Her Demonic Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 5) (3 page)

He crept forwards, his sword ready to strike. This would teach the former angel for making him come out here into this godforsaken jungle. Marcus would probably jump higher than Heaven when Veiron tapped him on the shoulder with the sword. His grin widened.

Something cold pressed against his throat and he froze.

His dark eyes slid to his left.

Amelia stood there, dressed head to toe in black combat gear, her small dagger held to his Adam’s apple. She smiled and her grey eyes brightened, but the fatigue and worry he could see in them didn’t lift. The past year and a half had been difficult for her. It had been difficult for them all. He had never seen her so on edge before though. Had someone found them and tried to kill her?

Both Heaven and Hell had been quiet since Marcus had fallen and joined with Amelia, allowing her to become his new master, endowing him with the same silvery unusual wings that she had, a mixture of feathers on top and leathery dragon-like membrane on the bottom half, and the same incredible powers.

“Been training?” He pushed her arm away, removing the blade from his throat.

Marcus didn’t look back at him. He prodded the fire with a charred stick. “We heard you coming from miles away. Subtlety is not your forte, is it?”

Veiron shrugged and slid his broadsword into the sheath on his back.

He walked into the clearing, dumped his backpack on the leafy ground and undid the leather straps that ran under his arms and held the sword case against his back. He let it drop to the ground next to his backpack and sat on a tree stump near the fire. Small insects drifted too close to the flames and fizzled out of existence. He faced that sort of end if the Devil ever got his hands on him.

“So... what the fuck am I doing in the middle of the Amazon, close to a gate that spells certain doom for me?” Veiron looked from Marcus, with his silver-blue eyes and stoic expression, to Amelia, deciding she was the easier target and the reason Marcus had requested his presence judging by the feelings she wasn’t bothering to mask.

She sat down on the log opposite him, her black clothes blending into the darkness beyond her but her silver hair making her stand out. It was up tonight, tied back in a tight ponytail like his. She looked as though she was enjoying the humidity of the rainforest as much as he was, so why had she chosen this as the location for their latest meeting?

Marcus wore similar black fatigues on his lower half, his own black shirt laying over the log to his left. His bare muscular chest bore the scars of a recent battle and there was a thin dark line cutting across his jaw.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re in a whole heap of shit?” Veiron said and Amelia stared at her feet. “Is someone going to tell me why I’m here, or do I have to beat it out of Marcus?”

He grinned at Marcus when the black-haired man glared at him, his pale eyes dark and daring him to try.

Marcus cleared his throat but it was Amelia who spoke.

“I need your help.” Her soft voice drifted across the crackling fire, conveying every ounce of worry that he had seen in her eyes. “I want to go myself but Marcus won’t let me.”

“Go where?” He didn’t really need to ask that question. Cold realisation sank deep into his gut. They were close to one of the gates to Hell for a reason, and it was one he really didn’t want to contemplate. Amelia had to have a damn good reason for wanting to go into Hell and Marcus had to have an even better reason for making her call in a favour from him.

“I can’t leave her there.”

Her? He looked at Marcus. The ex-angel sighed, lifted his gaze away from the fire, and looked across at him.

“The Devil has her sister,” he said, voice laden with a mixture of anger, concern and fear.

“I can’t leave her there, Veiron,” Amelia whispered and tears lined her grey eyes. Not the waterworks. He could handle anything but a crying woman. “Marcus won’t let me go and I’m afraid that if he goes alone, he won’t come back... or he won’t be able to find Erin. Please... I know I’m asking a lot of you but I need someone strong who knows Hell and won’t rouse suspicion. I need her back.”

Fuck, what was he supposed to say to her? Sorry, Love, I’m not interested in saving your dear little sister from the Devil and getting myself killed in the process? He was only alive because Amelia was. If she went down into Hell, she would get herself killed by the Devil or any of the other million vicious creatures that had orders to separate her head from her body by any means. If that happened, it was game over and he would wake up a guardian angel again, unaware of everything that had happened in his past lives and destined to fall and remember it all.

Still, he really didn’t feel like venturing down into the bowels of Hell on a suicide mission to save a woman when he was high on the Devil’s shit list himself. Everyone was looking for him, both up here and down there. The slightest mistake on his part and his former colleagues, the army of Hell’s angels belonging to the Devil, would be coming after him to haul his arse in for the crime of assisting Amelia and Marcus in their battle against the game.

“Please, Veiron?” Amelia whispered again and he couldn’t stand seeing the tears in her eyes. She had already been through hell because of this vicious game and had almost died by the hand of her lover, Marcus. She deserved to live, and so did he.

They all deserved some peace.

Veiron closed his eyes and huffed.

“Fine. I’ll take a trip to Hell,” he said and he could almost hear Amelia smile, could sense a glimmer of her relief and hear her heartbeat pick up.

“Thank you,” she said and he looked across the fire at her and shook his head. There was no reason to thank him.

He hadn’t promised that he would find her sister and bring her back in one piece.

He had only said that he would make the journey to Hell.

Whether it would be a one-way trip or not was yet to be seen.

It felt like a suicide mission to him.

CHAPTER 3

E
rin sat with her back against the wall opposite the open side of her black rocky cell and stared into the hazy fiery distance, watching volcanic vents spewing lava high into the air and listening to the constant screams. She couldn’t remember if it was five days or twenty since the Devil had visited her, but it had been a long time since she had seen anyone.

The other two who had been with the Devil during his visit hadn’t come back to check on her. Someone slid a meal through a grate in the bottom of her door from time to time. She ate only the vegetables, unable to stomach the thought of eating more of the final unicorn in existence let alone the meat itself.

She could have been somewhere more comfortable if she had complied with the Devil’s desires.

He had told her that before storming out of the cell and slamming the door behind him, leaving her alone with the dismembered wings of the last creature who had dared to defy him.

She had felt sick, reliving the Devil ripping them from the demon’s back, whenever she saw them so she had gingerly dragged them to the open side of her cell and tossed them down into the fiery river far below.

She could have escaped this place if she had gone with him. Not the Devil, but the other one who had visited her. At first, she had thought it was the Devil. The man had flown up from the abyss on huge black feathered wings, his wild hair as dark as midnight and his eyes as golden as a hawk’s. The only items of clothing he had worn were a black loincloth covered by tattered age-worn strips of armour and boots that reached his knees and had gold-edged black moulded plates that completely covered his shins.

His sudden appearance had startled her and he had looked so much like the Devil that she had fled to the back of her cell and had done a double take. Only on closer inspection had she realised that this man was different. If it hadn’t been for the black wings, she would have thought him an angel. He had been handsome, but darkness had clung to him, a sense of evil in the twist of his lips as he smiled at her and told her that she could have her freedom if she came with him.

It had tempted her more than the Devil’s offer and she had almost considered placing her hand into the man’s and letting him take her away. Only that lingering sense that he was evil beyond words, as likely to murder her as he was save her, had kept her at the back of her cell. He had hovered near the open wall of her prison, beating his wings and using the rising heat to keep him close to stationary. When she had refused, Erin had expected him to enter her cell and force her to leave with him, but he had snorted, a feral sound that had made her jump, and then swooped out of sight.

She had been too scared to race forwards and see if he really was gone. She had sunk to her backside close to the door of her cell and stared out at the world beyond her prison, wondering what would have happened if she had gone with the stranger. Would he have freed her or would he have taken her to the Devil, or would he have killed her?

His reluctance to enter her cell and the wary glances he had given it had left her with the impression that he hadn’t been willing to breach it for some reason. He had wanted her to extend her hand to him, beyond the boundaries of her prison. That had led her to settle on the idea that if he had entered the cell, something would have happened. What, she didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

She would have her freedom somehow, but it wouldn’t be with the help of a man who had looked like some sort of demonic angel.

Erin rubbed her knees, idly trying to get rid of some of the layers of dirt from her bare skin. At least it was warm in Hell so her scant clothing wasn’t a problem. She laughed at herself, the sound loud and echoing around her cell, jarring with the endless screams that rose up from the abyss.

Was that where the Devil was right now? Too busy tormenting his victims to come and visit her and try to convince her to do as he had asked.

He had told her that she could have her freedom if she would cast aside her sentimentality and kill her sister. Her stomach rolled in response to that memory and she slammed her mind shut against it, unwilling to contemplate such a thing.

Erin buried her face in her knees and hugged them, tired right down to her bones and starving. The few morsels she ate whenever food came through the door weren’t enough to keep her going. Without eating the unicorn meat, she was slowly growing weaker, the effects of the few mouthfuls she’d had wearing off a little more each day. Her throat felt like sandpaper too. The Devil clearly didn’t understand that the constant heat of his hellish realm was dehydrating her.

Then again, did he really care if she died?

She was bait. Whether she was alive or not didn’t matter. Or did it? He had been genuinely angry that she had been held captive for days on end without him knowing and without food or comfort. She could have had that comfort and all the food she could eat if she had only complied with him one way or the other. Play bait or do his work and kill her sister for him.

Erin wanted to do neither. She didn’t understand why the Devil wanted her sister but she didn’t want Amelia to come to Hell and try to save her. She would rather die here and rot in this cell than see her sister come to harm.

She shifted onto her knees, the rough basalt floor cutting into her dirty flesh, and pushed herself onto her feet. Her steps were unstable but she made it to the side wall of her prison and held onto it as she moved forwards, towards the edge.

Hot air blasted upwards from the inferno hundreds of feet below and almost knocked her backwards. It curled around her, blowing the fringe of her straight black hair upwards and stinging her eyes. She squinted and stared out at the unforgiving bleak landscape that stretched around her, all black rocky crags and flaming rivers. Huge black-skinned beasts roamed the land, their dragon-like wings furled against their backs and weapons in their hands. They tormented any smaller creature they passed, bullying it until it either escaped or gave up and cowered at their feet.

She had grown strangely used to the existence of this place and the creatures that dwelled within it, as though she had always known it was real and not the stuff of legend and myths.

Her gaze tracked the demons far below. Erin had watched the comings and goings of the creatures who guarded the prison, trying to figure them out and see if they had any weak spots. They didn’t. Nothing could stand up to them.

Nothing except the Devil at least.

She couldn’t see him amongst the creatures below her.

Erin leaned further forwards and assessed the ragged cliff face. She might have been able to make it down that way if she had been a champion rock-climber. She wasn’t. She was a weak, exhausted and sometimes scared woman who had never climbed anything bigger than a hill, let alone scaled a sheer rock face several hundred feet high.

The door opened behind her and Erin didn’t make the mistake of whirling to face the visitor this time.

She turned slowly, expecting to find either the Devil or one of his cronies come to torment her.

It was neither.

A bloodstained and beaten man wearing tight black jeans that emphasised the thickness of his thighs and a black t-shirt that stretched across the impressive hard cut breadth of his chest stood in the doorway.

He was holding a very big sword.

Erin swallowed.

Had he come to kill her?

She glanced back at the abyss below her feet. What would be a better and less painful death? Falling to this scarlet-haired man’s sword or plummeting into the volcanic river?

“Erin, I presume?” His deep voice wrapped around her and Erin couldn’t miss the concern that laced the weariness and irritation in it.

Erin looked back at him.

He slid the broadsword down his back and scrubbed his hand across several days’ worth of dark growth on his handsome face.

One good-looking man had fooled her already and it wasn’t going to happen again. This man was every bit as lethal, brutal and vicious as the Devil. It was there in his eyes and the way he held himself, legs spread in a warrior’s stance, ready for a fight.