Fallen Angel 3: Breaking Lucifer Read online

  Fallen Angel

  Breaking Lucifer

  J.L. Myers

  Fallen Angel Series Book 3

  Contents

  MORE BOOKS BY J.L. MYERS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Thank you for reading!

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  Connect with J.L. Myers

  About the Author

  MORE BOOKS BY J.L. MYERS

  THE BLOOD BOUND SERIES

  (New Adult Paranormal Romance)

  What Lies Inside

  Made By Design

  Web Of Lies

  Born To Die

  ~

  OTHER BOOKS

  Nerve Damage

  (A Chilling Psychological Thriller)

  ~

  FALLEN ANGEL SERIES

  Ashes of Eden

  Dawn of Reckoning

  Breaking Lucifer

  Cold-Blooded Fate (March 2019)

  Falling Stars (May 2019)

  Copyright © 2019 J.L. Myers

  The moral right of the author had been asserted.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this literary work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the author J.L. Myers.

  Cover art © 2019 J.L. Myers.

  ISBN: 9781730771576

  Visit the Website:

  www.jlmyers.com

  Chapter One

  Lava poured down Lucifer’s throat, blistering his mouth, tongue, and then deep inside his chest with unrelenting agony. Sweat poured. His vision blinked in and out of use. Fiery scorched landscape and a staring mob of red-eyed soldiers. Then darkness. Fiery landscape. Darkness.

  Finally his torment at losing Gabriel was overcome with pain so excruciating it stole his sight. His knees buckled, kneecaps melting into lava. And then Lucifer dipped down, the fiery lake eating him alive, devouring him inside and out.

  Lucifer screamed beneath the surface, breathing lava that would soon turn his immortality into fatality. This is what he wanted; living in Hell without her was not an option. She was the sun, and now he would forever be her memory of the Morningstar—a title he had never lived up to. He was ready to finish this, to be ended by his own hand. Even as he felt every fiber that made up his skin and bones melting, he had no regret. At least, not in this act. He was ready to die. Ready to find peace—

  His final words gargled with the disintegration of his jaw. “Farewell, my Gabriel.”

  A sudden blast streaked down overhead and speared straight into Lucifer. Enveloped in vibrating light, the scalding heat consuming his body vanished. Feeling cold as ice, the burning stopped, both in pain and action. No longer did his skin melt and curl back from his cracking bones and burning internals. Instead, it reverted, now uncurling and stretching to join with other threaded pieces that were on the brink of snapping. Muscles and tendons reformed, and his exposed skeletal frame shone as fractures smoothed out. His nonexistent leathers and armor returned too, forming over his body like a second skin. Shoving his feet down at the rock-hard ground below the surface, he stood, bringing his shoulders out of the still red-hot lava that should be consuming him. But it wasn’t, and as Lucifer saw the slack-jawed faces of his soldiers watching from the sidelines, he could not stop from looking down at his arms as he stretched them out in front of him. They were alight like they were logs in a burning pit. And yet he was not burning and becoming liquid and coal as the fire grew brighter and more persistent. Beneath the flames that danced over his raw body, arms, and face, he was healing. Even his hair was reforming, growing from his scalp in a long golden wave down to his shoulders.

  Staggering from shock, he closed in on the rocky shore. His men stumbled back, some falling to their backsides as others kept their distance.

  As he reached the riverbank and took the first step out of the lake, he could not stop from wondering how this was possible. How was he in one piece and healing at such speed when all the others who had fallen into the lake from Earth had burned to death? Had God smiled down on him with pity? Or had his maker decided his life was not his own to take? Or perhaps the burning of his wings so long ago had changed more than his blood and his ability to venture above in flight.

  Now fully out of the lake, Lucifer looked around. The men that lined the banks around him and the others on the other side of the lake they couldn't cross continued to stare. Then one of the King’s original guards fell to one knee. Zachias bowed his head and his ginger hair fell over his face. “Our Prince.”

  Reminded of Cyrus, Lucifer clenched his newly formed hands, making the renewed bones creak. He wondered where the King who’d attempted to end Gabriel’s life was. If he had escaped the lake, Lucifer would hunt him down. Glaring down at himself with flared nostrils, he felt like the fire was burning through his veins at the memory of Gabriel being attacked. He vowed then that if the King’s end had yet to come, he would deliver it in a flash of flames that would leave Cyrus as a charred corpse with his mouth gaping from screams of death.

  More voices rose around Lucifer, in front of him and from across the river. Pulled from his plans of murder, he unclenched his fists and blinked to clear his reddening sight. His breath caught. Every one of his surviving soldiers was on one knee—bowing to him. “Hail to the Prince of…”

  As the man who spoke stalled, Zachias furthered with a question. “What shall you name your new kingdom?”

  There was no hesitation as the fire that coated Lucifer’s entire body absorbed back into his skin without explanation, leaving him healed and whole. He had known the name of this place the moment he had fallen. The name he had sometimes used for the Earth above—before he knew better. “Hell. We are in Hell.”

  The men followed Zachias’s lead and stood, pumping the sooty air with their fists. “To the Prince of Hell!”

  Chapter Two

  Lucifer set out along the desolate landscape of Hell alone. Heading up along the river’s banks, his followers headed outward from either side of the flaming river toward the jagged peaking mountains that lay like fortress soldiers on both sides. Now that he was their prince—the Prince of Hell—he needed to know what this land had to offer. Lucifer hadn’t changed his mind about ending himself, at least not entirely. Though the potential to rule this land and all that resided inside hel
d some appeal. And if there was any way to use this newfound location and those that followed him to his advantage in the long run, he owed it to Gabriel to try.

  Plus, he had unfinished business.

  Unsure if Cyrus had perished, Lucifer needed to make sure he had before returning to the decision to annihilate himself.

  Following the winding river, his bare feet left pressed prints in the ashy ground that was peppered with the half-burned bodies of dead soldiers. Up ahead was a less jagged incline than the mountains that lay on either side of him. Volcanic lava flowed from between the rise, zigzagging down until it reached the river’s mouth. For some reason, he felt as if he was going in the right direction. Something inside kept urging him on.

  Reaching the rise, he climbed up the rough rocky face, scaling the steep black foundation one reaching hand and one grounding foot after the other. Higher and higher he ascended, that feeling in him soaring with each step. Was that a dim glow intensifying as he got higher? Bypassing the lava that spurted out from a hole in the mountainside, he climbed further, destined for the peak. And then his head reached the lowest edge, giving him a full view of what lay beyond.

  “By God’s hand…”

  Lucifer stared wide-eyed at what grew out of the flattened valley below. The red haze above was slowly thickening, reflecting more light rather than swallowing it with darkness. The scorched land beneath was not empty blackness like he had expected. Siding the continuation of the lake that curved to one side were so many misshapen black huts he could barely count them. With larger ones in the center that thinned out to smaller, shittier ones toward the outside, they were set out in a kind of order. Paths veered every which way, creating a maze of avenues between the many close-knit dwellings. At each corner, tall fire torches worked to illuminate the dwindling darkness, casting the orange hue he had seen from the other side of the mountain rise. With his angelic sight, Lucifer saw movement down there, large and small beings draped in brown and black rags. People? Is this were God sent humans who sinned while alive on Earth? he mused.

  Screams and faint cries reached him as he tuned his hearing, the sounds coming from people being chased and then another as someone was cut down in the street.

  “It can all be yours.”

  Lucifer whirled. Expecting to find an enemy in need of stabbing, his sword was freed of its sheath and poised in his hand to lunge—at nothing. No one was behind him. None of the soldiers who’d bowed to him as their prince. Not even Cyrus or one of the people from the civilization below. But Lucifer was sure he’d heard those words, and now that he thought about it, he knew that voice. “Remiel?”

  Although he was nowhere in sight, the angel’s voice reemerged as if he were standing right beside Lucifer on the mountaintop. A growing vibration of angelic presence hummed in the ashy air too. “You will rule over them all. The monsters that fell with you, and…the hellions. You will keep control and bring order to this realm and every being in it.”

  Lucifer narrowed his eyes and unclenched his suddenly stiff jaw. “Why would I do this? And why would God offer such a thing to me after my acts against him and his humans?”

  “For a chance…”

  Lucifer hissed, thinking of the only thing he could ever want in all the realms. “Gabriel.”

  “No.” Remiel’s reply was unwavering, and his robed form appeared with dusty blonde hair like a ghostly haze at Lucifer’s side. “You will never have what you desire. Our rules have not changed, and after all you have done in the name of what you covet, you could not truly expect they ever would. But,” Remiel added more forcefully when Lucifer went to bark his refusal to accept, “you will be saving the life of the one being you claim to love more than your hate of all God has created.”

  Lucifer turned away from the civilization below with deceptively slow movement—and struck out to catch Remiel by the throat. But his hand snatched right through the cloudy form. Feeling like he was breathing fire, Lucifer’s entire body came alive with sudden flames that burned as bright as his rage. The surprise of his returned fire did not stall his grated words. “If God harms her, I swear to him I will—”

  “Tut-tut-tut,” Remiel waved a dismissive hand, shaking his head in disapproval. “Best hold your tongue, Lucifer. You may think things cannot grow worse for you, but I am here to let you know they can. And no, God is no threat to Gabriel. To believe he could be only displays how far you have fallen not only in body but also in your faith. Besides, it is you and your actions that will bring about Gabriel’s death…should you ever attempt to leave this place.”

  Lucifer did not know if what Remiel claimed was true, but what did it matter? He was trapped here anyway. There was no leaving. Climbing out of Hell to save Gabriel when she had been battling Cyrus had been a fluke when the power infused in Remiel had misfired and catapulted him up high enough to grasp the edge of the earth that had been cracked open like an egg. Without wings or any opening now—unless his followers found one—he was stuck.

  Before he could question Remiel further, the other angel spoke. “You will be tasked to receive all the souls of Hell, and the new sinners as they are cast down from Above. Every new arrival must serve their punishment by your hand, and it must fit their crimes. You will be the Guardian of Hell and all the souls this realm contains.”

  “And should I refuse?” Lucifer planned to rule this place, but there was no danger in asking.

  Remiel began to glow, and then something appeared in his hand, a ghostly resemblance of the angel sword.

  Not needing to hear the outcome for his refusal, Lucifer hiked his chin up. “And should I accept?”

  Remiel nodded. “Prove you are worthy of change and commit to this, and perhaps, one day, God will return your black wings.”

  Lucifer’s mouth opened with a sharp inhale. Wings, even his black ones, were better than none. They made him more powerful. They gave him the ability to fly and soar. And they gave him passage to the Realm of Light by invitation. But he could not believe it. His wings were gone, burned to ashes.

  Lucifer’s lips parted to question the validity of Remiel’s offer, and if any danger he posed to Gabriel would have passed if his wings were willingly returned, but something stopped him before a sound could escape his throat.

  Remiel’s hand was upturned between them, and with a flash of pure white light, a downy white feather appeared across his palm. “God can return your wings.”

  The feather ruffled with the swirl of hot wind that picked up around him, its vanes and stem changing from translucent to solid. Lucifer reached out to touch the feather, desperate to prove to his eyes that what he was seeing was real. And then his fingertips brushed the long rounded tip. Real.

  Lucifer retracted his hand with a sharp breath.

  The white vanes where he had touched the feather turned black, the darkness growing like a stain until the entire white feather was as dark as the despair he’d almost drowned in.

  “This is an offering of good faith. A reminder of what you have the chance to regain—and what you have to lose.” Remiel’s voice fell to a whisper. “It cannot transport for good reason, but…it will allow your soul a single and limited trespass to Earth.”

  To Earth. Not to the Realm of Light or Heaven.

  Lucifer plucked the feather from Remiel’s transparent hand, holding the stem between his finger and thumb. This offering was a small constellation, giving him the tiniest glimmer of hope that one day, somehow, he might get to see her again. He tucked the offering down low beneath his metal chest plate.

  Nodding, he said nothing as he turned back to face the dirty civilization below. Following the curve of the river, he saw how it circled the base of a mountain with a flattened top like an invitation. He could see it now, his castle that all the beings of Hell would be made to create for him. A structure to kiss the black-and-red marbled sky and reach upward to Earth, a structure that would lift him as close to Gabriel as he could get down here. A small part of him—though he would neve
r admit it—also ignited at the thought of receiving forgiveness from his God. If he mended his ways, maybe, one day, he would be offered something more. Maybe he would be offered his place of servitude back above…if he could only change his heart.

  Bowing his head, and knowing deep down to his very soul that whatever happened he would one day see Gabriel again, he nodded. “I accept.”

  Chapter Three

  Alone in her blackened garden, Gabriel stared into the murky water that had once been pristine aquamarine. Like the real Garden of Eden, sin had taken its beauty and ruined it forever more. Yet the rotting skeletal trees and barren meadow that rose up to the cliff with its frozen waterfall could not steal the memories she had of this place. It could not remove the closeness she still felt to Lucifer who was now so far away. The surface that no longer gave her the ability to see him reflected her pale face and the silver that pooled in her eyes. She sniffed and her voice broke. “Are you in pain? Do you suffer?” A foreboding sense of something being terribly wrong refused to shift from her chest. “Are you even alive?”