An urge to turn back and fly directly to Heaven shot through him and he fought it, focusing on why he was here. It wasn’t the first time he had felt a strong desire to do something that didn’t feel right to him, that felt as though it went against everything he wanted. It had happened several times since his failed attempt to capture Erin with Nevar.
“If you feel any weird desires, do your best to ignore them,” Apollyon said, as though he had read his mind, or had he seen the struggle crossing his face? “It is not the Devil that toys with you. It is Heaven. They will have realised by now that you are missing and will seek to control you.”
Control him? Just as they had controlled Marcus and Apollyon, forcing them to do things against their will? What if he discovered that Erin had been telling him the truth about everything and returned to her only for Heaven to seize command of his body and make him carry out his mission?
Would he be strong enough to fight his orders as Marcus had to protect Amelia or would he succumb to them as Apollyon had?
Veiron didn’t want to find out the answer to that question. He drew a slow deep breath, held it and then expelled it and repeated the process until the urge had passed.
“It will be more difficult for them to control you when you’re down here. I had expected them to exercise some manner of control over you before now. Perhaps the reason they needed to change your memories also lessens their ability to command you.” Apollyon’s words offered no comfort or relief. If it was Heaven commanding him to do as they bid, then they still had some power over him, enough that he might not be able to ignore his orders.
He didn’t want to hurt Erin.
He scrubbed a hand down his face and furled his wings against his back. He needed to get a grip. For all he knew, Erin and everyone may have lied about everything. He couldn’t believe what they had told him until he had seen it for himself.
“Where is this pool?” Veiron said, more determined than ever to see his past life and see if Erin had spoken the truth.
“This way.” Apollyon pointed towards the rocks and the angel waiting there.
Veiron grabbed Apollyon’s arm. The dark angel shot him a vicious glare that Veiron chose to ignore and dragged him towards the angel.
“I must see the pool. I wish to show this traitor the things he has done before taking him up to Heaven for trial.” Veiron pushed past the fair-haired angel before he could respond and maintained his grip on Apollyon’s arm, keeping him in front so it looked as though he was guiding him when in reality Veiron was following.
Apollyon waited until they had moved out of sight of the angel before speaking.
“You have some cheek, Rookie.” He twisted his arm free of Veiron’s grasp and pointed directly ahead, towards an area where pale flickering light lit the black jagged rocks. “There. Go to it and think about your past life and whatever you remember of it and it will reveal all to you.”
“It cannot lie?” Veiron was sure that Apollyon wouldn’t tell him if it could be rigged to lie but he had to ask.
“It belongs to Heaven but they have no control over it, not as they do the pools in Heaven that record what happens in the mortal realm and only this pool records events in Hell. Go. I will keep watch.”
Veiron nodded and swallowed, his mouth dry and not from the heat of Hell. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and choked on the acrid foul air. How in the three realms had he been able to live in this place if he had been a Hell’s angel? It was horrific. He had been here mere minutes and he already longed for the cool clean air of the mortal realm or the sweeter air of Heaven.
He flexed his fingers and slowly approached the glowing pool. It wasn’t large, more like a pond really. Images flickered on its still surface, the scene switching rapidly. It could show him anything he wanted to see?
He crouched beside it, his left knee on the black ground, and leaned his right elbow on his thigh. He held his left hand over the surface, palm down, feeling the temperature rising off the water shifting with the images. The speed of the change in images began to slow until they focused on one, playing it out before him as though it was what mortals referred to as television.
Erin.
She walked the moonlit shore of the island, gaze cast downwards and arms wrapped around her slender body.
He wanted to remember her.
The scene shifted, whirling back through images that he couldn’t make out and then slowing to reveal Hell. Erin was alone again, sitting with her back against a black wall. The image zoomed outwards to reveal a cell with only three walls, the fourth being created by an opening that gave the prisoner the option of a long fall to their death.
He watched, curious to see what would happen to her and why she was being held. All angels suffered from severe curiosity, especially about things that were or had previously been forbidden to them. It was part of the reason he was here now, studying the past in a pool. The other part of his reason twirled when the door to her cell opened and almost fell over the edge. A man saved her. A man Veiron and all angels could recognise. The Devil.
The scene sped forwards and his gaze followed Erin throughout it and then the following ones, until the images slowed again and he saw himself standing in the doorway of her cell, a broadsword in hand, his scarlet hair long and tied back in a ponytail.
Erin hadn’t lied.
He had once been a different man, but there was no proof yet that he had been a demonic angel or they had been involved with each other.
He focused and forced the scenes to leap forward, impatient to see the rest of his past life. He believed now that he had died but he needed to see that he had been with Erin and had loved her, and that she had loved him.
They disappeared from Hell in a fashion only a demonic angel could use and the images careened onwards through time, giving him a brief glimpse of himself and Erin in a mortal nightclub and then a fight with Hell’s angels.
Icy claws punctured his heart.
Erin lay bleeding, cut to ribbons by a demonic angel. He had failed to protect her.
Tears blurred his vision and he blinked them away, his rage burning them up. A desire to kill and have revenge blazed through his blood but he tamped it down, watching himself act out that vengeance in the pool.
Erin hadn’t lied.
He had crimson wings and the form of a demonic angel.
Yet she still looked at him with love in her eyes.
She stood on a bed in a pale-coloured room, her arms open to him, and accepted him with a kiss.
The rush of images of them together that followed it both transfixed and angered him, saddening and warming him at the same time. It was strange to see himself looking so different to his current appearance, and to see himself fighting so fiercely to protect the petite woman who looked at him with so much love and devotion even though he was demonic.
Veiron knew deep in his heart that her desire for him then hadn’t been born of her link to Hell, to the realm surrounding him now. She hadn’t known that she had the Devil in her blood.
He saw her pain and confusion as her visions revealed her unknown power, and she unleashed them on the angel he knew as Nevar. She hadn’t lied about that either. They had fought on a rooftop in a city because Nevar had sought to take her to Heaven, to take her from him. She had attacked the angel with her power, protecting Veiron and forcing the angel to retreat.
Nevar couldn’t remember it, so Heaven must have tampered with his memories too.
Veiron’s anger spiked back up but faded again when the scene shifted and he saw himself with Erin, walking a moonlit shore hand in hand. She was beautiful as she looked at him with so much love shining in her eyes. He ached for her to look at him that way again, for her to realise that he was still the man she had loved back then, even if he couldn’t remember her. He still wanted to protect her, and he was coming to care for her again.
Hell filled the pool and he witnessed the fight she had mentioned with the angels, the one he remembered
in part, and forced himself to watch as he died, killed by an angel and taken back to Heaven. He didn’t follow himself there though.
Veiron stayed with Erin, captivated by her and how distraught she was. Her pain beat in his heart as she suffered, held by the Devil, devastated by his death and scared by what was happening to her. Veiron frowned and held his hand closer to the pool, aching for her as she awakened, listening to everything she said to her father in that moment and wishing her faith in him had been proven true.
Her fear clawed at him as she struggled against the change and another form shifted beneath her skin, turning it dark wherever it pushed hardest.
But her suffering as she awakened was nothing compared with what came afterwards when the Devil returned her to the island and she struggled to cope with what had happened to her and Veiron’s death. It tore at him and he longed to see her, wanted to reach into the pool to her and offer her comfort, needed to wrap her in his arms and protect her from all the cruelty and pain in the world.
She had suffered enough but Heaven had used him against her. They had sought to hurt her further and weaken her by sending him to capture her. They had known that she wouldn’t be able to use her powers on him because she loved him.
The knowledge that they had burned away his trust in Heaven, leaving him cold to the bone and unsure of everything. He had been so certain that Erin and the others had lied, that this had all been a trap, and that Heaven was good and pure and intended only to protect the world from the danger Erin represented.
Now he was only certain that Heaven wanted her dead in order to protect itself, and it had used him and Nevar, tampering with their memories as they had tampered with others.
He felt sick.
Veiron stood on unsteady legs and let the pool switch back to showing the present Erin where she stood on a beach staring at the moon.
He needed to see her.
He turned away from the pool and walked over to Apollyon where he waited a few metres away, his back to him. When he touched the dark angel’s shoulder, he turned and his blue eyes were full of compassion and understanding. He had suffered because of Heaven too.
“Have you seen enough?” Apollyon said and Veiron nodded. “Then we should leave.”
It was what he wanted most.
Veiron followed him in silence, lost in his thoughts as Apollyon opened the path to the mortal realm and they flew upwards. He ached to see Erin and tell her that he knew the truth now, but he feared being around her at the same time. He wasn’t sure what he would do if Heaven tried to control him and make him hurt her. He hoped he could overrule their commands and stop himself from going through with it.
The flight to the mortal realm seemed to take forever, the darkness ahead of him never ending. A cool salty breeze blew down the crevasse and Veiron breathed deep of it, using it to rid his lungs of the toxic air of Hell and soothe his pain.
Finally, he broke free of the earth and spread his pale wings to slow his ascent. The ground beneath them began to close, the sand shifting to repair the crack Apollyon had created.
Amelia and Marcus were instantly on their feet and approaching them. Apollyon landed first and Veiron was grateful when he herded them away, giving him space. Veiron landed and his gaze sought Erin. She sat at the far end of the palm-fringed beach, holding her knees to her chest, her head tipped upwards towards the starry sky.
Veiron walked the shore towards her, footsteps silent on the white sand, and focused so his wings disappeared. He sent his armour away too, replacing it with shorts similar to Apollyon’s, mortal clothing. He didn’t want to see his armour tonight. It was a painful reminder of what he was and what he had just witnessed.
Erin didn’t look at him when he reached her.
Veiron sat on the sand beside her, unsure how to proceed. He wanted to break the silence but he couldn’t find his voice. He stared at the water, watching the moonlight ripple across its black surface, and then tilted his head towards Erin.
She was beautiful, the soft silvery light of the moon turning her eyes dark and skin milky. His gaze traced her profile. Too beautiful to be born of sin and brimstone like her father. The sight of her caught his breath, stole his heart, and left him speechless. He wished he could speak to her. There were a thousand things he wanted to tell her, things that might lessen her suffering and some that would probably only worsen it. But most of all he wanted to tell her that whatever he had felt for her before his death and rebirth, he was beginning to feel for her again now.
It wasn’t enough for him though. He didn’t only want to feel for her, he wanted to remember her too. He wanted to remember his old feelings for her not discover new ones. They weren’t the same thing. He wanted to recall everything so she wouldn’t spend forever feeling as though he was no longer the man she had once loved and so she could let go of her desire for revenge.
“Did you see everything?” she whispered, never taking her eyes off the moon.
Veiron nodded. “I saw it all. I know you were telling the truth, and I am sorry for how I treated you.”
“It wasn’t your fault. They made you do it.” She paused and sighed. “Do you know what Heaven did to you now?”
“No.”
Her gaze fell to his and she frowned. “You didn’t see your rebirth and what happened?”
He shook his head, took a deep breath to find his courage, and lifted his hand and gently brushed his fingers across her pale moon-kissed cheek, holding her gaze.
“I stayed with you,” he said and her eyes widened. “I stayed so I could see what happened to you. I had to see it. I am so sorry.”
Pain filled her eyes and her jaw trembled. He stroked her cheek, enjoying the softness of her skin beneath his fingers and calling himself cruel for using her suffering as an excuse to touch her. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to touch her like this, had desired it for so long now.
“It’s not your fault.” She lowered her head and turned her face away from him, so his hand slipped from her cheek. His fingers instantly cooled, missing her heat. “It’s their fault.”
Her tone had hardened again and her anger flowed through him.
“Fighting them is not the answer.” No matter how much he desired it was. He wanted to destroy both realms for what they had done to him and to Erin, and to everyone on this island.
“Yes, it is,” Erin said, grim determination darkening her usually soft voice. “It is because they brought this upon themselves. They hurt Amelia and Marcus, and Apollyon. They hurt me… and they hurt you. They took you from me and I won’t let them get away with that. I’m going to fight them, whether you like it or not.”
She glanced across at him, eyes steely and bright.
“Will you fight with me?”
Veiron was beginning to see why he had fallen in love with Erin. She faced everything head on without flinching and was willing to take on the two most powerful beings in the world because they had hurt those she loved and wronged her. She was brave, and beautiful.
“Always.” He nodded and his heart thumped harder when she smiled right into his eyes.
“You’re starting to sound like your old self.” Her bright tone tailed off at the end, turning sombre.
Veiron sighed and she looked away from him, raising her eyes back to the moon.
“I wish I remembered you for myself… not just saw myself with you in some pool,” he whispered and she bit her lip. It trembled regardless of her attempt to stop it and he cursed himself when tears lined her eyes, sparkling like diamonds. He hadn’t meant to hurt her with his words. He had wanted to be honest with her and let her know that he was here with her now, and that he wanted to be with her again. “I want to remember you, Erin.”
She closed her eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod as she swallowed.
Veiron turned his gaze to the moon and the stars, absorbing how peaceful it felt to sit with Erin. How right it felt. Would he ever regain his memories of her? Would she love him even if he co
uldn’t? They could make new memories together but he knew she would be haunted by the ones he had lost and the past he couldn’t remember.
Her fingers brushed his where they rested on the sand and he stilled as she slipped her hand into his. Veiron shifted his hand and she tensed, clutching it.
“Just let me… for a little while?” she said, voice so low that it might have been the breeze blowing in off the sea and his imagination that formed those words.
He finished moving his hand as he had intended, linking their fingers together, and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye to find her smiling at the stars.
What future could an angel and the Devil’s daughter have?
Whatever that future was, whatever it entailed, he wanted it and he was willing to do anything to achieve it.
CHAPTER 33
It had been three days since Veiron had visited Hell and returned to her, aware that she had told him nothing but the truth. Those three days had been sheer torture. Erin hadn’t known what to expect when Veiron finally believed her and saw his past life and his time with her, but she hadn’t anticipated him coming to her and telling her that he wanted to remember her.
She hadn’t expected him to hold her hand like that and sit with her in silence that had felt too comfortable.
She hadn’t expected to end up resting her head on his shoulder and falling asleep on him, only to wake in her makeshift home with him lying beside her on top of the covers and still holding her hand, watching her. She had slept for fourteen hours straight and he hadn’t left her side once. She had dreamed of him and those sweet dreams had torn at her more viciously than her nightmares, leaving her feeling weaker than ever. When she had looked into his eyes, he had told her that he would sleep like it again if she desired it, so she might find rest and regain her strength.
It had confused her feelings and muddled her heart, and now she wasn’t sure what she was doing. The Veiron she had loved was dead and gone, but he was alive too. She couldn’t deny that he was different now. The cocksure arrogant side of him seemed to have died with his demonic past and while there were glimmers of it sometimes as he spoke with the others and planned what they would do next, she still felt as though she was looking at a different person.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 66
