the tears rolled down his cheeks and he touched my face.
“Halo, please…please stay with me.”
I smiled and reached up to touch his face as my body started to get colder and colder and then a black dragon landed behind us as Lucifer jumped down and ran towards us. He stopped as he saw me laying there, his chest feeling heavy and strange for the first time in his existence. He looked at Jet and then back to me.
“Was this your intention? To kill the only thing I have ever truly loved, to strip me bare?” Gunner said as he slowly looked up to Lucifer.
“Mother?” Jet said as I looked at him and my vision blurred.
“Jet?” I said as he stepped towards us and Ari and Finna both put their axes to his throat from each side.
Gunner looked up at him as Jets eyes became as glossy as his own and tears ran down his cheeks. Gunner waved them off and Jet lowered to one knee and looked at me and then to the wound on my stomach.
“I forgive you for leaving me,” he said to me and I smiled as his words settled my soul.
“I did not leave you, I would never leave you,” I said to him as he narrowed his eyes and looked past us to Lucifer. He stood up and started to walk towards him with his blade drawn.
“You said she left us.”
“She…she did.”
“You took her from me, didn’t you?”
Lucifer looked up at him as his eyes looked as if they were filled with sorrow.
Jet stared at him and then screamed.
“Draw your sword and fight me!”
Lucifer looked upward and a black dragon swooped down, he caught its wing and jumped onto its back rising into the air and looking down on me as I lay there, my red dress spread out like a river of blood around me. He then looked upward as he saw his brother descending from the sky and cried out as the angels descended and started to fight every demon back to the hole that had formed in the earth. Lucifer was last to retreat into the hole as God rose above it, his black wings spread wide and he held his hands out in front of him. He closed his eyes and a bright flash of light started to come from his hands as he sealed the hole up and prevented the demons from rising again. He then started to descend to the earth and landed one foot after the other. His wings started to grow smaller and they were gone before he reached us. He stopped and then knelt down to one knee as he looked at me.
“She is dying.”
He then rose and turned to Jet. He stopped and looked him over and then stepped up to him and touched his face. Jet closed his eyes and God grinned as he turned back towards us. Jet walked towards us and knelt down next to me as I reached up and touched his face. He placed his hand over mine and then looked at Gunner.
“If you are going to destroy us then I would ask that you do it quickly and allow her to feel no pain.”
Jet shook his head ‘no’ as God stepped up to us and Gunner looked up at him.
“He is your son, not Lucifer’s. I would guess that my brother knew all along and deceived Halo only to appear as if he was the Father of her child. She was already with child when she entered Hell. This is why you received no replacement. Jet is the 5th Hellhound.”
Gunner looked at Jet and tears filled his eyes as they both looked down at me. I felt tired, but happy as I looked up at Gunner and his son, my son…the best gift I could have given to this world, the gift of life. It was then that my heart slowed and my eyes closed as peace started to rest inside of me, a peace I had never known before and one that could only be that of salvation.
****
I woke in a soft bed, bright room, smell of flowers all around me. I reached up and felt the sunlight coming in through the window on my skin. The warmth told me two things; I was no longer a vampire, but human, as I had suspected. Then I sat up quickly and looked around the room as I remembered dying. The sweet embrace of it bringing me here I would