Fallen Angel 5: Falling Stars Read online

  Thanatos found Darius’s eyes over the fray that littered the steep mountainside. His words were clear over the cacophony of battle. “We need Bathory.” A duck and backward spin had Thanatos’s sword cutting through a random vampire’s jugular, and slicing another one’s Achilles tendon to take him off his feet. An elbow to another’s face, followed by a stab to the heart, brought him right up to Darius.

  Impressed by the young man’s precision and deadly aim, Darius smiled. “Then kill him.”

  “No.” Thanatos returned a wicked smile as sweat beaded down his face. “He sees things. Past, present, and future. With him, we will know what the other side has planned. We can remain one step ahead, ready and waiting to slaughter them all.”

  “Which one?” The prospect of this boon was too much to let go. Darius had noticed they had encountered fewer and fewer hellions in the villages they passed over the years. It almost seemed like someone, or something was killing them off…even though the dead could not be killed.

  Thanatos pointed to a sandy-haired male who looked more like a boy but had the sparkle of age to his silver-blue eyes. Across the feuding bodies, he moved like the wind, sword sweeping and striking, taking down a living hybrid while driving three others back.

  “Go at him with your siblings. We shall do the rest.”

  Thanatos seemed unconvinced, but he nodded anyway. Then he was away, slicking his wet hair back as he wielded his sword and barked commands.

  Darius got to work too, relaying his plan to the crowding dead. Smiles stretched the mouths of the hybrid-hellions as well as the deformed hellions. Jagged misshaped and pointed teeth poked out, and with hisses and squeals, the intangible hellions and hybrids swarmed. Dwarfing the attacking vampires that cried out in surprise, they surrounded them instantly, creating an impenetrable barrier that blocked their view of what else was unraveling. Though they couldn’t cause any direct physical damage, the lost visibility and confusion had vampires tripping over the fallen. Others rushed through swirling throngs of hellions only to lose ground and launch or tumble over rocky edges.

  The rest of Darius’s plan came to light as he whispered to the living hybrids.

  Fresh screams filled the darkening night sky, floating up as if they were becoming glittering stars above. The living hybrids did as directed, using the circling hellions as shields to conceal their attacks. Swords stabbed through the intangible bodies of the dead, skewering the vampires that were turned around inside. The battle forged on and the moon rose higher. More bodies fell until finally the side of darkness had the numbers.

  “Get to Bathory!” The call came from a thin vampire, this one older than Bathory who had dark hair and almond eyes.

  And then Darius saw it, Thanatos standing tall, his thick fingers buried in the younger vampire’s hair. His sword settled horizontally against the man’s jugular. “Fall back. Retreat.” His smiled dared the vampires who had escaped the throng of swarming hellions to do the exact opposite. “Or he dies right here and now.”

  “The first of your twelve…” Darius added, strolling casually over dead bodies that he stepped on as if they were no more than lumps of rock. “The first to die, before we slaughter the rest of you.”

  The vampires shared looks of unease, edging back from the seething hellions and the living hybrids that crept closer with their bloody weapons. The thin vampire who had spoken earlier hiked his chin. His voice was steady but barely more than a harsh whisper. “Fall back.”

  Quiet shock and argument rang out, but the vampire in custody shook his head. “Die this day, or fight for another day. This war is only beginning. Go, inform—”

  “No one,” Darius barked. He faced the vampires as they continued to slowly backtrack the way they had come over the rocky terrain. “Reveal our alliances, I do not care. But if you tell the angels we have your seer, if they or any of you come for him, his death will be instant. And he will not escape the Hell you evaded long ago. Starved and dying, he will kill to feed, and when I end him, there will only be one place that will have him. Do you understand me?”

  “Ruthaven?” Thanatos stared at the same dark-haired vampire who had spoken earlier.

  The man nodded, glaring as he tipped his head to his remaining allies. “Time to go.”

  And then they were gone, leaving their dead and the vampire that would soon reveal the mysteries of the missing hellions and prepare them for all that was sure to come, a war they would know their odds against, a war they would be ready and waiting for.

  Chapter Six

  Darius paced in the grand foyer of his castle in Babylon. Dwarfed by soaring columns bordered by blue tiled walls, his expression was as diabolical as ever. Being alive on Earth had its setbacks. He was still but a moving mist of shadow, not quite here but not anywhere else either. Having died to get to Hell, Darius had returned without his body, as had all the other hellions, ravenous and starved. But that was all going to change now that they had that damned vampire in their possession. At least, that is what he had been telling himself for the past six months.

  Darius kicked at the flakes of windblown snow that flittered in through the wide entry of the grandiose foyer. “I will not wait another day. He speaks tonight, or he dies.”

  Draped in a darkening sky that coiled with angry clouds over a setting sun, dwindling screams and shrieks filled the air outside, so much less than there used to be. Lucifer’s offspring had no need to kill the humans that resided in Babylon, and the hellions, though the sight of them drove the humans to panic, were powerless in their drive to cut them down.

  “Enough is enough.” Darius snarled, coming face to face with the vampire they’d caught and strung up with chains to the column centering the huge foyer. “Why do my scouts find few hellions? Tell me what is coming? What threat is preparing to descend upon me and my men?”

  The young vampire hiked his chin. His lips, now healed from yesterday’s cuts, thinned into a straight line as he refused to speak. Despite the chill of the wintery air, sweat dotted his brow as a result of the internal bleeding that was never given a chance to fully heal.

  “You are only heightening the pain to come, Bathory.” It aggravated Darius to no end that this poor excuse for a monster had once been part of his father’s army of killers. Now he was a seer of the future. An oracle—if they could bloody well get him to talk.

  “Have it your way,” Darius snarled. Luckily, given his non-corporeal status, he was not alone in this. He tipped his head at the bronzed God of a man who stood off to the side, Lucifer’s son, Thanatos. “So help me if you don’t make him talk…”

  Thanatos was a leader. Fearless, driven. Since Darius’s murder at the hands of the archangel Michael, his hybrids had been busy at work. Another race existed similar to them, strong and fast and equally as fearless, though perhaps not as bloodthirsty. Part fallen and part human. Lucifer’s offspring. Yet they still knew which side they were on; none of them wanted to fall to Hell, precisely where they’d been informed their father would hunt them down and send them to.

  Gullible half-breeds, but allies nonetheless.

  Thanatos’s face hardened. Already his fists were grazed and split from the punches he’d delivered, healing swiftly between each round of interrogation over the past months. He looked to the vampire that had his arms pulled back around the column and his hands tied with silver cuffs that sizzled. Already the vampire’s face was a painting of blacks, blues, and healing brown and yellow. Hesitation ghosted over Thanatos’s angled face as his hands unclenched with a sigh.

  “Or let him go and we will simply twiddle our thumbs until the angels or your dearest father decides to descend upon us.”

  Thanatos’s thick hands tightened back into fists. He swung at the vampire, cutting open the young man’s cheek on contact. “Tell us what you’ve seen!” He punched again, a crack of bone crunching at the impact before he shifted swiftly out of the way. “Tell us now!”

  Blood erupted with the connection, spurting past
Thanatos and spraying across Darius’s lips in an unexpected way that made him flinch. “What on Earth?” Instead of falling through him like every weapon or statue he’d tried to grasp to bludgeon the vampire with, the blood had settled on him as if he were made of flesh and bone. Darius licked his lips, taste springing to life on his tongue.

  Thanatos got in the vampire’s face and delivered another couple roundhouses while demanding answers. The fallen’s son could control an angel with his eyes—or so he claimed—yet he was failing at forcing his will on a lesser being. More blood went flying, coating both Thanatos and now Darius’s bare arms and neck.

  And that’s when the game changed.

  Feeling as though soft fingers were twinkling over him, Darius felt parts of himself take form. His lips and tongue. He looked down, seeing himself shimmer as if he were a wave of black smoke. Then he lifted his hand. His fingers were taking shape, pale flesh becoming tangible as he flexed his fingers.

  Darius sped at the vampire and threw Thanatos out of the way. Before he could contemplate his next move or the fact that he had actually taken and launched his ally across the foyer, he had the vampire by the throat. Darius’s throbbing fangs punched into the vampire’s neck, sinking in deep. Rich metallic blood flooded his mouth, spilling down his throat to fill his gut in a tingling sensation as more of him took form. His insides turned from mist to wet flesh and then so too did the rest of him, bone turning rock hard and chilled skin creating a coating over all the moist insides. In minutes he’d drunk his fill and felt more alive than he had since even before being murdered.

  Releasing his clawed grip that left crescent cuts from his dirty nails, Darius withdrew with a bloody smile.

  “You are of flesh. Of life.”

  Darius turned away from the vampire whose head bobbed with near-fatal blood loss and faced Thanatos. His chest rose and fell with deep breaths, but with no pounding beneath the trap of his ribs, he knew one thing for sure. This reanimation of life was simply that. Reanimation. This would bode well for all the hellions who hunted out in the streets without the ability to kill. “Not real life. Not being alive.” Darius planted a hand on his ally’s shoulder. “Now make him talk.”

  Thanatos hesitated, but then he seemed to understand. Their prisoner was weak, his ability to repel at risk. Standing before the vampire in an instant, Thanatos grasped Bathory by his cheeks as his silver-blue eyes drilled into the vampire’s. “What have you seen?”

  Bathory’s eyes turned hazy, the weak control on his head alleviated as he rested it back against the column. “The key to opening the realms…” The vampire’s pale face twisted as if he were trying to hold back the words from spilling off his tongue. It didn’t work. “It is Lucifer. His return to Hell will crack open the gates the moment a fallen soars above with the archangel, Gabriel.”

  “His return?” A deep voice spoke from the shadows, giving sound to the watching red eyes that appeared. The unwelcomed lingerer glided forward, revealing his misty form and long auburn hair. “Soars above?”

  “Zachias?” Darius hissed, spinning to face the man as he floated forward with easy steps. The man his father had beheaded in Hell before all of Hell’s souls were set free. “Where have you been?”

  “I am not your concern. Lucifer is. If he has to return to Hell, that means one undeniable thing. He has escaped.” Darius showed no fear as Zachias walked right up to him. In his current misty form, he wasn’t a threat. And now one thing made sense. If Lucifer was above, it was clear what was culling the hellion’s numbers. The prince himself—somehow. And with so many congregated in Babylon, it was only a matter of time before… “Lucifer will come for us. Even you, Zachias.”

  “Without a doubt.” Zachias flashed his fangs, and the firelight that lit up the foyer highlighted the malice across his face. “But I have an idea.” He looked to Thanatos before hiking his chin at the dazed vampire. “Is there a way to control Lucifer and still get him to open the realms?”

  Thanatos nodded and lifted the vampire’s face to capture his bouncing eyes before repeating the question.

  The words that came out of Bathory’s mouth had Darius’s jaw hanging open. It was messy, diabolical, and the most fun he could have imagined even if he had devised the details himself. “And you know where I can find this angel sword?” When Thanatos had compelled the answer to Darius’s question, he spun to face Zachias. “Now the only question is, where do you stand? Do I throw you to the wolf or can you prove yourself useful?”

  Zachias chuckled. “The wolf wants your head, not mine. But…if either of you perish, this future will fail. Gabriel is still in Hell. The being he fell to save. For her, Lucifer would break the laws of both the underworld and Heaven. He will only go back for her, nothing more, and nothing less. The circumstances make us allies.”

  “What does it all mean?”

  Darius ignored Thanatos’s question and shot over to Bathory to coat his palms and fingers in the vampire’s blood. Snatching Thanatos’s sword from its sheath, he returned to Zachias. Darius reached up as a red drop fell from his finger onto the man’s bottom lip. Zachias’s eyes blazed bright crimson and his tongue peeked out with a moan, changing from translucent to corporeal as he licked the blood away. Then he was gone like a gust of wind, mouth over Bathory’s neck and solidifying arms squeezing around the vampire like he was a sack of liquor.

  “Don’t kill him.” Darius’s voice was a command, and Zachias unlatched himself and shot back across the foyer to stand right in front of him. “We must make sure Lucifer’s reason to return remains alive for the time being. It is the only way we can take over all the realms and take him out for good, before he and Heaven end us all.” He held Thanatos’s sword up in warning. “Are you with or against us?”

  Zachias smiled and flashed an item that was somehow solid beneath his war clothes as they too became tangible. “You get the sword. I’ll get to Lucifer.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lucifer felt the nearness of the hellion before he even caught a glimpse. The sensation inside of him was akin to having small bugs beneath the skin, burrowing and eating away at flesh as they made their home inside his body in a network of tunnels. It was all he could do to keep himself from tearing his skin from his muscles and bones. The nearer Lucifer got, the worse the sickening feeling became. Fatigue had a firm hold of his body too. Already he had hunted down and captured sixteen stray souls as he moved from one village to the next. The last stop had returned six souls to where they needed to be, his own body. But despite the torture of it and how badly Lucifer’s legs wanted to fall like the setting sun already had, he refused to stop. He refused to take a break.

  Any reprieve was a moment stolen from Gabriel, prolonging her torment. More than ten years had passed by. Ten years of seeking and doing his vile duty. Ten years of watching her suffer every moment of every day at Cyrus’s hands.

  Lucifer’s mouth opened to roar, but then he heard something that trapped the anguish deep in his throat.

  Crunching. Slurping.

  “What the hell?”

  As Lucifer followed the sound of wet cracks through the field of wheat, the long stalks danced around him with a steady gust of wind. Still, it wasn’t enough to mute the crunching that got louder and sharper with each quick step. All the hellions he’d killed up to this point had been easy, shadows lacking form that, although they lunged to attack him, were as dangerous as ill-willed puffs of smoke, an irritation at most. But as Lucifer parted the barricading wheat with his hands, he saw proof that this time was not going to be as easy as the countless ones that came before.

  The small village was free of human sounds. There was no one milling around, no one chatting by the communal fire that burned central to the makeshift huts, and not a soul running for their lives in mortal fear. No. These humans no longer had the ability to scream. No longer even distinguishable, their parts littered the dirt paths that led to the left and right of the fire, legs, arms, a foot, a few heads, and torsos t
hat no longer resembled a safe place to house your internal organs. Now split apart, torn and dragged innards painted the paths in wet gore as moonlight lit them up and made them glisten. And the culprit…

  Was dead center and hungrily devouring the last body that still had arms and legs.

  Fully formed, there was not a shred of transparency to his leathery skin. Hunched over his prey with legs that were naught but bone and thin flesh, his long oddly bent arms led down to spindly talons from each boney hand.

  This was going to be fun. And by fun, Lucifer meant messy. Still, the ingrained need in him to hand out judgment and punishment for this hellion’s sins against these villagers who had been peaceful men, women, and at least five innocent children, set Lucifer’s veins alight as if his fire power had returned. It hadn’t, but that was not going to stop him now.

  “Dead meat!” Lucifer slid the double-sided dagger from the leather strap around his waist. “Hell is waiting for you.”

  A bulbous head flung around at once, black obsidian eyes sparkling as they caught the glittering light from the stars above. He snapped his wide jaw, revealing twin rows of tiny sharp teeth that were painted with crimson blood. A long serpentine tongue lapped the air as the beast snarled.

  And then the hellion leaped, pounding the body-littered ground on all fours in mashing strides.

  Lucifer didn’t dart out of the path of those snapping rows of teeth. Instead, he stood his ground. Under his breath, he counted down the impact. “One. Two. Three—”

  The hellion flattened Lucifer to his back harder than being flung from the top of his castle to the rocks below. The air belted from his lungs, and he saw starbursts behind his eyes as his free arm barred across the hellion’s neck. Its breath was foul, reeking of decay and death and his tongue lapped out, the forks cutting Lucifer’s face at first taste.

  But then the creature let out a high-pitched squeal and went still.