Sorry didn’t cut it by the looks on Uriel and Constantine’s faces. Lucifer didn’t give a shit. He was happy to be forced out of the tight space. “You aren’t saying anything, Lazarus?”
The golden winged Angel shrugged. “This isn’t my decision to make.”
“But you’re a part of this,” Lucifer said.
“Not the same way you all are. I’m here until I’m not here and then I’m there or wherever.”
Fuck him running, Lucifer still struggled to understand that Angel somedays. He turned to Gabe, “How do we get there?”
“The next realm is far from here. I’ll fly you as far as I can, but we’ll have to dodge any of the Angels Michael has sent to hunt for you.”
“Maybe we should swim?” Eve suggested.
Lucifer stiffened. “I don’t know how.” Damn he was so useless. He couldn’t fly. Couldn’t swim. All he could do was stalk the lands – and even then, he’d have to practice walking on his legs instead of all fours like he was used to. His face burned with embarrassment. “I’ll catch up.”
They all gawked at him and Gabe growled, “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“I’ll go on foot. I’ll follow your scent. Just… touch things along the way and I’ll follow your trail. You can move faster than I can, so take Eve with you.” Damn, that hurt to say. He didn’t want to trust these guys with her, but he knew getting her to safety fast was better than schlepping along for his ego’s sake and putting her at risk.
“I’m going with you,” Eve claimed.
“We’ll all go on foot then,” Uriel said.
No matter how many times Lucifer protested, no one listened. They all agreed to stick together and if they could only walk, then so be it.
The trouble with that was, they weren’t the only ones on foot.
Chapter 23
It was night time, the moon just a sliver in the sky. Stars, big and bright, sparkled across the vast night darkness. For the rest of the day, they’d stayed on the beach and gave Lucifer swimming lessons until night fall. Once the sun went down, they travelled north with Constantine navigating their path by using the stars as a guide.
Strange, to be surrounded by these particular male Angels. Eve felt small but big at the same time with them. Every once in a while, she’d catch one of them glimpsing at her. Maybe they were just making sure she was keeping up with the rest of them. She was tall, but everyone else’s powerful strides moved effortlessly through the jungle. She sometimes tripped up and lost her footing.
Other times, it felt like their stares were more intense.
She was still naked. So was Lucifer for that matter. Nudity didn’t bother either of them though. Their anatomy was different, yes, but it wasn’t a big deal. Being naked felt quite freeing, actually.
They’d been walking for hours in total silence. Keeping their wings tucked in tight, they moved through the overgrown trees and plants, following no path at all other than Constantine’s occasional directions of either pointing left or right. Eventually, Gabriel took the lead and Con went to the back of the line.
His silence was different than the others. It was impressive. Constantine’s boots never made noise as he navigated across the terrain. He was more a shadow than Angel. The comparison made Eve sad.
Of all the Angels, Constantine spoke the least. Maybe he kept quiet because Lazarus and Uriel talked all the time and he could never get a word in edge-wise. Or maybe he had nothing to say. She found both Uriel’s chattiness and Constantine’s silence a comforting balance.
Gabriel, on the other hand, growled more than talked. He scowled more than laughed. Eve could always tell when he was in deep thought because his wings would randomly flare and snap back. She found it endearing.
Lucifer was another beast entirely. That Angel was fascinated. His gaze darted in wonder at every little thing. Sometimes he’d inhale a deep breath and blow it out with a barely audible sigh. He’d snatch a fruit and offer her a slice or bite, smiling the entire time. Gracious, how he was so happy in the wild like this. And even while enraptured, Lucifer kept up the grueling pace and never strayed.
Lazarus leaned in and whispered to Eve, “Gives you a new perspective, doesn’t it?”
Eve tucked her hair behind her ear, “What does?”
“His hunger for life.”
She saw Lucifer hand Gabriel and Uriel each some kind of small fruit. They hadn’t eaten nearly enough and were burning a lot of energy tonight. “He’s hungry for everything,” she smiled, “Including acceptance.”
As if Lucifer instinctually knew they were talking about him, he turned and tossed them each a small fruit. Lazarus didn’t catch his, it just bounced off his chest and rolled to the ground.
“Do you not want it?”
“I’m not hungry,” Lazarus plucked a feather from his wings and twirled it between his finger and thumb.
“Why do you do that? It must hurt.”
“It does. But the pain is a temporary one.”
“Then why do it?”
“Enlightenment. It’s good to understand that what I feel now, will not hurt later. And what hurts later, I will not feel now.”
“Oh,” she said semi-cheerfully. What else could she say? They walked along for a few more minutes before Eve slammed right into Lucifer’s back and cracked her nose on his hard body. “Ouch!”
“Shhh!” someone ahead snapped.
Everyone froze in place with blades drawn. Something trickled out of her nose and she licked her lip. Great, she was bleeding. Damn, Lucifer was so hard.
“What the fuck is that?” Constantine whispered.
Gabriel responded with a silent head shake. He didn’t know either. Eve peered around Lucifer’s body and tried to figure out what they were staring at. Her heart smashed into her ribs.
A shadow moved towards them with long limbs, and a thin, willowy torso. This was no animal. It was more dangerous than that. Eve gripped her blade tighter and tried to force her heart to stop banging in her ears. The thing moved slowly, deliberately, and it was coming straight towards them.
“Holy Merciful Hounds,” Uriel gawked. “What is that thing?”
“It’s a soul,” Constantine said. “Just go around it.”
Eve thought she was going to faint. She’d not seen a soul like this before. It was blacker than the night. Solid and angry looking. Stretched and contorted, it only barely resembled a human. “H-h-h-how did it get here?”
“These kind creep into our realms on rare occasions,” Con answered calmly. He took a step back and let the soul move past him. “I think they’re just lost.”
Lost. Eve’s heart dropped to her toes.
The soul stopped dead in front of Lucifer and clattered his jaws at him. Lucifer stiffened. Even in the night, Eve could see the dark spots on Lucifer’s body matched the soul staring at him.
Was that a coincidence?
The soul reached out and grabbed Lucifer’s hand. Eve watched in awe as Lucifer allowed it to touch him. They all watched as the soul brought Lucy’s fingers up to his mouth. It opened wide and tried to bite him.
Lucifer barked once and slammed the thing to the ground and started strangling it. The soul began screeching a terrible high-pitched noise and the louder it got, the angrier Lucifer became.
“Lucy! Let it go!” Eve tried to pry the Angel off. “It doesn’t know what it’s doing!”
They tugged Lucifer off of the soul and he gnashed his teeth and jerked out of their grips. “This thing is not good! It’s not good!” Lucifer’s fire poured out of his body and the soul started jerking around on the ground violently. Its head thrashed from left to right as the flames covered it, consumed it.
Destroyed it.
“What are you doing?” Eve cried. She bent over and thought she’d be sick. “Stop this!”
“I can’t,” Lucifer growled, “I won’t.” He stood up and watched the soul disintegrate.
“How the fuck do you know how to do that?” Uriel gaw
ked.
Lucifer shrugged, “I didn’t. It was just… instinct.”
Eve doubled over as the last piece of the soul turned to ash and dust.
Then she dropped to her knees and sobbed.
She’s looking at me like I’m a monster. That’s all Lucifer could think. The way Eve dropped to the ground and cried over that thing made Lucifer feel like a piece of shit. He’d protected her by getting rid of that thing. He’d protected them all.
That soul was evil. So dark and toxic that when it grabbed Lucifer’s hand, he was immobile only out of pure shock. There was an exchange between them. An energy shift.
Since his Creation Day, Lucifer had been riddled with a darkness that ebbed and flowed across his body. Angels varied in lovely skin tones ranging from pale cloud-white to deep, rich ebony. But Lucifer’s colors were something else entirely. To see his darkness was an exact match to that evil thing was a fucking wake up call. And when it tried to bite him, Lucifer snapped.
That dark soul was a threat.
Threats needed to be vanquished.
Eve once called him the Devil and he planned to live up to that name. Devils are males who are good, even if no one else believes it. Devils, she said, are bold and strong and protective.
But maybe Devils were monsters.
The way Eve wailed and stared at him like he was the bad one here, made Lucifer second guess himself. Now, Lucifer felt isolated and humiliated. Eve’s tears only added to his doom.
“Stop crying,” he growled.
She didn’t stop.
“Look at me,” Lucifer got in her face and grabbed her wrists. She let out with a holler and fell back on her ass. His chest hurt.
Eve’s tears. That look on her face. The terror in her eyes. Fuck, he couldn’t breathe seeing her like this.
“I’m not like that thing,” he explained. “I’m good.”
I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. “I’m not like that,” he repeated as he spun around to see the rest of them. “I’m not the same as that thing.”
“We know,” Gabriel said. He walked over and put his hand on Lucifer’s shoulder, “Back away. It’s not you that has her upset. Watching that thing burn was what triggered her.”
“It had to be put down,” Lucifer explained.
“Until today, I didn’t even know it was possible to put those things down. We’ve never been able to annihilate them before.”
Lucifer didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“Now back the fuck up, so I can talk to our female.” Gabe squeezed Lucifer’s shoulder again and began steering him backwards and out of the way.
“How about you come with us,” Uriel said. He and Constantine escorted Lucifer away while Gabriel attended Eve.
“She’s afraid of me,” Lucifer whispered. “I can feel it. And I hate it.” To his dismay, more threads slithered from his wrist to his thumb as if to mock him. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Neither do we,” Constantine grabbed Lucifer’s hand to inspect it. “It’s incredible, though.”
Lucifer ripped his hand away from him. “I’m good. That thing was the opposite of good.”
Uriel cocked his head to the side, “Why do you say that?”
“Couldn’t you feel it?” The look on Uriel’s face said no. “I… I don’t understand what that thing was, but it wasn’t good.”
“You mean it wasn’t pure,” Eve hiccupped.
“No,” Lucifer spun around to face her, “It was pure. Just pure evil.”
Eve started wailing all over again. What the flying fuck was she so upset about? It’s not like that was an Angel he’d just obliterated. Or was it? “Was that thing once an Angel?”
“Nope, just a human soul.” Gabriel kicked the ash around, “Sometimes they darken or elongate and take on unnatural shapes. They can move swifter, too. But I’m confused as to why you’re this upset about it dying, Eve.”
“I’m not upset about it dying. I’m upset that it even exists!” she swiped her cheeks and stared at the ground.
She was upset that something like that existed. Great.
Lucifer looked down at his hands and saw the darkness spread across his knuckles and was sickened by it. “Look at me, Eve.” When she refused, he marched over, squatted down, and shoved his hand in her face, “LOOK AT ME!”
She flinched and did as she was told. It made him feel like total shit, too. “I see you, Lucy.”
“Then you see that I have whatever that thing had. It’s the same. I’m the same.”
“No,” she sighed. Her wings drooped and a feather fell off. “I’m the same. It’s me. They’re this way because of me.”
Lucifer lifted her chin with his forefinger, “Explain.”
Oh, right, she was supposed to just blurt out her biggest secret in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by warrior Angels, and the stench of burnt soul permeating the air?
“Explain it to us, Eve,” Lucifer repeated it using a gentler tone. “Please.”
Lucifer was good. Those dark souls were not. She felt horrible that he would ever put himself in the same category as those things. Lucy… gracious… that Angel couldn’t be evil even if he tried. But she had to tell them her secret. They were risking their lives and part of that was because of her. Eve owed them this confession…
“It happened a long time ago. In the human world.” She didn’t know how long ago anymore because she’d lost so much time in punishment shortly after. “I was walking through one of the hot, sandy territories – the ones with little water or food for anyone.” She cleared her throat and stared at someone’s boot. “There was a woman giving birth in the shade of a giant stone formation.” Oh mercy, she was really going to say it… she was going to confess…
Big gulp. Bigger gulp.
Breathe, Eve…. Breathe and spill the truth.
Lucifer squeezed her hand. “And?”
“And,” Eve closed her eyes, “The babe was dead when it came out.”
“That happens sometimes if there is a complication of birth,” Constantine explained.
“Yes,” she understood that. “But, this babe was so… perfect. So beautiful. And the woman,” Eve’s fists clenched, “the mother just left it there in the sand.”
“What did you want her to do with it?” Gabriel squatted down next to Lucifer and pinned her with his hard eyes.
“I… I don’t know. I just… I couldn’t bear to see such a perfect creature not be missed.” Eve’s palms began sweating, her stomach fluttered with guilt and anxiety, “I picked the babe up and held it. Rocked it.”
“You are an extremely passionate creature,” Lucifer said in a soft voice.
Eve ignored his praise. “I panicked. I couldn’t understand why this would happen. The babe looked so healthy. So beautiful. And the mother didn’t care. She just abandoned it.”
“Again, what else should she have done with it?” Gabriel rubbed his chin and stared at her.
“I don’t know!” Eve screeched. “But it wasn’t right! I held that tiny human in my arms and it felt warm and soft and good. I didn’t want it to be dead. I didn’t want the mother to walk away with no feeling. I wanted her to know how perfect it was. How special. How precious. But she didn’t care. I followed her, carrying the babe and screaming at her to take it back. She just walked away with no interest. No compassion,” she practically spat that last part out. “How could she not have that emotion?”
Constantine shook his head, “Not all creatures are compassionate or empathetic. Having babies is a procreation element, not a love element, Eve.”
“And that’s what I hated!” Her tears ran down her cheeks as she stared at each of them. “How could she just walk off without so much as a tear for that child?” Even now, she grew angry over it. And here it came…. Here was the moment they would all fucking hate her… “I blew into his mouth.”
Gabriel jerked his head to the side, “I’m sorry, you did what?”
“I blew. Into. The baby�
�s. Mouth.” She gritted out those words. Eve would be damned if she was going to feel afraid of them. What’s the worse they could do to her, leave her behind? Fine. She could handle that if she had to. And she’d suffered punishments far too gruesome to be scared of whatever they might inflict upon her.
“What happened after you did that?” Constantine asked.
“The child awoke. The mother cried.” Eve’s gaze flicked to the singed earth, “Souls were created… and my number disappeared from my arm.” There, she thought, confession accomplished.
As the entire jungle silenced and the air stilled around them, Eve prayed they would forgive her for damning the entire world with her actions. Her prayer, however, was half-hearted and unspoken because—
Lucifer captured her mouth with his, and took her breath away.
Chapter 24
Lucifer didn’t have a clue what he was doing. But as Eve confessed with tears streaming down her face, the beat of her heart slamming so loud in her ribs he could hear it from three feet away, and the crack in her voice as she explained what she’d done… Lucifer did the unthinkable.
What did one call this act? This joining of mouths and air and heat?
Whatever it was called, it felt amazing. Holy Merciful Hounds, warm lips, salty tears, her sweet breath - it was a mix of temptations the likes of which he’d never known existed.
Crouching down on the ground, leaning forward on his hands, Lucifer kept his mouth locked on Eve’s and he savored her. Something beautiful bloomed in his gut. It was warm and thick and spilled into the rest of his body. She didn’t pull away, but whimpered. It made him feel crazy and eager to do more.
Lucifer tilted his head and instincts took over from there. He licked her mouth, just across the seam. He felt her hands on his shoulders and he tensed. When she didn’t push him away, he wanted to explore more. Taste more. Give more. Get more.
Inhaling deeply, Lucy caught a fresh wave of exotic blooms and knew it was Eve’s fragrance. She liked this.
So he wanted to do it more.
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