All Hell Breaks Loose by Cate Corvin

Author:Cate Corvin [Corvin, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vivia Press
Published: 2020-09-19T05:00:00+00:00

17

Lucifer

I woke up elbow-deep in a corpse.

It wasn’t like surfacing from a deep sleep. One moment I was gone, and the next moment I blinked, and my consciousness surfaced with a gasp.

My hands were warm, painted up to my biceps with slowly congealing blood. The scent of copper and ashes filled the air, so thick and choking that not even the slight breeze could wash it away.

I looked up from my grisly task, still gasping for breath like I’d been drowning, the absence of pain a total shock to my nerve endings.

There were mountains around me, jagged and pointing to the sky in spikes. I knew this land: Irkalla. Everything was so dark a black it almost looked like the obsidian of Dis, but it lacked the warmth of the stone of my home, and piles of gray ash had swept up against the crags.

I was on one of those crags. The body in front of me was still warm. A demon, his eyes already glazing over, a ring of small horns circling his brow.

A deep puncture wound had been gouged deep into his chest. The charred marks and burns surrounding it told me exactly what had killed him.

I had. Those were the marks of my light. I took a deep breath, almost wiped my face with my hand, and remembered at the last moment that I still had blood all over me. Instead I blinked the ash away.

I didn’t remember doing this. I didn’t remember much of anything from the last… how long had it been? Days? Weeks? I remembered plunging into the Pit, breaking the barriers between Satan and the fury of Dis, and then… agony.

Blinding agony, and nothing else.

For several long minutes I just stared at the corpse, willing the memories to resurface. They were faint and foggy, but I knew why I was here, mutilating this demon…

Because he was a puppet. A flesh-and-blood glove for Satan to wear. My father’s might was massive, but he was ungainly in his draconic form. He was easy to find, harder to hide while he licked his wounds.

He’d wanted a new body to wear.

Because there was someone else with us.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut for a moment, my hands shaking as another memory surfaced.

I’d attacked Melisande. I still felt the vibration of my spear crushing through the delicate bones in her wing. My stomach heaved and I swallowed hard, replaying the image of her tumbling into the abyss, her face frozen in shock and pain.

One of them would’ve caught her. They had to have caught her. There was no possible way she was dead, because I could’ve sworn I’d felt her since.

I’d seen her in front of my eyes. Of course I’d reached out, intending to remove her from the world permanently as instructed, but she’d been standing here, in Irkalla, her eyes huge and the violet of her hair like a beacon in the darkness.

It wasn’t possible, but… I’d still seen her. I’d swear on it.

She was alive.

I clung to the thought like a talisman.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.