Daughter of Lucifer

 

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Chapter One

 

               His face is in shadows as he stands, tall and thin, glowing red eyes looking right at me. I see a gleam of teeth as he smiles slowly, and as he begins to step into the light, the vision changes so I am now in a dimly lit room, firelight flickering across the walls and the face of the woman I look up at, her beauty startling. Across her right cheek is a spider webbing of glowing veins, fire pulsing just beneath the skin, reaching up into her eye so her iris glows a bright, molten orange. She smiles down at me and leans close, her lips brushing my ear as she whispers a name. “Eris.”

~~

I jerk awake as my alarm clock starts to ring. With a sigh, I reach over and tap it on it’s head and it falls silent once more. As I turn over to climb out of bed, my eyes meet those of Cecily, the energetic, enigmatic girl who was a fellow orphan and friend here at St. Paul’s Home for Girls.

                “Happy sixteenth!” she chirps as she gently taps my nose before jumping off my bed onto the tattered round rug that covers the cold wood floors of my room.

                 I notice Abigail, my second friend at the orphanage, standing a little ways away from my bed, smiling through the curtain of auburn hair she usually hides behind. I push myself into a sitting position as I watch Cecily hop over to Abigail and take her hand, pulling her towards me.

                “Come on, give her the present!” Cecily says impatiently, bouncing on her toes in her usual fashion. As Abigail hands me the small present she had been concealing in a pocket, I shake my head at them.

                “Guys, I said no gifts!” I say with a little laugh as I take the offered present.

                “Yes, well we saw this in a window and thought of you immediately,” Cecily says brightly, elbowing Abigail, who shot her an amused look. “Isn’t that right, Abby?”

                Abigail nodded as she looks at the small box I have unwrapped. ‘It really did scream ‘Lillian,’” she said as I lift the lid of the box. I gape at the beautiful treasure that sits inside.

                “Oh, guys, it’s gorgeous!” I exclaim as I lift out the delecate ruby heart strung on a chain long enough to fit around my wrist. I latch it around my wrist and admire it. “Thank you so much!” I say as I rise and give them both hugs. Cecily’s sapphire blue eyes gleam happily as she gives a little hop.

                “Excellent! Glad you like it. Now, however, you must get ready for school. And tonight, remember, it’s just us. We’ll throw our own little party!” All of this rushes out of Cecily’s mouth as she pushes Abigail out the door. “Okay! See you in a bit!” Cecily says, and I hear Abigail say, “Happy birthday!” before Cecily slams the door closed. I laugh and walk over to my wardrobe, opening it to find an outfit for today.

 

 

                I huddle under the hood of my sweatshirt, an earbud in one ear, softly playing a song from my favorite band, half listening to Cecily as she excited lists things we could do at my “party” tonight, half watching the swells of students that flow across the campus of Raven Vale University. Me, Cecily, and Abigail already take college classes, so we go to school on the campus. It’s beautiful right now, the trees changing as the beginnings of autumn blow on the chill wind. Leaves the color of fire rain down around us, and I fine myself reminded of the face of the woman from my dream, and her one fiery eye. I pull my sketchbook out of my bag and touch my pencil to the paper, but before I can begin, a hand clasping around mine makes me jump and I look up into the eyes of Cecily.

                “Are you even listening to me?” she asks, glaring playfully at me, her spiky black hair making her look like an adorable hedgehog. Abigail looks up from the book she has up until now been completely lost in, and, spying my sketchbook, she snaps her book shut. She scoots closer to me and puts an arm around me shoulder.

                “Was it the dream again? I though you seemed a bit off this morning,” she says quietly, so the students milling around won’t hear. I sigh and rest my head on her shoulder.

                “It’s always the same dream,” I say, frustrated. “Ever since I can remember I’ve had the same dream. It’s so clear, almost like it’s… like it’s a memory or something,” I say, half to myself. Abigail pets my raven-black hair gently.

                “Maybe you should go see someone about this?” she tenativly suggests. Before I can respond, Cecily helpfully reminds us that we’re going to be late for class if we don’t leave now. I lift my head off Abigail’s shoulder and swing my bookbag over my shoulder.

                “I’ll see you guys at lunch, then?” I distractedly ask, already walking toward the door to the college. I hear Cecily behind me, saying, “Um, okay! Yeah, we’ll meet you for lunch!” before I’m walking through the doors of Raven Vale, lost in my thoughts.

 

                I look at my watch as I walk out of the college, noticing it’s 11:30. I hurry to our meeting place on the plaza and find Cecily and Abigail already there.

                “Finally,” Cecily playfully moans. “I’m starving. Let’s go!” she turned and began skipping down the sidewalk. Me and Abigail follow after her at a walk, laughing and she spins in a circle before coming to walk beside us. She squeezes between us and puts her arms around both our shoulders.

                “So, what are we hungry for today, hmm? Pizza, Chinese, Mexican? There’s a pretty good sushi place down the road,” Cecily ponders. I smile.

                “How about burgers? I’m craving some nice, juicy cow. I think Kip’s is open right now,” I suggest. Cecily and Abigail make sounds of agreement, and we continue down the road. Kip’s is a favorite of mine. Their burgers are magnificent, and you can order them to go. It’s much better than McDonald’s or Burger King.

                As we sit eating our burgers, we laugh and joke around. I finally glance at my watch and gasp.

                “Guys, we need to get back! I’ve got a lecture in ten minutes!” I say, standing and throwing my burger wrapper in the trash.

As we run back to campus, we pass by a alley, one of the kinds you wouldn’t want to go down alone. I skid to a stopm my eyes wide, not believing what I saw out of the corner of my eye. As I creep carfully back to the alley and peer around the corner, all I see are stray pieces of paper blowing in the wind. I hear footsteps behind be as I backaway from the corner, my mind spinning. It wasn’t real… it can’t have been, I tell myself.

                “Hey… you okay?” I feel Abigail put her hand on my shoulder. I turn toward them, looking at the ground as I wonder if I’m going crazy.

                “Hey Lils, you’re kinda freaking us out here. What’s wrong?” Cecily says, shifting as a particularly nippy breeze blows over us. I shiver, but whether it’s from what I just saw or the wind, I don’t know.

                “I think I saw… you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think I saw a dragon, or something. It was huge, and it had wings. It was all leathery and stuff,” I say, not sure what I want them to reply. Oh yeah, dragons hang out around here all the time. You didn’t know that?

                I see Abigail and Cecily exchange startled looks.

                “Er… are you sure those mushrooms on your burger were okay?” Cecily asks, aiming for a light and joking tone, but falling just a little flat. She clears her throat and looks down the alley herself.

                “Well, I see no dragons, goulies, or evil beasties,” she says, coming back to us, “only about half a tree blowing around. So! I believe you had a lecture to get to?” she says, coming behind me and pushing me toward the college. But I don’t miss the worried looks her and Abigail give each other.

                Great, now my best friends think I’m crazy, I think we walk onto the campus. I heft my bookbag higher onto my shoulder and turn to look at them. They had fallen a little bit behind me as we walked. Their heads were bent close together as they whispered, I’m sure about me, and as they noticed me looking at them, they lift their heads, their eyes as big as an owl’s.

                I clear my throat before I speak. “Um… I think I’m actually going to walk around for a bit. Clear my head. I think you’re right, Cecy, there was something weird about that burger. Can you tell Professor Hartsworth that I’m not going to be at his lecture?”

                Abigail nods, and comes a little closer to me, while Cecily gazes at me like she’s worried I’m going insane right before her eyes. Well, for all you know, you might be.

                “Do you want me to stay with you?” she asks, shifting her grip on her Shakespeare textbook, her burnt orange scarf fluttering in the wind. I shake my head, pulling my hood up over my head.

                “No, I’m fine by myself,” I say a little more sharply than I intended to. But Abigail just nods again and walks back to Cecily, taking her arm.

                “Okay! We’ll see you in a little bit, then!” she says as she leads Cecily away, tucking her hair behind her ear as she went, a jesture I know to mean she’s nervous. Of course she’s nervous! Her friend thinks she’s seeing dragons in alleyways! I shrink deeper into the hood of my sweatshirt and put my earbuds in, turning up the music as loud as it will go as I walk to my favorite spot, a tree who’s roots twist up out of the ground and form the perfect seat with a gorgeous view of the campus lake. After I settle in the dirt between the roots, I close my eyes and sigh. I review the image I saw as I ran past the alley. I passed the alley pretty quickly, so maybe I just mistook a bunch of papers blowing around in the air for a creature. But I swear it was big, about three feet taller than an average man. It moved pretty fast when it saw me, so maybe it wasn’t a dragon. Was it a gargoyle? Possibly. What about a demon? Did demons look like that? I suppose they could…

                I snap my eyes open. Whoa, you’re getting way off track. You didn’t see what you think you did. End of story. Forget about it. I firmly nod my head, as if to prove my own point, and settle back into the tree roots, closing my eyes once more and drifting off to sleep.

~~

They’re standing next to a humongous fireplace, large enough to fit a table in, the light flickering across their faces. I gasp, but I hear no sound from myself. I only hear them. The man with the red eyes and the woman with the glowing veins on her face. I creep closer, confident that they cannot see me. I get close enough to them to clearly hear what they are saying, and to see their features in detail. Both are amazingly handsome. The man has sharp features, and sharp eyes. His hair is short and black, the perfect contrast to his red eyes. He’s dressed in a black suit, and wearing a strange necklace. It looks like the pentacle, but I notice as I moce closer to get a closer look, it seems to be upside-down and slightly narrower. I’m facinated by what the symbol might mean, but I turn my eyes to the woman. She has long, thick blond hair, falling just fast her shoulders in loose, cascading curls. Her left eye is a beautiful blue that reminds me of Cecily’s eyes. However, the other, as I noticed in my previous dreams, glows like an ember. It’s almost hypnotic to watch how the orange depths shift and dance. Across her right cheek, stretching up to her eye, her veins look as though they are filled with lava. It slowly flickers across her face, giving her a strangly demonic yet beautiful look. She wears an emerald green dress that falls to the floor in ruffles from her waist. It suits her perfectly and only adds to her beauty. I observe all of this in about five seconds. I tune in now to what they are saying.

                “It was her sixteenth birthday today. She’ll start to notice things, notice herself changing. We need to find her. And soon.” The woman says. Her voice is almost as hypnotic as her eye. Smooth and sweet, yet with a strange, barely noticable hiss beneath the beauty. I shiver as I hear it.

                The man turns from the woman, walking across the room to a large desk. He pulls a piece of parchment towards himself and, taking up a quill, begins to scratch at the paper while saying, “I’m writing to one of my soldiers to keep an eye on her. I’ll instruct him not to be seen, but with her Sight becoming more developed, it may not matter,” he mused, almost to himself. The woman came over and wrapped her arms slowely around his waist.

                “My darling Lucifer, our daugher has finally been found,” she purred. “My Eris,” she continued, a strange light in her eyes. “How I wish I could have watched her grow up, taught her about what she is and how to control her… skills,” she added with what was almost a smirk. The man, Lucifer, turned to face her.

                “Lilith, be thankful we were able to raise Daray, train him into what he is today,” Lucifer told the woman. She gazed up at him through her eyelashes.

                “Yes, but he’s so…vicious” she says, with a slight smile, “I’m not saying that’s bad, but it will be nice to be able to train a lady in the finer arts of sorcery. All boys care about is brutally fighting each other. Who’s physically stronger than who. The true fight is that of the mind, that of sorcery. You must know yourself and know your magic to be truly great at a battle of magic,” she says, stepping away and pacing in the middle of the room. Lucifer follows her movements with his red eyes. She finally stops and sighs, reachingup to the chandelier she’s standing under and bringing her hand back down with a little bat hanging from her finger. I blink in surprise, looking up to see a whole family of bats sleeping amung the rungs of the ornate decoration. Okay, that’s different, I think to myself. As Lilith strokes her little pet, the double doors of the room are flung open and an extremely handsome boy, looking to be about sixteen, enters, a bleeding cut on his cheek, a blood-coated rapier clutched in his hand. He tosses the sword on the lounge in front of the fireplace, shrugging off the armour that covered his torso, arms, and legs. He’s shirtless underneath the armour, and his stomach is flat and muscled, his arms lean and strong. I gaze at him in wonder. Lucifer pushes himself off the desk he was leaning on and walked forward to the boy.

                “Out fighting again, were you? Tell me, how many angels did you kill?” he asks, circling the boy, red eyes scanning over his body.

Angels? I think.

                The boy raised his head and met Lucifer’s eyes. “I killed thirteen today,” he replies smoothly. His voice his smooth yet ruff at the same time, with something darker underneath. His hair is raven black and his eyes are strange; they almost seem to have no color at all, yet they were not white or grey.

                Lucifer put his hand on the boys shoulder and smiled, a wicked smile that sent chills down my back.

                “Well done, Daray, my son,” he says. The boy meets his father’s eyes and returns the chilling smile.

                Then, something that chills me more than their smile happens. All eyes in the room turn and look at me at the same time. This time, I hear myself gasp. Lucifer smiles his horrid smile again, and speaks.

                “Hello, Lillian.”

~~

                I feel something tickling my nose and whisk my eyes open, my hand automatically swatting out as I scramble backward away from whatever was touching me, still severely shaken by my dream. My hand connects with flesh and I hear a sharp cry.

                “Ow, Lillian! Jesus, remind me never to never again mess with you while you’re sleeping,” says a wounded Cecily, rubbing her cheek. Behind her I see Abigail with her sleeve stuffed in her mouth as he tries furiously not to laugh.

                I scramble to my feet, reaching out to pull Cecily’s hand away from her face.

                “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” I ask, gently touching the red mark I left on her cheek. She huffs.

                “Well, I’m not amazing, but I’ll live. Anyway, you slept through the rest of your afternoon classes, so we told everyone you weren’t feeling well and went back to St. Paul’s. Which is half of the truth. Did you see any elves while you were away?” she asks, smiling wickedly. I turned away from her grin, shivering as I remembered the creepy smiles of Lucifer and his son.

Those names… Lucifer and Lilith. Those were the names of the devil and the mother of demons. Why was I having dreams about them? It didn’t make sense at all. Granted, she loved weird things like that, anything evil and macabre, but still, she’d been having these dreams since she was a toddler. And why this new dream, when she’d been having the same one for years and years?

                “Hellooo? Seriously, are you okay? You seem a little, I don’t know, spacey. And freaked out,” she added. I take the hand she offers be and brush the dirt off the rear of my pants.

                “I’m fine, just a bit shaken. My dream I always have, of that man and the woman with the glowing eye?” I say, “Well… I just had a different one. They were in a room, and they were talking about someone named Eris. But, here’s the strange part, their names were Lucifer and Lilith. The devil and the mother of demons. And they had a son, named Daray or something like that,” I say in a rush, glad to get it out. Cecily’s got that cautious look in her eyes again as she takes my hand and leads me toward the exit of the campus.

                “Okay, sounds like you’re in serious need of some coffee. Like they say, a little espresso fixs everything!” she says, smiling at me. I smile back, hoping they don’t think I’ve gone completely round the bend.

                “It was probably the burger you ate, seriously. I know when I’m sick I have some funky dreams,” Abigail says, coming up on my other side. “So, let’s get some coffee and get back to St. Paul’s. We can just relax and watch a Harry Potter marathon or something. You’ll feel better tomorrow,” she says firmly. I smile and let myself believe her, and by the time we get to the espresso shop and the door’s bell tinkles as we walk inside, all I’m thinking about what type of coffee I was going to buy.

 

~~

Later that night, after watching all of the Harry Potter movies in the girls rec area, drinking coffee, and eating two-day old cake and chips the ladies in the kitchens let us have, I lie on my bed and stare at the drawings I have tacked to my ceiling. Some of them of my friends, nature, and random things I think will make good pictures, but most of them of the man and woman I now know to be Lucifer and Lilith.

I bite my lip as I gaze at a colored pencil sketch of Lilith, her ember of an eye not depicted nearly well enough in my picture. I hang over the side of my bed and pull out my box of drawing supplies. I turn on my lamp, the small amount of light it gives of easily illuminating my small room, consisting of my bed, my waredrobe, a small dresser which also serves as my side table, and a desk. I smile as I take the lid off of the old shoebox. I love my room. It’s cozy and my own personal little space to get away to. I pull out my sketchbook and a sharp pencil and set to work. Twenty minutes later, I have a portrait of sorts, depicting Lucifer, Lilith, and their handsome son Daray. I rest my chin in my hand as I stare at my latest masterpiece, then jump out of bed to grab my box of thumbtacks. I stand on my bed and fix the drawing to my ceiling, right above my pillow. I then hop down and climb inder the covers, staring for a while at the strange little family until I feel my eyes starting to droop. I yawn and reach over to my lamp, pulling the chain and extinguishing it’s glow. I turn over to the wall and clutch the blankets around me, closing my eyes and falling into a deep slumber.

 

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