Curse of the Fallen by Eve Archer

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Ella

Silence stretched across the dungeon as Dan aimed the gun with shaky, gnarled hands, both Rami and the demon close enough that I couldn’t tell where the bullet might hit. A drop of water pinged onto the floor, the sound reverberating off the slick stone walls.

“The demons are attacking,” Rami finally said, his voice a fierce rasp.

Dan’s brow crinkled. “The demons are here? They’ve never dared come to the island before.”

Rami nodded. “It is an abomination. One your actions brought about.”

Dan flinched and readjusted his grip on the gun, his fingers strangely twisted and dripping blood.

I felt a pang of sympathy for him. “You can make up for it by helping us escape from the demons.”

Dan’s gaze slid to me—hardening slightly—and his gun followed. “I already shot you once.”

“You tried,” I said, regretting the comment almost the second it left my mouth.

“You’re right.” He took a step forward. “I missed the first time.”

“Dan.” Rami’s voice held a distinct warning. “It is not too late.”

Dan swung his attention back to his fallen brethren. “For you or for me?”

Rami shrugged but said nothing.

The demon gurgled, clearly enjoying the face-off and Dan’s inner turmoil. I wondered if demons like this one could sense struggle, if they fed off it like the succubi and incubi fed off desire. The demons who were attacking us were certainly nothing like the ones I’d seen before, making me wonder how many different types there were, and if these were just mindless killing creatures.

“Go,” Dan said, squeezing the trigger.

The blast made me close my eyes, my heart pounding as the deafening sound—made even louder from the low ceiling and hard stone—tore through the air. When I dared open my eyes, the demon lay crumbled on the ground.

I swiveled my gaze to Dan, who still stood on the other side of the rusted bars.

He tossed the gun behind him. “Go,” he repeated. “It’s not too late for you.”

Rami inclined his head at him, grabbing both me and Sara by the sleeves and tugging us forward. We stepped over the motionless demons, blood pooling around their chests and swirling with the water puddling the stone.

When we reached the narrow opening in the wall, a gap that was hidden almost entirely in shadows, I paused, glancing back at the fallen angel in the cell. Although his eyes were ringed with purple and his lips cracked, his lips quirked up at the corners. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but maybe it was an apology. Either way, I’d take it. Anything to get away from the demons and the dank dungeon.

Rami went first through the opening, taking Sara’s hand and pulling her behind him. In turn, she reached for my hand, and we walked into the pitch-black tunnel.

“It’s not far,” Rami said, once we were shuffling through the gap that was so narrow, my shoulders brushed either side.

I’d never been particularly claustrophobic but squeezing through such a small space in the darkness made my throat go dry. The air was stale and briny, reminding me of our proximity to the sea. I fought the urge to back up and take my chances in the dungeon where there were flickering sconces and a ceiling you couldn’t touch if you lifted your arm.

“You okay, Ella?” Sara’s shaky whisper told me she wasn’t crazy about the tunnel either.

“Never been better,” I lied.

She laughed quietly and squeezed my hand. “I love that you’re such a shit liar.”

After a few more minutes of the tunnel’s twists and turns, a glimmer of light broke through the darkness. Then we were stepping out into sunshine so bright I had to shield my eyes as they adjusted to the glare.

“We made it,” Rami said with a loud exhale.

The tunnel had deposited us onto a path that ran alongside a cliff leading down to the water. A stone ledge had been carved into the rock and kept us from plummeting down. I peeked over the ledge, gulping when I saw how far the cove was below us. A boat rested on the pebble beach, pulled up far enough not to get swept away by the tide.

“We’re leaving the island in that boat?” I asked.

“Not all of us, I’m afraid.”

I hadn’t noticed another person on the path with us, but the she-demon hovered just past our line of sight. Clearly, she’d been waiting for us.

“Lilith.” Rami spat out the word.

“Lilith?” I glanced at his menacing expression, and then at the raven-haired succubus. “I thought her name was Jaya.”

“That’s only the name and identity she took so she could get to Dom. She’s really the mother of demons, the original succubus who birthed a hundred lilim a day.”

“Damn,” Sara whispered. “I don’t know what a lilim is, but that sounds messed up.”

“Demon offspring,” Rami said.

Lilith met my eyes and bestowed one of her sultry smiles on me. “Sorry for the deception, sweetie.”

“You really don’t give up, do you?” I asked, wondering if it was even possible to kill the mother of demons.

She let out a piercing shriek that made us all stagger back, hands over our ears. Before we could recover, she darted forward and pushed Sara so that she fell backwards into the tunnel. Rami ducked inside to help her up, and Lilith leapt to the top of the tunnel’s entrance, striking her blade hard into the rock. Fiery sparks erupted when the blade hit the stone, and a huge chunk sheered straight off, falling and covering the entrance to the tunnel, trapping Rami and Sara inside and me out—with the she-demon.

It had all happened so fast that I was still in disbelief as she landed on the ground, dust from the rock crash filling the air. I backed away toward the path’s slope down to the cove.

“So, what’s your plan?” I asked, trying not to be distracted by the muffled cries of Rami and Sara behind the rock. “You’re going to kidnap me again?”

She smiled, flipping her curved blades in her hands. “Not this time.”

I swallowed hard as I walked backward, careful to keep my eyes fixed on the demon while I used my hands behind my back to guide me, bumping along the ledge with my hip. I didn’t get it. She’d had plenty of chances to kill me before. If killing me was her goal, why didn’t she do it then?

“After all this, you’re just going to stab me?” I managed to say.

“It’s not my decision,” she said, although she didn’t sound broken up about it.

“So, who is pulling the strings, if the mother of all demons isn’t?”

Her dark eyes ignited, the red flash reminding me of her demonic soul. “I’ll be honest, human. At first I was incensed that Dominick had chosen such a weak and boring human when he could have had me.”

I ignored her slights. To her I probably was boring since I didn’t feast on human desire and birth demons.

“But then I realized I could use you for leverage, although that didn’t work out like I’d planned.“ She ran the edge of her knife along her red fingernail and sighed. “Working with humans is always a disappointment, and the Solano brothers were no exception.”

My heel caught on a rock protruding from the ground, and I stumbled, my back slamming into the ledge. I gasped as the wind was knocked from me.

“So, you didn’t get your leverage.” I heaved in a breath. “What do you hope to get by doing this?”

“I owe a debt of gratitude to Mastema.”

“The demon prince?” I asked. “Does he prefer payment in blood?”

She chuckled. “You’d like to think he’s the one pulling the strings, wouldn’t you? No, he only wants what his demons want, to keep the balance between the demons and the Fallen.”

“I don’t see how I have anything to do with that.”

She shook her head as if she was disappointed in me. “I did explain the prophecy to you.”

I was starting to get seriously annoyed by this prophecy. “You mean the thing that might or might not be real and probably isn’t about me anyway?”

Her lips curved into a terrifying smile. “You’re too modest. I think we both know it’s about you.” She eyed me. “I’ve never encountered an angelic trace quite as pungent as yours. If you aren’t the one to redeem the Fallen, no one is, and that’s exactly the way it should be. The Fallen will never get redeemed, and the celestial order will remain as it should be.”

My pulse trembled as she raised her blades, but I thrust my arms out in front of myself. If I’d ever needed my hands to do their light thing, it was now. I focused all my energy on my hands, but nothing happened. Nothing but the demon rushing toward me.

I braced myself for her attack. She was too fast to outrun, and no way was I getting knifed in the back as I stumbled down a rocky path.

Before she reached me, a gust of wind swirled the dust back into the air. Dominick landed next to me, his black wings gleaming in the light and his face both terrible and beautiful. He grasped my hand as he swept his wing wide, knocking Lilith onto her ass. She jumped right back up and barreled toward us, but I raised the hand clutched in Dominick’s. My fingers tingled as a beam shot from our entwined hands, blasting Lilith into the air and over the stone ledge.