Fallen Angel 1: Ashes of Eden Page 15

  Something dark passed over Michael’s face, a flash of anger or even torment, but then it was gone, and his strong facade was back in place. “Then there is no reason to hide them.” He lashed out and caught her wrist, the action surprising and aggressive despite his passive expression. “Let the disgraced’s words speak.”

  Gabriel’s fingers tightened around the feather, but Michael’s other hand caught her fist and pried her fingers open. Lifting her palm up, he blew a gentle breath over the crumpled feather, igniting the message to come to life.

  As if on the breeze that was nonexistent, Lucifer’s voice rose, intense and full of desperate emotion. “Eternity without you is meaningless. I cannot abide this distance. Our time will come.”

  As the feather disintegrated into nothingness, Gabriel tried to stay her reaction. But through her struggle, she felt the way her eyes lit up as the heat of rushing blood from her racing heart flooded up from her chest and across her face. Michael’s free hand landing on her shoulder shot her gaze downward as she tried to hide her face from him.

  “Look at me.” When Gabriel refused to peer up, Michael lifted her chin with his fingers. With lips pinned into a grim line, his eyes held an air of upset. “Do you know how Lucifer managed to get Azrael to deliver this message to you?”

  Breathing harder at the insinuation in his eyes, the smells of blackened trees and ash from what was once alive in perfect stillness increased, becoming almost too much to bear. She knew Azrael would only visit Lucifer to transport a soul. But she knew Lucifer down to his very core. He could never. He would never.

  “He did,” Michael said softly, staring down at Gabriel who only now realized she was shaking her head in denial. “A life was taken, and it was Lucifer’s actions that delivered that living being to the realm of the dead. From his hands, a man lost his life.”

  Gabriel still couldn’t utter a word. She still couldn’t believe it. Lucifer coveted what humans had, he saw them as pedestal-placed beings that had the world at their feet and eternity awaiting them at their end. Yes, he had caused pain and suffering, but he had never intentionally acted to harm another without being provoked. All he had ever done was to get close to her, to be within her reach, to keep her safe.

  “His message is proof enough. Lucifer will do whatever he can to get what he wants. And what he wants is you, soul and body.”

  “No.” Gabriel refused to believe it. She knew Lucifer. She knew the Morningstar. He would never kill another in cold blood. Not ever, and especially not for this. “You are wrong.”

  “I wish that were true.” Michael’s flat expression disagreed with his statement. “I watched it with my own eyes.”

  Pulling her wrist from Michael’s grasp, Gabriel kneeled at the pond’s edge. Her wings extended back like a long veil as she settled the water’s surface with a brush of her hand. As the sound of gushing water fled, her voice was unwavering. “Then show me, Michael. Prove my belief and trust in Lucifer wrong.”

  Michael was kneeling beside her in an instant. Gabriel gasped as he clutched her face with his large hands, his intense eyes seeming to strike with lightning as he stared into her own. “I am not granted this freedom of revelation…” Glancing swiftly up at the flashing sky, his strained gaze fell back down to hers fast. “But you must be made aware. The past is done, but the future…it is still to come.”

  Stabbing pain invaded Gabriel’s head and she screamed. The agony overrode the throbbing in her heart and dulled every one of her other senses. Her eyes squeezed shut, and although her body crumbled, Michael’s grip on her face held her up. The expected empty blackness behind her lids was gone. In its place, shifting images flashed in her mind. At first, she saw Lucifer with a smile that could light up even the heavens and make her forget the ugliness of her charred garden. Then she was in his arms, sheltered by his great white wings, their lips connected in frenzied kisses that made her lips tingle as she watched. As the feeling of being speared by a million tiny probes fled her brain, she got lost in the moving images, in the passion and the emotion. Everything around her physical body became a lost thought, making her forget where she was and who was with her. But then the scenery changed. No longer in each other’s embrace, Lucifer was on his knees, begging with his hands pressed together. Gabriel saw herself swathed in light behind him, silver tears streaming down her flushed face. The images sped up without warning, light turning to dark, and then blood and glowing red eyes appeared, filled with a vicious intent that could devour the world.

  Gabriel gasped for air, and Michael released her face, catching her around her waist before she could fall. Hoisting her up against his body, something flickered in his eyes as he beheld her face so close to his. Then he shook himself and stood her on her own two feet, taking a step back. “The Earth floods as we speak. Lucifer and Remiel will return eventually. Do you understand now what must be done?”

  With her legs wobbly, Gabriel expanded her wings to help steady her center of gravity. The events, the dangers, what Lucifer had revealed to her so long ago had been true. So horribly true. Finding her balance, she nodded, even though merely doing that broke her heart into a million pieces. Knowing the actions she had to take and trusting herself to do exactly that was like trying to win a war against herself. “I am not sure I am strong enough. If he comes to me…”

  Michael nodded when Gabriel trailed off. “There is only one solution.” He opened his palm, letting a spark of light flare to life. “There is one place that can contain him.”

  Gabriel knew what Michael was suggesting. Imprisonment. Not for her. It was not her will that would bring her to Lucifer. It was his. He would not stay away. She had witnessed the proof over and over again. She had seen the repercussions each and every time. And now she’d glimpsed pieces of a future that would lay waste to Lucifer because of his lust for her.

  Gabriel nodded her head, the motion mechanical rather than intended. Deep down she knew what she had to agree to. A measure that Michael would have no problem getting the other archangels and God to support. “For his own protection, Lucifer must be imprisoned.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lucifer reentered the Realm of Light in a flash of light conjured by Remiel at his side. The other angels chained around the looking glass hushed at their arrival, their eyes wary and watchful at the same time. They had likely seen all that had played out all those months ago. But had they seen what Lucifer had caused—the death of a human? Considering he’d suffered no repercussions, he assumed not. Though even if they had, that mattered not to Lucifer at this moment.

  Of the male angels that were present and murmuring greetings to Remiel alone, the one that he had hoped was absent was. Michael was not among the group that included only Raziel, Raguel, Jeremiel, Zadkiel, and Chameul. Though neither was Azrael. The thought of where the Angel of Death might be after what he’d forced him to return above with quickened Lucifer’s heartbeat. If Michael had intercepted him…

  His freedom back here could be cut short at any moment.

  Impatience tightened Lucifer’s muscles more than the stirring of whispers that came from the other angels.

  Turning toward the framing columns to their private chambers, Lucifer’s feet were ready to deliver him to the place he needed to be. To the one being he needed to see. A warm hand curled around his bicep, stopping his escape from the circular room of glowing light. Shoving Lucifer away from the other watching angels, Remiel’s voice was a whisper that made Lucifer eager to hear his private words. “I warn you, brother. Do not follow where your heart is telling you to go.”

  “And why not?” Lucifer yanked his arm free, stepping closer to Remiel so that they were standing face to face. Silence stretched out between them, becoming tangible in a way that tightened Lucifer’s skin and had his hands cranking into fists at the time that was being taken from him. His stare begged and dared Remiel to reveal what he knew but had yet to say. “Speak now or get out of my way.”

  Remiel’s shoulders
fell with his exhale. He stepped aside. “It is not my place…”

  Irritation at his brother’s subservience and lack of a backbone stirred anger within him. He shoved his brother further aside with his forearm and stalked through the soaring entry that revealed the corridor he needed to pass through to find her. Already he could feel her presence, that sensation that was like an invisible thread that tethered him to her no matter where each of them was. Intending to pass by the entries to their personal chambers as quickly as possible, Lucifer picked up the pace—until the sensation spiked.

  Lucifer had expected to have to weave throughout the labyrinth of corridors to her ruined garden. Even now he could imagine her sitting by the water with her hands catching her quietly wept tears. And he had been wrong. She was not that far away. She was not even in her own chamber ending this corridor.

  Turning to face the glittering drapery to his side, he knew where Gabriel was.

  She had received his message, she must have.

  And now…she was waiting for him, aware of his return. In his private chamber.

  Steeling himself and taking a few deep breaths, he dared to venture inside, sweeping the chiming drapery to one side as he went. And there she was. Sitting at the platform he’d spent countless hours sketching her likeness. The sight of Gabriel facing him from the glowing perch, her hands folded in her lap, her hair loose over her shoulders and longer than he remembered, and her lips parted with anticipation, almost made his heart beat right out of his chest. The depth of emotion he felt for her was unchallenged. Nothing had ever made him feel the way that merely beholding her did.

  And then he saw it. The feather he’d sketched Gabriel’s beauty with was in her joined hands, and it was shaking. Her hands were quivering. Concern and unsettling fear rooted through his soul, making him stumble as he staggered through strewn scrolls to get to her. Had she seen his actions below? Did she know what he had done to ensure his message reached her?

  Falling to his knees, he did not dare to touch her. Not yet. Not until she invited him too. He had used that man on Earth to his own advantage, a man that was set to die horribly through drowning. Had the quick death he had not kept from happening changed the way she felt about him? Had her hope for all that was good in him finally met its end?

  “Gabriel, I…” He so badly wanted to touch her, and as a stray tear spilled from her eye, he felt something breaking in him. If he had lost her… “I am sorry. I—”

  “Shhh.” Gabriel’s finger to his lips shushed his words as if she had sucked them right out of him. Another tear fell, and she forced a smile that was so sad it crushed him. “I know you are. I know you, Lucifer. And I am so, so sorry…”

  “You?” Confusion contorted the fear right out of Lucifer’s expression as her tear-filled gaze fell, releasing a few silver drops. She sniffed. “No. You have done naught to warrant those words from your mouth. Not now. Not ever.”

  Gabriel’s fallen eyes lifted with her deep, shuddering breath. Except she didn’t look at him. Instead, her gaze lifted higher, settling on something behind Lucifer. And then he felt it as chimes sounded.

  They were no longer alone.

  “Michael,” Lucifer grated as he rose and spun to face their unwanted guest. “Come to greet me upon my return? Have you missed me so?”

  Michael regarded Lucifer as if he were an ant in need of crushing. A plague in need a cleansing. His narrowed eyes flicked from him to Gabriel, his lips pressing harder together as he nodded. “It must be done.”

  Lucifer stepped forward, his wings expanding to shield Michael’s unacceptable look from Gabriel while making Lucifer appear larger before his towering brother. Anger fired within him at Michael’s cryptic words that seemed to be trying to force a response from Gabriel. “I am standing right here before you,” he snarled, his need to protect Gabriel from whatever Michael had planned forcing the animalistic side of him to break free. “What must be done, dear brother?”

  Michael’s gaze lowered with a nod as if he’d received the instruction from Gabriel herself. “I am here with one task and but one task alone. You cannot be trusted, not even when chained.”

  Lucifer’s eyes darted as if trying to find a way out, an escape. He could sense the severity of what was to come even though he had no answer of what exactly that was. But where would he go? All that kept him forging on, breathing and going through the motions of his punishments, was the thought of seeing her again, of hearing her voice, of touching her hand, her lips… No. There was nowhere else to go. Not without her. And he would not be chained herein. Michael had made that abundantly clear. He couldn’t be trusted in this realm.

  Assuming the worst, he glared at Michael. “You are set to deliver me back below? For how long?”

  “Not below…” Michael said no more. Instead, he lifted his glowing hand from the hilt of the angel sword.

  At once he knew where he was going. The place Remiel had warned him of. The prison cell.

  “Lucifer, please understand.”

  At Gabriel’s soft voice, he spun down to his knees and clasped her tangled hands. Care that he should refrain from touching her was gone. Care that Michael was right there never existed and would not stop him now. Peering into her eyes that pooled silver and spilled twin tracks down her flushed cheeks, he knew the answer before he asked the question. “You agreed to this? You agreed to lock me away?”

  Gabriel shook her head, and Lucifer prematurely let out the breath he’d been holding. “I did not agree. The decision was mine.”

  Lucifer’s lungs hitched. His sight turned hazy as he stared at her sorrowful face, her beautiful features melting from his field of view. With nothing but haze left, her words ‘The decision was mine’ repeated in his mind over and over again. Each repeat sent a shockwave through his body, feeling like he was being crushed from the inside out. Gabriel had turned against him. She had voted against him, his Gabriel, the only one who had ever stood by him.

  A tense hand landed on Lucifer’s shoulder, and the shock of power that jolted through him forced him from his knees up to his feet. “Time to go,” Michael grated in his ear.

  Lucifer was spun around so fast that he became a spindle of light, a subtle click vanishing his body only to reform him in a place he had never seen before. Surrounded by light that appeared endless around him, where Lucifer stood was no different—until a sudden shock of spearing lights shot up around him in a perfect circle. Lucifer suddenly faced bars of pure power that were never-ending as they faded into the eternal radiance above. A prison cell. And he was locked inside, while Michael smirked from beyond the bars, his hand resting harmlessly over the hilt of the angel sword.

  Baring his teeth with a hiss, Lucifer clutched the glowing bars, ready to tear this place along with Michael down. The other angel didn’t even budge, and Lucifer howled as the feeling of molten lava attacked his palms before he wrenched them free.

  “Despite all the warnings, you refused to keep away. You refused to follow our angelic laws.” Michael stepped closer, shaking his head. “You brought this upon yourself, Lucifer. You forced God’s hand.”

  Something in Lucifer, a piece of him that had always been there but had been dormant, trapped by love and his angelic nature, slithered free of its cage. It burned hotter than the bars that had taken the skin of his palms and fingers back to the bone. And it poisoned him more insidiously than anger and was longer lasting than ire. The feeling was not for Gabriel. No. Never for Gabriel. This had not been her doing. Her idea. Despite what she claimed, he knew where this result had come from. His arch rival. His nemesis. The angel Lucifer was sure secretly coveted what he had started with Gabriel for himself. The angel who was determined to turn his only saving grace against him. And now that it was out, Lucifer knew he could never lock it away, not anymore. This new emotion was so severe it threatened to drown him as he glared at Michael. It threatened to infect his love and throw it away like burned corpses on the wind.

  For the first time ever
, Lucifer felt—hate.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Michael climbed the golden stairs from the Realm of Light up to heaven, each next step reacting to his angelic presence and appearing the moment before his bare foot could gain purchase. For the first time in so long now he felt a sense of ease. A burden he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying had been lifted from his shoulders that now only had to bear the weight of his hefty wings. Gabriel was aware. She was no longer in the dark—at least on a few important details. She knew giving in to Lucifer would hurt him in the long run. It would challenge his angelic station and all that God had bestowed upon him as one of his archangels.

  Showing her the result their interactions could create had been enough to sway her choice to lock Lucifer away.

  Not that Michael had needed her permission.

  God had set him the task of separating the two before they had any chance to tempt their fate. But Michael had slightly miss-stepped. Allowing Gabriel to believe she was making the choice would keep her feelings for him from being tainted. It would keep her warm to him…

  Nearing the last few steps, the quiet yet powerful voice of God murmuring a command slowed his steps. With all the drowning deaths below, their maker had been overwhelmed with the action of passing new souls into Heaven. Glimpsing the towering, pearly throne nestled among a blank expanse of light, God’s illuminated presence that burned as bright as the sun was partially shielded by Azrael who convulsed. The crippling pain bent the archangel’s knees and hunched his back until light split from his body to coalesce into the form of a man; one of the drowned humans from Below. The man fell to his knees at the sight of the brilliant light that filled the throne and clasped his hands together. Words of begging ensued as God’s voice boomed, “Rise!” a black hole appeared at the foot of God’s throne. The man screamed as Azrael hauled him along and flung him down into the endless black beyond the opening.