Walking the Line Between Heaven and Hell

Prologue

I watched as the war was waged. I don't know why we were fighting with the demons, but i didn't like it. It did not feel right to me, it felt wrong to be fighting with other creatures. I thought we were supposed to help others not kill them.

"Scarlett, get away from that window," my mother said pulling me from my place by the window.

"Mother, why are we fighting with the demons? I thought we were kind to all creatures," I asked wanting clarity.

She seemed to freeze up for a minute before continuing to walk. "The demons would not live in peace with us, so we have to protect ourselves and Catalona," she said and that's when I realized that the demons also wanted our city.

"Why won't they live in peace with us?" I asked, mother had made it sound like it was completely the demons fault, but that didn't sound right to me.

She stopped and turned to look at me. There was a look of pure hatred in her eyes that scared me a little. " It is because of that Lord of theirs. He won't see reason. I wish that his son had already taken over, he seems to be the only one in that family that has any sense at all," she said with disgust.

I thought about what she had just said. Why was the the son the only one that wanted peace? What was it that we did that made the demons hate us so much? I needed the answer to these questions, so I asked my mother, "Mother, what started the war? Why do the demons hate us as much as they do?"

She sighed and smiled. "Even for a young girl you are very intuitive Scarlett," she said with another small sigh, then she continued, "The war, my young one, started because the Lord hates feelling like he is below us, both literally and figuratively. He hates us, because he hates the way we make him feel."

A horrible thought came to me that I hoped wasn't true, but just incase I had to voice my question, "Are we making him feel like that on purpose mother?"

She looked taken aback by my question. We were now sitting in the sitting room of mother's chambers as we talked. She finally answered my question after what felt like hours, but was really only a few minutes. "No, we would never do something like that on purpose. Us angels are a source of good in this world," she said it with such intensity that it made me cringe away from her.

"What about the Fallen angels mother?" I asked as I remembered hearing stories about them, but I had never really seen one before.

She shook her head and said, "They chose to walk the path of evilness, some more evil than others, but still evil none the less. They are either sent to the demon world as punishment, which I consider a worse punishment than death since they are cast out from their home never to return, Or they are sentenced to death and killed instantly depending on the severity of the crime."

"Who decides what their punishment will be?" I asked hoping against hope that my suspison was wrong.

"I decide at the moment, it is the King or Queen's job to judge a Fallen fairly. Some day, when you are old and wise enough, that job will be yours," she told me with what sounded a lot like pride in her voice.

I felt like I was going to be sick just at the thought of sentencing someone to death. No, no way. I cannot be the one to choose life or death for another. Even when I'm older and wiser like my mother said, I don't think that I would be able to kill anyone, even if I wasn't the one to swing the sword so to speak. I'll just have to make sure that I don't become Queen, I will even become a Fallen if I have too.