by J. L. Myers
Rising up on his knees, Lucifer clung to Gabriel’s moving body as he devoured her mouth. Every stroke brought him closer and closer to the edge of no return. And Gabriel was right there with him, her moans growing louder to overtake the noise of the plunging waterfall. Holding her with one arm, Lucifer tipped forward onto the other, gently lowering Gabriel down as she planted kisses to his chin and stubble-covered jawline. The fallen delicate leaves of the Weeping Willow offered a soft bed as he laid her down.
Staring down at Gabriel while still joined at the waist, Lucifer smiled. If he could keep any memory of her, it would be this one. With Gabriel’s legs tight around his muscular waist and back, her hand trailing up with the need to touch his wet, rippled abs, her heaving breaths that pumped her perfect breasts, and her beautiful eyes that stared up at him with passion, trust, and love.
Gabriel’s gaze flittered over Lucifer at the same time, as if she too were committing every detail of this encounter to her memory. Her lips, already parted with recovering breaths, mouthed words he didn’t need to hear to understand. I love you.
Lucifer leaned down slowly, eliciting a gasp from Gabriel as he pressed deeper inside of her. He kissed her chest, her collarbone, up her neck to her jaw, and then he claimed her mouth. “I love you, too—”
Lucifer came awake, feeling like he had fallen from the sky and hit the ground. He groaned as he lurched upright, rubbing at his eyes to clear the haze that blurred his vision. His sense of smell kicked in first. The air was hot, thick, and it reeked of foul odors…of death.
A sudden cawing and flapping sound made Lucifer rub his eyes harder. Something dropped in front of him, pulling at the sheet that draped over his legs and waist. Because he was sitting up on a large round bed, he realized as his sight cleared out. Surrounding Lucifer were walls of glossy black and a dusty floor. Tracks circled the room and snaked through it from one side to the other before meeting a bubbling pit of lava in the center. That cawing came again—from the bird that pecked at Lucifer’s covered feet.
“Belial?”
The name came to Lucifer as a sense of desperate loss constricted his chest, squeezing his ribs tight around his pounding heart. His skin was wet with sweat, his lips throbbed, and…he was hard. Images flittered through his mind of a glowing garden and a beautiful woman with hair like spun silver, eyes of endless silver-blue, and lips the color of a blushed rose. But as the events returned with clarity and sound and sensation, they melted away, stealing the words Lucifer had said and the things he had done or had done to him.
Lucifer slid his legs over the edge of the round bed. His brow furrowed as the body and then the face of the woman faded with the memory of his satisfying dream. All that remained was the notion of who he was and who he had always been since his untimely death when the Earth had swallowed him whole.
The Dark Prince of Hell.
Chapter Forty-Six
Water lapped gently at Gabriel’s ankles as they hung down into the pond. The breath from her lips was still fast, recovering from the dream that had ended too soon. Lucifer had been with her, touching, kissing, caressing, and so much more. He had remembered her—in their shared dream. Now Gabriel felt desperation to see him, to prove that their love could defy the odds stacked against them, that Lucifer’s sacrifice that gave her back her life and united her with their daughter had not truly been their end.
But Lucifer was not here.
He never had been.
A blip in subconscious existence is all their interaction had been, one that left her lips swollen from his kisses and her core tingling with the memory of him inside her.
All around, the landscape was renewed with color and beauty, from the rolling hills to the trees sprouting generous canopies of gold and green, to the wildflowers that tickled her arms on the bank of the pond. Yet none of it held Gabriel’s gaze. Not even the revealed ledge her daughter had been locked on could hold her eye as the waterfall receded, leaving only an intermittent patter to fill the white noise.
With the ripples stilling around Gabriel’s submerged feet, the scene through the glassy water refused to let her look away. The view was clear down below, the dark glossy walls and floor—and Lucifer lurching up on his shimmering bed, breath fast as he rubbed his eyes. Because he remembered their dream? Because the remnants of her caressing hands and devouring kisses assaulted his mind as they did hers?
Lucifer’s pet swooped into the room then, cawing as he landed on Lucifer’s legs. Lucifer rubbed at his eyes. “Belial?”
The pet’s name from Lucifer’s mouth made Gabriel’s heart soar with hope. If he could remember his prized pet, perhaps all they had been had not been killed with his sacrifice.
Lucifer’s slowing breaths came faster, his hand going to his chest as if his heart were racing as quickly as Gabriel’s was. His eyes darted too, their stare distant rather than set on something in range as his brow furrowed.
“Please remember.”
The look faded from Lucifer’s eyes and he slung his legs over the edge of the bed as if it were merely another morning. He sat without moving, turning into a golden statue, staring ahead into nothingness as the faintest hint of light in his eyes faded. Lucifer rubbed his head, ruffling a hand through his hair. He looked down at his war clothes that were renewed and cleansed of the remnants of battle.
Lucifer’s black wings dragged behind him on the dusty floor as he rose and strode to the closest window and stared out. The sight made Gabriel stare along with him. Hell was quiet, the streets a slow-moving activity of a few humanlike hellions. The few that must have remained below rather than rising up to escape when the mouth to Hell was cracked wide open. A few scarce crows sat on the peaked roofs of huts and on the tops of wooden and metal posts that had once been used for various forms of torture. The rest had been wiped out when they failed to escape the black cloud of Hell’s released souls. There were no mutated monsters skulking the streets. No snarls of hunger and depravity as they hunted prey.
Before Gabriel could wonder where the hellions her daughter had blasted to ash had gone, a cawing stole not only her attention but also Lucifer’s.
Gabriel watched as Lucifer whirled around. He stalked past his bed and the adjacent pool of lava that centered the room. Belial was perched atop the skull headboard on the other side of the bed, beak pointing down at the ground where the mirror slab had once been.
Lucifer held his hand up and the bird hopped on, gladly perching on his shoulder as he was directed there. The cawing as Lucifer went to turn back around stalled him in place.
As Gabriel looked down her heart leaped with hope. Would a lost shard of the mirror connect them beyond dreams? Would it prove to Gabriel that Lucifer did remember and the light she’d seen in his eyes before he woke would come back to stay?
Lucifer’s arms fell to his sides, and he kneeled down, plucking something small up off the ground. But it wasn’t a mirror shard. It was a scrap of flesh, charred on one edge and torn on the other. Gabriel gasped as he stared at the face looking back at him. At Gabriel’s face, well a part of it, sketched by his own hand.
Lucifer’s head tilted to one side, then the other. His brow furrowed as he held his hand out and traced the lines of her cheek down to her jaw before brushing over her lips. “A thing of dreams.” He shook his head. “Why do I dream about this winged woman, Belial?”
Gabriel gasped and tugged her feet from the water, creating ripples that stole the sight of Lucifer and Hell away. Lucifer hadn’t only given his light to save her. He hadn’t merely agreed to return to Hell and his position as its prince. His words and solemn demeanor had been a devastating clue. He had given up everything.
“He does not remember us.”
Gabriel whirled to the small voice that had spoken behind her before her mind could rationalize the speaker. “Evangeline,” she gasped, seeing the young girl standing in silence and draped in a pure white robe. Reaching out, she touched her daughter’s arm, trailing down to her hand in readin
ess to pull her into her arms.
Evangeline tugged away with a flash of hurt, but then she came to sit beside Gabriel instead. Her legs were barely long enough to dip her toes in the water as Gabriel slid her own back through the tepid surface. The clarity of Hell didn’t return, now showing the view of a random village that had been ruined by hellions before they ascended above and were destroyed. There was so much healing to be done below, so much order to restore. Yet Gabriel could not think of any of that now, not with what she knew and what her daughter had seen as clearly as she had. “Your father may not remember us, but his heart will never forget. His soul. We are as much a part of him as he is of us, though…I do not think watching him in Hell is best for you. He will not be the same angel you met up in Heaven. He cannot be. At least not for now.”
Evangeline opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to point out that Lucifer’s changes were more of a permanent thing. But then her chest rose and fell with a heavy breath. “I love that you hope, no matter what happens.”
At the welling of tears in her daughter’s eyes, Gabriel touched her face and curved her arm around Evangeline’s small shoulders. “Please do not cry, Evie. This is not the end for us. We still have each other.”
“Not for long…”
Evangeline’s voice was so quiet, Gabriel had to strain to make out the words, and still, it took her a moment to register each syllable. Grasping her daughter’s shoulders, Gabriel turned her on the soft grass to face her, kicking one of her own legs up out of the water to fold beneath her sapphire robe. “Why would you say that?” When Evangeline only lowered her eyes, spilling silver streams down her face, Gabriel gave a gentle shake. “Please, talk to me. Whatever it is, we can get through it. I will protect you, always—”
“Even if I no longer know who you are?” Evangeline’s eyes shot up, fresh desperation pooling and ready to spill over. The sight of her grief trapped Gabriel’s tongue in her mouth along with any words of comfort she had to say. “Heaven is not my home. I cannot stay. My blood opened the gates, and God can only close them once I am gone.”
Gabriel shook her head so fast her own tears created zigzags down her face. “No. I cannot lose you too. I won’t. I won’t let anyone, not even God, hurt you.”
The small hand that touched Gabriel’s cheek stalled her rant and all the sudden plans she had to fly from Heaven to go into hiding with her child. Out of all the reactions she expected, Evangeline surprised her with a smile. “I had a choice, Mother. God let me decide after I brought him back. I did not choose death.”
The air wanted to sweep out of Gabriel’s lungs with relief, yet the remaining sadness in her daughter’s eyes locked the pocket deep down in her lungs. Finally breathing, Gabriel exhaled, “What did you choose?”
“To live as a human, on Earth, with no memories of who or what I am. It is the only way to close the doors, to protect everyone that we saved.”
Gabriel started to argue, her fierce need to protect what was hers and vulnerable rearing its head. But Evangeline’s hands cupping Gabriel’s face stalled her words with a volt of power.
Surroundings lost, a distant scene came into view. Atop a building that must have been the tallest palace as it kissed the stars, pillars of tall lit-up glass structures glowed all around. Red and white light moved down below, zipping around the square edges of the monuments like metal bugs with glowing eyes. Under the light of a red moon, Gabriel paid no attention to the bustling below, the view above, or the blustery wind that attacked her wings. Instead, she stared down at a girl who was so familiar and yet so different. A girl of late adolescence with windblown hair, golden skin, eyes that glittered violet, and glorious white wings edged in the darkest of blacks.
Evangeline.
And she was standing with…Gabriel.
The girl gave Gabriel’s hand a squeeze, and then brought it up to her other one, joining her hand with a male’s. The Gabriel she watched smiled up at the man with midnight black wings and golden hair, the look on her face triumphant. “The waiting. The separation. We did it. And now we will never be apart again.”
“Ready to go home, Father?”
Lucifer smiled down at their daughter, his eyes so full of love. “I thought you would never ask. Ready, Gabriel?”
Gabriel watched herself smile back at Lucifer with a look that promised everything was finally as it should be. “Let’s go. Our future awaits, together.”
The vision vanished, bringing Gabriel back to her garden and Evangeline. Her daughter’s pleading eyes up at her said so much. The maturity of her gaze begged Gabriel not to fight this, to understand that this was the way it had to be.
“Please, Mother. I want to do this. I want all their deaths to mean something. I want to do what is right.” Evangeline’s hands fell from Gabriel’s face. “And I want the future you saw. But we can never reunite if we do not part. We will never be a family if you do not let me go.”
“But you will not know me. You will not know that you are loved and cherished and, and…”
“You will know it all for me, for now and forever. You will know for the both of us…for Father too.”
Gabriel sniffed back the tears that wanted to flood from her eyes. Her daughter, a being of both light and darkness, was the most amazing and strong being she had ever had the privilege to know. The pride Gabriel felt cut her deep, tainted by the loss she was already grieving, a loss she knew deep down was inevitable.
Drawing her daughter into her arms, Gabriel held her close, refusing to let go, curving her gray wings around her in a physical act of protection. She would never get to hold her again like this. Never get to give motherly advice and be there beside Evangeline to watch her grow into the angelic being Gabriel now knew her daughter was destined to become. But she was not losing her. Not for good. For every day of Evangeline’s life, Gabriel would watch her from afar, beaming with pride at the selfless choice her daughter had made to protect a world she would never grow to know and understand.
“I will miss you with all my heart,” Gabriel whispered as her soul broke in two. Her only solace was that Lucifer was powerful and protected in Hell, and that, once on Earth, no one would know who or what Evangeline was to make her a target. They would be apart, all three of them, but they’d never be lost to each other. One day, somehow, Gabriel would make sure that vision came true. “And I will always be here, watching, waiting, knowing that one day we will meet again. That one day you will be able to come home.”
Evangeline wriggled, loosening Gabriel’s tight hug to peer up with glassy eyes. Her resplendent wings sprung forth, draping white from her back before bleeding out to gray and then black as they curved against blades of grass and colorful flowers. Her little hand went to her heart, laying flat against the white material over her chest. “My heart will remember, won’t it?”
Gabriel smiled, seeing her very own hope reflected in her child’s eyes, seeing a girl that would always be angelic even without her memories or her wings. “It could never forget.”
This may be the end of Lucifer and Gabriel’s love story, but this is far from the end of their love and the life they are destined to live. Fallen Angel Legacy is in creation mode, and I can’t wait for you all to see what lies in store for your favorite angels and the world as we know it.
Can love conquer all?
I believe it can. xoxo J.L. Myers
Thank you for reading!
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Falling Stars. If you enjoyed the final book in the Fallen Angel Series please turn to the last page an select a star rating, or if you have a moment to spare, you can leave a review. It doesn’t have to be long—one or two sentences would be amazing. The more reviews a book has the more Amazon is willing to put it in front of potential readers. As an indie author, I don’t have a big publishing company promoting my work, so every little bit helps and I’d love for my audience to be a part of it. I read every one of my reviews and completely appreciate the thoughts and
opinions of all my readers.
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Thank you, J.L. Myers
Want to know what happens to the future generation of vampires? Continue reading for a sneak peek at What Lies Inside, Book 1 in the Blood Bound Series!
BLOOD BOUND 1 - WHAT LIES INSIDE
I was a…vampire.
I shook the unbelievable word from my mind and focused on the pavement as the balls of my feet hit harder and faster. I knew my intended destination. The night club my best friend, Kendrick, visited every Friday when he wasn’t off snowboarding. Right now I needed his support, and hoped for his undying loyalty. Seething fear surged adrenaline through my body and gripped me from within. What if he thought I was a monster too? Imagining his reaction terrified me. How could he accept this…this living nightmare I was becoming?
The passing houses fell behind me, replaced by commercial strips. I pushed myself faster still, keeping to the shadows and somehow passing with ease the moving cars on the streets. I pulled to an abrupt halt after taking a shortcut through an unlit alley. To the right was the club’s entrance, with a bright flashing neon sign above the doorway. Pulse.
A solid-built bouncer manning the door caught sight of me as I neared. “ID?” It was clear from his smirk that he knew I was underage.
I gulped, shrugging my shoulders. “Please, I just need to find my friend.”
The bouncer’s smirk thinned into a humorless line. “No ID, no entry.”
Like an irritating itch you can’t quite reach, his radiating aura of authority angered me. I squared my shoulders and clenched my jaw, staring him down. “Let me in.”
