Bound By Lucifer by Aiden Pierce

Chapter Eight

Jess

“Where are we going?” I demanded after a few minutes of driving in silence. With every mile we came closer to wherever it was we were going, nervous butterflies turned to angry hornets in my stomach.

“Canlis,” Abaddon grunted, not taking his eyes from the road.

“Canlis,” I repeated in disbelief.

He arched a brow, his piercings glinting in the light of the Bentley’s LCD console. “Is that not to your liking, Little Queen?”

“Stop calling me that. I’m not marrying your king. It’s just dinner.”

The demon snorted.

I blinked at him, crinkling my brow in confusion. “What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head, his gaze simmering with something dark and secret.

“Right… Anyway, Canlis is fine. I’m not normally one for something so fancy, but hey, better than what I was expecting.”

Canlis was the fanciest fine-dining restaurant in the Pacific Northwest. Like, suit and tie sort of fancy with portions so small you’d need a magnifying glass to see them. At least, that was my assumption of snobby places like that. I was far too poor to have ever been. I certainly felt dressed for it tonight, but I had built up someplace far more ominous in my mind.

“And what did you expect?” he muttered with a scoff. “An exotic night spent in the Seventh Circle of Hell? Perhaps a romantic picnic by the river of boiling blood, feasting on the corpses of the violent to the ambient screams of the minotaur’s victims?”

“N–no,” I balked. I snuck a sideways glance at the demon in the driver’s seat, who was grinning maniacally to himself. “Is Hell really like that?”

“Not anymore. Ever since Lucifer stole Hell from me, it’s been downright boring.” His brow slashed with a deep frown, and his tattooed fingers flexed around the steering wheel.

“Wait. Lucifer stole Hell from you? You mean you were—”

“I was the King of Hell before his dear daddy gave him the boot from Paradise, yeah. He stole Hell from me, among other things, and now I’m his little bitch.”

My brows popped. “Salty much?”

“It’s fine.” He gripped the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles went white. “It was a long time ago. Anyway, admittedly there’s less chaos among the native demon shifters of Hell and the exiled celestials shifters from Paradise now that they have a more welcoming place to call home.

“By celestial shifters, you mean the fallen?”

Abaddon’s face piercings jingled with a sharp nod. “Celestial beings born in Paradise, assigned as guardian class. Those are the poor fucks assigned a mortal to protect, and if they break any rule whatsoever, they get their wings torn out.”

“So Lucifer… He fell because he broke the rules?”

Abaddon nodded. “He and his brother Michael were the first-ever guardians. And they were assigned to the first two humans their father created. Lucifer got the better end of the stick because he was assigned to a fine piece of ass named Eve. Michael was given some asshole named Adam.”

“What crime could Lucifer have committed that was so heinous his own father ripped out his wings and sent him to Hell?”

Abaddon slid me a salacious smirk. “Three guesses.”

“Oh.”

I hated the fist of jealousy that clenched at my heart. There was no reason for me to be envious of the first woman to ever live. That was eons ago. Besides, Lucifer wasn’t mine.

He wasn’t mine.

I had to keep telling myself that. Because that irrational part of me was whispering something troubling to me, whispering things that couldn’t possibly be true.

He is yours.

I shook my head, foisting that voice away into the deep recesses of my being where it belonged.

“So these guardians… Does every human have one?” I was almost afraid to ask. “Do I have one?”

“No. The arch celestials only assign a guardian to the mortals they feel they have ownership over. Talk about fucked, huh? And they call us the evil ones.”

My head spun with all this new information. Did this mean that Heaven felt they owned Melanie? “Why do they feel they have ownership over some but not others?”

The demon gave a shrug. “They believe that when Lucifer fell from Heaven, he broke a part of The Silver City, and it hailed down over Earth, showering mortals with pieces of pure Paradise. Most humans couldn’t resist these little fragments of pure light, so what did they do? They ate them. This made them an easy target for supernatural creatures of the darkness who wanted to consume their light. The few that survived went on to have children, and it’s said those humans still carry around a piece of Paradise. And being the self-centered, evil pricks that they are, the arch celestials view said humans as their property.”

As impossible as this all sounded, it made…sense. That was why Gabriel was so damn protective of Melanie and why he had been holding her at arm’s length all this time. He loved her. That much was obvious. But if he acted on that love, he could lose everything. And—oh God. He’d slept with her! Did that mean Gabriel was going to lose his wings?

“So Lucifer is a fallen angel… He said he can’t let out his beast. What does that mean?”

“Every shifter has a beast inside them, their true nature. It’s that way for Earth shifters with an animal form, and it’s that way for celestial shifters and demonic shifters. Paradise likes to teach their angels that they are better than the rest of us, that their beasts don’t have urges or needs. But we’re all animals.”

“So he’s stuck…looking human?”

Abaddon nodded.

“Are you fallen?”

“No,” he growled. “I already told you, don’t you listen? I’m a demon shifter native to Hell. I’ve still got my wings.”

My gut twisted as I looked at the demon in a whole new light. He was terrifying enough in his human form, slabs on slabs of muscles, tattooed flesh and piercings. What did his “true” form look like?”

“So…” I swallowed hard, almost afraid to ask. “Will you show me?”

His lips curled into a wolfish grin. “Maybe you should buy me dinner first before you go asking for things like that.”

My nervous flutters were replaced immediately by a sharp pang of annoyance. I don’t know why I was experiencing such weird chemistry with Abaddon. It wasn’t anything close to positive. It was more like a high school science experiment gone explosively wrong type of chemistry.

“I’m asking you to show me your demon form or whatever, not your fucking dick, pervert.”

“Wow, not so much as a, please. You need to learn some manners. I’d show you, but I would ruin my clothes. I’d have to strip for you first, so joke’s on you. You’d end up seeing my dick anyway.”

I rolled my eyes, directing my attention to the world blurred beyond my window.

Everything Abaddon had told me was surprisingly enlightening. Still confusing as fuck, but at least I was now able to put a few things in perspective.

It put the mystery of Melanie and Gabriel’s relationship to rest. Though Gabriel’s fate still hung in the balance.

And there was still the question, what did Lucifer want with me?