A fresh wave of darkness surged through him and he didn’t have the strength to fight this one. He fell into Erin’s arms, feeling them wrap around him and her easing him to the warm sand, and then darkness took him.
He wasn’t alone.
Someone was watching him and it wasn’t Erin.
Veiron screwed his eyes up and clawed his way out of the darkness, struggling towards the light. He moaned, his head thumping. Where was he? Still on the beach where he had passed out?
He clumsily groped at his surroundings.
“You have been out cold for several hours. We moved you to a more comfortable location.” That deep voice belonged to Apollyon.
Veiron swallowed and forced his eyes open. It was night. Torches burned outside, staked into the sand. Apollyon stood in the doorway of the shelter, arms folded across his broad bare chest, blue eyes fixed on Veiron.
“Erin tended to you until I made her leave. She needed to eat and rest. She will come back soon.”
“Until then, I am your prisoner?” Veiron met his gaze.
Apollyon smiled and nodded. “Erin gives you too much free rein because of her feelings for you. I do not trust you… but I do not need to. It is not my trust you should be winning but hers. You have done nothing to earn what she has given you. Erin is the reason you’re still alive in your current form, not dead again and sent back to Heaven.”
He knew that. Everyone else on the island would have killed him when he had come down with Nevar had it not been for Erin’s intervention and wishes. He had done nothing to earn her protection. He had tried to kill her.
“Here.” Apollyon held his hand out to Veiron.
Veiron slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, afraid that if he moved quickly he would suffer another attack and pass out again. He peered at Apollyon’s palm. Two small white discs sat on it.
“I contacted Lukas and he believes that pills of this sort work for us as they do for humans.” Apollyon leaned over him and Veiron took the pills, holding them in his palm and eyeing them closely.
“What will they do?” He looked up at Apollyon, who had resumed his position as sentinel at the door of the small ramshackle shelter.
“Take away the pain in your head. Lukas once imbibed a large quantity of alcohol and suffered what humans call a hangover. He took human medicine and it helped ease his pain. It may do the same for whatever pain attacks you when you try to remember something.”
“Do you know why I experience pain when I try?” Veiron closed his fingers over the small white pills.
Apollyon lifted his shoulders. “No… perhaps it is a curse as Marcus believes, but we did not find any marks on you.”
Veiron looked down and quirked his right eyebrow. It appeared he was naked. They hadn’t even left him the modest protection of his loincloth. A blanket lay over his legs but he knew that beneath it he was as nude as the day he had been reborn.
“Did Erin assist you in this?” His cheeks heated at that thought.
“No.” Apollyon shook his head and then jerked it towards Veiron. “Take the pills.”
Veiron didn’t trust them or Apollyon, but he did as instructed, tossing the two pills into his mouth and swallowing them. They were hard to get down and stuck in his throat.
“How’s the patient?” Erin’s soft voice drifted through the open end of the shelter and she appeared in view behind Apollyon, carrying a round brown object with a flat top.
“Having difficulty swallowing,” Apollyon said and she frowned up at him.
“I thought I said to give him the pills with liquid?” She clucked her tongue in reprimand and Apollyon’s expression remained unapologetic.
Erin stepped into the shelter and knelt beside Veiron. He grabbed the blanket over his legs, holding it to him so he didn’t accidentally flash her, and then remembered that they had apparently been lovers. That certainly would have entailed her seeing him naked.
A brief image of her riding him flashed across his eyes and fire swept through his blood, shooting it all in one direction. His groin.
Veiron pooled some of the blanket over his crotch so she wouldn’t see the change happening to his body. She didn’t seem to notice. She held the brown round object out to him.
“Drink this,” she said and he took it in one hand, keeping the other firmly over himself, and looked into the hole in the top.
“What is it?” He sniffed. It smelled strange.
“Coconut. They grow on the island. I knocked it off a tree.”
“How?” Veiron lifted it to his lips and drank the liquid. It tasted better than it smelled, and it dislodged the pills that had stuck in his throat.
“With my power. I’m trying to learn how to control it. When I can control it, I’m going to kill my father and then I’m going to kill your boss and this whole stupid game will end.”
Veiron choked on the coconut liquid. Erin quickly took it from him and patted him on the back. Her patting gradually slowed until she was resting her hand on his flesh. His bare flesh. He pulled more covers over his crotch.
“Should I leave you two alone?” Apollyon’s grin was nothing short of salacious. “It seems Veiron would like to refresh some of his memories.”
Erin raised her eyebrows so they disappeared under her fringe. “I don’t get it.”
Apollyon’s blue gaze flicked down to Veiron’s hand and Veiron cursed him for drawing her attention there. Her eyes drifted to the blanket pooled over his lap. They widened. Her cheeks darkened. Her gaze shot to the coconut balanced on her lap.
The dark angel chuckled, turned and walked away, leaving him alone with Erin.
She continued to stare at the coconut. “At least part of you remembers me.”
The stain colouring her cheeks darkened. His face heated too. As a newly reborn angel, he had no knowledge of carnal matters, although if Erin was to be believed, he might know more than he remembered.
His gaze settled on her mouth, his breathing accelerated, and he found himself desiring to lean towards her and capture those soft pink lips with his own. He wanted to kiss her.
He couldn’t. He was here for answers. The truth.
His becoming intimate with her could be exactly what she had planned. She may have lured him here with a false promise of answers so she could work another spell on him, bringing him under her command and turning him against Heaven.
Her eyes shifted to meet his and then dropped to her lap again. The dark circles beneath them were worse now and her skin seemed even paler in the low light.
“Are you unwell?” he said without thinking and she shook her head once and then sighed.
“I’m not sick... I just haven’t slept well since...” Tears lined her lashes and she bit her lower lip. It trembled.
Perhaps not a sickness of body but a sickness of the mind affected her. She was born of the Devil’s seed and he was a being who couldn’t contract illnesses. It would make sense that she was not physically sick.
“Why have you not slept well?” He dipped his head so he could see her face more clearly.
Her eyes darted to his and the pain in them spoke to his soul. “My visions are back... my nightmares. The only time they stay away is when I sleep in your arms and since you... since you... well, they’re worse now. I see terrible things but none of it makes sense. I feel worse if I sleep than I do if I force myself to remain awake.”
An overwhelming desire to smooth his palm across her cheek, lure her into his arms and tell her to sleep bolted through him but he tamped it down. It could be another trick. He stared into her eyes and felt the pain that glimmered there in his heart. It wasn’t a trick. She looked close to collapse now and had seemed so haunted earlier on the beach.
A scared, tired woman.
Not the evil destroyer that Heaven had painted her. Just a frightened and hurt female. She didn’t seem like a threat to him. He felt sorry for her. If she could not sleep, she would continue to weaken, and she would have no hope of surviving an
assault by Heaven.
He recalled what she had said.
“You seek to destroy your father?” He studied her face for a reaction to that question. Her eyes locked with his, the softness in them hardening to ice. That look of sheer determination and seething hatred answered his question. “Why?”
“Because he took you from me. He used your death to awaken my powers… and I don’t think it’s because he wants me to be a happy independent woman. He wants those powers, or at least he wants me to use them for him somehow.”
“So you intend to kill the Devil?”
“It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.” She set the coconut down, picked at the white flesh inside it, and popped a piece into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s possible to kill the Devil?”
“No.” It wasn’t. Not at all. Killing the Devil would be as easy as killing God. It wasn’t something that could happen. They had fought each other since time immemorial and neither of them had succeeded in destroying the other. Erin stood no chance.
That thought made him want to gather her into his arms, call his wings and wrap them around her. He wanted to tell her to forget her desire for revenge and not get herself killed for his sake. She was insane to think she could defeat them.
Veiron’s head ached again. What was he thinking? She was his enemy, his mission target. He was supposed to take her into custody and up to Heaven, not protect her from his realm and her father’s.
“You thought it was possible once,” she said and he frowned at her. “When I first met you, you were bent on killing the Devil and God because of what they had done to you.”
That shocked him. If he really had known her in the past, then he had once believed he was capable of destroying the two most powerful beings in existence.
“It is not possible. God and the Devil maintain the balance in this realm. It cannot exist without both of them.” It was something fundamental that all angels learned during their first few days of life. Their duty was to maintain that balance. Had he truly desired to kill them in his previous life? Attempting such a thing was suicide.
“I miss you,” she whispered and stood. She didn’t look at him. She swept out of the shelter, leaving him alone.
He frowned. She missed him. Not she had missed him. She didn’t consider him as being back then. Would she continue to miss him until his memories had been restored?
Veiron growled at himself. He was letting everything sweep him along when he was supposed to be getting answers. Once he had seen whatever it was that Marcus had wanted to show to him, he would know the truth. He would know whether everything Erin had said was a lie or not.
But what good would that do him?
He still wouldn’t remember her.
He needed to see it though.
He focused through the dull ache in his head and scanned his surroundings. No sign of his armour. What had they done with it? It didn’t matter. He closed his eyes, focused on his power and called his armour to him. His loincloth appeared first and he stood, making it easier for the pieces of his armour to appear too. His blue and silver greaves and boots covered his shins and feet. His vambraces encased his forearms, and the slats of armour appeared around his hips. His breastplate materialised followed by his back one, the two locking together over his shoulders and his ribs.
Veiron didn’t call his wings. He raked his fingers through his hair and walked out onto the moonlit beach. The torches cast a warm glow on the sand around them and there was a fire to his left, circled by other shelters beneath the palm trees. Amelia sat there with Apollyon, the two of them deep in conversation. Veiron cast his gaze around, noting that he had seen neither the fallen angel nor his half-demon mistress since returning. Had they gone back to wherever they lived?
He looked up at the starry sky and wondered if he would ever be able to do such a thing. If Marcus was right and Erin was telling the truth, he would never be able to return to Heaven. He wouldn’t know what to do. He searched the shore for Marcus and found Erin instead.
She stood near the water with her back to him, the waves lapping at her bare feet and her arms wrapped around herself. The moon shone down on her, silhouetting her slender body and shining through the dark material of her dress, revealing her thighs. His body responded to the sight of her and he drew slow deep breaths to calm his raging desire.
She turned at the waist and looked over her shoulder at him. He could feel her sorrow and her pain, could sense it eating away at her. There was a weight on her shoulders and it was taking its toll on her. If she did speak the truth about him, about them, and everything that had happened, then he felt sorry for her. She had been through so much but she still stood firm, resolved to face her future no matter how bleak it looked.
He admired her for that.
He walked towards her and her expression softened, her eyes sparkling with affection that he didn’t deserve to have directed at him. He had come here to capture her and take her to Heaven, and she had been right, he had known that Heaven would ultimately kill her.
He no longer believed that Heaven wanted to eradicate her because she was the antichrist and in league with the Devil.
It wanted her dead because she posed a threat to it.
But she also posed a threat to the Devil.
Would her father be coming after her too or had her awakening only been part of a grander plan for her?
Her cropped black hair fluttered in the breeze, revealing the scar on her throat. Marks he had apparently placed there. He didn’t remember having teeth sharp enough to leave marks like that but he had in his dream and they felt so familiar to him.
Her eyes met his and he was lost in them again, warm from head to toe, drifting towards her without realising it.
A firm hand caught his shoulder.
“Are you feeling better?” Marcus said and Veiron nodded. Marcus released his shoulder. “Then we should get going.”
To Hell.
Veiron’s heart pounded. He stared into Erin’s eyes, hoping that she hadn’t been playing him and this wasn’t a trap, because he didn’t think that he could bear it. Somewhere along the line, he had begun to believe her and hope that what she had told him was the truth. He wanted to be the one this willowy female loved and had shared herself with.
He wanted to remember her.
CHAPTER 32
Marcus had deemed it too dangerous for all of them to venture into Hell, so Veiron went with Apollyon. It turned out that the ruler of the bottomless pit could create a gateway to Hell and easily enter and leave it at will. Veiron knew of the area where they were heading. It was protected by angels of Apollyon’s division, the only place in Hell where Heaven dared to keep a small force on standby at all times and none of the locals bothered them.
Veiron glided down on the hot air that rose from the realm far below him, his focus on the glowing orange line that marked their destination, pinned there to stop his mind from wandering back to the woman he had left on the beach above.
She would be safe with Marcus and Amelia there, but he couldn’t shake the desire to return to her and see with his own eyes that she was all right.
“Not much further,” Apollyon said, gruff tone conveying his dislike for the realm below them. Dislike that Veiron shared.
Hell was a dangerous place to enter, especially for an angel in his condition. Doubts filled every corner of his mind and the Devil would feed on those, using them against him, trying to sway him into falling. He would do no such thing. Erin and her comrades believed that he was destined to fall even if he devoted himself to Heaven. He had no choice in the matter. That didn’t sit well with him. If it was true, he wasn’t sure how he would feel. He wasn’t sure how he felt about any of it.
“You are not the only angel who has had their memories tampered with by Heaven.”
Veiron glanced across at his dark companion, the action causing his path to waver so his pale wings almost collided with Apollyon’s black ones. He s
traightened his course, fixing his gaze below him again.
“What do you mean?” he said and resisted his desire to look at Apollyon when he answered.
“Heaven changed some of my memories too. It is no lie. There is an eternal game between Heaven and Hell, and Amelia is at the centre of it. Marcus is Heaven’s pawn and he came close to killing Amelia, controlled by Heaven against his will. You were the Devil’s player, and will always fall and pledge yourself to him. I was the one tasked with awakening Amelia from her mortal form into her angelic one.” Apollyon huffed. “They forced me to kill her… shortly afterwards we realised that they had played with our memories.”
Veiron’s stomach twisted. He wished people would stop saying that he would fall and pledge himself in service of the Devil. It wasn’t something he would ever do.
Apollyon hadn’t wanted to kill Amelia either but Heaven had made him do that, if the dark angel was to be believed.
Meaning, Veiron had no choice in the matter. If Heaven and Hell decided he would fall, then he would fall. It didn’t matter what he wanted or what he did.
“When we land, let me do the talking,” Apollyon said and they broke out into an enormous cavern. Endless black surrounded him, broken only by boiling pits and rivers of lava. The landscape of Hell was as inhospitable and harsh as he had seen in the images of Erin.
“Perhaps I should do the talking.” If Apollyon was saying that they would need to convince the contingent of angels down here to let them pass or give them access to the pool everyone was talking about then it made more sense for him to be the one to do it. After all, he wasn’t on Heaven’s list of wanted angels. “Just lead the way.”
Veiron landed on the basalt plateau and quickly scanned his surroundings, searching for any sign of trouble. A young angel from the division of death came around a tall set of rocks directly ahead of him, a good distance away from the glowing edge of the plateau. The bottomless pit was down there. Was the Devil there now, waiting for Erin or planning something?
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Complete Series Box Set Page 65