It takes every able-bodied member of the Se7en plus Lucifer to pull me off of her. And while they still can’t hold me for more than a few seconds, it’s just enough time for Adriel to try to scramble to the other end of the room like the coward that she is. It’s not until Irin emerges that I feel the fury ease like an ebbing storm. She casually comes to stand before me, the skirts of her beaded sarong dragging on the white, sterile floor. She smiles, an act that’s one part sinister, one part seduction.
“Eden, my little abomination. Surely you weren’t about to shed blood in my home.” Her voice is level, but every syllable is laced with a threat.
I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.
“I was. And I am.”
“And you do remember that act is forbidden, correct?”
“I’m leaving anyway. So you can kill me now, or wait until I’ve packed my shit. Either way, Jinn is getting the blood that he needs to heal.”
Irin looks back to where Adriel is still huddled in fear. “That would be helpful, however not at all conducive to your plans. How can you seek revenge if you are dead?”
I narrow my eyes. “I may not kill her now, but the minute she steps outside these walls, I’ll be waiting. Jinn will die without her blood. And isn’t that the sole purpose of saving her from Uriel?”
Irin glances over my shoulder at the others behind me, still within range in case I make a move to slaughter their precious little angel. “You should tell her. Tell her or I will. I’m already bored with this conversation.”
“Tell me what?” I whirl around to face Lucifer and the Se7en. “Tell me what?”
“Eden…” Cain inches forward and the others fall back, giving us space to talk. “When Uriel extracted Adriel from your body, she fought to hold on. And in order to do that, she had to fuse her life to yours.”
“What?”
Lucifer steps up, clearing his throat. “Killing her would be committing suicide. Which is why they won’t let her sacrifice her blood to save Jinn. It would kill you.”
I look around at each of their solemn faces. They’re going to let him die…to save me.
Shaking my head, I back away. “No. No.” I look over at Adriel, the rage zapped from my glare. It wasn’t her everyone was so hellbent on saving, even at the expense of their friend. It was me.
“I wanted to tell you from the beginning,” Lucifer admits, taking another step towards. “They were convinced you’d do something stupid. I tried to convince them that you would never be so callous and, quite frankly, childish to prove a point. Because you are much more valuable alive than dead. And for us to do what we need to do—for us get the revenge you seek—you need to be very much alive. But you know that, right?” He lifts a brow, urging me to understand.
I know he’s right. We have work to do. But in order to do that, I need to hang on just a little longer. Plus we need the key to ending all this suffering.
“The Redeemer,” I blurt, thinking out loud. “I need The Redeemer.”
“What did you say?” At the mere mention of their sacred blade, Cain steps forward.
I lift my chin, mustering my courage. Facing off with the Demon of Murder is no easy feat. Especially when he’s scowling, making the jagged scar spanning from the corner of his lip to his ear appear even more menacing.
“I need to get out of here and finish what we started. And I need The Redeemer to do it. With or without your blessing.”
“You realize how fucking stupid you sound, right?” Cain’s black eyes narrow in contempt. “You’re a newborn Nephilim. So what…you think you’re going to face off with The Seraph? With Legion? Don’t let your foolish pride and your silly human heart get you killed, girl.”
“And so what if I do. At least I’ll die knowing I did all I can to save humanity. I’m not about to waste another second here, hidden behind Irin’s fortress like a damn coward.” I suck in a breath, taking a beat to calm the anger rising in my gut. “Look, I appreciate all you’ve done, but this is something I need to do. This all started with me, and it’s going to end with me. So you can be with me, or against me. Your choice.”
Cain snarls, but doesn’t say a word. His penetrating stare just continues to bore into me, sending a warning chill down my spine. He isn’t like the others. He’s made it clear from the beginning that my life means less than nothing to him. And the only reason he’d have to consider preserving my mortality would be for my sister’s sake. And before her, his respect and undying loyalty to Legion was the only thing holding him back from ripping my face off.
“Get out.”
I expect the command to come from Cain, but it’s Phenex who’s glaring at us from Jinn’s side. Glaring at me, as if I’m a stranger, an intruder.
“Get out!” barks the usually soft-spoken, even-tempered assassin. “He’s barely hanging on, and you’re arguing over a piece of metal? The very weapon that put Jinn in this bed? If you aren’t here to lend him strength and serenity, then leave. Leave. Now!”
“Come on,” Lucifer approaches, his hand outstretched. I reject his offer with a scowl and turn towards the double doors, my heart in my throat.
I feel like such a selfish bitch. Scratch that, I know that I’m a selfish bitch. They’re mourning their brother, and I’m more concerned with exacting a convoluted revenge plot that I don’t have the slightest clue how to enact. Have I fallen so far that it takes the fucking Devil to reel me in?
What the hell is wrong with me?
“You need to sleep,” Lucifer mutters when we’re halfway to my bedroom.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, Eden. You’re making a fucking fool of yourself. Are you trying to get yourself killed? Because if suicide is your thing, I can suggest a few less humiliating options.”
“Go to hell,” I sputter, unable to come up with a better comeback.
“So soon? I’m on vacation.”
“Yeah, of course your sadistic ass gets off on watching innocent people be slaughtered.” I step ahead, anxious to get away from the judgmental daggers he’s been throwing. Still, he’s right on my heels, and not even me damn near slamming my bedroom door in his face seems to shake him.
I cross the room to pick up my backpack, but Lucifer is already snatching it from my grasp.
“What the fuck? Give it back!”
“Not until you calm down and get some rest. You haven’t slept. You haven’t eaten. You’re running on fumes and expect to be efficient at what? Getting your neck snapped?”
“I told you—I’m fine. And I’m not your concern.” I go to steal my bag back, but he holds it out of reach as if the heavy sack weighs next to nothing.
“I’m making you my concern. Because apparently you’re either too stupid or too immature to be rational. And you forget—we don’t have The Redeemer. You’re cute and all, and a pretty decent lay, but I’m not sacrificing myself for a petty little girl.”
“No one asked you to. No one even asked you to come with me. Stay here if you’re scared. It’d probably be for the best. Wouldn’t want you to ruin your manicure.”
He barks out a sardonic laugh. “You’re funny. And a bit forgetful.” He steps forward, tilting his head down so we’re eye level. An electric storm is brewing within monochromatic glare and his voice softens to a haunting whisper. “Shall I remind you that I can flay the skin off your bones without lifting a single finger? I wouldn’t even break a sweat. I could eat you alive and use those lovely silver locks as dental floss.” He gently runs his fingers through my hair, before harshly grabbing a handful. Hard enough for my head to snap back. “I’m not Legion, Eden. I don’t give a fuck about your feelings. You will not goad me with a temper tantrum. So shut that pretty little mouth and do as I say.”
He pushes me back and I bounce against the bed. I’m pissed and embarrassed, but I have enough sense not to challenge him. The horrid image of those girls eating each other alive is still burned into my skull. He didn’t even say a word; the task was as easy as blinking for him. And those girls…they reveled in serving him with their gruesome demise. I wouldn’t doubt that he would condemn me to a similar fate for merely testing his patience.
Lucifer tosses my bag beside me and turns towards the door. “We leave in the morning,” he adds before twisting the knob. “Sleep, Eden. You’ll need it.”
My breaths heavy and my eyes blurred with rage, I dig my fingers into the soft satin duvet, just to keep myself from punching something or someone. I don’t even realize that I’ve shredded right through the fabric until my fingertips hit the metal mattress springs.
Shit. What’s happening to me?
I knew something had been evolving within me. I had been feeling it for days, since I was pulled from that black water—abnormal strength, superhuman speed. I knew I had been reborn into something not quite human yet not quite mortal, but I didn’t truly understand which parts of me were still of this world, and which parts of me had emerged from something else entirely. I could feel it roiling in my gut, slithering beneath my skin, burning behind my eyes. And it was becoming more dominant, more visceral.
I close my eyes, trying to put myself back together again. I wouldn’t become what Uriel had made me to be. I wouldn’t be a monster, even if every instinct inside me wanted to submit and let my inner evil take the reins.
As my heartbeat slows and the adrenaline begins to wane, exhaustion sinks its hooks in me. I barely have the strength to kick off my shoes before curling onto the bed, bypassing the tattered blankets. I sink into the cold pillows, noting how they still smell like Legion, like rain and scorched earth and kindling wood. Each inhale is a memory. The way he kissed me, like he was a starving man and I was his sustenance. The way his massive body fit over mine, and how I felt so small yet so safe with him. The way he rocked into me before sinking his teeth into my neck like my blood was liquefied Ecstasy. And in my last lungful of his scent before I drift off into a deep slumber, I hear him. I hear them.
Strobe lights skating across an empty dance floor.
Jagged shards of glass swimming in a puddle of tawny booze.
A neon-lit sign. A broken wooden chair.
A peal of distorted laughter. A wall splattered with fresh, bright red blood.
And a symbol I’ve never seen before.
Flashes of images spliced on an endless loop, each only lasting a mere second. I strain to see more, hoping to catch a glimpse of where I am, but the moment I step further into the room, the merry-go-round begins again. I look down. I’m dressed in ripped jeans, a chunky sweater, and sneakers. They’re my clothes, but I haven’t worn them in months. Not since they were soiled with brain matter and bile in the dingy corner store where I once worked. Not since the night Legion blasted through the dirty glass windows, guns drawn, and saved me from Lucifer’s Called.
“Hello?” I call out, unsure of who or what will answer.
My head is dizzy. My eyes are aching with the strain to focus on each scene. I can’t tell if I’m watching it all on a projector screen or if I’m experiencing it. Disoriented, I instinctively reach out a hand to steady myself and find myself grasping a wooden raised counter. A bar. I’m in a bar.
“Go back,” a voice whispers. It’s gravely, male, and as familiar as my own. Yet, there’s something off…something unnatural about it. “Go back. You’ve come too far.”
I can’t see him, but I hear him all around me, as if he’s right beside. I can even hear his breath stirring the hair at my nape. Even through the choking stench of blood and burning flesh, I can still smell him.
“Where are you? Let me see you.”
“No. You shouldn’t have come. You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
I shake my head, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. “I’ll always come back for you. I’m not giving up. I promise.”
“No.”
“Legion, please…”
“No.”
The ground beneath my feet quakes. Glass shatters. Wood splinters. And the walls begin to cry blood.
“Go!” Legion harshly whispers. “Go before they see you.”
“Where do I find you?” I try to shout above the roar of rising violence.
“You don’t. You won’t.”
A deep fissure opens the floor, splitting it in two to reveal a pit of blazing fire. I attempt to jump to safety, but I’m stuck. My shoes have melted and fused to the broken ground. I try desperately to struggle out of them and scramble away, but the more I thrash, the closer I come to the flames that are licking up my ankles. I try to scream, but my vocal cords fail, my lungs too polluted with smoke to produce a sound. I can’t go like this. I’ve been prepared for death since I was just a little girl, but I can’t go like this. Not now. I’m not done yet. My life, my story…it isn’t finished.
“Wake up,” the Legion’s harsh voice whispers. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
“Wake up!”
I’m panting, drenched with my own sweat and my throat is sore from screaming myself awake. My entire body shakes as the dream still echoes in my skull. That endless loop, a horror reel on repeat.
Strobe lights. Broken glass. A neon sign. A broken chair. Strange laughter. Blood walls. An undecipherable symbol.
Legion.
He was there. Legion was there. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his presence. I don’t know where I was trapped—I’d never been there before. But none of that matters to me more than one crucial aspect. He’s alive. Legion is still alive amongst The Many. And even though he claimed to not want to be found, I have to believe that he was lying. He was showing me signs—clues. Maybe he feels that coming for him would only end in disappointment and heartbreak. Or maybe worse. Still, there’s no way I’m sticking around here when he may not have much time left.
Not even bothering to slip on my shoes, I race out of my bedroom and down the hall. I have no idea what time it is, and honestly, I don’t care. I have to tell someone. I have to know that my suspicions aren’t merely false hope.
I lift my fist to knock on Lucifer’s door, but before my knuckles collide with the wood, it swings open.
And there he stands, in all his beautiful, malevolent glory. Naked from the waist up, only black silk pajama pants hang from his cut hips. His hair is just the slightest bit mussed as if he’s been raking his fingers through it. Judging by the empty quiet of the usually bustling halls, it’s either late or very early, and Lucifer looks as if he’s prepped for a porno. Fuck. Hating him would be so much easier if he wasn’t so ridiculously tempting to the eye.
“Well, hello, pussycat. Come to play?”
I swallow and peer around his frame. Shit. Maybe him being prepped for porn wasn’t so off base. He could be in the middle of making a movie right now.
“I, uh, I had a dream,” I stammer once I’ve assessed that he’s alone. “About Legion. I think he was trying to tell me something.”
Luc lifts a brow. “And what would that be?”
I brush past him and enter his room, so I’m not forced to stand there and gawk at him.
“I don’t know. My eyes kept being drawn to the same images over and over again. I think I was in a bar, but it wasn’t familiar to me. He was there, but I couldn’t see him. I felt him, I heard him whispering to me, but he was out of sight. I was only able to see the same scenes. I think he wants me to remember them.”
“And do you?”
I nod. “There were some details that seem unimportant. Broken bottles of booze, a chair, disco lights. But the walls were bleeding, and I could smell death; however, there were no bodies that I could see.”
“Is that it?” he strides to an end table and pours the remaining amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a glass.
“A neon sign, but nothing I recognize. And a weird symbol.” I shake my head. “None of it makes sense. I don’t even know if he was trying to tell me where to find him or trying to throw me off his trail.”
He takes a sip, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “Well…what did he say?”
“He said I shouldn’t have come back for him.”
Lucifer is silent as he sips his drink, his stare blank. Creeping doubt begins to bear down on my shoulders. Could I have just imagined it all? Was it just my subconscious trying to hold on to a ghost?
Feeling utterly silly, I heave out a breath and begin to turn for the door.
“Sorry. I know it sounds stupid, but… I don’t know what I saw or heard. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. I don’t sleep.”
I turn to face him and find that he’s no longer eyeing an invisible spot on the floor. He’s looking at me.
“You don’t sleep or you can’t?”
“Both.”
“I thought you said your kind are subjected to a level of mortal weakness while on Earth. Illness, exhaustion, hunger…”
“Under normal circumstances, yes. But I’m not normal. I’m not sure normal exists anymore.”
He walks over to where I stand, stopping briefly to relieve his hand of the empty glass.
“How did you know where my room was?”
I blink. “Huh?”
“I never told you. And I highly doubt Legion or Nikolai would want you knowing where I’m staying. This house has nearly twenty bedrooms, if not more. So how did you know?”
I take a sharp breath as I try to come up with a manufactured explanation. There’s no way I can tell him what I saw that night. Not because he was with a man and a woman. Not because in those moments of passion, he seemed so…lost. So alone. I can’t tell him because I’d have to admit that I stood there and watched. That I was so turned on that I was two seconds away from hiking up my sarong and burying my fingers deep inside me while Kairo and his female companion sucked and licked Lucifer’s beautiful, thick erection like it was their last supper. He’d know. He’d see the flush of my cheeks. He’d note the way I’d chew my lip as those memories stoked a blaze in my belly. And I couldn’t let him have that. He had enough ammo to torture me with. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I don’t know,” I shrug, trying to commit to the lie. “Must’ve heard about it from one of Irin’s servants. Probably so I could make a mental note to stay far, far away.”
He smirks, as if the truth is written in bold, black pen across my features. “Yeah. Probably.”
“Well…ok then,” I remark awkwardly. “I’ll just be going back to my—”
“What’s that on your face?”
“Huh?” I frown, batting at my cheeks. “Where?”
He steps in even closer, until there’s barely any space between his chiseled chest and the peak of my nipples, and swipes his thumb across my forehead.
“See?” he says, showing me the charcoal smudged digit. “What is that?”
I step back, and my eyes widen while every emotion wages war within me. Fear. Excitement. Confusion. Determination. I feel it all at rapid speed.
“It’s soot. I didn’t tell you. How? I…I didn’t…” I take a deep breath, reorganizing my thoughts. “In my dream, the floor opened up and there was fire. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t run from it. It was going to burn me alive, and it would have if Legion hadn’t been shouting for me to wake up. And when I finally did, that’s what I was screaming. Wake up.”
“You know what this means, right?”
I nod slowly. “Legion is alive. He’s still in there, and he’s still him. And if he can find me, maybe we can find him.”
He looks as calm and cool as ever, yet dark clouds begin to roil within his gaze as he utters, “Unless The Many find you first.”