As she approached, they pleaded her to help them. Veiron strolled right past them without even sparing them a glance. How could he be so unfeeling? He didn’t even break his stride.
She couldn’t ignore their cries.
Erin reached for one of them.
Veiron’s hand snapped around her wrist and yanked it back.
“Don’t,” he growled.
“But they’re scared and starving! I can’t let them just die here.” She wrenched her arm free of his grip and stood up to him. It was hard to intimidate a man who stood over a foot taller and around two feet wider than she was, but she wouldn’t let that stop her from trying.
“You damn well can because they’re starving all right, and if you open those cages, it will be you on the menu.” Veiron grabbed her upper arm and pulled her against his hard body, so her back pressed against his front.
Erin looked down into their dull eyes. “They’re demons?”
“One of the nastier kinds,” he murmured close to her ear, sending a shiver through her limbs. She barely resisted the temptation to lean back into his torso so she could feel his skin on hers.
Veiron launched a heavy boot at one of the cages, rattling it with a hard kick. The woman in it changed, brown-orange scales erupting across her flesh and her eyes burning blue as she hissed at him.
The creature spoke, lisping a language Erin didn’t understand through sharp teeth and with a forked tongue.
Veiron seemed to know it. He grunted, shrugged and levelled another swift kick at the cage.
“Tell him that if he listens to you,” he snarled and tugged on Erin’s hand, dragging her along behind him. “We have to keep moving. It isn’t safe here.”
Erin wasn’t about to argue but she didn’t understand Veiron’s sudden haste. The bruising grip he retained on her arm and the pace of his strides had her almost falling with each painful step she managed.
“I need to rest,” she said and he turned dark eyes on her.
“We can’t. Not now. Not here.”
“Because of that thing?” She hadn’t been born yesterday. “She’s going to tell the Devil, isn’t she?”
“The bastard won’t listen to her. She would need to escape that cage and reach the bottomless pit first. The Devil’s men would rip her apart before she even laid eyes on the old git.”
“Those horrible black demons with the red fangs and eyes?” She shuddered from the memory of them. “I never want to see another one of those bastards again in my life.”
Veiron suddenly released her arm and prowled on at a faster pace, heading up an incline. Erin tried to keep up but he was moving too quickly and her feet were killing her. Each step sent fire burning across her soles and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep going without a rest.
“Veiron?” she said but he didn’t stop. He kept going, the gap between them gradually growing, until he was more than one hundred feet ahead of her and she began to feel exposed and scared again.
Erin held herself and kept hobbling on, tears stinging her eyes. Her gaze darted around and she swore she could feel eyes on her, following her. She shivered, cold to the bone with fear, and her heart rushed in her ears.
“Veiron?” She tried again and he still didn’t acknowledge her.
He disappeared over the brow of the hill. Erin panicked.
She ran despite the fire that licked her feet and the pain that jolted her bones with each step. The land beyond the hill came into view as she neared the brow and she slowed when she saw Veiron standing there, his back to her and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
The hill ended abruptly, as though someone had carved away the other half of it. It dropped off into a valley over a hundred feet below her. Bright, boiling fire filled the world as far as her eyes could see.
“We will have to go around,” Veiron said, voice deceptively calm and emotionless.
She could easily fool herself into believing that he had just gone on ahead to scout what waited on the other side of the incline but she wasn’t that sort of woman. He had intended to leave her. She had put her foot in it again. Was it because she had placed them in danger by trying to free those creatures?
“I wish there was an easier way.” Veiron looked down at her but she kept her gaze on the brutal landscape. There wasn’t even a path. It was endless fire. “Hell is ever-changing. A few days ago, we could have passed through this way. There is nothing I can do to make this journey easier on you... if I use my powers, they will know that I am here. With that demon wailing about you, it won’t take the Devil long to figure out that you’re missing and that you’re with me.”
“What sort of powers?” She glanced at him.
He grunted and turned away. “We can follow the ridge and rest up ahead. Can you manage it, or are you going to swallow that pride of yours and let me help you?”
She would rather he answered her questions and stopped evading them.
“I’m fine,” Erin said instead and began walking again, trying not to wince with each step so he had no reason to call her stubborn and force her to let him carry her. As much as she wanted to be in his arms, she didn’t enjoy the prospect of being slung over his shoulder again, and his current mood said he would be carrying her that way or no way at all.
Two hundred yards down the rocky path, Veiron shocked her by speaking.
“I could teleport you out of this place,” he said without looking at her. “I could materialise you boots so you didn’t have to hurt your feet and clothes so you felt more comfortable. I could even produce some viable source of nourishment or perhaps even water if I focused enough... although I am not sure how good it would taste. I could do a lot of things, but the moment I use a fraction of my power, everyone will know where we are.”
That wasn’t so hard now, was it? Erin sighed and wished that he could do all that for her too, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If Veiron not using his powers kept them off the radar of the locals and allowed them to get out of Hell unscathed, then she wasn’t going to complain. She touched his left wrist and he looked at her. He had told her a little about himself and she was grateful, because she knew that he had a good heart underneath his hard lethal exterior. He had used her to illustrate his powers and that told her that he cared about her condition and he wanted to alleviate her pain. She couldn’t let him use his powers, but she could let him use his strength.
“Can you carry me now?” she said and his look softened and he nodded.
Sparks of nerves danced in her stomach when he opened his thickly muscled arms to her, bent at the knee and wrapped them around her. He didn’t sling her over his shoulder.
He lifted her in one arm and slid the other beneath the crook of her knees, carrying her like a princess in a fairytale.
Erin leaned her head against his bare shoulder. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “We’ll be somewhere safe soon. Get some shut eye and I’ll wake you when we reach it.”
Erin thought she was too wired to sleep, too alert to the dangers around her, but the moment she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of Veiron’s smell of aftershave, dirt and heat, a wave of fatigue crashed over her and the world faded away. She felt so safe in his strong arms.
CHAPTER 6
Carrying Erin like this was a mistake. A grand fucking one.
Veiron stared down at her where she lay with her head nestled so sweetly against his shoulder, face soft with sleep and beautiful despite the smudges of dirt.
He should have tossed her over his shoulder. Like this, she was a temptation, so innocent and fragile in appearance, calling to his dark need to protect her. God pity anything that crossed his path while he was holding her like a sleeping babe in his arms. He would tear them asunder with his powers regardless of the fact it would light up his position like a beacon in the Devil’s mind.
He would kill without mercy to protect this delicate impish beauty.
They reached the place where he intended to rest wit
h her and he was relieved to see that the area was intact, unaffected by the recent changes in the landscape of Hell.
He wasn’t pleased about something though.
He didn’t want to put Erin down or have to wake her. She had fallen asleep in under a second and clearly needed the rest. He had felt the change in her heartbeat and heard the switch in her breathing the moment her head had hit his chest.
How long had it been since she had last slept?
When was the last time she had felt safe enough to let down her guard like this?
It touched him that she trusted him, even after what she had said. Her words had cut him to the bone and he should heed them as the warning they were, that things wouldn’t end well for him if he didn’t start reining in the dangerous desires she stirred in him and forgot about her. She hated his breed.
Despised him without knowing it.
She never wanted to see another of his bastard kind. He could easily imagine the horror that would show in her eyes if she ever saw him in his true demonic form, and it was something he never wanted to witness.
It didn’t matter that he was the one holding her now, protecting her from the cruelty around her, guiding her safely back to her sister. She would forget all that in a heartbeat, in the time it took for her to realise that he was the same as those bastards that had taken her from her home and cast her into this nightmare.
His heart ached.
If he had ever needed a reason for keeping his distance from her, this was it. Scratch his need for revenge and his mission. It was the thought of her looking upon him with hatred blazing in her beautiful amber eyes that had him emotionally taking a step back and closing himself off to her.
Veiron set her none too gently down on her feet, the action jolting her awake. She murmured and looked up at him with sleepy eyes.
“We’re here,” he said gruffly and didn’t wait for her to fully wake before he hit the severe slope that ran into the fiery valley below.
He skidded down and dug his heels in to stop himself from going too far and passing the small outcrop of rocks that hid a small cave.
“Come on.” He held his hand out to her but she looked wary, eyeing the slope with fear.
Veiron started to lose patience as she shifted at the edge of the path above him, uncertainty written in her eyes. She nibbled her lip and edged her right foot forward.
It slipped.
Erin screamed and skidded down the slope towards him, arms flailing wildly. His heart pounded, adrenaline flooding his veins, released by the thought of missing her and seeing her tumble into the flames far below. He would never let that happen. He launched both hands at her as she came close, missing her with one and snagging her wrist with the other.
She kept screaming even when her backside hit the rocky slope and she stopped moving.
Veiron hauled her up to him and she quieted. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
She trembled against him, hands clutching his shoulders, her breathing fast and shaky. He wrapped one arm around her and held her until her shaking subsided and her grip loosened. When she was close to calm again, he lifted her onto the small ledge beside him and followed her onto it. He motioned towards the cave.
It wasn’t large, barely big enough for two people to crawl into and sit up without banging their heads, but it was safe. No creature would cross the fields of lava below them, unless they wanted their wings singed, and the rocks shielded them from view from the path above.
Erin crawled into the dark cramped cave and settled near the back. Veiron caught her fearful glance at the edge of the small ledge that separated her from a long drop to a fiery death and settled himself at the mouth of the cave, his back against one curved wall and his legs stretched across to the other. The sight of him there, blocking her fall, seemed to calm her.
He could understand her nerves. She had spent the past few weeks in a cell with only three walls and a very long fall to one of the primary rivers of Hell. The poor woman would probably spend the rest of her life afraid of high places where she felt she could fall.
“You can sleep,” he said.
“What about you?” Her voice was soft in the low-lit cave.
Veiron shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye on things here, and on you. You’ll be safe here, Erin, and you need your rest. Once I feel you’ve rested enough, we’ll continue. It’s only another day’s march from here to the gate.”
Her eyes didn’t brighten at that bit of news.
Erin pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I have nightmares when I sleep.”
He found that both difficult and easy to believe. She had been through a lot and seen things that would haunt her forever, but she hadn’t shown any sign that she had been having a nightmare when sleeping in his arms.
“I’ll keep the demons out of them too.”
She smiled. “I’m not five. I doubt you can keep my nightmares away. If you can, and it’s another power of yours, I wish you had been around my whole life.”
“Why?”
She lowered her chin and rested it on her knees, and looked up at him through her fringe. He had thought she had looked small and fragile when sleeping in his arms. He had been wrong. The way she had curled up and was holding herself, the tone of her voice, and the trace of fear in her eyes all combined to leave her looking vulnerable, and it made him want to pull her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her. Not just because he wanted to protect her, but because he knew she was letting him see this side of her, that she wasn’t this unguarded with her fears and her feelings around others, and it touched him. A kindred spirit. He hadn’t realised how strongly she felt things and that she guarded her heart as fiercely as he guarded his.
Her eyes met his, open and honest, speaking to his tainted soul. “I’ve always had horrible dreams... the things I see... my parents even had me tested once to put all our minds at rest.”
Veiron leaned towards her in the cramped cave, reached over with his right hand and brushed the black lengths of her hair from her face, hoping to comfort her. “What sort of things do you see?”
“Places like this sometimes... only worse. Horrible things that I don’t want to speak about.” She looked away and then closed her eyes.
“You didn’t have a nightmare when you were in my arms.” He wasn’t sure why he put that one out there. Tormenting himself? He was the big bad hero who chased away Erin’s nightmares and made everything right. Her knight in tarnished armour. Yeah, right. It didn’t matter what he did, or how alike they were beneath the surface. As soon as she realised he was one of those bastards she hated so much, it would be game over and goodbye Veiron. Kill it before it started. It was the only way to save himself.
“I didn’t. Can I sleep next to you?”
“Sure.” Way to resist and keep that all necessary distance between them. What was it about this woman that had him going against his better judgement? It was more than her beauty and how similar they were to each other. It ran deeper than that.
Erin moved closer, flashed him a tired but grateful smile, and settled on her side with her head on his thigh. Hell. He warned the part of his anatomy that she had chosen to snuggle up right next to not to get ideas. Those dirty thoughts spinning out of control in his mind were not going to happen.
Do not touch her. Do not lay a hand on that smooth but dirty slender arm of hers and stroke it to see if her skin feels as soft as it looks. Do not.
Veiron ran his fingers along the length of her arm.
“Veiron,” she whispered, his name like ambrosia to his aching soul as it fell softly from her lips. “I can’t sleep. Talk to me.”
“What about?” Any subject but himself. Keep it professional. Keep some distance. Any subject but himself.
“About you.”
“Sure.” Fuck. Why didn’t he just smash his fist through his ribcage and tear out his heart right now to save himself the inevitable pain in his future?
“Are you
fallen?”
He grimaced.
“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.” She tipped her head up, rolling slightly onto her back so she was looking at him. “Tell me if I’m being too nosy.”
He didn’t want to answer it, and she damn well was being too nosy.
“I am,” he said rather than refusing her and wished she would go to sleep. He shouldn’t have woken her. He should have tried to carry her down the slope. He might have made it to the ledge even with her extra weight rather than tumbling into a volcanic abyss.
Veiron looked down at the bubbling flame-filled plain below. Fiery painful death was beginning to look good but dying was off the menu. Not going to happen. Death meant rebirth, and rebirth meant a return to Heaven and forgetting everything until he fell again.
“Did they cut off your wings?” She glanced away when his gaze darted to meet hers. “You don’t have to answer that.”
If he didn’t have to answer any of these questions, then she should stop asking them and just go to sleep.
“How do you know my sister?”
Evidently, she had taken his silence to mean he wasn’t answering any questions about wings. If she knew he still had wings, she would ask what they looked like, and then it was a small leap to realising just what sort of creature’s thigh she was using as a pillow.
“We had a problem in common. I helped her and Marcus deal with it.”
“Is Marcus an angel too?”
“Of sorts.”
She smiled. “Are all angels of sorts? You say that every time. You don’t like to talk about angels, do you?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t his favourite topic. Just the word had his hatred bubbling to the surface and awakened his desire to unleash every drop of his rage on Heaven and Hell.
“Do angels wear robes and fly around Heaven playing harps and singing?”
Veiron laughed. “Fuck, no. We wear armour and fly around carrying out our master’s wishes with angelic weapons... and those missions often entail spilling blood in copious quantities.”
“Like warriors?” She was starting to sound sleepy.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 38