by Liza James
“You of all people should know that actions have consequences. Haven’t you learned that by now?” His voice is low and chastising, as if I care what authority he may have. He doesn’t rule me, and I sure as hell don’t answer to him.
“Fuck you. Where is she?” I ask just as Stella’s cries seem to grow even louder around us. She’s begging for something, but I can’t quite make out what’s happened to her now.
“She’s finding her way to the door. Just as you are,” he sounds bored. And I want to fucking kill him for it. He finds entertainment in others pain, in their cries and pleas for whatever horror he’s placed in front of them.
“Tell me, where the fuck she is, Lucifer. I’m not playing your game, we have important events to discuss, this is a waste of all of our time.” I try to logically reason with him, hoping he cuts this short and allows us entry. It’s a useless thought though—I know.
“Sunan can wait, I assure you,” he says flatly, just as he takes one step away from me. “You want your Stella? Here she is.”
Instantly, Stella’s familiar frame springs forth out of the air. She stands directly in front of me, her hands clasped tightly in front of her waist. Her head is tilted downward so I can’t see her face, but I hear her cries and I lunge towards her in order to bring her to me.
My hand reaches out for her chin as I tilt it up, her shoulders shake with barely contained sobs but just as her eyes are revealed to me, those cries transform into a string of bitter laughter. It spills from her throat in mockery, snaking around and defiling my mind.
Her eyes are completely black, just like Esme’s and I’m immediately aware that it isn’t my Stella. It’s a Demon pretending to be her, to fuck with my mind in the worst of ways. I step back, turning my gaze back towards Esme as he watches silently.
Demon Stella takes a step towards me, her face falling flat and her hands dancing up to the string tied behind her neck. I narrow my eyes as I continue backwards, but she matches me at each pace and my heart begins hammering in my chest.
“What the fuck—” I start, just as she releases the tie and her lilac dress falls from her chest, exposing those tits I know all too well. Her glossy pink nipples are peaked tightly against her skin and I loathe myself for even glancing, this isn’t my Stella displaying herself for me. This is a demonic representation of her, a false hallucination to fuck me over.
“Stay the hell back,” I say as I hold out a hand while she continues undressing. The fabric falls from her waist and pools at her feet when she steps out of it, standing before me completely bare.
God, she’s fucking beautiful. But I have to remind myself that it isn’t her. Those succulent thighs and that small waist, those rosy red nipples and heavy breasts. The way her lips are parted, and her pointed tongue slides out to wet her flesh—that isn’t mine. This isn’t my Fated. This isn’t my Stella.
“Don’t you want me?” She says, her voice an exact replica to what I hear daily from my own fiery redhead.
“No,” I say firmly, anger and rage replacing the natural draw I briefly had to her.
“Fuck her or kill her,” Esme says shortly. Her voice is clipped and annoyed at my obvious reluctance. My eyes widen at the demand, no fucking way can I do either of those things.
I’m not fucking a Demon who’s simulating my Fated. Hell, I haven’t even fucked my Stella yet. There’s no way I’m doing it like this.
But she is like Stella, she looks exactly like her outside of the eyes. It’s the same sweet voice I hear in my dreams, the same creamy body I want to lay my hands on, the same untamed hair that hypnotizes my gaze and begs to be wrapped around my fist.
And because of that, I can’t kill her either. It’s too much, too real for me to accept that.
“No,” I say. “Absolutely not.” I square my shoulders, meeting his gaze head on, refusing the challenge he’s placing in front of me.
“Then your Stella stays in her nightmare indefinitely.”
Suddenly, the sound of my Stella’s cries are amplified around us. So loudly that I have to reach up and slam my hands over my ears in order to muffle the tangible pain I’m hearing in her raspy voice.
“And in case you don’t know what’s happening, you’re about to slit her sister’s throat right in front of her eyes. Danner is also there, and he’s about to fuck her from behind because she’s so incredibly distraught, she has no idea what he’s doing. She’s far too focused on blaming herself and watching her sister’s death.”
My blood boils while my body freezes in time. An uncontrolled rage rolls through my chest and rips out of my throat in a growl that blows through the midnight air. The Demon in front of me flinches, and quickly steps back in fear, but Lucifer is quick to shove her forward again and meet my gaze.
“Do not forget that I am the one who gave you life amongst the Fallen,” he bites out.
“I regret making that deal with you,” I admit, spitting the words through clenched teeth.
“Oddly enough, you have me to thank for even meeting your Fated. Without Falling, without this deal between us, Stella would be living a perfectly toxic life in Danner’s arms without you swooping in to save her. I deserve appreciation. And you can do that, by either fucking or killing this one.” Esme’s head nods toward the imitation Stella but my mind is still spiraling out of control. He knows. He’s easily figured out what Stella means to me.
How can I fix this? How can I save my Stella without giving into Lucifer’s demands?
Surprisingly, Esme’s true voice breaks through her body briefly as her eyes return to normal and she hastily addresses the situation. “Kill her, he’s going to execute the Demon anyway. You’re simply ending it sooner rather than later.” But her head snaps back as she cries out in pain and Lucifer resumes his place back in her black gaze.
He tilts his head down in irritation before looking back up to me, “She will pay for that. Make your decision before I make it for you.”
Instantly, everything in me cripples at the sounds of Stella’s chaotic sobs. She’s hardly breathing, I can hear it in the way she’s gasping for air and yelling for her sister. I can’t leave her there, I can’t bear to listen to her pain. I feel it infecting me and shattering my own mind.
I lunge forward, wrapping my hand tightly around the Demon’s throat, struggling to differentiate this Stella from my own. But I hardly can, and she closes her eyes so that I don’t have the one physical feature defining her difference.
“Look at me,” I grind out, but she doesn’t respond, her body simply reacts to the hold I have on her. Her breaths strain and the sounds she makes as she struggles destroys me. I tighten my fingers, letting them dig into her familiar pale flesh as the agony rips through me. I can’t separate these two scenarios, I can’t make sense of what I’m doing and it’s eating me up, devouring me and ruining my soul to do this to her.
I’m killing her. I’m killing Stella. I’m murdering my own blood, my Fated, and I’m not sure how I’ll survive this.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I say, my lips curl back over my teeth as I fight to say the words. “I’m fucking sorry, Stella.”
Her body tenses, and her eyes slip open barely, but they aren’t black this time. They’re that same pale blue that fucking tortures me day after day. No, she can’t have those eyes. Give me the black ones.
I falter, but her hand reaches up and wraps around my own, urging me to continue doing the very thing that’s killing me as well. “It’s okay,” she whispers through the constrained pipe of her throat. “It’s okay.”
I can’t help it, tears well in my eyes as I watch my own flesh end the person I’m supposed to spend eternity with. The person I’m supposed to build a life with, unite and thrive with. Stella is everything. I’d trade everything for her safety, and oddly enough, that’s what I’m doing now.
My heart fissures, splintering into portions that will never bind together again. I can feel it with every last breath this hallucination takes. A darkness fills my che
st, corrupting my blood and permanently marking my soul. I dig my fingers in harder, hoping to end this fucking nightmare so that I can hold my true Stella in my arms again, forget I ever had to do this.
Her body stiffens further, struggling as she gasps for her last breath but is too weak to claim it. Her eyes fall shut and her limp hands fall from my wrist, until she’s a lifeless form collapsed in the dirt below.
I stumble backwards, falling on my ass as I watch what is the perfect embodiment of my Stella, dead in front of my own eyes.
“No,” I say as I shoot forward, wrapping my hands around her body and dragging her into my lap. It’s too real, it’s too fucking real.
“Stella, come on. Wake up,” I urge, knowing this isn’t mine. But needing it to be, needing to feel my Stella’s warm skin under my hands, feel her active breaths brushing against my cheek, needing to claim her fucking mouth against mine and show her that I am me, and she is she.
Suddenly, everything disappears. Stella’s body is gone from my grasp, Esme is no longer watching the game play out. Instead, an explosion of red and yellow flames licks out in front of me and I know this is the portal to the Underworld.
I don’t even give it a second thought, I jump up and race through it, anticipating finding my Stella on the other side.
The moment my feet hit the hard, black marble flooring, my knees weaken, and my legs collapse below me. My hands catch my fall, stinging from the slap of cold that cascades up my bones and through my elbows. I slam my eyes shut as my chest rises and falls with heaving breaths, ones that burn my lungs and painfully expand my rib cage. My eyes are sore with tears, as is my throat. The sobs I released moments ago acting as razor sharp blades that cut through my flesh.
But my mind is what’s truly fucked. I can hardly make sense of what I saw, what I felt, before I entered the portal. Excruciating reminders of seeing Nathanial’s hands around Luna, feeling Danner’s lithe body wrap around my own, watching as a knife sunk and began to slice through my sister’s flesh.
It’s too much, too fucking tangible, and before I have a chance to logically process the fact that it was Lucifer’s game, I suddenly see Nathanial’s strong form racing toward me. His arms shoot out, rapidly grasping my wrists in tight holds as he tries to yank me to him. But I panic, frantically pulling away until I fall back and have only a split second to scramble away from him.
“Stella,” he starts, that memorable husky voice tearing through me. But I can’t tell the difference between who he is now and what I just saw. Pain and loathing. Need and desire. So many colliding emotions wreak havoc on my mind, and I can’t keep it all together. “Stella, it’s me. Come on, you know it’s me,” he whispers impatiently. I can tell he’s trying to be mindful of my clear reluctance in being near him, but there’s something else in his voice that tries to break through my barriers. There’s a desperation in his eyes that seeks out my familiar intimacy. He’s needing to connect with me as much as I’m needing to detach myself from him.
“You—you, what you said,” I stammer out, my trembling hand lifts to weakly push against his chest, keeping him at a distance.
“It wasn’t me. I would never say those things. Remember what Amelia said? It wasn’t real, none of it was.” His hand comes up and his strong fingers wrap tightly around my wrist at his chest. His thumb brushes back and forth across my icy skin. How would he know what he said if he wasn’t there? If he hadn’t said them himself?
“How did you know what you said?” I ask, disbelief evident my words.
“That was my game, part of it at least. I had to listen to you, to everything happening without being able to intervene. I tried Stells, I tried to get to you.” He releases my hand and brings his fingers up to my neck, I try to shove him away but he’s stronger and he quickly pins my hands down with one hand while his fingers trace over the skin of my collarbone.
“Danner was there, he found me—” I say, but my shaky voice breaks and tears begin welling in my eyes again. I take note of the fact that Nathanial’s fingers travel to the pulse at the base of my neck, lingering there, inspecting and feeling the consistent racing throb of my heartbeat.
“He didn’t. He doesn’t know where you are, it wasn’t real,” he reminds me, but his eyes are trailing chaotically over my body. He doesn’t try to touch me any more than he already is. He’s simply taking stock, making sure that physically I’m okay.
I am. But my head isn’t.
“Then tell me something. Something you’ve been keeping from me, one of the secrets you hold so dearly. Tell me something that only I would know is true, Nathanial. I need to hear it,” I ask him for the only thing I think could help me make sense of this mess. I want to hear him say he’s my Fated, that this is real between us. That what I just heard, experienced could never actually be the case.
His eyes search mine, indecision clearly working through his mind at what I’ve just said. I know he doesn’t want to give it up, but I need him to. “I can’t, Stella. I can’t give you those things,” he says quietly. Painfully.
“You have to. I fucking need you to, Nathanial.”
He pauses, taking a heavy breath before his lips part to respond to me. My heart slams in my chest as I anticipate his words. “I’m an Incubus,” he says and suddenly confusion throws off my entire idea of what he was going to say. That wasn’t what I was expecting, though I can’t say I’m surprised. I knew something was different when he could feed me the way I needed, but I assumed it was simply because we were Fated.
Anger and distrust pool in my stomach, at the fact that he’s been lying to me about something that was so crucial to my well-being this entire time. Those months that I was starving, that I was in physical pain because I couldn’t feed. He could have helped. That night he found me in the club, when I was begging him to take over for the dumb fuck I was with and give me what I needed, he said he couldn’t. He saw the pain I was in, watched me cry and beg and internally wither away, and yet he did fucking nothing.
“Wait, what?” I ask, my eyes narrowing on his blue gaze. “How is that possible? You’re a Fallen Angel—"
“It would have been over for you both sooner if Nathanial had decided to either fuck, or kill you a little quicker than he did. He’s never been known for rash decisions, unless it involved other circumstances.” Lucifer’s sick voice penetrates the air around us and completely catches me off guard. My eyes fly past Nathanial’s shoulder to land on a man I’ve never seen before.
He’s tall, just like Nathanial and Elijah and just as broadly built. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t arguably one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. But the evil and darkness that radiates from his presence is a palpable suffocation around my throat. Countless tattoos span his hands and fingers, trailing up and peeking out of the collar of his entirely black suit. It’s impeccably tailored to fit him, wrapping around his heavy shoulders and tapering perfectly down his narrow torso. He’s strong, and the way the fabric bunches around his biceps and thighs is a sure sign of the muscles that lie underneath.
He even has tattoos on his face, one lining directly above his brow over his left eye. His light blonde hair is slicked back and styled flawlessly, while his heavily ringed fingers slide into the pockets of his dark slacks.
My heart rate kicks up at his words and my eyes fly back to Nathanial, adding more fuel to the fire that was already blazing due to the conversation we were privately having. “Which did you choose?” I demand, unfortunately afraid of his answer. Is it something he’ll have to do eventually? Does it have to do with what I saw in the woods myself?
“He chose to kill you,” Lucifer answers for him, his poisonous words working through me and amplifying the fears and rage I already have whipping through my mind.
Nathanial growls, a low and terrifying sound as he looks back over his shoulder at Lucifer. His lips curl back over his teeth when he turns to face me again, but it’s too late. My entire body is vibrating with uncertainties while I scramble to ca
lm the fuck down and act logically.
“He’s not telling you the whole story, it wasn’t you. I had to choose in order to—"
“Now, now, we don’t have time for this. Come along, let me show you my home.” Lucifer steps in between us and reaches down to grasp my elbow as he yanks me up and roughly pulls me alongside him. Nathanial is immediately there though, placing a possessive hold on my arm so that he can break me away from the Devil to my right.
I pull out of both of their holds though, maintaining my own space as I follow their steps. I don’t want to be touched, I don’t want to deal with any of it, including understanding that Nathanial is somehow an Incubus. I’m grossly frightened and irritated that I even feel like this, that I let Lucifer win his fucking game. And I’m so exhausted, so weak after playing that I’m starving to feed and regain my strength.
We hurry down a narrow hallway, black walls, black floors. Several black doors line the passage as well. The only fleeting glimpse of another color is surprisingly not the one I would expect to see here in the midst of Hell. Underneath each door is a faint glow of purple, some flash, some steady, other’s flicker and dim as we pass. I try to block out the muffled sounds that echo from behind each door. I swear I can hear screams, moans, a mix of pleas for something to end, and then other sounds for things to continue. My Demon is stirring underneath my skin, thirsty to be released. Discomfort resounds in my bones, but something else is settling in my chest as well. The oddest sense of belonging, like my Succubus has found home in a space so vile. It’s an eerie mix of wanting to be here—despite what I just went through—and wanting to run away at the same time.
Nathanial and Lucifer surround me in silence. It’s clear that they have some sort of heavy tension lingering between them, and that’s outside of what just happened in the woods. No, this is even more personal than that, something that’s been building for a long time between them.
We reach a large metal door at the end of the hall. Its surface is littered with bolts and beads of welding where it must have been patched together. It’s a messy representation of a doorway, but somehow blends to create an artistic piece that fits well in this infernal realm.