Gates of Death

by Rae Foxx

  A man appeared in the doorway, and almost immediately his eyes widened in shock. His tawny skin paled considerably. "Demons," he gasped. "Et abier—"

  Luc cut off his words by wrapping a strong hand around his neck. "No. You won't be cursing anyone today."

  With a gasp, Luc let go of the man's neck and shook his hand. "How?" he demanded.

  Vincent turned to run, but Michael grabbed him by the throat this time. "He's an angel!" Lucifer yelled. "Or something."

  Gabe and Michael's powers roared to life as they pulled them forward. They worked together to subdue Vincent, and Michael was soon able to let go of his neck.

  "You two do that so well," I mused. Vincent walked around the couch and sat down in front of me. He had no choice. Michael and Gabe controlled his movements now. I couldn't sense his nature to tell what kind of angel he was, but I knew he wasn't an Arch, so he was no match for my guys.

  If only I had my power. I sat on the coffee table, knee to knee with the man, and studied him.

  "I know that look," Luc whispered, but I ignored him. "Don't interfere."

  He was right. My power called to me. There was something it wanted me to know, but I didn't know how to heed it in this body. Grabbing the little sliver available to me, I prodded the mysterious angel's psyche, and it erupted in front of me.

  Had I had access to my full range of powers, I would've seen this in the hospital the second I laid eyes on him.

  "Oh, you've got a nasty aura, don't you?" I murmured.

  Reading and interpreting auras had been one of my gifts from the moment of my creation. God bestowed me with the ability to read a true nature. But it wasn't easy, especially with such limited power. The wretch said something, but his words fell on deaf ears.

  I whispered my findings as I wove my magic through his aura. It didn't want to do it, but it knew our job. Punishing the evil was our bread and butter, and there were few eviler than this Vincent.

  "He is a sadist, for sure," I mused. Squinting at his coloring, I tried to decide if the upper right corner was more gray or brown. It sort of morphed between the two. "And he likes girls." When the realization stuck in my head, I was yanked out of my trance-like state and lost the ability to read him. "Young girls." The words dripped off my tongue like vomit. Standing, I walked around the coffee table to put space between us. "He's a pedophile, and he's killed. I didn't get time to tell how much he's killed, but the browns in his aura confirmed that. He enjoys chaos and pain."

  Vincent glared at me but was unable to do anything thanks to the hold we had on him. "Let him speak," I said.

  "I have nothing to say," he snarled.

  "Okay, then. I'll speak." I bent over and looked him in the eye, keeping the coffee table between us. He couldn't hurt me, but I didn't want to be that close to something so disgusting. "Do you know who we are?"

  He nodded. His eyes darted to Luc. "You're human, though. You can't hurt me. And they're Archangels."

  Laughter bubbled up my throat. In my human body, it was easy to retain my humanity. Through all this mess, all the pain and heartache, I wanted to find my daughter, I wanted to find Raphael and get answers. But until this moment, I hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. I didn't want to punish. My eternal responsibility hadn’t seemed so vital, so real. As a human, nothing else mattered besides human trivialities. Uploading videos. Cooking dinner. Crafting a healthy marriage. I nearly laughed out loud.

  I'd forgotten who I was. As I stood in the living room of a pedophile murderer, I remembered. My soul recognized its duty. My mind flowered, the history and weight of my station enveloping me and welcoming me back.

  And then, my magic remembered. Eternal responsibility for the damnation of souls meant strong magic, nearly unparalleled. It was mine, part of me, and it wasn’t content being squashed back, unused.

  My body flooded with power, every pore expanding with the terrible magnificence of my might. It lifted me off my feet, like the first stretch after a long nap. The power flexed, and I spread my arms and let it expand as much as I could.

  But the human shell wasn't meant to hold this much. The atoms and molecules quickly became strained as the magic expanded them to their max. I quickly created a barrier between the power coursing through my soul and the physical encasement of my human persona. When it was in place, seconds later, I landed gracefully on the carpet. The awesome feeling of might had lessened, but my absolute knowledge of who I was hadn’t.

  "You're glowing," Lucifer whispered. "Why are you glowing?"

  "She has her power," Michael said. All three of them looked at me in awe.

  I only had eyes for Vincent. "Hello, my child," I said warmly. "I'm so happy to meet you. I am Lilith. The Queen of Abaddon."

  Magic weighed the words and when they hit his ears, he stiffened and screamed. "No! Stop!"

  If he had free range of his hands, he would've been clawing at his face.

  "You forget who I am," I continued, still sending power into his mind to torment him. "Your eyes keep straying to Lucifer, but he is not the one you should fear. Not you, you violator of children. Innocence thief. He is not your biggest threat."

  In an instant, I removed all the pain and torment I’d placed from his mind, leaving him gasping and gaping at me. "I am," I whispered.

  "I'll talk!" Vincent yelled. "I'll tell you anything you want to know!"

  With a flick of my finger, I pulled the coffee table back. Willing myself into the air, I floated over it as it moved, then lowered myself regally, sitting in the air. A Queen didn't need a throne. She made a throne out of anywhere she sat.

  "Now, tell us everything you know of Raphael," I said.

  Vincent looked from me to the three men still standing in shock behind me.

  "Now, if you please." I crossed my wrists and rested them on my knee, as if at my leisure. Inside, I couldn't wait to eviscerate the loathsome creature.

  "I'm only a middleman," he said. After that, the words poured out in rapid succession. "I connect angels who may be of a like mind. There are others that know of some of my preferred hobbies." I waved my hand. No need to hear those details. I'd seen enough in his aura.

  "Are there others like you?" Michael asked. The fury in his voice was clear. "With your particular tastes?"

  Vincent met my gaze. "I'll have the truth from you the hard way or the easy way," I threatened. "Your choice."

  He shook his head frantically. "I don't think so. Honestly. I'm talking about those that believe there shouldn't be a Heaven and Abaddon and Earth realm. There should be one, all on Earth. We should be free to live together, have our own lives. And when we die, we should be reborn, not punished or praised depending on what choices we made. Demons should've never been made from tortured souls. They all need to be destroyed."

  One realm. "Well, that's not going to happen." I shook my head. "What fools you are."

  Vincent tried to shrug, but Michael and Gabe had too firm of a grip on his body. "That's what they want. I'm sort of the organizer, I help them find Raphael."

  "Where is he?" Lucifer asked.

  "I don't know. He checks in with me randomly, and I give him any information I have." Vincent's eyes widened. If they got any bigger, they'd pop out of his skull. "I do have the names of the angels I've given to Raphael. The ones that want what he wants."

  "Name them," Gabriel said.

  Vincent rattled off three names. I recognized none of them, but Gabe and Michael did. They scoffed and rolled their eyes.

  "I swear. The names are real." He kept darting his gaze back to me, no longer Lucifer.

  "He speaks the truth," I confirmed. I would've smelled a lie on him.

  "Now the question is what to do with him," Luc said. "If we take him and Raphael shows up, he'll know we're on to him."

  "He knows," I said. "Raphael is the smartest person I've ever met, be it angel, Fallen, or human. And Mary told us he's three steps ahead of us. This one I will take care of myself," I said.

  With a snap of my f
ingers, I moved Vincent and myself to the barn at the back of our property back home. It belonged to Michael when he was human.

  My guys popped in behind me. "We were able to follow your power signature easily," Michael said. "Any angel or Fallen in the Earth realm will know you're here."

  "Good. Let them hear him scream."

  With another wave of my hands, Vincent's clothes burned off of his body. I made his wings appear and extended them. "Vincent, I have to apologize. I would love to do this by hand, but there simply isn't time."

  Using a sliver of power, I honed it into a blade and slammed it down on his right wing. It cut through like a lightning bolt down a tree, splitting the bone, muscles, and skin in half.

  Vincent howled in pain.

  Joel appeared to my left. "What is going on?" he roared. "You're torturing an angel!"

  Laughing with glee, I sliced my power through Vincent's left wing. "Your angel," I yelled over Vincent's screams as blood spurted from the open wounds. "Likes his conquests under legal age and kill..." At a loss, I looked back at the howling angel. "What do you like to kill?"

  His screams turned to sobs. "No, no. Keep screaming for me, Vincent. I like to hear your pain."

  A true statement. His cries of anguish bolstered me and helped me remember exactly who I was. I wasn't just the Archangel that Fell with Lucifer. I wasn't just the wife of Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer.

  I wasn't as involved these days as I once had been, thanks to bureaucracy, but in my very core, I was the Queen of Abaddon. I rebelled with Lucifer. Not behind him. Not in support of him. With him.

  With a gleeful laugh, I twisted my hand, and my power grabbed Vincent's pitiful dick, ripping it from his body as more blood poured out onto the ground.

  "His soul is brown, gray, and red," I explained to Joel as Vincent went white with shock. "It belongs to me." With a final burst of power—a drop in the bucket of the inferno inside me—I ripped Vincent's body apart into millions of pieces. His screams snapped into a jolt of silence.

  As his soul tried to flee, I captured it in a bubble of magic.

  "See?" I floated the bubble close to Joel so he could witness the despicable colors of Vincent's soul. "He's a bad boy."

  Joel stared at me in utter and complete shock. "But you're human," he exclaimed.

  9

  "Dear Joel." I chuckled at the still-incredulous expression on our new friend's face. "Am I ever truly human?"

  He mouthed a few times. "I guess not."

  "It just took me a while to see it,” I said.

  Lucifer cut off our conversation by grabbing my arm and pulling me close to him. "I need to speak to you alone." His low voice sounded urgent.

  I nodded. "Joel, as long as I'm alive, his soul will not be able to leave that bubble, no matter what anyone does to it. Only God could save him now. Would you find a safe place in Heaven to keep him until we sort out Abaddon? I won't have this soul roaming free on Earth." He was one of the darkest I'd seen, rivaled only by Hitler and other men of his ilk.

  Vincent's soul had more blood on it than most, because he may not have killed millions at once as Hitler did, but he'd killed or hurt unknown numbers over the thousands of years he'd been alive.

  Joel's shocked eyes darkened as he looked at Vincent's soul, churning around in the bubble of power. "I will. It will await you when you are free to take it back."

  "Thank you, friend." I patted him on the arm with a bloody hand. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I'd gotten so much of his blood on me." Looking around, I realized we were all covered in the blood of the dead angel. "Whoops."

  "Now," Lucifer said.

  I gave him a curious look. "Excuse us." I popped us into our bedroom, the one we'd shared as Lucian and Connie. "What is it?"

  Lucifer didn't reply. He grabbed my shirt and yanked it apart. Buttons went flying across the room. His mouth crashed into mine, and he pushed the soft flannel top off my shoulders.

  Desire washed over me, mingling with the bloodlust still coursing through my veins. My newly released powers danced through my desire, heightening it and encouraging it to spread. Within seconds, my panties were soaked with need and my nipples puckered under my bra like pebbles cold from a riverbed.

  Luc had my bra unclasped in seconds and his mouth on my nipples. I started to unbutton his shirt, then remembered I had my powers back. I burned the clothes off his body the way I had Vincent's, then removed my pants and panties the same way.

  Lucifer roared his pleasure when he popped his mouth off my nipple and realized we were both naked. "I missed our powers," he said. Grabbing my waist, he picked me up. As I wrapped my legs around him and braced myself on his shoulders, I realized I still had the blood of the angel I'd destroyed on my hands.

  "Do you want to wash off?" I asked.

  Lucifer growled into my throat as he laid me on the bed. His cock slipped inside me, perfectly positioned, as I went down. He wasted no time, pounding into me with abandon. "That was the hottest thing I've seen you do in five hundred years."

  After speaking those words, he lost himself in my body. I cried out my pleasure as a deep orgasm built inside me. The kind that would leave me relaxed after. It would wash away my panic, my anxiety, and leave me calm and more rational.

  A cleansing fuck.

  Lucifer was having a different sort of experience; I was pretty sure. As the head of his cock tortured my g-spot and built my release, he roared and grabbed my tits. "You're fucking amazing. All that power."

  The pleasure-pain of his large hands grasping my breasts for leverage as he slammed in and out of my pussy added to my growing crescendo. Crying out, all I had to do was hang on for dear life as Luc did all the work.

  I grabbed my legs and bent my body in half, but it forced Luc to let go of my breasts. He braced himself on the headboard beside my head.

  The new angle took me over the edge. My orgasm broke and every muscle in my body clenched. My pussy clamped down on Lucifer's cock as he thrust as deep as he could go. Moaning my name, he lowered his head to mine.

  When my body relaxed, the stress went with it. I could handle this. I could find my daughter. I knew in my soul that it would work out.

  I would make it work out.

  Luc laid on top of me, panting, for several seconds. "Did you get enough?" he asked softly in my ear. "I couldn't hold back to make sure."

  My hands glided over his sweaty skin as I hugged him. "I did. It was exactly what I needed."

  He propped himself up a little and looked down at me. "You sure? I can use my fingers to make you cum again."

  Laughing, I pushed him up. "I'm sure! I would tell you if I needed another orgasm." He pulled out of me, and I wiggled back on the bed. I'd have to wash this cover, for sure. It was covered in our juices and the angel's blood that was starting to dry on my skin. "Shower. Come on."

  We went into our large bathroom together. Connie and Lucian had insisted on a huge shower, so we were able to take one at the same time under the dual heads. We talked about our next steps as we washed.

  With my newly unlocked power, I summoned Gabe and Michael. They waited patiently for their turn to shower. "Did you have to do that right then?" Michael asked. "I mean, that very second? Joel was still there."

  Luc cracked an eye as he washed his hair. It occurred to me as I lathered mine up that I could've cleaned us with my magic, even changed our clothes.

  I still had too much human in me. Plus, showers just felt nice sometimes.

  "I had to do that right then," Lucifer said. "I can't have my real body, and the pleasure it brings, so don't begrudge me having her after watching that incredibly sexy display of power."

  We all roared with laughter. Lucifer finished his shower before I did, so he got out and Michael got in. He pressed a kiss to my soapy lips.

  "This high from getting my powers, killing Vincent, and fucking Lucifer isn't going to last forever," I said after washing the soap off. "We need to get moving." I worried I'd crash, and either be v
ery tired or worried about Ariel. At the moment I felt like I could handle anything.

  "Can you unlock my powers?" Luc asked.

  "I can try." I finished rinsing and stepped out of the shower so Gabe could hop in. As soon as I was dressed, I turned to Luc in our bedroom. He'd stripped the bed while I grabbed clothes.

  Focusing on his aura, I watched it flare to life. Oh, the many colors of his soul. The majority of the cloud around him was gold. Golden auras were exceedingly rare. White was the rarest, and I'd only ever seen one other angel with a white aura. My Michael. Silver was as rare as gold, and Gabe was blessed with one. So was Raphael, though now I had no idea what color his might be.

  I regretted not seeing the color of Ariel's sweet little aura but pushed the feeling aside to focus on Luc. He, unlike Michael and Gabe, had many other colors weaved into his soul. He'd killed. He'd maimed. He was the Lord of Darkness. Like me, he was more than one color.

  My aura was also gold, but just as flecked with the rainbow as Luc's.

  I traced his aura to the center, where the core of his power lay. But something blocked me from reaching it. I probed, cut, hammered, and pushed at the core with everything I had. Finally, panting, I had to stop.

  When I let go of the magic showing me Luc's aura, I realized my efforts had pained him. He'd collapsed on the bed with a tortured expression on his face.

  Michael and Gabriel stood beside me, shouting, with their hands on my arms. Their towels had fallen off their waists.

  "Luc." I ran forward. "Are you okay?"

  He groaned and sat up. "Yeah, I am now." He shook his head as I yanked him into my arms.

  "I'm so sorry," I whispered. "I didn't realize I was hurting you."

  "It's okay." He disentangled himself from my frantic hug and put his hands on my face. "Thank you for trying." I looked on in shock as he pressed a kiss to my lips. Definitely Lucian behavior. Not Lucifer.

  "If I'd been in my real body it probably wouldn't have hurt, but it is what it is. Now. We've got work to do." He clapped his hands together. "We have three names. Gabe, you and Lilith go look for one, and Michael and I will look for the other two," he said.