by Melody Raven
He must have transported. It made sense that all of Azazel’s wards would be down now. The demon had left her here to die. She didn’t blame him. He had already done more than enough for her. Still, it would have been nice to have a ride home.
A gleaming sparkle caught her eye. Next to the throne was a glass case. Muriel approached and saw with morbid fascination that a severed and bloody finger was housed behind the glass. Why would Azazel keep a finger?
A better question: why was she reaching out for the glass? She punched through the case; the shards fell to the ground. She stared at the finger in front of her. Something was wrong with it.
The demons around her started to catch on. She heard swords being drawn but didn’t look away. Couldn’t.
Then arms were around her waist. Muriel screamed as the ground beneath her disappeared. All the demons who surrounded her with menacing faces and promises of death were gone.
She tried to move her arms, but she had no leverage to free them. Her feet kicked at his legs, trying anything to get him to let go.
She turned to look over her shoulder and saw Kier stare back at her, determined expression firmly planted on his face.
His steel grip was around her ribs, just below her breasts. The very idea of him touching her after what she saw him do to Samuel made her skin crawl.
“You son of a bitch!” She called her hellfire to her. Apparently she wasn’t completely used up. She felt the flames burst out of her skin, but the heat did nothing to him. If anything, his grip got tighter.
He chuckled in her ear. “Silly angel. You can’t use my own hellfire against me.”
Unable to stand his laughter, Muriel threw her head back, making contact with his face. He cursed and his arms around her finally loosened.
Her abrupt freedom caused her to drop Azazel’s ring. Something else fell with it. It was the finger. Gross. When had she grabbed it? It must have been when Kier had snatched her, but she had no memory of doing it.
It was only then that Muriel looked around her surroundings.
Kier had brought her right back to the base. Right back to where he killed Samuel.
She screamed her rage as she charged him. She assaulted him with her fists, but he blocked her blows. As soon as she saw an opening and aimed for it, he managed to twist away from the blow and block her punch. Whenever her leg would shoot out for a kick, he would jump back just in time.
She didn’t care. She would destroy him.
How could he kill Samuel? Even if he thought he was protecting her, he should have known that she could never forgive him for murdering her friend.
Everyone had told her she couldn’t be with a demon. Her millennia worth of knowledge had told her that she couldn’t be with a demon, but none of that had stopped her.
She had trusted him. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have loved him?
As the “L” word crossed her mind, she stumbled in shock.
Kier was at her side in a second as he steadied her and wrapped her in his arms. “Easy there,” he breathed against her hair.
His chest rapidly moved up and down, trying to catch his breath from fending her off. Just like she remembered him being. Sweet and gentle. He had managed to avoid her attacks without once making a single move against her.
She steeled herself against any forgiving thoughts and pushed him away from her with all the strength she could muster.
He slid across the wooden floor but quickly caught his balance and stood ten feet away from her. For a moment there was only silence as they stared each other down.
“Muriel—”
She cut him off. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“You’re alive.”
The words were so short and simple that she didn’t have a chance to stop him from saying them. Muriel exhaled as they sunk in and she fully absorbed what she had done.
“Azazel is dead and I’m not.” The words sounded crazy. How could she have defeated the king of Hell without breaking a sweat?
There was no epic battle. None of Samuel’s men charged into Hell with her. She had simply walked through the front door and ripped out his heart.
Kier took a step toward her and she inched backward. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Then just tell her already,” came an annoyed voice from behind Muriel.
Muriel jumped around to face the new presence and her jaw dropped in shock.
An angel was in the room with them, but he was unlike any angel she had ever seen. In the blink of an eye, Kier was in front of her, blocking her with his body and his muscles tensed up for an attack.
The angel was tall, closing in on six and a half feet. His hair was shoulder-length obsidian black; his eyes were the lightest crystal blue. From a distance, they blended in with the whites of his eyes, giving his whole face an otherworldly quality.
Oh, and he was naked. He didn’t appear to have any shame in his nudity as he made no move to cover himself.
What really set him apart from any angel Muriel had ever seen were the wings. They were large—at full wingspan, they would measure over twenty feet—but that wasn’t what surprised her. It was the color. His wings were black. They didn’t just look black, but Muriel could feel the darkness ooze from them. As if the darkness was alive and hungry for something to consume.
“Who are you?” asked Kier.
Recognition dawned on Muriel as she wrapped a hand around Kier’s arm and pulled him back. “We need to go.”
The angel tilted his head in curiosity. “You would protect him after what he did to you?”
Muriel refused to respond to him. “Kier, get us out of here. Please.”
Kier nodded his agreement as he wrapped his arms around Muriel. She closed her eyes in anticipation of her body rematerializing somewhere safer, but nothing happened. She opened her eyes and saw the angel smile at their efforts.
Without warning, Kier charged the angel, running at full demon speed while hellfire emerged from his pores. The angel simply laughed as he carelessly waved a hand and Kier slammed into the far wall.
“Stop it!” shouted Muriel. “What do you want from us?”
The angel approached her slowly. “Do you know who I am? You’re a bit older than lover boy over there. I expect you to be better versed in your history.”
“I don’t care who you are, Lucifer. I asked what you want from us.”
Kier had brought himself to stand, and Muriel could see the shock on his face as he heard what she called the angel.
“Want? I don’t want anything from you. I already got what I wanted.” He held his hand up to show off where Azazel’s ring now sat. Well, it was Lucifer’s again. It had been his from the beginning.
“You did this,” said Kier from behind Lucifer. “You gave Muriel demonic powers so she could kill Azazel for you.”
Lucifer turned his annoyed gaze on Kier. “You simple fool. I did so much more than that. Angels don’t just fall. Did you ever wonder why there was just one mortal who attacked Samuel in the last six years? Or why you had the need to feed Muriel your blood even though everything you had ever heard told you that it was forbidden?”
Muriel’s skin crawled at the thought of his manipulation. “And my feelings for him?”
“Don’t worry. It’s still true love and all that shit. I just used it to my advantage. I could influence actions, but I couldn’t change feelings. I made you grab my ring and my finger after you ripped out Azazel’s heart, but you didn’t know why you did it.
“The state of being I was in allowed me to see more than just the physical. I could see through auras, right down to the soul. I knew that if I threw the two of you together, it was only a matter of time before some type of bodily fluids were exchanged. I just hit the jackpot when you started fucking and drinking each other’s blood.”
Muriel felt herself blush at his frank assessment of her and Kier. “So it was
the sharing of different, um, fluids, that gave me demonic powers?”
“Normally if a demon and angel spend too much time together, their light or darkness will rub off on each other, but you and Kier don’t work that way. Your souls are already so in tuned to the other, when they mix they create a type of synergy. Your different abilities start to blend and become stronger.”
Kier rolled his eyes at the biology lesson. “Why wait five hundred years to hatch your great escape?”
“Because it took me over three centuries to find a pair as compatible as the two of you. It took almost all my energy to send that mortal after Samuel. After you fell, I used up everything I had left to get Kier to feed you his blood. I was drained for years. Only recently was I able to convince Kier to track you down, and even then you two separated. I had to make sure he was at the hot spot you were raiding last week. Considering how perfect the two of you are for each other, it was exhausting to play matchmaker.”
“We are not perfect together! He’s a demon and he murdered my best friend!”
“The man is head over heels in love with you. Do you really think he would kill Samuel?”
“I saw it,” she muttered as she turned to look at Kier. “Did you kill him?”
Kier shook his head. “It was the shifter. It didn’t feel pleasant, but he can survive a broken neck.”
The shifter? Jacob had taken on Samuel’s face? Muriel tried to recall how Samuel acted that morning. He talked a lot. More than normal. She thought he was nervous about trying to open the door to Hell. It had just been Jacob worried about having his neck snapped.
“You and Samuel don’t even like each other.” She tried to piece the timeline together. Kier had left her after the fight at the base. Had he and Samuel really had time to plan this?
“We might not like each other, but we both love you.”
The last words were spoken so softly that Muriel thought she misheard him. The ground spun beneath her feet. “Samuel is alive?”
Kier nodded.
“Samuel is alive, Azazel is dead, and I resurrected Lucifer?”
“I was never truly dead. You just gave the powers of Hell back to me so I could re-embody myself,” said Lucifer.
“And the apocalypse? Are you going to merge the Hell and Earth realms?” she asked.
Lucifer scoffed at the idea. “I spent three millennia making Hell just the way I wanted it. I have no plans on tainting it with this place.”
Muriel didn’t even try to understand that logic. “Samuel is alive, Azazel is dead, there is no more apocalypse, and Kier loves me.”
Kier grinned at her. “You’re repeating yourself.”
“I’m happy, damn it. Let me repeat myself if I want to.”
Lucifer didn’t share in her elation. “You’re not out of the clear yet. There are going to be a lot of pissed-off demons now that I’m back and they’ll be taking their anger out on humans. Besides that, not many of your friends and allies are going to appreciate that your boyfriend is a demon.”
Muriel called her hellfire to her fingertips. Her few minutes’ rest had given her a small charge, but she was nowhere near strong enough to take on Lucifer. It didn’t stop her from bluffing.
Her hands burst into flames. “I think I can handle them. Why are you still here? Didn’t you get what you wanted from us already?”
Lucifer looked her up and down. The glow of the flames cast her face in a fierce light. A look of what appeared to be approval crossed his face. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Muriel turned just as Samuel, Jared, and Ava ran into the room. “Muriel, are you okay?” asked Samuel, right before the three of them came to an abrupt halt upon seeing Lucifer.
A huge grin covered Muriel’s face as she saw with her own eyes that Samuel was alive. “I’m fine.”
As Lucifer looked over the three newcomers, his wings twitched. “This is my signal to exit. Thank you for your assistance, Muriel. I’m sure we will meet again at some point.” He formally bowed down to her before he disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.
“Bowing just doesn’t have the same effect when you are buck-ass naked,” muttered Kier.
“Who was that?” asked Ava.
“No one important. Just the Devil,” said Kier.
Ava’s eyes almost bulged right out of her head. “I thought Lucifer was dead.”
“So did everyone,” said Muriel.
“Muriel just brought him back to life! But on the bright side, Azazel is dead and Lucifer gave our relationship his blessing.”
Muriel softly elbowed Kier in the gut. “Would you stop joking about this?”
“You mean to tell me that Lucifer himself was standing not ten feet from where I am right now?” asked Ava, still hung up on the whole devil thing.
“You killed Azazel?” asked Samuel.
Kier beamed with pride. “She reached right into the bastard’s chest and ripped out his heart.”
“No shit?” Jared looked Muriel over. “I’m impressed.”
“I’m glad to see that you’re okay,” said Muriel to Samuel. “Anything else the two of you want to tell me?”
“As far as I know, mine was the only death that was faked.”
Muriel shook her head in disbelief at what he had pulled off with Kier. She walked up to Samuel and tightly wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t you ever put me through that again.”
He hugged her back just as tightly. “It makes sense now. I will live and the false apocalypse will not come to pass. The prophecy wasn’t saying that I was going to stop it. It just meant that my fake death would give you the anger needed to kill Azazel.”
“That was the best idea you had?”
Kier approached Muriel from behind. “Well, speaking of prophecies, there was one thing we never told you about yours.”
Muriel unwrapped her arms from Samuel and looked at all of her friends. Each sported some sort of guilty expression. Well, not Kier. He still had that same grin on his face. “Well, now is as good a time as any.” She braced herself for what she was about to hear.
“Well, just remember that in this case the end justified the means,” said Kier.
Samuel shook his head. “The prophecy said that when you went after Azazel, you would be powered by a broken heart.”
“When it became apparent that you had feelings for me, I had to assume that I would be the one doing the breaking,” said Kier. “Since I had no plans of hurting you, I figured I would have to fake it.”
“Everyone knew this?”
Ava probably looked the guiltiest out of all of them. “We just didn’t see what good it would do you knowing. You were already convinced you were going off to your death.”
“Are you pissed?” asked Samuel.
“I don’t know. I think I’m still too relieved right now to really be pissed about anything. Ask me again tomorrow.”
“Thank God,” breathed Ava. “I thought you would never forgive us.”
Kier leaned forward to whisper in Muriel’s ear. “What do you say we go celebrate?”
His hot hand on her hip let her know just what he meant by “celebrate.” Muriel blushed as she understood his meaning. How could he fluster her so easily? She was more than twice his age.
“I think a celebration is in order,” she agreed. “Probably not until after I take a good twelve-hour nap. Killing and resurrecting kings takes a lot out of a girl.”
Jared made a jokingly disgusted face. “Ew. They’re talking about sex.”
“No, Kier is talking about sex. I’m talking about napping.”
“My self-esteem can’t take this abuse,” teased Kier.
“Oh please, every vampire and werewolf in here heard us going at it like bunnies all week. I think your ego can handle a little teasing.”
A wicked grin came across Kier’s face as he looked down at Muriel. His gaze darkened and he bit his lip. Muriel knew he was reliving all those noises they
had made together.
Suddenly the room was too crowded and too hot. “Maybe we should get out of here,” muttered Muriel.
“I told you they were talking about sex,” said a smug Jared.
Ava knocked him on his shoulder. “Yes, everyone in a five-mile radius understands that, Captain Obvious. Why don’t you two take some time to celebrate? We can get in touch if we need to.”
Kier’s arms wrapped around Muriel and she embraced the sense of rightness that filled her. She smiled at her friends as she was whisked away to a well-deserved vacation.
Two Weeks Later
Muriel stretched out and let the sun caress her bikini-clad body. “Kier, we need to talk.” The stretching rumpled the towel she was lying on, and she twisted to straighten it before any sand crept onto her makeshift bed.
“Are you really so afraid of sand?” asked Kier from above her.
Muriel squinted against the sun to get a better look at him. The tropics agreed with him. His broad chest was bared, and the sun glistened against his rippling muscles. He had just emerged from the ocean, and his swim trunks clung to his thighs.
She bit her lip as she held herself back from pouncing on him.
“If there is one thing I have learned from this trip, it’s that sand was created by a prude who was determined to prevent perfectly innocent couples from having sex.”
He plopped down beside her. The impact brushed sand on her legs and arm. “You think a little sand would prevent me from wanting you?”
“Well, I did say innocent couples.”
Kier leaned toward her. “You definitely don’t qualify.”
“I have been fully corrupted,” she agreed as she met him halfway for a kiss.
The last two weeks had been magical. It was freeing to be careless. To act like a new couple in love, with no fear of demons coming after them or kings who needed assassinating.
Kier had brought her to a small island in the Bahamas. It was a very exclusive resort that he picked for the sole purpose of beach sex. Muriel wasn’t as fond of the sand in naughty places, but whenever he gave her one of his heated stares or bit his lip in the way that told her that he was imagining her naked, it was impossible for her to keep her clothes on.
