Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset

by Grace McGinty

  “The auction is being held in the ballroom. Please feel free to go and register, then take a seat.”

  We didn’t deign to answer and headed toward the hushed voices in the ballroom. We took a seat at the back, and I cast my eye over all the people in the room. I held back a gasp as I recognized more than a few powerful people. People who had been in Forbes magazine, or in the society pages of gossip rags. But there were more people I didn’t recognize, people with greedy eyes that skimmed my body and made my skin crawl. I held onto Naz’s arm tighter. Naz was just as fucking scary, and I needed these vultures to know that I was with a freaking pterodactyl, and he was a thousand times scarier than they were.

  I skimmed the rest of the crowd and my eyes halted on a red-haired man. I sucked in a gasp. I didn’t recognize the man, but I recognized the aura.

  Archangel.

  I’d only ever met one in my life, Raphael, when he’d been patching up Hope. This definitely wasn’t Raphael. He was tall and had flaming red hair that wasn’t seen naturally in the human race, but you could probably pay hundreds of dollars to achieve it at a salon. His skin had a luminescence to its paleness. His eyes were cold and calculating. He scared the shit out of me, but I knew he wasn’t a Fallen. I knew all the Fallen personally. Hell, they’d all come to my fifth birthday party. Now I’d focused on him, seen through the glamor he must be casting because the humans in the room didn’t seem to notice him, the strength of his power almost burned against my skin. Definitely an archangel.

  I gripped Naz’s forearm tightly, my nails digging into his suit. “Naz…”

  “What the hell?”

  I looked at him. “I know rig…” But Naz wasn’t looking at the Archangel. He was looking at a face that was entirely more familiar.

  “What the hell?” I agreed. “What is Gus doing here?”

  Gusion was a Prince of Hell, one of Luc’s Fallen Angels. He also gave me a unicorn stuffy for my seventh birthday. And I still had a collection of feathers from his beautiful white and gold wings.

  I stepped toward Gus, about to ask him myself, when a man appeared at the lectern, hammer in hand.

  “Welcome everyone to tonight's auction. We have some real treasures for you tonight,” the staid looking man intoned, as if we were at Sotheby's or something.

  Naz pulled me gently to our seats. I sat down, twisting my paddle in my hand. Naz reached out and stilled the nervous gesture, his eyes holding both a warning and reassurances.

  The crowd quieted down and the MC cleared his throat. “Let’s get on with tonight's proceedings, shall we?” He opened his notes. “First up in lot 346. Just seventeen, and in wonderful condition…”

  “You shouldn't be here,” a voice sitting in the row behind us hissed. Another familiar voice. My head whipped around so fast it hurt.

  “Ace? What the fuck are you doing here?” I looked at my pseudo parent, my mother's best friend. Also Fallen Angel and Lucifer's consort. I knew her face as well as I knew my own.

  “That doesn’t matter, you guys have to-”

  She was cut off by the doors to the ballroom crashing in, and armed men in SWAT gear pouring in like a wave.

  “Policier. This is the Police. Do not move,” someone screamed from behind a helmet. Then there was pandemonium as people tried to rush the exits.

  A semi-automatic weapon was pointed at my face before we could even stand. Shit.

  Ace sighed and put her hands in the air too. “Too late.”

  Part III

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’d been sitting on the cold bench inside the holding cell for so long my ass had gone numb. Both my Louboutin’s and my fox fur wrap had been confiscated in case I tried to pick the cell door with a heel or something. I was freezing, shoeless and a little pissed.

  Ace sat beside me, chewing her fingernails and humming a Britney Spears song, not in the least bit perturbed by the fact that we were currently in jail for attending an auction where the product was human beings.

  There were eleven women in my jail cell. Three more from the auction, two women who looked like they were coming down off something hard, three angry looking hookers and a woman in her seventies with tightly rolled curls and not a single care in the world. Ace and the old lady had been having a great time. The old lady gave my Fallen Angel pseudo-parent the recipe for ‘the best hash brownies on the planet’. Direct quote.

  The police hadn’t believed me when I said I thought we were attending an art auction. I wouldn’t believe me either. Naz sat in the cell next to me with twenty-five other men, and he looked so murderous that everyone gave him a wide berth.

  A police officer came up and banged on the bars. “Estrella Jones, Arcadia Jones, Nazir Ashear, come to the front. Your lawyer has arrived.”

  I huffed out a sigh of relief that Gus or my guys had finally arrived to bust us out.

  “Mom’s going to be peeved that you used her name when you got fingerprinted,” I told Ace, who had a stupidly big grin on her face. She loved to mess with my parents. But it was all in good fun. They loved one another in a way the defied human sensibilities. They were two pieces of one soul, kind of like Hope and I, but realms apart.

  One of the men Nazir’s cage began to yell again about who he was and how his lawyer was going to sue everyone in the city of Geneva, but I ignored him as I strode past the cop to the desk to collect my things. I’d heard his diatribe on repeat ten times already. I signed for my stuff, and turned as I placed my stoll around my shoulders.

  My heart sank. The guys hadn’t talked us out of our prison cell. Standing on the other side of the room, looking supremely pissed off, was Luc. He frowned in our direction, and I felt about three inches tall.

  Ace swaggered up and laid a hard kiss on his lips, and then smiled up at him. “If you keep frowning like that, the wind will change and you won’t be so pretty anymore.”

  Luc smiled down at her with so much love that I wondered how humans could be so petrified of him. Anyone who had the capacity to love another being the way Luc loved Ace couldn't be all bad.

  Then he turned his eyes towards us, and they were as hard as flint. I resisted the urge to run. I retracted my earlier thoughts.

  “Let’s go.”

  I was moving before he’d even finished the word. As much as I liked to needle him sometimes, because I knew deep down he loved me too, there was a time and a place for it. The police station was not the place, and now was definitely not the time.

  Romanus, Rouen, Charlie and Gus stood on the sidewalk outside the station, and my heart leapt when I saw the guys. I ran straight into Charlie’s arms and wrapped myself around him before either of us got the chance to be weird.

  He stiffened but eventually relaxed into an embrace that was oh so familiar to us both.

  I inhaled deeply, letting his scent soothe me. Rouen came up and wrapped both Charlie and me in his arms.

  “We missed you,” he murmured against my hair. “Charlie was getting ready to bake you a cake with a nail file in it.” I felt the vibration of Charlie’s laugh against my cheek.

  Someone cleared their throat. I turned to see Ace grinning and Luc looking annoyed. “Can you please leave your public displays for somewhere other than the front of the police station?” he grumbled. He looked at his watch. “I must go, but I will be back to discuss this,” he waved a hand at Romanus, whose face was a stone mask, and Rouen. “Apparently, Estrella, you do not understand the concept of a loan. The souls of the Gargoille still belong to me.”

  I whirled around and faced him. “No,” I growled.

  He appeared in front of me, leaning down so we were nose to nose. “I am the Lord of Hell, Little Girl. Their souls are tied to me.”

  I stiffened my spine, leaning forward and staring him in the eye. I held myself steady, even though I wanted to run away screaming. I pointed a finger at his face. “I am the Gargoyle Queen. They belong to me. Heart and soul.”

  He lifted a hand and I tried not to flinch. He reached o
ver and patted my cheek, smiling proudly then looked over his shoulder at Ace. “Kids. They say the darndest things.” He shook his head with bemusement. “We will see, Child of my Beloved’s Heart.” With one more little cheek tap, he was gone. Just poof.

  I looked at Ace. “He can’t do that, right?” She raised an eyebrow. Of course. He was Lucifer, he could do whatever the hell he wanted. “He wouldn’t do that, I mean.”

  Ace just shrugged. “I’ll talk to him.” With that, she disappeared too. I was left on the sidewalk with my guys and Gusion, who was attracting far too much attention. He was classically attractive. He looked like a Californian surfer and a Roman statue had a golden, ridiculously good looking child.

  “Are you going to just poof out of here too, or are you going to stick around and explain why two Fallen and an Archangel were doing attending a meat market?”

  Tiny creases wrinkled his perfect nose, and he looked to be considering his answer. Finally, he sighed too.

  “Fine. I will meet you at your hotel.” And then he was gone. Fallen Angels were not known for their social etiquette. I looked around, hoping that there wasn't security cameras in front of the building that were filming their little vanishing trick.

  When Gusion disappeared, the tension left Romanus’ shoulders. He wrapped an arm around my waist and ushered me to the car. “Let's get out of here before Interpol change their mind about Nazir,” he said as the tail lights of our car flashed.

  “Interpol?” I asked, and looked at Naz’s carefully blank face.

  It was Charlie who answered. “Apparently, there's a list somewhere that has Naz’s prints on them as a person of interest in some undisclosed cold cases. It took Luc a lot of fast talking to get him out, and Gusion a lot of fast talking to get Luc to give enough fucks to want to make the effort.”

  I slid into the car beside Charlie, Naz sliding into the other side so I was sandwiched between them, our legs all tangled in the small amount of room. I looked at their thighs touching mine, and resisted the urge to run my hands up both inseams. I cast a look at Charlie under my lashes. One day soon.

  I pressed myself a little closer to him. I was going to change tactics. Giving him space to sort through his issues had failed. Plan B involved a lot of temptation until he cracked.

  Making sure our bodies touched as much as possible, I turned to look at Naz. A small smile tilted up the corners of his mouth. I think he was on to me.

  I broke the silence in the car as we pulled away from the curb. “Well, that was a bit of a clusterfuck,” I stated redundantly.

  Romanus scoffed. Well, it could have been worse. I was so damn tired. Someone should have told me that being this on edge all the time was exhausting. I snuggled closer to Charlie, who hesitated but eventually lifted his arm to wrap it around my shoulders. I laid my head against his chest, appreciating the steady thump of his heart. I moved my hand to his inner thigh, and slid it upwards, just to hear the sound of his tempo quicken. He sucked in a breath, and when my fingers brushed the hardening length in his pants, he put a hand over mine to still my exploration.

  “Rella.” It was both pained plea and chastisement. I grinned, and stopped moving.

  I closed my eyes to nap, but I didn’t move my hand. I liked the fast thump, thump, thump of his heart beneath my cheek.

  I walked into our hotel room and resisted the urge to fall face first into bed. Gus had arrived before us and was currently surrounded by silver room service trays.

  “Is that to share?” I asked, sitting opposite him at the table. I hoped so. There were twelve domed trays, and when I lifted one I saw that it contained waffles.

  My mouth watered. I loved waffles.

  Gusion just waved at the table, inviting us to eat, and went back to looking at his paper. It was hard to remember that he was literally as old as time itself, considering without his wings and in his jeans with holes in the knees, he looked like a model in his early twenties.

  I waited until everyone had filled their plates, and I’d shoveled at least half a waffle in my mouth, to start asking questions.

  “So, who was the Archangel?” I said as I chewed. Apparently it wasn’t just the Fallen who lacked proper social etiquette. My parents would be horrified.

  “Uriel.”

  Huh. I didn’t know much about what happened with my parents around the time Hope and I were born, and no one really talked about it, but I gathered two things from eavesdropping on conversations as a kid. One was that everyone hated Azriel, or Azriel the Dick as he was more commonly known as in our household. The second thing was that whenever they mentioned Uriel's name, they all said it with the exact same tone; disgust with an undertone of fear. Growing up, I knew absolutely no fear. With seven dads, the Devil as a father figure and the Mob as extended family, there wasn’t much I had to fear. I could list them on one hand; Hope getting injured, jumping out of the oak tree in my backyard, and squirrels. I hated squirrels.

  But when my parents talked about Uriel, it was like my heart did a small record scratch at his name, every single time. The Archangel Uriel became the boogeyman under my bed.

  I’d grown out of it now. How dangerous could an Archangel be? There were rules that were pretty strictly enforced. It’s why Gus fell in the first place.

  “You are right to fear him, Estrella,” Gus said, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “You can’t read my thoughts.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

  Gus laughed, his smile lighting up the room. Damn he was pretty, but I wasn’t interested in him like that. “No, but your face is comically easy to read at times.” He folded his paper in half and rested it on the table beside him.

  “Luc asked me to watch Uriel some time ago now, and I can tell you that he is not an angel you want to cross.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Actually, I wouldn’t go pissing off any angels, but least of all Uriel. He is pretty rigid in his enactment of God's law and it gives him a lot of moral leeway. Consider him very Old Testament.”

  Romanus growled his agreement. “What was he doing at a slave auction anyway? The laws aren’t that flexible, I know that much. Somehow, I don’t think he was there to smite all the wrongdoers.”

  Gusion shook his head sadly. “No. He wasn’t. He wasn’t there to buy anyone either. I can’t work out what he’s up to exactly, but I know that morally, it is wrong, even if he isn’t breaking any laws. That’s just the kind of angel Uriel is. He is poisoned with cruelty, thinly disguised as salvation.”

  We ate in silence as we thought over Gusion’s words. If he wasn’t at the auction to buy a slave, what the hell was he doing there? Could it be possible we were all on the same side?

  A fork stabbed a piece of waffle off of my plate and held it to my lips. I looked over at Rouen, who was eyeing me expectantly. “You aren’t eating. And I can feel your hunger.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and took the offered piece of food. These guys took the hunter/gatherer thing to a whole new ridiculous level.

  I suddenly remembered something. “Charlie, the invitation had the word Tenebrae written in UV ink as some kind of security measure. Can you look into what it means? Also, see if we can’t hack one of the SWAT guys body-cams. I saw a lot of familiar faces last night, and I wouldn’t mind having a list for a later date.”

  Gus laughed. “When you're done, give the list to Ace. She’d like to pay them all a personal visit to express her disappointment in their choice of purchases.”

  I knew what that meant. I’d definitely gotten my avenging streak from Ace. She may be Fallen, but she was still an adamant crusader for the weak and vulnerable. I smiled.

  “Happily.” Not even Charlie had a problem with that.

  Charlie was eating toast as he typed away furiously on his computer. “Huh, Tenebrae means rising darkness.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s a little cliché, don't you think?” They looked at me expectantly. “Seriously? The aid foundation is named Shine, and the shady sub branch
literally translates to Darkness. That's a little on the nose, even for me.”

  Charlie just shrugged, shaking his head a little and went back to his computer. I stuffed the remainder of my waffle into my mouth. I had a hot date with a warm bed. I was done.

  Something poked my cheek. I groaned and rolled over.

  “Rella, wake up.” Hands shook my shoulders, but I swatted them away.

  “I'm sleeping, so unless you want to get naked and sleep too, go away.”

  A husky laugh that I recognized as Naz’s rippled through the air. “I wish, sweetheart, but we gotta go. We’ve been made.”

  I was out of bed and on my feet in an instant, the blood rushing away from my brain making me woozy. Naz steadied me.

  “What?”

  “Charlie’s dot bots picked up Interpol surrounding the building.”

  “We were cleared. Are they here for you?” I said as I jammed stuff in my backpack, dragging on my clothes quickly.

  “I don't think they are here officially.” Naz’s voice was sharp, and I stared at the flinty look on his face.

  “You think Shine, or Tenebrae or whoever it is, has Interpol on their payroll?”

  Naz shrugged. “It would explain a lot of things.”

  I strapped my swords to my back, and threw a jacket over the top to hide their bulk. “I thought it was Interpol that raided the auction last night. Why would they do that and then try and track us down today?” I walked into the living room, to see everyone was packed. Gusion was gone.

  “Last night was private mercs hired by Ace, in conjunction with local cops. When Charlie hacked into the police files, he found all the body-cam footage wiped, and apparently, Interpol has had control of your sister’s case all along.”

  My brain whirled as I tried to take all this in at once. We left the room, walking quickly to emergency stairwell.

  “Up,” Romanus ordered. I could feel the intensity of his eyes on the back of my head. “We’ll jump across and leave through the next building over.”