Chapter Fifty-Three Lucifer
Chapter Fifty-Three
Lucifer
I fucking hate my brother and everything that self-righteous bastard stands for. Mother and I are going to have words over this. But I don’t have time to consider what I might do once I get hold of him.
That thing within the darkness moves, coming to its feet.
Only a handful of meters away from my bride.
“Charlotte, darling,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even as I inch closer to her. Azrael has his blade well in hand, following my lead. “Keep your eyes on the floor and retreat slowly. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she whispers, starting to inch toward me.
As I’ve told her dozens of times before, she may be immortal, but that does not mean there is nothing within my Mother’s chaotic universe or my Father’s divine order that can pose a threat to her.
It simply means that when it does happen, it will be a lot more dramatic.
Charlotte does exactly as I instruct her, knowing better than to defy me at a moment like this. She’s nearly in the clear, nearly within my reach, but then her friend enters her line of vision, the girl rasping for her last breath.
“Jax!” My wife drops to her knees.
Chaos erupts inside the chamber.
Just as Azrael and I lunge for her and her friend, the creature bursts forth from the dark, its massive jaws roaring.
I’m going to be punishing her for this for the rest of eternity, unfortunately.
If any of us bloody survive this.
Her self-preservation skills are seriously lacking.
When we both come out of the dive, I’ve got hold of her friend behind one pillar and Azrael has Charlotte behind the other.
The creature prowls about in the darkened chamber, searching for us stupidly.
“What the hell is that?!” Charlotte shrieks.
“It’s a Living Creature.” Azrael hushes her.
The beast roars, searching for where we might have gone, but it relies on sight and smell alone. It has thousands of eyes, but it cannot hear us.
“Or one of my Father’s early attempts, I’d say.”
“That’s what’s guarding the pearly gates?”
She says it as if she’s just fully come to understand the kind of celestial deals she’s been making. Particularly the one she’ll soon have to settle with Sloth.
“And yet you’ve been telling me to let you make your own choices,” I snark back.
“I’ve changed my mind, sir,” she cries, hearing that thing growling in the dark as it scuffles about. “You’re in charge now, I promise.”
I roll my eyes. “Day late, dollar short, darling.”
The creature is roaming, but since it cannot see us, it’s uncertain what to do.
It’s only a matter of time before it sniffs us out.
“Would the both of you shut up, so I can focus?” Azrael growls. Trying to get a line of sight on where it might be, he leans around the corner.
I twist, peering around the pillar as it steps into the faint light, and I get a proper look at it. It’s all wings and eyes and muscle, stitched together by divine ego and whatever nightmares my Father might’ve had lying about at the time.
Four faces curl around one skull—lion, man, eagle, ox—like my Father couldn’t decide what the fuck He wanted it to be when it grew up, so He just said “yes” and decided to be done with everything.
There are too many wings, eyes everywhere, and none of them blink, giving us no reprieve.
The beast doesn’t breathe so much as radiate judgment, the kind that gets cities leveled and souls bartered, but its four maws promise divine retribution.
How the fuck my brother managed to tame it is beyond me.
“On the left. Near the opening of the antechamber,” I whisper to Azrael.
He nods. “On the count of three, I want you both to run for the door.”
My eyes narrow. “What are you going to—”
“Just fucking trust me for once in your goddamn existence,” he snarls. “I’ve never done anything without your best interest at heart.”
He means more than this moment—the blade. The lance, the one he used against me.
“One.”
His deal with my Father. How he betrayed me at Gethsemane. Didn’t warn me about His plans to sacrifice the Nazarene, how I was to be locked away.
“Two.”
My grip on Charlotte’s friend tightens. And now, how he’s fallen in love with my woman. Ruined whatever chance I might’ve had to keep her safe from herself.
Though it seems as if she might be coming around at any rate.
For a moment, I fear I might have misjudged him.
But then my gaze snags upon Charlotte’s friend lying in my arms, desperately grasping to the last breaths of her life. Her death is going to destroy Charlotte.
My jaw tightens.
I know then without a doubt that I am not ready to forgive him just yet.
“Three!”
I lunge for the door, Charlotte’s friend clutched in my arms. The weight of her doesn’t slow me, no matter what that blasted door might say.
Because if she dies, the possibility of me regaining my powers, my immortality, all that I am, also dies.
And that is an outcome I refuse to live with, frankly.