by J. L. Myers
Between its heavy body and ribcage, that was too large and jutting to ever be considered human, Lucifer’s ready hand jerked up. The embedded blue tip of the dagger drove up higher, cutting through the hellion’s sternum and spilling its grizzly meal all over Lucifer. The smell was even worse than the hellion’s breath, and the wetness all over him made him want to heave. But he was not done.
The next part would somehow be worse.
Through gritted teeth, Lucifer met the soulless black eyes of the hellion, seeing the glint of life fading fast. “From Heaven’s light to Hell’s fire, deliver back unto darkness.” The hellion combusted on top of him, bursting into live coals at first and then rendering into a puff of black smoke. Though he had done it countless times before, Lucifer hated this part. But there was no way around it. Not if he wanted to save Gabriel.
Lucifer’s mouth opened wide with a deep intake of breath.
The black sucked into his mouth as if summoned, the cloud diminishing as it trailed from a billowing mass to pour down Lucifer’s throat. He wanted to hurl, to spew all the vile rot back out. The humming started up then, renewed veins of pure black tracking out all over Lucifer’s skin, freezing him from the inside out, stealing his breath as his throat choked closed as if to lock the darkness inside.
Lucifer stopped moving as his heart faltered, and his lungs went still as death. With his eyes open, the stars blinked down at him. The only other sensation was the wetness of the dead that coated him through his leather and metal armor. And then everything turned black.
Eyes open, there was nothing to see. The feel of gore all over Lucifer subsided too as swelling darkness hooked into his still heart and bit into it like a meal. This was worse than the previous kills, more prominent somehow. Because the hellion had been of flesh and bone? Anger, hatred, and murderous desires filled Lucifer’s heart and mind, promising joy if he simply gave in and accepted the darkness as part of himself. Promising relief. It would be so easy, so releasing, so painless.
The sickening sensations of other nearby hellions fled Lucifer’s body too.
But then he saw her in his mind and the jagged lines of cut flesh down her pale, dirty back.
“Gabriel,” Lucifer choked out.
He could not do it. Not now. Not ever. Lucifer lived for Gabriel, and he would die for her and her alone. He would never give in to the darkness, and he would never take the easy way out. He would save her.
With a roar of anguish, Lucifer’s heart leaped in his chest, locking down the darkness that swirled inside the vital organ. Lucifer didn’t know how he was going to get through this, how he was going to reabsorb all the souls without losing himself, but he did know one thing. He had to try, and he had to succeed. He could not fail her.
As Lucifer rolled and clambered onto his hands and knees, devoured muck falling from his chest and stomach to the dirt, he stalled before pushing upright.
He was not alone.
Chapter Eight
“Impressive, I must say.”
Lucifer jerked his head up and blinked back the darkness, making shapes out of the haze that had taken his vision. Not that he needed to see to discern an identity. He knew who was approaching through the remains even before his sight cleared. “Zachias.” Snarling and with the darkness encouraging the flash of murder in his eyes, Lucifer lurched to his feet. He steadied himself, the glowing weapon still secure in his gore-slicked hand. “Come to die too?”
Zachias’s hands shot up in surrender as he stopped a healthy ten yards away. Near the fire, a slew of makeshift human weapons in the form of long burning sticks sat within his reach. A thick, raised cut marked his neck from ear to ear. Evidence of the moment Cyrus had taken his head clean off his shoulders before Lucifer had gotten the chance. His red eyes held sincerity as Lucifer stalked closer. “I did not choose to betray you. I have only ever served you and Gabriel.”
“You led Cyrus to us. To my Gabriel and our child.”
Zachias took a step back but did naught to protect himself. “I had no choice. It was you or me. If I refused, I was dead.” As Lucifer got closer, Zachias back-stepped faster. “I chose wrong. I know I did. I swore my allegiance, and I wronged you. I deserve to die.”
“That is something we can both agree on.”
“But, wait. Hear me out!” Zachias’s hands pushed against the air as if the movement alone could hold Lucifer and his burning rage back. “I know where most of the hellions are. And Darius. He thinks I am on their side. Even after his father took my head, he thinks I serve him.”
Lucifer sliced the scabbard from Zachias’s waist, disarming him with a clattering thump as the halter fell to the ground. His other hand clutched the traitor’s throat in the same swift movement. “And so do I.”
“Then do it,” Zachias choked out, making no attempt to fight back. “Have your revenge. End me now.” Lucifer squeezed harder. “Or, let…me…help you. Gab-riel…”
Lucifer spat venom. “You dare say her name.”
“I c-an make…sure…they keep her…a-live.”
Lucifer shoved Zachias back, and one side of the dagger he held fell down in a glowing rope of sizzling lava. He threw the end around Zachias’s waist and tugged him close so they were face to face. “Speak fast.”
“Darius has a vampire who can see the future.” As Zachias’s armor heated up, the smell of singed fibers from the cloth beneath married with the stench of dead bodies. “He now believes you will return to Hell for Gabriel and that act will open the realms’ gates.”
Zachias had no idea what he was talking about. Lucifer was tasked by God to return to Hell with all the escaped souls. His maker would never decree such a task if it would permanently open up Hell and leave Heaven vulnerable. Lucifer leveled hard eyes at his once most trusted soldier. “How can you ensure she remains alive?”
The sizzling increased and the smell of Zachias’s roasting flesh rose up from where the whip had burned through his leathers. He spoke faster. “A message sent below to Cyrus informing him of the loophole and how her death will trap him forever.” He wriggled as the lava cut into his back and sides—to pull a long, gray feather from beneath his breastplate that curled delicately at its fat rounded tip. “With this.”
Gabriel’s feather. Lucifer would know it anywhere, the only ones of their kind and in that color and shape. He snatched the item, missing her a million times more at that moment and feeling desperately helpless. “How did you get this?”
“I…in Hell…” Sweat sprouted all over Zachias’s face and down his neck as if he’d been standing in a downpour.
The whip was beyond parts of his flesh now, hitting his internals.
Lucifer released the end with a flick of his wrist, sliding the coil of lava free from the man he’d once trusted with his life—never again.
Zachias gasped, taking a small step back but remaining rather than retreating. “I stole it. In case it came in useful one day. And now it has…it is yours, and if you infuse it with your angelic link, if it is even possible—Hell knows I have already tried and failed—Darius’s message to Cyrus to keep Gabriel alive can be sent. My cover with the enemy will be secured, and Gabriel will be protected—until you return to free her.
Lucifer knew Darius or, in fact, any of the hellions were powerless to use this feather on their own. He had witnessed Cyrus try and repeatedly fail in Hell. But if infused with an angel’s intentions…
As Lucifer lifted the mirror pendant, a fire lit view came into focus. Still fully naked, Gabriel was battered black and blue. Suspended with her arms tied with chains above her head, one of Gabriel’s shoulders was popped out of its socket. So much silver and dirt muddied her pale flesh that it was hard to tell if there was any more unharmed skin still there. Cyrus was there, and slammed a fist into her face, cracking her head to the side. A split threatened to rip her dislodged arm clean off. But then Cyrus unhooked her, and her battered body fell in a heap on the hard ground. Gabriel barely reacted as her captor hovered over h
er, looking even dimmer than the last time he’d glimpsed her.
Lucifer dropped the mirror and closed his eyes before opening them again. For once he prayed—that he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. “It could work.”
Lucifer focused on the feather, willing all his angelic power into its delicate vanes. The traitor had come to him of his own accord. He hadn’t even attempted to fight or protect himself. For all Lucifer knew, Zachias had been watching as he lay vulnerable in a haze of darkness and done nothing to harm him. There was no trust to be given anymore, but perhaps there was a common ground, a common goal. Lucifer released his held breath, and the feather vanished from his hand. It was done, and he felt sick with fear. “If I find out you betrayed me again, Zachias, there will be too many pieces of you to ever be put back together. Do you hear me?”
Zachias nodded, wincing as the slight movement irritated the looping cuts around his abdomen. “Loud and clear. Your will is my command.” He held his hands together as if begging. “I will not disappoint you. Darius is in Babylon, formed like I am and as his swarm of hellions are. I will tell him I deceived you and that I barely escaped with my life. When you are ready, come for them. But come prepared, for I know they will be.”
Lucifer shoved Zachias back, breaking his hands apart. “Go. Get out of my sight and spew your lies before I change my mind and kill you now.” He watched as Zachias turned and staggered away with a grunt, holding his arms around his body. As he disappeared through the tall wheat stalks, Lucifer wondered if he’d just made a deal with the devil, or if he’d saved the love of his life.
Lucifer clung to the mirror pendant—he was about to find out.
Chapter Nine
Gabriel crawled on all fours, rocks digging into her knees and palms and cutting through her already thin skin to bone. Dragged by her ankles, her chain rattled until there was no more give in it. Thick blood dripped from her lips, falling in slow globs from her open mouth. Every part of her wanted to collapse, to black out and revive in the empty darkness of unconsciousness. But she could not let her guard down. Not today. Not any day that had passed since Lucifer traversed from Hell to Earth.
Had it truly been years already?
Hundreds of days of this…Hell?
“How did he escape?”
A jarring strike whacked into her side from Cyrus’s foot, throwing her off balance. Gabriel hit the rocky wall that cut fresh slices along her tender ribs. She gasped for breath, lungs feeling like they were about to explode. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t answer the question—not that she had any intention of doing so anyway.
Instead, Gabriel glared up at Cyrus who hovered over her. In the years that had passed, he and his men had suffered too. There were no animated victims in Hell to drain. All the bodies out there were lifeless, without the ability to regenerate their drained blood supply with each feeding from Cyrus and his soldiers. Their food supply was wearing thin, withering in the dusty plains beyond this dark cave. Now their leader was thinning and becoming frailer by the day. He was becoming more desperate too.
The way Cyrus looked down at her naked body right now, licking his bottom lip, drove fear through Gabriel. With a thick layer of dirt and blood to conceal her womanly features, his stare was not sexual, but rather, hungry.
Cyrus hiked his chin at the two guards standing watch behind him up the mouth of the cave. They responded without need of words, turning and walking away, their dark forms fading behind the dancing of flame light from wall torches.
Kneeling down to her level, Cyrus stabbed a jagged fingernail under Gabriel’s chin, forcing her from her crumpled position into a sitting one. She clenched her jaw to keep from giving him the satisfaction of her audible pain, but it didn’t matter. Cyrus’s eyes lit up anyway, seeing the fresh silver pooling in her dull eyes. “My patience has reached its limit. Tell me what I want to know and you will live another day.”
“Go to Hell.”
“Already here.” Shifting his hand, Cyrus held Gabriel up by her throat, lifting her to her feet and then off the ground that was wet with her daily spilled blood.
Thrust back into the wall, Gabriel couldn’t help the cry that tore from her dry throat. Those rocks were sharp, stabbing, but her bound wings kept her naked back and bottom from being made further into mincemeat. Instead, they took the brunt of the impact, brittle bones bending and small fractures fissuring out internally. Her head didn’t escape the attack though, leaving her mind airy as her skull pulsed.
She couldn’t take much more of this.
Each day the torture resumed, and each day it was different. It almost amazed Gabriel how inventive Cyrus was through it all. The skinning, the breaking of small bones, then a few larger ones, being burned with lava, having her feathers set alight only to be doused and then torched again, being pinned down with water dripping over her raw face and chest, being restrained while they poured water down her throat until she choked and passed out. At least the water torture had ended—the purified stores of water that had been derived from Lucifer’s blood had only lasted so long. But the torment didn’t stall after that. She even met with some of the torture devices Lucifer had used on the hellions. Her nightmares ran rampant with visions of her limbs be pulled from their sockets nearly to the point of tearing flesh.
Cyrus’s thumb grazing up and down the length of Gabriel’s neck brought her out of her head. The look in his red eyes, that burning need, had her heart leaping up into her throat. “Then if I am stuck here, if we are all stuck here…you will be my last pleasure. My only pleasure…”
Cyrus licked his cracked lips, and Gabriel’s stomach turned, threatening to drive bile up her throat. The times she had given herself to Michael to further their angelic race of warriors had been bad enough. Having this monster’s mouth on her flesh would be worse. Infinitely worse.
Cyrus smiled, his long fangs peeking out in all their pointed glory. A bite from him would hit bone.
As he inched closer, Gabriel closed her eyes, seeing behind her lids the time so long ago on Earth when Lucifer’s creations had taken her down and penetrated her skin with their fangs. She still remembered the fire of their bite. The infection. And the insidious darkness that had lingered afterward, before God trapped it deep inside her.
With the last of her strength, Gabriel shoved against Cyrus. He chuckled in return, smashing her head back into the rocks again. Pockets of white danced in Gabriel’s vision and her head tipped as the cave around her seemed to rise up and crash down.
And then it was too late.
Cyrus’s fangs drove in deep, hitting bone as his rough lips created a seal over Gabriel’s dirty neck. The suction came next, the drawing of her angelic blood from her vein and into himself. A burning sensation bloomed from the twin punctures, spreading out with rabid heat to engulf her entire body. A naked body Cyrus was now pressed hard against as he pinned her to the wall. Everything hurt, everything ached. Gabriel’s entire body was throbbing, the pulses getting harder and yet slower as time itself dragged on as if eternal. Her heart, it was drying up, failing in its task to pump her lifeblood through her as the supply thinned out.
That drowning darkness God had locked inside her flourished with each pull from Gabriel’s vein. It battled with the light of her soul, threatening to stain its glory black. And for a moment, she almost gave in to the sensation, the power. Gabriel wanted to beat her grazed fists into Cyrus’s chest, she wanted to gouge his eyes out, and to swipe the dagger from his belt and drive it up through his ribs to pierce his monstrous heart.
But even as Gabriel tried, even as the darkness gave her strength, it was only in her mind. As Cyrus inched back, keeping his fangs embedded in her, her body dangled like a suspended doll. Only his strong grip under her jaw was keeping her up. And her heart…it was slowing, pounding violently with its last beats.
Relinquishing the darkness with more ease than she had anticipated, Gabriel clung to the light inside of her, the last of her link to Heaven
and God. But it was no use. On the day she had sent Lucifer away to save them both, Remiel had infused her with a blast of Heaven’s light—to help her heal…to help her survive. Now that ambient power that had never failed to halo her body was not merely fading to a dull glow, it was disappearing, being siphoned from her vein and straight into Cyrus.
Gabriel’s bitter end was here, and there was no stopping it.
With quiet words that were not spoken but remained internal, Gabriel did not plead for divine intervention. Instead, she sent her silent goodbye. I am sorry, Lucifer. I tried to hold on. I tried to await your return. I…I love you.
Gabriel was ready to die now. To finally rest after all the pain and heartache she had suffered through. Losing Lucifer over and over again. Delivering their child while under attack only to have her explode into golden sparks of nothingness. Each loss had been too much to live through, and now she no longer had to. Over the last years, she had grown so tired.
Cyrus released his monstrous bite and held Gabriel at arm’s length, his smile devious and his lips and chin soaked in glittering silver. Flame light from wall torches danced in his glowing red eyes. He hadn’t drained her fully, and his smile spoke volumes to his intentions. “You thought I would grant you death? Never. You are my toy. My plaything. And for as long as I am stuck here in Hell, you will be mine to use, to abuse…” He raked his glowing red eyes down her naked body that shook with tremors. “To do as I see fit. Now and forever.”
A startling flash of light had Cyrus’s hold on her releasing as he spun to the source. Gabriel fell in a heap, the ground rattling her bones and making her gasp in pain as she fought to gain air. Gabriel’s eyelids threatened to close as her body convulsed, but the thing Cyrus caught made her filthy eyelids peel wider. A feather that was soft, downy…and gray. One of her own?
Cyrus caught the long and curled length in his fist as it fluttered down out of nowhere. He gasped, his mouth falling open before clamping shut. His eyes went distant as words she couldn’t hear over the slow thumping in her ears were spoken. A message. He was listening to a message.
