Summon Dorn (Archangels Creed) (32 page)

Fury roared through him until killing was all he could think. A hand
touched his shoulder, and he spun and buried both aqua blades into the chest of…

Lucian
's eyes widened. Oh God.

****

Sally finally managed to fight her way to Lucian. She could feel his agony and turmoil and knew she possessed a powerful peace that he desperately needed. The two demons had just covered him in a vile tormenting liquid. She should have called his name first. She'd startled him. But it was an accident. She struggled to make her mouth work but the numbing sensation in her chest had spread quickly to her throat and face until she stood paralyzed. She wanted to soothe the horror in his face, to turn and call for Dorn's help.

He must
've heard her call him inside because he was suddenly there. Why was he so angry? No, terrified. Surely he knew Lucian hadn't meant it.

Sound was beginning to fade until all she heard was the beating of her heart in her ears. Slowing. What was happening?

She wanted to close her eyes but couldn't move. She watched Dorn open his arms wide as his mouth moved. By the straining in his neck, she knew he yelled something, but it was all silence and peace to her.  

Blue fire
exploded from his chest and Dorn flashed over and embraced her in his arms. At contact, she heard his voice inside her.
"Don't die on me."

Die? But she felt so happy and at peace, why would she die?

Chapter Thirty

After Dorn
gave the order to leave at once, he flashed Sally back to the hotel room, praying the entire way. Lucian had stabbed her while under that demon's power. Heaven help her, he'd buried contaminated aqua blades inside his wife's chest. It appeared that she'd absorbed the positive powers of the blade by the peaceful look on her face, but the black seeping out around the wounds terrified him.

"
What have I done?" Lucian whispered from behind him where he'd laid her on the bed.

Dorn took a second to draw from the
correct energy. "You didn't know." He forced the words softly, denying the eye for an eye wrath that ached in his angelic pores, demanding execution. Though vengeance had been given him to exact, mercy was in order, and Dorn had never struggled with it like he did at that moment.

"
Why didn't you take them to the Holy Mountain?" Kassern demanded, exiting the suites bedroom.

"
I tried," Dorn bit back. "It was the first thing I attempted when I consummated. Uriel kindly reminded
me
, an Archangel, that we were
not clean
." The words bordered a yell because Dorn hated how he had to be told the most obvious things he could normally smell a million miles away, literally.

  The silence became deafening with Lucian
's guilt and shame. The man seemed to give in to every emotion that assaulted him. No, not a man, a child. And he was his responsibility.

****

Lucian couldn't bear to raise his head to look at the Archangel who'd just addressed him.

"
You have to let it go," Dorn repeated.

The frustration in Lucian
's chest thickened until he couldn't breathe. He couldn't even speak to say he couldn't do it, let go, he didn't know how to disconnect from it, from this unnamed weight inside him.  He shook his head.

"
You were only seven. You cannot hold yourself accountable for his sins. No matter how much you wanted to stop it, you were only...seven."

Lucian forced the ugly words from his chest.
"I could have told!"

Dorn shook his head slowly.
"You can barely speak about it now. How much more difficult when you were seven? And alone?"

"
Difficult?" Lucian's vision blurred as anguish clamped his chest and made him hoarse. "Difficult to help my own
mother?
She suffered in silence. For
me!"
The words ripped from his aching chest.

"
Yes, she did. For you. And I promise you this. She will never suffer again. Her prayer has always been to protect you. But you have to decide to let me do that. Right now, right here."

Lucian stared at him, wishing he understood, wishing so many things.
"I don't know how."

He
heard a sob behind him and knew without looking that it was Jessie. He was so pathetic. Crying like a baby. That's all he'd ever known how to do, he never stopped crying, and crying never did a damn thing. Nothing ever did a damn thing.

Lucian suddenly found himself on his back, the wind blasted out of him and Dorn
's fierce aqua eyes inches from his. "I don't have time for your childish games," he seethed. "She needs to go to the Holy Mountain to heal. And you are stopping her."

"
Stop it!" Jessie screamed. "Leave him alone."

Dorn clenched his eyes and stood Lucian on his fee
t before turning away from him.

"
You don't understand," Jessie cried, embracing Lucian. "He's seen things, heard things. Things nobody, especially not a seven year old should see and hear. Night after night, he was stuck in a horrible silence, listening to his own mother stifling her pain. But she didn’t want her bad decisions to hurt him. Choosing a bad husband and father, not finishing school and taking that job offered to her by the local shoe maker, all because she was sure the man she'd fallen in love with would do as he said and send her money. Because she believed with all her heart till the day she died that Lucian's real father was a good man!" Jessie gasped, tears streaming. "And when the money never came, she was vulnerable to the whispers and slander of-of how she was stupid to believe the American's lies, stupid to believe he ever loved her, so she took a husband so that her son would not be teased, so he could have a proper family." Jessie sobbed, putting her hand over her eyes. "And then the drinking started, then the other women, the insults, the threat to hurt her baby." Jessie looked at Lucian and shook her head. "She didn't know he was hurting you Lucian, she didn't know. If she had known, she would have killed him." She nodded, emphatic. "She loved you more than her own life, she did, you have to believe me, I wouldn't lie to you, I know it."

She clung to him and Lucian stared at her, dumbfounded.
"How do you know all of this?"

She stared into his gaze a moment before releasing him and looking around.
"I…I'm not sure, I just do." She wiped the tears from her face, seeming embarrassed.

"
You just
do?" 
Betrayal boiled Lucian's blood. He looked at Dorn. "Did you really think you had the right to tell her all of this?"

"He didn't Lucian—"

"
You'd
lie
for him?" Lucian turned and glared at her, unable to believe it, pain smothering him.

"
Lucian…" Kassern’s voice was low. "You really need to calm down."

Lucian turned his blurred vision to Kassern, panting on rage.
"Calm down? Is that all you can say to me, calm down? Don't you have anything to say to that piece of shit right there?" He jabbed a finger in Dorn's direction.

"
Lucian?" Jessie's voice sounded fragile and Lucian became aware that blue flames covered his body.

"
You don't want to do that," Dorn warned.

"
Still reading my thoughts out to everybody I see." Lucian slowly walked in his direction.

"
Lucian, you could get hurt," Dorn said.

"
Hurt?" Lucian's self-harm scars tingled and ached along his inner thighs where they'd gone far deeper than the surface cuts on his arms. "I'm no stranger to pain."

Lucian launched at the angel only to somehow get sucked into his embrace like a magnet
, into arms of steel that wrapped him in a bear hug. The wave of peaceful calm slammed him and Lucian struggled against the feeling. He didn't want it, it didn't belong, it didn't fit with anything he possessed inside him. The only thing he could manage was a scream but as his breath left him, so did all his strength.

"
You have to let it go, Lucian," Dorn whispered next to his ear.

I don
't know how
. Lucian could only think the words.
I don’t fucking know how.

"
I'll help you."

Tears swam in his eyes and sorrow pierced his heart.
"Why didn't you help?" He let his head fall onto Dorn's shoulder. "I prayed so many times," he wailed.

"
Lucian," Dorn began. "I chose your brother for this mission, but I was wrong. And when I met you, I knew that immediately, you were the one. And not just by chance, but by choice, you were prepared long ago for this moment, right now."

"
To help save the world," Lucian cried.

"
You, Lucian…" the words caressed him somehow, "you mean the
world
to God. And if there was only you left in all the world, He would still do what He is doing."

A sob tore from Lucian
's chest and he clutched the angel tight. At the first crack in the steel cocoon around his heart, the angel's aqua power surged in and Lucian lost all his strength. He let it all go, wailing out all the anguish and grief. And the
relief.
God the relief that flooded him, lifted him, there was nothing like it. He was so light, so happy, so free.

The amazing moment shattered with a horrific scream.

****

Kassern jerked to
ward the sound coming from the hotel suite's bedroom and followed Jessie to it. When Dorn entered behind him, he explained, "We found Jessie with her in the cavern next to where we fought."

"
We couldn't just leave her." Jessie seemed worried they'd blame her for something.

"
What's wrong with her stomach?" Devyn went to stand on the other side of the bed, taking the girl's pale hand.

Jessie sat on the bed next to her and touched the huge bulge under the
brown woolen garment that could have passed for a monk's robe. She looked up. "Babies."

"
Babies? Plural?" Troy's face paled. "But she didn't look pregnant when we left."

Toren
suddenly appeared in the room and without words gave Dorn his report. Operation Demon Crush was a success and he was on his way back to the Third Heaven to give report to Uriel. Toren's gaze narrowed and he strode to the bedside, his attention centered on the girl writhing in agony.

"
Is it…growing? Her stomach?" Devyn frowned and stared as if trying to measure the change.

The girl opened her mouth and screamed
again.

"
I'm assuming you have a sound barrier around this place." It was more a statement than question as he reached down and touched the girl's forehead, no doubt using the mercury properties of his shield to learn something. But why the interest?

"
Getting anything?" Kassern arched one brow.

Toren
slowly sliced his mirror gaze to Kassern. "No, but Steve is…"

Judging by
Toren's perplexity, he wasn't sure what was up with his
pet
, as some of the archangels referred to their adopted beings. Genderless, nameless pet, in Toren’s case. Toren had resorted to calling it Steve in hopes to provoke the thing to name itself. He was the only elite archangel whose pet behaved this way. Toren had informed Kassern he was tired of being wondered over as if it was something he was doing wrong. The pet wouldn’t assume a name? Then he'd assume it for him.

The girl suddenly reached a hand out and grabbed Toren
's. The angel's wings erupted behind him, mercury feathers trembling with whatever she'd done to him. Kassern rushed forward and Toren shot a hand out and knocked him on his ass with a blast of power.

"
Father!" Toren gasped, dropping on one knee.

"
What's happening?" Devyn stood and backed away from the bed as Toren's mercury energy leaked out everywhere.

"
Yes, an update would be helpful," Dorn all but demanded.

M
ovement drew Kassern's attention to her bloated belly, which was appreciably larger and now heaving and rolling. Kassern went to the bed and with his fingernail, burned an incision in the garment blocking his view of what was happening there.

When her belly came into full view, sounds of shock and horror filled the room.
The skin had taken on an odd, almost translucent quality. Combined with the movement from within, the translucence gave the impression of a flesh-colored bag of moving marbles. Even while Kassern watched, the belly grew larger and the skin thinner.

Jessie moved to the foot of the bed and lifted the girl
's brown robe and screamed, jumping back. Kassern stepped back as well, and the human part of him wanted to retch as a wriggling blob of blood and mucus the size of a calf oozed out onto the bed.