Cade pulled a box of pasta from the pantry. “You and your challenges.”
“Hey, I’m not the one that issued it, Cadey. You should know by now that I take everything as a challenge. It’s basically part of my DNA. You need to word things differently. Like, for reals.”
Moving to the Bluetooth speakers in the kitchen, Ria turned it on, waiting for it to automatically connect to her phone before selecting the music app and scrolling through her songs. Selecting one, she turned the volume up as J-Lo’s voice began to fill the room. Moving her hips in figure eights, Ria twirled around the room, singing along with the words.
“Me and Benjamin Frank-o, stay at the bank-o, gettin’ checks like Nike, everywhere that I go…”
She was so wrapped up in her dancing and singing that she almost didn’t catch the moment Cade’s body went limp and he collapsed to the floor. Startled, Ria took a step towards him before strong arms suddenly wrapped around her from behind. She was briefly aware of what felt like feathers before everything went dark.
Chapter 10
The first thing that hit Ria’s senses was the chill in the air. Judging by how cold she was, she suspected she’d been wherever the hell she was for a little while. Shifting slowly, the second sensation to hit her senses was the hard, cold floor beneath her. It felt like stone of some type, was slightly damp. She gradually rolled from her side onto her back, the muscles in her body protesting the action even with how carefully she moved. It was clear she’d been lying on her side on the unforgiving floor for a while.
Her eyes gradually fluttered open as she lay there, and she gazed at a ceiling carved with markings, these strange, curved symbols she didn’t recognize. Turning her head slowly, she realized they were everywhere, covering every square inch of the stone walls. It was a small space, no more then 6 feet by 6 feet, a perfectly enclosed square. Sitting up, she spotted a door in one wall, the same, strange symbols marring its metal surface.
The memory of feathers before everything had gone black surfaced in her mind, and it didn’t take much guessing to ascertain where she was.
She was in heaven’s prison. Those asshole, dickwad angels had done something to Cade and kidnapped her to the worst place she could possibly think of.
Her heart jumped in her chest at the thought of Cade. What had they done? Why had he collapsed so suddenly? It was like he was some kind of robot, and someone had found his off switch and flipped it. Was he okay? Was whatever they did permanent? What about the other guys? Were they okay?
If this were a movie, Ria would have some kind of psychic connection with the guys, and she’d be able to reach out to them with her mind, telling them she was in fuckin’ heaven’s prison and that they needed to come rescues her.
But really. What good would that do? She’d already learned from Jace that there was no escaping heaven’s prison, and she suspected there was no orchestrating a prison break either, no matter how much help she had on the outside. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the guys. She did. But this was heaven’s prison, most likely guarded by who knew how many full-on angels. Not fallen angels, but completely whole, superpower-wielding angels.
Okay, Ria. Just keep your cool. You’ve been locked in tiny spaces before and you survived just fine. They must not want you dead or you’d be…ya know, dead.
But if they didn’t want her dead…what did they want? The possibilities were endless and none of them brought any sense of comfort to her.
She glanced around the small room and sighed.
Welp. Here we are. Guess there’s not much to do but wait for them to decide to come retrieve me and let me know what the fuck they got planned. They better not forget about me. I’m fucking hungry. They got any food up in this joint?
It may have been minutes or hours later, she really couldn’t tell, but eventually there was the sound of a lock turning and the heavy metal door opened. A bright light flowed into her tiny cell, momentarily blinding her before strong hands roughly grabbed a hold of her sore arms and hauled her up. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and she managed to look around as she was all but dragged down a long hall. It was surprisingly bright, considering how dark the cell had been, and appeared to be rather modern-looking.
“Y’all need to upgrade your cells if you’re gonna be rockin’ this shiny office look.”
Peering out of the corner of her eyes at the two angels carrying her, she wasn’t surprised to see that they were both strikingly gorgeous. It seemed to be genetically inscribed on angel DNA that they had to be gorgeous. Probably to make humanity more inclined to worship them. After all, who would want to worship a Quasimodo lookin’ dude?
“Hey, y’all really got the wings goin’ on! Ooooh, they’re so pretty, too. Can I touch them?”
Silence.
“Friendly lot, aren’t you?”
More silence.
Heaving a sigh, she attempted to move her feet quickly so as to keep up with the two massive angels dragging her along between them down the long hall. It seemed almost endless. No, seemed wasn’t the right word. It was literally endless—the hallway just kept going off into the distance, not an end in sight.
After a while of futilely struggling to match the pace of her guards, they suddenly stopped before a seemingly inconspicuous set of double doors. The doors themselves were as white as the rest of the hallway. Nothing about them stood out, not even a label or number or anything. Good thing the guards seemed to know where they were going, because if Ria were wandering around on her own, she’d have become hopeless lost what with the lack of any distinguishing markers in the place.
They stood there for a moment, Ria waiting not so patiently.
“You gonna open it or just wait for it to open on its own?”
The doors swung open.
“Guess that answers that question.”
Ria peered at the room as the guards dragged her through the doorway. Although room wasn’t quite an accurate enough word to describe the place.
It was massive and all white, just like the hallway, and Ria blinked at the sight of fluffy white clouds floating throughout the space. It was like the stereotypical concept of heaven had been shoved into the room, and at the head of the room was a large white throne. Seated on the throne was a dark-haired, blue-eyed angel staring at her with a mix of curiosity and amusement. And, of course, he was breath-takingly gorgeous.
Must be something in the water.
“Hello, Arianne.” His voice was deep and sultry, and if Ria were going to bet, she’d bet he made it sound that way on purpose.
“Hello, person I’ve never met before.”
The guard on her right tightened his grip on her arm harshly, bruising her already tender skin.
“My name is Michael,” The angel on the throne smiled in what he probably thought was a friendly way.
Spoiler alert—it wasn’t.
“Michael? Like, as in the archangel Michael?”
His creeper smile grew. “You’ve heard of me.”
“Everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of you, and I’m pretty sure you already knew that.”
This time, the guard full-on yanked her arm, nearly disconnecting it from its socket.
“Yo, Grabby McGrabber Hands. That arm is supposed to stay attached.”
Tilting his head to the side, Michael overtly surveyed her. “We’ve asked you here to discuss a proposal with you, one I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bitch, you didn’t ask me nowhere, you kidnapped me, which is illegal in all 50 states, by the way, and before you yank on my arm again, Grabby, just know that I will happily knee you the balls. Jace may have taught me how to throw a punch but kneeing a guy in the balls is a move all women are born with.” She glared sideways at the guard to her right.
“And how is my brother?” Michael queried.
An eyebrow quirked up her forehead. “Jace is your brother? I thought he was a seraph.”
The dark-hai
red angel shrugged. “We’re all brothers and sister.”
“One big happy family up in here.” She cracked, rolling her eyes again.
Ignoring her sarcastic quip, Michael steepled his hands beneath his chin. “We’d like you to work with us, Arianne.”
“Would you now.”
He nodded pertly. “Indeed. Did you know there’s a prophecy about you?”
Ria tried to jump and down in excitement, but the strong hands gripping her arms prevented her from accomplishing the full effect, and instead she sort of bobbed in place. “Really? I get my own prophecy? Look at me, all Harry Potter n’ shit. Let me guess, neither shall live while the other survives? Am I a horcrux too?”
Michael was clearly very good at ignoring her sarcastic and odd outbursts. “It says the war for humanity will be won when the creation of all three worlds powers the machine of humanity. I never put much stock into the prophecy, at least, not until recently. After all, until recently, humanity didn’t have much to offer in the way of technology. But you all have really grown leaps and bounds in the last few hundred years, haven’t you? So many new inventions. So much possibility. It’s led me to change my opinion on the prophecy.”
At this point, Ria was examining her fingernails half-heartedly, staring at the dirt that always seemed to accumulate there even though she never did anything to warrant it. She could just be sleeping and—poof!—gunk under her nails. It was so bizarre. It didn’t really matter what Michael was saying because she already knew that there was no way in heaven or hell (and she meant that quite literally) that she would be helping these asshole angels.
“Your ability to create souls is quite opportune.”
She glanced up from her nails to eye him warily. “I can’t do that.”
It was Michael’s turn to roll his eyes. “Of course, you can. How do you explain that demon prince still being alive after been stabbed with a knife that can kill anything? The only way for that reaper to be able to bring him back is for him to have a soul. With training, we’ll help you control that ability. And you’ll be able to create enough souls to power our machine.”
Ria’s head was spinning. Create souls? Machine? The fuck is this guy on? Angelic LSD? Little bit of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds for the angelic overlord?
She shook her head. “Even if that’s true, what the flippity fuck makes you think I would even consider helping you? I know what the deal with you all is. I know you just want to control humanity and basically take over the world, you super-villain wanna-be. I should start calling you Lex Luther.”
His smile turned icy. “I don’t think you’ll want to refuse us.”
Placing her hands on her hips, she saucily tossed her hair back. “Oh yeah? Why is that?”
“Because we can fix your father.”
Her breath halted in her lungs.
“Ex…excuse me?”
Michael cocked his head and eyed her like an predator sizing up its prey. “Your father. He’s still alive, rotting away in that…what do you call it? …Mental rehabilitation facility. Of course, nothing they do will help him. His ailment is of a supernatural origin. But our reapers can easily heal his mind. You can have the father I know you always wanted.”
She stared at him, her mouth hanging open in shock.
“Just say yes.” He smiled.
Chapter 11
“Hey, Red Hot, guess what I found on DVD!” Dax called through the cabin as he hefted two armloads of plastic bags full of groceries in through the front door, Jace close behind with an even larger load. He reached behind him pushed the door closed, glancing around the living room.
“Where is everyone?” Jace queried as he headed towards the large island in the kitchen to unload the groceries. Dax followed him, looking around as though he expected Ria to pop out from behind a piece of furniture yelling ‘boogety boogety’.
“Dunno…what the fuck? Who left water boiling the on the fucking stove?” Dax dropped the groceries on the counter and rounded the island to turn off the stove, nearly tripping over Cade’s unconscious form lying on the floor in the process.
“Cade? Cade! What the fuck?!”
At the sound of Dax’s startled voice, Jace dashed around the island and froze at the sight of Cade lying unconscious. He immediately began looking around and finally spotted an angelic rune written onto the wall of the cabin. Grabbing a knife from the counter, he ran to the rune and carved a slash straight through it.
Instantly, Cade groaned. Jace hurried back over to him and Dax, helping his brother pull the demon into a sitting position.
“What happened?” Tallen’s low voice echoed through the room. Jace looked up at the demon prince as he rushed through the front door, his motorcycle keys still in his hands and his jacket half off his shoulders. “What’s going on? Where’s Ria?”
Jace motioned to the now destroyed angelic rune on the far wall of the cabin. “Seraphim. The seraphim have Ria. We just came home, and Cade was on the floor.”
“What the fuck do you mean the seraphim have her?! How could this have fucking happened?” Tallen’s voice was rising, the terror they were all feeling spilling through.
Dax robotically reached out and turned of the stove, his leaf-green eyes staring daggers in the angelic rune Jace had deactivated. Cade was rising to his feet, a look of pure guilt flashing over his face.
“I can’t believe I let this happen.”
Turning to him, Jace shook his head. “This isn’t your fault. We knew Azeros and Jerrick were after her, but…I had no idea the angels would come for her too. I should have known better. There was no way you could have protected yourself against an angelic rune meant to disable demons. We were…I was unprepared.”
There was no small amount of guilt weighing on Jace at that moment. He was the leader of the group, a former seraph general, and he should have been prepared for anything. It was what he did—he mapped things out, planned for anything and everything, guessed the enemies next step before they were attacked. He was supposed to look after his family…
“What do we do? We can’t just leave her there. I don’t even want to think about what they want with her.” Dax heaved a frustrated sigh as he ran a hand through his blonde hair and glanced Jace’s way.
Rolling his shoulders, Jace straightened up, and stared his brothers directly in the eyes.
“We need help. There’s only one person I can think of that can give us any direction into what’s going on.”
Dax nodded. “We need to talk to Arcel.”
Tallen’s eyes widened marginally as Cade looked at Jace questioningly. “Who’s Arcel?”
“The leader of the fallen angels.”
******************************************
Jerrick hurried down the hallway of his father’s mansion in hell, shoving demons out of the way if they failed to move quickly enough. It was never a good thing when his father summoned him to the great hall, and certainly not after the failure of the three greater demons they’d sent after the girl. No, there was little doubt in Jerrick’s mind that his father was in a raging mood, and he liked to take out his anger and frustration on anything within his eyesight.
Jerrick certainly didn’t want to fall into that category.
Turning, he entered the great hall and bowed low, hoping to appease his father before the demon lord could get a chance to strike.
“You summoned me, Lord Azeros?”
It didn’t matter that he was the demon lord’s first son. He could never call him father for fear of his ensuing wrath.
“I did. Come closer.”
Without an ounce of hesitation, Jerrick stood and stepped closer to the dais where his father’s throne rested. Any hesitation would be construed as weakness, and his father abhorred weakness in any form.
“The demons you sent after the girl…”
Jerrick swallowed imperceptibly. “I will send someone stronger after her, my lord. In fact, I will send an entire army after her. There is no way she will
be able to fight my legion.”
“No need, son.”
Son? He never acknowledged Jerrick as his son unless he was in a good mood. But why would he be in a good mood after such a failure?
“My lord?” He finally risked making eye-contact with his father.
Lord Azeros had the same features as Jerrick, the same dark, chestnut hair and slate grey eyes. His face was like sculpted stone, cruel and unforgiving. And at the moment, it wore an expression of…glee.
“We do not need to go after her. She will come to us. She will want to come to us.”
Jerrick swallowed again. “I don’t…”
“After all,” Lord Azeros continued. “We have her mother.”
The End
Demon Bones: The Soul Series Book 2 Page 10
