“Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Oh, I won’t hurt you, dear,” Corbin said. “I promised Julian I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head. You’ll love it when we fuck. But I can’t vouch for what Luciana might do.”
The demoness held up her knife. The silver blade gleamed, picking up a shard of light in the darkness of the nightclub. She ran it along Serena’s cheek. Blood seeped out. Luciana drew her finger along the cut, stinging. Serena felt the vomit rising in her throat, threatening to spill out.
She closed her eyes and prayed.
God in heaven, protect me.… Please, God. Send help.
There was one last obvious place for Julian to look, and a phone call from Harry confirmed it.
“They took her,” his assistant said, breathless on the other end of the line.
“Who?” Julian demanded.
“Corbin, Luciana and Nick. They killed the Gatekeepers you sent to watch her. One of them managed to get us a message before he died.”
“Where is she?” Julian asked. His gut began to churn. What a fool he’d been. He’d broken the cardinal rule of the demon world. Never underestimate your opponent. Worse, he’d underestimated his own attachment to the girl. Even Corbin saw what Julian couldn’t. That she was the only thing in the world that would bait Julian into a trap.
Love had blinded him. By fearing to ruin her himself, he’d pushed her away, into a danger worse than he ever could have inflicted. His mind began to run through all the possibilities. He shut his eyes and shook his head, willing the gory images out of his head.
Harry said, “We’re not quite sure yet. But somebody phoned in a bomb scare to Devil’s Paradise. Cleared the place out. It’s empty. I’m sending over a team of Gatekeepers as we speak.”
“I’m going now,” Julian said.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on Los Angeles, on his West Hollywood nightclub. He arrived in front of the carved wooden doors of Devil’s Paradise. And as he had last night, when he thought he had lost Serena to Corbin, he prayed. Prayed for guidance. Prayed for assistance. Most of all, he prayed for Serena’s safety. Not knowing whether his prayers would be answered, he did it anyway.
He hauled the doors open and entered. In the darkness, he navigated from memory, visualizing the space he knew so well, his steps echoing in the massive room.
Light flooded the dance floor, illuminating two figures there. Corbin and Serena. He’d tied her to a post, and her once-bright hair was dulled, matted with blood. Good God, what had Corbin done to her? Julian would kill him. But first he would torture him, frighten him as much as Corbin had frightened Serena. He would sever Corbin’s genitals from his groin, and make him bleed like he’d made Serena bleed.
A third figure huddled on the floor, cowering in terror. Nick.
“Ah, Julian,” said Corbin. “The knight in shining armor, come to rescue the damsel in distress.”
Serena looked up then, shock in her wide blue eyes. Corbin had stuffed a gag in her mouth, but she screamed anyway, a muffled sound of frustration that stoked Julian’s rage to a white heat.
“Let her go, Corbin,” Julian growled. “You win. Take me instead. Take the hotel. You can have whatever you want.”
“Thanks to our young friend Nick, I already have what I want. I want her,” Corbin said easily.
“Let her go. She’s innocent,” Julian told him.
“All the better. It’s not as much fun killing guilty people all the time. I enjoy a little tragic injustice once in a while. Don’t you?” A trace of satisfaction glittered in Corbin’s cold blue gaze. “In any case, why should I let her go when I can have both of you?”
The older demon moved toward Serena. At the side of her throat, he held the blade of a knife. As Julian walked closer, he saw that her face, her neck, her arms were covered with thin cuts.
“Don’t worry, I promised I wouldn’t hurt her. This is all Luciana’s handiwork,” Corbin said. “So don’t come any closer. I wouldn’t want to break my promise.”
“Coward,” Julian ground out. “Why don’t you fight me, like a real man? Instead of torturing an innocent girl.” He squared his stance, ready to take on an attack.
Serena shook her head, and screamed again. Julian could see the message in her eyes: Get out. Save your self. Leave me here. As if he would ever do that.
Corbin held the knife at her throat, and Julian could see the blood that dulled the sheen of the blade. “Shall I cut the jugular or the carotid? It would be so easy to slice right through either. And wouldn’t that be a pity, if she bled out here? Rather ironic. Devil’s Paradise, the final resting place of an angel. It’ll make your club even more popular,” he said.
Julian’s blood raged. “You can’t kill her. You know the rules.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But we can certainly cause a great deal of pain.”
We?
Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw the flash of black hair beside him. Luciana. She came toward him with all of her pent-up vengeance, two centuries of rage that had grown into an uncontrollable force all its own. He dodged and she swept past, overshooting him in her fury. As she spun to face him again, he grabbed her sideways, wrestling a knife out of her hand. It clattered to the ground, and he kicked it away.
He wrapped his hands around her neck. “Let go of Serena. Or I’ll send Luciana straight back to hell.”
Corbin just stared at him with that inscrutable gaze. “Go ahead. You’ll be doing us both a favor.”
“Arrogh’e merda, Corbin, you piece of shit,” Luciana shrieked. “How dare you?”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you, sweetheart? Never bet the devil your head. He’ll screw you every time,” Julian said, thrusting her away from him. “Come on, Corbin. Fight me. Show me what kind of a man you are. Just the two of us. I’m the one you want. I’m the one who took your hotel. I’m the one who made a fool out of you. Crushed your reputation. Usurped your power.”
What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Corbin dove at Julian, just as he’d done in the high-stakes room at the hotel. Julian feinted, knocking the knife out of his hand. But this time Corbin’s weight caught him square in the chest and sent the two men crashing to the floor. Pain seared through Julian’s back as they landed, Corbin’s body crushing him as they fell.
Beneath them, the floor of the material world gave way and they continued to fall, spiraling down into emptiness. Down into hell.
They were gone. Julian and Corbin had disappeared, leaving Luciana gawking in their wake. The demoness turned, fixing her serpentine gaze on Serena, still bound to the post. Their heads turned in tandem. On the ground between them lay a discarded knife, still wet with Serena’s blood.
Luciana smiled as she bent to pick it up. “Now, where were we?”
In that instant, half a dozen burly Gatekeepers lunged through the door, scattering as they entered the club, their eyes adjusting to the darkness. They paused, glancing at the two women with some confusion.
God in heaven, help me…
“Take her!” Luciana ordered, pointing at Serena.
But the Gatekeepers did not move. They took their instructions from Julian, and in Julian’s absence, they hesitated. Then one of the Gatekeepers advanced, not toward Serena, but toward Luciana.
“Maledizione! You’re demons, aren’t you? She’s an angel! Idiots, why won’t you listen to one of your own kind!” Luciana screamed. She held the point of her knife at Serena’s neck, its tip pricking against her skin. “Stop right there or she dies.”
Serena felt her pulse beating against the metal edge of the knife. A strange calm came over her, knowing that even if she died, she would be safe. Luciana yanked loose the rope that bound her to the post, freeing her and shoving her forward.
The doors to Devil’s Paradise swung open on a gust of cool wind.
In the doorway, Arielle stood, her blond hair blowing around her, bright as a halo. Behind her, half a dozen members of the Company stood
, their presence radiating strength. The supervisor stared down Luciana and said, “Harm Serena and you will never know a moment’s peace again. The Company will hunt you down. We will find you. And you will understand the consequences of killing an angel.”
The two women stood, glaring at each other. Time seemed elastic, and in the moment that they stood transfixed, Serena sensed the power struggle between them, a showdown of unspoken threats in the space between their locked gazes.
“Let her go,” Arielle ordered.
The demoness’s breath hissed through her throat, the steam of her fury escaping through a pressure valve. She still had the potential to blow. Finally, with a vicious thrust, Luciana hurled her captive into the heavy doors of Devil’s Paradise. Serena’s head connected with the wooden door frame. Pain splintered through her skull. She felt Arielle’s arms catch her as she fell, cushioning her descent.
“Luciana’s getting away!” someone shouted.
It was the last thing Serena heard before she passed out.
Chapter Seventeen
Serena wandered in a haze among the red mists of hell, through a labyrinth of rooms. At each turn, she saw clusters of demons torturing the damned, gnawing at the entrails of mutilated human bodies, digging out their eyeballs with great, curving claws that trailed strands of bloody nerves. In her dream, the demons hissed, pale green snake eyes glowing.
She ran, twisting and turning through the snaking corridors, until she came to the center of the maze, where she found Julian, tied to a rotting wooden bed frame. He turned his head, imploring her with blue-green eyes bright with fever. Beneath her, her feet were rooted, unable to move. From behind, a demon caught her, claws slicing into her shoulder, and…
She awoke in her own bed at home, surrounded by the familiar froth of her white duvet. Her head ached like she’d been hit with a two-by-four. But she was still alive. Her wounds would heal. At least on the outside. Bile surged in her stomach and threatened to rise up her throat. She swallowed hard and willed it down.
Arielle perched on the edge of her bed, leaning over her with concern. Serena croaked, “What happened? How long was I out?”
She remembered Corbin and Julian dematerializing from the floor of the empty nightclub. The imprint of their struggle lingering in the empty air they had just vacated. Then, like a ripple in a pond, all trace of them had vanished and the space had gone still again.
“A few hours. Things went a little differently from how we had planned,” Arielle said. “None of us anticipated that Nick would disappear, but he did and he’s lost to us at the present time. Perhaps at some point in the future we’ll be in a position to reach him. But more importantly, we achieved our primary goal. Julian is no longer a demon. He no longer has the power to corrupt humans. Your work is done.”
Nick is lost to us. That was Arielle’s way of saying that Nick was in hell. As for Julian…Serena knew where he had gone, too. Her dream had not been a dream. Corbin had taken Julian to the underworld.
Arielle confirmed it, but then added, “It’s not your responsibility to save him. Julian believes he needs to be punished. And as long as he believes that, no one can save him.”
There was silence between them as Serena’s mind flipped back to the nightmare images that had ripped through her sleep. The damned, tormented by demons. Julian, chained to a bed.
She flipped back the covers. Her whole body ached; her injuries were still not fully healed, but she would not let that stop her. She would not sit in bed while Julian burned in the underworld. There was no time to waste. “Then I’m not finished. We need to get Julian out of there,” she announced. “I’m going to hell.”
“You’re willing to take the chance that you may end up sacrificing yourself for all eternity?” Arielle asked. “Think about what that means, Serena. The rest of your existence in hell. Your mission is not to sacrifice yourself. Remember, you’ve already done that once before. The risk is far too great. It’s time to let Julian go.”
“I love him. I have to try,” Serena said, regretting that her actions had impacted her supervisor in ways that Serena herself had never considered. Still, she could not give up on Julian. “I don’t believe that God would allow me to get stuck in hell. I’m not afraid. Besides, Julian risked himself for me.”
Arielle pursed her lips, silent as Serena rooted in her dresser for a pair of jeans and a simple blouse. Finally, the older angel said, “I wish I could go with you, but I can’t. Corbin specializes in taking people into their own personal version of hell, modeled on their darkest fears and traumas. Only someone Julian trusts enough to let into his subconscious will be allowed to enter his version of hell.”
Serena turned to face her, clothes in hand. “How do I know he’ll let me in?”
“You don’t. Not until you get there. But you won’t go alone. The Archangels have the power to enter any part of hell. You’ll have to ask Gabriel if he will guide you.”
“How do I do that?”
“Call and he will come.” Arielle rose from the bed, came to squeeze Serena’s hand. Around them, white light flared for an instant, its brilliance gathering to surround Serena with a luminous aura. “Use the light to protect yourself when you’re in hell. Remember to keep love in your heart. And one more thing—always remember that you’re a fully enlightened being.”
Julian burned. The fires of fever consumed him, his mind wandering through a delirious nightmare of images. He slipped in and out of consciousness, unable to distinguish exactly where he was, only that he was strapped to a surface, lying flat with his belly and chest exposed. He writhed, he twisted, but he could not escape the pain that seared through his body.
Corbin loomed over him, the flesh of his face melting away to skeleton, the eyeballs uncovered and bulging. Corbin’s bare skull, teeth bared in a permanent grin, white against the exposed jawbone. “You remember Brooke, don’t you, Julian? You ruined her life. She’s been down here, waiting for you.”
Brooke Bentley’s vibrant beauty had already been ravaged during her years on earth, but hell had transformed her into a creature Julian no longer recognized. A being no longer human, a grotesque parody of the woman she’d been in life. The skin he’d once caressed was now torn and hanging from her in ribbons of gore. Desiccated weeds tangled in her matted auburn hair, and a putrid stench arose as she moved toward Julian. At the ends of her fingers were no longer fingernails, but the claws of a bird of prey, a Frankensteinian version of a harpy’s hand.
“This is for what you did to me. For all of the women you destroyed,” she shrieked, plunging one of those talons toward the pit of his belly.
“No!” Agony roiled in the pit of Julian’s gut; his insides buckled as though she had impaled his abdomen with a glowing hot iron. But when he looked down, his shirtless body was unmarked. Was it an illusion, this torture? Whatever it was, in this nightmare of a hell realm, the pain was very real.
Brooke laughed then, her cackle spiraling up into a ringing echo, infernally loud in the cavernous space around him, even as he clenched his eyes shut against her.
Nothing could save him. He was damned, and he would remain here, trapped in this endless suffering. Because he deserved it, he knew. He may have prayed for Serena when he needed the support of the divine. But for himself, Julian knew he was beyond prayer. Beyond hope. Beyond redemption.
Regret. Since the end of his human life, centuries ago, the word had signified nothing. When the shot of his pistol had pierced the heart of Luciana’s husband, he had known regret. But upon his human death, immersed in the blaze of hell, that regret had burned away, licked into flames the same way paper dissolves in fire. His regret had melted into the ember emotions of bitterness and malice.
He thought of Serena. Through experiencing her love, he had recovered the meaning of regret. He deserved to be punished. For all of the countless lives he had ruined, for all the people who had suffered exactly like this. His actions had resulted in the torture of thousands, and for that, he de
served to be punished. Most of all, he deserved to be punished because he’d placed Serena’s life at risk. He had toyed with divinity, and he had come very close to corrupting it.
As Brooke plunged her needle-sharp claw into his stomach once again, Julian’s single consolation was that at least Serena was safe.
The sky in Julian’s hell was a deep gray, the clouds pregnant and threatening to burst at any moment. They rolled overhead at a terrifying speed, giving Serena a feeling of vertigo as she walked behind Gabriel. To quiet her stomach, she focused on his white wings, brilliant against the drab landscape.
In the distance, the outline of a ruined English manor house dominated a hilltop. Gabriel said in a hushed voice, “That’s Julian’s ancestral home. It’s here, in his version of hell, because this is the scene of his deepest fears.”
“Where is he?” Serena asked, shivering. It was supposed to be hot in hell, not cold, wasn’t it?
The Archangel motioned for her to follow him. Entering a forest of withered trees, they walked until they reached a dilapidated cottage. The thatched roof was crumbling, covered in patches of mold, and the garden rambled, overgrown with weeds, roses decomposing in mottled shades of dried blood. Without knocking, Gabriel pushed open the door and entered.
Inside, a thick layer of dust covered the dark wood floors. The few sparse pieces of furniture were broken and decaying. As Serena took a step forward, the floor-board beneath her foot creaked and then gave way. Gingerly, she pulled her foot out of the hole and continued behind Gabriel.
From another room, they heard a man curse, and another groan.
Gabriel held a finger to his lips, signaling for silence. As quietly as she could, Serena followed him. He pushed open the door.
Julian was chained to a child’s bed, its wooden frame rotting, exactly as it had been in her nightmare. He was shivering, sweat running down his face.
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