Page 83 of When Monsters Fight
Oh…fuck. Michael was fighting them. He was fucking fighting them, and Shem was trying to pull away from me.
I gripped him tighter, but he broke free and crossed to Lucifer. She held out her sword to him, which he took and flipped, pressing the tip of the blade to his chest.
Suddenly it all made sense. My foreboding, the sense of impending doom and loss. Everything.
He was the key.
The anchor.
Lucifer couldn’t be free while he existed, and that sword…That sword would end him for good.
Movement above us and around us signaled the arrival of more celestials.
“Now, Shemyaza!” Lucifer said. “It must be now.”
But she was wrong. It wouldn’t be enough. Because a piece of his soul existed intertwined with mine. And there was only one true way for her to be whole.
A calm conviction settled over me.
This was always how it was meant to be.
Shem plunged the sword into his chest, and I threw myself against his back.
My body jerked as the blade sliced into me, burning, tearing as it pierced and bound us together.
“NO!” Gabriel’s heart-wrenching scream was followed by several bellows of shock.
But it was okay.
Shem was in my arms.
“Rue…” Shem’s voice was a rasp. “Oh…my Rue…”
“I’m here, Shem.” I laid my cheek against his back. “Always and forever.”
The world exploded with warm light as we tumbled into oblivion together, because God had never meant this proud brave watcher to die alone.
Epilogue
Death isn’t the end.
I mean, I knew that, but with Soul Reaper doing the ending, I kinda thought I’d be obliterated.
But nothing ever truly dies; at least that’s what I’ve been told.
Ascension, for Lucifer, meant something much more than I’d realized.
It meant taking God’s place.
All the power.
The right to rule.
Lucifer took it all because she was God’s heir.
I’d like to say I was there to see it unfold. That I was there when she kicked the Dominion’s ass and obliterated Michael. Damn I would have liked to see that. But I was on a journey of my own.
An ascension of my own.
