Chapter 14 Lucifer #2
It was only then that Lucifer noticed Galilee had been slowly edging herself over till her body was placed between her family
and him. The heat coming from her redoubled, and the Kincaids began to notice. Some of the Kincaids lowered their weapons
when Galilee got in the path of their shots, but others didn’t, their jaws set as their eyes flicked over the low burn spreading
over the leaves in the garden with alarm.
Celestial raised her forearm and licked at a dribble of blood that had run from the wound on her palm. The crossbow bolt lay
in the grass by her feet. She didn’t say anything.
“What makes you think I couldn’t offer consent?” Galilee asked, deceptively calm. Oh, but she tasted like a storm, and Lucifer
wanted her. He could smell a leash being taken off and it excited him. All around her, the blackening edges flared into red
embers, thickening on leaves and branches. A low hum crept into the air, hovering just below their hearing.
“Come on, baby,” her mother cut in. “He’s the Devil. What power could you possibly have against him?”
A strange look flickered over the grandmother’s face, and Celestial’s nostrils flared imperceptibly. Lucifer’s eyes slitted—those
were the two who held answers, deep in their bellies, from the look of things. He’d carved buried truths out of people before,
but he’d promised Galilee her family wouldn’t be hurt. The other Kincaids might have fragments of the truth, carefully crafted
stories, or warnings currently bolstered by how Galilee’s growing rage was incinerating a small patch of the garden, but it
was the grandmother who watched Galilee with wary calculation, not an uninformed fear.
“You think I’m too weak to say no to Lucifer?”
Galilee’s voice was getting wild now, and her lips were flushed from the heat pushing off her.
Lucifer could feel the sting of it against his skin even from where he stood.
He wanted to call out to her, to brush his skin against hers, but this was hers and hers alone, and it was glorious, despite her hurt.
She had forgotten about her human friends, forgotten that they had been shielded since she’d known them, and so she didn’t notice the way they were staring at her as red coals burst out of the ground by her feet, as her hands began to glow, light spilling out from her palms like a threat or a blessing.
Lucifer bit back a sharp grin. His honeycomb lover was unfolding before his very eyes, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d seen, all simmering fury and burning power.
“Gali, you gotta hold it,” Celestial said, her feet shuffling on blades of grass that crumbled to ash as she moved.
Galilee didn’t take her eyes off her mother. “Nah, let her say it with her chest. You think I’m so weak, Ma?”
Collette blinked and glanced at Gali’s hands. The light coming off her daughter’s skin illuminated the red coals circling
her on the ground. “Galilee, we just want to protect you.”
“Who told you I needed to be protected?” Galilee hissed. A willow tree by them groaned as its waving branches caught aflame. The Kincaid women glanced
up at it, and several of them gasped. They stepped back, dark caution warring with love in their eyes as Galilee clenched
her fists and the light from her hands whitened into something clear and sharp and dangerous. They had never seen her like
this, Lucifer realized, and they were afraid.
Still, as much as it pleased him to see her drop the helpless skin they had stitched her into, Lucifer also knew Galilee would never forgive herself for losing control and hurting the people she loved.
All her rage was really just rooted in an old, old hurt.
These people had kept the truth from her for years, and they were still working so hard to convince her she was just like them, instead of setting her free, preparing her for what lived inside her.
It was one thing to keep your true form leashed, like he did.
It was another to have been raised entirely on a leash, to not even realize the leash was there, or who was holding it, or why they had placed the leash in the first place.
Galilee was breathing hard, her hands bloodless and throbbing with white light. “I told Celestial I didn’t need y’all riding to my rescue, but none of you ever fucking listen to me. I will not step aside, Nana Darling. I chose him because I wanted to, do you understand?” Her eyes were shattered
ink, frozen in place, piercing into her grandmother’s. “Do you hear me, Nana? Because I wanted to.”
Something unspoken passed between them as the ground burned around Gali, and her grandmother closed her eyes, her body sagging.
“I warned you, child,” she whispered. “I warned you about that want.”
Galilee made a visible attempt to gentle her voice in return. “I know, Nana Darling. But the sun still gonna rise in the morning,
whether we like it or not.”
Her grandmother looked devastated. “And so you lay with Satan himself, with the enemy of worlds? That did not have to be inevitable,
Galilee. Look how you burn even now, as if he raised you from a pit of Hell.”
Lucifer felt the words land on Galilee as strongly as if her grandmother had struck her. The heat around them tightened, and
the light from Galilee’s hands flared, casting deep shadows on her face.
“So I’m evil now, Nana?” she asked unsteadily, looking around at her family. “That’s what you going with?”
A Kincaid with a sawed-off shotgun shifted her weapon from Lucifer to Galilee, and after a brief hesitation, another Kincaid
with a pair of pistols did the same. Galilee drew in a ragged breath as she watched them do it, and her friends gasped softly,
alarm filling their expressions.
“Please,” Bonbon said. “Don’t hurt Gali.”
“Stay out of this,” the one with the sawed-off snapped. The family was now split, most of them staring at those two in shock.
“Jesmyn, baby,” one of them said to the woman with the pistols. “She’s our niece.”
Jesmyn spared an anguished glance. “I’m sorry, Peony, I really am. I’m not tryna hurt Gali, and you know I don’t agree with Sage half the time, but we don’t know if she’s in control of herself. I gotta protect you and Celestial.”
Celestial looked over at the mention of her name, faintly surprised. “You don’t gotta worry about me, Ma.”
Jesmyn’s jaw tightened. “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about this shit Gali’s pulling.”
Sage scoffed, her hold on the sawed-off not wavering an inch. “I been worried about the shit Gali be pulling. But none of y’all would listen to me.”
All the women were sweating now as roiling shadows danced over their bodies, Galilee’s light bouncing around the garden. They
looked confused and scared, but it still took a monumental effort for Lucifer to restrain his fury. Fuck the promises he’d
made. He would add his power to Galilee’s and burn these gardens and everyone in them to a cinder before he let any of them
spill a drop of her blood. One of the Kincaids was holding back Collette, who was looking at Sage with pure violence simmering
in her eyes. Celestial frowned, her fingers flexing spasmodically.
Galilee’s grandmother still hadn’t answered the question about evil. In the face of that silence, Galilee choked back a sob,
and the temperature of the garden spiked precipitously, forcing gasps out of all the humans. Their white clothes dampened
with perspiration.
“Galilee,” Lucifer called, unable to hold his silence while she suffered alone. Galilee turned to look at him, and grief was
a clawing mask on her face. Lucifer’s chest tore a little. “Oh, beloved . . .”
“The Devil calls you like a dog and you answer like the whore you are,” Sage hissed out, her face contorting in disgust. Galilee’s
mother broke out of the hold she was in to backhand Sage, sending her sprawling to the ground, the sawed-off tumbling off
to the side.
“Watch your mouth,” Collette snarled, her lip curling with disgust.
Sage glared up from the seared grass. “Like calls to like, Collette. I warned you all. I told you she smelled wrong. All that light was unnatural, and you still dragged her out of the woods and brought her home. Now
it’s spilling out of her like a lanced boil.”
Celestial clenched her fist and stepped closer. “That’s enough,” she said quietly.
“When will it be enough? We marched out here to rescue her from a monster, but look around you!” Sage gestured wildly to the burning
garden. “Our own blood burns as she attacks us with fire—we raised the monster, cousin!”
Collette grabbed the sawed-off shotgun and leveled it at Sage in one fluid motion. “Insult my baby one more time and I’ll
blow a hole in your face,” she invited.
Sage stared down the barrels of her own gun, then shook her head and smiled, her teeth smeared with blood. “Oh, but she’s
not your baby, is she, Collette?”
A resounding silence poured over the garden, and Collette staggered back, her hold on the gun sagging. Sage grinned triumphantly,
and in the surprised emptiness, Galilee looked to her mother, her face paling beneath her freckles.
“What did she just say, Ma?”
Collette could not answer, her eyes fixed on Sage with rapidly dawning shock and rage. Galilee swiftly turned to her grandmother,
fear crawling over her face as she processed the words Sage had spat out.
“Nana Darling. She’s lying, ain’t she?”
Lucifer could hear every plea packed into the words. Tell me it’s not true. Tell me I’m my mother’s child.
When the old woman dropped her gaze, Lucifer was almost certain he heard Galilee’s heart break.