Chapter 17
Uriah had made a poultice from a crushed golden feather and some sage. He held the concoction over the heat of my stove before spreading it across his palms. He applied the beige mixture to Luiz's face and the scars full of grainy and horrid magic began to knit closed.
All of this happened in my periphery as I paced my apartment and ran through every possible solution in my mind.
I wanted to walk into the swamps of the Fourth Circle with a machete, hacking down trees and demanding retribution. Returning to Envy would have been too predictable though. I had to think of something else.
The Demon inside of me lashed at the edges of my mind and threatened to drag me under. The thirst for blood dried my mouth and caused my hands to clench repeatedly as I played the Leviathan’s impended death through my mind like a movie.
My mouth felt too small and my teeth felt too large. They burnt against my gums as I struggled to hold human form.
I understood Lucifer’s blight. I pulled out the short blunt spectre while reaching inside of my waistband. The object no longer than my forearm.
“I have to give him the sceptre.” I concluded. I placed the Devil’s silver on the kitchen island and buried my fingers in my hair. I tugged my scalp until it burnt.
“You want to give the beast access to heaven?” Uriah's voice was curiously devoid of emotion.
“What other option is there?”
Luiz winced in pain as the last of his facial wounds knitted clothed. “What happened to you?” the Hound blustered angrily. “You need to go to the Fourth Circle and get her back.”
The Guardian yawned from his spot on the sofa. Blood still marred his white fur. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that the canine nodded.
“If I give up the sceptre, then I won’t be able to journey to Hell anymore. That is true.” I allowed in a tiny voice. “But Petra is human. The Human Realities are her home and I can live with my decision.”
Uriah placed the ramekin full of cursed feathers onto the worktop. “And what of Lucifer?” He said in a low and dangerous tone. “You think he will allow his queen to cut herself from Hell like festering flesh?”
“For his daughter?” I quirked a brow.
“There are other ways.” Luiz urged. “We will find Petra. We'll bring her home.”
“And Dahlia will continue to hide in the Human Realities, in a place that her lover can only spend an hour a day in?” Uriah was glib.
“My romantic relations are no business of yours. You oversized pigeon.” I snapped.
I pushed away from the kitchen and stormed into the master bedroom. I pulled off my high heels and surveyed the bottoms. There was blood on the red soles. I pulled out some stretchy black yoga pants and forwent any shoes with a cold and methodical posture.
I was ready for a fight. Luiz was right. There was no way that I was going to allow my daughter to fall into the hands of my enemy.
I shut down any thoughts about what the Leviathan could have been doing to her. Hoping to Hell that she would be respected in his domain.
Uriah cleared his throat. He leant against the door frame of my walk-in closet with his muscular arms crossed over his chest. His wings were hidden away but I could still sense their residue. He was so different from Lucifer. Burning emotion that he refused to allow himself to feel. Uriah was carefully contained but somehow I needled him in a way that both delighted and scared me.
“You could give up your wings.” Uriah said, his eyes were focused on a spot above my shoulder, unseeing. “You could fall if you wished to go back to Hell.”
The lump in my throat made it difficult to speak.
“I’m not a good person, Uriah.” I admitted. “I will ensure that the Fourth Circle is nothing but ash for my daughter’s safety. I promise that I will try to avoid giving the King of the Leviathan the power to enter the Summerland.”
He smiled sadly and pushed away from the door. His steps were confident and sure as he reached out and cupped my jaw in his hand. Uriah's golden eyes searched mine for something. All I could do was stare back at him, powerless.
“Why do they say you’re evil?” Uriah whispered as his nose trailed over the side of my neck as he pushed my hair away from my shoulder. “I am beginning to realise that I've been lied to.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but his lips crashed into mine and forced my voice back into my throat. The pressure of his lips on mine was too much to bear. My eyes fluttered closed and a low groan echoed from the Angel's throat. He deepened the kiss; my lip throbbed with his bruising pressure.
I was on fire as I gripped the material of his shirt and pushed him away. Our lust hung in the air like a thick blanket and neither of us addressed the chemistry that threatened to spark the air.
“I need to go to Hell. I need to tell Lucifer that the King of Envy has our daughter.”
Uriah blinked as if waking from a daze. “Whatever you think is best.”
The demonic part of me wanted him to blaze red and lash out with jealousy. I wanted him to take me. The other part of me, the rational part, recoiled back and whispered Luc’s name.
Did I want to be a Pet?
Did I want to ride on the curtails of an ambivalent master, vying for attention that he had deprived me of when I needed it the most?
As a youngling in Hell, I had been lost and alone when Luc created me. Too powerful to be treated as anything other than a liability. I had been drawn to Lucifer, the second half of my soul, like a moth to a flame. His own tainted magic had called to my own. The Devil responded to our connection by pushing me into a tower. I could only watch him from afar.
I had grown desperate for his attention, willing to do anything if my master would only pay attention to me.
Uriah was something sweet, decadent, but poisonous. He was everything that I shouldn’t want but somehow he called to me. When Uriah’s golden eyes looked into mine, he saw me. All my rough edges and shadowed corners. He may have flinched back in disgust at my evil, but he saw me.
“I can take away your unhappiness.” Uriah breathed. His lips were inches from my own. “I can twist your uncertainty and your resentment to Lucifer into something else. I can ensure that you will be happy by his side for the end of time.”
“You would do that?” I whispered.
Uriah nodded solemnly. “But if he were to ever raise a hand to you, be certain that he will find himself on the end of my wrath.”
I pulled away and gripped the sceptre in my palm. My knuckles went white. “Goodbye, Uriah.” He opened his mouth to speak, but the fabric of the world ripped open. I landed in the throne room of the First Circle. Face first in front of the Devil.
Lucifer grew very quiet as we sat around the dining table on our mismatched chairs. A swinging pendulum of two gagged humans hung from the arched ceiling. Lucifer magic slammed their limp forms into each other, strung up by their feet like a pendulum of sinners.
My Hell wine begun to boil as Lucifer’s magic raged in the air. Whilst I could withstand the heat of the red-hot glass, the temperature had started to burn off the alcohol that I desperately needed. I slugged back what was essentially grape juice and held up my empty glass until a Hell Hound swooped in and took it from me.
“The Leviathan must be stopped.” I snarled, power-infused my words and the chandelier tinkled as if a shockwave racked the castle.
“War room.” Lucifer replied brusquely and the dining room dissolved into a part of the castle that I had never seen before. A map grew on the table, and the coloured wisps hovered over the boundary lines of the circles.
Wrath’s lines had been almost entirely obscured, which made sense as the Leviathan had taken the circle for himself.
“We could have prevented this when the Valkyries’ demanded help to reinforce the borders.” Abaddon eyed the shimmering expanse of the Jake Lake, complete with its own figurine of the serpentine body of the King of Envy.
“Hell lore requires that you must be powerful enough to hold your own territory.” I explained. “You know this.”
“And yet the Leviathan hasn’t come for the Third Circle. One would think that he would have taken Sloth first.” Abe replied.
Lucifer was silent as his stare appeared to burn a hole in the table. I wanted him to rear up like a beast and take control of the situation, but he had been confusingly absent even though it was his daughter that had been taken. The only sign of his rage was the leaking magic that had begun to twist the physics of the room. Abaddon and I ignored the boiling drinks and the pulsing walls.
“Belphegor would have been able to fend off an attack.” I said. “The Leviathan has an agenda that makes no sense. Why would he come for the First Circle? We will rip him apart. Why would he start a war with the Summerland? He is a beast of the Jade Lake; he has never seen an Angel in his life.”
“Perhaps he has taken umbrage against those of us that are Fallen?” Abe clicked his fingers and reached inside of his holster for his dagger. He slammed it directly in the centre of Envy. “Whatever the reason, an attack against the First Circle is beyond the pale.”
The table groaned under the weight of an unknown force. Abe straightened his back and bowed, leaving Luc and me alone without a word.
I opened my mouth to speak but was unable to find words.
“He took my daughter.” Lucifer whispered, darkness begun to leak from his nostrils like a black fog. “If you give him the sceptre, the Leviathan is not only taking my daughter, but my Consort as well.”
I stepped to his side; my hand flinched back when I reached out to place it on his shoulder. I wanted to touch him, but he still occupied a pedestal in my mind that made our relationship difficult to comprehend. His silver eyes rotated to meet mine. His hands rested on the armrests of his throne, and his knuckles were clenched tightly enough that I could see every tendon under his pale skin.
I hung my head and found my shoulders had begun to shake.
“People keep taking things from me.” Lucifer’s voice was a lick, a whisper.
“And from me.” I replied.
“You need to go to the Fourth Circle and retrieve her.” Lucifer told me. I agreed, but the only thought the wracked through my brain was that he wasn’t coming with me.
“And you?”
“I need to remain here, to protect the First Circle.” Lucifer said. “Abe will go with you. Bring my daughter home to me."
His hands gripped my waist as he tugged my body in front of him. He bent me over the edge of the ancient wood and the swirls of the magic across the map encased my body.
Lucifer stood up; he gripped the edge of my thighs and tugged my body until I was flush against him. I felt the hardness of his erection against the small of my back.
“I need you.” He growled. “I need to feel your body and know that you are here with me.” I hummed and tried to twist to face him. He did not allow me to do so.
His grip was firm enough to leave bruises as he tugged down my yoga pants. His fingers were rough as they plunged inside of me and scissored from side-to-side to test my wetness. I reared back and gasped in pleasure as I felt his hand deep inside of me. He was a force. He took his cock in his hand and rubbed the creamy flesh of my buttock. My eyes rolled back in my head as thrust inside of me, shallow, in and out at first but then building to harsh and claiming strokes. My belly pressed tightly against the table as I took the pounding that he gave me.
I jumped when I felt his fingers reach around and grip my clit. He twisted and pulled the delicate nub until tears ran down my face and I was unable to take any more.
Lucifer’s sex was bruising. All consuming. He marked my body and I took every harsh thrust and painful twist. Every action screamed that I was his. Like an ant being burnt by a microscope, having even a fraction of Lucifer’s attention was blinding. Still, he said nothing as his hips rocked against mine possessively and he pulled an orgasm from my pulsating core.
His final thrust hit the end of my channel; his cock throbbed against my cervix as he flooded me with his pleasure. His mind echoed through my own and I caught the scraps of his orgasm. It pushed me over the edge. His hands gripped my shoulders and turned me around to face him. My trousers were still down by my knees and Lucifer placed a feather light kiss on my lips.
I don’t know what he had seen when he looked into my eyes, but I was too raw.
Lucifer was the father of my child. He was my Master. My first love.
I reached up and laid my palm on the side of his face.
“You are mine.” Lucifer said fervently.
I said nothing.
“When I ran from you. You appeared in front of me when I had thought you were dead. You wanted to know where I ran to?” Lucifer asked, as he brushed my lip with his thumb. “I went to see our daughter. I watch her from a distance. I protect her. I never left her. Just as I will never leave you, Dahlia.”
The circle of Pride readied for war whilst the skyscrapers on the edges of the First Circle glittered against the grey sky.
It was not a war of soldiers and battlefields but one that had been fought for years over the antique wood of our dining table as our enemy drank our wine and made scathing comments.
The Leviathan's time had come, but we did not need numbers to take him down.
Abaddon and I Laced to the edge of the Fourth Circle, at the end of the long line of stalls in the City of Dis. The dusty path led straight to Envy. Devoid of other travellers. Abe’s blackened armour caught the dim light as we walked in silence to the edge of the Leviathan’s domain. The tree roots formed cages as they hovered above the black water, almost entirely divorced from the golden glass of the river Styx.
My wings were out but tucked behind my back, as I was unable to do anything else with them. Hell’s atmosphere had somehow hindered my ability to slip them into the Ether, like I had done in the Human Realities.
My heart burned as every step into the swamp echoed Petra’s name back at me. I wished, down to the very depths of my blackened soul, that I could sense her or feel some sort of tether to her but all I felt was love. There was no Hell Magic that could lead me to her.
Abaddon was more familiar with Envy than I was. The three Fallen angels had landed in the lake when Hell had been founded. The shockwaves of their fall caused a rip between the human realities and the dimensions, with sin slowly leaking through. The residue of their power washed into the Jade Lake and turned the Leviathan from a serpent into a King.
Levi lived in a castle to rival Lucifer’s domain, but the walls were made of wet stone and built on the foundation of rotting swamp foliage instead of ice and obsidian. Although still part of the vast Lake, the kidney bean shaped body of water had somehow hidden the behemoth of a structure when I had passed by on the River Styx before.
“Does he know that we are coming?” I wondered, unable to stomach how silent it was. The was no noise apart from the brush of the water as it lapped against the foundations of the stronghold.
“One would assume so,” Abe said, as he eyed the open iron drawbridge. Iron was notorious for negating magic of all types, and the sight of the dark metal filled me with unease.
We walked in.
It was too easy.
I saw the outline of her curly hair first. The sight of her caused my lips to pull back from my teeth, in a wolf-like snarl. The Hellhound’s fingers glowed orange as her magic licked the air, begging for violence. Abe stepped forward, reaching for his dagger but I put my arm out to stop him. I shook my head. My muscles screamed for her head.
“Meesha Patel.” My voice was venom. “What a pleasure.”