Fallen Angel 5: Falling Stars Read online

  Michael let loose a war cry as he wielded his sword to knock Cyrus back before lunging at them. The hellions lunged for Lucifer too.

  With no more time, Lucifer sheathed the sword and pushed up with force, driving himself and Gabriel through the hole at speed. His wings flung out the moment he cleared the jagged rock opening, batting the hot air to deliver him higher and higher. The Earth’s crust approached fast, and Lucifer pulled his wings in at the last second, clearing the fading gap that scraped his feathers as he shot through.

  Lucifer lifted higher into the night sky, the view of remaining cracks disappearing one after the other before the dead hybrids’ smoky remains obscured his view. “I’ve got you, Gabriel. We are going home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  An ember of hate attacked Lucifer’s heart as he soared up into the clouds. He’d made it out—and Gabriel was still alive, barely, her heart letting out a sluggish beat for every four or more breaths he took—no thanks to Michael. A tiny ember of remorse slithered around the ball of hate in Lucifer’s heart. Without Michael’s help, he never would have made it down to Hell to save Gabriel in the first place. Even before now, Michael had broken the rules to protect Gabriel when God had refused, delivering her to Hell and Lucifer’s waiting arms. Those debts of life would never get repaid because there was no surviving what Lucifer had left Michael to face alone. “Sorry, brother,” he whispered, and for once, he meant it—because he could not go back. Not now. Not in time to do any good.

  Lucifer had one mission, and he was not failing now.

  In spite of his confusion over Michael’s words and actions against their plans to save Gabriel, Lucifer had seen the desperate self-loathing in Michael’s eyes when he had sent out that volatile strike of light. The last thing Michael wanted was to endanger Gabriel, the woman they both love—so why had he?

  The bright moon lit up the star-spangled sky as Lucifer flew higher, making everything look the same. But he didn’t need the ability to tell the stars apart to know where to go. Despite the darkness in him and how far he had fallen, the place of Heavenly light called to Lucifer as if beckoning him home. He was so close he could feel the humming that resonated beneath his skin. His heart leaped in anticipation with or without an invitation from his maker. There was no stopping him. Lucifer may have been banned from reentry, but he was ready to bet their lives on one assumption. Gabriel, the purest and most honest, had never been banned. Unlike Lucifer, her wings had regrown, gray like Remiel’s, and as a dim halo pulsed over her ashen flesh, he was ready to prove his suspicion right. With her link to Above still alive, her angelic welcome alone would open the door and grant them entry.

  “W-where…?” Gabriel’s eyes streamed silver as they cracked open. Her sudden consciousness made Lucifer’s heart leap with firing hope—until clarity shrank her pupils and her eyelids flung wide with a look of horror. “No. Lucifer, no!”

  Gabriel’s eyes rolled back in her head. Her heart suddenly belted too fast and with too little blood to feed her body the life it needed. She became a dead weight in Lucifer’s arms, threatening to drag him down. Her words reminded him of Michael and sent tendrils of fear through him, but he couldn’t stop now, not when they were almost there. She was Lucifer’s everything, nothing mattered more than her survival, not even his own life. And if that were the price, Lucifer would gladly pay the debt. He would die for her, a thousand times over.

  Lucifer batted his glossy black wings harder.

  Death had a hold of Gabriel—her heart fell silent.

  “No!” Lucifer’s wings beat the air one last time as he braced for impact. What if his assumption was wrong? Would it hurt her? Would it kill them both instantaneously? There was no way to know and only one way to find out.

  The invisible surface of the looking glass cracked over Lucifer’s head, the water and shards driving upward at his intrusion. His black wings flared out, turning down to catch the air and lower them gently as the glass reformed and the water rained back down as if Heaven sent. The moment Lucifer’s feet hit the choppy surface, he fell to his knees. He submerged Gabriel fully as healing light glowed and filled the water with a warmth that hummed. “Please do not be too late.”

  A sense of wrongness pulled at Lucifer’s insides, making his muscles tighten. He was not permitted to be here, but not even God himself could force Lucifer to leave. Their maker would have to kill him first.

  Staring down at Gabriel beneath the water, Lucifer waited for a sign as he ignored the trembling of his insides. A flutter of her eyelids. A patter of her heart. Anything…

  Silver streaked out around them, washing off of Gabriel’s naked body and staining the pure water. Dirt added a grimy filth, muddying the sight of her and dulling the healing glow.

  “It cannot be…too late.”

  Lucifer’s shoulders curled in, his spine curving as wet drops fell silently from his eyes. His body numbed, no longer able to feel the Heavenly demand for expulsion. His emotional agony remained. Time passed as if eternal, with no end or reprieve from the sorrow that hooked into Lucifer’s heart and soul.

  Gabriel’s battered face remained as lifeless and bruised as it had been before her rescue. Lucifer did not need to raise her dead weight to know her body refused to heal. The water’s rejuvenating quality was gone, taken away. The proof was undeniable as Lucifer’s minor old and new wounds from hunting down the hellions then the hybrids, and having to escape the returned monsters of Hell refused to heal despite being submerged in the dirty water. Old bruises remained, as did cuts and scrapes. The raised red scar that tracked down from his sternum to his navel remained the same, and no new feathers sprouted from his wings that had been plucked by the hellions in Hell. Lucifer was forsaken, and he’d failed her.

  The love of his life.

  The only thing that had ever mattered to him.

  Lucifer had failed her in the beginning—and every step along the way. His love—and his need for vengeance—had killed her. Her blood was on his hands, on his soul. He would never be rid of the stain, and he never wanted to be. Without Gabriel, Lucifer was empty. A shell of a man. A being with nothing to live on for.

  Releasing Gabriel’s legs, they fell lower beneath the murky surface, sliding down Lucifer’s folded knees and jostling something at his side. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Keeping his other arm around her, Lucifer grasped the hilt of his sword. The blade came out of the water as he slid it free of its scabbard. Now cleansed of all the death it had delivered, blood-painted drops fell from the reflective blade. Lucifer held the length up, poising it right under his chin so that it kissed his jugular.

  If his minor wounds wouldn’t heal, neither would a fatal one.

  “I love you with all that I ever was and all that we could have been.” With a gulp and a bucket-load more silent tears, Lucifer’s voice cracked as he leaned down on the sharp edge. Without Gabriel, he was broken. He would not live without her. “Forgive me…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Welcome home, lost child. Your destiny awaits.”

  Gabriel’s heart fluttered to life at the reverberation of God’s words inside her mind. Her eyes flung open to a murky film and pain dominated her body, crippling her of movement. The world beyond was a wavy distortion, swaying back and forth above her. Pillars, ambient light that fought to penetrate the muck around her, and Lucifer.

  A sword was poised at his throat as he stared lifelessly.

  His lips moved with sorrow-filled words. A goodbye.

  Suddenly Gabriel knew where she was. In the looking glass, a place of healing that failed her battered body. And the place that would bear witness to Lucifer’s last breath. Gabriel’s lungs squeezed, her mouth opened to scream. Gurgles came out as Lucifer sliced the sword sideways—

  Gabriel lifted her numb hand slowly from the water, fighting debilitating tingles as her face and body followed right behind. A terrible gasp delivered oxygen to her greedy lungs—and her hand caught the deathly shar
p blade, yanking it back off Lucifer’s throat.

  Lucifer dropped the weapon at once. It splashed as it hit the surface beside them before sucking beneath. Gabriel’s hand clamped over the deep slice in his neck that sheeted silvery-black blood down his chest, but he didn’t make a move to stem the bleeding. Eyes more intense than Gabriel had seen in years, Lucifer stared at her in disbelief, choking on words that wouldn’t come, crying silent tears of relief as he crushed her to his chest, and making it hard for her to cover the gaping slice in his neck.

  Gabriel struggled against Lucifer for a moment, needing to stop the gushing blood that added silvery snaking tendrils to the water around them. But a soothing, “Shhh,” from Lucifer stalled her in motion. Slumping against him, Gabriel drew her first full breath, allowing her body to reboot as calmness washed over her. The light beneath the water glowed brighter, somehow transcending the polluted liquid to beam up at them as Lucifer’s wings—his wings!—closed around them both.

  Safe in Lucifer’s arms, the moments before Gabriel blacked out came back in patches. Michael racing in to her total shock and fighting back Cyrus and Darius and their loyal guards. Lucifer appearing on his knees beside her next and swooping her up. There had been chaos. Battle sounds—and the incoming of the hellions. Lucifer had returned them all to Hell? They were trapped, as good as dead. Then there was fire and she was suffocating, gasping her last breaths.

  Gabriel wanted to stay in this moment forever, to never leave. Nestled beneath Lucifer’s black wings, she curled her arms around his muscled body. Her lips pressed to his chest, tasting his blood and feeling the thin central scars that now ran the length of his heart. The death wounds Gabriel had taken from Lucifer, the ones that, as she peered down at her breasts, were a mirroring group of three almost vertical lines. “How?”

  Something clawed at Gabriel’s subconscious, tearing away the serene calm like all the flesh that had been stripped from her body in Hell time and time again. Fleeting sensations tingled over her naked form as Lucifer’s embrace warmed her: the blind memory of soaring, of wind assaulting her face and dangling wings, the thinning of the air she could hardly manage to gasp in.

  “I…” Lucifer’s voice was a rasp, his skin along his throat knitting together as she peered up through the opening from his protective wings. “…thought I failed. I—I thought you were…dead.”

  Gabriel’s heart broke at the trail of tears that forged tracks down Lucifer’s dirty face. Her hand lifted, needing to touch him, needing to wipe his pain away—but the sound of lapping and the feel of a chill to her arm had her freezing in motion. The light. The pillars…her oxygen deprived mind finally put the pieces together. Gabriel knew where they were, the place she’d begged Lucifer not to take her, the place that, as the pain and disorientation subsided, revealed the extent of God’s power. She was healed, not only in body but also in mind. The infection from Cyrus’s bite and blood was no more.

  But her return to heavenly stature had come at a price…

  “Oh, Lucifer.” Gabriel’s hand completed its shaky journey up to his face as her tears tumbled without end. “You didn’t…”

  Lucifer’s brows pulled together at seeing the fear in Gabriel’s eyes, but his parted lips didn’t utter a word. His head snapped up instead, and his wings tightened around her as he retrieved his sword. “What do you want?”

  Lucifer growled as Gabriel rose up to see the archangels gathering in from one of the glowing corridors. They were all there, except for Azrael. More warrior angels crowded in behind them, spilling into the circular room that could never house them all. Each of them was sullen, and a few sent dirty looks at Lucifer, knowing what he had done. Knowing what was about to come.

  “It is not what we want…” Remiel stepped forward, meeting the edge of the looking glass with bare feet. His gray wings drooped from his back, as sad as his face. He flung a sapphire blue robe, and Lucifer caught it. “It is what you have done.”

  Now Lucifer’s wings did unravel as he bared his teeth and spat venom. “Saved our own from the clutches of pure evil when your God sat by and did nothing to help?”

  “You delivered a fallen to the Realm of Light,” Remiel added, looking to Gabriel with sorrow as she snatched the robe from Lucifer and tugged it over her head. “A banished soul, your own soul, Lucifer, that on reentry broke the wards of the realms.”

  The long flowing robe settled on the water and the material sucked down beneath the surface that felt like it was ready to swallow Gabriel whole. She caught Lucifer’s sword-wielding hand as he went to storm up the concaved base, tugging him back to see the confusion and disbelief in his eyes. “You did it to save me. You were unaware. Now what is done is done. The past cannot be changed. But we need to unite for the future—otherwise we may as well give up now. There is no stopping this. No escaping it now.”

  There were murmurs of agreement in spite of the clear reluctance that had a grip on all of their faces, even Remiel’s. “The warriors are already above where it is safe. Only we remain to prevent this threat.”

  “What is done?” Lucifer sheathed his weapon and tugged on Gabriel’s arm, the murky water splashing around them. “Gabriel, what is going to happen?”

  Gabriel caught Lucifer’s other hand and squeezed as she faced him fully. The Realm of Light trembled, columns shaking with a deafening rumble. A subtle sensation niggled at Gabriel, somehow calling to her, almost begging her to stay. A sense of fear washed over her, for what was about to happen? Or for something she was leaving behind? There was no way to know and no time to find out. “Hold on tight—”

  The glass shattered beneath their feet with a crash, raining shards as the water sucked them down with it. And then Gabriel and Lucifer were falling, hands entwined as they tumbled from Above through clouds and endless sky. But they were not alone. The other angels fell too, hundreds of them, so many that all of the ones inhabiting the Realm of Light must have fallen straight through the glowing floor. Flight failed them as they plummeted down backward, their wings flying up around them—as their feathers turned from pure white to raven black.

  “Fallen?” Lucifer’s voice strangled with shock, noticing that only Gabriel’s and Remiel’s wings remained gray. The evidence was clear enough that he understood without Gabriel even opening her mouth. “I did this?”

  The ground rushed up faster, mountains and then trees, rivers, and cities taking shape.

  Only Lucifer’s face remained clearly in Gabriel’s sight as they tumbled head over feet through the night sky. A sad smile broke over her lips. “You saved me, Lucifer, when no one else would. You kept to your word. Now I must keep to mine. Ready to fly?”

  Lucifer nodded. “I would follow you anywhere, anytime.”

  Their wings flung out at once, catching the rushing wind. Stabbing pain attacked Gabriel’s wings and she bit back a cry of anguish while Lucifer’s face strained at the onslaught. There were loud, splintering cracks, some from her wings, others from his, and even a few from nearby falling angels, but then it was over, their powerful flying attachments fighting the downward spiral and batting to lift them high and hoist them up above the mountains.

  Not all the angels pulled off the feat, their wings failing them as the pressure of the fall broke too many bones and perpetuated the hurtling below.

  Angels collided with the ground near and far, black wings bent and bodies sprawled.

  And that’s when Gabriel saw it.

  When all the angels that had succeeded in taking flight saw it.

  Heat rose up from the earth like fire, adding waves to the view of below. But there was no confusing the sight. It was everywhere. As far as the eye could see, deep fissures sent out jagged lines through the land below, splitting rivers apart, cracking mountains in two, bisecting even the entire Babylon civilization and its castle. Burning glimpses shone through as plumes of black and red steam clouds rose up to cover everything with darkness. Dark shapes crawled from the cracks and gaping crevices, blanketing the w
orld below in deformed beasts and hoots of triumph.

  Those in the Realm of Light had fallen.

  And every soul in Hell had risen up.

  The doors below and above had split wide open. And now there was no going back.

  “Would you even follow me to Hell on Earth?”

  Lucifer’s nostrils flared and fire burned in his narrowed eyes that scoured all that awaited them below. “Especially there.”

  And with that, Gabriel and Lucifer repositioned their black and gray wings and dove down into anarchy.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Watching from the shadows atop a sheer cliff face, the bleak view below filled Lucifer with fear. He shivered at the brush of steady wind, a chill spreading up his spine. A quick glance up revealed a dark sky with only the movement of drifting clouds. “Where are you?” His heartbeat remained elevated and his muscles refused to release as his stomach churned.

  With a huff, Lucifer’s gaze dropped back down to the place that had once saved twelve vampires and had been the damning destination of Darius’s failed ritualistic plans. It was almost a day later and so much had changed.

  On the ground below and surrounded by thick concealing trees, Cyrus was free and barking orders like he was the ruler he had once been. Like he had the upper hand—because he did. He was alive—and reunited with Darius. The king’s son appeared at his side with a disappearing black feather. A travel means that had now been unlocked since the realms’ wards busted open.

  Hellions swarmed all around them as they conversed with weapons drawn, now lively and free of Hell since the sun failed to penetrate the dark haze that had enveloped the world. They were seething and hissing, mangled jaws snapping and soulless eyes shifty, seeking out a weakness that was ripe for the crunching of bones and the slurping of skin.

  Their vision was focused though. Rather than seeking prey through the thick forest that surrounded them, the hellions stared at the bordering trees.