“Are you unwell?” he said without thinking and she shook her head once and then sighed.
“I’m not sick... I just haven’t slept well since...” Tears lined her lashes and she bit her lower lip. It trembled.
Perhaps not a sickness of body but a sickness of the mind affected her. She was born of the Devil’s seed and he was a being who couldn’t contract illnesses. It would make sense that she was not physically sick.
“Why have you not slept well?” He dipped his head so he could see her face more clearly.
Her eyes darted to his and the pain in them spoke to his soul. “My visions are back... my nightmares. The only time they stay away is when I sleep in your arms and since you... since you... well, they’re worse now. I see terrible things but none of it makes sense. I feel worse if I sleep than I do if I force myself to remain awake.”
An overwhelming desire to smooth his palm across her cheek, lure her into his arms and tell her to sleep bolted through him but he tamped it down. It could be another trick. He stared into her eyes and felt the pain that glimmered there in his heart. It wasn’t a trick. She looked close to collapse now and had seemed so haunted earlier on the beach.
A scared, tired woman.
Not the evil destroyer that Heaven had painted her. Just a frightened and hurt female. She didn’t seem like a threat to him. He felt sorry for her. If she could not sleep, she would continue to weaken, and she would have no hope of surviving an assault by Heaven.
He recalled what she had said.
“You seek to destroy your father?” He studied her face for a reaction to that question. Her eyes locked with his, the softness in them hardening to ice. That look of sheer determination and seething hatred answered his question. “Why?”
“Because he took you from me. He used your death to awaken my powers… and I don’t think it’s because he wants me to be a happy independent woman. He wants those powers, or at least he wants me to use them for him somehow.”
“So you intend to kill the Devil?”
“It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.” She set the coconut down, picked at the white flesh inside it, and popped a piece into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s possible to kill the Devil?”
“No.” It wasn’t. Not at all. Killing the Devil would be as easy as killing God. It wasn’t something that could happen. They had fought each other since time immemorial and neither of them had succeeded in destroying the other. Erin stood no chance.
That thought made him want to gather her into his arms, call his wings and wrap them around her. He wanted to tell her to forget her desire for revenge and not get herself killed for his sake. She was insane to think she could defeat them.
Veiron’s head ached again. What was he thinking? She was his enemy, his mission target. He was supposed to take her into custody and up to Heaven, not protect her from his realm and her father’s.
“You thought it was possible once,” she said and he frowned at her. “When I first met you, you were bent on killing the Devil and God because of what they had done to you.”
That shocked him. If he really had known her in the past, then he had once believed he was capable of destroying the two most powerful beings in existence.
“It is not possible. God and the Devil maintain the balance in this realm. It cannot exist without both of them.” It was something fundamental that all angels learned during their first few days of life. Their duty was to maintain that balance. Had he truly desired to kill them in his previous life? Attempting such a thing was suicide.
“I miss you,” she whispered and stood. She didn’t look at him. She swept out of the shelter, leaving him alone.
He frowned. She missed him. Not she had missed him. She didn’t consider him as being back then. Would she continue to miss him until his memories had been restored?
Veiron growled at himself. He was letting everything sweep him along when he was supposed to be getting answers. Once he had seen whatever it was that Marcus had wanted to show to him, he would know the truth. He would know whether everything Erin had said was a lie or not.
But what good would that do him?
He still wouldn’t remember her.
He needed to see it though.
He focused through the dull ache in his head and scanned his surroundings. No sign of his armour. What had they done with it? It didn’t matter. He closed his eyes, focused on his power and called his armour to him. His loincloth appeared first and he stood, making it easier for the pieces of his armour to appear too. His blue and silver greaves and boots covered his shins and feet. His vambraces encased his forearms, and the slats of armour appeared around his hips. His breastplate materialised followed by his back one, the two locking together over his shoulders and his ribs.
Veiron didn’t call his wings. He raked his fingers through his hair and walked out onto the moonlit beach. The torches cast a warm glow on the sand around them and there was a fire to his left, circled by other shelters beneath the palm trees. Amelia sat there with Apollyon, the two of them deep in conversation. Veiron cast his gaze around, noting that he had seen neither the fallen angel nor his half-demon mistress since returning. Had they gone back to wherever they lived?
He looked up at the starry sky and wondered if he would ever be able to do such a thing. If Marcus was right and Erin was telling the truth, he would never be able to return to Heaven. He wouldn’t know what to do. He searched the shore for Marcus and found Erin instead.
She stood near the water with her back to him, the waves lapping at her bare feet and her arms wrapped around herself. The moon shone down on her, silhouetting her slender body and shining through the dark material of her dress, revealing her thighs. His body responded to the sight of her and he drew slow deep breaths to calm his raging desire.
She turned at the waist and looked over her shoulder at him. He could feel her sorrow and her pain, could sense it eating away at her. There was a weight on her shoulders and it was taking its toll on her. If she did speak the truth about him, about them, and everything that had happened, then he felt sorry for her. She had been through so much but she still stood firm, resolved to face her future no matter how bleak it looked.
He admired her for that.
He walked towards her and her expression softened, her eyes sparkling with affection that he didn’t deserve to have directed at him. He had come here to capture her and take her to Heaven, and she had been right, he had known that Heaven would ultimately kill her.
He no longer believed that Heaven wanted to eradicate her because she was the antichrist and in league with the Devil.
It wanted her dead because she posed a threat to it.
But she also posed a threat to the Devil.
Would her father be coming after her too or had her awakening only been part of a grander plan for her?
Her cropped black hair fluttered in the breeze, revealing the scar on her throat. Marks he had apparently placed there. He didn’t remember having teeth sharp enough to leave marks like that but he had in his dream and they felt so familiar to him.
Her eyes met his and he was lost in them again, warm from head to toe, drifting towards her without realising it.
A firm hand caught his shoulder.
“Are you feeling better?” Marcus said and Veiron nodded. Marcus released his shoulder. “Then we should get going.”
To Hell.
Veiron’s heart pounded. He stared into Erin’s eyes, hoping that she hadn’t been playing him and this wasn’t a trap, because he didn’t think that he could bear it. Somewhere along the line, he had begun to believe her and hope that what she had told him was the truth. He wanted to be the one this willowy female loved and had shared herself with.
He wanted to remember her.
CHAPTER 32
Marcus had deemed it too dangerous for all of them to venture into Hell, so Veiron went with Apollyon. It turned out that the ruler of the bottomless pit could create a gat
eway to Hell and easily enter and leave it at will. Veiron knew of the area where they were heading. It was protected by angels of Apollyon’s division, the only place in Hell where Heaven dared to keep a small force on standby at all times and none of the locals bothered them.
Veiron glided down on the hot air that rose from the realm far below him, his focus on the glowing orange line that marked their destination, pinned there to stop his mind from wandering back to the woman he had left on the beach above.
She would be safe with Marcus and Amelia there, but he couldn’t shake the desire to return to her and see with his own eyes that she was all right.
“Not much further,” Apollyon said, gruff tone conveying his dislike for the realm below them. Dislike that Veiron shared.
Hell was a dangerous place to enter, especially for an angel in his condition. Doubts filled every corner of his mind and the Devil would feed on those, using them against him, trying to sway him into falling. He would do no such thing. Erin and her comrades believed that he was destined to fall even if he devoted himself to Heaven. He had no choice in the matter. That didn’t sit well with him. If it was true, he wasn’t sure how he would feel. He wasn’t sure how he felt about any of it.
“You are not the only angel who has had their memories tampered with by Heaven.”
Veiron glanced across at his dark companion, the action causing his path to waver so his pale wings almost collided with Apollyon’s black ones. He straightened his course, fixing his gaze below him again.
“What do you mean?” he said and resisted his desire to look at Apollyon when he answered.
“Heaven changed some of my memories too. It is no lie. There is an eternal game between Heaven and Hell, and Amelia is at the centre of it. Marcus is Heaven’s pawn and he came close to killing Amelia, controlled by Heaven against his will. You were the Devil’s player, and will always fall and pledge yourself to him. I was the one tasked with awakening Amelia from her mortal form into her angelic one.” Apollyon huffed. “They forced me to kill her… shortly afterwards we realised that they had played with our memories.”
Veiron’s stomach twisted. He wished people would stop saying that he would fall and pledge himself in service of the Devil. It wasn’t something he would ever do.
Apollyon hadn’t wanted to kill Amelia either but Heaven had made him do that, if the dark angel was to be believed.
Meaning, Veiron had no choice in the matter. If Heaven and Hell decided he would fall, then he would fall. It didn’t matter what he wanted or what he did.
“When we land, let me do the talking,” Apollyon said and they broke out into an enormous cavern. Endless black surrounded him, broken only by boiling pits and rivers of lava. The landscape of Hell was as inhospitable and harsh as he had seen in the images of Erin.
“Perhaps I should do the talking.” If Apollyon was saying that they would need to convince the contingent of angels down here to let them pass or give them access to the pool everyone was talking about then it made more sense for him to be the one to do it. After all, he wasn’t on Heaven’s list of wanted angels. “Just lead the way.”
Veiron landed on the basalt plateau and quickly scanned his surroundings, searching for any sign of trouble. A young angel from the division of death came around a tall set of rocks directly ahead of him, a good distance away from the glowing edge of the plateau. The bottomless pit was down there. Was the Devil there now, waiting for Erin or planning something?
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 outwa
rds 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.
Her Demonic Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 5) Page 33
