This was something else entirely.
He could feel it, here in this arena. Like words caught in an evanescent wind, he knew what was about to happen, and there was no stopping it. The churning in his stomach only made him clutch at the podium more.
“We have decided,” the leader of the Seraphim boomed across the arena, his voice filling the entire area. “Adam D’Angeline, for your gross insubordination and repeated betrayal to your kind, you will be the one to bring us Eve D’Angeline. Dead.
“You will kill Eve D’Angeline and the Betrayer Camael, and bring me their heads so that we may show all of our brethren what it means to turn your back on Le Coelesti. Heaven does not take kindly to sinners, Adam. If you fail, or your cowardice purports that you refuse instead, I will kill Eve in front of you while you watch.
“Do you understand me, Adam?” Enoch said simply, his steel gaze smoldering like the stokes of the earth.
The gasps and murmurs that racked the coliseum bordered near pandemonium, so loud that Lord Enoch had to strike the gavel repeatedly to get the lesser angels to quiet down.
Adam looked up at Raphael while Enoch forced order back into the room, a silent understanding passing through them both.
Adam’s options had run out.
He could hear it now, clear as day.
So giveth, so shall I taketh away.
So be it then. “I understand.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“He can’t be serious, Raphael,” David balked. “There’s no way the First Sphere would allow something like that to happen.”
“David, they are the First Sphere,” Danielle interrupted as she propped back against her chair, her head hung over backward toward Raphael. “And no one gave you any kind of warning?”
“No.” The Archangel shook his head, his hand subconsciously grasping his throat, perhaps to ease the sick feeling in his stomach that increased by the minute.
“What about you?” David threw his hands up. “Do they have any inkling that you are involved?”
“No, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Adam said as he entered Raphael’s office through the large chamber doors. “I won’t have my best friend covering for me anymore. We’re just going to have to come up with another plan.”
Emil walked into the room behind Adam, closing the chamber door and locking it quietly so to not garner attention from the nearby guards. “And how do you expect to do that, Adam? You heard what Lord Enoch said. Are you going to kill her? Because I don’t believe that for a second. Not one.”
Adam dropped into a nearby seat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I say, fuck her,” Emil said simply. “Your life is not worth some demon-loving whore.”
The entire room turned toward him. “Excuse me?” Adam nearly choked.
Emil shrugged as he leaned against the wide expanse of shelving that constituted Raphael’s library. “Well, someone had to say it.”
Raphael grimaced and turned with everyone else to face Adam again. “I think what Emil is trying to say—”
“What I’m trying to say is exactly that,” Emil said as he kicked off the bookshelf and joined the rest of the crowd. “Eve went to the other side. We were right there. She could have come with us at any point, and yet she stayed. You really think you should go save this chick?”
“Emil,” Dani gasped. “Tact.”
He shrugged and dropped into the chair beside her. “If it’s not already obvious by this point, then consider this a warning: she will be the death of you.”
“Be that as it may,” Adam conceded as he paced back and forth across the marble floor. “There’s got to be another way, another something.”
“Well,” Emil finally said, giving in. “You can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. I suggest you try taking a look upstairs in the Library.”
Adam dropped into Raphael’s leather desk chair, leaning into the recline. “And what good would that do any of us?”
“The Restricted section,” Emil said simply. “If you’re going to find any information, it’s going to be there.”
“Won’t work,” Adam replied. “They pulled my access when they did everything else.”
“But they didn’t pull Raphael’s,” Danielle argued.
The Archangel had been silent almost the entire time; a harried look wrought his normally serene face. “No, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea, Emil.”
Adam jumped at the thought. “Of course it is, Raph. If I can get in, we might have a chance at saving her.”
“We?” Raphael balked.
Adam nodded. “Oh, yeah. You’re coming with me.”
“What?” he sighed. “I thought you said you were going to keep me out of this mess.”
“You’re right,” he said, reaching for the doorknob. “I did, but now I need your help.”
“And what do you even hope to find in there, Adam?” Raphael pushed the door back closed.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” David said. “You now have to fight not one, but two enemies.”
“Absolutely,” Adam answered, slipping back around the desk and back toward the double doors. “I got her into this mess; I have to get her out.”
Raphael shook his head. “She came here, you know, told me Camael had sent you to Gehenna.”
“What?” Adam turned around.
Dani stood up. “We thought you knew. She made it to Hell, didn’t she?”
“No.” Adam shook his head. “She came with someone, an anchor or something. One of the demons.”
The female angel squinted as she left the company of the others and went to the cabinet that held Raphael’s single bottle of scotch. She poured two. “So then how did she get to you, Raphael? Did you summon her?”
The Archangel shook his head. “No, and if I could, I wouldn’t have done something so revealing. You forget Enoch knows Adam had accomplices. He’ll be looking for a reason to accuse me.”
Danielle clucked her disagreement with her tongue. “He doesn’t know. He wasn’t there. He only thinks. What’s the worst he can do to us anyway?”
“Enough,” Adam answered. “We have to tread carefully otherwise we might all be in danger.”
Emil yawned. “If she’s a realm jumper then Gehenna won’t let her go easily. Only First Sphere have that ability. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t have an armed battalion around her at all times.”
“We can’t wait forever,” Adam said as he looked over the group. “We have to try and find out something now, while there’s still time. Raphael and I will go to Machon and see what we can find out. You guys wait here. I don’t need more people on the hook for my mistakes.”
David shot up. “Are you sure? I mean—”
“It’s fine, Dave,” he said, turning to Raphael. “How long do you need?”
The Archangel uncrossed his arms, sighing with a frown. “Ten minutes, maybe.”
“Good.” Adam clasped his friend by the shoulder, his eyes briefly going over Raphael’s armor bearing Araboth’s official emblem. “That armor always did look better on you than me.”
“Oh, shut up,” the Archangel snorted. “You just had better be right about this.”
Ω
“Now, dodging a fireball can be done in two ways; one, you literally dodge it, like a human, or two, you force it back in the opposite direction.”
My training sessions with Mammon had progressed steadily. If anything, my anger fueled my body’s need to train, my need to succeed. I would spend every waking moment doing just that. I would learn anything I could get my hands on, mastering every ability, until not even Camael could stop me.
Perhaps he thought me grateful for his attempts to free me from my enslavement. Surely he didn’t think I condoned what he was trying to accomplish. The entire destruction of the realms, and for what? Because they refused his tyranny? He could be intent on destruction out of defiance or sheer evil. I kept wondering what could have pos
sibly happened to make Camael so intent on ruin. What level of hate or sorrow did it take to reach the point of destroying everything?
“Show me,” I heard Mammon say. “Amelia?”
I looked up at him half in a daze. Only those closest to Camael called me by my actual name; the rest called me Lilith.
This name, this person I had been, it still seemed foreign and familiar at the same time. I still didn’t remember much about this place, this life I had led, who I was, and who I’d been.
Why did they accept me so readily as one of their own? I needed to remember more.
Something was missing. Some hole. Some fragment.
“Amelia?” Mammon repeated.
I sighed and shoved my hands in my jacket pockets. At least my training wear didn’t consist of billowy material; there was logic somewhere on this plane. Thank god.
“Can we finish this later?” I asked. I needed to take a walk.
He looked at me kind of funny and then finally shrugged. “Alright,” he said as he gathered his things and headed toward the chamber door. “I’ll be down with the smithy if you change your mind.”
Alone, the silence plagued me. A constant tapping at my brain offered no respite. I simply stood there unsure of what to do.
Sheol was large enough that Mammon could disappear down any number of corridors in seconds and scarce be seen again. I just needed enough distance that my thoughts would be my own.
I took off down the corridor, my mind forcibly silent as I raced with nowhere to go. I didn’t want anyone else to hear me any more than I wanted to hear myself. My chest shuddered in fear; I was too afraid to do anything anymore. Not of them, but of myself.
Gehenna comprised what most considered Hell, while Sheol was more akin to a military compound or underground city. Cold and bright in some areas, and black in the next, Sheol meandered in an endless, winding maze of corridors and chambers.
Carrier and tracker demons marched double-file down the hallway, their captain nodding respectfully in my direction as they passed. I let myself fade into the background in hopes that no one else would recognize me though there was little hope of that.
The Fallen Hosts had seen to that. Ba’al and the others knew me better than I knew myself, and they wasted no time in introducing me to the military as Camael’s ward, Lilith.
Luckily most of the soldiers were either too young to remember or too busy to care. Those that weren’t, either bowed or nodded each time I passed. Somewhere in the past millennia, Araboth had turned me into a creature of darkness or perhaps even the matriarch of the fallen. My reputation preceded me wherever I went. Like Na’amah, I was one of the Four Queens of the Underworld.
Even now, my memory was so scattered, so fragmented. There were pieces I recalled, like Camael and these hallways. For whatever it was worth, it felt like I had walked these halls a million times in my life. I knew exactly where to turn, exactly where to go.
Across the open expanse, Camael stood naked to the waist, his thoughts lost in his actions as his body echoed his every command. His movements were tight, definite. He extended his hands outright, one over the other, as he simulated a languid series of punches while the lower half of his body rotated in accordance with his will. For several minutes he continued, each move specifically chosen as he fought an invisible nemesis.
When he broke that form for another, one with more force behind it and obviously meant for attacking, he realized I was watching. He blinked and awkwardly lowered his leg to the ground, his sable wings jutting out to steady him. “How long have you been standing there?”
“A few minutes, why?”
He exhaled sharply as his wings recoiled back, inadvertently drawing my eyes to the well-defined abs. “No reason. I was just curious. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Does it really matter?” I asked, diverting my attention to something else while he scooped a nearby towel off the ground and started to dry the sweat off his body.
“Not really, I guess,” he said, flinging the soaked cloth over his shoulder. “Why are you in here anyway? Don’t you have training with Mammon?”
“Why is it any of your business, Camael?” One look into his eyes, and I could feel him pressing on the borders of my mind. “Don’t even try it. You won’t find anything useful.”
“So I see,” he snorted and walked toward the back of the room.
“Where are you going?” I asked as my eyes followed him.
He was taller than Adam was by a few inches, making me a dwarf next to either of them. Sweat plastered his black hair to his face but made his body glisten from exertion as he adjusted the waistband of his pants. He was attractive; I couldn’t deny that.
Like bedding a lion, I’d wager.
Every part of him screamed danger. His muscles were well defined, his form lithe. He was deadly, and I was stuck in a room with him. His gray eyes locked on mine as I forced myself to keep his gaze.
“I was just about to head down to the lake. Would you care to walk with me?”
I nearly choked. “No, thank you.”
He jerked his head suddenly. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Never mind.” This place was just as bad as the rest. I turned to leave.
“Don’t go,” he said, latching onto my wrist. “Please, I mean.”
“Excuse me?” I yanked my arm away. “Since when did you get to ask for anything?”
“Amelia, wait,” Camael begged awkwardly. “I need you.”
“What you need is a flipping hole in the head.”
“Don’t—” but he stopped himself and sighed. The intensity of his gaze hadn’t lessened. Instead, it only increased as his dark, feathery downs bushed out, his wingspan stretching all of twenty feet from end to end and black as night. I had seen them before, but not like this. This was different.
For some reason, they made him less ominous, like each second in his presence didn’t have to come with bated breath. “I’m not going to hurt you if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said softly as he took a step toward me.
Ever the cautious one, I stepped back. “Cut the crap, Camael, and just tell me what you want.”
He sighed again. “I have already said. I would like you to accompany me to the lake. Would you please do me the honor of allowing me your company? I have something I want to show you.”
I scowled even more. He made no sense.
“Please?”
I sighed and hugged my shoulders. He wasn’t going to give up, and I had nothing better to do anyway. “Fine.”
A grin spread from ear to ear as his cold, stone eyes roared to life. “Great!”
I blinked awkwardly. This was the same man who had kidnapped me and tortured Adam, the same angel who was staging a coup against Heaven.
Had I not known him, I would have been hard pressed to say he was the leader of Hell. He seemed carefree, almost childlike as he pulled me by the hand to the far side of the cavern to where a large, marble archway divided the room. A winding stairwell drew us farther into Sheol, the two of us racing like children as our shadows from the oil lamps danced with us.
And as I ran, struggling to keep pace with the gray-eyed angel’s sudden vitality, I realized that for the first time in the longest while I felt free. The air I breathed no longer weighed so heavily on my chest.
It felt nice. It felt easy.
“How much farther is it?” I managed to yell over the roaring in my ears after the fifth landing.
He didn’t even have to answer. We stood at the edge of an even larger opening, and it was only now that I realized he had meant a massive, subterranean lake that must have stretched for miles.
Camael let go of my hand as our run lulled to a walk. Our feet crunched against the gravel as the underground shore approached. “What do you think?”
The ceiling of the cave stretched so far above us that it was difficult to imagine how far underground we really were. He spun around, his arms wide as he stared at the glistening firma
ment speckled with stalactites and minerals.
Like stars painted across the heavens, they danced above our heads, beckoning us to get lost in the moment. I almost did until Camael grabbed my hand, ushering me back into reality.
“Come on,” he said, tugging slightly. “There’s more.”
When I hesitated, he looked back. “What’s wrong?”
Ever the realist, my mouth got the better of me. I couldn’t do this, not twice. “Why did you bring me here, Camael?”
Rejection crossed his carefree face. “What is it about this place you don’t like?”
I scoffed. “This place? Nothing. It’s you I don’t like.”
The fire in his eyes snuffed out as he forced down the lump in his throat. “Okay. Thank you for your brutal honesty.”
“What is it with you people?” I finally snapped. “Who do you think you are that you can just act like everything is just hunky-dory?”
“Hunky-what?” His nose twitched.
“You abused me,” I said, completely ignoring his increasing frown. It was a good thing we were alone because I was sure my voice would carry. “You tortured me. You tortured Adam. You’re a murderer.”
His lips had drawn into a tight line, his jaw set firmly as he waited for me to finish.
“This entire place is insane, and you’re their goddamned ring leader. I will never be content here no matter how hard you try. Perhaps you should have thought about that before trying to turn me into your latest Queen.”
The former Seraph licked his lips and simply stared at me. For a moment, I half-expected him to hit me, and for that moment, I didn’t rightly care. I had lost everything I had gained in my life. I was nothing more than a body now, and I assumed that, like most men, he wanted that too.
When our eyes finally met again, absolution replaced dejection. “I’ve never murdered anyone,” he whispered tightly. “And it’s obvious you don’t remember this place because here you asked me to free you.”
My voice crept out of my throat. “Free me from what?”
FALL FROM PARADISE Page 13