by Leigh Kelsey
Gabriel tilted his head. “Hell has corrupted you, Liliana. You lied to me.” He pursed his lips, a subtle sign of outward irritation that must have meant he was seething inside. “You shouldn’t have been able to lie to me.”
Lili pulled one of Bernard’s gleeful, wicked smiles from her memory and slid it onto her face like a threat. “I lied to you? I lied to you? You manipulated me for months; you don’t get to talk about lies, Gabriel Zeusson. And maybe you’re right, maybe Hell did corrupt me. But I would never have been there if you hadn’t used the Severance on me, if you hadn’t let Raphael kick me off the edge of Wisteria. If this monster hadn’t found me and healed me, I would have died.”
As she spoke, the magic in her writhed faster and faster, sweat pricking her spine, her chest, as her inner temperature rose. Lili slammed her hand against the barrier again, all her anger and magic erupting through her tingling palm. A stuttering laugh burst from her as the electric power containing Cerberus … melted away. As if her hand was covered in acid that ate through the prison.
With another grin—partly unhinged and full of violence, retribution—Lili smashed both her hands into the barrier, over and over, ignoring the jolts that ran up her wrists, the pain that splintered through her fingers, until a big enough hole had formed. Flexing her fingers, ready to do more damage, Lili stepped beyond the barrier separating angel and demon and took a step closer to the crater. To the hateful archangel.
Gabriel didn’t show surprise, he was too composed for that, but Lili had spent months studying his glorious face for traces of emotion, for tiny hints that he cared. She’d become the world’s foremost expert on the archangel Gabriel, and she could see the unease now in the tiny lines beside his eyes, the displeasure in the slight tensing of his mouth.
She glanced sideways only once to check her friends were okay. But breaking through the shimmery barrier didn’t appear to have freed them. They were still frozen, snarling. Lili narrowed her eyes on Gabriel; he had more magic here, more weapons. She was an idiot to think he’d come unarmed.
She needed him to lose his concentration, and to call off whatever magic he’d unleashed here. Lili ought to have been cowed but she had space inside her only for fury as she advanced on him.
“I should thank you, shouldn’t I?” she said in that soft, dangerous whisper she was coming to know, walking closer and ignoring the debris and little stones that skittered down the crater’s loose slope. “If you hadn’t sent me to Hell, I’d never have known I had this magic.”
A slight twitch beside his eye—anger. “You overstep, Liliana,” he said flatly, matching her next step forward, and then her next. Lili waited for the pain, the recoil, the betrayal to steal her breath, but her rage and magic swallowed any emotion that rose.
She stopped three steps from Gabriel, watching his burnished feathers ruffle as his eyes narrowed, just slightly, in irritation. She glared into his unfeeling eyes and snarled, “Let. Them. Go.”
“Or?” A true smirk curled his lips, full of arrogance. He didn’t think she could hurt him. Well. Lili didn’t know what she could do, but every second he gloated and sneered, her friends were suffering, and she was willing to use Gabriel as a test subject.
“Or you’ll find out what Hell made me into.”
He pursed his lips, judgemental eyes panning down her wine red velvet dress, the dust kicked up onto her boots and calves, before scanning her face. “If you weren’t a scarred half breed, you could have been quite pretty.”
His words found their mark but she ignored the pang in her chest. Letting him hurt her … that was exactly what he intended. And Lili was done giving Gabriel what he wanted.
“Nice try,” she said, smirking with one side of her mouth as she punched her fist forward. Heat, fire, and magma raced through her blood in response to her unspoken order and Gabriel staggered backwards, a decidedly un-angelic growl ripped from his lips as Lili’s demon magic branded him.
He’d tried to do it again—make her feel small, make her hurt and flinch. Bastard.
“Oh, look,” she said, her eyes trailing over the angry red weal of a handprint on his shoulder, feeling a thrill of pleasure to have injured him. “Now you have a scar to match mine. It’s a shame, really. Without it, you could have been quite pretty.”
There was a savage pleasure in being mean. Maybe she understood Bernard a little better now. At the thought of him, and his brothers, Lili’s chest grew tight. Gabriel used her distraction to rush across the gravel between them and snare her by her hair. Pain raced down her nerve endings as he pulled at her scalp, hard enough that her feet slid on the loose ground. Lili cried out, her eyes watering until tears spilled.
“Bitch,” Gabriel spat, sounding like a stranger.
Lili cried as he wrenched her hair, pain splintering her rage, but the wrath was still there, waiting. Gabriel used his grip on her hair to pull her deeper into the crater’s middle, Lili’s body entirely out of her control.
Fear and panic blurred her anger as she grasped for a plan. She didn’t know what to do, how to make him let go, but what would Cerny do? Or Bernard or Russ? Bite them, if they were in Cerberus form probably. But Gabriel was too far away for Lili to sink her teeth into.
Then what would Lucifer do? Tears of pain blurred Lili’s vision as she scrambled for an answer to her mental question, her boots grappling for purchase on the gravel to slow their progress. Luc would use his shadow magic, but what could Lili do with her demon power? She couldn’t reappear across the crater with her fire, no matter how badly she wished it were possible.
But fire could burn and scald and rage. She could use that. She didn’t have any other option.
She didn’t have the space to thrust her hand forward, not with Gabriel dragging her, his body too close to hers, but Lili pictured the heat inside her body spreading to her skin so the hand digging into her arm would singe. She felt on fire herself, sweat rolling from her face, her chest, but it was worth it when Gabriel swore savagely and dropped her like she was a burning coal.
Without his brutal grip holding her up, Lili lost balance, but the momentum of her fall helped tear his fist from her hair. Pain raced across her scalp, hairs ripping free even as her backside slammed into the ground. Dazed and shaky with adrenaline, Lili bit her lip against the agony and stumbled onto her hands and knees, then to her feet, her hand out in front of her. Self-preservation instincts roared, urging her to run.
Every breath she took shuddered, sobs threatening to take over as her eyes fell on Gabriel’s angry face, but the sight of her hand shocked her silent. Steam rolled off her palm, the skin a raw pink colour even though it didn’t hurt. Didn’t hurt her, at least. If Gabriel grabbed for her again, she knew she’d scald his skin from his body. It was a tremulous weapon but Lili felt steadier with it.
“Let my friends go,” Lili shouted, her voice rasping. “Or I’ll burn you again. And—and this time I’ll burn your wings.”
Her courage was deserting her but Gabriel didn’t need to know that. Lili stood as tall as she could when her body was stinging, her head pounding, and her legs and bum scraped from falling onto them. Cerberus had to be hurting so much worse though, so Lili blinked her eyes clear, clenched her jaw, and glared all her hatred at Gabriel. The red hot magic in her blood helped.
“Alright,” Gabriel agreed, and Lili nearly sagged in relief. “Tell me where to find Lucifer and I’ll release your friends.”
Ice water shot through Lili’s fire, putting out the flames in a heartbeat. She was left suddenly powerless. “No,” she breathed, shaking her head as she backed up. This was a trap—she could feel its walls rearing around her, poised to spring shut.
“Not even to save your friends, Liliana?” Gabriel was gloating now, pleased with the cage he’d steered her into. Either she led Gabriel to Lucifer or he’d hurt Cerberus. Maybe … even kill them. It was what he did, what she’d always known he did on his missions. Back then, it had seemed like a holy task, ridding the world of a sco
urge, but now that she knew demons weren’t all evil—even if some were—she couldn’t think of it the same way. The idea of him killing Russ, Cerny, and Bernard terrified her.
“Ask something else,” Lili breathed. “Anything else.” She regretted it the second the words were out there, especially as Gabriel smirked. Fool—this was what he wanted. The trap hadn’t been in choosing between Lucifer and Cerberus—that was the bait he’d used to draw her into the cage.
“Come with me to Heaven, Liliana.”
The ice in her blood expanded until Lili was shaking, her breath coming out in puffs of cloudy air. “Why?”
His face did not budge, and his voice gave nothing away as he said, “You belong in Wisteria.”
“You kicked me out,” Lili hissed. Ice water filled her whole body, splashing over Hell’s magma until her flames winked out and her hand finally stopped steaming. But something bigger, something more, was trembling to life in its place. Lili ignored it—it was secondary to Gabriel’s words. “Why would I go back? Never.”
Gabriel shrugged. “Remember you chose this.”
He lifted his hand, and Lili braced for excruciating pain. But nothing came. Instead, a canine scream ripped across the hollow crater. Lili’s eyes shot to the road above the crater, to Cerberus, as Russ screamed, the sound twisting into Lili’s heart like a corkscrew. She thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then Bernard flinched hard, shaking his head as if to jar something loose, and Lili stopped breathing. Cerny had gone perfectly still, but even at this distance Lili could see the blood rolling from his ears.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it! Okay! I’ll do what you want!”
The screaming stopped instantly and Gabriel nodded, satisfied.
Her eyes still on her friends, Lili scanned Cerberus desperately for signs they were okay. She didn’t dare move as Gabriel marched towards her, frost cracking through her blood stream at the thought of his hands closing around her again. Lili didn’t watch; she kept her eyes on Cerberus, swaying on the edge of the crater, all three of the brothers looking pained and shaken, their body wavering like they were about to faint. Russ had slumped, his head resting against Bernard’s. Lili didn’t let herself ask the question that half formed in her mind. He would be fine; she’d accept no other outcome.
Lili caught her breath as they took a stumbling step forward; Bernard’s pained green eyes were fixed on her as their huge, lumbering body swayed another step towards her and Gabriel.
A shadow fell over Lili, blocking her vision of her friends.
“Come,” Gabriel commanded in a flat tone, grabbing Lili’s arm tight. “You’ve proven useless in Hell. Now we’ll see if you can be of more use in the Gods’ Garden.”
That touch, hard enough to bruise and with no care to her comfort, made something inside Lili go murderously still. The pure entitlement in the grip…
Ice spread outward from Lili’s chest. A predator awoke inside her, some searing combination of ice and fire, and Lili screamed as pure white pain raced up her spine. Pressure built beneath the skin of her back, so sudden and agonising that howl after howl tore from Lili’s hoarse throat. She thought she’d die of it as burning ice rampaged through her body, until finally, finally, the pressure exploded outward from her shoulder blades.
Lili lost all control over her body, slumping in Gabriel’s grip and shaking all over as the ice-fire faded, simmering into a bearable burn behind her ribcage.
“Impossible,” Gabriel laughed, letting go on reflex as wings—wings—spread out from Lili’s back. Feathers skimmed the bare skin of her shoulders and her back where the velvet dress had shredded. Her knees absorbed the impact as she hit the crater, little rocks scraping her palms raw, but she barely felt the hurt, reeling inside.
The ice … she hadn’t recognised it after so long spent drowning in her red-hot demon magic. It was her angelic power. But the cold that burned … that was something else, some combination of the two—of Heaven and Hell, angel and demon—and it was something she’d never known existed. Nobody had ever spoken of it, nor written it in any book Lili had ever read.
As her body readjusted to the weight of wings, Lili groaned, pushing her palms flat against the ground and attempting to get her knees under her. Her whole body felt battered but she managed to stand, swaying, and glare at Gabriel who still stared open mouthed.
Gabriel. Who just stared. And did not reach for her. Self-preservation slammed into Lili so hard she let go of her questions, her wonder and panic, and before she could give it a second thought—before Gabriel could recover—she kicked off the ground and pumped her wings. Her wings. Somehow her magic had healed her, had given her a new set of wings, so dark brown they were almost black, and as downy as a newborn’s. Lili didn’t care how it had happened; gratitude, relief, and awe filled her belly with butterflies.
Lili pumped her new wings, arrowing into the sky and about to dive down for Cerberus. For a moment she thought she was free, but a second wing beat echoed among hers and a burnished gold body slammed into her, sending her reeling through the clouds.
Lili was too dazed to fight, let alone strong enough to hold her own against a battle-hardened archangel, but she’d been flying for as long as she’d lived, and she was smaller than him. Which meant she was faster. She dove and swooped, flapped her wings faster to shoot higher to evade him, his fingertips merely grazing her soft wings. Even new as they were, they responded like her old wings had, as if she’d been training to fly and building the muscle guiding them all her life.
Lili didn’t dare question her good luck; she just kept racing through the sky above the breach, never daring to stray far from Cerberus. But all she was doing was prolonging the inevitable. And … she wasn’t thinking. Again. All she was doing was tiring herself out; that was why Gabriel was allowing her to get free.
If she stood a chance of escaping him, no matter how tiny and unlikely that chance was, she had to do the opposite. She had to stop running. And Lili hated that idea.
What would Lucifer do?
He’d make a stand and fight. But that was because he was ultra powerful and he knew he’d win. Lili would lose if she fought Gabriel. But she’d lose if she kept wasting her energy on flying, too.
She had one shot, the first strike with surprise on her side.
Lili swooped again, going beneath the clouds to glimpse her friends, sprawled out on the edge of the crater, even Bernard’s Bullmastiff head unconscious now. Panic speared through Lili and her strength faltered.
Her mouth opened on a silent scream as her body crashed through the air, the sky blurring around her as her wings stalled. But instinct had her posture adjusting, her wings curling to catch the air again. Never before had she been so glad her father had made her attend flying lessons every single day, instead of two days a week like the other children. It was only her instincts, honed in those lessons, that kept her from meeting the crater head-first, or veering off course into the breach.
The breach…
It still hung in the sky, a white slit like a scar through the night sky, its tattered edges blowing in the wind. Lili wished she could pick up her friends and carry them through the rift home, but there was no way her scrawny arms would be able to lift a single canine head, let alone all three and the enormous body. Think, think. She raced through the clouds, avoiding the archangel on her tail, and as her mind ticked over, it landed on what Gabriel had said so long ago.
Because I’m an archangel … I can’t spent many hours there before I’ll wither.
She wouldn’t leave him there to die, not even if he was a bastard and her enemy, but if Hell could weaken him, she’d stand a better chance in a fight against him.
Her heart hammering, Lili dove, angling her wings to bring her in line with the breach as air whooshed past her face. She didn’t have to go through the rift; she just had to make Gabriel think she was going to use it.
Not allowing herself to doubt the plan, Lili flew as fast as her wings would car
ry her, relief threatening to weaken her as Gabriel yelled her name, pursuing her more urgently. Lili held her breath as she came close enough to glimpse Hell through the rift, a rolling indigo forest with treetops as far as she could see. She could go home. But no, not without Cerny and Russ and Bernard.
At the very last second, Lili swerved, using her speed and smaller body to move faster than Gabriel, with all his warrior muscle, could react. Lili almost didn’t believe it as Gabriel slammed into the breach, swallowed by the magic even as his face twisted, realising she’d tricked him. But it was too late—there was nothing he could do to stop the breach sucking him into Hell. Lili watched, her burning lungs demanding she gulp down air, as he vanished into the forest.
As soon as he was out of sight, Lili spun in the air raced across the wasteland toward Cerberus. She plummeted to the crater beside them, a shaky hand reaching to brush their velvety body. They were breathing but far too shallowly. Lili needed to get them home, but how? Could her magic—
“Liliana.”
Lili went deadly still, shock paralysing her with a hand on her friends’ chest. It couldn’t be… There was no way. The last time she’d heard that voice it had been a delusion. Was she hallucinating now?
“Liliana, come.”
Lili didn’t dare turn, didn’t breathe.
The voice was nearer, sliding over the back of her neck, when he said, “I will heal your friends if that’s what it takes for you to come with me.”
“You can heal them?” Lili rasped, still not daring to turn. Her father—Michael. Here. Talking to her, acknowledging her existence, and … and offering to help her friends. Was it real, or just another desperate hope given flesh? Either way, the promise of him healing the brothers was too precious to ignore. “You swear it?”
“I swear it,” he replied solemnly. Lili didn’t know if she could believe him, her heart torn between wanting to trust her father and wanting to protect herself from deception. Could she trust him, or was he like Gabriel? “But choose quickly, Liliana. That breach won’t keep Gabriel for long.”