Suddenly A Succubus

Chapter 65.2

Flashes of Tadghán ran through Vee’s thoughts, memories of how completely his lycanthropy had eclipsed his personality and desires. For an entire night, he’d been nothing more than a monster, a creature of instinct with no aims for anything other than hunting, carnage, and bloodshed. Would that happen to Nick, too? If the sight of Amara failed to calm his nerves, Vee knew without question that Amara would be too stubborn, too optimistic to give up on the cure and reclaim her powers for the sake of self-defense.The D’Ambray Chapel soon came into view, its many tall spires reaching towards the moon hanging above it. Its front doors had been knocked off their hinges, thrown deeper into the chapel where they’d smashed several rows of pews.

Skidding to a stop just past the entrance, Vee looked around for any signs of Nick or Amara. She heard no movement, saw no figures lurking in the shadows. She quickly saw a small, wooden door near the main entrance that had also been ripped off its hinges, and took off running again.

Was this a good sign? No pure monster would bother ascending to the top of this bell tower, it didn’t make sense. If Nick was somehow still present inside this curse, perhaps he’d been able to direct it towards his favorite place on campus? Vee prayed that he’d managed to hold onto his humanity, that enough of him would be conscious to accept the cure they’d so painstakingly retrieved from The Wilds.

Endless ticking gears and whirring mechanical parts hummed around Vee as she sprinted up the stairs. Each click, each second that passed, seemed to be a cruel promise that she was going to fail, that she’d once again be too late, too weak to help those that mattered most to her.

Halfway up the stairs, she heard an animalistic grunt, the splintering of wooden planks, and the shattering of glass.

“NOO!!”

Tears threatened to blind Vee as she pushed her body to its limit. Above her, wood crunched and the stones of the bell tower shook as a hulking figure stalked its prey. Vee grabbed the handle of the trapdoor, threw it open, and jumped into the small clearing beneath the massive, decommissioned bell.

Nick, now a hulking, uncontrolled werewolf, leapt at Amara, his razor-sharp claws ready to tear her to pieces. She just barely managed to dodge his swipe, but in the process, they both lost their balance on the shattered, uneven flooring. Nick stumbled to the side, and Vee saw Amara for a brief instant before she tumbled over the stone railing. Her body disappeared from view as she fell, and terror gripped Vee.

Digging her heels into the wood beneath her, Vee lunged forward. In this moment, she didn’t care about Nick, she didn’t care about herself, the only thing that mattered was saving the love of her life.

Unbidden, fractured pieces of her conversation with Zadkiel returned to her.

Nick tried to slash at Vee, who wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the attack completely. His claws dug into the side of her legs, sending horrible pain shooting through her body, but she kept running.

Focusing entirely on the stone railing in front of her, Vee took one last breath and closed her eyes in prayer.

Kicking off the floor, Vee dove over the railing and opened her eyes.

Magnificent, iridescent light from beyond time erupted from her body. Born from the heart of Creation, it bent and refracted through Vee’s soul, giving her breath and vision beyond anything she’d ever felt before. She saw Amara, bloodied and afraid as she plummeted to the concrete below, but she also saw the sky above. She saw the moon, the sun, the endless blanket of stars wrapped around them. The glittering star that was her miracle, previously both a promise and threat, began to orbit her soul in perfect harmony as she breathed deep of its light.

In the wake of this light, she saw herself. A small child desperately praying to a Patron that couldn’t hear her. A teenager scared of making friends out of fear of them learning the truth about her. A young adult, vulnerable and betrayed by a woman she did not yet know was her true love, lashing out with misplaced fury. A fading light tarnished with fear and confusion, discovering something beautiful in the chaotic moments before her existence nearly collapsed.

She saw this exact moment, her shining body leaping from the bell tower, and prepared for the visions to stop.

But they didn't.

She saw a young, dark-skinned man with black hair and thick eyebrows cradling a dear friend in the middle of a war-torn battlefield. Chloé, angry and frustrated, staring back from the opposite side of a mirror. Heavy, eternal eyes beneath a crown of horns, their amber irises overflowing with twisted promises. Amara, the love of her life, descending a flight of stairs in a glittering red dress, proudly displaying her true form before a crowd of onlookers. An impenetrable barrier, a fallen ally, a race against time in the face of impossible adversity.

Countless images flooded Vee’s soul, racing by at speeds she never thought possible. She made no attempt to wrangle this perception, took no steps to guide the course of this strange experience, instead surrendering herself to her faith in her Miracle. The images, memories, and flashes of time gradually coalesced into something bigger than the totality of Vee’s life, bigger than her Miracle, bigger than time itself. She saw the infinite cosmos as it had been born, as it was now, as it could be in the future. Desires and desperations beyond anything she could hope to comprehend, hints of collectives so vast they dwarfed even the archangel Zadkiel’s might. The endless expanse of infinite time and infinite space somehow converged into twin observable facets of reality. Two glittering, impossible eyes that encompassed everything that had ever been or ever could be, and as Vee gazed upon them, they looked back. They flinched with recognition, and in the wake of their clarity, Vee’s consciousness collapsed back into her current form, her current reality. The totality of everything Vee now was coalesced inside her soul, its presence so immense that it demanded release, demanded form.

Magnificent, iridescent light from beyond time erupted from her body. Born from the heart of Creation, it bent and refracted through Vee’s soul, finding its freedom in the shape of two pillars of light that burst forth from her back. So potent was the appearance of this light that a shockwave of Enochian energy washed over the chapel, knocking Nick to the ground as it swept over the ancient stonework. It scattered decades of rot, banished centuries of ruin and degradation. It crafted new purpose and meaning for everything it touched, gifting new breath to a voice that had long ago resigned itself to obscurity.

For the first time in over a hundred years, the D’Ambray Chapel Bell began to ring. It sang a song more beautiful than it ever had before, a song of revival and second chances. More than anything, it sang a song of celebration as the angel Vequaniel found her wings.

The twin pillars of light condensed into a majestic tapestry of feathers, each as pure and divine as the light of Heaven itself. Immaculate, golden iridescence lined the edges of these feathers, and in the wake of their movement, sparkling rainbows scattered through the air. This tapestry soon condensed once more, not to change shape, but to angle downward in an attempt to save the life of a demon.

Vee flattened her wings and sped towards the ground, wrapping her arms around Amara and soaring back into the sky moments before she collided with the cold concrete. Returning to the landing beneath the bell, Vee set Amara down before cradling her cheek and looking into her eyes.

“Amara? Are you okay?” Vee asked. Bright light poured forth from her eyes, forcing Amara to squint as she returned Vee’s gaze.

“Vee? Is that you?” Amara winced in pain as she tried to move, drawing Vee’s attention to the blood running down her arm. Reaching out, Vee lovingly caressed the injury with her hand, knitting the wound together and completely removing all signs of damage.

“Everything’s okay, love,” Vee whispered.

“But it’s not! I tried to give Nick the cure, but he—” A rush of emotion overwhelmed Amara, choking out the rest of her sentence as tears streamed down her face.

Heavy, animalistic grunting filled Vee’s ears. Pulling away from Amara, Vee rose to her feet and turned to face Nick with newfound confidence. She spread her wings wide, embracing their meaning as she focused the entirety of her new senses on the werewolf in front of her. She saw Nick, his body twisted into a lycanthropic monster, snarling as he crouched low to the ground. He kicked forward, attempting to slash at Vee, and in return she raised a hand.

With a flick of her wrist, glittering angelic chains sprang forth from the light of her soul. They wrapped around Nick’s arms and legs, binding him in place and suspending him several inches above the shattered wooden floor. With the light of her Miracle now perfectly in sync with the light of her soul, Vee looked deep into Nick’s essence.

At the core of this beast, Vee saw the endlessly compassionate heart of her friend, trapped beneath the incredible weight of this monstrous curse. Thick, shadowy tendrils forced him into hiding, eclipsing the entirety of his being while attempting to overwrite the very nature of his soul. A grotesque, snarling wolf met Vee’s gaze, snapping and barking as it tried to fight back against the iridescent chains holding it in place. As terrifying as this curse was, however, Vee also saw cracks in its power. True to Saoirse’s word, the lycanthropy was on the cusp of permanently stitching itself into Nick’s soul, but it hadn’t yet won.

“Wretched curse of Lycanthropy, you are not welcome here!” Vee stepped closer to Nick, her words shaking the stones beneath her feet in perfect synchronicity with the bell tolling above her. “In the name of the Angel Vequaniel, your grip upon this human ends now!”

Coils of angelic light bent to Vee’s command, and she extended herself towards the heart of Nick’s lycanthropic infection. She exploited the cracks in its power, pushing deep into the curse and gripping it tight. It thrashed and raged against her command, desperate to consume its host entirely, but Vee refused to budge. Standing firm, she ripped the heart of the beast from Nick’s soul, conjuring a storm of glittering Enochian fire to dispose of it entirely. It howled with all its might, even attempting to reach back towards Nick in hopes of destroying him as well, but it failed to buck Vee’s ironclad faith.

With a final puff of smoke, the D’Ambray Chapel belltower bore witness to the first official Miracle of the angel Vequaniel.