Beloved Purgatory (Fallen Angels, Book 2) (36 page)

The gash on Forneus' throat grew. First his chest
ripped open, and then his stomach, as if some unseen hand were
unzipping his torso. Forneus doubled over, clawing at his guts as
he tried to close the gaping hole. Still, he spit venom at his
master. "You are naive, my fallen Prince. Such a goal is
impossible, and if you did somehow succeed your subjects will not
thank you for it. Unless, of course, your 'Paradise' is merely
another opium den, wherein all of us lay before you, bereft of
clothes, dignity and consciousness, indulging in nihilistic power
fantasies or trying to escape from them by inhaling that sacrosanct
drug. For me--for all of us--a world fashioned by you could only be
another Hell."

"Silence," Lucifer rasped. Then his large, glassy
eyes rested on me--eyes filled with regret and something even
rawer--a deep, unsatisfied longing. "Come to my side, Devi."

The desperation in his voice broke the spell. He
didn't look confident any longer. His chest heaved. He reached out
to me, and the veins in his arms bulged as the snake coiled tighter
around him.

"Don't come any closer," I shouted, stepping
back.

"Forneus will come around. Soon, nothing will stand
between us."

Words could not describe how horrible that
sounded.

The snake hissed and flicked his tongue against the
veins popping out of his arm. The purple flames were back in his
pupils.

He's trying to hypnotize me again
, I realized,
shutting my eyes. Such a gesture probably wouldn't help me escape,
but at least I wouldn't be drawn to him. That counted for
something.

And then something slammed into my back.

I crashed to the floor. I tried to move, but the
thing above me held me in place. No, it wasn't just a thing--a
silver hand lay right before my eyes, and a man's ripped torso
pinned me to the ground.

The cool floor exasperated the pain in my bruised
cheekbone. My ribs felt like snapping twigs. They dug into my lungs
like a shrinking cage.
I'm being crushed. I can't even breathe.
What is going on?

I cracked my eyes open and saw light.

Golden flames curled through the air, sweeping over
the violet smoke like ink poured into water. White, hot, Heavenly
light. Every exposed inch of my skin the silver man didn't cover
began to burn. I wailed as I watched my hands turn lobster red.
Oozing scabs appeared on my knuckles.

Camael
, I thought immediately. It looked the
same as when I'd first seen him walk into that tunnel of light with
my brother. And when he'd healed me. And when he'd protected me
from Oz and the Hellish monsters. He and Oz had come for me.
Somehow they'd found me in this cruel, forsaken place. No, of
course they would. Oz loved me--surely that love had led him to me.
And Camael was duty-bound to protect me. Nothing could stop him.
Together, they'd take me away from this nightmare of addiction,
pain and desperation.

I winced as I pushed against the body on top of me.
The movement caused the skin on the sides of my arms to crack and
slough off.
Ignore the pain
, I commanded. Something like
that didn't matter. They'd heal me. I pushed myself to the left
with all my might. Just barely, I was able to make out the form of
the most beautiful heavenly being I'd ever seen.

But it wasn't Camael.

His wings filled the room. They looked like a
phoenix's--red, gold and white pools blurring into each other,
always moving. Intolerable, relentless heat pulsed off his body
like nuclear rings. His eyes were fire.

Lucifer held his arms above his head, trembling as he
stepped forward. The snake hissed at the light. Forneus was
completely black, his skin a charred husk. His lips had been burned
off, and his bony jaw was locked open in a silent scream.

The silver hand moved from the floor to my forehead,
blocking my vision.

I struggled at first when he wrapped his strong arms
around me. But his touch was like aloe, soothing the burns and
coating me in an almost liquid cool. He held me to his chest, and
both of us glowed with soothing silver light.

The golden angel turned and blasted a fiery hole in
the wall. "Take her. I'll catch up with you."

"Shamsiel," the silver demon whispered, then looked
down at me.

I stopped moving. The "whites" of his eyes weren't
white, but black. The gleaming, silver orbs that looked back at me
in that darkness looked like little moons.

"Just go," Shamsiel said, turning his back on us.

The silver demon cradled my head next to his
shoulder, then leaped into the wall of fire the golden angel had
left for us.

Chapter 19

The cave glowed from the silver light emanating from
his body. It looked like we'd entered Purgatory, though I couldn't
see any patches of the
Rukah-Hayim
.

He set me down on the hard ground. "Do you still
hurt?"

I shook my head. Nothing burned. Even the welts were
gone from my skin. It was as if nothing had happened

He placed his hand on the center of my chest. My body
shimmered as another soothing, cool wave spilled over me. "I'm
sorry."

My heart beat faster. "You're that little boy from
Forneus' Halloween party, aren't you?"

He nodded.

Well, that didn't surprise me. His name was Sariel,
and he was silver. Yet, he'd saved me.

I shivered as I wrapped my arms around my chest. Oz
had told me to stay away from him--no, actually he'd begged me to.
Why was he so scared of this demon?

"May I see your hand?" Sariel asked hesitantly.

I'd prefer you didn't
, I thought. I hated
thinking about that spot. It looked exactly like what I'd always
imagined Bubonic Plague to look like. But unfortunately the demon
was already reaching for them, and really, what could I do to stop
him? Slap him silly, I guess.

However, I doubted he would find it funny, so I let
him wrap those cold, gentle fingers around me and turn my hands
face-up. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I wish you hadn't
done this."

"Why do you care?" I blurted out.

He closed my hand, then held my fist. At first I'd
considered the coolness of his skin soothing, but now it was giving
me goose bumps. My fingernails bit into my palms. His silence only
made it clearer how alone we were, and that the only light in this
seemingly endless black cave came from him.

"I know you're a demon," I told him.

His eyes no longer had pupils. They truly did look
like moons, then--full and distant in a starless night sky.

"Do you belong to Forneus?"

"No."

"Who, then?"

He glanced over his shoulder, at the place where the
portal we'd escaped through had once burned. "I don't have a master
anymore."

Blood pumped through my veins so hard and fast that I
almost fell over. "But you did have one--a devil owned you, and you
got rid of him. How did you do it?"

My hands were free. He'd let go, at some point, and
stepped back. He couldn't get rid of me, though. I'd dashed
forward, skinning my knees, then started clawing at his arms. "Tell
me, please, how to save Oz."

He crouched down to my level, then grabbed my wrists
to stop me from scratching him. "I'm sorry, Devi. It isn't
something that could be repeated."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed. "Devils covet the beauty of angels. They
remember the lightness of their bodies, the purity of their light,
and the grace of their wings. Lucifer feels this most keenly,
because he cannot even leave Hell. When the angel of the sun
offered to sit at the foot of Lucifer's throne, and fill his bleak
world with light, he couldn't say no." His expression softened.
"The Fallen Prince forbade other devils from having angels.
However, even if that weren't the case, I doubt you'd be able to
find an angel who could stand living so far from God."

"Is Shamsiel really an angel? I mean, if he belongs
to Lucifer--"

"He doesn't 'belong' to Lucifer--or, at least, the
Prince cannot control him." Sariel gave me a slight smile and let
go of me. "If Shamsiel bent to Lucifer's will instead of God's,
then he would no longer be an angel. Lucifer must endure that
slight if he wants to see the sun."

I gulped. Alright, those were a pretty extreme set of
circumstances. But... "There has to be a way to save Oz from
Forneus."

"There isn't," Sariel responded steadily. "He
promised to serve Forneus until death, and in return the spirit of
the woman who tempted him in Eden--the one he loved who made him
fall--was released from Purgatory."

It isn't fair. You just wanted to save them
because you loved them. How could that be bad?
I blinked. The
demon's image blurred, until all I could make out were silver
streaks in the darkness.

I heard his rich, deep voice. "The spirit suffers
most when it is separated from God. We knew this, and the devils
knew we could not enter Purgatory. So they offered to save them if
we became their servants. We didn't know, then, that we would be
forced to eat the souls of men, or that such an act would turn us
into monsters.

"There are differences in our contracts, but the end
result is the same for all of us: when the devils wage war against
each other, we fight; when a human tries to back out of a contract,
we force them to comply; and so on."

My chest felt tight. I fell forward, tearing at my
hair. "I thought I could save him if I could stop the curse.
Forneus said--he said--"

"Is that what he promised you in return for your
soul?"

I suddenly didn't want to tell him anything more. I
don't know why. Something in me stopped myself from explaining
further. I really didn't know this demon. I didn't know what he was
capable of.

"There has only been one demon who has ever survived
our curse," he said softly.

My head shot up. I knew it. Oz refused to tell me
about it, but Onoskelis had mentioned that a demon had survived. My
fingers twitched. "Tell me."

Sariel frowned. "Are you sure you want to know? The
Rukah-Hayim
still runs through your system. Since the event
is still too close to me, there is a possibility that you will lose
yourself in my words, and experience my memories. They aren't
pleasant."

Like I care
. I'd already ventured into
Forneus' fantasy world, so I already knew it was hallucinogenic.
Besides, whatever it was couldn't be worse than Hell. "I need
this," I begged. "I don't want to be a killer. I don't want to hurt
anybody. I never did. I love him."

"I understand," the demon answered.

"Then tell me," I whimpered.

There was a long pause. The air seemed too still, and
the damp scent of the cave filled my lungs.

His hand slipped over his face, obscuring the light
from his eyes. It looked like he'd draped a veil over two distant
twin moons. "The demon waited until the woman he loved was asleep
beside him..."

The cave pulsed.

His droning voice echoed, then disappeared.

I fell back and sucked in a panicked breath. What was
going on? I was somehow breathing unstiffling air, salty and clean.
It was warm, and the ground was soft. I was sitting on blankets
piled on top of a sandy floor.
I'm not in the cave anymore
,
I realized. The
Rukah-Hayim
must have immediately pulled me
into his memory.

I looked before me. A man and a woman lay beside each
other in the red tent, though in the darkness it looked aubergine,
almost the same color as her eyes. She slept so he couldn't see
them. He wanted to, one last time. But that desire, like so many
others, would go unfulfilled.

He bent down and kissed her cheek.

She wrinkled her nose and yawned.

He loved it when she did that. It made her look
innocent--no, more than that, like the horrors of the world could
never touch her. He didn't want that to ever change. He knew it was
wrong to feel that way, but he couldn't help himself. Because of
that innocence, she hadn't turned away in disgust when he told her
he was a demon. She hadn't lusted after his power. She'd simply
held him, as she always did. And for the second time, he fell.

He ran his fingers through her silky hair. It was
black in the dark, the same color it was beneath the sun. He
glanced to his side.

Through the opening at the doorway, the stars gleamed
back at him. There was no moon out that night. No one would see
this, or remember her, but him.
I will keep you in my heart
always. I will never forget you
, he whispered.
My only
regret is that I love you too much.

He grabbed his pillow. He gripped it so tightly that
his knuckles turned white. He was reverting back into his demon
self, and he couldn't stop it. Light seeped through his skin,
painting everything in the tent silver. Her hair, her eyelashes,
her flesh--all of it was outlined in the same color as him.

His hands shook as he raised the pillow.

He wanted to kiss her again, but did not dare. It was
too easy to put it off for one more moment, and then another, and
another. If he put it off any longer, his time would be up. She was
human. Her spirit would go to Purgatory if it was her fate to
murder him in cold blood. And if that happened, he wouldn't be able
to free her. No one would. She'd remain there forever.

But that was only part of it. If he was to end the
cycle, he couldn't allow anything or anyone to hold him back, not
even her.

I will find it
, he vowed.
If only I had
already. Perhaps this was his punishment for that failure.

The silver man cried as he raised his shaking hands
and put them over her face. His face twisted when she started to
shift in her sleep, as her hands limply gripped his arms. But he
pushed down harder. Harder.