Veiron’s mind reeled and the ache in his head worsened. She was asking him to go to Hell because he knew it and wouldn’t rouse suspicion? She wanted him to find Erin for her?
He reached around and ran a hand down his long ponytail, and then flicked a glance down at the broadsword resting beside him. What was happening? It all felt so familiar, as though he had lived these moments before.
Like a memory.
He roared against the pain that exploded behind his eyes and clutched his head with both hands, gritting his teeth.
The sound of battle erupted around him and he found himself running, pushing forwards. He flicked his eyes open and quickly took in his new surroundings. Hell again and the midst of a battle involving angels from the division of death. Their glossy black wings and the gold edging around their obsidian armour reflected the fiery pools of lava in the cracked basalt ground.
Veiron flexed his fingers and found a black rod in it, tipped at both ends with a crimson blade. He glanced at his black and scarlet armour, and then at the angels. They were coming for him. They weren’t on his side. He ran forwards and turned his head in that direction.
Erin was there, held with her back against the Devil’s chest, his arm across her front, restraining her.
She was reaching for him.
Veiron instinctively reached for her.
Sharp pain lanced his chest and he looked down to see the tip of a golden blade protruding from his breastplate and blood spilling down his bare stomach.
He looked back at Erin and collapsed to his knees.
She still reached for him.
His mouth moved but his ears rang, the noise so loud that he didn’t hear what he said. She spoke too, her expression soft, full of love and affection.
Love that she had mentioned.
She had said that his final words had been to tell her that he loved her.
The buzzing in his skull increased, the pain so intense that his vision wavered. Darkness loomed up and then closed in on him, and Veiron fought it. A desperate urge to reach Erin consumed him and he tried to stand.
Angels descended on him and a bright light engulfed them all.
When the light receded, he found himself standing in the middle of the garden between the white fortress and the holding cells in Heaven. His head ached, throbbing madly.
How had he got here?
He looked around him, gaze tracking some of the angels that passed him, and tried to remember. The last thing he recalled was exiting the fortress. The ache in his head worsened. He closed his eyes and images flickered through his mind, disjointed fragments of moments that felt so familiar. Each time he remembered one, it disappeared. What was wrong with him? Was he sick?
He spun around, feeling disorientated as the beautiful pale gardens of Heaven switched to the harsh black landscape of Hell and back again.
What was happening to him?
He caught a snippet of something that stayed with him—an image of Erin reaching for him and he for her.
That image evoked an intense need to see her again and he couldn’t ignore it.
She had infected his mind somehow and he wouldn’t be well again until he had completed his mission.
Veiron beat his silver-blue wings and flew over the huge white wall that protected the realm of Heaven. He twisted in the air and shot downwards, the wind buffeting him and the clouds leaving a fine layer of moisture on his bare skin and his blue armour.
He would find his target and he would capture her.
He would succeed this time.
Veiron folded his wings back and picked up speed, zooming down through the clouds, back towards the island. His gut said that he would find her there this time and it wasn’t wrong. As the small green island came into view below him, surrounded by clear jewel-like blue waters, he felt her presence on it. She wasn’t alone. Others were on the island with her but there was a chance that they wouldn’t be close to her when he arrived.
Could he swoop down, snatch her and make off with her before anyone noticed? He doubted it. She would fight him if he tried to take her. She hadn’t wanted to fight him before but every instinct he had said that she would fight him if he tried to separate her from her friends.
Veiron spread his wings to slow his descent and scoured the island. He found what he was looking for sitting on a small spit of rock on the opposite side of the island to everyone else. When he drew close to her, she looked up and showed no sign of moving.
He landed near her on the beach and strolled along it, curious now, wanting to see what she would do. Would she attack when he was close enough or run away? Would she call for her friends or fight him alone?
He stepped up onto the rocks and she did none of those things.
She got to her feet and faced him, her short black dress fluttering in the warm afternoon breeze. Her skin had lost its colour, far paler now than it had been before, and there were dark circles beneath her haunted amber eyes. Was she sick?
“You took longer than I expected,” she said, soft voice calm and not a trace of fear touching it. If anything, he would have said she was angry with him for not coming for her sooner, but her expression remained emotionless. “Have you thought about what I said?”
Veiron stopped, one foot on the higher rock in front of him, and frowned at her. She had been waiting for him.
“We had to go away. Amelia wanted to speak to Apollyon and Lukas about everything. I wanted to stay but Marcus insisted I go too. Did I miss you while I was gone?” She didn’t wait for his reply. “I suppose I must have. I was sure you would come back for me. Have you remembered anything?”
His frown hardened. Had she known he would see things while in Heaven? Had she orchestrated the whole thing, placing those seeds in his head just as he had feared? Her amber eyes probed his and she sighed.
“I take it that’s a no. I wish you would say something.”
“I have come to capture you and complete my mission. You will not fight me and stop this from happening?” He studied her expression, watching for a sign that she was lying or was out to trick him.
She shook her head and only honesty touched her voice. “I would never fight you, Veiron. You can take me in.”
She held her hands out to him, wrists together, and smiled.
He frowned at her odd gesture. Perhaps it was a human one that he wasn’t familiar with. He stepped up onto the rock and grabbed both of her slender wrists in one hand. Fire flashed across his skin and pierced his skull. He flinched and released her, images of her flickering through his mind so quickly that he felt sick.
“Veiron, what’s wrong?” She touched his face, her palms gently cupping his cheeks, warming his skin.
The pain faded as though her caress had soothed it away and he slowly opened his eyes and looked down into hers. Concern blazed in them, the emotion so intense that it stole his breath. There was love in her eyes too and the sight of it evoked images of him in Hell, desperate to save her but unable to because he was dying.
Veiron growled in frustration, swept her into his arms so fiercely that her head knocked against his breastplate, and beat his wings. He flew upwards hard and fast, determined to feel the wind on his face, feel it flowing over his silver-blue feathers, smoothing out his jumbled feelings.
“Veiron?” she whispered and he ignored her. He had captured his target and he would take her to Heaven, and he would be done with her and her trickery. “Why don’t you remember me?”
There was such hurt in those words. He couldn’t stop himself from looking down at her. No tears lined her eyes this time but her pain shone in them. Not a lie.
“Why can’t you remember what we shared?”
“Because I had never met you before the other day and none of what you say is real.”
Her pain increased and she looked away from him. Her hair fluttered and danced in the wind, obscuring her face so he couldn’t read her expression. She curled closer to him and shivered. The air was growing colder. A
shocking desire to pull her nearer to him and share his body heat with her drove through him. He pushed it away.
“I love you.” She didn’t look at him and the wind made her voice quiet, but he still heard her. A strange spark heated his chest, a mixture of warm feelings and terrible pain. She faced him again. “You were the only one who ever understood me and what I was going through.”
He stopped dead and beat his silver-blue wings to keep himself stationary, staring at her all the while. It didn’t seem like an act to make him lower his guard.
“You can’t believe what Heaven told you, Veiron. They’re playing you. It’s all a stupid game to them and to Hell. We’re just pawns.” She looked up into his eyes, seized his shoulders, gripping them tightly, and pulled herself closer to him. “Don’t trust them. They’ve done something to you. Heaven is just going to use you to capture me and then it will let you fall again, just as it always does.”
Veiron glared at her. Heaven would do no such thing. Angels fell of their own accord, not because their master decided it. He wished he could push her away but he couldn’t without dropping her. He could ignore her and shut out her lies though. As soon as he was in Heaven, he would be safe again, rid of her toxic words that cast a veil of doubt over everything that he knew.
He beat his wings and flew upwards again, intent on reaching Heaven and blocking her out.
She wriggled in his arms and looped hers around his neck, pulling herself up so she was eye level with him.
“Curse you,” she said and then slanted her head and meshed her lips with his.
Veiron halted and tried to evade her but she held him firm, kissing him. A spark of recognition and a sense of familiarity shot through him followed by a flood of images. He saw them together on a beach, walking hand in hand under the moonlight, and then she was standing on a bed, smiling and holding her arms out to him.
Veiron managed to break away from her and breathed hard, head splitting in two as he tried to make sense of the fragmented images. He licked his lips and tasted blood. Had she bitten him?
His gaze fell to her mouth. A red streak marred her lower lip and the temptingly soft pink flesh around it was swollen. It must have split when he had grabbed her on the beach and she had banged her face on his armour.
The taste of her was so familiar.
Veiron’s eyes dropped to her neck. Teeth marks. He had seen himself biting her in the throes of passion, lost in her and in love with her. The pain splitting his skull open burned more fiercely and he almost clutched it. Erin’s grip on him tightening brought him back to his senses and he kept hold of her instead. He breathed hard, battling the encroaching darkness, barely holding on to consciousness. Why did he almost pass out whenever images of her flooded his mind? Why did they disappear as quickly as they had come, but didn’t disappear completely? He felt he had lost some but could still remember others.
“I cannot take this,” he whispered and stared down into her eyes. “I do not want to remember things that are not true.”
She softly stroked his cheek and the pain in his head eased again, as though her touch was magic. “They are true.”
She caressed the marks on her throat.
“You bit me while we were making love, Veiron… you saved me from Hell… you saved me so many times… but I failed to save you. You died and it was all my fault.” Her voice hitched on the last few words and he wanted to tell her that whatever had happened to him it wasn’t her fault. If he had died as he had seen in those images and as she had said he had, then he had died for her. It had been his choice, because he had wanted to save her and had been willing to sacrifice himself to do so.
He lowered his gaze to her throat again and the marks on it. Desire pulsed through him whenever his eyes found them or whenever they met hers, and he was beginning to believe that desire was his true feelings and not a spell she had cast on him. It came from deep within him, heated his blood like an inferno and set his heart pounding. He had never felt anything like it and he feared he never would again if he let this woman out of his arms.
“Veiron?” She brushed her soft fingers across his cheek and then swept them into his short red hair, and his eyes rose to meet hers. She smiled at him, worry reflected in her eyes and in her touch. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I see things,” he said and then told himself to be quiet. She didn’t need to know about them. It would only strengthen her hold over him. She would seek to soothe him, to take away his pain, and he would fall right into her hands.
“Tell me,” she whispered. Exactly as he had predicted. She sought to use his weakness against him. He would not fall for her ploy.
“They give me headaches.” He frowned when she lifted her fingers to his left temple and ran their tips in soothing circles over his skin. He would tell her no more. That had just been a slip.
“What do you see?”
“You… me… the traitor and the abomination. Hell. It is a trick. You have cast some sort of spell on my mind.”
She shook her head and continued caressing his temple. “Not me. You do remember me then?”
She looked pleased by that. Veiron said nothing. He wasn’t sure whether he had remembered her or whether the lies she had planted in his head had merely borne fruit.
“Do you still remember things about us?” she said.
“They are all lies. My mind rejects your trickery. When the images cease, my head hurts and the false memories disappear.”
“Or your false memories take over again.”
Why was she insisting that what he saw with her was the truth and that Heaven had changed his memories?
“Speak with Marcus and you will see that I’m telling the truth, Veiron.” She lowered her hand to his chest and he almost missed the feel of it on his skin, smoothing out his troubles, leaving him feeling compliant and all too willing to do whatever she asked of him. “We can show you the truth. There’s a pool in Hell that can show it to you.”
Veiron growled at the mention of Hell and beat his wings harder, carrying them more quickly towards Heaven. His chest hurt, a dull throbbing that spread through him, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I knew you were tricking me. This is all some power of yours… some evil you have cast upon me!” He doubled his efforts, desperate to reach Heaven and get away from her. He couldn’t take it. He could no longer tell truth from lie. She poisoned his heart and his mind, all in some attempt to turn him against his master. “Oh, you are evil indeed. Your father’s progeny without a doubt. How you trick and tempt an angel. He would be so proud of you!”
She gasped and tears filled her eyes. “How can you say that to me? How can you be so cruel after everything we’ve shared?”
“Desist! I will listen to no more of your foul lies. You seek to make me fall.”
“No,” she barked and grabbed his armour over his shoulders. “I would never do that to you. I tried to make him stop… I tried to make him save you too… he refused. You didn’t want to die. You didn’t want to become an angel again, forgetting everything the Devil and God had put you through… you have to believe me, Veiron.”
“I believe nothing that comes out of your mouth.” He turned his focus away from her, trying to block her out, but she pulled herself up. The shift in her weight in his arms caught him off guard and he tipped forwards, almost losing his grip on her as they plunged downwards. She shrieked and clung to him and he resisted the urge to tighten his grip on her as he righted himself and continued upwards.
“You died barely a week ago, Veiron. I saw you die with my own eyes. Whatever you remember, it happened. You died trying to reach me and save me from the Devil.”
He halted again and stared into her eyes. Why had that shocked him? Of course she would know what he had seen. She had been the one to plant those images in his head somehow. She had constructed the false memories that plagued him.
“Why would you need to be saved from your father and why would I be the one doing it?�
� he said and she lowered her gaze to her lap.
“Because my father… if you can call him that… is a vicious, evil bastard. He tricked me and you died because of it… and you tried to save me because you love me.” She slowly raised her head, her eyes drifting up over his chest and then his neck before they finally tentatively met his.
“I do not love you.” He steeled himself against the tears that lined her dark lashes and the pain that radiated through him. “I feel nothing for you. You will come with me to Heaven where you will be contained and questioned.”
Her expression turned solemn and her voice lost its warmth, gaining a note of resignation that he discovered he didn’t like. “No, Veiron, I won’t be contained and questioned. I will be killed. Let’s not pretend anything different will happen.”
She had known her fate all along yet she had still allowed him to take her, had refused to fight him and had accepted the death sentence that awaited her in Heaven. What strange sort of creature was she? She confused him at every turn, entranced him whenever she smiled and it showed in her eyes, and bewitched him with only the sound of her voice breathing his name.
“I will prove that you know me, and that you care about me, and that you just don’t remember that you do because Heaven has tampered with your mind.”
He frowned at her. “What do you mean, prove that I know you? I will not allow you to lure me down to Hell for your master… so how will you do such a thing?”
Erin smiled and briefly pressed her lips against his.
Nothing happened other than a momentary hunger to return the kiss.
“You tried that before. It did not make me recall whether I loved you or not. It did not prove anything.”
She nodded and stroked his cheek, her amber eyes darting between his. “I really hope this will.”
Erin pushed out of his arms.
He tried to grab her but he was too slow. She fell, tumbling head over heels through the air, hurtling towards the ocean several thousand feet below.
Veiron twisted in the air and beat his wings, shooting down towards her, his heart thundering against his chest, commanding him to save her.
Her Demonic Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 5) Page 31
