The flickering lights dimmed, as the Blood stepped hesitantly through the archway into the crevice beyond.
I almost murdered ten kids. I could’ve…
You almost did nothing. Your daddy set up this nightmare carnival, and you’ve been caught in the show.
Cold choked me. I clasped at Ash’s wings; my throat was tight. “How…?”
“I tried…” Ash’s gaze was empty. “When Lucifer first started cleansing our ranks. I won’t ever forget the deaths that I caused because I tried to save triplets…”
Tears dripped from his eyes, yet still he only stared with that blank, broken stare.
I shook him. “You tried. You lost your claws, trident, and right to be anything but a Seducer because you tried to stop Lucifer.”
“But I lost.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of Ash struggling with this burden alone because he wasn’t alone anymore. “You didn’t have me then. Now you do.”
Ash scrutinized me in a way that I couldn’t understand, although anything was better than the lost look he’d had going on before. “Good to know that I have the Protector this time.”
He linked our hands.
Clank — a steel door smashed down, shutting in the kid.
There was a clear viewing panel through into the light chamber like this was just another Cage fight. Somehow, however, I didn’t think a Champion would be stepping away free.
“We can try—” I begged.
“Ten kids, Violet, in place of one. We can’t fight the entire FF, Under World, and Lucifer. Not yet…and not before those kids would die.”
“What happens next?” I tightened my fingers around Ash’s.
The powers inside howled to jump up and battle for the kid, even as I knew that’d kill ten more.
How could I judge to allow one to die to save a theoretical ten? Ash had been presented with the same choice, and he knew the consequences. I allowed him to hold me back, even as part of me hated him for it.
Hated myself.
Yet I hated Lucifer more.
Ash shook his head, holding me closer. “Don’t watch. Don’t ever watch. Like I had to.”
I shivered, caught beneath Ash, wrapped in his warmth, and I burned with the power of the trident.
“Yours, take me, always,” Devil wheedled. “Queen, mighty, kill them all.”
Tonight, I’d meet Lucifer, and he’d make us suffer for the failure of the second test. Yet now I knew the truth of the Fire Catacombs…? Every part of me was singing in unison — vampiric, angelic, and Protector — to take the bastard down, even if he was my dad and he loved me. To do that, however, I had to let the monster inside play with Devil, which would make me more dangerous than the Light-bringer. And I didn’t know if I could control either once they were free.
I screwed closed my eyes, shuddering at the Blood’s screams.
21
When I was a freaky eyed kid in the school yard, I’d invent stories about my dad. Dragon tamer, computer tycoon, or heroic firefighter, he always played the hero.
It didn’t matter though because nobody believed me: not even myself. I needed an imaginary dad, however, to light the shadow one that followed me every day since my abandonment.
I’d called out to the angels to save me because no one had answered when I’d called out dad. And maybe I was a bitch, but you had to step up to survive.
Alone.
But I wasn’t alone anymore. Now I had my dad, and he wasn’t a dragon tamer, he was the bastard dragon whose fire wouldn’t save me. Instead, it’d burn hotter than the sun.
Lucifer’s light blazed like judgment in the pitch-black. Blinding, scarring, and immolating.
His spy fireflies buzzed along the roof.
I huddled in the warmth of Rebel’s arms against the chalky stench that chilled the deep-level air raid shelter that mouldered, abandoned after World War Two, with its low ceiling and the rumble of Tube trains above.
The Bones.
Why the hell had Lucifer demanded that we meet him here? Alone? And why did it terrify the vampires into obeying?
I took a deep breath of my shirt’s collar: citrus cloves.
When Ash and I had stumbled back to my carriage room — the kid’s screams still echoing in accusation — I’d slipped into my leather trousers and latex, but I’d pulled Ash’s shirt on over the top again. I hadn’t been able to abandon our new closeness.
Ash would have to wrestle me for the shirt if he wanted it back. And wouldn’t Misrule get off on placing bets on that…?
Ash paced at the back of the shelter, in front of a colossal vampire who’d been hooked by a harness to a mechanical wheel, which rusted in flaking copper: A Roman slave at a waterwheel.
But what nightmare did the wheel pull…or open?
The Roman Vampire’s skin shone silvery white, Gollumesque, as he sagged against the wall.
Lucifer’s wings flared. He looked even taller than last time; he was kitted out in full leather outfit, blazing horns and all. A cape, which flowed around him like oil, had been added to his Big Bad costume.
Yet even through the surging flames, Lucifer’s mouth was tighter, and dark shadows bruised underneath his eyes. For the first time, I saw the cost of his power, played out on his flesh.
Because of me.
Our hunt in his bedroom — no flames, horns, cape, or trident — suddenly appeared an innocent memory.
Mischief knelt in front of Lucifer but he didn’t bow his head; he held his back straight and his chin lifted. His haughty gaze met mine, shining through the dark, as Lucifer possessively petted his hair.
The proud consort.
I fisted my hands to stop myself storming over and wrenching Lucifer away to stop him touching my Fae Angel. Just as the forces inside raged to punish Mischief for allowing it, even though I knew that he was risking himself undercover: The illusion of submission.
The warring powers were as hard to fight as Devil. The trident’s pull, tugging on me, adrenaline-shot me with power.
Lucifer had the trident on him.
I wriggled free of Rebel, stepping forward.
Clank, clank.
Surprised, I peered down at the metal beneath my feet, before tapping my boot — clank, clank — on the sheet of steel that covered the rest of the shelter’s floor.
Lucifer chuckled. “Wow, that’s quite the tap dance of joy to see me. And there I was thinking that you’d be an itty bit…I don’t know…naughty girl sorry to have made daddy cross?”
I snorted. “First, shove the daddy kink, and second…? What’s with the hollow floor?”
Clank — I booted the metal.
Horror: it flashed across Mischief’s face before he could smother it.
My chest tightened.
“Don’t stand there, Violet,” Ash’s command was threaded with anguish, as if I was standing on his dad’s grave.
I took a cautious step back. Time to deal the Bluff Card. “OK, pay up. Two wings and unpurified: I chose your team. That means I passed the test. Three prongs make a trident in my hand.”
I held my breath. I’d never expected both angels and vampires to be better liars than me.
Lucifer cocked his head, before smiling. “You want Devil?”
I nodded.
This time, Devil materialized in the air before me, as Mischief had in the Bone Palace, every twisted bone inch of him glowing in glory.
“Yours, yours, yours,” Devil chanted. “Take me, take me, take…”
“There’s just this eensy last thing,” Lucifer mused, as his hand tightened in Mischief’s hair. “Devil has been aching for a kill all day. You know, champ, this is exciting. You’re my assassin now, after all. Who will it be? Addict, Seducer, or pet?”
Lucifer booted Mischief between his shoulders, sprawling him over the metal between us. Mischief landed with a startled oomph.
Rebel took a wary step away from me towards Ash, and that hurt the most.
“Kill.” Devil’s
light coiled around my hands, dragging my fingers to the shaft. “Kill, kill…”
Its hunger to feast on death…devour my love…drag me into its whirling darkness…shuddered through me. I panted, throwing back my head, then howled.
“Queen,” Devil purred, “my Queen. Anarchy, chaos, light.”
I tried to yank away my hands, but coils of light held them lashed to the bone. Devil swung me around, pointing first at Mischief, then at Rebel, and finally at Ash.
“Choose,” Devil ordered.
If I wasn’t a bitch to Lucifer, then I wouldn’t be a bitch to a pointy stick.
I shook the trident and was certain that I heard it yelp. “Shove it, Mr Poseidon. I’m the top boy here. I make the call on who we kill, and we don’t kill fam. You either follow me like a good little fork or you’re not mine.”
Devil blazed, hot enough to sear, as he thundered. I gasped but held on. At last, the fire died down, and Devil shrank, still grumbling. “Yours,” he muttered, “good fork.”
There was no bastard way he’d ever been good.
I shivered as I slipped him into the pocket of my trousers. I’d conquered Devil and I had the weapon that we needed to fight the revolution.
I jumped, startled by the sudden touch to my cheek. Lucifer was studying me.
How had he moved so fast? Or had I been truly so lost in the battle with Devil that I hadn’t even noticed him?
“Huh, you didn’t kill.” Lucifer smiled sadly.
“You wanted me to?”
He shook his head. “I think you missed my meaning: you didn’t kill. You aren’t an assassin. And my pet is better at taking off the heads of the Pure than my disobedient daughter.”
I dragged Ash’s shirt more closely around myself; my skin tingled.
And that’s how you call a Bluff Card.
“Then why give me the kickass weapon?” I asked.
Lucifer ducked his head like he’d been the one caught out. “Because here’s what I’m learning with kids: their failures make you look bad. I have this whole…thing…planned, you know, party hats and cake for your coronation as Queen of Chaos.” His horns flared in sympathetic outrage. “I gave you two chances. Two! Have a guess how many I give everyone else if they fail?”
“I’d go with trick question. You don’t give bastard chances.”
Lucifer giggled. “She truly is my daughter, I knew it.” He patted my head. “On my blood, we’ll share this final test in private: lucky number three. Then the Feathered can’t bleat about my love for you being a weakness, and the dissenters can’t spin it to tear down everything that I’ve sacrificed to build here.”
A third test? Yet that was fair. I’d failed, after all.
And I flushed because I was one of those dissenters. It hadn’t been difficult to rise up against my mum in Angel World. She’d barely pretended to offer me love. My dad, on the other hand, had offered me a throne, power, and a parent… And in return I was plotting to destroy everything that he’d ever loved and fought for.
Remember the Fire Catacombs…the kid Blood…the screams…
I nodded, shakily.
“Good, good.” Lucifer smiled. “This one’s the simplest of them all: sacrifice. Cue the drum roll… What will you sacrifice to the Bones for me? Who?”
Bastard, no…
I twirled to Ash, but he was already striding towards me, catching me in his arms, dark Brigadier again. “Step back.”
Clank, rattle, clank.
The walls shook, as Roman Vampire groaned and strained forwards, pulling the chains on the wheel.
“Sweet Mary,” Rebel gasped.
A section of floor trembled open like a mouth, before drawing to a clanking stop.
What lay beneath us?
“Show her the heart of pain, Seducer.” Lucifer flashed an arc of light towards the tomb beneath the Bones: a ghostly rainbow. “The reason that you sacrifice.”
Ash clasped my hand, edging us together towards the dark. Then he nodded grimly down, and I knelt on the metal. “Never feel guilt for how you won in the Cage. Your prize blood keeps Key alive.”
Anarchy’s brother.
In the roasting heat beneath the air raid shelter, a kid who looked like he should be in the year below Jade at college, had been bound in barb wire and trapped in the dark. The wire had been jammed between his lips in a brutal muzzle.
Key stared up at me, squinting against the weak light with too large eyes in a gaunt face, hidden behind midnight curls. His skeletal frame was lost in his single item of clothing: bloodied denim jeans.
He reminded me so much of Anarchy that it booted me in the gut.
How much had seeing Key like this hurt Ash each time that he’d fed him? And how many others were trapped beneath here — starving to nothing but bones? I’d been walking on top of them, as they’d been buried alive.
I didn’t miss that there was one more space in the tomb. Sacrifice: I got it now.
I swallowed, digging my nails through my trousers. I needed it to hurt more. My claws shot out, slashing the leather. I hissed, as it sliced through skin.
“For the love of Christ, would you stop that, woman.” Rebel swooped down, yanking my claws away from my knees. “You grew into your claws then? They’re…”
“Different,” I whispered, shying away.
Rebel stroked across my knuckles. “We’re all different.” He raised the tips of my claws to his lips, kissing each one in turn. I shuddered, as each light touch of his lips jolted me through my claws all the way to my throbbing wingtips. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “I was a muppet if I ever made you feel like you had to hide this side of yourself. You’re the Fallen’s princess too. But you’ll never Fall. You’ll rise above us lifted on our wings.”
When Lucifer swung his cloak around my eyes, a snaking blackness blindfolded me; I screamed.
“Time out, kiddies. I’m touched by your Fallen coming out moment, I truly am. But there’s a timer tick tick ticking here: can you hear that? One minute, counting down. This is me, patience officially worn out.” Lucifer’s teasing tone darkened. “I’ve been daddy indulgence, haven’t I? Three tests? Now, sacrifice.”
He swept away the cloak, and I coughed, clutching Rebel’s arms. Gray spots danced in front of my eyes.
Hell, I couldn’t bear being lost in that endless darkness again…a taste of what Key suffered in the Bones.
What I’d condemn whoever I chose as sacrifice to suffer.
Key’s gaze swiveled between us, whilst his tongue gargled words behind his wire gag; scarlet dribbled down his chin.
Rebel dangled his legs over the lip of the Bones into the gloom. He bowed his head; his eyelashes curved onto his cheek. “I’m a bad angel but I can do something good. Look, I bicker with the Brigadier, but you need him because this is his world. Here, I’m nothing but wally of a captured angel…”
“You’re not nothing…”
“Princess, please, I’m not awful good with sappy goodbyes and nonsense but—”
“I promised that you’d never go back into the dark. I promised.” I wiped my hand across my eyes: I wouldn’t give Lucifer the show that he wanted or let him see what his test was costing me.
Rebel had suffered for forty years in a birdcage prison in the dark. When he’d been returned to it in Angel World, it’d broken him.
How could I watch it happen again? Was any bargain worth that?
I reached for Rebel, but he shrank back.
“I knelt for you, willingly.” He bit his lower lip, tearing at the tender flesh with his teeth; I craved to free it and kiss the cut until I tasted his sweet blood. “And this is me, submitting to you. By all the saints, let me show you what that means.”
“Sorry to interrupt the Casablanca moment.” Ash hauled Rebel away from the edge; Rebel writhed in his hold. “Wait, nope, not sorry at all.” Ash hurled Rebel across the shelter, staring down at me with regimental steeliness, before his expression softened, as he glanced at Key. “I was the one
who…saw what the dark did to our retro angel. He’s not returning to it.” I recognized the possessive protectiveness towards Rebel because it surged through me too, just like his blood. “I remember equal kneeling duties. So, Ash: ready for sacrificing. Note the total lack of enthusiasm.”
I swallowed thickly. Both my blokes had offered themselves to this torment to save me and the Under World.
“That’s time up.” Lucifer frowned at Mischief. “Why didn’t you throw your hat into the Bones ring, pet?”
Mischief glanced up, startled. Then he peeked at me, before wetting his lips. “I’m not a fan of barb wire gags, Your Majesty. Let other fools walk into the fire for her; I didn’t kneel.”
Even though I knew…hoped…that Mischief was playing his role, I still winced.
Lucifer laughed, and his eyes twinkled. “That’s why I love you, my selfish scheming pet. You can’t be taken under the spark. I need someone like you close to me. It’s…refreshing.”
Ash closed his eyes, shuffling to perch on the edge of the Bones, but I stopped him from pushing himself down into the shadows.
“There’s nothing in your test says that I can’t sacrifice myself.” Panting, I edged closer to the Bones’ lip. Key’s eyes widened, as my legs swung down. I smiled at him reassuringly. “I’m done with others martyring themselves because of me. You want to know what I learned from my mother? A queen shouldn’t hide away, letting others get killed or hurt for her. She should lead, even if that means being locked underneath the floor in some psycho’s wet dream.”
Silence — so tense that it smarted.
Lucifer assessed me. “How can I have a carnival without its queen?”
Lucifer’s fairy lights roared to pumpkin size, buzzing furiously. They shot towards me, catching me up in their midge haze.
I wailed, seared and suspended between them, hauled like a naughty kid due a spanking before her dad. Except, no dad had ever worn a cape of infinite night, flaming wings, and burning horns. I trembled, squirming between their stinging hold.
Lucifer leaned in, whispering hot against my ear, “Do I have to explain every detail of statesmanship to you? This is the Land of the Wild and Free. How do you think I manage to rule? What about the Children of the Dark, who’ve never even seen the light? How would you stop them tearing through the human world or converting to become the Pure?”
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 70
