It was clear from the crowd’s chants, however, that he was nowhere near one of the favorites to win the event.

  The top pick seemed to be a huge man in his mid-forties, who was as wide and thick as a lumberjack. He even wore a red flannel shirt and had a long beard currently covered in a mass of crumbs and hot dog bits.

  “It’s disgusting,” Jenna said, holding her stomach. “A beard? Really?”

  “He has to feed the mice that live in there,” Sage joked.

  “Ew!”

  We all laughed despite the fact that no one could watch the man eat without quickly turning away. However, none of this seemed to bother the crowd. On the contrary, the faster he ate and the bigger the mess he made on his beard, the louder the crowd chanted his name.

  At first, none of this seemed to bother Kody, but as contestants started dropping out, he seemed distracted, his eyes constantly flicking in the lumberjack’s direction and the diminishing pile of hot dogs in front of him. Still, in the last few minutes, Kody had solidified his position in the top five, which wasn’t too bad, given the caliber of the competitors.

  Next to me, Jenna frowned, looking over her shoulder at the crowd behind us.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” She frowned, listening.

  I refocused my attention, trying to figure out what had distracted her. A moment later, I picked up on it. The crowd in the back was slowly starting to chant Kody’s name instead of the lumberjack’s. Soon, Benjamin noticed too.

  “The tide seems to be turning,” he said.

  The wave continued, moving closer to where we stood, the crowd chanting Kody’s name louder and with more fervor. A man a couple of rows behind me was wearing a hat that identified him as a fan of Sam, the Lumberjack.

  The fan was pumping a fist up in the air, screaming Sam’s name, which I could clearly read on his lips. Abruptly his chant changed for no apparent reason, and he started calling Kody’s name instead.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked under my breath.

  As my eyes followed the row of people down the line, I could see their chants changing from Sam to Kody. My eyes jumped to a woman who was clearly rooting for Sam. As I watched her, a figure appeared behind her for a short instant.

  Jophiel!

  I caught the flash of his resplendent blond hair as he leaned to whisper into the woman’s ear, then moved in a blur to whisper to the next person, whose chant immediately changed too. He moved in and out, weaving through the crowd, changing the tide, which seemed to have an immediate effect on Kody.

  His eyes shone as he stared at the crowd, noticing the shift. Their cheers seemed to spur him on, and he increased his pace, devouring hot dogs faster than ever and quickly moving into fourth place.

  As Jophiel moved closer to where we stood, my hand itched to pull out my Queller. My heart thundered out of control as I glanced around, searching for Drevan. He was at my side in an instant.

  “I see what he’s doing,” he said, glancing at Jenna as he sandwiched himself between us.

  “Is that allowed?” she asked.

  Drevan nodded. “Sadly, yes.”

  “Shit!”

  “What do we do?” Benjamin asked.

  Jenna looked up from her phone and held it up. “His latest TikTok video is blowing up too. I bet you that fucking angel did this too.”

  It was so easy for Jophiel to manipulate this situation. It hadn’t been this way with Solar Hudson, but things had been completely different then. Very few people involved, and certainly no social media to manipulate. How could we fight against this sort of tampering?

  “He’s in third place now,” Benjamin announced.

  I pressed forward through the crowd. They gave me dirty looks, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get as far away from the angel as I could. Drevan and my friends followed.

  “I won’t let anything happen to anyone,” Drevan told us as we made it to the front of the crowd.

  By now, almost everyone was calling Kody’s name. Sam took a small break, looking confused, unable to understand how he’d lost the support of all his fans.

  I felt the urge to get out of there, to yell at the crowd to run for safety, but that would only cause chaos, and it seemed that Jophiel had changed his tactics altogether. He wasn’t trying to kill me or kidnap me. He seemed to finally be playing by the rules of the game.

  By now, Kody’s counter read fifty-three hot dogs. He was only two behind Sam, who was starting to look sick—either from disappointment or too much food, I could only guess. Kody, on the other hand, was happily chomping down on wieners and soggy buns, looking ready to demolish fifty-three more. My stomach flipped at the thought.

  Kody’s name roared in my ears as the crowd chanted in a frenzy. No one seemed to take a breath, and there was more excitement than at a music concert. From the looks of it, they were cheering for the second coming of Freddie Mercury and not a second-rate food-eating competition—worst of all, Kody was lapping it up and using the crowd’s support to propel himself to number one. Not only that, but to get ahead by six hot dogs by the time the final buzzer went off.

  “And the winner is Kody Jeong,” the announcer shouted over the microphone.

  Kody lifted both fists up in the air, and the crowd went crazy. He ran across the stage at the beat of We are the Champions, doing the floss, the griddy, and dabbing. The crowd cheered as if in ecstasy, but no one loved it more than Kody.

  “Shit!” Sage exclaimed. “This is bad. I told you we should have given him the stomach flu. He’s eating it up.”

  It was pandemonium for several minutes until the announcer managed to calm the crowd down to present Kody with a huge check for three thousand dollars, and a golden trophy with a hot dog at its apex.

  When it was all said and done, the crowd dispersed, wearing confused expressions on their faces as if they’d just woken up from a daze and had no idea what they’d been doing for the last ten minutes.

  “It’s officially viral,” Jenna announced, holding up her phone once more. “His TikTok video has over a million views now.”

  “Fuck!” Sage turned to Drevan. “Can’t you, like, delete his account or something?”

  Drevan shook his head. “To play by the rules, Lucia would have to do it.”

  “You haven’t turned into a genius hacker in the past hour, have you?” Sage asked sarcastically.

  “Those rules are so unfair,” Benjamin said.

  Sage huffed. “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Let’s go assess the damage.” Jenna pulled me along to the competitors’ room backstage.

  As we walked in that direction, Drevan disappeared into thin air, and I felt his presence beside me as we went. When we showed our press passes and entered the room, we found Kody surrounded by several reporters.

  He was talking animatedly, a smile stretched from ear to ear. From the dazed looks on the reporters’ faces, it was clear Jophiel had buttered them up too. Jenna gave me a defeated look, and I felt my heart sink. This was only going to make our job harder.

  We hung back, waiting for our turn to interview—or pretend to interview—Kody. One of the last reporters left as they all dispersed started asking Kody questions in what I assumed must be Korean.

  She leaned very close to him, resting her hand on his chest and batting her eyelashes. She was a pretty, petite Asian girl with chin-length hair. She wore a child-sized pink T-shirt, a checked schoolgirl skirt, and platform combat boots. She was very pretty, and it was obvious that Kody was taken by her.

  “Oh, this is not fair play!” Jenna exclaimed. “How are we supposed to compete with that? The other side has it too easy.”

  I cursed inwardly. We’d chosen the wrong path for redeeming Kody. Bringing him here had been a huge mistake, and it’d set us back for who knew how long. I finally understood how smoothly things had gone with our previous subjects. We had redeemed Solar in record time, but it wouldn’t be the same with Kody. If we didn’t figure out the correct strategy, getting him to change his ways could take months, if not years. It was like we needed psychology degrees to figure out how to correctly tweak someone’s mind to see their faults.

  When Kody saw us standing back, waiting, he waved and smiled, then started walking away.

  “Where is he going?”

  —He has a date, Drevan’s voice said in my head.

  “A date?!” I exclaimed.

  —Yes, she asked him out.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What?” Jenna asked.

  “Drevan says Kody has a date with the reporter,” I answered, my voice sounding tired and utterly defeated.

  “Great! All we managed to do was make him go viral, earn him three thousand dollars, and get him laid. Way to go, us!”

  I scrubbed at my face, overwhelmed by frustration. “We failed,” I said in a near growl.

  Jenna came closer and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. We’ll try again. We just have to regroup.”

  “How will we ever win if we’re the only ones that follow the rules?”

  Tears stung the back of my eyes. Jophiel didn’t play fair, and God didn’t care. He only cared if we failed. He was done with His failed experiment and seemed to be playing this charade for mere appearances. And what was the point of that? Why didn’t He just get it over with?

  A tear spilled down my face. I swatted away and turned from Jenna, embarrassed. It was rude, I knew, but I stomped away, headed outside. Jenna came after me, but I barely heard what she was saying.

  At the moment, I didn’t care if the entire world imploded.

  26

  Outside, I ran past Sage and Benjamin and left the building, pressing past the crowd.

  Before I got too far, Drevan materialized in front of me. I ran straight into his arms and let him gather me against his firm body. I bit my lower lip to stave off the tears and managed to keep them at bay.

  “We haven’t lost the war,” he said.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “I know, but you can’t lose hope.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  Drevan said nothing to this. He only held me tighter and whispered softly in my ear. “I love you, Lucia.”

  I pushed away from him to look him in the eye. There was such tenderness in his expression, such longing that it was impossible not to believe him. He did love me.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  Compared to him, I felt insignificant, and I couldn’t understand why he would choose me. Did he expect me to become a demon like Khargon? Because that would be the only way a relationship between us couldn’t endure.

  And maybe, considering the alternative, that was the only viable option for me. I knew that going to Hell meant being tortured forever. But what about going to heaven? Could it really be paradise when beings like Jophiel lived there? Becoming a demon might be my only salvation. Still, why would someone like Drevan fall for someone like me? Surely, he knew others like him. Beings who had lived alongside him for thousands of years and could understand him better than I ever could.

  “Why me?” I asked again, thoroughly confused.

  “Can one ever explain what the heart chooses?” he said, caressing my cheek with the back of his hand. It shouldn’t have been, but his one question to my question was the right answer.

  I had told myself so many times to give him up, to push him away because he was not for me, because he was a demon, because he was the son of Lucifer, because he was a monster, because, because, because…

  And yet, my heart chose him every time—no matter what.

  “Drevan.” My gaze scanned his handsome face, three words hanging from my lips. They’d been lodged in my heart for a very long time, and only fear had kept them from spilling to the surface. Except I saw no reason to hold them back anymore. Drevan was my only salvation, and I wasn’t afraid of what that meant anymore. I wasn’t afraid to give myself fully to him.

  As he gazed back, he seemed to hold his breath.

  “Drevan, I—”

  A stampede of people pushed past the front doors, screaming and trampling each other. I turned away from Drevan, my heart taking off into a frantic gallop. He grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look at him again.

  “Lucia, what were you going to say?” he demanded.

  But it didn’t matter—not when I glanced over my shoulder, and just past the doors, I saw LeBeau stabbing her Queller toward Jenna, an expression of murder twisting the former director’s face.

  “Jenna!” I extricated myself from Drevan and ran toward my friend, dodging the charging crowd as I unsheathed my sword.

  A few people rammed into me, almost knocking me to the ground, but I managed to stay on my feet. An instant later, Drevan was in front of me, clearing the path.

  “Leave her alone, you bitch! I’m going to kill you,” I shouted, in an attempt to distract LeBeau.

  To my relief, my anger-filled growl had its intended effect. Fearing an attack from the side, LeBeau sidestepped, holding her attack on my friend, and expertly adjusted her footing to face me. I came to a stop a few yards from Jenna. We struck similar attack poses, our swords held in front of us, our knees bent, ready to spring at LeBeau.

  The crowd continued to pour out of the building, thinning out quickly, for which I was grateful. My eyes quickly searched for Drevan. He had been next to me, and I would have expected him to jump in front of LeBeau to defend us, but instead, he was standing a fair distance away, shoulders squared, hands tightened into white-knuckled fists.

  I followed his line of sight, but nothing seemed to warrant his reaction, which meant he was sensing something I couldn’t. Goosebumps erupted over my skin, traveling down my spine and leaving me with an awful premonition that, today, everything I held dear would meet its end.

  Where were Sage and Benjamin?

  Please, be all right.

  Just as the thought materialized inside my mind, both of them came running from the back, Quellers in hand. Khargon was hot on their heels, screaming at them to run for their lives. When they saw us, they veered in our direction, ready to help.

  “Get the hell out,” Khargon cried out. “He’s fallen. There are no rules anymore.”

  She had to be referring to Jophiel, but what did she mean? How much worse could it be?

  “Stupid girls,” LeBeau spat, pulling my full attention back to her. “Don’t you see you’re fighting for the wrong side? Drop your swords, and I may consider sparing you.”

  “Go to heaven, you bitch!” Jenna shot back.

  “Have it your way.” LeBeau lunged forward, slicing her sword in a wide arc, intended to hit us both at the same time. She moved so fast that I had no time to prepare my sword. Instead, my telekinetic instincts of self-preservation kicked in, and I sent a jolt of energy right at LeBeau’s hip and center of gravity. Unbalanced, she faltered and staggered sideways. Anyone else would have fallen to the floor, but her footwork was excellent, and she managed to right herself.

  As she planted her feet, the entire building shook, and the wall exploded, sending cinder blocks flying in every direction. We all ducked as debris rained down on us. Jenna cried out in pain as a softball-sized piece of concrete grazed the side of her head. She swayed for a moment, then dropped to the floor. I ran to her, hooked my hands under her arms, and awkwardly pulled her away from LeBeau. I stopped near the wall next to a stand advertising barbecue seasonings.

  “Jenna!” I patted her cheek as her eyes danced from side to side. A streak of blood ran from her left temple down to her jaw. She looked as if she was about to pass out. “Stay with me.” I slapped her this time.

  That got her attention, and her blue eyes focused on my face.

  I helped her sit up against the stand, her back resting against it. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and took several deep breaths.

  I tightened her fingers around the hilt of her Queller, which had miraculously stayed in her hand. “If anyone comes this way, stab the hell out of them.”

  I turned back toward the chaos. A sheet of dust was settling on the floor, which was strewn with pieces of concrete, wood, and cinder blocks. Beyond the settling cloud, LeBeau lay on the floor, unmoving, but it wasn’t her prone body that kept my attention. No, it was what lay thirty yards away, looming in front of the broken wall.

  Jophiel.

  At least I thought it was him. The massive creature that stood there had the same blond hair and wore the same light skirt and belt, though that was where the resemblance ended.

  He stood over eight feet tall, his skin looking sallow and gray, and his once resplendent wings streaked with a black tarry substance. Slick drops dripped from the stained feathers, which looked nothing like an angel’s.

  He’s fallen, Khargon had said. Did that mean he…? The words of the curse [X] had placed on Lucifer echoed inside my head.

  May you and your progeny be forever cursed with the semblance of a hideous beast. May your betrayal serve as a lesson to others that when you turn your back on your maker, no good can come of it. May they roam the earth forever, unworthy, unloved, far removed from God’s likeness.

  It seemed Jophiel had lost his place in heaven. He broke one too many rules, disobeyed his God, and fell. And no doubt, he blamed us.

  But that wasn’t what terrified me. I was used to bigger foes. What made my blood turn to ice was the weapons he held in his hands. On his right, he wielded the firelash, and on his left… Swiftglory. Both of them could hurt Drevan, even kill him, and from the way Jophiel was staring at Drevan, it seemed that was the only thought in his mind.

  “Stay here, Jenna,” I said.

  She tried to stop me, but I jumped to my feet, holding on tightly to Blazebringer as I ran toward Drevan, Khargon, Sage, and Benjamin. As I passed LeBeau, I spared her a glance. A piece of wood was sticking out from her chest and bloodstained shirt. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly at the ceiling. I felt no shred of sympathy for her, and as soon as I joined my friends’ side, she was out of my mind.

 

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