Lucifer's eyes burned as he stared back at me. "I already gave him a second chance once. I won't do it again. Not this time."
"We're his parents! It's our job to give him a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, until we finally bring him back to us!" I was so angry and frustrated that darkness I didn't know how to control lashed out at Lucifer, making him lurch back in surprise. It disappeared an instant later, so fast it made me wonder if I was seeing things.
"What was that?" Lucifer asked, his brow furrowing. "Did you just use darkness?"
"I don't know!" Rising to my feet, I shot him my most scathing glare. "All I know is that I won't be staying with you tonight."
I stalked out of the room before he could say anything further and before I needed to slow down and think about what I’d just done. My hands were trembling and I stumbled forward, nearly running into Einial, who was carrying some clothes and a towel with her.
She regained her balance quickly. "Oh! I was just bringing these to your suite."
"Thank you." I glanced back at the door I'd just slammed behind me. “But I’ll be needing my own room now.”
* * *
When I opened my eyes the next morning, Zel was on the foot of my bed playing on her phone.
“Morning,” I said groggily, no longer surprised by anything she did.
“Come fight.” She slipped her phone away, but I couldn’t see where to in one of her usual skin-tight, leather outfits. It was more straps and cross-crosses than anything else. “I’m bored.”
Somehow I doubted it was boredom that had brought her here. Like me, she'd been through an ordeal, and Azazel often got out her emotions by punching things.
"All right." The thought of fighting appealed to me more than I expected. Maybe I had some shit to work off too.
She leaped to her feet with a triumphant grin. “Hurry and get dressed. I'll meet you outside.”
I was pleased to see that Einial had brought me more clothes, including some that were suitable for exercising in. Samael's new assistant seemed to be well on top of things.
Ten minutes later, we were on the back lawn. I eyed Zel as she went through some warm-up moves, looking beautiful and deadly. She stretched in the fine drizzle that seemed to keep the air at one hundred percent cold humidity. I glanced up at the gray clouds that seemed to be a permanent fixture in the sky. I’d never seen such a gloomy place. As I warmed up, the damp soon permeated my clothes, and I was glad I’d tied my hair back—it would have been a ball of frizz, otherwise.
It suddenly began raining and Zel stretched her arms to the sky and cackled. “Yes! Bring it on!”
It was official. She might have lost her damn mind. I hugged my arms around myself, already soaked and shivering. "You're enjoying this weather?"
"I love it. It's so nice to be back here instead of hot, dry Las Vegas." She threw me some side-eye. “You know, as Lenore, you loved this weather too.”
That made sense, since I'd been a Fallen then. But angels tended to want to live in warm, sunny locations, and I was no exception. I shivered and rubbed my arms. If only Einial had prepared for this and gotten me a thicker jacket to wear. Hell, any jacket. She must have forgotten I wasn't a Fallen too.
“Come on.” Zel jerked her head to a large expanse of lawn under the cover of some tall, sprawling trees. “The sooner you start moving, the sooner you’ll warm up."
I huffed and headed over, knowing she was right. I couldn’t just stand around waiting for the sun to appear. Right now, it didn’t even feel like England got a turn with the sun—like the sun had rolled over in bed rather than bothering to rise.
We launched into our usual combat routine, as we'd done during our other training sessions, before we'd been kidnapped. Moving did warm me up, and it helped me burn off some of the stress of the past few days too. Things started to feel almost normal again.
As we sparred, my mind drifted to my time here as Lenore, when I'd trained with Zel just like this. Zel and that other woman with the red hair.
I dodged a quick jab and twisted away and spun back. “Being here brings back a lot of memories. I keep seeing another woman with you in them. A woman with red hair.” I ducked Zel’s swinging fist and moved to counter it. “What happened to her?”
Azazel froze, her hands lowering from their defensive position, and my blow hit her right in the face. Harder than I'd planned, because I never thought my punch would actually land.
She staggered back and spat, her bright red blood hitting the ground between us. “What the fuck, Hannah?"
"Sorry, I didn't mean to—"
“Why would you bring that up?” She rubbed her palm roughly over her jaw, muttering a sentence where I caught nothing but the last couple of words. “Stupid angel.”
I watched her, realizing I'd hit a nerve. I didn't want to upset her further, but I also sensed this was something important, something I should know. Azazel was my best friend, I now understood. Not just in this lifetime, but in all of them, going back all the way to Eve. If there was some pain in her past, I wanted to be able to help her through it.
“Zel,” I said, moving closer to my friend, my voice softening. “What happened?”
“Shut up.” Her voice was cold and hard, and her face looked really pissed now. Her anger masked her pain, but it didn’t conceal it completely. Not from me, anyway. “Her name was Veslea. She was my fated mate. Like Lucifer is to you.”
“She was a shifter,” I whispered. As soon as I heard the name, more came back to me. “A hawk. She worked for Lucifer during the Great War. No, that's not right. She worked for me.” She was my scout. My spy. My messenger. The person I trusted most, other than Azazel.
“Yeah, thanks for the reminder. You don’t have to regurgitate memories for me as they occur to you.” Zel half turned away, and when she spoke again, her voice was smaller. “Veslea was killed by an angel not long after you—Lenore—died."
A wave of grief washed over me, and I gripped Zel’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
She didn't shake me off, but nodded a little at my words.
“You thought Lenore was killed by an angel, too, didn’t you?” I asked, fitting all the pieces together. This was why Zel hated angels so much. It made total sense now. It probably explained a lot of her attitude too, including why she'd been so rude to me at first. Imagine if you'd lost your mate, and your best friend kept dying on you, leaving you alone. How hard it must be to get close to anyone after that, fearing they might leave you next.
“Yeah, I didn’t know it was Adam until Gadreel betrayed us.” She snorted. “Not that Adam doing it makes it any better. That asshole.”
Her voice sounded so bitter...and sad. Gadreel had been her friend for over a hundred years. She'd lost another person close to her.
I wrapped my arms around her, resting my head against hers, taking a moment to grieve with her. She stiffened, but then she lightly rested a hand on my back too, giving me the bare minimum of a hug in return. She'd held me like this not long ago, when I'd remembered who I was. Now it was my turn to offer her some silent comfort. I grieved for Veslea too, who'd always been loyal and exceptionally clever and so full of life. A perfect soul, gone too soon, lost to the horrors of war.
Azazel pulled away. "Come on. We have to get you in shape if we're going to face Adam and Belial again."
Her mention of my son made me apprehensive again. I had no idea what I'd do when I saw him again.
"What's the deal with you and Belial?" I asked, as we moved back into combat-ready stances.
She blew out a breath. "I killed his girlfriend during his last rebellion, when she was storming the palace in Hell. He hates me for that, and I hate him for being a traitor to his own kind."
Her words about my son made my hackles raise, and darkness lashed out of me again toward her. She rolled out of the way and yelled, "What the fuck was that?"
I spread my hands as the darkness vanished. “I…uh… I channeled some darkness last night. And back a
t the bar when we were attacked. Think you could help me figure it out?”
Zel’s eyebrows arched, the movement rapid. “You did what?"
"Maybe I'm becoming a Fallen," I said with a laugh.
She scowled at me. "It doesn't work like that."
"How does it work?" I asked.
She narrowed her eyes at me, as if she thought I was messing with her. "The only people who became Fallen were the ones who left with Lucifer in the beginning. We settled in Hell, but we didn't do well in the land of darkness. Angels need light to survive, and there's not much of it there. So Lucifer summoned Nyx, the Elder Goddess of night, and begged her to help us. She turned all of us into demons, giving us many of their abilities—the ability to see in the dark, the immunity to the cold, and the power to use darkness instead of light. After that, all Fallen were sired from one of the original, like me and Samael."
I nodded slowly, her words bringing back knowledge I'd lost. "And yet, the other demons don't believe you're really the same as them."
"It's bullshit. They were created by the Elder Gods, just like we were." She put her hands on her hips. "So there's no way you, an angel, could suddenly be using darkness powers now."
"But it keeps happening whenever I'm upset. Just like my angelic powers did, before I could control them."
Zel's brow furrowed. "Then we'd better work on getting these under control too."
I was sure the question in her mind was exactly the same as the one in mine. How the hell was I able to use both light and darkness?
27
Lucifer
Olivia and her mates returned with news of Adam in the afternoon, and Samael summoned us all into the great hall of the manor so we could discuss our next move. We'd spread out around the banquet table, and I sat at the end with Hannah beside me, though she still wasn't talking to me after last night. She'd spent most of the day training with Azazel, and she looked a lot better than she had last night. Last night, when she'd somehow used darkness against me. I planned to ask her about that later, once we were alone. For now, we had more urgent matters to discuss.
“How bad is it?” I asked, already sure of the answer. Given the population increase the world over, Pestilence's arrival would be about a thousand times worse than the last time. So many innocent mortals... Well, perhaps not innocent, but certainly undeserving of the kind of destruction Adam currently wrought.
“It’s bad,” Callan said. He'd always been rather blunt.
Olivia's face was pale. "Adam vanished in London, but he left a trail of sickness along his path."
"Hundreds of mortals have fallen ill," Bastien added in his matter-of-fact voice.
"I couldn’t keep up.” Marcus bowed his head. “There were just too many who required healing."
“I’ll notify Archangel Raphael to send Malakim to minimize the damage Adam’s causing.” My blood simmered as anger twisted through me. “The mortal world can’t find out about this. It endangers us all.”
Not to mention, if humans discovered the existence of Pestilence, it would create an immense global event, and anything that humans did in response would interfere with my own control over the situation. I pulled out my phone and shot off a quick text, the easiest way of communicating with Raphael, then began another one off to Gabriel, the leader of the Archangels. My fingers flew across the phone screen and the texts were sent off. In the old days, when we wished to confer with the angels, we had messengers. Modern technology was truly incredible.
"There was no sign of where Adam went?" Kassiel asked.
Olivia shook her head. "No, we lost him in the city."
“Wherever he emerges, death and disease will follow," Samael said. "We must stop him before it's too late."
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. "Even though we don't know where he is, we know where the Archdemons will go next. Heaven."
"To release War?" Azazel asked, leaning forward. "Are they that stupid?"
"Apparently," I said dryly. "The good news is that Heaven is sealed off, and only a few people have a key. Archangel Michael had one, which should have been passed to you, Callan, upon his death."
Callan's eyebrows darted up. "I didn't even know there was a way into Heaven anymore."
I drummed my fingers along the wooden table. "Yes, Heaven and Hell both have a few keys that allow entry, though they're extremely rare and hardly ever used. The last time I know of the key to Heaven being used was just before your birth, Callan. Michael and Jophiel wanted you born there." Truly, angelic pride put my own to shame.
"Also news to me." He rolled his eyes. "Great. I bet my mother has it."
"At the very least, she might know where it is,” I ventured, though I didn’t want to see Jophiel either—I still hadn’t forgiven her for hiding Hannah from me.
“We’ll have to pay my sister a visit,” Hannah said, her voice firm. “She owes me, anyway.”
I glanced at her face, noting how her mouth was set in a grim line at the thought of seeing her sister. Jophiel owed both of us for what she'd done.
Samael cleared his throat. “I also have some news about Belial. Our contacts at Penumbra Prison said he arrived there a few hours ago. He demanded to see Archangel Azrael, but we don't know the details of the conversation, or where Belial went after that.”
Azrael had been the corrupt former leader of the Archangels, but he'd been sent to Penumbra Prison to rot after Kassiel and the others had taken him down. Since I'd helped them, Azrael would no doubt be willing to help my son move against me in any way he could.
“Belial must have gone there to get information on how to get to Heaven.” I closed my fingers into a fist. Damn him. My own son, always a step ahead of me in plotting my downfall.
“Azrael tried to use the Staff of Eternity to open Heaven and Hell, but we destroyed it," Olivia said. "I doubt he would go through all that trouble if he'd had a key."
“Perhaps," I said. "But he might have told Belial where he might find one. Even more reason to visit Jophiel immediately."
"I'd like to visit the prison myself and see if I can learn anything more," Samael said.
I nodded. "Take Azazel with you."
"I'm ready," she said, rising to her feet. "No sense in wasting time."
Hannah stood too. “Let’s make an early night of it. Tomorrow will be a long day."
Everyone filed out of the room to head to their own suites. Everyone except me and Hannah. She gave me an icy look as she prepared to part, but I said, "Wait."
She paused at that and turned around at the command in my voice.
I leaned back against the table and crossed my arms. "I watched you training with Azazel from one of the windows earlier. Were you going to tell me about your new powers?”
She set her hands on her hips. "First, don’t take that tone with me. Second, I have no idea what's happening to me. Suddenly I can use darkness and light."
"Show me."
Her brow furrowed as she held out her hands and concentrated. I carefully schooled my features, deliberately keeping my expression blank so as not to reveal my shock as Hannah proceeded to produce both light and dark magic, one in each palm. Impossible. Even I couldn't do that.
“Are you using powers from your past lives?” I asked. “Do you have any of the other abilities you once had? Persephone's magic, for example?”
She shook her head and cut off the flow of magic. “No idea. I don’t think so. Not that I know of, anyway."
I stroked my chin. "Very curious."
"I'm going to bed," she said, turning for the door again.
I moved in front of her to block her path. "No. Not without me."
She arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I told you I was done with you sleeping somewhere other than by my side. I let it pass last night, because you clearly were exhausted and not thinking straight, but no more. I’ll tie you to the bed if I have to, but your place is nowhere else than beside me.”
Hannah’s eyes flashe
d, but not in anger. Oh, she liked that idea, even if she wouldn't want to admit it. "I'll sleep where I want to sleep."
I scooped her up into my arms. Perhaps a little tying up was exactly what she needed. “It seems you require a reminder that you are my mate and my queen.”
"Lucifer!" she cried, but she didn't fight me. She liked it when I exerted my dominance in bed, even if she wanted to be equal in all other areas of our relationship.
I carried her to our suite, my heart thudding as stared up at me with defiant eyes. The bedroom door flew back as I kicked it open, revealing the four-poster bed in the center of the room.
I drew the blankets back and laid her on the bed, then used my own powers of darkness to shred her clothes, removing them without even touching her. She gasped at the sudden touch of my shadows as her skin was exposed, and her nipples hardened in the cool night air. I raked my eyes over her naked body possessively.
I commanded the shadows to become binding, twining around her wrists before anchoring to the posts at the headboard. Her eyes widened, but her cheeks were flushed with desire, and she didn't protest. She could have stopped this at any moment with her own magic, but she didn't. She wanted me to continue.
My cock strained against my trousers as my gaze roamed her body, bared before me. The shadows yanked her legs apart next, binding her ankles to the other posts, exposing her already wet pussy to me. Then I let the darkness run over her body like a caress, stroking her nipples, sliding against her clit, while I watched. She let out a breath and her pupils dilated as she moved her hips, and one of my shadow tentacles slid inside her pussy.
"I don't even need to touch you to make you come." I slowly fucked her with my magic, showing her who was in command, while she whimpered and writhed.
Hannah needed a lesson, a reminder that I was her king, and she belonged to me. I climbed up onto the bed and kneeled over her, yanking open my trousers and pulling out my cock. "Open your mouth."
Her lips formed a slight pout, and I rubbed the head of my cock against them, making them part for me. I slid my hard length into that perfect little mouth, smothering her cries as I made the tentacles thrust deeper into her, teasing her clit at the same time. She gasped around me as I rubbed against her tongue, and I groaned at the exquisite feel of having her soft lips around me again.
Devilish Mate: Claimed By Lucifer Book Two Page 17