That smile died when a brunet male rounded the corner ahead of her. He carried a silver tray with a domed cover on it, and she stared at the reflection in it, unable to believe her eyes, and then glanced at the man.
He looked perfectly normal as he stood before her, dressed in a black suit similar to the one Lucifer wore.
She looked back down at the cloche.
Slowly shook her head.
In the reflection on it, he wore something that resembled black armour over his broad chest, his arms left bare above the elbow, but encased in black guards around his forearms.
Nina backed off a step and flicked another glance at the man.
A thousand hot needles pierced her skull and she grunted as she clutched it, pressing her hands hard against her temples. Tears filled her eyes as she fought to breathe, but she gave up when the suit the man wore disappeared and he stood before her dressed in armour that covered his chest, hips, shins and forearms. What the heck?
She cried out as the pain in her head grew more intense and her eyes widened in horror as huge crimson wings sprouted from the man’s back.
Like an angel.
The hallway twirled around her and she staggered to her right, hit the wall there and crashed to the ground. Images flashed through her mind, whirling together and then separating to reveal them. Her stomach turned as she caught individual ones long enough to make sense of them. The fortress. Lucifer’s powers. The angel before her. His eyes burned red.
As red as Lucifer’s had.
Shadow wings.
A terrible power that she couldn’t comprehend.
The black lands beyond the barrier.
How charming and dangerous he seemed.
Nina clutched her stomach as sickness brewed in it, dread pooling there as she realised who he was and where she was. She had to escape. Her skin prickled, fiercest down the line of her spine, and an urgent needed blasted through her, overpowering the quieter voice that pressed her to find Lucifer and discover what was happening.
She wanted to know, and this was her chance, but she was afraid.
She feared everything she felt for him, everything she had felt while she had been with him, had been a lie.
That word echoed in her head, hissed on repeat, urging her onto her feet. Lies. He had lied to her. She had to get away. She had to flee.
No, she didn’t want to run.
The urge grew stronger, overwhelming her, and she was running before she knew it, bolting down the corridor in a blind dash for freedom.
Freedom from what?
Her heart screamed that Lucifer would never hurt her. He had protected her. He had taken care of her.
Her head shrieked at her to keep running. Lies. All of it. Lucifer was the prince of lies. The sower of discord.
The Devil.
She grunted and held her head harder as she saw flashes of him with great black wings and she zoomed around him, coming to see his back.
Those wings sprouted from the place where she knew scars to be.
He was a liar. He was using her. She had to escape now, before he returned.
Before it was too late.
That need drove her to keep running, even as her heart tried to rebel and make her stop. Whenever she thought about stopping, the pain in her head grew stronger, turning her thoughts hazy and allowing more images to invade her mind. Every charming smile Lucifer had given her. Every time he had asked her about the man who had taken her. Every moment when he had been watching her with coldness in his eyes.
They all crashed together until she saw one final image.
Lucifer standing before her while she struggled to remember the man who had kidnapped her.
And with blinding clarity she knew that he had pushed her in that moment, he had driven her to remember.
He had used his powers against her.
Nina screamed and sprinted down the stairs in the towering entrance hall. The moment she hit the ground floor, she broke right, heading for the enormous twin doors. They opened for her and she rushed through them, and skidded to a halt, her breath leaving her in a gasp.
Black spires of rock rose in a curve around an obsidian courtyard under a pitch-dark sky. Beyond those spires, cragged grim land reigned, and in the distance rose a plateau. Light shone there, pure and warm.
Light that drew her towards it and filled her with a desperate need to reach it, because every instinct she possessed said that she would escape this hell if she made it there.
Nina ran towards it, her sneakers pounding the smooth pavement.
Screams rose around her, garbled cries that turned her stomach and chilled her to her bones. She kept running, pushing herself beyond her limit, unable to heed the part of her that told her to slow down and even stop. She had to keep running. Lucifer was a liar.
The Devil.
A heartless, merciless, and cold being.
It had all been a lie.
Nina’s head turned foggy and she nodded, agreeing with everything that was running through her mind, even when a piece of her screamed not to listen. She scaled the rocks at the opposite end of the courtyard to the fortress, clambered between two of the gigantic spires, and lost her footing. She slid down the slope on the other side, hit the ground hard and rolled, grunting as the small stones and rocks lashed at her.
The air was too thick to breathe, the stench making her gag as she pushed herself up and wearily found her feet. She had to keep running.
Her eyes sought the light again.
She had to reach there.
It called to her.
It filled her heart with sweet promises and she was powerless to ignore them.
Nina kept running, her mind growing numb but her body seemingly alive, able to function without her brain working it. Her feet carried her straight towards a winding path that led up to the plateau without her even noticing it. Her eyes were fixed on the light above her, never straying from it. She couldn’t bring herself to look away from it. She had to keep looking at it.
She had to reach it.
Her breath sawed from her burning lungs as she finally reached the plateau and the bright golden light.
It was so strong that it stung her eyes and blinded her, and she raised her hand to shield them.
“You do not belong here.” A soft melodious male voice curled around her and the light faded enough that she could lower her hand and seek the owner of it.
A man stood before her, his white hair tied in a ponytail and his blue eyes filled with warmth that beckoned her to him.
An angel.
White wings furled against his back and he held his hand out to her.
“I will take you home.”
Nina reached for him and, despite the distance that was between them, her hand slipped into his as if he had been standing only inches from her.
She looked up at his handsome face and blinked slowly.
This was wrong.
She had to speak with Lucifer. She didn’t want to leave him.
The angel’s eyes brightened, darker flakes swirling among the paler blue, and her head felt heavy again.
“Come with me.”
She nodded and stepped closer to him when he drew his arm back. He wrapped his other arm around her and she looked up into his eyes, drifting in them among the incredible blue, hazy from head to toe.
“I will see to it that you are safe and that the vile creature has not harmed you, and can never harm you again.”
Nina frowned at that, something buried deep inside her warning her that she wasn’t safe with this man, she was only safe with Lucifer. That fleeting feeling melted away as the man spread his beautiful wings and beat them. She had to go with him.
“The Devil is a cruel and vicious beast. He has used you ill. He has spread his lies like poison through you. You will be safe now.”
Nina nodded. She would be safe.
The light engulfed them and when it receded, she found herself standing in the middle of her small Lon
don apartment. The heaviness in her mind began to lift, the fog parting, and she gently broke free of the angel’s arms. She staggered back a few steps, placing some distance between them, and looked around her and then at him.
“Remain here. You will be safe in this place. The Devil will no longer be able to reach you.” The angel closed the distance between them and brushed his fingers across her cheek, and Nina shuddered and withdrew, a cold sensation running through her, born of his touch. He smiled. “The Devil will no longer be able to hurt you.”
But he hadn’t hurt her.
He had been kind, tender even, and had taken care of her.
The angel locked eyes with her again and her head hurt, flashes of Lucifer with cold eyes filling it.
She pushed back against them and looked at the angel.
There was something familiar about him, something that triggered a hazy sense that she shouldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone. Everyone had toyed with her to a degree. Lucifer.
The angels.
Her eyes widened.
The man who had taken her had been an angel.
Nina’s knees gave out and she hit the wooden floor with a crack.
The angel went to crouch and she held her hands out, warning him away.
“I just need to rest,” she muttered to his knees. “I need to sleep. If you don’t mind?”
She lifted her eyes to meet his and he nodded, his ponytail shifting with it.
Long hair.
Dread pooled in her stomach again, heavier this time, sickening her.
She didn’t remember how she had ended up in Hell, but something warned her that this man had been involved. He hadn’t just happened to be on that plateau either, with that beam of light that had lured her to it. He had been waiting for her.
If Lucifer had indeed played her, manipulated her mind and used her, then this angel had done infinitely worse to her.
He had stolen her from her world, dumped her with the Devil, and had then lured her back to him. Why?
He towered over her, his eyes colder now that she was afraid of him and was regaining her senses. His white wings rose above his broad shoulders, his black breastplate shifting with each steady breath he drew. She felt colder the longer she looked up at him, fear bubbling up inside her. She had to make him leave.
“If you don’t mind?” she said again, putting more force into her words this time.
The angel regarded her for a few long seconds in which her heart raced and her palms sweated, her fear growing stronger until she could scarcely breathe, and then nodded.
He backed off a step and bright light burst into the room, blinding her. When her vision came back, he was gone.
Relief crashed over her and she sank forwards, curling into a ball.
How was it that she had felt threatened and in danger around an angel, yet she had felt safe with Lucifer?
Nina rolled onto her side and hugged her knees.
She wasn’t sure what was happening, or whether she had simply gone insane, and she wasn’t sure that she would ever know, because deep in her heart she knew that only one man could give her the answers to her questions.
Nina pressed her hand to the floor, reaching down through the levels of the building and beyond, to where she imagined Hell to be.
A man she felt certain she would never see again.
The Devil.
CHAPTER 12
Lucifer lifted his head and scoured the horizon as a sensation of power ran through him. His golden gaze halted on the plateau and the bright shaft of light illuminating Hell there.
His eyes darted to his fortress and darkness swallowed the land around him before separating to reveal the courtyard and the twin doors towering before him.
They were open.
His heart lurched in his chest and he sprinted into the building, his power reaching outwards, stretching invisible fingers through the castle as he searched for Nina.
A cold shiver ran down his spine and he turned back towards the door in time to see the light on the plateau stutter and die.
His breath left him in a rush and he could only stare at the dark plateau, ice stealing through his veins as his heart throbbed madly behind his breast.
“No,” he uttered and shook his head, refusing to believe that she had left him.
He growled and whirled back to face the vestibule and the floating staircases. Black shadows streamed from his fingers as he raised his hands and ribbons of darkness furled outwards, splitting and multiplying as they scoured the castle. Nina was still here. She wouldn’t have left him.
He had made sure of that. He had taken steps to ensure she wouldn’t discover where she was. The main doors had been locked to her. His men under orders to conceal their true appearance should she venture from her room.
“No,” he snarled as his shadows reached the top of the tallest of the towers and he realised she wasn’t anywhere within the fortress.
The valley.
Lucifer teleported to her room and didn’t hesitate. He ran straight to the corridor that would take him to the valley and sprinted down it, his shoes loud on the cobbled floor and his heightened vision revealing the black tunnel to him without need for light to guide him.
He didn’t stop running until he hit the invisible barrier at the end.
He pressed his palms to it and tried to reach through it with his shadows, but the light drove them back, the boundaries of his imprisonment stopping them from seeking Nina.
“Nina!” Lucifer banged his fists against the barrier, sure that she would hear him if she was in the valley.
He bellowed her name at the top of his lungs until he was hoarse and the sky in the valley had turned black, heavy clouds rolling in to pelt the land with hail the size of his clenched fists. Lightning forked the sky and he clawed at the barrier, his long black nails raking down it as he breathed hard. The river surged, the boiling water crashing over the wooden bridge and carrying it away.
Snow cracked on the mountaintops with a boom and tumbled downwards, picking up speed as it thundered towards the valley. The air filled with the groans and snapping of the trees as the avalanche ploughed through them, ripping them from the hillside.
Lucifer snarled and his wings burst from his back, his short obsidian horns emerging and protruding through his black hair as they grew, flaring forwards from behind his ears to beyond his temples.
He bared his fangs as his eyes blazed crimson and lightning struck the highest peak.
Stone exploded and rained down on the valley, huge chunks of it carving up the earth and the grass. A massive boulder bounced off the peak of the hill and hit the fortress, shaking the walls.
“Nina,” Lucifer whispered and pressed his palms to the barrier, his heart on fire and burning with a need to see her.
He needed her back.
He closed his eyes, lowered his head and teleported back to the entrance hall of the fortress.
He wasn’t alone.
Lucifer lifted his head and pinned deadly crimson eyes on the wretched creature standing opposite him.
One of his men.
The larger male shifted foot-to-foot, his skin paling as he looked at Lucifer.
Not because he was witnessing a side of Lucifer that he worked hard to keep hidden—his true appearance.
The male feared because he knew why Lucifer was angry.
He knew Nina was gone.
Lucifer roared at him, every single one of his teeth sharpening into vicious points. The male stumbled backwards, hit the wall near the door rather than the space he had clearly aimed for in an attempt to flee, and quickly held his hands up.
“I did nothing wrong, Master.” The male fell to his knees and lowered his head.
The bastard should beg for his life.
Lucifer raised his hand, ready to strike him down and send him back to Heaven for what he had done. He had frightened Nina away. Lucifer knew it. The imbecile had been careless and she had seen him for what he was.
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“I was bringing her food as you requested, Master,” the male stammered into his knees and then dared to raise his head and look directly at him. Lucifer sneered and flexed his fingers, and the male flinched away and rushed out, “My wings were concealed! I didn’t break the rules. I swear it. When she saw me, she became pained. She had some sort of episode and I tried to help her. I tried to stop her.”
Lucifer lowered his hand on hearing that and the male whimpered, curling into himself, obviously anticipating death.
He stared at the male, sifting through his memories until he found the one he wanted.
Lucifer flexed his clawed fingers. He hadn’t lied. The male had hidden himself, using a glamour to alter his appearance, and his wings had not been out.
Nina had seen through the spell somehow.
There was only one way that was possible.
Mihail had done something to her that Lucifer had failed to detect. He had altered her memories and implanted something in her, something that had been triggered on seeing someone other than Lucifer, allowing her to witness the Hell’s angel in his true appearance and granting her the ability to leave the fortress.
Lucifer still wasn’t sure what her orders had been, but he knew one thing.
He couldn’t let her go.
He needed her back.
The space she had filled inside his chest was already hollowing out again, turning blacker than before, and now he didn’t want to return to how things had been. He didn’t want to be without her, even when he knew that he didn’t deserve her.
Even when he felt certain she could never love a monster like him.
Lucifer slowly walked towards the Hell’s angel, who cowered as he approached, and then beyond him, out onto the steps of his fortress.
He stared across the distance to the plateau, rage burning in his heart as his shadow wings fluttered from his back, itching for him to take flight and decimate the forces of Heaven who stood guard there.
But his enemy was not here.
Mihail was gone, and had taken Nina with him.
Lucifer had failed to protect her from the angel.
He tipped his head back and looked at the cragged ceiling of Hell.
But he wouldn’t fail to take her back.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 156