Fallen Angel 4: Cold-Blooded Fate Read online

  Zachias came awake then, groaning as he pushed up to his feet and peered down at himself while touching his reattached neck and head. He looked to Cyrus. “You killed me.”

  Ignoring the soldier, Cyrus was beside Lucifer in an instant and kicked out fast as light, heel smashing down into Lucifer’s face.

  Gabriel screamed, and stars danced in Lucifer’s eyes as he fell and rolled to his back. But he refused to stay down. Instead, he twisted to his side, forcing his ribs to snap shut as one flailing arm brushed past the platform leg and clutched the hilt—

  A chorus of cawing grew in the distance. Lucifer’s crows were nearly here—help was nearly here.

  But they’d never make it.

  “Lucifer!” Gabriel screamed.

  The dagger stabbed into his chest—right through his heart.

  Not even Gabriel’s gargled screams could have stopped the attack as Lucifer dropped the weapon and was flattened to his back. That same snaking pain coiled through his body, stealing his ability to move or fight back. He gasped spears of agony that stole his breath as blue flared up from the embedded blade Cyrus kept pinned into him.

  This was it. Their end. Defeated and powerless, insides on fire and about to burn out to smoldering cinders, Lucifer couldn’t save Gabriel. He gasped out his final words that would never make up for his failure. “Love—you. So—rry.”

  But nothing happened.

  Unlike the assassin, the blue didn’t continue spreading out through his veins and across his flesh like live currents of power. Instead, it returned suddenly, ricocheting back into his heart. The force was unimaginable and unrelenting, a darkness that built in his heart that pulsed around the curved blade.

  And then it punched free.

  Like a fist driving out from Lucifer’s heart, his chest burst open a fist-sized gory hole of flesh and silver-black blood. Jagged bone protruded, framing a black eruption that spewed up from his chest in a hellish cloud. The crows burst in through the speared windows then, blocking out the red glow outside. Knocked back on his butt with the dagger that had been expelled from Lucifer’s chest with force, Cyrus stared along with every other set of red eyes in the chamber. The black mass grew like an angry storm cloud, growing darker and larger as it coiled up over their heads. The crows were forced higher, their caws becoming frantic as the darkness swirled around the chandelier that jingled and shook. Then they started to fall, wings burning off and bodies thudding as they hit the ground. The remaining crows shot back out through the windows as the pulsing mass filled the speared ceiling.

  Lucifer watched, unable to move an inch and knowing all his allies were gone. The darkness that he’d fought to control inside of him made damning sense. That darkness had existed inside of him for so long, growing ever stronger with each passing day in Hell. He knew what they were at once. The same coiling masses that were delivered to him with the incoming of new arrivals.

  Souls. Thousands of them.

  Of every soul he had received and delivered into Hell, he had retained part of them as Hell’s ruler. Now they had been released, and Lucifer was powerless to rein them back in.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The black mass grew so large that it choked the air and diminished visibility. The soldiers and Darius batted the pluming dark energy away to no avail as Darius yelled, “Don’t release her!” He and the three closest soldiers worked to keep their swords skewering Gabriel. She jerked at the movements, being cut deeper and wider as her attackers started to panic. Yet she did not make a sound. Face a mask of torment, she flapped her wings to unbalance the men on either side of her while clutching the sword through her belly and trying to push it and Darius back.

  Still floored, Lucifer forced his body to respond, forced his dead arms and legs to work. Grunting onto his side, he began to crawl, throwing one dead arm up then the other to drag his heavy body forward. Pain stabbed at his chest, his burst open ribs snapping and breaking on the glossy ground rather than healing. But he didn’t stop. And no one got in his way.

  Zachias was on his knees, arms over his head as if he feared he would be swallowed up by the violent swirling mass.

  Cyrus batted away at the blackness too, twirling around as he slashed out with the dagger. His face was raised. He wasn’t looking down. He hit the lava pit, his foot then leg submerging with a hiss of melting flesh before he yelled and fell sideways. Almost burned back to the bone, he writhed on the ground, the black cloud pressing down over him.

  No one else came to his rescue. They were all too occupied with the inability to breathe as the blackness closed in around them and choked the putrid air.

  In the past, Lucifer would have basked in the agony of his suffering enemies. But not now. Gabriel was his only concern; she was all that consumed his thoughts. He was so close to her now, getting closer.

  Darius withdrew his sword from her, cutting up her hands with his fast retraction. The three soldiers still around her followed suit, tripping and ducking to get out of the swirling mass.

  Gabriel fell like she’d been dropped from Heaven—right into Lucifer’s arms as one last push slid him through the slick of her spilled blood. Barely below the mass, he ground his teeth as her impact cracked more exposed ribs. They both gasped for air. “Gabriel, look at me. Please. I’m here now. I’m sorry.” Oh, God, she looked like death. Flesh now gray, lips blue, and so much blood that there was not part of her that remained dry.

  Gabriel’s eyes rolled back to the whites, scaring him senseless before they slammed back down with vivid focus. As if by miracle, she smiled. “Do not be, my love. I am not.” She coughed, her whole body seizing and loose bones rattling from where she’d been skewered. “But promise me…” Gabriel spluttered as the darkness pressed down on them. “Promise you will find her. If she is out there—God, she must be out there—promise you will protect her.”

  “Do not say that. You are not leaving me.” Though it took every ounce of strength he no longer had, Lucifer bit his wrist with his flat teeth, tearing the skin open. There was no way to know if this would work. This time the angelic weapon hadn’t stabbed her. But he had to try something. “Here, drink.”

  Before Gabriel could take his blood to heal her broken body, the black sucked up suddenly—and spewed out through the windows like a plague of living shadows. Cyrus and Darius were the first to the window openings, gaping out as soldiers crammed in behind them.

  Outside the sky had lost its red clouds that shifted and sparked. All the light was eaten up by the swarming shadows that grew ever larger by the second, forcing Lucifer’s swirling crows even further away as more feathered bodies fell. Something was on the precipice of happening, Lucifer knew it as the strangest sensation made his own body tingle with the smallest beginnings of healing. Healing he was managing despite having been stabbed with that angelic dagger.

  Because the souls no longer hindered what light still existed inside of him?

  Now close to the bed after the soldiers’ jostling had shifted Gabriel, Lucifer used the edge for support. Pushing up with one hand, he made it to his feet, cradling Gabriel’s deadweight in his arms. Staggering back, he slipped on a puddle of smeared silver. Gabriel’s blood. So much of it on this side of the chamber was splashed with smears and specks, from the bed to the empty mirror stand and to the doors. Lucifer regained his weak footing, moving slower as they cleared the fallen doors and stole out into the corridor. Every tacky step that left silver footprints like a path to track them down threatened to take out his wobbly knees, but he kept stabbing one numb foot into the ground after the other. “We need to get away. Far away.” Lucifer was weak and unequipped to protect her. His fire remained blocked, unresponsive, and he had no idea how long that would last.

  Gabriel gasped in a breath, one shaking hand pointing down—to drip blood over the charred corpses of her pets. “Zallina, Zephyr…they’re gone.”

  “Shhh,” Lucifer tried to soothe her, but it was no use as Gabriel sobbed. First their child and now the
grotesque pets she had loved like children. “We need to reach out to Remiel. You saved him once. He cannot refuse—”

  “Lucifer, look…”

  Gabriel’s dying words that killed her sobs forced his attention. Her misty eyes stared out through a speared window opening along the hallway that glimpsed down the peaked mountain. The villagers, humanoid hellions and the deformed alike all gathered as one, awed at the spectacle that mingled below the red sky. Even the prisoners in the maze had stopped running, as had the hellhounds that had never stopped hunting them before this day. They all stared up, jaws slack and eyes frozen.

  The crows were gone, the lack of cawing demanding every set of eyes up at the sky.

  The black swelled for a moment—and then it sucked in on itself, dissipating into nothingness.

  Every Hellion fell like the dead.

  And they did not get back up.

  Twin thumps echoed out from the chamber they had fled. “Darius!” Cyrus’s voice, and it was devoid of the false calm he normally contained. Curses and the clattering of weapons remained, growing louder from their chamber. “Where is Lucifer?” Cyrus screamed. “I am going to kill him!”

  A stampede of feet hammered louder, closer. The old king and all the traitorous soldiers were coming to finish what they’d started.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Lucifer flattened his wrist that had barely begun to heal against Gabriel’s parted lips. His words were rushed and whispered as his eyes darted from hers and up the hallway and back. “Take flight to the mountains. Call on Remiel. Get out. You have to get—”

  “I cannot leave you to die.” Gabriel’s eyes bled with tears, but even though she’d jerked back to spit her rebuttal, Lucifer could feel her strength. With blood on her lips and ingested with a swallow, she was healing, growing stronger. The cuts through her stomach and sides stopped leaking fresh silver. Her voice rose, “I will not.”

  There was no time to kiss her lips, no time to say goodbye despite how desperate he felt to do both. “You have to. If our daughter is alive, you must.”

  Cyrus stormed out through their chamber doors, shadowed by snarling non-hellion soldiers and dangling Darius’s lifeless body by his ankle. Murderous intent raged in his crimson eyes. “Stop them!”

  Lucifer dropped Gabriel’s legs and shoved her at the peering window—too late.

  A clamor turned him around to glimpse down the opposite length of the hallway. Soldiers. A whole swarm of them. They must have been stationed at every exit to his castle, lying in wait should anything go awry.

  Gabriel winced as she leaped up to the window ledge, wings fanning out. Weaponless, Lucifer ran at Cyrus and his armed guards to hold them back. Wrong move. Thick ropes flung out from the encroaching soldiers, crackling alive with flames from a wall torch as the looped lengths sailed through the air. Gabriel’s feet left the ledge as she pushed off—and her bloody wings were snagged.

  “No!” Lucifer screamed, spinning back to run to her.

  Tugged back, Gabriel sailed backward, hitting the opposite wall that was solid rock. Fire torches fell, rolling into the hands of their enemies as they were swooped up. Gabriel fell too, gasping and flailing to remove the ropes that set her feathers alight.

  Lucifer made it only two steps when a soldier’s sword appeared before his eyes. He halted mid-step, the weapon was a hairsbreadth from his jugular—as the paralyzing dagger penetrated his back and kept him from ducking out of its path. Hands claimed Lucifer’s wrists, wrenching them behind his back, popping his arms from their sockets as he struggled. “N-o,” he choked out.

  The ropes around Gabriel’s wings burned long enough for the guards to gain control over her. Held in arms, multiple swords were poised at Gabriel’s belly, ready to slice her in two. A clattering of chains made his blood run cold. Long thick restraints were wrapped around her neck, crisscrossing to pin down her arms. Her damaged wings were bound next, strapped up tight to her back, restricted from expanding or being of any use.

  More chains were delivered to the guards surrounding Lucifer, binding his arms and legs. That dagger twisted in warning every time he even attempted to fight back. But Gabriel wasn’t giving up. Even while bound and gagged with a dirty hand over her mouth, she fought to get free, screaming in her throat sounds of anguish that could not escape.

  “How did you do it?” Cyrus’s rank breath batted Lucifer’s ear, the foul smell of dead blood assaulting his senses. He kicked at Darius’s lifeless body on the ground beside them. “How did you kill them?”

  Lucifer didn’t care to answer, he only cared about what would happen to Gabriel. “Do what you want to me, but if you or anyone you command hurts her—” His livid eyes cut to Gabriel as a guard lunged forward. The butt of his sword cracked her in the face and she suddenly went limp in the many arms that fought to contain her. Lucifer growled, twisting even though the dagger made his legs weak and gouged at him with each slight shift. “I will p-personally torture each and every one of you be-yond anything, anything you could ever imagine. I w-will exterminate every being you and your kind have sired in Hell and on Earth permanently.”

  “I asked you a question, Disgraced of Heaven. How did you kill them?”

  Lucifer finally heard the question Cyrus was asking over the thumping of his pulse in his ears. “Kill them?” Thoughts spun in his head, promising a solution to get himself and Gabriel out of certain death. “They are not dead.” Somehow he knew it was true. The existence of all the souls he had contained still called to him, but they were far away—above. “They are free on Earth.”

  “What?” Cyrus recovered from the revelation quickly, clutching one large hand around Lucifer’s and squeezing. He looked sidelong to Darius’s body on the floor, free of mortal injury but also any signs of animation. Cyrus waved another guard forward, and Zachias’s rebirthed body was dumped at Lucifer’s feet. With his head still attached, he was in the same lifeless condition Darius was. “Their souls were freed. Freed of your body. Freed of Hell,” he said almost absentmindedly. “Tell me how, how we too can escape, and I may lessen the pain your lover experiences in her death.”

  Lucifer laughed in spite of the real threat in Cyrus’s voice. The old king’s words held no honor anymore. They hadn’t since the day Lucifer had turned him into the monster he now was. The monster he had always been. This was on Lucifer’s shoulders. Gabriel’s fall to Hell. The loss of their child. Her impending death. There was no escape for Cyrus and his followers either, but he and Gabriel had a chance to survive if Cyrus believed there was. “You released the dark souls from my containment.” Lucifer was not privy to the how of their escape from Hell. Perhaps the removal of his child had opened up some gateway. With that kind of power being used to remove her from Hell, could that mean his daughter was still alive? Or perhaps her removal—her untimely and unwarranted death—had merely created a temporary escape for the intangible. Whatever the reason, Lucifer knew one thing for certain. The blade in his back must have shifted as Cyrus leaned around him because his words came out easier. “Those souls were removed from their physical bodies, given the ability to soar through the barrier that traps us all. You are not dead, Cyrus, but please, allow me the honor and you too can escape.”

  “In your dreams.” Cyrus released Lucifer’s neck and lashed out without warning, cutting the head clean off the guard who’d dragged in Zachias’s body. The unsuspecting man fell to waste, body hitting the dusty floor a moment before his head. Blood spurted out in a glossy red spray.

  And nothing happened.

  No dark soul rose up. No spirit to fly high and escape the pits of Hell.

  Lucifer deflated, despite knowing Cyrus would not be dumb enough to take the bait. “Like a rat in a maze. You want the title of Prince of Hell, take it. You and your sorry sheep will never leave this place. None of us will. But believe me, you will wish you could. My promise will never fade.” Lucifer was in no position to deliver threats, but that didn’t stop him. His and Gabriel’s predic
ament could hardly get worse. Being weak now would only expedite the torture that was sure to come. Torture he had to find a way out of—for her. “One day I will kill you all. I will remove your existence from all of history.”

  Cyrus growled and shoved Lucifer forward. Two soldiers grabbed his arms, hauling him up before his legs could give out. That damned dagger was still in his back, stealing his strength and vitality. “Take them to the dungeon. I have much planned for the prince—and his whore.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Now curled up in the shadows in the lowest part of the rocky tunnels below the castle, Gabriel’s tears had dried up long ago. But that did not mean she was dry. Chained to the wall, every part of her throbbed and burned. The silver smears below her were the after effects. Now muddied with dirt, they were all that remained of her latest round of punishment. Her flesh wasn’t raw and cut up—because for the most part it was gone. Cut and pulled from her body in long gory strips and dumped in a growing slick pile of sick amusement for Cyrus. A pile that had been started by throwing their wasted flesh onto the charred remains of her poor pets and the rest of the hellhounds that had been slaughtered.

  The pain had been monumental, but nothing compared to losing her child—or what she was forced to watch now.

  Strung back against the rocky wall and out of Gabriel’s reach, silvery black blood covered Lucifer in torrents. It streamed from the many slashes in his body, so many that it made him look like a living voodoo doll. Being stabbed so many times with that paralyzing dagger left him barely able to speak let alone hold his head up. The hole in his chest from escaping souls now looked less severe with all the added damage. The beatings were an intermission that turned his tan skin black and blue in the light of the flaming torches that lined the wide path to this dead-end cave. Each hit to his face and chest broke his skin, cracked bone, and dislocated joints. His jaw dislocated with a cracking blow, swaying side to side and cutting off Lucifer’s goading retorts that kept Cyrus focused on him and from returning to torture her once more. Cyrus slammed Lucifer’s jaw back in place only to throw more punches to dislodge it again.