Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (71 page)

“I will see to it that you are safe and that the vile creature has not harmed you, and can never harm you again.”

Nina frowned at that, something buried deep inside her warning her that she wasn’t safe with this man, she was only safe with Lucifer. That fleeting feeling melted away as the man spread his beautiful wings and beat them. She had to go with him.

“The Devil is a cruel and vicious beast. He has used you ill. He has spread his lies like poison through you. You will be safe now.”

Nina nodded. She would be safe.

The light engulfed them and when it receded, she found herself standing in the middle of her small London apartment. The heaviness in her mind began to lift, the fog parting, and she gently broke free of the angel’s arms. She staggered back a few steps, placing some distance between them, and looked around her and then at him.

“Remain here. You will be safe in this place. The Devil will no longer be able to reach you.” The angel closed the distance between them and brushed his fingers across her cheek, and Nina shuddered and withdrew, a cold sensation running through her, born of his touch. He smiled. “The Devil will no longer be able to hurt you.”

But he hadn’t hurt her.

He had been kind, tender even, and had taken care of her.

The angel locked eyes with her again and her head hurt, flashes of Lucifer with cold eyes filling it.

She pushed back against them and looked at the angel.

There was something familiar about him, something that triggered a hazy sense that she shouldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone. Everyone had toyed with her to a degree. Lucifer.

The angels.

Her eyes widened.

The man who had taken her had been an angel.

Nina’s knees gave out and she hit the wooden floor with a crack.

The angel went to crouch and she held her hands out, warning him away.

“I just need to rest,” she muttered to his knees. “I need to sleep. If you don’t mind?”

She lifted her eyes to meet his and he nodded, his ponytail shifting with it.

Long hair.

Dread pooled in her stomach again, heavier this time, sickening her.

She didn’t remember how she had ended up in Hell, but something warned her that this man had been involved. He hadn’t just happened to be on that plateau either, with that beam of light that had lured her to it. He had been waiting for her.

If Lucifer had indeed played her, manipulated her mind and used her, then this angel had done infinitely worse to her.

He had stolen her from her world, dumped her with the Devil, and had then lured her back to him. Why?

He towered over her, his eyes colder now that she was afraid of him and was regaining her senses. His white wings rose above his broad shoulders, his black breastplate shifting with each steady breath he drew. She felt colder the longer she looked up at him, fear bubbling up inside her. She had to make him leave.

“If you don’t mind?” she said again, putting more force into her words this time.

The angel regarded her for a few long seconds in which her heart raced and her palms sweated, her fear growing stronger until she could scarcely breathe, and then nodded.

He backed off a step and bright light burst into the room, blinding her. When her vision came back, he was gone.

Relief crashed over her and she sank forwards, curling into a ball.

How was it that she had felt threatened and in danger around an angel, yet she had felt safe with Lucifer?

Nina rolled onto her side and hugged her knees.

She wasn’t sure what was happening, or whether she had simply gone insane, and she wasn’t sure that she would ever know, because deep in her heart she knew that only one man could give her the answers to her questions.

Nina pressed her hand to the floor, reaching down through the levels of the building and beyond, to where she imagined Hell to be.

A man she felt certain she would never see again.

The Devil.

Lucifer lifted his head and scoured the horizon as a sensation of power ran through him. His golden gaze halted on the plateau and the bright shaft of light illuminating Hell there.

His eyes darted to his fortress and darkness swallowed the land around him before separating to reveal the courtyard and the twin doors towering before him.

They were open.

His heart lurched in his chest and he sprinted into the building, his power reaching outwards, stretching invisible fingers through the castle as he searched for Nina.

A cold shiver ran down his spine and he turned back towards the door in time to see the light on the plateau stutter and die.

His breath left him in a rush and he could only stare at the dark plateau, ice stealing through his veins as his heart throbbed madly behind his breast.

“No,” he uttered and shook his head, refusing to believe that she had left him.

He growled and whirled back to face the vestibule and the floating staircases. Black shadows streamed from his fingers as he raised his hands and ribbons of darkness furled outwards, splitting and multiplying as they scoured the castle. Nina was still here. She wouldn’t have left him.

He had made sure of that. He had taken steps to ensure she wouldn’t discover where she was. The main doors had been locked to her. His men under orders to conceal their true appearance should she venture from her room.

“No,” he snarled as his shadows reached the top of the tallest of the towers and he realised she wasn’t anywhere within the fortress.

The valley.

Lucifer teleported to her room and didn’t hesitate. He ran straight to the corridor that would take him to the valley and sprinted down it, his shoes loud on the cobbled floor and his heightened vision revealing the black tunnel to him without need for light to guide him.

He didn’t stop running until he hit the invisible barrier at the end.

He pressed his palms to it and tried to reach through it with his shadows, but the light drove them back, the boundaries of his imprisonment stopping them from seeking Nina.

“Nina!” Lucifer banged his fists against the barrier, sure that she would hear him if she was in the valley.

He bellowed her name at the top of his lungs until he was hoarse and the sky in the valley had turned black, heavy clouds rolling in to pelt the land with hail the size of his clenched fists. Lightning forked the sky and he clawed at the barrier, his long black nails raking down it as he breathed hard. The river surged, the boiling water crashing over the wooden bridge and carrying it away.

Snow cracked on the mountaintops with a boom and tumbled downwards, picking up speed as it thundered towards the valley. The air filled with the groans and snapping of the trees as the avalanche ploughed through them, ripping them from the hillside.

Lucifer snarled and his wings burst from his back, his short obsidian horns emerging and protruding through his black hair as they grew, flaring forwards from behind his ears to beyond his temples.

He bared his fangs as his eyes blazed crimson and lightning struck the highest peak.

Stone exploded and rained down on the valley, huge chunks of it carving up the earth and the grass. A massive boulder bounced off the peak of the hill and hit the fortress, shaking the walls.

“Nina,” Lucifer whispered and pressed his palms to the barrier, his heart on fire and burning with a need to see her.

He needed her back.

He closed his eyes, lowered his head and teleported back to the entrance hall of the fortress.

He wasn’t alone.

Lucifer lifted his head and pinned deadly crimson eyes on the wretched creature standing opposite him.

One of his men.

The larger male shifted foot-to-foot, his skin paling as he looked at Lucifer.

Not because he was witnessing a side of Lucifer that he worked hard to keep hidden—his true appearance.

The male feared because he knew why Lucifer was angry.

He knew Nina was gone.

Lucifer roared at him, every single one of his teeth sharpening into vicious points. The male stumbled backwards, hit the wall near the door rather than the space he had clearly aimed for in an attempt to flee, and quickly held his hands up.

“I did nothing wrong, Master.” The male fell to his knees and lowered his head.

The bastard should beg for his life.

Lucifer raised his hand, ready to strike him down and send him back to Heaven for what he had done. He had frightened Nina away. Lucifer knew it. The imbecile had been careless and she had seen him for what he was.

“I was bringing her food as you requested, Master,” the male stammered into his knees and then dared to raise his head and look directly at him. Lucifer sneered and flexed his fingers, and the male flinched away and rushed out, “My wings were concealed! I didn’t break the rules. I swear it. When she saw me, she became pained. She had some sort of episode and I tried to help her. I tried to stop her.”

Lucifer lowered his hand on hearing that and the male whimpered, curling into himself, obviously anticipating death.

He stared at the male, sifting through his memories until he found the one he wanted.

Lucifer flexed his clawed fingers. He hadn’t lied. The male had hidden himself, using a glamour to alter his appearance, and his wings had not been out.

Nina had seen through the spell somehow.

There was only one way that was possible.

Mihail had done something to her that Lucifer had failed to detect. He had altered her memories and implanted something in her, something that had been triggered on seeing someone other than Lucifer, allowing her to witness the Hell’s angel in his true appearance and granting her the ability to leave the fortress.

Lucifer still wasn’t sure what her orders had been, but he knew one thing.

He couldn’t let her go.

He needed her back.

The space she had filled inside his chest was already hollowing out again, turning blacker than before, and now he didn’t want to return to how things had been. He didn’t want to be without her, even when he knew that he didn’t deserve her.

Even when he felt certain she could never love a monster like him.

Lucifer slowly walked towards the Hell’s angel, who cowered as he approached, and then beyond him, out onto the steps of his fortress.

He stared across the distance to the plateau, rage burning in his heart as his shadow wings fluttered from his back, itching for him to take flight and decimate the forces of Heaven who stood guard there.

But his enemy was not here.

Mihail was gone, and had taken Nina with him.

Lucifer had failed to protect her from the angel.

He tipped his head back and looked at the cragged ceiling of Hell.

But he wouldn’t fail to take her back.

His gaze darted from one spot to another across the black vault above him, easily leaping from each invisible seal to the next. Need filled him, a terrible urge to break every one of the seals that kept him locked in Hell. He growled through his sharp teeth and reined in that desire. It would only spark Heaven into sending angels to stop him, and even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t bring him what he desired.

By breaking every seal, he would free himself but he would also end the world.

As little as people thought of him, he wasn’t a heartless bastard.

He didn’t want to bring about the end of this planet.

He loved his realm as it was, in one piece, and himself as he was, alive.

If he was to reach Nina, he would require a more covert way of crossing from his realm and into the mortal one.

There was only one way.

Lucifer closed his eyes and reached out to his daughter, easily locating her on her island paradise.

“Daughter, come to me,” he whispered the words into her mind, keeping his voice calm and even so she couldn’t detect the turbulent emotions churning inside him—the desperation to have her standing before him in Hell, the urgent need to see Nina again and ensure she was safe, and the fear that he would be unable to make either of those things happen.

What the fuck do you want?

His daughter had a little too much of his sassiness and viciousness at times.

“I require you…” Lucifer grimaced, swallowed his pride, and huffed. “I need your assistance.”

Holy fuck. Did you just say what I thought you did?

Lucifer snarled at her. She laughed in his head.

No need to get grumpy, Pops. What’s the deal? You got a pest problem?

He smiled at that. His daughter viewed angels with the same disdain as he did after all they had done to her, her maggot of a husband, and her son, and those she deemed family.

The concern that edged her voice in her last question told him that she considered him part of the latter, despite her best efforts to hold him at a distance and hate him.

“Come to me and I will tell you.”

Silence again.

She wasn’t going to fall for it. The darkness inside him pushed, roaring to the surface and trying to break free. He contained it, unwilling to let her sense it in him or those who were in the vicinity see how upset he was. He refused to surrender to the black voice in his heart that pressed him to do whatever it took, born of his desperate need of Nina, because he feared that if he did, he would break the seals and destroy all three realms.

“Daughter,” he said.

“What?” she snapped.

Not in his head.

Lucifer opened his eyes and fixed them on Erin where she stood a few metres from him, on the lower section of the courtyard, her hands planted on her hips over her short black summer dress and her golden eyes filled with irritation.

“So where’s this invasion?” She looked around her, causing her short black bob to sway with the motion, the sense of anger and annoyance flowing from her growing in strength as she realised that there was no invasion.

He had to act quickly before his opportunity teleported right back beyond his reach.

An unfamiliar sensation squirmed in his stomach.

Before it had a chance to overpower him, he teleported in front of Erin and pressed his palm to her forehead. Wide golden eyes leaped up to meet his.