Revelation (Redemption series Book 4) Page 5

  Hands moved near my feet, the shackles at my ankles falling away. The ones on my wrists followed.

  I didn’t move.

  “It’s okay,” the black-haired man said. “Everything is okay now.” His gaze studied me, his eyes roaming my frame, and my cheeks reddened with shame and terror, my body exposed and blistered.

  Lifting his arm, the man bit his wrist, blood welling up on his skin, before offering it to me. I recoiled.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed. “We’re only here to help. This will help. You’ve got to trust me.”

  Before I had a chance to protest, his wrist rose above my mouth, the blood dripping down my throat. I was powerless to stop it, powerless to run, my body too damaged to flee.

  Fire suddenly roared through my veins, both painful and familiar, and I screamed again, tears rolling in large tracks down my cheeks.

  “Please …” I begged, pausing when I realized I could speak again, my swollen lips no longer engorged, my legs struggling against the hard ground.

  “I’m only here to help,” the man repeated.

  I squinted at him, my brows furrowing. “Who are you?”

  “Damn it!” the other, more lyrical voice swore.

  My gaze swung in his direction, my heart swelling at the sight of him, at his golden hair and blue eyes, at the white shirt and low slung jeans that hugged his broad frame.

  “Lucas,” I breathed.

  His eyes widened, his gaze flicking from my face to the man next to me. “You know me?” he asked, a suspicious gleam lighting his eyes. “And him?” He gestured at the other guy. “Do you know Marcas Craig?”

  The words shot through me like a bolt of lightning. The screams that spilled from my mouth were unexpected and violent, my legs kicking, my arms covering my face. Memories of the flying insects feasting on my flesh and the steam blistering my skin suddenly consumed me, the unbearable, indescribable pain returning.

  Over and over, I murmured, “It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault.”

  My eyes fell closed, my legs drawing up to my chest. I knew Marcas. I loved Marcas. I hadn’t forgotten him, but for some reason, my brain didn’t want to remember him.

  Visions of Beez leaning over me ravaged me, his sneering face repeating, “Remember that this is all happening to you because of Marcas Craig.”

  “No,” I whispered. “It’s not his fault.”

  I had this sudden, distant vision of myself sitting there, rocking, words spilling from my mouth. Deep down, I knew I was going crazy. My mind fought it, laughing at me in that sarcastic teenage voice I knew so well, the one that I’d leaned on years before. It told me not to be a victim. It told me not to be like the women in the movies who pushed away the ones they loved because of something they’d been through.

  But no matter how many times the head tells you something, the heart doesn’t always listen. I knew who Marcas was, but I couldn’t stop the sobs that racked me, the ones that tore me asunder, the ones that told me I was suddenly afraid of loving him.

  Marcas touched me, his hands closing over my shoulders. I fought not to cringe as he pulled me into his embrace, his chin falling to the top of my head, his breath fanning my hair. My tears fell hard, shaking me.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m going to make this right. We’re going to make it through.”

  The Marcas I knew, the one I was trying to separate from the pain-causing one in my head, rocked me. Slowly, and ever so carefully, he lifted me, his gaze swinging to the Fallen angel.

  An unspoken message passed between them, but the only thing I could concentrate on was Marcas’ arms, on the way I wanted to hide in them while also pushing them away.

  He turned, and I gasped, my gaze falling on our surroundings.

  If the blue expanse had been beautiful, it was nothing compared to what I saw now. We were standing in paradise, a beautiful landscape of lawn so green, it was almost turquoise. The grass waved, as if touched by the wind, but there was no wind. Four streams flowed through dipping fields dotted with fiery-colored wildflowers, each body of water a different color; white, amber, plum, and yellow.

  The irony was almost too much. I’d been tortured in paradise, my body ripped apart in a world of wonder.

  Lucas noticed my conflicted stare, and he smiled gently. “The third level of Heaven, a land of milk and honey, wine and oil, but also where merciless angels punish those who disobey. It’s a fine line between the corrupt and the just. Most who come here are on their way back to Heaven, to the Fall, or to Hell.”

  My stare was blank, my heart a twisted organ in my chest. “Monsters, all of you,” I breathed.

  There’d been so much betrayal in my life, as much madness as there had been happiness. It was destroying me. What happens when you get to the point where you don’t know where right begins and wrong ends, when you no longer care who the bad guys are and who the good guys are supposed to be? When the only person you can really trust is yourself?

  Chapter 12

  War, no matter how big or small, is a fight for power. In the end, there’s never a victor. There’s a tentative winner, a leader who will always have to defend his position, but never a true victor. Heaven and Hell are always in turmoil, the levels and kingdoms in constant upset. Anyone caught between the two are destined to be torn asunder.

  ~Luther Craig, the Demon of Lust~

  Marcas

  My life had lasted way too long, an eternity full of sin, death, war, and loss. I’d seen things, done things, and survived things that no mortal man could ever endure intact, mentally or physically. I thought I feared nothing. I was wrong.

  On the way back to S.O.S headquarters, I kept Dayton tucked into my chest, dodging lightning as we flew. Portals to Heaven, unlike Hell, didn’t exist. There was a thin veil separating earth from the planes that contained the levels of Heaven. Like Hell, Heaven was broken into layers, each one containing a different hierarchy of positions. Demons could only withstand the third level. Anything above that was too holy, too full of power that demons couldn’t bear.

  So, with Lucas in front of me, I flew with Dayton. She was rigid in my embrace, her breathing erratic despite her healing wounds. She was mostly nude, her clothes having been eaten away. She shivered, and I tightened my grip, using my power to warm her.

  Over and over, I found myself repeating, “It’s going to be okay.”

  The words were more for my benefit than for hers. I had no consolations, no comforting gestures to help her. I’d been through torture—being a demon is nothing if not brutal—and it had taken me hundreds of years to overcome it. It had taken walking among the ancient Egyptians, working with them on their monuments and pyramids to work through what had been done to me after my relationship with Sophia had ended. I’d been punished, as she had been, for getting involved with an angel, my penalty brutal, surpassing most torture.

  I’d had hundreds of years to heal. Dayton didn’t.

  I had no words other than, “It’s going to be okay.”

  When we landed, the only reason she remained in my arms was for modesty’s sake. Sparing no glance at the people I knew watched us, I marched past them, carrying Dayton to the upstairs bedroom we often used when we were in residence.

  We were barely inside the door when she pulled away, her feet dropping to the floor. She stumbled as she rushed into the bathroom, the room glowing abruptly as she used her weakened power to clean and clothe herself.

  I waited, patiently staring at the door.

  “You don’t have to stay,” she called.

  “I’d rather wait,” I replied.

  Dayton Blainey had been my lover for four years, and in the space of a moment, the familiarity we’d managed to build over time had been stripped away. My life had caught up with me, and I hated myself for it. Rage burned in the pit of my stomach, the knowledge that my love affair with Sophia and my desire to create a safe kingdom for hybrid demons had become a punishment for Dayton. Somehow, I’d known this time would come
. That the brutality I’d always known in this life would cross over to hers. It’s why I had fought her so hard when we’d first met, when I’d tried to make her hate me during our search for the Seal. I wasn’t good for her, and I never would be. Now, it was here. The brutality I hadn’t realized I’d feared, having dropped into our lives fast and quick. There’d been no time to blink. That was the way things worked between Heaven and Hell.

  What I’d seen when we’d arrived in the third level of Heaven had scarred me like nothing else. It wasn’t the violence or the brutality of it that had affected me. I’d been bred among violence. It was the innocence of the victim. It was the fact that they’d had the woman I loved shackled, legs and arms apart, her body covered in blisters, her skin mauled by flesh easting flies. I couldn’t get the image out of my head.

  The door to the bathroom opened, and Dayton stepped free. She wore a long sleeve green tunic over a pair of skinny jeans, the outfit simple and made to cover the wounds she had left. Her face was still healing, the gashes in her cheeks and across her forehead almost gone.

  “You didn’t have to stay,” she said awkwardly.

  I stepped forward, and she backed away from me. A mumbled apology spilled from my lips.

  She stared. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

  I snorted. “Isn’t there? It’s my fault. All of it. You shouldn’t have saved me all those years ago, Dayton. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.”

  A sad smile lit up her features, shudders still racking her body. “I knew I loved you. That’s all that mattered.”

  The shudders kept getting worse, her eyes focusing and then falling away. She rubbed her arms, and I knew by the way her lips pinched together that memories assaulted her.

  “And now that you know the risks involved?” I asked. “Is it still worth it?”

  For a long moment she didn’t answer, her voice small when she finally said, “I love you, Marcas.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek, but I didn’t move to wipe it away. She’d only shy from the touch.

  My heart hurt when I replied, “You can love someone and still let them go.”

  She froze. “Give me time.”

  Sighing, I breathed, “There’s an uprising brewing in Heaven and in Hell. If we don’t do something to stop it, then it’s going to destroy earth.”

  “I know,” she said, her gaze sliding up to mine. “I heard a lot when …” She swallowed hard. “Let’s go. They’re going to need our help.”

  She started to brush past me, and I grabbed her arm, the grip gentle. “You can have all the time you need, Blainey, and if you decide to walk away, I won’t hate you for it.”

  Instead of pulling away, she surprised me by stepping toward me, her cheek resting against my chest, her body trembling. “It’s not your fault,” she kept repeating.

  It took a moment for the shock to wear off, for my arms to fall around her, the embrace loose in case the touch was too much.

  “It’s not you I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “It’s me, and it’s everyone else. Who do you trust? How do you wake up every morning and not wonder who’s going to betray you now?”

  My heart broke for her. There’d been too many betrayals in her short life; her father, her aunt, her sister, and Sophia. She’d been forced into too many rituals, put through too much pain, too many tests, and so much torture. She’d been through it all and remained with me, even though in her head, I know she equated me with pain. Still, she stayed. She hung on, investing four years of her life to help me be the best leader I could be. She’d sacrificed everything for me.

  It was time for me to do some of the sacrificing.

  “You don’t know,” I finally answered. “You never know who to trust.” I pulled away from her, my gaze finding her face. “You’re going to break if you stay with me,” I whispered, my eyes searching hers, my hand moving up to cup her face.

  Her lips trembled, her hand covering mine on her cheek. Her fingers were so much smaller than mine. She’d always been so small.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “That it may be time to make a choice. When this is over, it may be time for you to live a life outside of fear.”

  She blinked, the truth written in her gaze. It was bad timing, but she knew I was right. There comes a time when everyone has to step back and look at their relationship, when the newness has worn off, and the time to decide if it’s better to remain with each other or run the risk of dying.

  “You were right the other day,” I said. “We’re not healthy.”

  Another tear rolled down her cheek. “They think they broke me, you know that?” she asked. “They’re wrong. Just keep that in mind and have a little faith in me.”

  I smiled. “I’ll always have faith in you, Blainey. There’s more to both of us than we show to the world. I just don’t want you destroyed by this world when you haven’t had a chance to live in a normal one.”

  Shudders racked her again, and I pulled her against me, my sigh a long one. “We have a demon and an angel to stop,” I said against her hair.

  Something about the way she stiffened scared me, the hardness in her gaze when she glanced up turning my blood cold. “Yes,” she replied, “we do.”

  Chapter 13

  The key to any battle in the underworld is wit. You can cut down a lot of lives, stab a lot of hearts, shed a lot of blood, and still get nowhere. The key is clever charm and secrets. A secret can get you further in a battle than any weapon. As long as you keep your enemies close and your secrets closer.

  ~Luther Craig, the Demon of Lust~

  Dayton

  My heart was heavy, my mind a saturated mess of images, and I let Marcas hold me, ignoring the pain-filled screams in my head, the ones that told me he was just as responsible for everything that had happened to me as everyone else. He wasn’t. Truth was, the only person I could blame was myself. I’d chosen this life. I’d chosen Marcas, and with it the pain his life entailed. I just had to keep reminding myself of that. The mind was the most beautiful, complicated, and least fair organ in the human body. No matter how many times you told it something, how many times you tried to convince it that it was wrong, it still had a tendency to be misleading.

  This hug, this embrace, felt like our last, as if what Sophia and Beez had done to me had opened our eyes, making us face things about our relationship we’d refused to look at before. Not about whether or not we loved each other, but whether or not we were healthy for each other. Years ago, our bonded powers had been what made us strong and unique. Now with so many hybrids coming forward and the Princes of Hell getting greedy for power in the underworld, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were weaker together than we would be apart.

  So, with that in mind, we released each other, our gazes full of unspoken words and silent promises, before turning to walk down the stairs to the living room.

  It was then, before we’d even set foot on the first step that the world began to shake, the ground heaving and bucking. From calm one moment to an earthquake of epic proportions the next.

  I started to fall, my hand clutching the banister, my body slung against the wall in the stairwell. Pictures fell facedown in my path.

  Grabbing me by the waist, Marcas swung us down the stairs and into the doorway of the parlor, the flying debris from the room beyond barely missing us. A mirror landed at our feet, the surface cracked, throwing back our distorted, fractured reflections.

  Throughout the house, screams rose, the sound throwing my mind back into that terrible place in the third level of Heaven. I clutched the doorframe, my teeth clenched.

  “What the hell is this!” Alessandro shouted from the living room.

  The world kept shaking, the manor walls trembling.

  “We need to get out of here!” a female screamed.

  “No!” Conor’s voice rang out. “I know it seems bad, but this manor is made of stone. Have a little faith in me! If you were seeing what we
could see from the living room, you wouldn’t want to be out there!”

  My gaze flashed to Marcas’. One glance, and we both lunged for the living area, adrenaline propelling us over the debris in the hallway and into the space beyond.

  I was not prepared for what we found.

  There, beyond the wreckage, beyond the floor-to-ceiling window, was an earth covered in opening fissures, the ground pulling itself apart. The cracks in the soil stopped just beyond the manor, as if a barrier wouldn’t allow the land to split below us.

  Above the fissured world, the sky was red, black clouds rolling in angry waves across the crimson. The color of demons.

  “I always thought you had this place blessed, Alessandro,” Luther called, his eyes falling on the unblemished land around the house. He was standing against the wall closest to the windows, his arm around Monroe’s waist.

  “There’s a lot of religious artifacts on this property, demon,” Alessandro retorted.

  The prophet I’d met the day before was cowering on the floor, crawling on his hands and knees muttering prayers that I knew wouldn’t be answered.

  “Damn it,” Conor cursed from his place at the door, Emma next to him, her arms over Maria’s head. “You’ve got to get still, prophet,” Conor called. “You’re making it deuced hard for me to keep the ceiling from caving in on you.”

  The man whimpered, freezing, his hands steepling in supplication.

  Conor’s face was strained, sweat beading up along his brow, his palms raised, his gaze on the stone walls.

  “Can you do this, gargoyle?” Luther mocked.

  Conor threw him a look. “Try me, demon, and you’ll be the first I crush.”

  Luther laughed, his amusement over the situation eliminating some of the tension in the room.

  My hand pressed against the wall opposite the window, my gaze on the glass, on the way the surface was beginning to crack, jagged lines running from the center and out toward the edges.

  “Dayton,” Maria’s voice called.