Marcus wore similar black fatigues on his lower half, his own black shirt laying over the log to his left. His bare muscular chest bore the scars of a recent battle and there was a thin dark line cutting across his jaw.
“Why do I get the feeling we’re in a whole heap of shit?” Veiron said and Amelia stared at her feet. “Is someone going to tell me why I’m here, or do I have to beat it out of Marcus?”
He grinned at Marcus when the black-haired man glared at him, his pale eyes dark and daring him to try.
Marcus cleared his throat but it was Amelia who spoke.
“I need your help.” Her soft voice drifted across the crackling fire, conveying every ounce of worry that he had seen in her eyes. “I want to go myself but Marcus won’t let me.”
“Go where?” He didn’t really need to ask that question. Cold realisation sank deep into his gut. They were close to one of the gates to Hell for a reason, and it was one he really didn’t want to contemplate. Amelia had to have a damn good reason for wanting to go into Hell and Marcus had to have an even better reason for making her call in a favour from him.
“I can’t leave her there.”
Her? He looked at Marcus. The ex-angel sighed, lifted his gaze away from the fire, and looked across at him.
“The Devil has her sister,” he said, voice laden with a mixture of anger, concern and fear.
“I can’t leave her there, Veiron,” Amelia whispered and tears lined her grey eyes. Not the waterworks. He could handle anything but a crying woman. “Marcus won’t let me go and I’m afraid that if he goes alone, he won’t come back... or he won’t be able to find Erin. Please... I know I’m asking a lot of you but I need someone strong who knows Hell and won’t rouse suspicion. I need her back.”
Fuck, what was he supposed to say to her? Sorry, Love, I’m not interested in saving your dear little sister from the Devil and getting myself killed in the process? He was only alive because Amelia was. If she went down into Hell, she would get herself killed by the Devil or any of the other million vicious creatures that had orders to separate her head from her body by any means. If that happened, it was game over and he would wake up a guardian angel again, unaware of everything that had happened in his past lives and destined to fall and remember it all.
Still, he really didn’t feel like venturing down into the bowels of Hell on a suicide mission to save a woman when he was high on the Devil’s shit list himself. Everyone was looking for him, both up here and down there. The slightest mistake on his part and his former colleagues, the army of Hell’s angels belonging to the Devil, would be coming after him to haul his arse in for the crime of assisting Amelia and Marcus in their battle against the game.
“Please, Veiron?” Amelia whispered again and he couldn’t stand seeing the tears in her eyes. She had already been through hell because of this vicious game and had almost died by the hand of her lover, Marcus. She deserved to live, and so did he.
They all deserved some peace.
Veiron closed his eyes and huffed.
“Fine. I’ll take a trip to Hell,” he said and he could almost hear Amelia smile, could sense a glimmer of her relief and hear her heartbeat pick up.
“Thank you,” she said and he looked across the fire at her and shook his head. There was no reason to thank him.
He hadn’t promised that he would find her sister and bring her back in one piece.
He had only said that he would make the journey to Hell.
Whether it would be a one-way trip or not was yet to be seen.
It felt like a suicide mission to him.
CHAPTER 3
Erin sat with her back against the wall opposite the open side of her black rocky cell and stared into the hazy fiery distance, watching volcanic vents spewing lava high into the air and listening to the constant screams. She couldn’t remember if it was five days or twenty since the Devil had visited her, but it had been a long time since she had seen anyone.
The other two who had been with the Devil during his visit hadn’t come back to check on her. Someone slid a meal through a grate in the bottom of her door from time to time. She ate only the vegetables, unable to stomach the thought of eating more of the final unicorn in existence let alone the meat itself.
She could have been somewhere more comfortable if she had complied with the Devil’s desires.
He had told her that before storming out of the cell and slamming the door behind him, leaving her alone with the dismembered wings of the last creature who had dared to defy him.
She had felt sick, reliving the Devil ripping them from the demon’s back, whenever she saw them so she had gingerly dragged them to the open side of her cell and tossed them down into the fiery river far below.
She could have escaped this place if she had gone with him. Not the Devil, but the other one who had visited her. At first, she had thought it was the Devil. The man had flown up from the abyss on huge black feathered wings, his wild hair as dark as midnight and his eyes as golden as a hawk’s. The only items of clothing he had worn were a black loincloth covered by tattered age-worn strips of armour and boots that reached his knees and had gold-edged black moulded plates that completely covered his shins.
His sudden appearance had startled her and he had looked so much like the Devil that she had fled to the back of her cell and had done a double take. Only on closer inspection had she realised that this man was different. If it hadn’t been for the black wings, she would have thought him an angel. He had been handsome, but darkness had clung to him, a sense of evil in the twist of his lips as he smiled at her and told her that she could have her freedom if she came with him.
It had tempted her more than the Devil’s offer and she had almost considered placing her hand into the man’s and letting him take her away. Only that lingering sense that he was evil beyond words, as likely to murder her as he was save her, had kept her at the back of her cell. He had hovered near the open wall of her prison, beating his wings and using the rising heat to keep him close to stationary. When she had refused, Erin had expected him to enter her cell and force her to leave with him, but he had snorted, a feral sound that had made her jump, and then swooped out of sight.
She had been too scared to race forwards and see if he really was gone. She had sunk to her backside close to the door of her cell and stared out at the world beyond her prison, wondering what would have happened if she had gone with the stranger. Would he have freed her or would he have taken her to the Devil, or would he have killed her?
His reluctance to enter her cell and the wary glances he had given it had left her with the impression that he hadn’t been willing to breach it for some reason. He had wanted her to extend her hand to him, beyond the boundaries of her prison. That had led her to settle on the idea that if he had entered the cell, something would have happened. What, she didn’t know, and she didn’t care.
She would have her freedom somehow, but it wouldn’t be with the help of a man who had looked like some sort of demonic angel.
Erin rubbed her knees, idly trying to get rid of some of the layers of dirt from her bare skin. At least it was warm in Hell so her scant clothing wasn’t a problem. She laughed at herself, the sound loud and echoing around her cell, jarring with the endless screams that rose up from the abyss.
Was that where the Devil was right now? Too busy tormenting his victims to come and visit her and try to convince her to do as he had asked.
He had told her that she could have her freedom if she would cast aside her sentimentality and kill her sister. Her stomach rolled in response to that memory and she slammed her mind shut against it, unwilling to contemplate such a thing.
Erin buried her face in her knees and hugged them, tired right down to her bones and starving. The few morsels she ate whenever food came through the door weren’t enough to keep her going. Without eating the unicorn meat, she was slowly growing weaker, the effects of the few mouthfuls she’d had wearing off a little more each day. Her throat felt like sandpaper t
oo. The Devil clearly didn’t understand that the constant heat of his hellish realm was dehydrating her.
Then again, did he really care if she died?
She was bait. Whether she was alive or not didn’t matter. Or did it? He had been genuinely angry that she had been held captive for days on end without him knowing and without food or comfort. She could have had that comfort and all the food she could eat if she had only complied with him one way or the other. Play bait or do his work and kill her sister for him.
Erin wanted to do neither. She didn’t understand why the Devil wanted her sister but she didn’t want Amelia to come to Hell and try to save her. She would rather die here and rot in this cell than see her sister come to harm.
She shifted onto her knees, the rough basalt floor cutting into her dirty flesh, and pushed herself onto her feet. Her steps were unstable but she made it to the side wall of her prison and held onto it as she moved forwards, towards the edge.
Hot air blasted upwards from the inferno hundreds of feet below and almost knocked her backwards. It curled around her, blowing the fringe of her straight black hair upwards and stinging her eyes. She squinted and stared out at the unforgiving bleak landscape that stretched around her, all black rocky crags and flaming rivers. Huge black-skinned beasts roamed the land, their dragon-like wings furled against their backs and weapons in their hands. They tormented any smaller creature they passed, bullying it until it either escaped or gave up and cowered at their feet.
She had grown strangely used to the existence of this place and the creatures that dwelled within it, as though she had always known it was real and not the stuff of legend and myths.
Her gaze tracked the demons far below. Erin had watched the comings and goings of the creatures who guarded the prison, trying to figure them out and see if they had any weak spots. They didn’t. Nothing could stand up to them.
Nothing except the Devil at least.
She couldn’t see him amongst the creatures below her.
Erin leaned further forwards and assessed the ragged cliff face. She might have been able to make it down that way if she had been a champion rock-climber. She wasn’t. She was a weak, exhausted and sometimes scared woman who had never climbed anything bigger than a hill, let alone scaled a sheer rock face several hundred feet high.
The door opened behind her and Erin didn’t make the mistake of whirling to face the visitor this time.
She turned slowly, expecting to find either the Devil or one of his cronies come to torment her.
It was neither.
A bloodstained and beaten man wearing tight black jeans that emphasised the thickness of his thighs and a black t-shirt that stretched across the impressive hard cut breadth of his chest stood in the doorway.
He was holding a very big sword.
Erin swallowed.
Had he come to kill her?
She glanced back at the abyss below her feet. What would be a better and less painful death? Falling to this scarlet-haired man’s sword or plummeting into the volcanic river?
“Erin, I presume?” His deep voice wrapped around her and Erin couldn’t miss the concern that laced the weariness and irritation in it.
Erin looked back at him.
He slid the broadsword down his back and scrubbed his hand across several days’ worth of dark growth on his handsome face.
One good-looking man had fooled her already and it wasn’t going to happen again. This man was every bit as lethal, brutal and vicious as the Devil. It was there in his eyes and the way he held himself, legs spread in a warrior’s stance, ready for a fight.
He looked as though he had already been through several battles recently. Now that she looked closer, she spotted tears in his t-shirt that revealed startlingly enticing glimpses of hard packed muscles.
Erin dragged her gaze down to her own feet.
She must have lost it in the past few days. She had finally plunged into crazy, her mind frazzled by her captivity and being in Hell. She had to be insane to be ogling the man who had clearly come to kill her.
“Why don’t you just do it and get this over with?” she said, feeling a spark of defiance ignite in her chest. If she was going to die, she might as well go down fighting.
“Excuse me?” He frowned at her, a quizzical look filling his dark eyes. “Get what over with?”
“Killing me.”
His dark red eyebrows pinched together. “If you’re not Erin, I might.”
It was her turn to frown. “You don’t want to kill me?”
“Are you Erin?”
She nodded.
“Then I don’t want to kill you.” He stepped into her cell and she noted that he didn’t bother to stay close to the door. If she were entering a cell on a mission to save someone, she would certainly keep one foot in the door in case a bad guy came along and shut them both in. Did he have another means of escape if that happened? He raked dark eyes over her and she shivered under the heat of his gaze. “You are not what I was expecting.”
“Ditto,” she said and shrugged when he looked into her eyes, confusion lighting his again. “I was expecting the Devil to come back.”
“The snide little fucker actually paid you a visit in person?”
Erin frowned at how casually he badmouthed the Devil, as though he wasn’t afraid of him. She stared at the man, taking in his impressive height and build. He was taller than the Devil and much broader too, thick sinewy muscles visible beneath his tight clothing. His biceps were huge, so large she would struggle to wrap both of her hands around one arm. Her fingertips and thumbs wouldn’t touch if she tried. Matching black and red tribal tattoos curled around those biceps, a tantalising peek of a larger design that disappeared under the sleeves of his t-shirt.
Erin found herself wanting to strip his top off to see the rest of it.
She really had lost her mind.
“Are you alright?” He frowned again.
“Just a little brain damage,” she said, trying to make light of everything.
He crossed the black floor and stopped before her, towering close to a foot over her, his immense body overshadowing hers and making her feel tiny. He slid one large hand along the line of her jaw, tilted her head back, and stared down into her eyes.
Erin swallowed. It should be illegal for a man to be so handsome yet so lethal-looking. He screamed danger but she wasn’t quaking under his touch because of it. It was a whole other feeling that had her trembling.
“You don’t look crazy,” he whispered and she added his sultry low voice to the list of reasons someone should stamp him with the words ‘dangerous’ and ‘forbidden’. “Now... all opposed to being rescued, raise your hands, otherwise, I’d like to get the fuck out of here.”
Erin didn’t argue, not even when he clamped one strong large hand around her slender wrist and drew the broadsword strapped to his back with the other. She stared at the open door, battling a flood of emotions that threatened to sweep her under. Freedom. This man was here to save her. It was too sweet and glorious to believe. It had to be a cruel trick, another form of torture to break her.
She didn’t have much time to take in what was really happening when he pulled her over the threshold and into a long black corridor that ran between the cells. Before she could even glance back at the cell that had been her home for God only knew how many days, he was dragging her along the hallway.
“Can you run?” He glanced over his broad shoulders at her and didn’t give her a chance to respond before he started at a pace.
Erin tried to keep up. The prospect of actually surviving and escaping Hell flooded her with adrenaline that had her bare feet moving but she couldn’t match his long strides. A bright flash blinded her but it didn’t slow her companion. He kept running. They passed a large open room and she turned her head in time to see several dead bodies strewn across a floor slick with blood. More flashes lit the darkness and with each one, a body disappeared.
They looked like humans. Had the
man killed them to reach her? What was that light and why were they disappearing?
She started to ask but her gaze settled on the hard angles of his profile and the stern set of his jaw and she thought better of it. This man was her ticket out of Hell and she wasn’t about to piss him off, not when she had the impression that he was quite content with killing.
Erin pounded along the black-walled corridor beside him, her legs beginning to tire and each step jarring her bones and sending pain shooting across the soles of her feet. She lost her footing on one of the sets of steps that led downwards and almost fell. The man’s hand on her wrist stopped her. He pulled her up by her arm as though she was nothing but a ragdoll in his hands, suspending her off the ground for a second before setting her down again.
“You are weak,” he said and she bristled at the double meaning in his words. He wasn’t just saying she was weak from her captivity, but that he thought she was weak period.
Erin snatched her wrist free of his grasp and rubbed it. She turned her nose up and stormed ahead of him, feeling crazy for taking the lead when she didn’t know where she was going and she didn’t have a weapon, or the knowledge of how to wield one. She couldn’t let him think she was weak though.
He followed behind her, a dark shadow barely a few feet from her, his footsteps almost silent.
They reached a split in the corridor and Erin paused. Neither of the avenues she could take looked inviting. Both were pitch-black and voices came from one. Or was it the other? Everything echoed in the corridors and it was hard to distinguish which would lead her to a grisly death and which would lead her to freedom.
She chose the right.
The man grabbed her around the waist from behind, twisted her in his arm, and slung her over his shoulder.
Erin struggled and his arm tightened against her back, causing his thick shoulder to press into her stomach. Her organs protested, sharp pain lancing each one.
“You’ll fall off. I need to move fast and you’re slowing me down.”
Well, that was just rude. Erin punched his backside. God, it was like a rock. She almost purred. Could this man get any smexier?
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 35