhere else. Later on the bag was removed from my head and I saw Alexis. Someone must have sat me in the chair because that bitch was now sitting in front of me. She wore a long green dress, and smiled at me like this was the best day in her life. I was losing control, and anger blasted through me like a thunderstorm.
Ricky’s potions had probably worn off by now, and I must have looked like a complete idiot, nearly sliding off the chair because I couldn’t control my body. In my head I kept telling myself that her spell would stop working soon. She had me, and I just needed to wait for that moment when I’d get my magic back.
She sighed like she was bored, and got up from her chair. Seconds rolled by and then she stood in front of me, grabbing my cheeks. It didn’t matter. I still couldn’t feel a thing.
“I have you now, little mongrel whore, under my full control. You shouldn’t have messed with me. Now you’re going to regret it forever,” she hissed. Her charms were twisting my guts and I wanted to scream but couldn’t. It was harder to pretend that I could resist her, but I was hurting from inside out. Her charms were spreading like a venom in my body.
My mind was like a sponge, absorbing everything that was going on, but I was unable to make any kind of response.
Seconds later she smiled again and then poured something into my throat. It was a fiery liquid that started burning me. My guts couldn’t take it. I wanted to stick my fingers into my mouth and throw up. Whatever was in that flask, it quickly began sucking my abilities out of each cell. I felt it getting into my bloodstream. There was no more tingling, and my magic was vanishing as my heart beat steadily in my chest. My demonic soul was falling to pieces and Alexis stood by me and laughed.
Then darkness came, and the last thing I remembered was that creepy wide smile on her face.
I stretched my arms and legs, releasing the tension in my body. I lay on the cold ground, trying to gather the strength to lift myself up. Half of my left side felt numb, probably because I had been lying in an awkward position for too long. I really needed to stop getting knocked unconscious. I’d lost count of how many times that happened recently.
My fingers were really stiff, and my energy felt completely absent. I couldn’t tap into my source. I remembered bits and pieces from the moment Alexis caught me in her chambers and I wished that I had been better prepared.
Suddenly I shot back to my feet, thinking that I was having a real panic attack. This time around something felt different.
I couldn’t sense any demons or humans around me. Well, it was difficult to figure out if it was because of the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere or because my energy had been somehow stolen from me. Alexis wasn’t skilled enough to do such a thing. My demonic DNA had been implanted into my soul. She couldn’t physically make me a human, and yet I had this terrible feeling in my gut that this was exactly what she had done.
She’d locked me in a cell and when I tried to recall everything that happened, my memories were blurry but they slowly came back. It happened just before I was about to open the gates of hell. Nameless had betrayed me, betrayed the whole group.
I rolled my head around and kept on breathing. Sweat was dripping down my face and my chest felt like it had cracked open. I suddenly remembered sitting in a chair and Alexis pouring something into my mouth. I must have passed out after that. My throat went dry and I felt like a tonne of heavy bricks cascaded down to my stomach.
“No, she couldn’t have… That’s almost impossible,” I whispered to myself as the realisation that I was no longer a mongrel washed over me.
That bitch had stripped me of all my demonic power. I felt empty, lost, and I hated the new me more with every passing second. My pulse sped up and blood pounded in my ears. I had lost the connection with Matilda and Ricky, couldn’t sense anyone else’s emotions like I used to before Alexis had trapped me inside this cell. Panic knifed through my chest, tearing my confidence apart. I’d taken my demonic power for granted so many times, and now it was lost forever. Seconds later I had my fingers around the bars and was screaming at the top of my lungs.
It was official. I had lost it.
“Get me out of here, you bitch!”
No one answered me and no one was coming to my rescue. The silence buzzed in my ears. I had no idea where that bitch was keeping me, and that didn’t matter. I was just a human now, not even Lucifer’s daughter anymore.
It took a while before anyone showed up. I lifted myself off the ground, and seeing Princess Layla in a place like this shook me to the core.
“Hello, Maxine, I’m glad that they finally caught you,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.
Only now it hit me how useful it was to recognise someone else’s emotions and knowing what others felt. Now that emptiness was unbearable. I couldn’t fucking take it.
It was obvious that Alexis had sent Arthur’s aunt in here. She needed to make sure that she kicked me when I was down.
“We both know that I have been framed. I had nothing to do with Arthur’s death. Alexis is manipulating you,” I said, knowing that I was wasting my breath on her. Princess Layla’s mind had obviously been poisoned.
She stared at me with disappointment and resentment. She never truly trusted me, even when others praised me. She was always aware that there was something going on between me and Arthur.
“Stop lying to me. You are a murderer and there is plenty of evidence,” she said and then tried to grab me, but I backed away to the wall. She was filled with pain, and I understood it. She had lost her nephew.
“Don’t be blind, Layla. Alexis is using you. How can you not see it?” I shook my head knowing that there was no point explaining anything to her. She was filled with vengeance towards me. I felt so down not feeling my magic, not sensing anyone’s emotions.
“You will rot in this prison forever,” Layla said. “No one knows that we are keeping you here. Soon the decision will be made and you will pay for everything you’ve done.”
“Wait, hold on. What do you mean that no one knows? What decision? Get Rodriguez in here. I need to speak to him!” I shouted after her, but she was already walking away.
I shook the bars, but her steps echoed in my ears. She disappeared in the darkness shortly after that.
I hated this. I detested the fact that Alexis had changed me. She knew that the emptiness could break me and that was her intention from the beginning. She was slowly crushing any hope that was left inside me.
I kept banging my legs over the metal bars, but no one else showed up, not even the guards with water and food. I wasn’t hungry, but someone eventually should tell me what was going to happen with me.
The cell had a bunk bed and a basic toilet. I sat there for ages, losing track of time. Frustration and anger boiled inside me. This wasn’t the kind of anger that let me open the gates of hell. Now I was just a human being, and without my magic I was no one.
I must have dozed off after several hours, because when I woke up there was someone standing on the other side of the cell. I shot back on my feet, trying to grab her, but she backed away from me, laughing.
“What the fuck have you done to me, bitch?”
“Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” she sang. “You aren’t going to live for long without your mongrel abilities.”
“At some point I will get out of here and I’ll kill you, and I’ll take my time to enjoy it,” I said, as my pulse pounded in my ears. She had that magical glow around her, and I wished that I could do something to wipe that stupid smile off her face. There were so many ways that I could hurt her.
“I have won and you should accept it,” Alexis said. “I’ve al
ways been the one. Now that I’m healed I can put my master plan in motion. Lucifer will pay for what he did to me, now that I have his favourite daughter.”
“Lucifer? You have removed my power because of him? Do you really think that he gives damn about me?” I asked, wondering how long she was planning to keep me in here.
Days, weeks … who knew? She wasn’t going to wait forever.
She smoothed her red hair and bit her lip.
Then she created a ball of light on the surface of her palm and played with it for a moment. Every ounce of my blood riddled with frustration.
She had found the way to defeat me with that spell. I was no one without my abilities.
“I have spent enough time with him to know that he will come for you and I’ll be waiting,” she said. “My family had a certain position in hell, but the dark lord never respected them. Now this is going to change. Rodriguez helped me put this little plan of mine together. It was so clever, don’t you think?”
“What did you do to my friends?” I asked.
“Your little group has been arrested so they won’t cause anymore trouble. The Royals are under my full control and that old demon is willing to do anything just to hang on to his position. He will even go against the dark lord.”
No one was stupid enough to go against Lucifer, and yet Alexis was convinced that she could defeat him.
My father had always controlled the entire population of hell, but things on earth were more complicated. I only began to realise that now. Rodriguez was Lucifer’s right hand in the palace, but the old demon went over his head. Lucifer lost control of the royals and his hands were tied because of the election.
“You won’t get away with this. Lucifer will destroy you.”
“Maybe or maybe not. He’s the prince of hell not the prince of earth and his influence only goes so far. Right now, I’m in charge of the palace and I’ll be the one bringing him down. And he won’t dare to even try to remove me, because he can’t. That’s the beauty of it.”
Chapter 19
“A hungry mongrel—yapping, thrusting out, intent on nothing but the meal to come—is silent only when its teeth sink in.” ― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
I stared at her, clenching my fists, knowing that she was absolutely right. Lucifer couldn’t just walk into the palace and take control of his demons there. He had others that acted on his behalf.
Different rules were applied to hell than to earth. I had a feeling the dark lord wasn’t allowed to break them. Messengers, Watchers, demons and even mongrels were all created for a reason.
After being in that small cell, alone and defeated, I was forced to analyse lots of different things.
I suspected that Alexis had found Lucifer’s greatest strength in his biggest weakness. She must have been watching him, analysing the way he operated when she was still his lover, and after he scarred her, she used that new knowledge to plot her revenge plan. My father didn’t reveal his true nature to her either. She only knew him as Morpheus, like I had when he first showed up in Ricky’s apartment.
Maybe my father asked me to take care of her because he couldn’t act upon it himself. For centuries he was using the appearance of Morpheus to deal with his affairs and that’s why there was so much conflicting information about him.
I guess it was easier for him to pretend to be someone else. Maybe he was allowed to travel to earth only as Morpheus. I was confused, but the further I thought about it, then more I believed that maybe he wasn’t allowed to interfere in any serious human affairs.
It was clear that Lucifer’s own demons in hell were obedient, but that didn't mean that he could also control them on earth. There were many reasons why demons were so desperate to escape to the human world. Of course the life in the underworld wasn’t a real life.
I suspected that once demons left hell, the dark lord no longer owned them or owned their future.
Watchers and the heads of the factions were working to keep a certain order on earth, so the demons that crossed over to earth believed that they had to follow Lucifer’s protocol that he created for his benefit. That way he made them believe that he was still in control. I mean if that was really the case, then my father was a master manipulator and he’d managed to trick me too.
In some ways this was still a theory, a theory that made perfect sense.
Alexis must have put all those complicated pieces together.
Now that she had her power back, nothing was going to stop her from executing her revenge. She must have been thinking about this for a very long time, trying to find the way to get to Lucifer, to mess up his plans. Her timing was perfect: the election in hell would keep him occupied for a while.
It only took me twenty-six years to figure out that the faction system on earth had many flaws.
Demons on earth were unaware of what was going on in hell after they chose life on earth, and most of the time they were happy living amongst humans. They believed that they could decide about their own future. Hell had taken that away from them.
“Lucifer will come for you, Maxine, and I’ll be waiting,” she said. “And then nothing will ever be the same again.”
Eventually after about a day, a scrawny human brought me food and water. I was beginning to think that Alexis was planning to starve me to death.
The solitude had truly fucked with my head and the time began to drag. I was back from hell, but now after being locked up in this small cell I felt like I had never left.
The human didn’t make eye contact with me. He slid the bowl with food through the square space between the bars and then vanished. Alexis didn’t come back. She took my magic away from me and left me to suffer in solitude.
Every minute felt like an hour and every hour like a day. I couldn’t break that circle when I started to lose touch with reality. Days were passing, although to me time stood still.
The food tasted the same every day and eventually I began looking forward to the time when the human would show up. Then I would ask him all sorts of questions, mainly to find out what day of the week it was or if there were other prisoners around here.
Most days he ignored me, but after weeks maybe, he began loosening his tongue and answering some of my questions. It turned out that two weeks had gone by since I was caught in her chambers.
On the fifteenth day I lay on the cold floor thinking that I wasn’t going to last long like this. Alexis had finally found the way to break me, because I was willing to do anything, just so I could get out.
“Maxine, hey, Maxine.”
I heard a whisper and saw Arthur leaning over the bars and smiling at me. I shut my eyes and counted to ten, telling myself that this wasn’t happening for real. My imagination was screwing with my eyes. He was dead, gone, and he wasn’t coming back.
He kept whispering to me, and after a while he disappeared. Then it was Ricky, Emma and Zach.
They all showed up, telling me that I could escape, that this wasn’t the end. I believed them in some ways.
The truth was that I had no idea what was happening to my friends or if they were locked up too.
After a few more days I started shouting at the top of my lungs, just so I could feel alive, until some men showed up and beat me up. It was a vicious circle that was never going to end. Alexis had time. She wasn’t rushing anywhere.
I lifted my fingers and kept moving them in front of my eyes, thinking about my daughter. She was the only reason that I hadn’t gone completely insane, that I still thought I could get out of here. I kept imagining playing with her. She was my light in the dark tunnel.
The scrawny human came back the next day, and the next day, but I was done asking him questions. That routine became mundane. He stuck my bowl through the metal bars and left, muttering incoherent words to himself.
Being the other me, the human one, was difficult and I hated every second of it. Mum was much stronger than me. She survived without any help and still managed not to go crazy when she had
me.
More days must have passed before Alexis came back, and at some point I lost track of time. She hummed under her nose, looking glamorous wearing a long red coat with gloves.
“Ah, the famous Miss Brodeur is no longer a threat and of course no longer a mongrel. I must say, Alexis, that I’m impressed with the way you handled her,” said Rodriguez staring down at me with twisted excitement. His eyes gleamed with powerful energy and every tiny hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was afraid of what he wanted to do with me, more than before.
I grabbed the metal bars, thinking that maybe they were planning to take me somewhere. At that point I didn’t care. I just had to get out of that cage.
“Yes, she is going to be obedient now. I think we have waited enough,” Alexis said, staring at me intensely.
Rodriguez looked back at me with that calculating look on his face. He could read me much more effectively now, because I wasn’t a demon anymore.
“Just get on with this, guys. I’m kind of bored of sitting around,” I said.
Alexis smiled and took out something from her pocket. It looked like a powder compact or a small mirror.
“As you wish, my dear,” she said. “Guards, it’s time. Tie her up so she won’t try doing anything silly.”
She waved her hand around the gold box and the tiny object vanished. Jealousy filled my lungs. I wanted to feel the waves of magic rushing down my body. I missed it terribly, and part of me knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay sane without it. Being hopeless was the worst thing that could happen to me.
Seconds later a few men opened the cell and started dragging me out. I couldn’t even say if they were humans or demons. Rodriguez and Alexis walked behind me, talking to each other with hushed voices. Shortly a black sack was shoved over my head again.