by J. L. Myers
Unable to bear it for another second, Lucifer slid across the bed to stand.
Gabriel heard him and sniffed, wiping quickly to smear her sorrow from her face even though she had to know it was too late. “You are awake.”
God, even her voice was broken, as broken as her soul must feel to be trapped in this disgusting place with a man who perpetrated and encouraged all the monstrous things that went on inside his castle and down in their ever-growing city.
Without covering himself, he went to her. Wrapping his arms through her wings and around her body that trembled despite how hard she must have tried to control it, Lucifer realized something. That change, the look he had been unable to decipher that had been growing in intensity since her first day here in Hell…he finally knew what it was, what it meant. Her belief that there was always a sliver of good in all that was bad, that there was always hope—it was dying.
This place, this Hell, it was killing the very thing that had drawn Lucifer to Gabriel in the first place.
It was killing the one thing that was ingrained in every part of her, the one thing he knew she could not live without.
Over her shoulder, he saw the state of their growing community. Monsters hunted down prey in the streets. Fingers, hands, and feet often got torn from bodies by overzealous attackers. Drained hellions were left for dead on the sooty dirt that would never actually achieve a peaceful end—there was no death in Hell. Only eternal torment and pain.
Trailing a hand down her silky hair and continuing over her soft feathers, Lucifer sighed. He wanted to cover her eyes. He wanted to wipe it all out and make it go away, leaving them as the only two beings in this world. But despite all the times he had wished it, making it true was not in his power. “Did you sleep?”
Gabriel shook her head, answering the question he already knew the answer to. Turning her around to face him, he did not need to lift her chin to know that crescents shadowed the underside of her sad eyes. Though Gabriel had admitted to feeling tired, proving that, like him, she could sleep now that she was away from Above, she had not been able to sleep even for more than a few fleeting moments.
Lucifer tilted her head up anyway, drinking in the deep pools of her eyes as she met his gaze. He needed to remember her, every little part, from her high and rosy cheeks, her full and blushed mouth, her small pointed chin, the curve of her neck, the delicate collarbones and everything below and how she felt beside him. He had to remember because… “I love you. God, I do. More than anything in this Hell, Earth, or even Above. You are everything to me. My heart, my soul…” That part was especially true. Without her by his side, without the knowledge that she accepted and loved him despite what he had become and what he would continue to be, it saved him every day. It lent light to the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him with each disgusting act of torture and power. It gave him hope that one day something might change…but with her hope dying…
He could not let her lose herself to save him from the eternal darkness that welled inside him. He would not. Her happiness, her light, it was more important to him than the threat of losing himself.
“You cannot stay here. I will not let you. You are not fallen. You are not an outcast. Speak to God, send him word of your loyalty, and agree to whatever he wants. Let Him take you back, let Him take you home—where you belong, where you can shine, where you can work to end all that is dark and evil.” Like me, Lucifer added without words.
Gabriel’s face contorted, those restrained tears now flooding from her eyes. Yet her expression wasn’t full of sorrow, at least not for long. With one hand clenching the material over her chest, she fisted the draping black lower and pressed it to her stomach. Something shifted, her sadness and depression alleviating without warning. Glaring at Lucifer, she shook her head. “You have no right to demand this of me. We have lost too much. We have given too much. And now…” Her lips remained open, words hanging from the tip of her tongue, but no sound came out. Loosening the material over her stomach, she smoothed the draping satin down gently. “I will not leave Hell without you. Not now. Not ever. I will not lose you again. I won’t return to where I was or who I was, I can’t. Not anymore. I may have wings, Lucifer, but I am far from pure…”
Lucifer opened his mouth to speak, but Gabriel pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. In any other situation, being bared to her and with the stimulation of her touch, Lucifer would have been lost to this intimate contact. But not now. That burning hope that had survived so much pain and torment was back. Not bright and alive like it had once been, but it was still there, a tiny ember begging to be believed in. To be heard.
“Heart and soul. Even in Hell, I feel more alive here, more wanted and loved than I ever did Above. If you want me to leave, I will, but not without you. We are all we have. Us is all that matters, all that will ever matter from now and forever more. So long as you can forgive me…”
“Forgive you?”
Gabriel looked away, lids falling half-mast as she stared down at the ground. “I begged He spare you from Michael’s wielded angel sword. I sent you to Hell.”
Lucifer had never dwelled long on why God had intervened that day, though in his heart he had always guessed Gabriel had been involved. With a gentle hand along her cheek, he lifted her face. “You saved me from annihilation.”
Gabriel shook her head, lifting her watery eyes to meet his. “I condemned you to Hell…and…and…” Her hand went to her stomach as if she suddenly felt ill. “I stole your choice to die by agreeing to any and all terms and consequences. My body as a vessel and yours as a door for Hell’s souls, a plague that you can never be rid of. And now…”
Gabriel turned toward the window, but Lucifer caught her shoulder and spun her back around. “No. I do not forgive you.” Though a reenactment of her with Michael flashed in his mind, the resulting heartache did not spur his words. With a flood of tears streaming down Gabriel’s face, he tilted her chin up to force her to look at him. “Nothing you have done requires my forgiveness. You saved me from myself, from my grief of losing you. And I alone accepted Remiel’s offer from God—an offer I cannot regret…because it brought you back to me. The only thing I will ever need in any Godforsaken world.”
A small smile pulled at Gabriel’s lips. She dropped the satin sheet that fell in fluttering waves, revealing the pale and womanly curves of her body. Despite that lack of nutrients here and even with her soul struggling, her body was thriving, growing and changing. Somehow she seemed even more feminine, more supple and alluring than she had Above or since her first days here. Under Lucifer’s perusing stare, her wings curved a little closer around her. He locked his knees to keep from staggering and clutched her hands that had joined over her navel to tug them apart. “I do not deserve you.”
“You have me.” Stepping closer, Gabriel bit her bottom lip as she pressed her body against his, scrambling Lucifer’s brain as her ample breasts pressed into the toned muscles of his rippled abs and chest. Her hand trailed slowly up his pec and curled around his neck, fingers raking into his long golden locks. “I love our love, Lucifer. I love you. What we have together can never be wrong. It can never be undone. And I will never ever give it up.” Gabriel arched up on her toes, her neck craning and lips reaching as she pulled him down to her. “Now kiss me like this is the last time…and never stop.”
Powerless to refuse her, Lucifer dipped his head lower and joined their lips in a devouring kiss that had Gabriel collapsing in his strong arms. With the taste and touch of her, Lucifer knew, somehow, that everything would work out. Gabriel would always be the light in the dark recesses of his soul, and he would find a way to keep her hope alive, to let her shine in this desolate place. If it were the last thing he ever did, he would become worthy of her love and her hope.
Chapter Four
Michael stole through the night cloaked in shadow, the moon behind thick cloud cover keeping from being spotted. Screams strangled into nothingness, proving that God’s permission to act had been warr
anted. He was in the right place, and his blood rushed with the need to take action. This large village of mud bricks and stone where not a single candle was lit through the small window openings was exactly where he needed to be. Already he could detect that coppery scent on the frigid air, a smell that raised his pulse and drove him on at the same time.
The killing had already begun.
With his wings tucked in tight and his footsteps light, Michael gave the hand signal to come closer. The small band of angels he had been approved to take below moved with the speed of light from the surrounding cornfield. The angelic warriors, two women and four men, wore the blank faces of those who thought not of themselves nor for the lives they were sent to protect, only hinting at their determination of a task to execute. Dressed in their war gear of animal hides and metal, they waited on Michael’s command.
Another strangled cry pierced the deathly quiet night. Another life being taken.
Michael tipped his head once—and the six angel warriors came alive.
The angels rushed past him, long swords slicing free of the scabbards that hung from their waists. Cracks of wood and sounds of shattering clay and glass rang out as they broke through doors and leaped through window openings. Shouts and screams erupted—not from the hybrids that’d been ambushed—from the human victims inside. Men, women, and children rushed from the dwellings at the noise, shock joining the terror in their eyes at the sight of the angels as they ran from the village. Michael unpuzzled the reaction of quieted screams to chaos, and lack of surprise from the hybrids they had come to attack as figures removed themselves from the shadows around dwellings and from the open doorways of other huts. They had been anticipated. Expected. As more fear-fed humans ran for their lives, something else was clear.
The angels were outnumbered.
Ten to one.
“Not possible,” Michael breathed the words as an afterthought as clanging metal and more screams joined the sounds of battle cries from his warriors. So many had been disposed of during the battle with Lucifer. So many had been sent to Hell. Had more existed that were yet to be found?
“I see those wheels spinning, winged creature.” One man headed the group of fanged hybrids who stalked his way, snapping their bloody jaws as if hungering for more of what covered their lips and chins. “But talking is not why we are here, especially not now that our delicious company has finally arrived.” The leader, Darius, Cyrus’s own son, the same disgusting excuse for life who’d taken Gabriel and ripped her wings from her back, smiled gleefully. “Take him down. I want to taste him myself.”
At least twenty hybrids rushed at Michael, nails extended and fangs bared and ready to tear flesh from bone. Michael freed the angel sword from the new scabbard that strapped flat to his back and wielded it with the purpose and precision he’d trained himself to do since the beginning of time. The glowing blue metal scored flesh, sending crimson spurts ricocheting all around as his warriors spilled out of the brick dwellings. Without the element of surprise, each of the angels was hunted by another eight hybrids each. Yes, they were fast. Yes, they were trained and equipped, deadly silver glinting from their hands as the hidden moon peeked through with beams of ghostly light. But so was the enemy. Brought into existence by the blood of the fallen, by Lucifer, they were as fast as the angels and yet so much more callous. The angels’ lack of actual battle experience showed too as they tripped over pots lined up alongside dwellings and bumped into posts that held awning covers up over entries.
Michael wasn’t faring much better either. Fearing for his charges, he misstepped too, his back slamming into the side of a hut as he dodged back to evade the snapping fangs of a ravenous hybrid. Its red eyes burned with hatred and hunger, and as Michael recovered, sweeping his sword out to hack the young man’s arm, another one rushed in to take its place.
But Michael didn’t stop. He didn’t falter.
Sword swinging, he kept himself from being bitten, from being ripped open and devoured. His skin stung from the countless places they had already scored his flesh with their talon-sharp nails, and silver blood dampened Michael’s arms in falling torrents. He was breathing hard, his lungs burning with the need to fight, the need to win—but he was losing.
They were all losing.
Refusing to stop, refusing to give in even as blood from the hybrids splattered and coated his body, he saw what was sure to come. His angelic warriors, the beings he helped bring into existence in the intimate moments he had laid with Gabriel, they were in danger of being caught, or worse, injured beyond the ability to fly Above to repair. They were not his children. Not really. His and Gabriel’s combined light gave them the possibility of life, but it was God who gave them bodies and a soul. They were His children, and although Michael did not feel scared at their impending demise, at their impending deaths, he knew when it was time to quit and reconvene. When it was time to conserve and retreat.
“Fly now!” Michael screamed the order to his warriors that battled without pause. They hesitated, seeing the growing number of hybrids who closed in around their commander. But he did not want their help. Already they had killed handfuls of hybrids between them, all while losing stamina and sustaining larger and more dangerous wounds to their arms, legs, and torsos. Wings stained in red and silver blood were in threat of dropping transporting feathers. Soon his warriors would not fight another day, but he needed them too. “Go now!”
The boom of his voice had each of them flinging out their bloody white wings and thrusting their bleeding bodies up to the stars.
With no one else to attack, every set of red eyes turned on Michael. His wings met resistance as he was backed up against a hut. He was surrounded. He was trapped.
Spinning off the wall as the group lunged like one giant mass of murderous intent, there was no option to free his wings and take flight. Jammed under an entry awning, Michael took the only available option and darted into the dark hut. He continued backing up inside, maneuvering around a chair and table in the darkness that left him close to blind. His sword remained poised, raised in front of him and steady in his malleable fist.
When Michael hit another object that stalled his retreat, he didn’t tear his eyes from the open doorway. Under the eerie blue of his weapon, the place was turned upside-down. Clay bowls and menial possessions had been shattered and cracked, clothes had been thrown and torn, and wooden dolls were broken and strewn. The family that had lived there was no more, he saw as his leg nudged something smooth and chilled. Tearing his eyes from the doorway, he saw the carnage. The body of a young girl hanging over the edge of a dirty bed, arm twisted, mouth gaping, and vacant eyes open and staring straight at him. Her throat had been all but torn out, leaving tangled gory skin in its wake.
Michael shot his sights back to the door—as a wheezing gasp snapped it back to the bed.
With her mouth still gaping, the girl’s eyes flung wide, revealing blood-red pupils.
“No.” Michael’s mind refused to accept what was so clear to his eyes. This girl, this human girl…she was one of them.
“Perfect, isn’t she?”
Michael’s eyes snapped back up to the door, expecting to be rushed at by clawing nails and hungry fangs. Except the hybrids didn’t flood inside to take him out as he had anticipated.
Instead, Darius meandered in, his smirk cocky. “One of our newest recruits. One of many turned today, and one of many to come.”
Michael kept his sword poised, his balance steady, even as the girl shifted and her broken arm cracked back into alignment. He had to get out. He had to inform God. All that had been banished to Hell and the curse meant nothing as long as these half-breeds now contained the ability to spread the disease only Lucifer had sustained the power to share.
The young girl leaped up without even a sound of warning, clinging to Michael’s back. Her small but strong legs snaked around him, trapping his wings against his body.
Michael reacted on instinct, flipping the angel sword behind him
and stabbing it back along his side as he lifted his elbow to make room. The girl’s fangs grazed his neck, her breath warm despite the chill of her skin—before she sucked the air back in and let out a scream. Michael twisted then, freeing the sword from her gut and driving his elbow into her snarling face. She went flying back and hit the wall, crumbling down onto the bloodied bed in a hissing heap.
Michael twisted back fast, intending to stab his sword through Darius’s heart. But he never got the chance.
Feet kicked out from under him, Michael landed on his back. Pain speared through his wings as his bodyweight crushed them beneath him over sharp debris. His driving wrist was caught, and Darius slammed it down into the ground in an attempt to remove his weapon. Michael held firm, even as Darius’s other hand punched a dagger down into his throat.
Shock and agony had Michael’s free hand going to his neck instead of striking out. He couldn’t breathe. He was pinned to the ground.
Believing this was the end, Michael closed his eyes, sending words from his mind up to God, sending a warning of what would soon become an unbeatable threat if they did not act with the full force of Heaven. But nothing happened. With his wings attached and his Heavenly light still illuminating his battered and bruised body, his message was echoing back at him. It wasn’t going through.
With no time to think, Michael knew he had to escape this, he had to return to Above. It was his duty.
Rasping around clogged air, Michael was surprised at the sound of his own voice as he glared up into Darius’s eyes, and spluttered words, “Let me go, and I will spare you this night.”
Michael expected a hearty laugh, maybe even a broadening of the cocky smile that split Darius’s lips. Instead, the young man yielded, snapping free his blade as the murderous drive in his glowing eyes fell with a look of utter vacancy. Expecting a trap or something horrible to come, Michael kept one hand clamped over his neck as his blood welled and he deciphered an escape. His two obvious options were crushed as hissing creatures filled the open door and stalked inside, and more began to climb in through the small windows, heads and arms followed by torsos and then legs. They watched their leader who stood stationary and devoid of his earlier personality, and then they narrowed their eyes at Michael.