Into Hell (The Road to Hell Series, Book 4)

by Brenda K. Davies

  “I’d hoped you’d die when they took you to the wall,” she said.

  I rubbed my hand over my heart before I comprehended what I was doing and dropped it. I’d come to realize that no matter how much I armored myself against this woman, she always found a way past my defenses. I had no weapons against her, but as soon as I found Gage and Bailey, I would leave her here to rot in this place.

  Beside me, Kobal growled and stepped toward her. “No.” I placed my hand on his chest to hold him back.

  My mother’s eyes flicked to Kobal and enlarged when she took him in. “Demon! You brought a demon into my home!” Her voice took on a hysterical note that I’d never heard before. “Be gone, demon! Get out!”

  “Go,” I said to Kobal and nudged him toward the doorway.

  “I’m not leaving you with her,” he stated as she continued to shriek at him to get out.

  “I’ll be fine.” I pushed harder against his chest. “I have to learn if she knows anything about my brothers, and she won’t tell me with you here. Go.”

  He relented, walked into the hall, and out of sight. The front door opened and clicked shut again, but I knew he hadn’t left. That had been for her benefit. My mother continued to shriek like a bird for a full minute before abruptly stopping and turning her head to gaze at the blank TV.

  “Mother, where is everyone from town?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond. I almost shook her, but stopped myself before I could. Touching her would only set her off more, and that would do nothing for me.

  “Where are Ga-age and Bailey?” I was unable to keep the hitch from my voice as I asked this question.

  “You had them taken from me!” she spat. “But then, you took them from me years ago. Because of your evil, manipulative ways, they always liked you more than me.”

  “Yes, I manipulated them by loving them when you couldn’t, or wouldn’t.”

  “If you hadn’t been born…”

  “What?” I asked when she stopped speaking. “What if I hadn’t been born?”

  “I could have had a life.” She lifted a hand to run it over her soiled hair and studied her reflection in the TV. “I was pretty and popular. I could have been loved. But no man would stay with me after you. Once they realized they were with the woman who had given birth to the devil’s offspring, they left me.”

  More like they left when they realized she had bats in the belfry, but I kept that to myself.

  “No man would listen when I told them you were the spawn of Satan himself,” she said.

  I knew the others listened in the hallway, but I didn’t hear the ruffle of a feather or an inhalation. I felt no embarrassment over what they’d heard. They knew the truth of my lineage and my mother had never tried to hide her intense dislike of me from anyone.

  “Gage and Bailey aren’t the spawn of Satan, and you never loved them either,” I said, unable to bite back the words. I’d never stoop so low as to hit her as she had me numerous times over the years, but I wouldn’t be her verbal punching bag anymore either.

  When her eyes slid back to me, they burned with hatred once more. “You ruined me! It was only supposed to be a fling, yet I paid for it by having to bear you! The entire time you grew within me, I knew you were evil.”

  “I’m not evil. I’m…” I stopped speaking to take a calming breath.

  It was pointless to argue with her. She would never see me as anything other than what she believed me to be. Ever since I’d learned of my heritage, I’d feared she’d always been right and that I was evil, but in that moment, I knew she was wrong; I would never be what she’d always believed me to be.

  For me to lose my bond with life, I would have to take a series of steps that I never planned to take. Even if something drastic happened to push me into taking those steps, I could never be like Lucifer. I had my love of Kobal, my friends, and my brothers to keep me tied to who I was now.

  “Where are Gage and Bailey?” I asked.

  “I should have aborted you like I planned!”

  I did a double-take as those words plunged a knife through my chest. Never, over all my years with her, had she ever said anything like that to me. From the hallway, Kobal stepped into view. My mother was so focused on me, she didn’t notice him stalking across the room with his eyes burning molten gold.

  He’d kill her if he got his hands on her, I had no doubt about it.

  CHAPTER 49

  River

  “No!” I shouted and placed my hand against his chest to stop him. Stepping closer to my mother, I glared at her as she continued to glower at me. “Then why didn’t you?” I demanded of her. “Why did you keep me when you didn’t want me, didn’t love me, and believed me to be evil?”

  Kobal wrapped his hand around my wrist. I didn’t know if he was offering me comfort or preparing to pull me out of his way. His eyes were focused on her; his claws extended. It would take only one swipe for him to sever her head from her shoulders.

  The fight went instantly out of her and she slumped against the chair. “Because they told me not to,” she whispered.

  I frowned at her in confusion. “Who told you not to? Your grandparents?”

  Her parents had passed before I was born; she’d lived with her grandparents until they both died. I didn’t recall them, but this had been their house.

  She scoffed. “They booked the appointment for me.”

  Every time she opened her mouth, it felt like a new one-two combo to my gut. However, I remained standing beside her, a glutton for punishment. She’d never revealed this much before; I had to hear her out.

  “Then who?” I demanded, and Kobal’s fingers tightened on my wrist.

  “I was sitting in the waiting room, eager to be rid of you,” she whispered. “I knew you were wrong. It was still early in my pregnancy, yet I was exhausted all the time and so weak. Gage and Bailey never did that to me, but I felt you draining the life from me.”

  I closed my eyes against her words, knowing they were true. Even then, I’d been seeking out life, and she had been the only supply available to me. It had to have been terrifying and exhausting for her.

  For the first time in my life, I put myself in her shoes. Fifteen and pregnant with a baby she didn’t want, and who was draining her from the inside out. I couldn’t understand her hatred, but I understood her fear.

  “What stopped you from going through with it?” I asked.

  “The voices,” she whispered as her fingers dug into the chair. “I was waiting for my turn when they whispered to me for the first time. They told me I had to keep you alive, that I had to care for you, and that if I got rid of you they would kill me and I would burn in Hell for all eternity. So many times, I contemplated ridding myself of you and your evil over the years, and every time the voices returned to tell me to keep you safe or I would pay for it.”

  I didn’t know what was worse, her hearing voices or the fact that she’d contemplated killing me often throughout my life.

  Corson, Raphael, Hawk, and Caim stepped into the doorway, drawing my attention to them. Raphael’s face remained blank, but Caim’s expression was curious as well as confused.

  “When I told the voices there was something wrong with you, that you were killing me, that you were evil, they told me to keep you safe anyway,” my mother continued. “I told them I believed you were the devil’s spawn, and they told me it didn’t matter; Lucifer’s child must live. They told me I could never tell anyone what they revealed, and I was too afraid to go against them. It doesn’t matter anymore though, everyone knows the truth now.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I breathed as my gaze remained pinned on Raphael. Kobal’s head turned toward the angel and his eyes narrowed.

  “Then, one day, they told me to turn you in, to get rid of you, and I was so happy. Finally, it was over. I was free of you, but it was too late. You had already wrapped your evil around Gage, Bailey, and the rest of the town. You turned them all against me.”

  Her words drew
my attention back to her as a memory tugged at me. On the day she’d sold me to the soldiers, or the day she’d apparently been told to sell me to them, I had stood beside her just like this. I recalled thinking that despite her hair being a stringy, unwashed mess around her face and her near constant frown, she looked untouched by the years with her smooth, wrinkle-free skin.

  Now, I looked past her unwashed hair and clothes again. Past the shadows under her eyes, her emaciated frame, and hollowed-out cheeks to her unlined, youthful skin. She’d been sixteen when she gave birth to me and twenty-five when the gateway opened. She was thirty-eight now, but there wasn’t so much as a laugh line next to her eyes or a crease in her brow.

  My head spun as I tried to process this information. I lifted my hand to my forehead and swayed on my feet. Kobal steadied me as Magnus’s words from when we’d still been in Hell drifted through my mind. We’d been getting ready to travel to the seals, and he’d gone through the scrolls before pulling me and Kobal aside with some of the others…

  “There is more to her,” Magnus said to us.

  Thrown off by his words, I hadn’t known how to respond or what to expect. “What though?” I asked.

  “I believe some of your vast power with life is because you have found each other and claimed the other as your Chosen. The discovery of a Chosen makes a demon stronger, even a mortal demon such as yourself,” Magnus told me and Kobal.

  “What do you believe the rest of it is?” Kobal inquired.

  “I don’t know,” Magnus replied. “What I do know is that she is unlike any who have walked before her, and I believe she will be the end of Lucifer.”

  He’d gone on to say he believed me to be the first true World Walker. The first angel offspring who could be capable of walking Earth, Hell, and Heaven, but he hadn’t known why.

  I knew now.

  Lowering my hand, I stared at my mother again. “You haven’t aged in thirteen years,” I breathed. “Not since the gateway opened.”

  She blinked at me as if she hadn’t realized this, and perhaps she hadn’t. I didn’t think she had a clue as to what she was. Until recently, no one had known there would come a time when I would stop aging too.

  “You are descended from the angels. That is who the voices belong to and why they can speak with you,” I said.

  For a moment, a light bloomed over my mother’s face. A smile curved her mouth and her eyes warmed in a way I’d never seen before. “Angels,” she murmured. Then, her eyes dimmed and she slumped against the chair. “They want nothing to do with me, only you. Everything has always been about you.”

  I looked to where Raphael and Caim stood in the doorway. Raphael remained apathetic, but Caim looked like someone had socked him in the gut as he gazed from my mother to me and back again.

  “She’s not descended from an angel. It’s impossible,” Caim muttered, though he looked as if he didn’t quite believe it. “We know our lines; we followed them. Few of us have any descendants left. I mean, I guess there could be a line we believed to be dead, or a child lost along the way, but I don’t think so. She must be insane.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “No, she told me I had the devil’s eyes. She’s always known who I descended from and the voices… the angels told her.”

  Caim stared at my mother before focusing on Raphael. “Why would the angels talk to her?” Caim demanded. “Why would they—you—not want Lucifer’s line ended? River is the last of his descendants. Why not let her mother have the abortion and be done with it?”

  Raphael stared at me for a minute before his head tipped back and he gazed at the ceiling. When he looked at me again, he started speaking. “Before River was born, Ariel received a premonition revealing that she must survive. No matter what the cost.”

  “The cost was her,” I said and waved my hand at my mother. “The angels broke her when they suddenly started speaking to her and told her to keep me when I was feeding off her.”

  “Some humans are not strong enough to handle the voice of the angels, but she had to know to keep you alive and to keep you with her. What happened to her was unfortunate but necessary.”

  “Unfor… tunate?” My voice cracked on the question. “Unfortunate!”

  Kobal moved my palm off his chest and drew me closer to him. His hand ran soothingly over my arm, but I wasn’t in the mood to be calmed. Flames danced across the tips of my fingers before I snuffed them out. My mother would run straight through the wall if she saw me wielding fire.

  “You have no idea what she did to me! The things she’s said to me, and the hatred she harbors for me. You have no idea what it’s like to grow up not understanding why the woman who is supposed to love you unconditionally treats you worse than most people treat their dogs!

  “And now, I know it’s because she was right. I am descended from Lucifer. I am part demon and angel. The angels destroyed the fragile mind of a scared fifteen-year-old girl and all you can say is it was unfortunate? Why didn’t you at least allow her to give me to someone else?”

  “Ariel said your path was to stay with her,” Raphael replied. “And you have walked it.”

  “And she will continue to walk many more paths,” Kobal growled.

  “Yes, she will, but we have little knowledge of where they will take her from here. Ariel knew to keep her alive and when to turn her into the soldiers. If River hadn’t been born, there would have been no one to close the gateway when the humans opened it, but her father still would have been able to topple the seals. She needed to exist to counteract the man who created her. Ariel never foresaw anything else about her, not even that she would become the Chosen of the varcolac. Though, I suppose that makes sense.”

  “And why is that?” Kobal demanded.

  “Power attracts power and….”

  Raphael’s voice trailed off when Vargas, Erin, and Magnus crept into the doorway. I hadn’t heard them enter, but then I’d been a little distracted. When they looked from me to my mother and back again, I realized they’d been in the house for a while.

  “What angel line is my mother descended from?” I demanded of Raphael. “Who else am I descended from?”

  His lips compressed into a flat line as he gazed at me. Fury burst so hotly through me that I understood the term “blood boiling.” If it was possible, I would have choked the life out of him right then. Saved my life or not, I was sick of being toyed with by angels.

  “Tell me who she is descended from. Which fallen angel is it?” I asked.

  “I’d like to know that myself,” Caim muttered.

  Raphael remained stubbornly mute.

  “Tell her or I’ll kill you,” Kobal said flatly. “I don’t care if you can help defeat Lucifer. I won’t tolerate you keeping secrets from her. I will end you here and now.”

  Corson, Hawk, and Magnus crept closer to Raphael in preparation of capturing him should he try to take flight. Caim leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms over his chest to make it clear he wouldn’t interfere.

  “Tell her!” Kobal commanded. He hadn’t raised his voice, but my mother jumped and the tension in the room ratcheted up.

  “You cannot beat this varcolac, Raphael,” Caim said quietly. “He was born specifically to fight the angels. It is why he has survived so long with Lucifer in Hell. The girl has the right to know why her life has been played with in such a way.”

  “You only seek answers for yourself,” Raphael replied.

  “I seek answers for all of us!” Caim retorted.

  Raphael returned his attention to the ceiling. When he closed his eyes, I realized he was communicating with the angels. I peered at the ceiling, but all I saw there were water stains.

  Raphael’s eyes were a deeper purple hue than normal when they met mine again. “There is an angel line that only one angel knew of, until recently,” Raphael said.

  “Who?” I demanded.

  “When Michael and Ariel walked the Earth, they mingled with the humans, healing them, bringing them peace
and the love of the being,” Raphael replied. “They granted miracles to the favored humans, and the being did have favored humans back then. More than that, Michael and Ariel brought hope to a struggling people. The being granted them permission for this, and planned to allow the rest of the angels to also walk the Earth, once the humans were more accustomed to seeing them. That is the reason why we can all leave Heaven, but only Michael can allow us to return. Like the varcolac, Michael having such control was a way to keep the angels regulated and the worlds separated as they should be.”

  “So what changed all that?” I asked.

  “The angels were created to obey, but we do slip. While on Earth, Michael fell in love with a human and succumbed to temptation.”

  A pin dropping in China could have been heard over the hush that followed those words.

  “They fathered a child together,” Raphael continued. “His name was Adam, and yes it was the Adam who was placed in Eden. Adam is also your ancestor,” Raphael said to me. “You are the only human to ever exist where a fallen angel line and the only untainted angel line came together. Not only that, but you are the product of the two most powerful angels in existence.”

  CHAPTER 50

  River

  The breath exploded from me, but my shock was nothing compared to the expression on Caim’s face. Dumbstruck was an understatement. Then it faded away to be replaced with a look so thunderous I expected him to start tearing the house down.

  “Are you kidding me?” The glass in the window frames rattled from the force of his bellow. “That’s impossible! Impossible!”

  “Easy,” Magnus said from behind him.

  Caim’s head whipped toward him. Magnus held his hands up as he stepped away from the infuriated angel. Then, Caim leveled Raphael with a look of pure murder.

  “Michael is the one who was so insistent that we not question anything, so adamant that we follow the laws, yet he never said why. Did he know the reason we couldn’t leave Heaven was because of him and keep it from us?”