Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
KELLAN
K ellan watched the human wailing as he rocked Demitria back and forth as he brushed her face with gentle fingers as if she’d come back to life under his touch. Kellan felt it deep within his chest, that nagging feeling again. The loss he knew Jace must be feeling. He’d had years with her, and Kellan knew what it looked like when a human was broken. When they’d given up on everything. Jace was the spitting image. His face was hollow, pale, his eyes dull. Lifeless, like something in himself had died. As if any light that had been within had gone out the moment Demitria had taken her last breath.
Kellan could feel himself slipping into that rage, willing every ounce of it to come pouring into him. Feeling the surge as it thrummed in his veins, pumping through his blood as it rejoiced . He was murderous. Craving nothing more than destruction and death. What he had been groomed to be. A being of mass destruction, and he welcomed every fucking ounce of it.
Kellan crossed the threshold and let the darkness take over.
With his sword in his hand, he stalked in the direction Lucifer fled. A fiery darkness emanated from him, nearly identical to the one Lucifer wielded, winding itself around him as it clung to everything that he was. Like a power of the gods, it pulsed through him. Igniting. Burning. Kellan was hell incarnate. This was why the Dark King had held him in his clutches for so long. Why he had led that army through countless wars. He was fire, he was rage, he was darkness. And it mirrored everything that Lucifer was.
The remaining Horsemen were quick on his heels, readying themselves for the fight that was coming. A battle that he knew had been on each of their minds for so long now, but Kellan whirled around, turning his sword on his own siblings.
“I go alone.” The growl rumbled through him. His eyes dark. Murderous, as he stared at each of them. “Back off.”
“You can’t do this alone. Not like this.” Gabriel stood his ground and toed toward his brother. Kellan swung his blade, and Gabriel jumped back a foot to miss the deadly point. Friend or foe, he could hardly discern the difference. Not when he could feel his eyes turn into that depthless pool of black.
“Follow me and I will turn on you. Back the fuck up.” He had such little restraint as something told him to swing. To pierce his sword through flesh, and let the bodies build before him so he could bathe in their blood. Drink it in.
“Kellan you’ll be killed!” Eire cried out, silver lining her stormy eyes as she reached a hand toward him. He contemplated cutting off her limb, too. Kellan was so much more than the last time his darkness had taken over. The incessant rage. The bloodlust. He very nearly killed them all the last time. Now? He didn’t know if he could hold himself back. Not as that voice whispered for blood.
“Then so be it.” Kellan left them standing there before he disappeared into the mouth of the mountain.
Following the Dark King was easy. Blood trail aside, he could feel the fear wafting from the male’s body. The metallic, iron tinge to the air, and Lucifer hadn’t gone far. Kellan ducked into a narrow passage, and the blood trail thickened. Fallen angel or not, Lucifer would not come back from that wound without a healer. He’d lost too much blood. It smeared across the rocky ground and the walls around him. Dripping and pooling along the ground as it slushed beneath his boots. Another fifteen feet of the passage and he emerged into a shallowed cavern.
Kellan could sense him. Could smell Lucifer’s fear as he cowered. Alone, without another demon in sight. As he waited to die by his hands.
“You can still join me, Horseman. We can put the past behind us. Create a force that even the council couldn’t reckon with.” Lucifer stumbled back as Kellan advanced. His dark hair was plastered to the pallid skin of his forehead with blood and sweat. Lucifer’s lips trembled, cracked and dry as the irregular breaths fluttered through Kellan’s ears. Gone was the cocky, confident, fallen angel he’d served so many years under.
“You’re pathetic.” He laughed, the sound reverberating off the walls around them. Wicked, as it filled every inch of the cavern. “It’s over for you.” He stopped, waiting. Watching to see Lucifer’s next move.
“We can still beat them. Help me take what should be mine. Help me take this planet, and I will free you from their grasp.” Something in the fallen angel’s voice had his body begging for more blood, stoking that fire burning within him.
“I’d rather die than work for you again.” Kellan spat. He advanced a step, and the fallen angel flinched. Loose stones crunched beneath his boots, but his legs were steady. Nothing phased him when he was like this. Like the world around him no longer existed once he set his sights on his target. It was how not only the council, but Lucifer himself had groomed him. Had embedded it in his brain to tune every sound and movement out of his mind until it was nothing but him and his prey.
“Kellan you don’t want to kill me.”
“You’re delusional if that’s what you believe. I want nothing more than to absolutely obliterate you.” He laughed again, almost in a near manic state.
“She needed to die. What’s the life of one human girl? Surely my life means more than that slimy rat.”
Kellan lunged, his steps faster than Lucifer could comprehend. He swung, but held back just enough for it not to be a killing blow. He had vowed to take his time with Lucifer. To make him suffer like he had. Like so many before, and still continued to, suffer. He would have made it last weeks. Months. Even years if he didn’t have one last mission after he was done with Lucifer. He’d be brutal, but it would be faster than the angel deserved.
With the deadly point of his blade, Kellan severed the tendons at the back of Lucifer’s heel, and the male crumbled to the ground. Howling in pain as he tried—and failed—to get back to his feet.
“Kellan don’t do this.” Lucifer’s eyes grew wide as the reality set in. He knew he wasn’t walking away from this. Not this time. “Kellan, I have so much left to do. I’m not ready.”
Kellan reveled in that look as the being pleaded for his life. That sick, twisted part of it calling to him, and he enjoyed every fucking moment.
“How dare you plead for your pathetic excuse of a life.” With a flick of his wrist, another appendage fell free from his body. The scream that erupted from him was like so many Kellan had heard before. The wounded cry of a dying animal, and he grinned.
“Kellan!” The pool of blood thickened and expanded beneath him as he continued to bleed out. There was nothing left of the fallen angel's left arm. In sheer moments, Kellan had reduced it to nothing more than a hunk of flesh.
He palmed the dagger, striding toward the trembling being. “Begging will get you nowhere.” Down Lucifer’s chest he dragged the blade, plunging it into his abdomen before tearing into Lucifer’s flesh with his bare hands, enclosing them around whatever he could grasp, and yanking them from his stomach. Lucifer’s blood sprayed, and Kellan could feel it dripping down his skin. Tasted it in his mouth, but he continued on. Severing the tendons in his right arm, ripping them from his body, and rendering him completely immobile.
Lucifer’s pained wails echoed throughout the cavern. Over the mountain where an entire army had fallen still at the ear-piercing sound. Kellan should have been disgusted, but he felt nothing. No remorse. Held no mercy for the being beneath him, despite him begging over and over again for his life.
Suffering. It was the only thing Kellan wanted Lucifer to feel. He wanted him to suffer. To beg for his death.
“Balance, Horseman. Killing me throws the balance.”
“Fuck the balance.”
Lucifer's severed head hit the floor, rolling a few feet away from his still body. Eyes glazed and unseeing. His mouth still hung open in a pained, silent scream.
Only then did Kellan let the weight of his actions fall heavy on his shoulders. Not with remorse. He didn’t feel anything for the dead angel. But relief. This world had been rid of the monster that had plagued them since the dawn of time.