Beneath the Skin by Adrian Phoenix

Author:Adrian Phoenix [Phoenix, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781439137291
Publisher: Bill
Published: 0101-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

18

UNTIL YOU FADE INTO NOTHINGNESS

THE ROYAL AERIE, GEHENNA

March 25

SOMETHING COOL AND WET trailed across Lucien’s forehead, dampening the fire raging inside his skull. The pungent aromas of lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus curled into his nostrils and prickled against his consciousness.

A hand slipped behind his aching head, eased it up. A cup pressed against his mouth. Lucien allowed his lips to part. He swallowed a sip of ginger and hyssop tea, hot and minty-sweet.

“That’s good,” a woman murmured, her voice soft and rimed with music—a delicate bell. “Drink more. It’ll help ease the pain.”

Lucien did as she suggested and swallowed more of the soothing and fragrant tea. The cup vanished from his lips and the hand lowered his head back onto a pillow. The fire and pain inside his skull diminished into glowing embers, as did the throbbing ache in his shoulders.

He listened to the sounds around him: a skirt rustling, perhaps; the clinking of a cup, spoon, and teapot; and the fleshy padding of bare feet upon stone. But underneath, a river of voices, thoughts, feelings, and pealing wybrcathl rushed through his mind like foaming white water over rocks—a swirling and dangerous current.

Shields must be down.

Lucien tried to strengthen his shields, but failed. Pain exploded in a white burst behind his eyes. His strength continued to ebb, leaving his shields as flimsy as gauze. The reason why flickered through his memory.

Gabriel speaks Lucien’s true name. “I bind you, Sar haOlam of the Elohim to the soil of Gehenna and bind your power within you, unused and unvoiced, until I set you free again.” As Gabriel paints a blood-glyph on Lucien’s forehead, translucent light streams from his palms and coils around Lucien, binding him with an ethereal rope. “As Gehenna fades, so shall you.”

Gabriel’s smug voice roiled through Lucien’s mind, awakening other memories.

Dante’s anhrefncathl, dark and burning and razor-edged, stabs into Gehenna’s fading night sky, madness glimmering in each exquisite and haunting note.

Closing his eyes, Lucien sends one last thought to Dante then, in a final, desperate act to keep his ties to Dante from revealing his location to the Elohim, he severs their bond.

Je t’aime, mon fils. Toujours.

Lucien opened his eyes and looked into a moonlight-washed night sky, his temples throbbing, his heart aching.

He’d severed the bond he’d shared with Dante and survived. But a cold, lightless hole had been ripped into the fabric of his being; a hole that seemed to rip wider with each breath he drew.

Had his child survived? And if so, was Dante’s sanity still intact?

“Would you like more tea, Samael?”

Lucien sat up at the sound of his former name. The blue marble terrace whirled for a moment, then stilled once more. Pain flickered, faded. But dread gripped his stomach. He didn’t recognize the woman who met his gaze. A spy for Gabriel?

She sat curled on a cushioned bench, her beautiful oval face full of concern. Her hair, pale as moonlight—silver with just a hint of blue—framed her face in wavy tresses, while artfully arranged curls were piled on top of her head in ancient Grecian style.

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