Broken Halo: Fallen Angels Trilogy, Book One

by Marcel, Zoey

  It was a very good thing Nimbus wasn't here, or she would have given him her very soul. Once the haze cleared she would be capable of sanity and reason again, but in this renewing afterglow she could think of nothing but complete oneness with him, the consequences be damned. In this moment, she could understand him. She now comprehended another type of love. The dark, possessive love he once spoke of, one that pursued its desire regardless of the repercussions.

  She sighed with fulfillment, nearly jumping with a start when she saw someone waltz around the corner. It was Jude's other slave, Hope. She wore rags and her hair had grown in enough that the short, tangled strands flopped in her eyes. It looked untamed and frizzy, framing the dirt streaked across her pale face.

  “Hope,” was all Sonya could say.

  “Hope? Hope.” There was an absent look in her hazel eyes. She saw Sonya, but seemed to be seeing into another dimension, or a distant memory of happier times, “I saw hope once. It was in the soft, fragrant pink and white blooms of spring, the sweet, powdery essence of innocence - flowers.”

  Sonya felt a chill when Hope giggled while she stared off into space and traced the wooden surface of a nearby table. Pity and evil were at play here.

  “I used to wear a crown of daisies in my hair...like a halo of innocence. Did you ever wear a halo, angel?”

  Sonya had goose-bumps on her arms. She wasn't aware Hope knew what she once was. Angels didn't wear halos as mankind often depicted in art, but the symbolism she referred to was unmistakable. “No.”

  “Flowers,” Hope whispered. Her eyes darkened and her smile became cynical, “But then the winter came, not for me, though. I died of thirst in the drought of summer. The heat of cruelty burned me to ashes. Hope died.”

  Sonya couldn't tell if she had lost her mind, or was now incredibly enlightened by her dire circumstances.

  “But you survived the heat of summer,” Hope continued. “It wasn't the merciless heat that brought you down; it was the fires of ecstasy. Then the changes of autumn came, but you didn't see the cold, darkness of winter coming. How could you when you were so distracted by the pretty colors of change? The colors they wanted you to see.”

  She felt shivers slithering up and down her spine like serpents of fear.

  Hope smiled wickedly, but there was bitterness in her countenance. “You would have noticed winter had it struck right away back in the spring. You would have fought the darkness that accompanies the dead of winter, but they knew this; thus the seasons of subtlety were sent first to disarm you. Even now that the sun has set and the cold nights have begun, you see only the snowflakes. You dance in the snow while the life has been raped from every living thing. Those strong enough to survive go into hibernation, sleeping until the return of spring. But little do they know their slumber is an eternal one. No more than you can see past the snowy landscape into the frigid darkness ensnaring you. Spring will never come again. Hope is dead.”

  Tears pricked Sonya's eyes at her words. Advice came too late. The mocking word scrawled across Hope's forehead was the opposite of what was written in her haunted hazel eyes. The light was gone from them, but this wasn't an evil darkness, it was a tormented one. Her innocence and sanity were gone, yet her insight into Sonya's downfall was a remarkable one.

  “No more flowers or birds singing,” Hope walked so lightly she practically floated toward her. “No warm sunshine or new beginnings.”

  “I'm so sorry they did this to you.”

  “They? But they didn't. Hope wasn't killed by demons; she was killed by an angel. The sky wasn't darkened by evil, it was darkened by love.” Hope's expression turned hostile while her voice sounded calm and sweet, “Two women and one angel left to defend the children against a band of vampires and demons. The angel was injured and the two women murdered. There at the gates of hell they stood. They were given a choice.”

  Sonya's scalp crawled with horror when it hit her. She struggled when Hope lifted her dress and touched her mound, but she grabbed Sonya's wrists and held her still. She seemed stronger than Sonya recalled her being.

  “You must hear, Sonya. You must know how Hope died.” Hope massaged her clit slowly, smiling when she flinched, “They were presented with a choice: to be tormented in the underworld, or to become the slaves of demons on the earth. They chose the lesser of two evils, knowing that their final destination would be the same. One wonders sometimes whether or not these women would have survived the attack on the orphanage if a second angel had been present guarding them. Perhaps she might have helped ward them off, or dissuaded the fiends from initiating such an attack in the first place.”

  Sonya wept and tried to free herself from Hope's grip, cursing how sensitized and vulnerable her tiny bud was in lieu of the prior stimulation there. “Hope, I'm so sorry.”

  “Hope is cake. There is no cake. I am dead.”

  “Please let me go. I want to comfort you.”

  “Do you have cake?”

  “I...no, but I can bake you one if you like. Please stop touching me like that.”

  Her grin was ruthless. “I thought this was what you wanted, angel. You gave up heaven for pleasure. If it had been me, I would have given up sex for an eternity of light and cake, but we always want what we can't have, don't we?”

  What was this obsession of hers with cake? Sonya tensed and struggled as her body was led toward the finale she dreaded. “Please stop. I don't want to -”

  “Finish? But you did before,” Hope sneered. “What changed? Now you see the cost of unbridled passion. I want you to finish. I want you to look into my eyes and take your damned pleasure, knowing what it cost. I want you to come the way I do, knowing hope is dead. Even with your eyes opened I want you to see darkness.”

  Sonya stifled her sounds as her body was delivered over to abandon. Her womb shuddered as she had shivered earlier in horror at the sight of a destroyed version of Hope. The spasms in her pussy evoked wetness in the region to match her saturated eyes.

  Hope smiled. Her hazel eyes were vicious. “I see your pleasure, but it doesn't touch me. You on the other hand, cannot see my suffering and escape untouched. My face will haunt you when you close your eyes to take your pleasure.”

  Sonya kneed Hope to push her away so she could free her hands and reach out to the victim. Hope hissed at her and reached into a drawer for a knife. “Hope, I'm sorry. Put that away.”

  “Hope is dead! You killed her and now death is coming for you!” Hope yelled and ran at her.

  Sonya screamed and bolted away as fast as she could. The woman snarling like a beast behind her seemed more animal than human. She was knocked to the ground and tried to keep the dagger at bay whilst Hope held it over her.

  “You shall go to the abyss before me!” she yelled. She shrieked when she was yanked up from behind and the knife was forced from her.

  Jude handed her over to a maid. “I told you to keep the bitch locked away.”

  “I wanted to take her out so she could stretch. I'm sorry, sir.”

  “Lock her away and see that it doesn't happen again.” Jude turned to Sonya, “Were you harmed?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Glad to hear it. The broad is a menace.” He walked off as though the disturbance had been a minor nuisance rather than a lunatic crying out for freedom and justice.

  Sonya stole away and fell to her knees bawling. Hope was only a shell of the woman she had been, but there was no longer any light in her. Hope was gone and she was responsible.

  ***

  Nimbus was burning incense in the temple when the earthquake struck. There was only one reason such powerful tremors would occur in the underworld. The first and last time this had happened a succubus had been drawn to a man who turned out to be a messenger angel in disguise. Tzuriel resisted Delilah's wiles, which irked her. She laid a trap for him and eventually caught him and dragged him down to the underworld. They barely made it past the gate when he regained consciousness and pummeled the asses of
the two guards.

  The entire duration of the brawl, the earth around them rumbled and shook, jostling its inhabitants below. The people above were unaffected; it was a tremor targeted directly at the kingdom of darkness. The angel escaped and laws were laid down that no holy thing should ever enter the underworld as the ground trembled from the sacrilegious union of the holy in a place of darkness.

  That was back in the age of the Roman Empire and now this earthquake seemed twice as fierce. Sonya was human, so Nimbus knew that wasn't the reason. The magnitude of this one when no angel or sacred artifacts were present seemed to suggest that someone was offering a prayer to God, or quoting scripture. It didn't take a genius to figure out whom that someone was.

  He found Sonya being beaten by a chaos demon in his true form. She looked scared out of her wits and while she struggled, her defensive reflexes were more to keep the beast at bay than to actually delve him any harm. Nimbus pulled the brute off before he did her any serious damage.

  “She was making holy utterances!”

  He slammed the creature up against the wall. “I will take care of it.”

  “She should be killed! What is a believer doing down here?”

  “She is not a believer. That is Sonya.”

  “The fallen angel turned human?” The demon shifted back into his human counterpart, “Why have you not killed her?”

  “I have other plans for her.”

  “She is not even dead. Unless you kill her or claim her, a person with that much light in them has no business down here.”

  “What I do with my property is none of your bloody business.”

  “She has too much hope in her; too much goodness. You must destroy it, or they will demand you kill her.” The demon left in a huff.

  Nimbus sighed, knowing he was right. Sonya seemed distressed about something, but it wasn't enough. She had enough hope in her to stave off despair. And apparently enough of a soul still left inside of her that God heard her prayer and the earth shook in fear because of the sacred offering of an answered prayer being uttered in the most lawless of places. What had she prayed for?

  It was no longer enough to subdue her body and will; he needed her soul. He must break her spirit so she would taste of despair and hopelessness and do anything to relieve them. With the entire underworld soon to be outraged at her audacity once they learned of what she had done, she would need a protector, a hero. They would demand her death, or that she be offered as a sacrifice and he would provide her a way out. He hoped she possessed the good sense to take it.

  His heart felt heavy and his body tense with rage and jealousy as he led her into a dungeon and stripped her. He shackled her to a pole with her back to him and cracked the whip against the stone floor so she would know what was coming. The loud echo ricocheting off the solid walls sounded ominous even to him.

  Anger surged through him when he sensed a communion of sorts. She was praying silently again. The cries of the dead were one thing. They were damned so their pleas were of no consequence, but Sonya was very much living and as long as she was there was still hope. As long as she had hope she was unreachable to him. He delved her a mean blow with the whip as a penalty for her treachery.

  “Stop doing that!” he yelled.

  She screamed when the punishing instrument made contact with her back. He didn't strike her hard enough to draw blood, but it left a nasty mark on her lovely skin. She wouldn't scar permanently from this flogging, he would see to that. Her skin was too flawless to be marred irreversibly by such marks of brutality, but if she didn't stop crying out to God, he would see to it that she bled from this encounter.

  “What happened to her?” Her voice was as shaky as her trembling body. She was scared and possibly in shock from the force of the blow.

  “Who?”

  “Hope. She is so altered. What did they do to her?”

  “Her mind was weak. She broke under the torture.”

  Sonya shivered. “What torture?”

  She shrieked when he struck her again, this time on her rump. It bloomed a vibrant shade of pink like a rose in summer. Except this rose had a thorn that existed in the tantalizing welt that was conceived by his power. Nimbus grazed his fingers over the mark, smiling when she winced. The tenderness seemed to surprise her and the gentle touch hurt her sensitized flesh. Good. The conflicting marriage of his mercy and cruelty would confuse her torn heart and likely break her spirit. Either the excruciating pain would get to her, or her feelings for him in spite of the torment would draw the truth from her.

  “She and Less had the nerve to run away from their master. They were restored to him and Jude executed the justice she deserved,” Nimbus said, backing away a couple of steps in preparation for another strike should she get snippy with him.

  “You mean he tortured her.”

  “Precisely.” He moved her hair to the side and kissed her neck.

  Sonya's eyes closed and her breath hitched. She tried to fight what she felt. Tried to return to the light, but she kept looking back at him standing in the shadows. She tried to lure him out, but it was a lost cause. She would never save him from the darkness, but her heart couldn't accept this. It was the reason she fell originally and it was the reason she would fall eternally.

  “What did he do to her?” she prodded.

  “Is your imagination so shallow?” Nimbus cracked the whip against her other butt cheek, experiencing chills of excitement when she screamed at the way it gnashed at her hip. There was so little skin over the hipbone. How she was suffering. He felt his eyes changing shape and color when he saw the red seeping steadily from the gash. It trickled slowly down her thigh like a tear of despair. He must dry her tears.

  She cringed when he knelt and applied his tongue to the wound. “Oh, please! Just beat me if you are so inclined. Why must you touch me?”

  He grinned, allowing his tongue to fork and make love to her bleeding flesh. “Do you not desire mercy, angel?”

  Sonya gasped, likely astonished that he called her an angel. “You are not merciful. You are one of them. You probably tormented her too.”

  “I did not have that pleasure,” he said coldly.

  Her voice sounded whiny and broken like she would burst into tears. “Pleasure? Does human suffering please you?”

  “It does, although human passion pleases me more. I cannot change what I am, nor shall I apologize for it. I would that you should esteem yourself with the same regard.”

  “How can I be true to myself when you constantly seek to change me?”

  “I do not wish to change you, merely to bring the truth of your nature to light.” He circled her so she could see him walking nonchalantly with the weapon, “You bind yourself to laws and regulations that leave you feeling oppressed and smothered. You -”

  “I do not. I want to be good.”

  “Do not interrupt!” Nimbus slashed the whip against her thighs, tearing the skin.

  Sonya let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her body shuddered and sweated as her full chest heaved against the pole she was chained to. She gave a tiny screech of frustration and he delved her a punishing blow to her fanny. She cried out in misery, giving herself over to the silence and complacency he required of her.

  “You do as I say and you are whatever I say you are. In your endeavor to cling to truth, you have closed your eyes to it. Open them, Sonya. See yourself as you truly are – an agent of darkness, a minion of depravity.”

  “No.” She wept.

  “Yes!” He hissed, reinforcing his point with the whip.

  “Oh god!” She sobbed.

  “He cannot save you when you willfully choose to be damned. That is the beauty of the entire situation for me. This was all your choice. How intolerable that must be for you to hear.” He flogged her again, taking care when he struck her back not to be as rough or indiscriminate as he had her rear and thighs. Being human, he didn't want to damage any of her vital organs, merely punish her for treason and break her belligerent s
pirit.

  “Please don't say that,” she pleaded, “I'm so sorry for what I have done.”

  Nimbus burned with anger. That was the last thing he wanted to hear – that in her heart she had repented of her transgressions – that she regretted being with him. He cracked the whip violently against the protective shell that barricaded the soul he was trying so hard to reach. The one she had sold, but somehow still clung to. She would lose it and surrender it to him.

  Sonya wailed with a bone-chilling suffering he had heard many times when passing through the dungeons here. Her tears were understandable. Even men had pleaded for mercy when faced with unbridled brutality. She gave him her blood and her misery, but withheld the thing he wanted most. She was afraid of losing her soul, but she must or the underworld would seek her execution.

  “Why don't you just kill me already?”

  Her words cut him and he retaliated with a biting slash to her body. She cried out as his heart cried out. The drop of blood rolled slowly down her skin like the tears his bleeding heart shed. The barrier between them must be as frustrating for her as it was for him.

  “Is that what you want - to burn in the lake of fire? Is eternal suffering in the abyss a more desirable fate than a lifetime with me?” he growled.

  Sonya was bawling. “No. I don't want to go there, but I deserve to after what I did to Hope.”

  So it was guilt she felt. “What happened to her was not your fault. Jude altered her.”