Michael reached across the body and grabbed Gabriél’s shoulder. “Tell me.”
“Outside, they looked like Darklings…until you stabbed them, then, like a snake shedding its outer skin, the Darkling flew away, leaving a dead human.”
Michael’s hand dropped from Gabriél’s shoulder.
“About one hundred humans died in seconds. Once our army realized what their actions had caused, they dropped their swords. The remaining Darklings slaughtered them. Four hundred angels died today. Those that took human life and those that sought to retrieve their bodies too soon. I sounded the retreat, but not soon enough.”
That answered why the carnage happened, now he needed the how. How was it possible for Darklings to be inside of humans? The dead inside of the living.
Michael rose and tipped his head to Heaven. “Cry no more, my warriors. Tonight, we have suffered a great loss, however, our dead did not die in vain. We will forever honor their sacrifice on this hallowed ground where they died defending humanity.”
Grass began growing, along with trees, and flowers of every description. Watered by the crystalline essence of angels, the flat plains would soon be a jungle. “Collect our dead and call forth the comfort angels to return the humans to their families. At least they will have something to bury.”
Michael spread his wings, prepared to take flight, when Gabriél grabbed his forearm. “What are your orders to the army, Michael?”
What army? Tonight, what was left of the army had been neutered like a knife to the balls of a dog. “After the bodies are collected, drain this field of the essence of our dead warriors. I want nothing except scorched earth remaining. Afterward, a full retreat. The rest of the army are forbidden from engaging any Darkling until further notice.”
Gabriél shook his head and his lips peeled back in a grotesque mockery of a smile. “No. Instead, I shall tell them we have lost the war to the Darkling horde. Thanks to the Heavenly Host, their Demoni overlords are still locked in Hell, though I suspect not for much longer.” He released Michael and opened his speckled brown and white wings. “I will personally gather their essence and return it to the Heavenly Host,” he promised and took to the sky. On the horizon, thousands of comfort angels appeared.
“Brethren!” Gabriél shouted. “Gather our dead and return home. We leave this place of death and defeat.”
Michael stayed earthbound and watched as every angel and every human was lifted from the field and carried away. Only then did he ascend to the heavens. He stopped at the threshold to the Throne. There, his armor and blade vanished and his skin and bones shed, transforming him to his natural state of light. In this sacred place, he wasn’t an archangel. He was a seraph, a sacred guard to the Throne of God.
But Michael was angry and confused, among the many other emotions he had little experience with. Those emotions burned within him and ignited a blaze that consumed his light. He stepped to the throne afire. The other seraphs didn’t move from the stations around the room, though he felt the speculation as he approached the plain wooden chair in the center. With absolute humility, Michael dropped to his knees and prostrate himself on the cool marble floor and asked one question. “Why?”
Whether it took one second or one million years, with that one question asked, he was duty bound to wait for his answer.
21
At his post in the executive board room, Taige kept his features neutral and his stance relaxed—the complete opposite of his churning insides. His Darklings hadn’t returned from their reconnaissance mission. The three had specific instructions: Go to the farm. Canvas the area. Kill no one. Return to Vegas. How fucking hard was it to follow orders? Those brainless bottom feeders. Somehow merging the Darklings with humans had further reduced their collective IQs to minus twenty.
He had to know what happened to them. Were they dead by some random act of fate or did they meet a violent end? Not that he cared either way about how they died. He cared about them meeting the end at the farm, and if that were the case, who killed them? Michael? Another angel? Another demon? Something unknown? He had to get there. That meant he had to get away from his Demoni Lord. Not easy when every second of his day was spent catering to his lord’s needs. At best, he’d grasp a few precious moments of privacy to implement his plans.
A phone rang. Someone had broken one of many cardinal rules. No electronics present that Malphas did not control. He couldn’t risk a picture at an inopportune moment. At times, Malphas’s personal control was thin enough for him to lose form. The last thing he needed was that image on social media. Ignorance truly was bliss until all the Demoni Lords were free and the need for secrecy had ended. More importantly, it was an issue of control. As with all lords, they had to dominate in every arena. In Hell, the lords mixed as well as oil and vinegar. They kept to their own areas, letting their minions do their fighting since not one of the four could beat the other, and they refused to form allegiances. That would have to change when Taige freed them.
An underling of the CFO reached into his suit pocket and fumbled with the device. Malphas paused his speech to the board of directors of his latest acquisition and angled his head a fraction toward Taige.
Taige moved from his position as the unfortunate man dropped his phone. The device skidded across the carpet to lodge under his boss’s seat. By the time he retrieved it and blubbered out an apology, Taige had gathered the man’s notes from the table and had him by the collar, leading him out of the room.
“I’m sorry. I forgot it was in my pocket. It’s my wife. My daughter has been s—”
“What is your position here?” Taige interrupted.
“I’m assistant to Mr. Williams, the CFO of the—”
“You’re fired.” Taige signaled to an armed guard. “Escort him to his office, allow him to collect his personal items, make sure to take his ID, then escort him off the premises.” Taige angled away as the man sputtered. He didn’t return to his position in the boardroom, because his phone vibrated in his pocket.
He crossed the hall and stepped into the stairwell. Only then did he reach inside his pocket and glance at the message on the screen. A set of longitude and latitude coordinates from Aiden. Taige pulled the energy out of the air around him to form a pocket dimension. He stepped into the small, glowing sphere and exited in Africa on the eastern slope of Kilimanjaro, next to Aiden, a fellow Spaun. In all the millennia spent in Hell, they had never cared for each other. Belonging to different lords would do that, but their mutual cause brought unity where none had existed.
“Do you see, Taige?” Aiden pointed to the tropical forest spread out before them.
Taige didn’t need to see when his nostrils were filled with the scents of dead angels floating on the evening air. The floral abundance was further proof on the once dry plains. “What happened here?”
“What we discussed worked.” Aiden slapped Taige’s shoulder and ran down the slope to frolic amongst the greenery. Arms open wide, the fool spun, fell back, and let the lush foliage cushion his body.
Confused, Taige joined him in the foliage and dragged the Spaun to his feet. “Refresh my memory, what did we discuss?” The last time they’d met was over three years ago.
Aiden took Taige by the shoulders. The absolute glee on his face was a contradiction to the rows of sharp teeth showing through his shifting façade. “I built the army of Darklings inside the humans. Like we planned. Then flipped the spell and let the Darklings out to hide the humans. The subterfuge worked. The Celestial Army killed those whom they were to protect, thus killing themselves. I am brilliant.”
“We planned this action for a future date yet to be determined.”
Aiden shook his head. “That date has come and gone. I started building for the future we planned immediately. Good thing, too. When you told me about finding the Cruor, I knew the time to act had come.”
Not sure whether to be excited or panicked, Taige said, “What exactly did you do?”
“I lured the Cele
stial Army here, lined the battle with humans shrouded by the Darklings inhabiting them. The angels saw their enemy, not those they were sent to protect. Their first wave fell on the Darklings, slaughtering them like sheep, until the shroud lifted and red blood, not ash, soaked the field. They fell to their knees and the rest of my army swept in for the kill.”
Taige was stunned. The victory was… “Did you kill them all? Is the destruction of the Celestial Army complete?”
Aiden shrugged. “Some still live. Not enough to make a difference. They’ve just finished collecting their dead and the human remains. Saw Michael and Gabriél. They had no idea I was here, hidden in a pocket, watching them mourn. Oh, it was a glorious sight and all because of me!” Confidence oozed from the Spaun.
“They will be back,” Taige said. “If there is one angel left, he or she will fight.”
Aiden took Taige by his shoulders. “The retreat horn sounded. You know what that means.” Façade completely gone, Aiden’s grin encompassed his entire face. He shook Taige hard, demanding he join his excitement.
Finally, Taige did. His façade sloughed off and he joined his fellow Spaun in the merriment. They fell to the ground and ripped out the foliage, the flowers, the trees, symbolically killing the angels all over again. The Celestial Army had never retreated, because they’d never been defeated. Until now. The playing field had irrevocably changed in their favor. The time of the Spaun and Demoni Lords had come. He just had to get Malphas out of the way.
Taige stretched his hand out over the field, a sense of urgency building within him. “We need to find a way to collect their spilled grace. This much essence should be enough to open the portal to Hell.”
“I thought only the essence of an archangel could close and open the portal.” Aiden questioned.
Taige’s gaze widened to encompass the width and length of the newly formed tropical forest. “So many angels died here. The odds are in our favor that one of them had to be an archangel.”
Aiden clapped with glee and jumped to his feet. Suddenly, he dropped back down on top of Taige. “Tell me.” Aiden pressed their misshapen foreheads together. “Tell me you have the Cruor.”
Before Taige could answer, the ground shifted beneath their feet in a great, heaving wave. The earth shuddered. To human eyes, it would’ve appeared as if a billion fireflies had taken flight in the daylight. Taige saw the event as it truly was. The spilled grace of the slaughtered angels was returning home. Streams of grace separated from the dirt, grass, flowers, and trees, and raced into the blue sky.
“No!” Taige shouted. Enraged, he tossed Aiden aside when he tried to silence his bellow. “So close! So, close. I won’t be denied. Not this time. I refuse! Do you hear me? I will not be thwarted!” he shouted to the sky.
Aiden erected a dimensional pocket around them, cutting off sight of their defeat. “All is not lost. I will collect what I can without being killed. Now be quick and tell me you have the Cruor.”
“I don’t,” Taige snapped. “But I will soon. I, too, have a plan in the works.”
Aiden opened his mouth, no doubt to demand an explanation.
“There’s no time. I have to return or face scrutiny, scrutiny we don’t want. Collect what you can. Hurry.” Taige exited the pocket dimension and formed another before detection. He returned to the board room in time to meet his master at the entrance glaring at him. Taige swallowed his ire and plastered a smile on his face. In this job, kissing ass was second nature and he was very good at it. He’d do what he had to get back to the farm.
22
“Bring me this watered down shit again and I’ll break every bone in your body.” Bane held the quaking bartender by the throat. The man shook so much he probably registered on the Richter scale.
“Release him, Bane. Remember the rule about unwanted attention.” Scarla grabbed the hand choking the man.
Bane dropped the bartender back onto his feet and waited as Scarla shoved a Benjamin into his bartender’s palm. “Balkan Vodka, Charlie. Bring the bottle and two glasses.”
The moment Charlie was on his way, Scarla propped her ass on the stool next to Bane. “Spill it.”
Bane gritted his teeth. He came to the underground fight club seeking liquor and a brawl. Not a lecture. If Scarla knew what was good for her, she’d leave him alone. “I thought you stopped coming here.”
“Just because I don’t fight anymore, doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch. Now, stop ignoring the question and spit it out.”
Bane answered her with a glacial stare.
“Don’t want to share? Then let’s play ‘I Bet You,” she said as Charlie came back with an open bottle of Balkan, one of the strongest liquors on the planet, and two glasses. She poured two fingers of liquor into the glasses and passed Bane one.
He downed it without waiting, earning an elbow to his ribs. Scarla refilled his glass and glared at him, all sorts of threats in her champagne colored eyes. He didn’t want to play this stupid game, but he didn’t have the energy to fend her off. Maybe it was the liquor stoking a fire in his belly. It wasn’t because he actually wanted her help.
“The rules of the game are, if I guess correctly, you get a drink. If I’m wrong, then I get a drink.” She saluted him, then said in a singsong voice, “Let us begin. I bet you’re here in a fucked up mood because you have girl problems.”
He was thirsty, that’s why he took a sip and ignored the smirk on her face.
“I bet you really like her and that’s pissing you off.”
It wasn’t that simple. He’d left her hours ago. Hours. Ago. How do you explain abandoning a woman moments after screwing her, because he didn’t want what she made him feel? He didn’t have time for it. He took another sip of his drink and struggled to force it down.
Scarla leaned back and crossed her legs. “I bet you don’t want to like her, but she’s under your skin.”
He drained the glass and held it out for a refill. She obliged and topped it off.
She tapped her chin with a manicured finger. “I bet…you thought you would hit a homerun and now you’re stuck on first base.”
Bane handed Scarla her drink. “Sip. You’re only half UnHallowed and it packs a punch.”
She gave him a lopsided smirk full of attitude and took a tiny sip. “You scored?” She slapped his chest. “I bet she rocked your world and that’s why you’re here with me and not with Amaya. Am I correct? It’s Amaya we’re talking about? Not some random chick you picked up?”
He hated that she was right; Amaya did more than rock his world. She irrevocably altered it, and not for the better. She gave him what he wanted after she’d taken everything away. It wasn’t her fault he killed three humans. He accepted her innocence, but her innocence didn’t change the fact that Michael would end Bane’s existence the moment he discovered his crime.
Scarla nudged him. “Hey, talk to me. I may be able to help, and if not, my ears work.”
Women and their need to talk. “Amaya is—”
“Special. I know. I’m not ashamed to say she almost kicked my ass. She could use some hand to hand training, then I may have to watch my back. Anything you want to tell me about her?”
“No.” He’d bet his immortality she didn’t want to hear how soft Amaya’s skin was, or how delicious she tasted on his tongue. How her silky flesh responded to his touch. How he couldn’t get her out of his damn mind.
“It’s obvious she’s not strictly human.” She used air quotes. “I’m not the only one wondering who the daddy is, Bane.”
They’re gonna wonder a long time. UnHallowed didn’t have gold eyes. Another secret he had to keep from everyone. He eyed Scarla without comment.
“I bet you it’s Tahariél, that horny bastard. If he kept a secret love child, one of you will hold him down while I neuter him.” She sipped her drink. “He’s not my father, right?” she whispered. “I know I’ve asked this before, humor me.”
They’d been down this crooked street already. “Riél is
not your father. Neither am I, nor Daghony, Kushiél, or Chayyliél.”
“Then who?”
He had an idea, but he wouldn’t tease or torture her. And he wouldn’t correct her assumption about Amaya being half UnHallowed.
She sighed. “I bet you’re going to screw everything up with Amaya.”
He downed the Balkan and grabbed the bottle.
“You’ve already screwed up, haven’t you?”
He took a large swallow.
“Uggh, Bane!”
“Why do you care?” he snapped.
“I don’t care about her. I care about you, idiot.” She punched his ribs. “I bet you want to fix whatever you’ve fucked up.”
He didn’t take a drink.
She shifted in her seat and completely faced him. “Why? If you like her then…” Her lips thinned and her brow furrowed with a deep frown. “Look, if she makes you happy, go for it. I’m tired of being surrounded by bachelors. Not that I’m saying I like her. I don’t know her well enough to hate her...yet.”
“It’s not that—”
“Simple? Whatevs.” She waved him away. “I swear I’m gonna put the lot of you on Tinder.”
He had no idea what Tinder was and didn’t want to know. “I have to let her go, Scarla.”
She poked him hard in the center of his chest. “You know what? You think you must let her go because you don’t want to try. For all your UnHallowedness, you’re a coward. And I bet you if I find someone I like as much as you like Amaya, I’m not going to fuck it up.”
A cheer went up from the crowd and they both turned to peer through the throng comprised mostly of men, older ones in suits with open collars, younger ones in jeans and Timberlands. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic. A few females hung close to their men, while a few more worked the room hunting for customers. In the middle, stood a circular caged ring. Another cheer went up. Another scream mingled with the glee of the crowd.
Only One I Want (UnHallowed Series Book 2) Page 12
