by J. L. Myers
Pain exploded in Gabriel’s back, low between her flapping wings. Her mouth gaped and her feet slammed down to the ground as a hand clamped around her neck. With his chest meeting her back, Gabriel saw the long blue dagger tip protruding from her front. Not her heart. And not her stomach. Somewhere in-between. Though there was no relief, not as searing pain crippled her entire body and took the use of her legs and arms away.
Hanging on the blade that, apart from his hand, was the only thing keeping her upright, his breath that fanned over her cheek was putrid. Old blood and rot. His body pressing into her back and shaking wings made her cringe. “I was only going to carve it from your belly, but now…” A chuckle vibrated from his chest through to her back. He spun her around, the blade vacating her body. Now the tip bit into her belly, a drop of silver blood escaping through the black material as he leaned closer. “Now I think I will enjoy ending you too, winged creature.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Hot on the hellhound’s pelting paws, Lucifer almost vomited as he blasted through the door to Gabriel’s special place. The earthy ground was a rumpled mess, unearthed plants and crops scattered like fallen soldiers. And the blood, there was so much of it. Among patches of red, shimmering silver spattered the ruined garden in long streaks and small and large puddles. More painted the railing and the outside wall of ivy.
The metallic smell of it hung thick in the hot air, as well as a fresh ashy scent he couldn’t place.
Lucifer choked back the urge to retch, seeing a hybrid leaning over Gabriel. Morbid realization hit him like a blast from God’s hands as he saw the dagger. His eyes had been right. Because this was the hybrid he’d delivered to Hell earlier, the one he’d thought was carrying something shiny.
The long and razor-sharp blade that curved like a wave was mid-air. On the ground and covered in smears of dirt that stuck to Gabriel’s perspiring and bloody skin, she tried to crawl backward on one arm while her other clung around her belly. Her injuries were uncountable. So many slices leaked from her arms, legs, wings, and chest.
Not noticing Lucifer’s arrival, the hybrid thrust the dagger at Gabriel’s gut—and a glint of brilliant blue shone from the blade.
Lucifer reacted before the hellhound could clamp onto the hybrid’s driving arm, pitching a flaming ball like a meteorite. Gabriel flinched at the last second, the blade missing her gut and sinking deep into her lower ribs as the fireball hit.
Shocked and suddenly ablaze, the hybrid released the weapon and fell to his side. Zallina snapped at his heels as he went up in a human ball of flames. His sheiks rebounded off the bloody wall and spilled over the railing, dying off as Lucifer raced to Gabriel.
Relief flashed in her eyes as he scooped her up and cradled her to him. Gabriel was severely injured, but she was still very much alive. That light in her eyes had not faded, not even a bit. “You came.”
Confusion drew Lucifer’s brows closer as the fire died off, leaving the hybrid gasping and clawing to crawl away. Zallina prevented him from getting far, but it was not either of them that had confused him.
Gabriel had expected him not to come? To ignore her summons because she’d been pushing him away? Or worse…to ignore the clear threat she was under when her pet came barreling his way leaving paw prints of blood in her wake? Lucifer had started running even before glimpsing the horrific scene in the mirror fragment that hung around his neck. “I will always come for you. You are my everything. Do you not know that?”
A certain fear lingered behind all the blood and dirt that marred Gabriel’s face. But she did not answer him. Instead, she glanced down. Beside another small gash that leaked a silver stream, a dagger protruded from her ribs. “It burns.” Her eyes cast long to the skinless black bones of her other pet. Now the ashy smell made sense. Zax—he was dead? “This dagger killed him. With one strike.”
And now it was embedded in Gabriel’s chest, so close to her heart.
Lucifer yanked the blade out quick and silver welled and pooled, spilling down her robe that had been reduced to rags. He gathered her hands from where she held them over her stomach and pressed her palms down against the long slice. “I will be right back…”
“Where are you going? Lucifer, please…” she rasped and then coughed, silver spraying from her mouth.
But Lucifer wasn’t listening, he wasn’t stopping. Dagger in hand, he marched to the hybrid and whistled. The hellhound released her charred toy at once, bounding away to go to Gabriel’s aid. Kneeling down, Lucifer caught the hybrid by his throat, staring him dead in the eyes. “Who sent you?”
The man shook his head. His red eyes set in his charred face were full of spite. “They will both die. I will kill them—” He choked as Lucifer squeezed, his words dying before they could reach his raw lips.
Lucifer didn’t ask again; he didn’t need to. Now that he was touching his flesh, the hybrid’s sins came flooding in. His eagerness to join those like him in a vendetta to use humans like lambs to the slaughter. To follow the rumors of Darius to lead them into power and to bring down anyone, or anything, that stood in their way. He had murdered men, drank them dry. He’d taken their women, raped them, drained them too. Then came the children, ranging from old enough to understand what was happening to them, to babes that could do naught but wail as they were exsanguinated in their cradles. The next part was patchy, an attack gone wrong. Villagers fleeing—when angels had descended.
When the images fled, Lucifer barely managed to contain the rage that was fast burning to life inside of him. His vision darkened, his hand on the hilt shaking with restraint. In his peripheral, he saw Gabriel struggling to her feet. One palm was on the leaking wound in her chest, the other crossed her stomach—like she needed to be sick? Still, he knew why Gabriel was coming his way, why she was fighting her injuries to reach him. Lucifer shifted his head to block her out as she held up a hand to stop him. “Why? Why her?”
The hybrid laughed. “I felt like it. I wanted to see that light in her eyes fade.”
Lucifer roared even as Gabriel called out to him, plunging the dagger deep into the hybrid’s heart. The man’s expression fell, his laugh cutting off. His entire body vibrated, his eyes rolling up—and then his head snapped back. Blue light poured from his gaping mouth, shooting up to the dark sky and lighting up the swirling reddened blackness above. Heat radiated from the man, warm on Lucifer’s choking hand as the hybrid’s body began to disintegrate from his chest outward. Watching in morbid fascination, more blue speared from the man’s body, striking out as his skin ripped open in countless places as if he’d swallowed an exploding star. The heat of the hybrid’s neck in Lucifer’s tight grasp became unbearable, but before he could let go, a final sequence of images inundated Lucifer’s mind.
Strung upside down, this hybrid should have died then and there, but something had intervened. Or someone. Words were said, but they were skewed, cut and mismatched. But the action was not. The handing over of this blade he now pointed at the hybrid’s heart—from Michael’s own hand.
After helping him save Gabriel from Darius’s band of misfits above?
The hybrid shifted suddenly with a grunt, and Lucifer failed to react. The dagger was in the man’s hand in an instant—and flinging through the air over Lucifer’s shoulder.
Lucifer was up and running as Gabriel squeaked. The dagger arrived first, plunging into her chest as he caught her and they went down to the ground. He cradled her, stroking the bloody hair back from her face. “Stay with me.”
Gabriel’s eyes rolled, her quivering lips falling open. “Protect…”
A flash of blinding blue ripped Lucifer’s head up toward the hybrid. The heat was too much, the man’s skin crackling as it turned from pale and supple to electric and charred. Ash continued to rain down from his bones, leaving him in the same state Gabriel’s pet had been reduced to.
A weapon that could kill in Hell.
And it was embedded in Gabriel’s chest.
Chapter Twenty-T
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Lucifer wrenched the dagger out of Gabriel’s chest. Silver sprayed up at his face as a puddle pooled out of her. His hand came down over the gaping slice fast, applying pressure to stem the bleeding. It didn’t work. More and more silver flooded out, seeping through his fingers. “Damn this. The bleeding…”
Gabriel’s gentle hand on his shoulder had Lucifer looking up at her face. Sweat sprouted all over her, making her porcelain flesh clammy under all the dirt and blood. “I have to tell you. You need to…”
“Shhh.” Lucifer held her closer, shoving the dagger into the band around his forearm that clung to her. “Do not speak.” The leaking wound in her chest continued to flow. Without light, Gabriel’s ability to heal was failing her. And that was not her only wound. Her body was battered, broken and bruised. Rising up off the dirt, Lucifer clung to her, turning to step over the bones of her attacker as her wings brushed over the remains. “You need rest. You need to focus on healing. On repairing.” On staying with me, he thought but didn’t dare say. “Nothing more, nothing le…”
Lucifer trailed off as she went limp in his arms.
With his back already to the door, Lucifer shoved the barrier open, and Zallina darted after him to get inside. Gabriel was breathing, thank God, but her breaths were shallow. “Zachias!” Her surviving pet nudged his legs and whimpered as Lucifer’s mouth opened to yell for assistance. “Not now, Zallina. Zach—”
Zachias appeared around the bend as Lucifer rushed along the open-air back walkway to his private chamber. The guard stopped short before he barreled into him, his face pale and sweaty and breaths fast.
“Where in Hell did you come from?” Lucifer demanded, surprised at the soldier’s sudden appearance and look of worry.
Zachias shook his head and followed as Lucifer kept on down the long hallway with its open arches that peered down over Hell. “I heard screams, and when the guards said you’d fled your torture rounds…” He panted for breath. “What the hell happened?”
Lucifer’s glare made it clear this was not the time for questions. “Get fresh water from the stored pots for her garden, then boil and cool it. I need clean cloth too. And something to close these wounds. If she dies, then so will you.”
Lucifer elbowed one side of their chamber doors open as Zachias raced away. Maneuvering over the lava track and around a pillar, he reached the bed and laid her down gently over the plumage of her wings. Gabriel stirred as he planted his hand back over her chest, but despite her strangled gasp, she didn’t wake. Zallina sat at the foot of the bed, her front feet pawing at Gabriel’s dirty feet as she whined. Lucifer kept his hand in place as he scoured down her body. Now lathered in sweat, her robe stuck to her, accentuating her womanly curves and a swelling bulge over her abdomen. His other hand pressed down lightly—but shot back as Gabriel suddenly jolted and went still. With her lids squeezed shut, the incoherent mumblings from her mouth only heightened Lucifer’s fear. A few of her less severe wounds had slowed in their expulsion of blood, but they hadn’t stopped. The larger slices and deep cuts at the base of her ribs were wide open, making wet sounds as she twitched in unconsciousness, giving him a clear view to her insides and, in places, even her bones.
Lucifer touched her belly again—
“No. Leave him. He’s innocent.”
Gabriel’s ramblings continued as Lucifer retracted his hand and leaned over her, his knees bent beside her on the bed as he cupped her face. “Gabriel, please. Don’t you dare leave me.”
Trapped in sleep, Gabriel only trembled harder, spouting words of threat as if he was the danger she needed to escape.
Lucifer clamped his lips together, shifting to hold her close to his body as he reclined to lay a kiss against her cold forehead. He fought back tears. “Shhh. I am here. It is only me.”
A knock proceeded Zachias entering Lucifer’s chamber in a rush. Belial swooped in after him, perching on the tall skull headboard with a caw. In the soldier’s arms, he carried a fresh pot of water. Cleansed strips of cloth draped over the edges, their ends soaking up the liquid that had been purified from Lucifer’s own blood. “She is not improving?”
Lucifer wanted to gently release Gabriel and launch from their bed to flatten Zachias on his back. He wanted to take out his fear and anger at what had happened to her on someone. Anyone. But Zachias was not at fault. The one who had attacked her was no more. But if he ever got his hands on Michael, not even God could help the angel.
Lucifer tugged the dagger from the leather strap around his arm and flung it. The motion of doing something felt good for all of a split second as Zachias ducked. Water splashed from the pot, but his best guard recovered as the projectile narrowly missed his head and struck the door. Reaching the bed to lay the pot down safely, Zachias rose and turned to glimpse the dagger that quivered from its embedded place on the unopened side of the two-door entry. “I know you are angry…”
At the same time, Belial fled his perch. He shot past them on the bed, cawing repeatedly as he narrowly missed colliding with the closed door.
“Belial, quit it.”
The crow swooped again, the siren of his caw never ending. Lucifer was ready to fire a bomb at the aggravating pet.
“Wait!” Zachias motion to Lucifer’s hand that sparked with flames. The guard frowned and turned fully, striding around the lava pit to the door. Gripping the hilt, he eased the dagger free. His frown deepened. “Was the weapon damaged earlier?”
“I will damage you—” Lucifer stopped himself as Zachias moved with angelic speed to the other edge of the bed. Zallina growled, but Lucifer made a halting noise. His hold on Gabriel’s trembling body loosened and he leaned over her, seeing clearly what had stolen his words. The tip of the dagger that could glow with heavenly blue was gone.
Now Lucifer did release Gabriel as Belial resettled on the headboard. Pulling away from her removed the chill of her skin from his, leaving only her smeared blood across his bare armor and the leather that draped down from his waist as he came around the bed. He snatched the dagger, glaring at the curved length that caught the candlelight from the skeleton chandelier above. His focused snapped back to Gabriel as she groaned.
Part of the dagger sent by Michael to kill her was still inside Gabriel.
Lodged in her chest from the hybrid’s final attack.
No wonder she could not heal. No wonder her body was failing, growing paler and weaker with every wheezing breath she gasped.
The thought of Gabriel suddenly turning into burning ash made Lucifer feel like he had been stabbed in the temple. Lucifer staggered. So close to her heart. What would happen if it burrowed its way to the organ? If it skimmed the meaty flesh that was pounding loud enough for him to hear?
Lucifer turned on Zachias and clutched his neck. The flattened tip of the blade sliced into the underside of his jaw, dribbling blood that ran down the metal. “You knew something was missing. You were involved. You tried to kill her!”
“No!” Zachias didn’t fight back, but he didn’t cower either. Remaining strong, his eyes were deadly serious as he spoke. “You saw it. Your pet gave me cause to inspect. That is all. You know I have no ill will toward you. You know I would never act against you.”
Lucifer did. Out of all his soldiers, Zachias was the only one he truly trusted. Well, as close to trusting as he could get of anyone that wasn’t Gabriel.
Retracting the dagger, Lucifer stepped back and released his strangling hold. Without apology, he strode to the bed, minding Gabriel’s wing as he leaned over her. Her body’s quivering had lessened and her mumbling was still incoherent. He pressed his lips to her forehead and spoke her name. “Gabriel, please hear me.”
Gabriel went still then, her ashen eyelids cracking open. The silver of her irises was weak, but the shrinking of her pupil gave him hope. “L-Lucifer?”
He held up the blade, unsure if she could see clearly or not. “The tip of this weapon is lodged inside your chest. It is the reason your body will not heal. I…”
Lucifer shuddered, a chill attacking his spine despite the sweat that dampened his skin with the knowledge of what he knew he had to do. “I must cut it out.”
Gabriel’s paper-thin eyelids opened wide. With the cracking of her lips and the red veins staining the whites of her eyes, not to mention the gray pallor to her skin, she looked like death warmed up. Straining to sit and failing, Gabriel clawed at the sides of her robe as if trying to wrap her arms around her body in protection. From him? “No.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It is t-too dangerous. W-what if y-you—”
“What if I what?” Lucifer studied her face as her eyes darted, seeing Zachias beside the bed now holding the fresh pot of water. She didn’t answer, only shaking her head. Lucifer sighed, reaching out a gentle hand to cup her face. “This must be done. You are dying. Gabriel, please…”
Remaining quiet, Gabriel stared down her abdomen. The shakes began to return, and her clinging fingers fell limp on the bed. She nodded quickly. “Be c-careful. P-please—”
A fresh wave of tremors took hold, but this time, her eyes stayed open, awake but powerless to help herself. Renewed currents of blood flowed from her chest wound, staining her already marred wings beneath her with glittering silver.
Lucifer reacted at once, climbing over her and swiping the dagger from his soldier’s belt. Zallina barked and jumped onto the bed. Her head lowered with a vicious growl. “Heel,” Lucifer grated, fire burning in his eyes. “Or Gabriel dies.”
With a jaw snap and a whine, the hellhound leaped from the bed.
“Pin her shoulders down!” he shouted. Zachias did as ordered, minding Gabriel’s wings that were fanned out on the bed as Lucifer used his weight to press down her pelvis. She was shaking violently now, fighting without even trying to. But there was no time to waste as silver spluttered from her mouth with a gasping cough.
