The Mephisto Covenant (10 page)
Read The Mephisto Covenant Online
Authors: Trinity Faegen
He reached up to pull a strand of hair away from her mouth. “His father is the dark angel whose job is to take souls to Hell. A thousand years ago, Mephistopheles fell for an Anabo named Elektra, which was not cool because they’re like living angels, and he’s a guy who works for Lucifer. To keep God and Lucifer from knowing, Mephistopheles took Elektra to a small island in the north Atlantic and hid it behind a fine blue mist. In Greek, the word for blue is kyanos, so that’s what he named the island: Kyanos. Elektra had seven sons, and the oldest was Eryx.”
“Eryx has brothers?”
Jax nodded, looking at her from behind those mirrored shades. She wished he’d take them off. Even though his eyes were strange, it bugged her not to see his expression.
“As Eryx grew older, he became obsessed with jumping off the cliffs of Kyanos, even though he knew it would kill him. Mephistopheles told his sons they were destined for immortality, and when they were grown, instinct would compel them to die.”
“Why would it be anyone’s instinct to kill themselves?”
“They had to die to become immortal. Since their Anabo mother was mortal, Eryx was afraid the part of her that was in them would die forever, and in immortality, they would be all darkness, with no light in their souls. He prayed for help, but God and Lucifer didn’t know they existed. He asked his father to come clean with Lucifer, but Mephistopheles told Eryx not to worry, that he would come back just the same. Eryx didn’t believe it.”
As the lift took them higher up the mountain, it began to snow, and she watched each perfect flake that hit his shades, there for a nanosecond before it melted.
“He became more certain as he grew older that he and his brothers would become immortal monsters, so the day he turned eighteen, when he couldn’t fight the instinct to die any longer, he killed Elektra. Her death was the only thing that would make God and Lucifer aware of his brothers, and he hoped sacrificing her would save them.”
“He killed his own mother?”
“Yes. Then he jumped, and just as he had feared, he came back as an immortal without compassion, with no conscience. His brothers hated him for what he’d done, even after he told them why, but he didn’t care. He left Kyanos and found other people. He was charismatic and discovered people would follow him, would do what he told them, hoping for his favor. They pledged their lives to him, and when he asked for their souls, they willingly said yes.” “What happened to his brothers?” “Just like Eryx, they were compelled to jump to their deaths,
but because God was aware of them, he blessed each of the others before they died, so when they came back, they weren’t like Eryx.”
“Where are they now?”
“They were charged by Lucifer to fight Eryx, to keep him from becoming powerful enough to take over as the gatekeeper of Hell. If he did, he wouldn’t care about free will. He’d snatch every soul as it leaves its host.”
Sasha looked down at the trees, dusted with snow, at boulders and crags and outcroppings where trees couldn’t grow. It was so quiet, noises muffled by the snow, the voices of skiers ahead and behind them muted and distant. All she could hear with any clarity was the constant hum of the lift cable. And Jax’s low, deep voice, telling her things she didn’t want to believe. “You realize this all sounds like BS?”
“I wish it was.” He looked ahead. “But it’s all true, Sasha. Eryx exists. He tricks humans into pledging their souls to him, and when they die, he takes their spirit and absorbs it into his own, which makes him stronger.”
“If he’s been doing this for a thousand years, he must have collected millions. How many is enough?”
“When the scales tip in his favor, when more of humanity belongs to him than to God, he’ll be strong enough to take on
Lucifer. But he doesn’t have millions. Nowhere close. He can’t take a soul if something blocks it, so Lucifer carved out a pit, deep underground, then surrounded it with the darkness of Hell. When one of Eryx’s lost souls is thrown into the pit, he dies, but his spirit can’t escape. So yes, Eryx has collected millions of followers in a thousand years, but a lot of those people are decaying inside the Earth, their spirits blocked.”
This was like a show on the Syfy Channel. Or a horror movie. She thought of zombies and ghouls and ghosts. But she was a logical person, and the physical parameters didn’t make sense. “If the pit is deep underground, how do his followers get in there?”
“The entrance is hidden on the other side of the world, in a place no one ever goes. Beneath a certain spot is a long chute that leads to the pit. It’s called Hell on Earth. It’s said no one ever lands and lives. The fall kills them.”
“Who says that? Who takes them there?”
With his face turned away from her, he looked down at the mountain as they moved above it.
“Jax?”
Slowly, almost hesitantly, he raised his head, turned toward her, and carefully slid the shades from his face. “I do.”
Holy God. She almost couldn’t breathe, she was so stunned. “You’re one of his brothers?”
Slowly, he nodded.
Blinking back tears, she sat there in the lift chair and connected the dots. “It was you in that warehouse, wasn’t it? You came to take the Ravens to Hell on Earth, and there I was, half dead. Before you took them, you healed me. That’s why I had no wounds or bruises when I woke up. You stabbed Alex to keep him from taking me to Eryx. He wasn’t a jumper. You took him, didn’t you?”
He didn’t nod, didn’t answer. Just stared at her with his weird eyes.
“You work for Lucifer. You’re a dark angel.” Still, he didn’t say anything. “Did you come to the ski runs today to take Brett?” “I came to find you.” “Why?” “I went back to San Francis
co to see you, to make sure you
were all right. I found out you moved here.” She sucked in a deep breath
and looked ahead again. The top
was close. They’d be there within five minutes. “No wonder your eyes are different.”
He said nothing. She had suspected he was different, but hearing it out loud wasn’t the same as wondering. Not only was she insanely attracted to him, she liked him . . . but knowing he was something from Hell, that he killed people, even if those people were lost and evil, made her skin crawl. Did he go home from a hard day’s work killing people and hang out in Hell?
She moved a little, pressing closer to the edge of the chair. It wasn’t that she was afraid. She wasn’t. But he’d gone from being a guy she wanted to know a lot better to a stranger she’d like never to see again. “What happened with the Ravens? How did they wind up in San Francisco Bay, instead of Hell on Earth?”
“The bodies in the bay were doppelgangers. Mephistopheles provides bodies that are exact copies of the people we take to Hell on Earth. If all those people disappeared without a trace, people would panic.”
“Were your brothers with you that night?”
He nodded while he pulled his gloves on and readied his poles for the ramp. “We planned that takedown for over a week. You being there wasn’t in the plan. I didn’t know what to do about you. I couldn’t take you with me, but I couldn’t leave you there to bleed to death. I healed you and put you to sleep, and we left.”
“But not before you erased my memory of you.”
“I had no choice. We’re not supposed to interact with humans unless it’s necessary to our job, and if we do, we’re supposed to erase their memory of us.”
“Then why are we here, interacting? You know I’ll remember you.”
A muscle worked in his jaw, so she knew he was clenching his teeth. Had she made him mad? “It’s not like you’ll tell anybody. No one would believe you.”
“Why could you erase my memory of you then but not today?”
“I don’t know. It’s never happened before with anyone else.” “Aren’t I the lucky one?”
His sigh sounded sad. “Just forget it, Sasha. This is hopeless. I see that now.”
“What’s hopeless?”
“You and me. I thought . . . I wanted to . . . you’re beautiful, incredible, and you’re Anabo. Regular people are afraid of me, but you’re not like ordinary people. Your soul is pure, without original sin.”
“I’m not without sin. I’m just like everyone else.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing about you that’s like others, Sasha. You don’t realize what lies within other people, so you can’t know how different they are.”
“If I’m Anabo, does that mean my parents—”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. What Aurora was can’t be quantified like DNA—something that determines if you have blue eyes or blond hair. It’s a spiritual thing, something unique to a person’s soul. The Anabo are rare, but all could be traced back to Aurora.”
“How do you know I’m Anabo? Did you see my birthmark?”
“I didn’t need to. It’s in your face, your eyes. To me, you have a certain glow, almost an aura, around you.”
She remembered Mercy Jones said her aura was pure and beautiful, with the light of divinity—the most perfect she’d ever seen. Mercy said she was destined for an extraordinary life, one that would make a difference. Sasha had thought she was a wack job. Now, she wasn’t so sure. “Give me an example of how I’m any different from anyone else.”
He was thoughtful for a minute, then said, “You’re not mad at your mother for not giving Alex’s boss what he wants. You’re bummed about it, sure, but not angry. You’re stuck living with strangers—a woman who hates you and a guy with no conscience—making you vulnerable to all kinds of bad consequences. Anyone else would be mad as hell, but all you think about is where your mother is, if she’s safe, if she’s going to be okay.”
Slumping back in the chair, she stared down at her ski tips. “She said the information could cause problems bad enough to start a war.”
“And you bought it without question. You trust her completely, because it’s not in you to distrust anyone you love. It never dawned on you that the information is worth a lot of money, that maybe she’d rather sell it than just hand it over.”
“She’s never been the same since Dad was murdered. If I got mad at her, what purpose would it serve except to make her feel worse?”
“Thanks for making my point. With you, it’s always about the other guy. You think everyone else is like that, Sasha, but they’re not. Trust me.”
“There are millions of compassionate people in the world.”
“Sure there are, but even the kindest people have a dark side, a part of their soul that tempts them toward evil. They have to make a choice to resist it. You don’t, because it’s just not there. It’s why you’re not afraid of me, because I’m no threat to your peace of mind. You have no idea how appealing that is.” “So you came to find me because I’m Anabo.” “I came to find you because I wanted to know you, because
I hoped we’d become friends. I’ve never . . . I don’t have any friends.”
“But you’ve been with a girl before.”
He jerked his head around to look at her. “How would you know?”
“Because you knew exactly what you were doing when you kissed me.”
“Oh.” He relaxed and turned away again. “They weren’t friends. Just shadowy faces in dark places.”
“Hookups? Is that what you’re about, Jax?” He tapped his pole against his ski, clearly upset. “Maybe
I’m not a regular guy, maybe you think I’m repulsive, and hell, I guess I am, but I’ve never felt like this. I’m alone, all the time. I just thought that maybe, for a little while, I could be with you, and it’d be okay. But like I said, I see now it’s never going to work. When we get off in a minute, I’m going to ski the black run and go home. I won’t bother you again.”
He sounded so sincere, so dejected, she almost asked him to stay, but she couldn’t get past what he was, what he did. This wasn’t for her, no matter how hot and nice he was, no matter how great he was at kissing. She wanted to be like everyone else and go out with a normal guy, one who didn’t know anything about Anabo, or Eryx. Besides, w
here could this lead? He wasn’t
human. She was great with embracing cultural differences, but hanging out with a guy from Hell?
Yeah,
not a good idea. So she didn’t ask him to stay, or say she still wanted to give them a chance. Instead, she asked, “Where is home?”
He pointed to the west with his pole. “About ten miles that way.”
“You live here?”
“Ironic, isn’t it? You moved where I live the day after we met.”
“I thought you must live . . . I assumed because of where you’re from, that you live there.”
“No, I live in the real world, in a real house. I eat and sleep and take showers and watch TV and play basketball. I need . . . want all the same things any normal guy wants. I’m bound to Earth until the end of time, or until we have what we need to kill Eryx.”
“What’s that?” Turning to look at her, he said softly, “Redemption.” “If God blessed you before you became immortal—” “It kept my brothers and
me from becoming like Eryx, but
we’re still sons of Hell, Sasha. We can’t stand on holy ground. If we pray to God, he doesn’t hear us. When the end of the world comes, we’re all bound for Hel
l, unless we’ve been redeemed.”
The idea of praying and not being heard was so awful, so sad, she teared up again. “I can’t believe someone like you could be ignored by God.”