Fallen Angel 4: Cold-Blooded Fate Read online

  Lucifer shot a ball of fire at the ground, and Gabriel’s severed wing went up in flames. He twisted the sword fast and clamped a burning hand over Darius’s shoulder to stall his escape. The only remaining feather was snatched from Darius and shoved into Lucifer’s sword sheath for safekeeping. Retracting the sword, Lucifer laughed as he shot past Darius, coming up behind him as blood poured from the hybrid’s abdomen. “Perhaps…” he whispered in his ear, right before he impaled him up higher from behind. “But there are worse things than death. Worse things that you can never escape.” Like the darkness I am going to unleash upon you… “Not after what you did. Now walk.”

  Darius grunted and stumbled on, the hole through his body around the sword growing larger and larger with every misstep and trip. He never cried out in pain, but tortured grunts and groans escaped his mouth all the same. It was a longer trek back on foot, especially in this position. But as soon as he heard this ‘brave’ man, who had chosen to attack an unsuspecting and innocent woman, scream in torment, it would be so worth the wait.

  When the mountain was cleared, the flat landscape stretched out before them, the city getting closer by the second. Lucifer’s soldiers had rushed out from their posts and soon enough surrounded the two as Lucifer kept Darius walking forward. They were all speaking, but Lucifer could not hear them. A ringing had started up in his ears that drowned out even the cawing of his birds as they swooped and circle from above. The distance could have cooled the rage that burned inside Lucifer as they got closer to the city and the castle. The sight of Gabriel watching from the central window behind barricading flames, her silver-streaked face pale with a trembling hand over her mouth could have calmed his vengeance.

  But it didn’t.

  The distance traveled and even the distressed sight of her didn’t change a thing.

  Every step boiled Lucifer’s blood. Every breath and every groan from Darius only spurred him on faster. By the time he reached the city outskirts, a crowd had grown. Deformed hellions filled the avenues between dwellings as he stalked for the city center, while human-hellions peeked out of those same huts. All of them lingered warily in morbid fascination but also in fear that kept them following to keep watch.

  Once Lucifer reached the stage, he withdrew the blade from Darius and kicked him up the wooden steps. His enemy rolled to his side, blood pouring as he tried to get up. A nod to Zachias, who stood close by, had the fiery-haired ally and a few other soldiers moving to guard his latest victim.

  Lucifer faced the community that crowded in around them and his watchful soldiers. Up above, his crows circled, waiting for an instruction to strike.

  Whispers of escaping Hell had been on the rise and now was no different. From the twisted mouths of monsters, their harsh, gravelly words were rich with the prospect. The winged one. Her feathers. The prince will free us all. His promise will be delivered. Hell on Earth. New hunting ground.

  “You have all heard the rumors. I know many of you have seen my mate. You know of her angelic wings, and with little to hope for in this desolate place, freedom is easy to believe in. The feather of an angel to grant you passage…”

  With his trusty sword steady in his hand, Lucifer reached with the other into his sword’s sheath. Gabriel’s stolen gray feather that he hadn’t burned to ash came free. Lucifer rotated the stem between his thumb and forefinger, making the crumpled vanes twirled before his eyes. The crowd was silent, staring. A number of hellish monsters and even a few of the hunted humans crept forward. They had heard the rumors, there was no doubt about that. The hunger for freedom burned in their eyes. It showed in their lithe and deranged bodies that twitched and leaned closer, desperate to get this one-way pass out of Hell.

  Crossing to Darius in a flash, Lucifer didn’t strike out or further maim with his sword that could cut a man in two. Instead, he sheathed his weapon and hauled Darius up by his throat. He held up his hand, palm up with the feather balancing on top. An offering. “Take it and free yourself. Do it.”

  Darius bared his bloody teeth. He coughed as the hold around his neck tightened, splattering Lucifer’s face with blood. His red eyes pulsed and his free hand tensed into a claw that wanted to claim flesh—or drive through Lucifer’s ribs to rip out his heart, by the glance his sent toward the prince’s strong armor.

  Lucifer held the feather right before the dead man’s eyes, his words a snarl from his tight lips. “Take it—and free yourself.” When Darius remained still, he unsheathed his sword, holding it to the hybrid’s neck as his hand released.

  With one fleeting glance at the soldiers who watched idly by, Darius snatched the feather and sputtered a final desperate prayer to deliver him from this place.

  Sword kept raised, Lucifer let out a shrill whistle. He faced the crowd again, watching as their shocked and envious expressions turned into disbelief. Unlike the rumors he had heard himself, there was no sudden disappearance, no flash of light. No escape. “You exist in Hell because that is where you deserve to be. Your crimes on Earth earned your condemnation here. There is no escaping Hell. Not now. Not ever. Your invitation here is eternal.”

  While the human hellions cowered back, the monstrous ones riled up, spouting their anger at the promise of escape Lucifer had once made. They neared the stage as a whole, angry and belligerent. Lucifer’s hellhounds appeared through the crowd, hackles raised and snapping their razor-sharp teeth as they leaped onto the stage. His many soldiers unsheathed their swords, cutting back the group that tried to rush at Lucifer. Crows quit their circling above and dive-bombed, splitting gnarly skin open and plucking eyes from sockets. But it was a twin cannonball of fire that got their attention. Shrieks erupted as the huge flaming balls struck, hitting at least ten advancing hellions each. With creatures writhing on fire and others floored by stabbing soldiers, lunging hellhounds, and attacking crows, the hellions’ sudden need to attack wavered.

  “That’s better,” Lucifer said over the quieting sheiks and whimpers of the fallen. He lowered his voice with deathly calm and leveled his eyes down at the deformed souls, panning slowly from left to right to drive his message home. “Commit any act against me, against my mate, my pets, or even my soldiers…and you will no longer wish to escape. You will wish you could die a second time. That my hellfire could snuff out your stained souls. You will wish for eternal obliteration. But it will never come…”

  Facing Darius, the prisoner struggled in the hands of Zachias and two others. “You have not won. You have—”

  Lucifer struck out like a rattlesnake, spearing his sword right through Darius’s right thigh, then his left. Bone cracked and blood spurted as the hybrid fell to his knees. And Lucifer was right there on one knee, clutching Darius’s face hard enough to dislocate his jaw. “Oh, but I have. And what I have planned for you and your father, it will never end—no matter how much you beg me to stop. No matter how broken your eternal body becomes.” Lucifer’s smile widened at the first glimmer of fear that overcame Darius’s unwarranted bravado. “Your suffering, your screams, they belong to me, and they, like you, will never die.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The following afternoon, Lucifer watched from the platform that centered the city center. Sweat trailed down his face and his pulse pounded in his ears. His fingers twitched over the heads of two of his flanking hellhounds with the need to unleash the soul-devouring darkness that had grown to a level of volcanic explosiveness. Holding his dark desires at bay was torture—torture he was ready to pass on to his deserving victims.

  A broad smile stretched Lucifer’s lips at the swelling audience that crowded in closer. A vast number of hellions and deformed beings had gathered at his request. Every. Single. One of them. None had stayed away. None had refused the order.

  His crows watched with their beady black eyes, lining the rooftops of all the surrounding huts. With monstrous hellions to one side, the group of non-deformed humanoid hellions huddled together, keeping close to the protection of the armed soldiers that surround
ed the stage. Dirty and riddled with bite marks and fresh and dried blood, their fear was warranted. Yet, even though they cast testing looks at the beings that hunted them daily, the spectacle on the stage held their gazes longer.

  Darius was strung up like a star, his arms and legs pulled outward and taut, suspended to a post on either side of him with rope fastened to each base and each top. Black and blue, he was out cold, head hanging and face shielded by his long dark hair—but not for long.

  Striding there in an instant, Lucifer gave into the boiling darkness inside of him. “Wake up.” Fist primed, a cracking punch jostled Darius’s head. His consciousness flooded back and he peered up. With bloodshot eyes, he took in everything: his restraints, the crowd, and the deadly gleam in Lucifer’s black stare. “Damn you,” he rasped as Lucifer backed up slowly. “One day I will make you pay. I will—”

  Lucifer flung his arm out in front of him, sending the spike-tipped fingers of a long whip at Darius. Cyrus’s once favorite weapon. The spikes embedded over his bruised and bloody chest, tearing a howl from Darius. And then Lucifer tugged, ripping crimson torrents down from the hybrid’s collarbone to his navel. Crimson poured as Darius screamed, his angered eyes filling with vengeance. And then Lucifer was right in front of him. His surroundings disappeared as he drove his fists into Darius’s face over and over again. Cracks erupted with spurts of blood. Then the terror in his victim’s eyes fled and Darius’s head fell forward. Face beaten to a pulp, a fractured skull had cut Lucifer’s fun short.

  With rushed breaths blowing through Lucifer’s nose, he staggered. As where he was and who surrounded him flooded back, he fought the urge to look up at the towering castle on the mountaintop. Gabriel was watching him. Lucifer could feel her stare. He could feel her disappointment, her sadness, even from this distance. After yesterday’s ordeal when he returned to her in barely contained rage, she had appealed to him, given herself to him, believed in him, and encouraged him to battle the darkness. But the moment he wasn’t in her presence or satiated by her touch, he was powerless to fight the urge. More than that, he knew he had to take action, to show every hellion that crossing him or threatening Gabriel was worse than a death sentence.

  And there was nothing like fear to drive that point home. Threaten what I love, and you will wish you could die a second time to escape me.

  A parting of the deformed hellions brought Lucifer out of his head and even further away from thoughts of Gabriel. Staring out into the crowd, he watched as Zachias, now his loyal second in command, dragged Cyrus forward by a chain that all but strangled his neck. Unlike the times Lucifer stole down to the cells to ‘visit’ his victim, Cyrus was in better shape now. The muscles that had been ripped from his body and the tendons that had been snapped had grown back almost fully. The skin covering his body was patchy and raw, but about half of it was pale in color rather than red and bloody. With his feet and wrists bound by foot-long lengths of chain and another guard jabbing a sword into his back, he begrudgingly stumbled onward—until he saw his son.

  Lucifer’s smile grew.

  “You bastard of Heaven!” Cyrus spat, stopping short before snarling as the sword at his back bit into him. He stumbled on again, forced to move as two more guards grabbed his arms. “What the hell have you done to him?”

  Lucifer clenched his jaw and recoiled Cyrus’s favorite whip around his open knuckles. “No less than what I am about to do to you, traitor.”

  Cyrus fought harder then, a surge of fear taking over his mind and body in a fit to break free. But there was no escaping this, not for him and not for Lucifer. A line had been drawn in the ash and it had to be walked.

  Soon enough, Cyrus was strung up in the same fashion his son was, sharing the middle post while his other leg was fastened to a third post.

  With one arm free, Cyrus tugged at the chains to no avail. “Darius, wake up. Damn you, wake—”

  Lucifer caught Cyrus’s unsecured wrist in an iron grip. Cyrus tugged—then relented as his hand cracked backward from his wrist. Jaw gaping but any sound withheld, Lucifer clutched the traitor’s tense fingers, lifting them up between them. “This is only the beginning.” He ripped Cyrus’s fingers back, releasing a succession of snaps.

  Tugging harder, spit sprayed from Cyrus’s mouth. “I will kill you. I will—”

  The traitor roared as Lucifer claimed his flailing elbow and broke his forearm in two. Jagged bone punched through the skin.

  “Your failure to kill me is what sealed your fate.” Dropping his arm, Lucifer faced the staring crowd. “A fate I will deliver to any and all of you if you ever act against me. Learn your place as obedient slaves, or succumb to my teachings.”

  With a caw of agreement from his watching crows as his hellhounds barked from the stage, Lucifer returned to Cyrus to finish his lesson. A nod had Zachias stringing up Cyrus’s broken arm as he seethed vile threats of murder and mayhem. But Lucifer didn’t hear a word, the pounding anticipation in his ears was too loud. He started with Cyrus’s remaining fingers, snapping each one at the joint. His wrist, elbow, then toes, feet, and ankles came next. Cyrus’s screams overtook the delighted chatter of his crows and the murmurs of the hellions and his soldiers as his hellhounds kept a guarding watch. The traitor’s legs came next, knees snapped backward and shin and thighbones cracked in two. Breath coming harder and faster as darkness edged Lucifer’s sight, the snap of ribs made him smile, tearing tortured grunts from Cyrus as he broke each one individually with a jabbing punch that concaved the traitor’s chest. But his desire to inflict torturous pain had grown. Like a festering wound, the darkness in him infected every thought and every impulse.

  Lucifer’s public show of dominance and power was not even nearly done. A disgusting plan flourished in his mind, demanding instant release.

  Giving in to the insidious darkness, Lucifer stalked to Darius, ignoring the sudden profanity that spewed from Cyrus’s lips. He punched out, and Darius’s jaw crunched as Lucifer’s throbbing fist connected with bone. Darius came awake with a sudden gasp. Lucifer’s eyesight burned red as fire exploded from them and every inch of his skin. Slicing his sword free, he hacked the hybrid’s arm clean off from the shoulder.

  Darius finally made a sound worthy of Lucifer’s vengeance, howling like a dog as the limb came free. Blood spurted repetitively as his suspended body dipped lower on one side.

  Before Cyrus could release a fresh bout of murderous curses, Lucifer swung his sword again. The second arm came free with a shriek that was more woman than man. Warm wetness sprayed across Lucifer’s face and body. Darius fell forward, his face hitting the stage. Lucifer smiled at the armless man as he tried to use his restrained legs to cower away. Without arms for balance, he kept tipping, all the soaking blood collecting ash each time he fell and tried to bring his broad torso back up.

  “The price of treachery is steep.” Lucifer sneered up at the surrounding hellions that either cringed or looked keen to join in, though even those that were eager held a depth of fear to their soulless eyes. They enjoyed pain and torture, but they feared being subjected to it. He hiked his brows at Cyrus who stared murderously while breathing through flared nostrils. “But by all means, make my day. There is no act I will not commit.” Releasing twin fireballs from his hands, Lucifer severed the chains with his sword that kept Darius face down. Then he kicked the hybrid over onto his back and brought the sword down across Darius’s upper thigh. More blood, screams, and gasps from those who watched. A trail of glossy wet created the path Lucifer stalked forward through. “There is no vile thing I will not do if you cross me.”

  “Stop, please stop.” All the bravado had drained out of Cyrus as he watched his son squirm, now only a head with a body and one leg. Out of the few times Lucifer had encountered Darius, this was the first time he had looked scared, Cyrus too.

  “Not on your life.” Giving in to the darkness, Lucifer lopped off Darius’s last leg. Kneeling over the limbless man, he held the sword to the hybrid’s neck, press
ing the sharp edge into the tender spot under his broken jaw. Darius gargled and tried to gasp. Wet pools grew beneath them, now soaking Lucifer’s legs that straddled the man. The urge to take the man’s head off was unbelievable. The longing Lucifer felt to see wetness spurting from his severed spine as his head rolled like a bolder was almost too much to refuse.

  The darkness in Lucifer took over, turning his eyes black. Retracting his sword, he clawed into Darius’s hair and flung his blade down so hard it embedded sideways in the wooden stage—severing Darius’s head in a glorious spray of blood that coated his face.

  Lucifer blinked, willing the darkness to recede. Darius was still beneath him. The beheading had all been in his mind, and as an inkling of sense washed over him, he knew he had to stop—if he intended to make the traitor’s son suffer for all of eternity.

  Breathing hard, Lucifer slashed his sword sideways. The crimson that bubbled up was mesmerizing, addictive, but he forced words from his mouth instead of finishing the hybrid off.

  “Gather his parts and sew them back on. I want him strung up in the cave.” With blood leaking from his slit throat, the strike of fear in Darius’s bloodshot eyes widened Lucifer’s smile. “I want him healed enough to feel every sliver of agony—when I cut him to pieces again. And again. And again.”

  Finally, Lucifer managed to tear his hungry eyes away. Rising to his knees, he nodded to Zachias as he faced his men. “No one gets away with what they did. No one crosses me or my queen.”

  “Your lover will never be safe,” Cyrus grated, looking a little delirious from his countless broken bones as his body hung from between the two posts. “Revenge will be mine, and she will suffer at my hands.”

  With a snarl, a wave of Lucifer’s hand had an animalistic sound peeling from Cyrus’s throat. The guards stationed at either post had taken hold of the handles and spun the rotating wood a full turn to the right. The restraints had pulled tight. Too tight. With joints popped and bones snapped, blood gushed from Cyrus’s broken arms and legs. And the guards didn’t stop there. Cyrus’s continued curses turned to strangled grunts of torture as his skin was stretched to the point of tearing but not severing. Never severing like his son. Cyrus was still very much alive, and Lucifer planned to keep him that way.