Fallen Angel 1: Ashes of Eden

by J. L. Myers

  Another flash of light streaked overhead, drowning out the pale stars.

  Lucifer’s hand on her neck pulled her closer, and then there was no more separation. Their bodies pressed into one another, and Lucifer’s hot lips connected with Gabriel’s, taking the breath right out of her. Flames ignited inside her body and her mouth parted in shock and need, scrambling her thoughts and any understanding of right and wrong. Tasting his sweeping tongue in her mouth, the entire world around them disappeared as if it had never even existed.

  Gabriel reached for Lucifer, desperation growing in her at having him so close and needing so much more—

  She gasped when Lucifer broke away and the light in the sky above turned to glittering darkness. Breathing hard, she reached for Lucifer, yearning to touch his handsome face that was now blanketed in shadow. He stepped away from her, his chest rising and falling too fast to control.

  “We cannot.” Lucifer lifted his face to the sky that shielded the heavens way above. “The soul has passed, and he can see all again. He can see us…”

  Gabriel’s hand shot to her throbbing lips as she sorted the meaning out of Lucifer’s words. Their union, their kiss, it had been hidden from their maker, shielded by the passing of a soul from Earth up to Heaven. A kiss that she would never forget…and one that, as she looked at him now with his reddened cheeks and weary eyes, they both knew could never happen again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucifer sat in the scribe vault, his back to the entry and his sight unfocused, glazing over the infinite vaulted walls that spanned out before him. He hardly remembered the hours he’d spent here already, picking up and sliding the strewn scrolls the other angels had retrieved and read before rushing to witness more below into its rightful slot. Mind a million miles away, all he could see, all he could hear and smell, was Gabriel. The sight of her before him in that field had been more than he could take. Her intake of breath, the parting of her lips, the way she had unintentionally leaned in closer to him… All of it had led to his undoing, to his total lost control. To the first brush of his lips against hers—their first kiss.

  Even now Lucifer’s lips burned with the memory of her mouth accepting his. His entire body refused to cool itself, tingling in anticipation of everything else it craved from her. He felt lost and yet found, a prisoner that was hers and hers alone to command.

  Lucifer sighed, forcing himself to breathe through the fever pitch that threatened to overtake him, letting himself dwell on their reinstated separation.

  The memory of Gabriel’s shock and insistence to return above drowned his lustful imaginings like waves over a smoldering fire. She had known that what they let happen between them was wrong. It had been all over her face. Her actions had said as much as they spoke not of their interaction, but of their need to return. The way she had been unable to look at him while her cheeks remained burnt red was like a fist squeezing his heart.

  What had he done? He never should have. Despite knowing this, as he awaited her routine arrival to record the day’s events she had witnessed, he found himself envisioning what it would be like the next time. How it would feel, how it would taste, to take her in his strong arms and slant his hungry mouth over hers?

  A tingle of sensation brought the actions alive with moving color in his mind. Finally.

  With every thought reserved for her alone, Lucifer awaited Gabriel’s arrival. The anticipation of her nearness warmed and terrified him at the same time. He could not stand to see her condemned or punished as he had been for all that he had started between them.

  Amongst his fear, his need for her spiked. Closing his eyes, what he imagined was a form of torture, because it could never be, and pleasure rolled into one. Still, Lucifer refused to stop the musings, refused to rein in his growing and desperate need. “You came…”

  Gabriel’s voice was a seductive whisper, “I had to.”

  Control forfeited, he spun on the log where he sat and reached out for her. With his hands capturing Gabriel’s tiny waist, he crushed her to his chest as he stood, feeling up her back and kissing her with all the passion that brewed like a blast ready to explode inside of him. She accepted his kiss with a moan of desperate need, her tongue sweeping and chest pumping against his with labored breaths. Her hands needled into his chest, urging him on. He caught one of her legs and pulled it up around his hardening body. His other hand fisted the material over her shoulder, tugging it down—

  An incoming shift in sensations froze his body and the rapid breath in his lungs. Lucifer’s thoughts shut off suddenly, reminding him that it was all in his mind. Still perched on the log, facing the glowing platform before the well of fire, the landing of a firm hand on his shoulder between his quivering wings proved Lucifer’s suspicions right. He gasped in a breath, feeling the thrum in his veins that announced the angelic presence…of someone else.

  “This must end, Lucifer. And it must end this day.”

  Lucifer flinched at the deep male voice that spoke, his entire body turning rigid as his wings tucked in tighter to his back. He whirled up, facing the brightly glowing angel behind him with bared teeth. A glow intensified by God? “You dare to spy on me, Michael? To slip into my thoughts?”

  Michael held his gaze and refused to step back. Dark tousled locks that made it look like he had rushed here framed the look of malice on his face. “It is not my wish to be here, to see what befouls your mind. I am but a loyal servant empowered by His will, commanded to deliver this…” As he held out his hand with one finger extended, the smirk on his face revealed his lie, his anticipation of acting against Lucifer. Light glowed from his finger, burning brighter as he reached forward. “Sweet dreams, Sinner.”

  Fearing agony akin to what had attacked his mind and floored him in the past, Lucifer went to dodge away. God should have missed their actions on Earth. But then he thought of the unexpected invitation to join Gabriel below. A setup? Even with God occupied, had they been watched? Or had his careless recollection and heightening desires revealed his sin? Either way, he knew one thing. He had to get to Gabriel. He had to warn her before this same punishment could be delivered unto her.

  The log stump got in the way as Michael vanished with a click and reappeared closer. Stumbling back around the platform, and unable to reach the exit, a sudden mass smacked Lucifer’s calves. A searing burn attacked his palm as he steadied himself at the edge of the fire well. And then it was too late. Michael’s glowing finger connected with Lucifer, right between his eyes. Like being struck by lightning, searing agony speared through Lucifer. Every part of him felt like it was raw and on fire—until all the sensation melted as his legs gave out and he fell.

  “Behold the destruction this path will wreak upon us all.” As darkness stole his sight, he felt a gentle tingle and heard Michael’s grating voice one last time—directed at someone else. “This is not your station. Now leave. Forget what you heard and saw.”

  The light and warmth around Lucifer ceased to exist. So did Michael’s and any other angel’s presence. He had no body and no control over where he was or what was happening. Then movement and color started to appear in a slowing swirl, huge and inescapable as if the looking glass had suddenly become his eyes, blocking out anything else. In the rounds that connected into one view, Lucifer stared, unable to look away. He saw himself from behind in Gabriel’s garden, his great white wings concealing his body. He was not standing still, and he was not alone, he noticed as a pale pair of legs and feet appeared between the shelter of his wings alongside his in the glowing grass. The moving image rotated then, and Lucifer’s heart felt like it was ready to explode. Bared naked, he held Gabriel in his arms, touching her, kissing her—

  The view shifted suddenly to the looking glass. Lucifer crawled forward on his knees, his lips moving with frantic words as he clasped his hands in front of him.

  He was begging, pleading.

  The images sped up after that, events meshing into one another. Bars, chains, wings of satin bla
ck, falling like a star, and then fire and blood, screams and cries and glowing red eyes.

  As it all faded into eternal darkness, Lucifer knew what he’d seen had been a warning. A prophecy. One that began with him and Gabriel in an act that would ripple through the realms and had the potential to threaten the earth and life as they knew it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabriel rushed into the scribe vault, tearing her robe as she slid past the platform down to her knees. Gathering Lucifer up into her arms, she held him close to her chest, draping his limp body over her lap. “Lucifer! Lucifer, please come back to me.” Fear unlike anything she had ever felt before turned her insides to mush, roiling her stomach and threatening to make her retch. Her eyes darted over him, seeking the injury that had floored him. There was none. His body in all its cut lines and bronzed skin that peeked out from his shorter robe and the strap over his chest was free of injury. Which meant…

  “No.” Gabriel shook her head, causing her cascading locks to shimmy over Lucifer’s chest. “It cannot be…” Angels did not sleep. With their eternal bodies maintained above, there was no need to slumber. Yet here he was, gone as if he was lost to his physical body. Gone as if he were…

  She refused to think the morbid word. He couldn’t be.

  A shake of him returned no living signs, but as her trembling hand settled along his neck to turn his face up to her, she felt something. His heart was beating. Blood still moved like a branching river through his veins. Lowering her face closer to his, she felt his warm breaths that were so shallow the rise and fall of his defined chest was almost invisible.

  As the fear for his immortal life calmed inside her, she thought of what had brought her here. Staring down from the edge of the looking glass, a gentle tap on her shoulder followed by Remiel’s hesitant words, “Lucifer needs you,” had sent her racing to get to him.

  Now she was here and she could do naught to help. Gabriel clung tighter to him, letting his head of golden hair nestle into her chest. If he was not sleeping, was her lack of action hurting him? Would he ever wake up? “Please wake up, Lucifer.” The words from her lips continued to come, murmured in desperation and total honesty that was not hers to feel or vocalize. “I cannot be without you. Not anymore. Not ever again. I need you, Lucifer. I need…”

  Lucifer shifted across her lap, his lax muscles growing taut and bulging as consciousness returned. His head against her breast nuzzled closer and a moan escaped his lips.

  “Lucifer?”

  Lucifer turned to stone, every one of his muscles snapping tight as he gasped. The next moment he reared and pushed away, wings flinging out magnificently as he scrambled back until he hit the solid, glowing bricks of the fiery well. Breathing as fast as they had both been down on Earth in that defining moment, he glanced around and then to the corridor beyond the entryway as if looking for something or someone. “You are alone? Why are you here?”

  Gabriel lowered her eyes from his beautiful face and body. She wondered if he had heard her words to him, her confessions. She’d had no right to say those words, much less to feel them. What had happened below could not continue. “Remiel found me by the looking glass—”

  “Remiel,” Lucifer sneered, bringing Gabriel’s eyes back up as he motioned to the ground where she’d found him. “He stumbled upon us. Upon Michael—the one who left me like this.”

  Gabriel leaned closer, her feather tips quivering with released apprehension over the luminescent floor as she reached for him. Lucifer jerked his hand that was holding him upright back, but she snatched hold of his wrist. Her touch softened when he stopped retreating at her circling thumb over his pulsing wrist. “Why would Michael do as such? What happened to you?”

  Lucifer seemed transfixed by her massaging touch, staring down at their pale and golden joined hands. His brows drew together with a look of being wounded. But he said not a word, and the cupping of her other hand around the one she held seemed only to drive him further away.

  “Lucifer?”

  After the longest silence that raised the patter of her beating heart, Lucifer finally spoke. “It should be enough to stop me, to stop all of this. But the moment I hear your voice, or see your face, or touch…” He lifted the hand covering his other one and laid it flat over his pounding heart. “The moment I feel your touch, it all seems worth the risk.”

  “Risk?” A pang of something she could not describe chilled her blood. “What risk?”

  Lucifer dropped her hand and drew away, rising up to stride forward and perch back on the log that was now in front of the platform. His wings slouched with a deep sigh, splayed behind him and blocking the messy surface from view. “I have seen what lies in wait for us in the future.” His hands cranked into fists and he belted one down at his thigh. “Havoc. Mayhem. Can two angels and their forbidden actions truly bring about the promise of damnation?”

  Gabriel gasped at his angered words and the obvious need to inflict pain on himself. Whatever he had seen had been a message, a warning. From God? Or perhaps her angelic brothers who had already turned their backs on Lucifer. Regardless of the answer, she believed her whispered words and she prayed he did too. “Total damnation is a result of many. We made an error, imperfect as we all are. We are not so powerful or diabolical to be able to bring about such things.”

  Now he peered up, his sorrowful eyes finding her through his wavy golden locks. “The memory of your taste…” Hunger pulsed in his silver-blue stare as his gaze fell to her lips. “I cannot forget it. You are the light, and I am a moth to your flame. I cannot turn away. I will not. I cannot stop what we have already begun, not unless you tell me to.”

  Taking what had frightened Lucifer seriously, Gabriel wanted to be strong. But with every word that formed and died on her tongue before reaching her lips, she knew she could not. Despite her resolve and the knowledge that she could never repeat what they committed down on Earth, Gabriel would never turn away from him. She would never abandon him. Their kiss below had changed everything for her. It had brought light to the disarray of everything Gabriel had been feeling from the very beginning. She could not undo what they had begun any more than Lucifer could, but she could control it.

  Rising as tall as she could on her knees, she crawled forward and reached for his face, cupping her hands along his sharp jawline. His teeth clenched with a hissed breath and a small muscle bunched under her touch. She smiled as tears welled with the knowledge that they would never be like they had been on Earth again. “I will be our strength. I vow it, Morningstar.”

  As Lucifer’s tight lips separated to speak, Gabriel rose to her feet. A quick brush of her lips grazed his cheek, and then she turned and escaped through the exit, silver rivers streaming across her face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Beside Gabriel in her secret garden, Lucifer luxuriated in the feel of the water that cooled his feet and legs from the pond. Lying on his back, his wings were the softest blanket beneath him, and the view of the brightness above that held not a cloud or the harshness of the blistering sun was relaxing. Since the day of his doomed warning, Gabriel had kept to her word. Unlike him and his wandering thoughts, she had been and remained their strength. Gabriel never avoided or kept away from him, but she did keep her distance when they were close. She refrained from touching him, despite the many times he had reached for her. And in those times that he had been weak, Gabriel had averted his attention rather than refusing him.

  Lucifer had not stopped wanting more between them, but he had started to feel a sense of comfort in the security she provided being around him. He may not have trusted himself, but he trusted her…with all his heart and soul.

  As the only sounds in her garden ceased to exist and the lapping at his calves died off, Lucifer knew Gabriel had frozen the waterfall to peer into the vast expanse below. For the most part, they watched the world from here in their secret solitude. Away from the prying eyes of the other angels—though not of their God.

  Gabriel’s de
ep sigh filled the silence then, and Lucifer felt the despair in it even without glancing up. Her slender hand reached back as if seeking his touch. Then she sighed again, her arm falling limp and retracting until it disappeared in front of her. Unable to remain reclined, Lucifer reared to sit upright, his wings batting gently to shake the grass away. He frowned at her own wings that were pulled around her shoulders as if she needed their comfort. Lucifer ached to be the one to comfort her with his strong and able arms. Instead, he shifted closer, close enough to feel her radiant warmth without touching her silky smooth skin.

  With her arms tight around her propped knees, Lucifer peered around the barrier of her thick wings. “Gabriel? What burdens your soul?”

  For a moment, part of him hoped her distress was from their lack of contact, from the constant strain of keeping each other at arm’s length. The impulse to assume it was that and relive her of her pain was so intense, but then she pointed to the water. Lucifer slid his feet free of the pond and watched as the surface resettled into a stillness that resembled thin ice. At once he saw the cause of her pain and sorrow. Camps of humans had banded together in the past months, setting up their animal-skin tents, and planning their battles strategy. And now the time had come. Metal and wood were wielded, commanded by each man’s arm to inflict the ultimate damage. The ultimate end. Bodies lay broken and strewn. Blood ran red in rivers between huts in the ambushed villages. Women screamed as they were set upon by the attacking men, forced into submission as they were raped and beaten. Crying children were quieted, their bodies thrown to the ground like waste.

  Lucifer ground his teeth together, anger boiling in him that was as uncontainable as a forest fire. He had seen the flares of light overhead, the sign that souls were passing from Below to Above. But then the flashes had stopped. Except—they hadn’t. He saw the proof as more men, women, and children were cut down. The flashes had never stopped…they had become constant. The time lapse in-between spent lives was so quick there was no break. “Why have you deliver that message so long ago when he never intended to act? This plague upon the earth continues, and he does nothing!”