The Devil's Daughter

by Abbie Payne

  Lucifer Palmer

  Prince of Death

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  YET ANOTHER FUNERAL, YET another soul to claim.

  This time, it was a funeral for a fallen angel that I didn’t know all that well. I was usually more careful and caring with the way I took souls from people that I didn’t know all that well since I didn’t know how their family would take it. I knew the pain that losing a loved one could cause - after all, I was the prince of Death - and so I tried to ease that pain as much as I could.

  Unfortunately for this family, I was not in a good mood today and I wasn’t in the mood for taking care of people today. I just wanted to claim this stupid soul so I could go back home and lock myself away from everyone.

  It didn’t help that Wyatt had given me a black eye the night before during our fight, so I was in a considerable amount of pain.

  I was standing on the sidewalk, watching as the funeral procession went by. I was waiting for them to get to the cemetery before I took the soul and went on my merry way, but I was growing irritated by a young child that was standing beside me. Naturally, his parents were nowhere to be seen and he was being obnoxiously loud and chatty, but when the hearse with the casket walked by and he was still talking, I lost it.

  I turned around and grabbed the kid and hoisted him up, forcing him to look me in the eye. I saw the look of sheer terror in his face, but I didn’t care. Actually, I loved seeing that look on his face.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, allowing my horns and wings to show (though it wouldn’t be until later that I realized they were out long before that).

  “Do you know what they say about people laughing when hearses go by?” I asked him.

  I felt his shiver when he heard my voice, but I didn’t let that even begin to compel me to go easy on him. No. He would pay for this.

  “You die,” I told him, “Do you know what happens when you die?”

  The boy shook his head.

  I pouted a little, “Really? They haven’t taught you about that in school?” I asked, putting him down, though I didn’t take my hands off of him.

  Several people walked past and glanced our way, but no one tried to intervene. If they were smart, they wouldn’t dare to even think about trying to intervene. If they did, I would have no problem taking their souls, too. There was always more room for more souls.

  The humans learned that the hard way.

  When the boy didn’t respond, I smirked and decided to take matters into my own hands. After all, this kid deserved to have some kind of education before he experienced it first-hand.

  In an instant, we were whisked away to a dreamscape of sorts where there was a dead body in front of us. It was a fresh one - relatively unscathed... for now. The boy continued to plead with me as I snapped my fingers, describing to him in detail as the body began to decay. He even tried to hide behind my leg, but I wasn’t nice enough to do that. I just dragged him back around by the collar of his shirt.

  “Do you want this to be you?” I asked him as I put my hands on his shoulders and began to dig my nails into his skin.

  “N-no, no,” he said rapidly, “Please, let me go.”

  I almost didn’t let him go. I almost killed him right then and there when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. Within seconds, I teleported both of us back to the “real world” and let the boy go before turning to see my brothers all standing there.

  The corruption was still taking over their bodies, but I could see in their eyes that they were still there - more so than they had been in the past several days. More than anything else, though, I saw the fear and desperation in their eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked them.

  “It’s Eddie...” Lachlan began, then looked over at his twin. I looked at Wyatt, too, who seemed to be unwilling to tell me what was wrong either.

  “She’s gone,” Pierce said finally, “And we have every reason to believe that she went to the White City.”

  Forty-Three

  Wyatt Palmer

  Prince of Wrath

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  “ARE YOU SURE SHE’S GONE?” Lucifer asked us, staring down at us. He had his horns and wings out now, too, but that was the least of our priorities. Right now, our priority was Eddie (never in a million years did I think I would say something like that).

  “Casimir came by and told us,” Elton explained, “Said that she’s going back to Heaven because she doesn’t want to live with us anymore.”

  I made a face at that. Of course, I’d already heard it from Casimir’s mouth, but it didn’t sound any less absurd the second time around. I still didn’t know Eddie that well, but that did not sound like something she would do.

  Lucifer sighed and held his hand out to us, “Let’s go back down and get the Council and the minions. We’re going on a field trip and we’re going to need the numbers.”

  Forty-Four

  Gavin King

  The Big Man Upstairs

  Celestial Palace

  MY BROTHERS (MEANING THE archangels, not those other pathetic creatures that dared to still claim our blood relations with them) and even Brayden himself may have been a little skeptical of my ability to succeed, but I was never worried. I knew that good things would come to me in the end.

  What I didn’t expect, though, was for those good things to come in the form of the Defect falling straight into my trap. I mean, I of course gave her that dream the night before in hopes of shaking her up a little bit and drawing her closer to me, but I never thought she would actually come to the White City.

  With that curse of hers, I was convinced there was never someone quite as foolish as the Defect clearly was.

  I was standing in the Celestial Palace throne room with the six prisoners, watching as they all sat on the floor with blood, bruises, and scratches all over their faces. I no longer had any use for them and I probably could have sent them back to their cells a while ago now, but I didn’t. I still wanted to marvel at my mens’ work... plus, it was kind of fun to watch Satan squirm whenever he looked up at the mural on the ceiling.

  I looked up when I heard dainty footsteps coming towards the throne room. I knew they were coming from the Defect - I’d already seen her coming from my fortune mirror that was hanging in my bedroom - but what I didn’t expect was to hear eight - no, nine... no, fourteen separate other pairs of footsteps following close behind hers. I gaped as the shadows drew closer and looked to the Hunters and Satan, who were all smirking at me.

  “I told you, Gavin,” Satan hissed, “You will never win because there is one thing that I have over you: a real family that would never dream of turning their backs on each other.”

  Forty-Five

  Edelweiss “Eddie” Sullivan

  Princess of Hell

  Celestial Palace

  I THOUGHT I WENT TO THE WHITE City on my own, but I was sorely mistaken. Of course, I also realized when I turned around to see the eight princes, Phoenix and her brothers, Oliver, and Will there, that I’d forgotten something.

  At the end of the day, no matter what, we were as much of a family as most of us were ever going to get. We were a family - it didn’t matter who we were, where we came from, or what we were like. We would always fight for each other. There was no other way to go about it.

  I admit that I was nervous about the idea of going to face Gavin and His archangels. This was my first time in the White City since my “fall” and I’d promised myself a long time ago that there was no way I was going back there. When I felt Phoenix’s hand on my shoulder and saw the princes behind me, all in their demon forms and ready for anything that would inevitably come our way, I somehow wasn’t quite as scared.

  We walked together into the throne room to realize that they were all waiting for us, but the thing was, we were ready for them, too.

  Immediately, the throne room erupted into a full-blown battle that could only rival those that were found at the battlefields that the Empyrean War were being fough
t on. For once, though, the angels weren’t winning. No. Much to my surprise: we were winning.

  Lucifer looked over at me as I started to become cornered by four of the archangels (none of which I could remember the names of, but there were like three archangels whose names started with an “r”, so that was the excuse that I was sticking to). He called out to his brothers who all sprung into action right alongside him. Before they could get to me, though, something happened.

  Suddenly, the eight brothers met just enough that they were for some reason lifted off of the ground as a bright aura surrounded them. Outside, angels could be heard screaming bloody murder and the angels inside the throne room where injured so badly that they could no longer fight.

  We all stopped and looked at one another. Had we won?

  I wish I could say that I was happy that the fight seemed to be over, but... something about all of this didn’t feel quite right.

  Don't miss out!

  Click the button below and you can sign up to receive emails whenever Abbie Payne publishes a new book. There's no charge and no obligation.

  https://books2read.com/r/B-A-WFML-MUBJB

  Connecting independent readers to independent writers.

  Also by Abbie Payne

  Hell's Garden

  The Devil's Daughter (Coming Soon)

  The Stardust Circle

  The Light We Lost

  Watch for more at Abbie Payne’s site.

  About the Author

  Abbie Payne is an author from right outside Houston, Texas. She writes young adult and adult about found families, hardships, and the things that make us different in hopes of inspiring people and offering people that are even just a little bit like her a way to escape and a little bit of solace that they aren't alone.

  Read more at Abbie Payne’s site.