by J. E. Taylor
CJ paused the television. “Get the children out of here.”
But Valerie’s attention didn’t waver from the picture of her son.
“Val!” CJ snapped.
Her gaze jumped to his and then what he said sank in. She ushered her girls and April outside, but before April stepped out the door, she cast a worried glance between me and the television.
Michael stood frozen in the kitchen with a drink in his hand. His face lost all color, and he, too, stared at the frozen picture of Alex and his brother’s nearly unconscious form. The glass in his hand cracked.
“Take Alexis outside,” he said in a low, strained voice.
Kylee didn’t argue with his commanding tone. Personally, I wouldn’t have either. She grabbed her daughter out of the highchair and ushered her outside with the rest of the family.
CJ glanced at me. “This might not be appropriate for you either.”
“I need to take him down. Remember?” As much as I would have liked to disappear and not see what my father had done to Alex, I needed to understand the depths of horror he was capable of. Even though in my mind, I already knew. The fact he took the time to record it and send it to a news channel was seriously messed up.
CJ closed his eyes, and I actually felt the mental steel erect in his mind and around his heart. He exhaled through pursed lips and pressed play just before he opened his eyes.
Lucifer in Alex’s form smiled for the camera. “You think my grandfather was warped, welcome to the new and improved circus of true depravity. Oh, and be sure to ask my father what we are when you see him.” Then his fingernails dug into Gabriel’s chest.
Gabriel screamed, and someone laughed in the background.
The snapping of bone followed, and the rest of Lucifer’s hand punched through Gabriel’s chest.
When Lucifer yanked Gabriel’s heart free, Gabriel’s eyes widened. His mind registered what he was seeing before his face turned ashen and his eyes rolled, showing only whites. His body sagged even more in the chains as all his muscles gave at once.
A crazy cackling continued beyond the camera.
Blood dripped down Alex’s arm, and he took a slow whiff of the beating muscle in his hand for his rapt audience. The smile that followed chilled me to the core.
And then the bastard took a bite out of the heart.
I could see thousands of people getting sick all over their living room floors. Hell, I knew what eating a human heart was like. My stomach twisted, and I put the back of my hand to my lips to keep it in check.
Lucifer closed his eyes as if he were eating a rare delicacy. He savored each bite until it was gone. A glow started around him as he swallowed the last bit but faded almost immediately. When he opened his eyes, they shimmered a golden color before settling back to Alex’s normal blue. He licked the blood from his fingers slowly for the benefit of the camera.
It was gruesome and deliberate. And the grin that followed nearly had me launching for the bathroom.
I controlled the roll of my stomach and swallowed the bile, unable to look away from Alex. I knew it was Lucifer doing these things, but seeing Alex’s face made the hurt in the center of my soul flare.
I had no choice but to bury the knife into the bastard’s heart.
Michael dropped his glass into the garbage and turned, heading outside without a word. Seeing his own brother’s death numbed him. I glanced over the back of the couch and watched through the window. He sat down in the swing and just looked out at the lake with an expression that showed none of the turmoil inside him.
CJ still stared at the television, watching the newscaster speculate. The banner stated that the Ryan family couldn’t be reached for comment and showed the abandoned home in Maine through the gates. His hands clamped tighter on the armrests, making them creak.
It was all too much to cope with. I didn’t want to hear what the newscasters were saying about Alex Ryan. They likened him to his namesake, and I could almost see the steam rising from CJ’s head. A red hue coated his skin, and I knew there was a slow simmering fury underneath his calm exterior. It blazed in his eyes.
I was done with the drivel for today, and the television blinked off. CJ turned his sharp glare at me, but said nothing. He could have easily overridden my off command with one of his own, but he didn’t.
Lucifer had just compromised any future Alex might have had. He was hedging his bets all around.
“That leaves one,” CJ said with a growl.
I cocked my head and met his darkened gaze.
“He televised Bridget’s death, too. Beat her to a bloody pulp for the camera.”
His growling answer left me shaking.
“When?”
He pressed his lips together. “You were asleep and everyone else was at the grocery store getting supplies when I happened to turn on the television.” His hands curled into fists. “Thankfully, April wasn’t here. I don’t think she could have dealt with that kind of brutality. It was far worse to watch than what we just witnessed.”
I had a feeling April had already seen what Lucifer was capable of in her visions.
CJ’s gaze lifted to the path at the edge of the woods, and I knew where his mind was going. I was up on my feet, even before he was. I beat him out the door and sprinted to Paradise Cove. I was out of breath when I reached the moss.
“Bridget?” I gasped as CJ stepped from the woods behind me.
He just shook his head.
It took a few moments but then it sank in. Bridget wasn’t in heaven. I nearly folded over like I had been sucker punched.
“Gabe?” CJ said.
The air shimmered over the cove, and Gabriel Andreas stepped out of the mist onto the moss between me and CJ.
“Where is he?” I asked.
He glanced at me, and his lips thinned. “I don’t know where we were.”
“And your mother?” CJ asked.
He shook his head. “She was the first one he killed, because just for a moment, she got through to Grace.” He wiped his hand down his face. “That’s when he chained Grace next to his goddamned throne. Shredded her clothes and fu—” He stopped and glanced at me.
His haunted gaze stripped me of my voice. I knew what he was going to say. The boy who’d made love to me in the panic room was gone, replaced by a warped exhibitionist.
“When he finished, he stormed over to my mother, whispered some vile things in her ear, and then punched a hole in her chest with his bare hand. He ate her heart right in front of her before she exhaled her last breath.”
CJ’s eyes welled up with tears, and he bit his lower lip.
“Grace didn’t even react, and from that moment forward, anytime that bastard snapped his fingers, she would lean over the arm of his chair and spread her legs for him. She’s lost it completely.”
I closed my eyes and hung my head, collecting the shattered pieces of my heart and doing whatever I could to keep myself together. CJ put his hand on my shoulder, and the simple contact gave me an infusion of strength. Strength to handle whatever Gabe said next.
“What can you tell us about where you were?” CJ asked, his voice calmer than I expected.
“The building we were in was in rough shape. I’m talking condemned-building type of shape. The paint peeled so much it looked like fuzz on some of the walls. The space wasn’t that big, maybe the size of your family room at best, but the wall we were chained to was rough like concrete blocks or exposed brick underneath the crumbling drywall. Most of the windows were boarded up but a few were missing or splintered, so during the day it wasn’t dark.”
Leaves crunched and we all turned. Michael stared at the ghost of his brother for a moment, and then he moved across the space and nearly tackled Gabriel in a hug.
When the hug broke, Michael asked, “Mom?”
Gabriel pointed toward the sky. “With Dad.”
Michael’s numbness broke, and with it came both anger and sorrow so thick I nearly gagged on it. “And Grace?” he s
queezed out of his tight throat.
“She’s batshit crazy,” he said, not sugarcoating it at all. “Do me a favor and stay as far away as you possibly can.”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know if I can do that.” His hands curled into fists as he let the anger overwhelm the hurt. It was that crazy, fierce, brave side of the archangel’s blood that was bubbling to the surface.
“Too many have died already,” I said with a shaking voice, capturing Michael’s attention.
He pressed his lips together, and his borderline glare held a promise of charging to his death without my permission.
“He has traps everywhere, and if you get caught, he has chains that will make you helpless.” He looked at both CJ and me. “He’s preparing for an assault from both of you.”
“Is there anyone else there besides Grace?” I asked, pushing aside the brokenness inside me. Tom had said it best when he told me life wasn’t fair and I had to take the hit for the rest of the world. I was ready, and I knew, despite the rage in CJ, he still wouldn’t be able to kill his own son no matter who was possessing his body.
“I saw at least a dozen different demons. I don’t know if there are more.”
I blew air from between my lips. I wasn’t sure I could battle that many demons in a building that was basically fire tinder.
I wiped the thought from my brain and focused on Gabriel. “Is there anything else? Anything at all that you can remember that might help us find him?”
Gabriel looked down at the moss and drew his eyebrows together in concentration. “There was enough newer graffiti sprayed over the walls to make me wonder if it wasn’t as desolate as I thought. Some of the garbage laying around made me think it might have been an insane asylum at one time. I think one of the decaying pamphlets had something about mental health on it, but I’m not sure. I was pretty much delirious half the time, first from the physical beatings, then from grief, and then from lack of food.” He met my gaze. “If he hadn’t killed me when he did, I probably would have starved to death. I’d bet my body is still hanging in the chains, just like my mother’s. He left Tom and Bridget’s bodies where they had fallen, too, so the smell of decay has to be hideous.” He glanced back at the moss. “The place may have been haunted, but I’m not positive about that. I thought I saw a few ghosts, but I was pretty delusional near the end.”
CJ wiped his pale face and gave a nod. He turned and headed back towards the house. I shifted from foot to foot, unsure of whether I wanted to ask anything else or if I should follow CJ.
“What took you so long?” Gabriel asked, staring at me. His arched eyebrow announced accusation as much as his tone.
“We jumped through one of the breaches to get out of an avalanche.” I met his gaze and shrugged. “Kylee, Levi, and I had to traipse through hell to find the last open breach.”
His jaw dropped and his mouth formed a surprised O before he recovered and found his voice. “Seriously?”
“Afraid so,” Michael said. “We camped outside of the breach in Ireland until they came out.”
“I am so sorry we didn’t get here sooner, but time didn’t work the same way down there. We had no idea so much time had gone by when we finally jumped back through.” I studied the moss at my feet.
“It wasn’t your doing, Faith,” Gabriel said with a sigh. He glanced at the treetops, like admitting that had actually physically hurt him. When he finally looked at me, his expression was torn between sorrow and frustration.
“If I hadn’t caused the avalanche, we would have been home.” I met his stare. “Then you wouldn’t have been taken.” Again, it was my actions that had almost wiped out an entire family. I swallowed that bitter pill hard.
“Sweet child,” a voice from the water interrupted, and Naomi Andreas stepped onto the moss. She crossed to stand in front of me. Her warm hands descended on my shoulders.
I had an entirely new respect for her now that I had Damian’s memories, and I understood her standing by her daughter the way she had. Even though her disappointment had been visible, it had still been her daughter. Saving her was Naomi’s first instinct. Her failure to save either Gabriel or Grace reflected in her eyes, and I covered one of her hands with mine to try to ease some of her suffering.
“You know as well as I do what would have happened had you been home. None of us would have survived. Lucifer would have taken the fight to us, and you know how that would have ended.”
Her sad dark eyes reached into my soul, and I bit my lip to keep from tearing up. I shivered, thinking of April’s vision. I knew exactly how that would have turned out: the walls of CJ’s house painted with the last of the angel descendant’s blood, and my red hair draped over the kitchen table and my chest with a gaping hole where my heart had been.
I couldn’t stay here anymore.
Not with the mix of emotions thickening the air.
Michael gave me a nod as if he knew just how freaked out I was getting. I turned and left so he could have time with his mother and brother before they disappeared.
The girls were playing soccer on the front lawn when I stepped out of the woods. Valerie and Kylee sat on the dock stairs with Alexa, talking quietly. CJ wasn’t anywhere in the yard. I caught a glimpse of him through the big bay window and headed inside.
CJ had a map printed out in front of him and was placing dots on it as he looked between his computer screen and the paper.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I closed the front door behind me.
CJ looked up from his computer. “Mapping out the abandoned hospitals and asylums within reason from York that are in the same condition that I saw in that video.”
“What’s within reason?” His idea of within reason and mine could be vastly different.
“A four-to-six-hour radius.”
I would have gone up to eight hours.
He raised his gaze from the screen for a second. He didn’t even have to say it. I knew he had heard my thoughts, but he didn’t respond beyond that intense stare that made me want to study the wood grain in the floorboards.
“Why not more?”
“Bridget disappeared and then returned within the same day. So, eight hours would be pushing it.”
“Oh.” I glanced out the window at the kids playing and wished I could be a kid again just for a moment. I wanted to be carefree like they were. It was something that I’d never gotten to experience.
CJ sighed, pulling my attention back to him.
“The last time I found Lucifer in an abandoned building, it was New York City.” He wiped his face. “But I’m not sure he’d go back to the city again, although we can’t rule it out.”
“He seems to like the city. He had Naomi and Damian in an abandoned building in New York as well,” I said, remembering some of Damian’s memories I’d filtered through in the wee hours of the morning.
He nodded and jotted down the names of the locations at the bottom of the map, biting his lower lip. “There’s nothing in New England that hasn’t been converted or doesn’t have public access. He wouldn’t be somewhere that has regular foot traffic.”
I agreed with his assessment. He had to be somewhere Naomi’s and Gabriel’s screams weren’t able to be identified. Which meant a fairly remote area or deep underground, but deep underground didn’t fit with Gabriel’s description of the space.
CJ leaned back and stared at the list on the map in front of him. “We’ll go here first.” He looked up at me and tapped the one in western New York.
I glanced at where he tapped on the map and looked up at him. “We?”
“Yes. We. I am going with you. I just need to make sure Valerie has what she needs.”
I crossed my arms. This was so not a good idea. “I don’t think so. I am not going to lose another Ryan in all this. Besides, you heard Gabriel. He’s set traps.”
“Precisely.” He pointed at me. “You need me.”
It was funny how CJ could be reasonable and cocky at the same time. The
same thing that endeared me to Alex frustrated me in his father.
“No.” I reached down and ripped the list from his grip. I stared at the six names, four of which were in New York.
“We’ll go to Willard first and then loop around to Pennsylvania then track back from there.” He traced the route he had mapped out, and it made sense to me. “We might need to break overnight at our penthouse if we don’t find him before we hit Staten Island or Poughkeepsie though.”
“That’s a good plan, but you keep saying we. You need to stay here and protect them.” I pointed out the window. “Besides, I’ve got Levi, the demon-eating dog.”
“I am not a dog,” Levi grumbled from the living room floor.
I had almost forgotten Levi was still inside. I guess in our hurry to get some breathing room after Lucifer’s on-air debut, we didn’t think to let him out.
I threw my hands up in the air. “Okay, demon eating monster.” I turned back to CJ’s sharp glare. The more razor-like his look became, the more he knew I was right. “Besides, you aren’t going to be able to pull the trigger,” I mumbled under my breath.
His glare tightened. “I am going with you. Or we wait until you are strong enough to do this on your own.” He crossed his arms in a silent challenge.
I didn’t have a smart come back, so I glanced out at the kids playing in the yard as the night started creeping in.
We didn’t have the luxury of time. But we also couldn’t underestimate Lucifer. If we did, that could be a disaster.
Lucifer was picking up his game. Destroying Alex’s future seemed to be hot on his list, even though he was the one wearing the image. He no longer had anyone in his grasp beyond Grace. And all she had was time on her side, especially with Lucifer’s end game of creating an army of trinities.
The longer we took, the deeper the hole he would dig for Alex. It was his M.O., his favorite game, and he knew just as well as I did it would flush us out of the woodwork. As much as I didn’t want CJ to go with me, I couldn’t exactly turn down the help, especially since I hadn’t mastered this power searing my veins.
“Fine, but we can’t leave them unprotected.” I nodded toward everyone outside. “If you are with me, Levi stays here.”
