The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe

Author:Joanna Wiebe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-20T07:00:00+00:00

sixteen

IN THE SHADOWS OF ANGELS

I’M NOT HERE. I’M NOT IN THE WOODS WITH A GRAY-FACED demon telling me things no one should ever hear. I’m back home, back in California, and I’m six years old, and my mom is braiding my hair as she tells me she’d give up everything she has and then some for me. I’m four years old with my parents in a small LA playhouse, watching a performance of The Black Rider, listening to my mom whisper an explanation of what I’m seeing: the hunter traded his soul to the devil for bullets that couldn’t miss. I’m eleven years old, a year before my mom was diagnosed bipolar, and sitting in the car with her outside a church, watching her wring her hands, and then I’m biting my tongue as the rear wheels skid on the gravel and we speed away. I’m twelve, and she is at the kitchen table, her face wet with tears; she smiles at me through them, and she says, No matter what, it was worth it.

I’m there.

I’m not here.

“But,” Teddy continues, bringing me back to these cold, damp woods, “you and I both know that demons can’t create humans.”

I look into his eyes, which are swirling with a mix of dark and light emotions, sorrow shining through the strongest. He’s just told me Mephisto helped make me. But maybe it’s not true?

“So it didn’t work?” I ask, clinging desperately to this shred of hope. But it’s slippery. It’s a cliff I’ve slipped off; it’s a branch I’ve caught just in time, but I can’t hold on much longer. I know, without Teddy saying it, that this story doesn’t end well.

“It worked,” he says.

“Impossible.”

“Mephisto cannot create humans. What does he need in order to vivify kids here?”

I try to swallow. “Their DNA.”

“Your mom had a fertilized egg from in vitro.”

I’ve stopped breathing.

“All Mephistopheles needed was a soul,” he says. “Where do you think he got that soul?”

“I—I don’t know.”

But I do know.

The underworld is filled with souls. Dark, damaged, writhing souls. The souls of the Seven Sinning Sisters and the demons, punks, dark witches, succubae, and incubi under them and alongside them.

Releasing me, Teddy watches my reaction as he backs away.

I’ve fallen into my own grave. Anne Merchant has been shoved into a six-foot hole, and every new realization is a shovelful of earth that’s been thrust onto me, burying me alive. The unearthly woman I saw in the mirror and sketched; Dia said she was an underworld goddess. Invidia touching my hair, and the sense of power that filled me. Mephisto’s tolerance for me in spite of the trouble I’ve brought on him. Even the reason Mephisto wants me here at all. To say nothing of how easily today’s challenge came to me, as if the seven deadly sins are second nature for me.

“Am I possessed?” I stammer.

“You are a soul reincarnated.”

It takes me a while to actually utter these words: “Not just any soul?”

“Not just any soul.”

My voice is tiny. “Is it very bad, my soul’s history? The person I am?”

“Not in my books.

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