by J. L. Myers
That tingle came again, a sweeping warmth that cascaded down from Gabriel’s parted lips and into her very soul. And then it pulsed, punching with destroying force.
A cawing echoed down the cave and then Belial soared in to land beside her. Lucifer’s loyal pet was one of the few that had survived the cloud of escaping souls that had rendered the rest of the crows to ash. He hopped from one foot to the other.
Something was very wrong.
The total dread that shot out from Gabriel’s heart was like nothing she had ever felt before. It was worse than every time Cyrus had retaliated against her and punished her for Lucifer’s escape. It was worse than the daily feedings and having to choke down that vile monster’s blood.
It was—like déjà vu.
It was a morbid sensation Gabriel had felt only a few times before, and watered-down versions assaulted her mind of the past. When she’d gone against Lucifer and had him removed from the Realm of Light. When Lucifer’s wings were burned from his back. When she’d watched him fall to Hell. But the most replicating event that had struck her this way had been more recent. More than ten years ago—when her newborn daughter had exploded into obliterating sparks of light.
The sensations grew stronger by the second, stabbing Gabriel through her very heart as if she were right now being pocked by Cyrus’s dagger. Her breaths came faster. Her eyes darted around the moving shadows created by flickering firelight from wall torches. Every muscle in Gabriel’s body seized as her heart pounded against her ribs. Every pore in her skin sprouted beads of sweat. A delirium took over, one that had her flipping onto her back and crying out. Distant sounds of slapping feet grew nearer as shouts erupted, but she couldn’t see the guards that rushed at her.
Instead, what Gabriel saw was in her mind. A memory…
The total devastation across Lucifer’s face as he learned of the deal she’d made with God. His reluctant acceptance, knowing it was the only way to free them both from the endless torture that awaited them. And then the moment she’d pressed her lips to his and willed her life force to join with his in an eruption of brilliant light. The condition she had insisted on when Remiel delivered God’s ultimatum. A failsafe to protect the one thing she had left to lose.
Gabriel scrambled up fast, and hands groped for purchase of her arms as Belial swooped and pecked at the men. Gabriel batted them away too, scooting back until her wings crunched into the jagged cave wall. “Belial, go. Get out!” Gabriel knew what was happening as Belial thankfully listened and fled up the mouth of the cave. She knew it deep down in her heart that felt like it wanted to shatter into a million pieces. She knew it down to her very soul that ignited with a light so bright that it flared all over her body like a beacon.
Lucifer was dying.
The guards snatched for Gabriel again, and she threw her hands out, blasting them back with a shock of twin light from her palms. They hit the walls with a crunch and fell in two heaps. She was a live wire, a combustible source that was reacting to the real threat to the man she loved. A man she refused to let be extinguished.
The guards groaned and struggled to their hands and knees as sounds of stampeding feet grew louder. More guards were coming. And they weren’t alone. The deep voice that demanded answers and barked orders was the same one that whispered vile deeds into her ringing ears after he fed on her. Cyrus was coming, fast. She didn’t have much time.
Touching her hands to her lips, Gabriel brought back that final moment in her mind. Their last kiss. It was undeniable now, she would never kiss Lucifer again, she would never see him again, and not because she was about to let him die.
No way in Hell.
That kiss had been a pure farewell immortalized in her mind, but it had been so much more than that. A joining of light to light, of her soul to his. Disguised by his departure, Lucifer wouldn’t know what Gabriel had done in that fleeting moment, what she had gifted him. But she could not let him go without knowing there was a failsafe to protect him in his plight to save her. Because if saving her became impossible, at least she knew he would survive. That had been part of the deal, her one concession in the horrible terms she had reluctantly accepted.
And now it was time to play her part.
It was time to save Lucifer.
Back on their feet, the two guards were joined by others as Cyrus led a fleet of armed men at Gabriel. Arms reached, weapons were held ready. Cyrus snatched her wrist—
None of them got far as Gabriel ratcheted down onto her back and brilliant light burst from her in a sonic boom. Thrown from her, every one of them fell quiet, knocked out by the shock. Gabriel fell quiet too, willing her life force from her clutching soul and out through the link her kiss had created. The light formed a domed cocoon over her, swirling with white, yellow, and gold that lingered as if waiting for her to change her mind.
Gabriel smiled. In the past, she regretted her actions or lack thereof. She had wished for things that were not in her power to change. Like the snuffed-out life of her daughter to be returned. Now Gabriel had no such drawbacks. No indecisions. No regrets. Love and saving what she loved was all that mattered now. She had lost her daughter. She refused to let the light that she knew existed in Lucifer be drowned out too.
Lips parting with a final breath in, Gabriel’s exhale sounded her last words. “I love you, Lucifer. Never forget that I loved you. And please…forgive me.”
The light vanished, vacuumed through the stalactites on the cave ceiling. Gabriel’s chest tore open, cut through from back to front in two separate places. A last one drove up, spearing her as if invisible swords were shooting up from the ground right through her racing heart.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucifer’s eternal glow dimmed suddenly, his pierced heart stopping dead in his chest. With his eyes frozen open, staring at the blood-splashed ceiling, he couldn’t lift his only link to Gabriel to eye level. His arms were dead weights atop his leaking chest that grew chilled by the second. This was the end, slow, with the pain of eternal sleep fading and his memories of love and immortal life dissolving as if it were a picture made of sand in his mind. Lucifer’s mouth gaped uselessly, unable to pass breath to form his final words. I love you.
Darius and where he had gone and with who became secondary to reality.
Gabriel’s sudden voice stole what remained of Lucifer’s sight and made his cold heart spasm. Please…forgive me.
Lucifer’s back jacked up off the damp ground and light shot from his body as if he were a star being born. The returning pain in his chest disappeared, but the light didn’t vanquish his soul as Gabriel’s sorrowful words rebounded inside Lucifer’s mind as if ricocheting off the inner walls of his skull. Please forgive me. “Oh, God. Gabriel, no.” The ability to grate words startled Lucifer as the beacon of light around him imploded and blasted right back into the dying mortal vessel that was his body. The power stole his breath, keeping his spine jacked up in an arch over the ground.
And then all went dark and Lucifer collapsed.
Hearing only his shallow breaths, Lucifer stared blindly, blinking away the fog as his air-deprived mind rebooted. In the underground catacomb below the Babylon castle with the scent of death thick in the air—he was alone. Darius had long fled the ashy remains of what had once been countless hellions. And there was no sign of the angel sword—the heavenly weapon that should have killed him. But the surroundings or any lurking threats were the least of his concerns.
Snapping his pounding head up, Lucifer saw the place where three thick slices had carved open his chest. The skin there was stained with silvery black, and as he sat up with a groan, his free hand smeared the covering away—to reveal healed golden flesh with naught but three long scars.
What Lucifer clung to in his fisted hand against his collarbone caught his attention. The mirror pendant. His link to Gabriel. Her words hit him as if Darius had returned and stabbed him with the weapon to end angelic life all over again. He gasped in morbid fear, raising the jagge
d teardrop shard upward and uncurling his trembling fingers one by one.
“Gabriel…” Her name was a thing of torture in verbal form. Lucifer’s eyes burned with angry tears.
She was on the ground, legs twisted to one side and back flat against her dirty wings and the grime of the cave he had left her to suffer in. Short, wet gasps made her torso hiccup. The light haloing Gabriel’s body was gone, the life in her weeping eyes fading. For an everlasting moment, Lucifer’s whole world came crashing down. Still bared of cloth, recurring punishments marked her pale skin with bruises ranging from black, blue and purple, to yellow and brown. The caked-on silver blood that trailed down from her neck was fresh over days and days of repeated feedings.
But that wasn’t even nearly the worst of it.
Still fully uncovered, Gabriel’s dirty chest was free to view. So were the stab wounds. All three of them. The ones Darius had inflicted upon Lucifer that had vanished now scored the area of Gabriel’s ribs between her breasts. Silver blood pooled over her chest, diverting to flow sideways in multiple streams down her sides and over her shoulders and neck. The sight painted a heart-breaking story of what had happened. Gabriel had been on her back when the sword had penetrated each and every time, suffering until the fatal wounds—Lucifer’s wounds—pierced her heart. She’d connected herself to him. Somehow, she’d taken his mortal injuries from him and into herself—with her kiss. Lucifer remembered the power of their farewell and the touch of Gabriel’s soft, blushed lips. It had been a kiss of power, a kiss of promise and acceptance. Their last kiss—and Gabriel’s final act of love toward Lucifer.
“No.” Lucifer’s heart shattered in his chest as he staggered up to his feet. But he only made it halfway, knees catching his heavy weighted body. Eyes locked on the fragment, his vision blurred with hot tears. “No, no, no!”
Lucifer had never agreed. He had never even known. And if he had, he never would have accepted this, her life for his. Her death. His Gabriel. If anyone deserved death, it was him. Not her. “Damn you.” On his knees, Lucifer glared up at the dancing light from the surrounding wall saucers, sending his curses way above. “Damn you, God. Damn you to Hell!”
A stampede of feet rushed closer, and Lucifer whirled on his knees, donning his discarded breastplate in a rush. He expected to find Darius returning to finish the job, but no one was there. Then the voices came, angry and rushed. Cyrus. A horrid gasping intake of breath snapped Lucifer’s head down—as Gabriel came to life.
Kneeling down at her side, Cyrus tore into his wrist and mashed it into her gaping mouth, cutting off the air that she so desperately needed. Gabriel’s bloodshot eyes flared wide, her weak fight against her captor futile in her state as more silver gushed from her chest.
Lucifer held his breath, his very soul on the verge of dying if this momentary return of life vanished.
Cyrus pulled away moments later, but he didn’t drop Gabriel’s head that he cradled with his free hand. “You cannot die. I am not done with you yet.”
Gabriel almost smiled, crimson tainted lips curving as those short breaths came even slower. “I…am.”
Being there with her, Cyrus could clearly judge what Lucifer already saw with his own eyes. Gabriel was not healing. Taking on Lucifer’s mortal wounds had been a death sentence, one that could never be undone. Despite not coming in contact with the angel sword herself, the wounds inflicted were too severe. Without Lucifer’s angelic blood or the light of Heaven itself, there was no getting out of this. The slices in Gabriel’s chest weren’t slowing in their expulsion of blood, and as her eyes rolled and her need to be rid of Cyrus’s touch failed with her pushing hands falling limp, one thing was horrifically clear.
Death had its hooks in Gabriel. And this time, it wasn’t letting go.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucifer stumbled up from the dark stairs, rushing down the empty passageway before bursting out into the blinding light of day. His lids slammed shut on him, fighting every time he pried them open. Fresh tears sprouted from the blinding sting, stealing his vision. Dagger in hand, he went to move on anyway.
There was no time for this.
His humanness.
His weakness.
Gabriel was dying, growing closer and closer to that final resting place of nothingness with every passing minute. And Lucifer refused to let her deal with God take her from him. He refused to let their cold-blooded fate rid the realms and Heaven of her love, loyalty, and hope. He refused to let the raging darkness that bubbled up inside him get in the way. He needed a clear head, a one-track mind. And this purpose was it. He had to hunt down Darius and the remaining hybrid-hellions. It was the only way to open Hell and save her—before it was too late.
The world needed her. Lucifer needed her—even if that meant giving Gabriel up to save her.
A cold, sharp edge to Lucifer’s throat froze his forward motion. His own dagger was snatched from his grasp. Again he expected Darius to be the one there as he blinked the blurry wet from his eyes, back to finish him off and take the weapon he’d failed to steal in his hasty departure.
Heaven to Hell. How wrong he was.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Glowering at Lucifer with his long black hair whipping in the hot breeze, Michael bared his white teeth. The sword he held was silver—so much less intimidating than the blazing angel sword. Still, with an edge that could sever bone, Lucifer was forced to stop his forward motion. “Being that you are here, Lucifer, I see that you screwed up again. Do you not ever tire of failing, of turning everything that could be good into darkness and havoc?”
A huge group of boys and girls banded around Michael. Though each varied in appearance, something about them was similar. Despite their toned and lean-muscled build, their faces held a certain youthfulness to them that made Lucifer think they were all around the same age. Early teens. And that was not all. Beneath the smears of blood that coated their exposed limbs and cheeks in the same fashion Michael was painted in, an unmistakable white glow haloed each of their bodies. An angelic glow. Yet they were clearly not angels, none of them having wings to show of. They were still human…sort of.
Part angelic. Part…human.
The reason Michael’s white wings had been stained satin black?
The reason didn’t matter as Lucifer called to his non-responsive fire, the consuming need to seek vengeance on the angel who had attempted to kill his daughter feeding an insatiable hate inside of him. His fists clenched and his eyes glared daggers. Despite being weaponless, Lucifer bared his teeth and stepped closer to snarl in Michael’s face. “You tried to kill my daughter. And you almost killed Gabriel in the process. You speak of righteousness and duty, but you are no better than me. You laid with human women. You broke the rules too.”
Michael drove Lucifer back with his forearm, the sword digging in and scoring his throat with a sting. Lucifer hit the external wall beside the castle exit he’d escaped from. “Not I alone. Action needed to be taken since you spread your vile seed upon this Earth. The destruction you and your creations through blood and seed cause not only a threat to Earth. But I will never let you and your evil win. This day, Lucifer…is your last.”
Lucifer shoved his back off the wall and leaned closer, forcing the sword to cut deeper. “Today my spawn helped to track and take out most of the escaped hellions. They along with the spared vampire, Bathory, and his newly infected made this possible.” Lucifer locked down his dark desires. They came a distant second to Gabriel’s survival. “Now, step the hell back and let me finish my duty. A duty I will fulfill. Not for you or your righteous God. But for her.”
“Bathory?” Despite his surprise, Michael didn’t let up for a second, slamming Lucifer back into the wall. The afternoon sun that poured down on him sprouted sweat over the archangel’s furrowed brow and upper lip and brought dampness to the arm he kept pinned against Lucifer’s chest. “Then you are a fool. Your ‘loyal’ spawn fled. They are not here. Only death and bodies remain—human an
d vampire.”
Lucifer focused over Michael’s shoulder and that of the heads of the half-breeds. For once, Michael was right. There was no sign of his adult children, nor was there any sign of Bathory. But there were vampires, scores of them. They added to the quiet bodies they had passed to gain access to the castle, now still as death too. The battle had continued with the hybrids out in the streets, but only the corpses of living hybrids littered the dusty ground. A diversion to get the hybrid-hellions away? A few of Lucifer’s offspring added to the unmoving carnage, but there was no sign of Thanatos.
The city of Babylon was eerily quiet, the sweep of gritty sand the only movement as it swept and swirled over the bleeding and twisted bodies that littered the streets. Had Thanatos and his surviving offspring chased the hybrid-hellions off to try to render them lifeless? Or had it been the other way around?
As Lucifer stood there pinned to the base of the castle wall by Michael, there was no way to know the answer. But he needed to. Either way, he had a job to do, and only one way to get down to Hell to save Gabriel before it was too late.
If it wasn’t already.
Lucifer itched to clutch the mirror pendant around his neck, but instead, he shoved Michael back with both hands. “I do not have time for this arguing, let alone the time to kill you for all you have committed against me.”
The children readied their own deathly sharp swords that glinted silver in the falling sunlight. Michael pointed the tip of his own to the underside of Lucifer’s jaw. “There is always time for death. And now it is finally your time.”
The tip jabbed in deeper, hooking under the bone as Lucifer’s mouth parted with words. “Then Gabriel dies too.”
The forward motion of Michael’s sword stalled. The children paused too, clearly trained to follow the movements and intentions of whatever Michael did. “What have you done to her?”
