by J. L. Myers
Chapter Thirty-One
Michael stood at the edge of a cliff, gustily wind flailing his dark hair back from his hardened expression. A sense of defeat settled over him as he peered down into a village that ran riot. Screams filled the night and so too did the scatter of humans. They fled to the surrounding trees that led to mountains or hid in amongst the wooden huts and surrounding livestock stables. It was chaos. Bedlam. Broken bodies lay in pools of their own blood. Gusts of wind battered Michael’s outstretched blackened wings, daring him to dive below.
Unfortunately, his intervention was not needed.
The attacking hybrids were not alone as they hunted for lives to take.
Like thieves in the night, vampires stalked the attackers, closing in at every vantage point, ready to cut them down and save what few lives were left—and to end the ones who would now be infected.
The vampires attacked almost simultaneously, taking the hybrids off guard and disposing of so many with the stabbing of their silver swords. The original vampires unleashed their gifts, sprouting fires to block off laneways, streaming water from a well to knock others down, making the ground tremble in patches to detour any escaping hybrids, and throwing blasts of dirt and sand to blind others. But they weren’t going to get them all. Not this time. So many hybrids scoured the village that, at this height, they looked like rats in a dirty maze. And they were…retreating?
The vampires were hot on their heels, even though the enemy’s numbers dwarfed their forty plus men by more than double. But despite the number advantage, the hybrids were speeding away. Dropping human victims that were bleeding but alive and others that were yet to be bitten—because they had merely been holding them as if in wait of something. Speeding away in rushed blurs over wooden barriers, herds of sheep and cattle in grazing paddocks let our bahs and moos of startlement.
Again Michael felt the urge to take flight, to swoop in after every hybrid that fled. But there were too many, all now scattering in various directions rather than following one leader. The sight and knowing that he’d arrived here for a report and not with an army to join in, kept his feet planted. Michael’s confusion over the attack methods used as well as the retreat had him retracting his wings to his back.
The hybrids never ran. They never surrendered.
They always fought to the death.
But Michael had seen something else even from this distance. A change that was as clear as if it had been broad daylight rather than hazy under the shadows of a low setting sun. More than hybrids were down there attacking unsuspecting humans.
As the screams dwindled, the fearsome villagers dared to peer out from their hiding places under flipped troughs, behind huts, through the upper level of stables, and even up through the opening of a central well. Though none ventured out as they saw the vampires moving about their village. Dead bodies were dragged and piled high. Using the fire that burned from the central bonfire beneath a pot of brewing stew, a flame was carried harmlessly from one vampire’s hand over to set the corpses alight. The fire grew and smoke pumped up, staining the twilight sky with smells of burning flesh. Groaning men and women were dragged from their dying places in the dirt and one by one they were decapitated. Their bodies joined the growing pyre.
It was horrific to behold, but a kindness in the end. A necessary evil.
Now bitten, every single one of them would soon turn, like the small girl Michael had encountered in that first village. Their eyes would redden as fangs sprouted from their mouths. Then came the hunger, the undeniable need to feed—on living victims for blood.
Michael watched it all without the need to intervene. His hands were clean in this. None of their deaths were on him. And he knew they would get their judgment day in Heaven. Being in transition rather than turned, they would only be judged on who they had been as humans, not what they would have become if allowed to live.
When all was dealt with, the vampires vacated, leaving the uninfected and lucky survivors to mourn and repair their village. But not all the vampires were departing. Falling behind the group, Lord Bathory had clearly known Michael was watching from afar. Covered in bloody welts and darkening bruises, he waved him in as the rest of the vampires set off in a different direction. The group cut through an empty field where sheep mingled in the corner in fright, leaving Bathory alone. Though not entirely.
At his side was Lord Ruthaven. The strain on his battered face matched Bathory’s as they strong-armed a man onward. A man who looked nothing like a hybrid, and yet was eerily familiar.
Michael felt a sudden strike of suspicion and his wings flung out as he stepped off the cliff. Catching the wind with a flutter to slow his dive, he kept his eyes locked on the three below. Landing yards from the cliff and well before the thickening trees, Michael stood right in front of the two vampires. His suspicions were confirmed as he beheld the man they had in their grasps. With his arms tied at his back and his feet tethered together and connected by rope up to his wrists too, there was nothing remarkable about the man. Except for his missing chalky pallor and red eyes. Likely in his late twenties to early thirties, the man was handsome enough with bronzed skin and hair the color of spun gold.
And no fangs.
“He is not a hybrid.”
“Since when did Lucifer get his wings back?” the man spat in disgust.
Ruthaven smashed his sword hilt into the man’s face, knocking him out cold with a direct hit to the temple.
“Lucifer?” Michael could barely believe his ears. “Why on Earth would he think I am Lucifer?”
“From what he has been told, I would say the black wings confused him,” Lord Bathory informed.
“What he’s been told?” As Michael spoke, he felt humming in his body that had become scarce since his time Above had been severely cut back. Angelic power. “What is he?”
Lord Ruthaven lifted a bloody hand to grasp the man by his cheeks, lifting his drooping head upright for a moment. “Do you not see the resemblance?”
A strike of understanding rocketed through Michael, breaking off in shards that burst all the way out from his chest to the tips of his wings. There had been at least a dozen of them in that village, attacking without killing. Waiting as if to hand over their prey. Could it really be?
Lord Bathory swiped dripping blood from his face before confirming Michael’s worse fears. “Part human, part fallen. This is Lucifer’s son. One of many that are teaming up with the hybrids. I have seen the proof in my visions.”
A chuckle had every one of them staring in silence. The man’s drooped head lifted fast and his eyes flashed open, silver-blue—at Ruthaven. “Let go.” The vampire’s bloody hand fell from his cheeks as the man twisted his head. Bathory unsheathed his sword, ready to attack, but the man’s piercing gaze stopped him. “Cut me loose.”
“What in Hell?” Michael lunged forward, but the ropes that restrained the man were already severed.
The man snatched the sword from Bathory who stood in a similar stupor to Ruthaven. “So you are not my father, fallen one,” he said, jabbing the sword into the underside of Michael’s chin. “Too bad. I would have enjoyed ending you this day.”
Michael’s wings were stretched out, his fists at his sides were clenched. This creation, this spawn of Lucifer, was as dangerous as the hybrids if not more dangerous. With the sway of Heaven in his eyes, he had power over the vampires. Would he harbor power over Michael, over an angel, too?
Michael didn’t get to find out. His own sword never made it more than halfway out of its sheath as Lucifer’s spawn penetrated his jaw, driving the thick sword tip up through his tongue and then sideways through his cheek. The pain paralyzed him, killing his voice and his intentions to cut this man down. “Tell my father I am after him. We all are…”
The sword retracted, detaching one side of Michael’s jaw as it yanked free with a twist. He stumbled at the shock of being released, hands going up in preparation to catch his jaw should it come clean off. Luckily it held, a
nd his own weapon sliced free in his quick hand. But as Michael looked up, peering between the two stunned vampires, he saw no one at all way back to the bordering trees.
Heaven’s gaze of persuasion, and the speed of light.
This war would be the death of them all.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cyrus lay twisted on the damp cave floor, every inch of him in agony. The wetness beneath him was his own blood. The burning sensation that covered him felt like he was wearing a layer of lava, like his flesh was still being stripped from his arms, legs, and chest. Spearing strikes pulsed up his legs and arms, reminding Cyrus that both his shins had been broken, along with an arm and a wrist. Snapped through and jagged with marrow seeping out. The way his tendons healed, new strips forming and stretching, only added to the pain, tightening areas that weren’t ready to be driven back together.
A soppy tongue lapped at his face, lifting layers of skin off in its wake.
Then all was quiet. Cyrus’s grunts and strangled screams were no more. The hellhounds’ boney tails happily wagged, leaving only the pitter-patter of paws fading out as two sets trotted away up the tunnel.
They were on their way to Darius, to do to his son what they had already done to Cyrus. To do what they did almost every day once their earlier inflicted wounds and broken bones had healed.
Cyrus rolled onto his back, and his chest hitched at a stabbing in his side. A cracked rib. His bloody hand went to his chest, covering his heart that beat too slow and hard to be good for him. If he hadn’t been what Lucifer had turned him into, he would have died from this treatment a thousand times over. His wish for that end had occurred at least fifty percent of the time. The only thing that kept him going now was his plan. His anticipation that one day soon he would turn the tables.
One day soon, he would return the favor to Lucifer and his lover. After the subsequent months that had passed by, perhaps today or even tomorrow would be his day.
A slow smile stretched his mouth wide, splitting new skin that gushed blood down the side of his face.
A high pitched sound had his maddened glee failing. A yelp?
Cyrus tried to lever up but toppled back down onto his elbows that dug into sharp rocks in the dirt. His teeth clenched at the stabbing pain, but he craned his head to the side, staring at the shifting light that danced up ahead and created patterns on the walls.
A thud. Then a growl.
Another thud.
All went quiet for a moment, leaving his own rushing blood in his ears as the only sound Cyrus could hear.
Metal clattered, the sound of chains falling to pile up on the ground somewhere out of sight.
Cyrus’s heart took off like a Hell villager running from a hungry deformed hellion. Was this truly happening? Was today the day he’d been anticipating?
His answer came first with the sound of dragging. Then as a man appeared at the top of the tunnel. Though he was backlit by the fire torches, the build of him and the regal stance that hinted at royalty gave him away—not to mention the limp hounds he dragged by their front paws with one hand. Darius. He’d been freed before the hounds had gotten to him, and was now redressed in the armor the guards wore. And he had company. A terrified woman carried a pot atop a pile of leathers in her quivering hands. Darius shoved her on with a chokehold around her neck and smiled. “The child’s birth is imminent.”
Cyrus drew on the strength he did not have, and forced himself to his knees that popped and bulged at wrong angles. His voice was rough as he spoke through the pain of separating joints. “You have no idea how long I have awaited this.”
Darius dropped the disarmed hounds and sauntered closer, moving as quietly as a lion. In one hand he hauled the barefooted woman along, making her stumble to keep up. Unhinging a torch as he neared, his smile was full of devious intent. “Oh, I believe I do, Father.” He snatched hold of the pot and kicked the woman down in front of Cyrus. The leathers she held fell as she hit the ground. “Drink up. Patience is not one of my strong suits, and we have so, so much to do.”
The woman’s sobs turned into shrieks as Cyrus struck out. Even weak as he was, she was no match for him or his bloodlust. It had been too long since Cyrus had fed, too long since he’d tasted the sweet, sweet flavor of human blood and been able to take his fill.
The woman’s shrieks choked off the moment Cyrus’s fangs struck, twin jabs sinking in deep enough to hit bone. And then…euphoria. All that rawness, that burning and stretching and striking pain dulled, replaced by a wave of pure delight as he took more and more. With each strong pull from her bitten neck, his strength and vitality returned, insides growing and re-volumizing as new tendons and skin sprouted and stretched out to where it needed to be.
When the woman quit batting at his chest in a pathetic attempt to push him away, Cyrus dropped her flaccid body to the ground. He rose up onto his feet, bared naked since his rags had long been stripped from him along with his skin. Although Cyrus was not completely healed, small legions and gaps remaining and muscle mass at about half of its former glory, he felt stronger than he had in all his time in Hell. He felt ready and starved—for blood. Though this time, Lucifer would be his victim.
A sizzle drew his eyes as Darius spilled red-hot lava from the pot onto the ankle chains that restrained Cyrus. The metal warped and glowed, bubbling only a few links from where Darius held the length up off the ground. A flash of a sword appeared from Darius’s side and he severed the weakened chains. He clapped a hand on his Father’s shoulder. “The masses are gathering, readying for our strike. A guard volunteered his armor, begged me to take it, actually.” He nodded down at the pile of stolen leathers with a devious smile. “Get dressed. We—”
Darius’s smile twitched as a shifting sound snapped his head up and narrowed his stare. The hellhounds were waking. Darius spoke faster, striding up the tunnel toward them as Cyrus donned the armor. “Our path inside is being cleared as we speak. Ready?”
On his feet and dressed, a wet slice and crunch repeated as the hounds were impaled one after the other. As their bodies thumped onto the ground, Cyrus took his first steps in the direction of freedom and vengeance. He strode on at a brisk pace, his body humming with purpose and deadly anticipation. “I have never been more ready for anything in my entire existence. I will make that wingless angel watch as I kill his whore and cut the life from her body. He will beg me to end him too. But I never will. And then he will bow to me as the new Prince of Hell.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lucifer wavered at the exit from Gabriel’s rooftop garden, still as awed by her knack for life and growth now as he had been in the very beginning. Though this garden was merely a fraction of what she had created in the Realm of Light, it was monumental all the same. To grow life in Hell when all was such a wasteland was amazing. Lucifer glanced away from the blossoming trees with their small white flowers that had started to drop their petals, to the pot he held, chock full of vibrant fresh fruit. Oranges, mangoes, lemons, pomegranate, and even apples. All items he had handpicked from her bountiful garden to feed her and their child.
Lucifer pushed back the thoughts of Eden that he had a hand in ruining on Earth.
That was so long ago now. Almost forgotten.
Now he was here. A ruler and a prince. A father to be. To grow a life of her own body, it was nothing short of a miracle itself.
A sudden cry stiffened Lucifer’s spine and had his head snapping sideways. Belial jumped on his shoulder. The scream had come from inside, echoing down the cavernous open-air hallway of glossy black and flaming orange torches. It had come from Gabriel.
Dropping the pot, the clay shattered on the ground and fruit rolled as Lucifer shoved inside and raced in the direction of their chamber. Belial took flight, cawing loudly as he speared down the hallway. Lucifer poised his lips to whistle for backup but released them with a curse before he could. To escape the torture rounds early, he had sent his crows on a mission to force the new hellions on a two-day
trek across Hell’s desolate landscape. It had been Zachias’s idea. A new and extended way to torture hellions by keeping them exposed to the elements and drained by unending marching while all chained together. They would be too far gone to loop back in time.
The tortured cry came again, and Lucifer’s whole body turned cold in morbid fear, sweat sprouting despite the chill. His feet could not move fast enough as a grunt came this time, but then he was there. Flinging himself into the chamber right after Belial, he caught the doorframe to halt his forward motion.
Lucifer expected the worst: intruders, incapacitated hounds, and blood. He expected the black walls to be dripping with silver torrents.
When that was not what Lucifer saw, it took a few blinks to reconcile the view with his fears. Gabriel was on their bed, her beautiful features a mash of pain as she panted for air. She was crouched on her hands and knees, her hair sticking to her perspiring face as her fingers dug into the bedding. Her two hellhounds paced and whimpered, crossing each other as they completed half circles around the bed. Belial calmed to perch on the headboard.
A familiar face popped in front of Lucifer from around the nearest pillar. Zachias placed one hand on his shoulder as Lucifer stared in shock. “Perfect timing. Gabriel wished not to alarm you earlier or disrupt your rounds, but I was coming to get you. Lucifer, your heir is soon to arrive.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Go. Comfort her. I will tend to all else and bring cleansed water and cloth.” He brushed past Lucifer and gave him a little nudge. “Go.”
And then Lucifer was alone, the door pulled almost shut behind him as he stared in dumb silence. This was happening, his life, his future, his hope.
Gasping in strong and steadier breaths, Gabriel caught sight of him. “Lucifer, it—”
Lucifer was by her side in an instant, his arm around her trembling wings and his free hand cupping her face. He kissed her with fervor, with all the love that felt like it was about to explode from his pounding heart. “I love you, for eternity. I am here, I can…” He released her, worrying that his fast approach and hold had hurt her. “What can I—do you need—I should—the fruit—”
