“Rella!”
She was dead. My twin was dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Their emotions felt like whips against my already raw soul. I stared at the hole in the ground where they’d lowered the other part of me. I wanted to climb in there after her, curl myself around her like we did when we were young. But instead, she was going to be cold in the ground, alone. We weren’t made to be alone. We were two parts to a whole. One couldn't survive without the other. I couldn’t survive.
This was wrong.
I could hear them speaking behind me, but I ignored them. Mom sobbed softly into someone's chest, I could tell because her cries were muffled.
“She won’t eat. She won’t speak.”
“She won’t look me in the eye. It’s like she…” Sam stopped whatever he was going to say, but I could almost hear the rest of the sentence. It was like I died too. I wanted to. It was too much. It had all been too much.
Charlie and Nazir’s funerals yesterday, the barrage of grief-stricken Mulligans like a tornado of sadness, and I sat alone at its center. I wanted the pain to eat me up. Maybe if I felt enough of everyone else’s grief, I could forget the emptiness inside me. The connection that was missing.
“Bring her away,” someone said, but Memphis stepped in to stop them. Memphis hadn’t left my side, nor had Gusion. Even as I lay curled on my bed for hours on end, they were there, silent protectors.
“Leave her. She needs time. We will watch her, I promise. I swear this on my immortal soul. I will let no harm come to her.”
I looked to where he was speaking to Lux, who was staring at me with more emotion than I’d ever seen on his face. Such jagged pain.
“Please,” Memphis said. He almost sounded like he was begging. “She needs to be alone. This emotion,” he waved at the group, “it is pushing her into the darkness. I am not sure we can catch her if she falls much further. Please.” This time I was certain he was begging. For me.
Lux was conflicted. I could feel his need to grab me, to take me back home and never let me leave again. To never feel this grief again. He stared at me, and I must have looked like death, because eventually I heard them move away. I was alone again, with that white box. With my twin.
“Rella,” the single word came out on a sob, but I sucked it back down. What did I do now?
I slumped to my knees in the soft dirt, ignoring the grave diggers waiting to bury my sister. Rella had always been the invincible one. I was the one who was made to break.
A hand touched my back, and a huge wave of something that felt suspiciously like love came through the contact. I looked over my shoulder, and if I still had the capacity to feel, I would have been shocked.
Luc knelt beside me, his large hand almost spanning my back. His face, his usually hard, scary face, was twisted in something that looked like compassion. And love.
I took one look at his face and wailed. I dove into his chest, and let him wrap his arms and his huge onyx wings around me. He blocked out the world, all the pain and grief, and I sobbed against him as my eyes cried my heart's blood against his chest.
“Hush, little one. Hush. It is okay,” he whispered in his deep voice, the voice meant to strike fear into mortals, instead of soothe their wounds. “It will all be okay.”
“How?” The word came out jagged and angry. “She’s dead, Luc. Bring her back to me. Please. I need her.”
He mumbled something low and Latin, but shook his head. “I cannot.”
“You can! I know you can, because you’ve done it before. Please. Please. Please,” I begged, my fingers digging into his forearm.
“I’m sorry. But you will see her again, Hope. This I swear. I can promise you she is happy. She is not alone. It is you who must draw strength to go on.”
I sniffled as I looked up into his bottomless black eyes that assessed my very soul with a glance. “She’s in Hell?”
Luc inclined his head. “They probably weren’t being the most virtuous of people these last few weeks. Romanus and Rouen, and Nazir, were already in my purview. They are all fine. Ace is setting them up a beer pong table in my grand dining hall, of all places.” His normal scary mask slipped back into place. “Estrella is sad, but it is because she knows how you will have taken her death. You must pull yourself from the abyss, and live for the both of you now. That would make her afterlife truly happy.”
I nodded, and then Luc was standing. He helped me to my feet. I didn’t bother brushing the mud from my knees.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, and hugged the Devil close to me. He loved me. He loved Rella too, this supposedly Fallen Angel, who was storied to have no capacity for love, but had proven the stories wrong over and over. Unlike my parents, he had never aged. But he was ageless.
“Thank you, Luc.”
He let out a scary rumbling noise. “Do not thank me. I failed you both. You are the beloved children of my consort. And I let one of you die.” The last part came out in a scary, inhuman voice that made the temperature around us drop. The hairs on my body rose.
I dropped my arms, but I didn’t step away. “That’s the thing about us pesky humans. We never do quite what you expect.” I looked up, meeting his eyes again. A bold move, even for me. “I want them all to pay. Every single person who had anything to do with Rella’s death. I want them to regret ever being born.”
Luc groaned. “Please. Not another plot for vengeance where you go in with guns blazing. The last one did not end so well,” he gently reminded me.
He didn’t have to tell me though. I wasn’t Estrella. But I was no longer the Hope of last week either. I wasn’t the Hope who could rely on the love and protection of her twin any longer. Something was now a little broken.
I shook my head.
I wasn’t Estrella. I couldn’t shoot, or kick ass.
But I was going to raze their world to the ground. For Rella.
And for me.
Part II
Chapter Fifteen
“Where is she?”
I felt more than heard Memphis’ booming voice over the top of the pounding music in the club. Everyone turned, though I doubt they knew why. His voice was a compulsion, and if they knew which ‘she’ he was talking about, I had no doubt they would have served me up to him like a sacrificial virgin. Well, it was probably a little late for the virgin thing, but I could definitely be a sacrifice.
I didn't care. I tipped the shot glass in my left hand into my mouth, and then chased it with the shot glass in my right. The tequila was coursing through my veins like an anaesthetic, numbing the feelings. Well mine, not everyone else's. But in a huge group like this, the pulses of emotions became just another muffled element to the atmosphere.
I swung my hips, letting my long, loose curls swirl around my bare shoulders. A guy, well a boy — how did he get in here without being carded? — danced up beside me, and I gave him a fragile smile. I let him dance beside me, until his hips were moving with me and he was trying to be an extra from Dirty Dancing. I rolled my eyes, but I was too drunk to care. I put my hands in the air and pretended he didn’t exist. Pretended no one existed. Pretended I didn’t even exist.
I felt a hand on my hip. “Get lost kid, otherwise your night is going to get real bad, real fast.” I looked up, and the group of people standing in front of me shocked me despite my drunken haze. Blue Mulligan was standing there, his body unmoving amongst the sea of writhing partygoers. He was flanked by Gus and Memphis. They were an odd trio.
Blue held out his hand, his fist curled around something in his palm. He opened it up, and inside sat the gold queen from his chess set.
I stopped moving, ignoring the people jostling me. I reached out and took the queen, my fingers brushing his palm. Tears leaked down my cheeks.
“I want to go now.”
Blue nodded, and Memphis plowed through the crowd. Everyone moved or they were moved bodily. Some brave people reached out to brush their fingers on the Fallen Angels as they passed. They m
ight look human, but your hindbrain knew they were more.
We emerged through the club’s fire doors, and the security guard opened his mouth to protest, but one look at my escorts and his mouth snapped shut. Clever move. I could feel the simmering rage escaping through Memphis’ emotional shield. He must be really pissed.
We slid into a Range Rover. “Who’s car?”
No one answered my question. “Why is Blue here?”
Gusion turned, and even he looked a little mad. “We couldn’t find you. We can’t track you. You are the only fucking human on the planet we can’t find, and you are the only human on the planet I even give two shits about.” He sucked in a deep, calming breath. “Memphis thought your friend here might have better luck tracking a wayward heiress than us. He talked to some contacts, tracked you down.” I could tell the admission that a human could find me easier than he or Memphis burned a little.
Normally, they could have asked Rella. Rella always knows where I am. Knew. Now I was completely untethered from the world.
“You came back?” I asked Blue, my thumb stroking the golden chess piece in my hand.
Blue nodded. He didn’t say he was sorry for my loss, or sorry for storming out. But he looked at me, his crystalline blue eyes unblinking. He reached out a hand, and I placed mine in his. He knew this was how I could feel his emotions, read his thoughts.
I was scared. Confused. I’m sorry… for everything. I felt everything in that touch. His sadness, his fear, his sympathy. His desire. He could tell me things in the silence that he could never say out loud. I squeezed his hand hard and let go. I unbelted my seatbelt, and moved across the bench seat in the back of the car.
He tilted his head, a little line of confusion knitting his brow. The back of the car spun, the last two shots of tequila hitting me hard. I shifted until I was so close to Blue that I could feel his breath on my cheek. I moved quickly, if not elegantly, straddling his lap.
“What the hell is she doing?” Gusion asked, but he sounded muffled. Memphis let out an inhuman noise.
I ignored them both. I leaned forward and kissed Blue, kissed him with all the force of my feelings, hoping I could pour them from my lips into him. He sat perfectly still, not moving, not kissing me back, but I could feel the flare of his desire.
“Kiss me back, damn you,” I raged.
“I like my dick attached to my body, Princess. Your friends wouldn’t be so happy if I put any appendage of mine anywhere near you when you’re this wasted.”
“Watch your mouth,” Gusion, my normally good-natured friend, snarled out.
Blue just quirked a brow. I laughed, and then I sobbed. I put my face into Blue’s neck, and let my tears run down his skin. His hands ran up and down my back. He didn’t try to soothe me with his words. He just let me cry my tequila tears as we sped through the streets of Manhattan.
“When does it stop hurting?” I whispered against his throat.
“Never, Princess. We just learn to smile through the pain.”
I woke up with a mouth so dry, it felt like it was filled with sand. As I moved to the left, the room spun and pain speared my brain.
“Argh.”
A soft chuckle came from beside me. I opened my left eye, and saw Gusion’s laughing face.
“Sore head today, Sweetheart?”
I slapped a hand over his mouth. “Unnghh. Need. Water,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “I’m mad at you. You can get it yourself.”
I tried to sit, but the thudding and nauseating spinning increased seven-fold. I moaned and laid back on the bed. I would rather die of dehydration.
Gusion tutted me, and rose. It was then I realized he was in nothing but tight boxer briefs. I lifted the blankets and breathed a sigh to see I was still in last night’s dress.
I watched his ass as he walked into my ensuite, filling a glass I kept on my nightstand with water from my sink.
Someone should write an ode to his ass, because it was amazing. He switched the light on, and I winced as someone stabbed me in the brain again.
“Why are you almost naked in my bed?” I asked. Last night was a bit of a haze after the fifth tequila shot, but I did vaguely remember being in the car. And maybe Blue?
“You passed out on Blue Mulligan’s lap, and then vomited on me in the elevator.”
I sucked in a horrified gasp. “I didn’t?”
“Yep. Then I drew the short straw and got to sit in here and watch you sleep so you didn’t choke on your own puke like some kind of eighties Rockstar.”
I covered my face with my hands, all the blood in my body rushing to my face.
“I’m so sorry,” I groaned. Gusion knelt by the bed and pried my fingers from my eyes. He lifted me up a little, strong hands supporting my back, and gave me a sip of water.
“You have to stop, Hope. Everyone is worried. Your folks are beside themselves. You’re giving Memphis a stomach ulcer. You can’t party away the pain. It’s still there the next day, but you’ve also got a massive headache as well. Doing this to yourself won’t bring her back.”
I closed my eyes against his words. When I was drunk off my ass was the only time I could forget, at least for a little while.
“Estrella would be appalled you were trying to kill yourself one drink at a time, making stupid decisions, putting yourself in dangerous situations. You need to cut it the hell out.”
I rolled away from him, giving him my back, and my nauseous stomach rolled as well. “You don’t have to be here to watch it. No one asked you to stay.”
He grabbed my shoulder and rolled me back to face him. “No one had to ask me to stay, Hope. I stayed because I care about you, and don’t want to see you dead in the river because you are being a careless child. It hurts. I know hurt. But this isn’t the way to fix it.”
I ground my teeth together. “What is the way to fix it? Divide the armies of heaven and incite a war that would have my friends cast into hell for eternity?”
He flinched back at my words, and I did too. What a fucking asshole thing to say. “Gus...I didn’t mean that.”
He sighed and stood. “Yes, you did. And you are right. But learn from my mistakes. Don’t destroy the lives of everyone around you because you are hurting.”
He turned and left, and I felt like a bitch.
I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled to the ensuite. Reaching in, I turned on the water and set it to boiling. Every morning for two weeks I’d done this same routine. My body was feeling its punishment now.
I stood beneath the scolding water and pictured Gus’ hurt face. I banged my head against the tiles.
“What have you done, Hope? Who have you become that you put that look on Gusion’s face? The same man who has held you in his arms as you cried these last weeks?”
Azriel’s angry voice made me jump. I made a little window in the steam, to ensure I wasn’t hallucinating.
“Azriel, I’m showering! You can’t just walk into a bathroom when a woman is naked!”
He shrugged. “Why not? The steam has hidden your naked form from me. I can merely see an outline of your body. I am the Angel of Death. I have seen the human form in every way. I can assure you, yours is no different.” His emotions felt otherwise. They weren’t overwhelmingly colored by confusion any more, though there were still hints of it around the edges. No, he felt like desire, and lust and all sorts of carnal needs. I wondered if he knew what the feelings meant. I’d bet the family farm he did. He might be confused by his feelings for me, but he wasn’t stupid or a child. He’d recognize what lust was; he had seen it in Gusion before he fell. Witnessed true passion in the form of Luc and Ace.
Azriel narrowed his eyes a little. “Besides, you seem to have little regard for the feelings of others. Perhaps I am just following your example.”
I was being chastised by Azriel. My behavior had been so appalling, even the Angel of Death thought I was being a dick. He seemed truly offended on Gusion’s behalf.
I remembe
red what Memphis said about Azriel and the other Fallen being friends once. I wondered if those feelings still existed, even just a little.
“What do you care how I made Gusion feel? He is now a denizen of Hell. It’s none of your business,” I snapped. I could feel the spike in the Angel’s annoyance, his sadness, his confusion. I had no urge to help him figure it out. Well, not today anyway.
“Why are you so…” I saw him wave a hand in an expansive way, “fractious about this? You know that your sister’s soul still exists, she still lives in happiness with her consorts. As far as souls go, your sister has, what's that human saying? Hit the Jackpot?”
I sighed. I didn’t bother responding, but Azriel wasn’t finished.
“Her end was quick and painless, her transition to hell without the ordinary soul confusion. It was a good passing.”
My body jolted as if I’d been shocked. What was he saying…?
“Were you there? Did you take my sister’s soul to Hell?” I asked carefully.
Azriel’s face scrunched in confusion. “Of course.”
Of course! I threw the door open on the shower, uncaring of my nakedness. “You sent my sister’s soul to Hell instead of taking her to help, and you are standing in front of me, daring to chastise me? Get the hell out of my apartment!”
It was Azriel’s turn to look incredulous. “She was far beyond the human capacity for healing, Hope. Not even Raphael could have healed her. It was time for her soul to move on.”
He kept talking, and my rage began to spiral out of control. I threw the shampoo bottle at him through the open shower door. He dodged it easily.
“You should have… I don’t know. I don’t know! But she didn’t need to die.” The fight fled as quick as it came, and I resisted the urge to slump on the floor of the shower. I could keep some dignity. Well, as much dignity as I could have standing in front of an angel. Naked.
He tilted his head in that way he had when he was listening for the other Angels. “Here come your bewitched suiters, Witch.” He looked me up and down, and his confusion grew. An unfamiliar sensation colored his emotions. Not lust, or desire. I knew those colors intimately now. Something different. The mood in the room shifted, the heated anger in my chest dissolving and spreading its way further, uh, south.
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 69