Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (32 page)

Lucifer could certainly see why Clark was attracted to her. She was beautiful in every sense of the word. Her features were distinctly feline, and her hair was such a fine blond that he was certain the color didn’t exist in the natural world. Her body was a sin itself, long and lithe, lethal and luxury at the same time. And when she tilted her chin up at him and bared her teeth, well, that was just icing on top of a gorgeous cake.

“I’m going to kill—”

Lucifer leaned down and pressed his hand to her mouth. “Shhh, sweet Cami.” She flinched at the endearment, and Lucifer knew he’d struck a nerve. “You need to know that I expect exquisite manners while you’re a guest in my house. No death threats. Understood?”

“Fu—”

Lucifer surged up and kicked her in the ribs. As she caught her breath, he studied his reflection in the cracked mirror hanging over the looted china buffet and smoothed his hair back into place. “Now,” he said after a moment, “I think we should both get to know each other a little better.”

Lucifer crouched back beside her, noticing she kept her mouth shut this time. He studied her face for a long moment before he spoke again. “He broke your heart, didn’t he? Was that it? Turns out he loved Michaela a little more than he thought?”

Camille gritted her teeth. Another nerve struck.

“Tell me, why were you out in the woods crying when I found you?”

Lucifer waited for a response, and when it was clear he wasn’t getting one, he withdrew a dagger from his Gucci boot. The edges were lined in gold that reflected the light. Through the blade’s middle wound a single swirl of Michaela’s precious wing bone. It wasn’t much and not nearly enough to kill. Only to scar and hurt. And prove points.

Camille watched the blade carefully as Lucifer drew it closer to her face. “Tell me, sweet Cami. I don’t want to hurt you.”

When she looked away, he smiled. He knew when he found her earlier this morning that this was going to be a fun few days together. She was a soldier, not a warrior like Michaela. No, Camille and all Throne angels were accustomed to pain. They bore it, shouldered it during battles, until the great warriors could swoop in and claim victory at just the right moment. Camille, like Lucifer, was used to the trenches, the dirty fight, the cheap tricks just to win a day’s battle. He really liked that about her. Such a shame he was going to have to crush that winning spirit.

A shame he must break her soul. Break her like Clark had broken him.

“Humpty Dumpty…” he murmured.

He drew the blade down her cheek, watching as her golden blood met the edge of the blade and sizzled. She didn’t cry out or even flinch. She took the pain, just as Lucifer knew she would. Maybe she even welcomed it because she expected it from him.

When he was finished, a gash went from the top of her ear to the corner of her mouth. His hand had wavered slightly in his excitement, so the wound was deeper in some parts than others. The cut hadn’t done nerve damage, but would likely leave a scar.

People didn’t love ugly things.

“Now, Cami?” he asked, holding up the blade in front of her face so she could watch as her blood dripped onto the floor. Like a good little holy angel, she offered him the other cheek, smirking as she did. He clucked his tongue. “You’re going to make me hurt you, I can tell. But think on this: will Clark want you when you can only offer him a damaged, scarred body? Because he doesn’t love you, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t have broken your heart. So that means he only uses you for your beautiful body. Am I close?”

Lucifer laughed when she didn’t move or speak. Instead of going for her cheek again, he lowered his blade to her tight shirt and slipped the point beneath the fabric. Camille stiffened, sucking in her belly to avoid the dagger’s edge. Her eyes flicked to his for a second before she clenched her jaw and looked away. With one easy swipe, Lucifer cut her shirt cleanly up the middle.

She wore nothing underneath. Her body was open to him, her breasts perfection, her skin pliable and white as alabaster. He imagined she probably tasted divine. For a brief moment, he lost himself, instead of seeing Camille’s naked chest, he saw Maya’s. It was the pretty little Nephil who stared up at him with her gray-green eyes as she lay on his floor. A dart of pain went through his skull, and he had to step away.

What if someone did this to Maya? Cut her cheek and exposed her nakedness? Even as he thought it, his chest contracted and his breathing shortened. A wondrous headache bloomed between his eyes. He rubbed his temples, blade still in hand. Or what if she saw him doing this to Camille? What if she knew who he really was?

People didn’t love ugly things.

Lucifer blinked and found himself staring into the cracked mirror once again. He took a deep breath to clear his head of muddled thoughts and turned back to Camille. She watched him advance, her chest rising and falling evenly. She wasn’t even scared. He doubted she was nervous. And above all else, she would kill him in an instant if he gave her the chance.

He settled himself back beside her, close enough to feel the heat coming off her body. Her nipples hardened in the cool air coming through the house, but Lucifer didn’t feel even the slightest bit turned on. He was excited for other, bloodier reasons. He placed the tip of the blade in the hollow of her neck, between her collarbones. With the slightest pressure, he eased it down, slicing along her skin, between her ribs, to her navel. A small trickle of blood marked his path. It wasn’t much, but he knew it caused her a bit of pain. And he didn’t want to go too fast.

He wanted nothing more than to destroy something Clark loved. Because Clark certainly loved her, judging by his frantic conversation with that Descendant cop that Lucifer had overheard. The look of desperation on Clark’s face would’ve been obvious enough, even though Camille didn’t seem to believe his love herself. She doubted Clark’s affection, likely even hated herself for loving him back. They couldn’t find each other in the darkness of love, even though they were both reaching out.

Lucifer wanted to destroy Camille and then rebuild her so he could present her back to Clark. Only then, when Clark watched someone he love hate herself, would he understand Lucifer’s pain.

And after he had the Watchers’ secrets, Lucifer would destroy Clark as well.

He asked Camille many questions about Clark. She never answered one. By the time Lucifer stood up again to stretch his back, she was covered in fine cuts, with blood running over her ribs and pooling beneath her back. Her skin was pale now, and slicked with a sheen of sweat. Her scent was heady and lush, fragrant with the first shimmer of fear. Lucifer basked in it.

As he rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, a thought came to him. “Do you know Maya?” He said her name with reverence, like it shouldn’t be spoken too loudly.

Camille’s eyes darted to his, a hiss escaping her lips. “Leave her alone,” she said, her voice venomous.

“So you do know her.” Lucifer crouched back beside his toy, his prey. His Cami. “What’s she like?”

“She’s nothing like you.”

Lucifer squinted at Camille, wondering what she was getting at. Of course Maya was nothing like him. That exact reason had drawn him to her. She was pure and sweet, the opposite of him. Maya wasn’t evil like him, wasn’t the devil like him. She was precious and perfect, and he was
Lucifer
. The headache was back, resuming its steady beat like it had never really gone away.

“I saw her at the compound,” Lucifer whispered, dropping his head into his hands. “She talked to me. She liked me.”

“I really doubt that. She has good taste in men.”

“She let me touch her,” he went on, not hearing Camille. “I even held her against my chest for a moment.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I want to hold her again,” Lucifer admitted, scaring himself from how much the statement was true.

“Leave her alone!”

Lucifer blinked, his vision clearing of Maya. Camille thrashed beside him, straining at her restraints. Blood oozed from her wounds, but it didn’t slow her a bit.

He quickly stood and pivoted around to face the mirror. This time, he didn’t look at his reflection. He couldn’t. What was he doing, talking about Maya while he was cutting Camille? He really was insane. The pain thrashing around inside his skull made him sway on his feet; he had to catch himself against the dining room wall. He glanced over his shoulder at Camille, who was still working herself into a frenzy as she tried to get free.

He didn’t know if hurting Camille—breaking her—was something he would have done before the fire. He’d ripped out Michaela’s wings, but she’d deserved it for taking his in the same manner. And so did Camille. She’d earned what was coming to her now. But it still felt wrong. It still felt like he was betraying Maya or the ideal of Maya. Something about her, something about her purity, had eased him, comforted him. He yearned for that feeling again, for a reprieve from this madness.

And a thought came to him, unbidden and completely foreign. He’d never felt it before. He certainly had never wanted it or never allowed himself to want it. “But I want her to love me,” he whispered, not thinking he was speaking his greatest desire aloud. But when Camille started laughing—the kind of deep belly laugh that grew and grew until it was like a whole other person in the room—Lucifer realized his mistake. He slowly turned back around, trying to hide his horror that she’d heard him.

People didn’t love ugly things.

“You…” Camille gasped between guffaws. “Have…got…to…be…kidding…me!”

The laughter rang about in his skull. He watched her for a long moment as she lost herself in the hilarity that anyone could love him. The notion was so funny to her, so incomprehensible that anyone would want the devil.

Her laughter made Lucifer forget what they’d been talking about. All he saw was Camille laughing at him, but he held the knife. He crossed back to her and leaned over her twitching body. She snorted. As she continued to laugh, Lucifer’s eyes fell to her pants. Camille noticed his gaze and fell silent, her body completely still. Lucifer reached for her waist.

“Stop,” Camille commanded, all her laughter gone.

He didn’t. He jerked her pants off, ripping them down her legs. To ease the laughter that still echoed in his ears, Lucifer plunged his knife deep into the muscle of her thigh.

Camille screamed.

And all was right again because she would be ugly too.

Chapter Four

C
lark didn’t bother going out the front door of the Descendants’ compound. He slung his backpack, which was stuffed full of protein bars, water bottles, a change of clothes, ammo, and a gun, over his shoulder and went through the gigantic hole in the wall. Things were still so chaotic inside—voices hollering over each other, wounded screaming for mercy as they were carried to the hospital, the air cluttered with the scent of death and fear—that no one noticed Clark leave. He preferred it that way. He didn’t know exactly where he stood with his arrest and Liam’s murder, and he didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

Outside wasn’t much better. The once-beautiful estate that Clark had grown up on was reduced to rubble and allowed to burn because water was too much of a commodity to waste on putting out the fire. The wall surrounding the estate was mostly collapsed; nothing stood between the Descendants and the outside world now, even though the tall stone formation hadn’t helped them to begin with. Crispy demon bodies adorned the front step. Clark stepped over them with a grim smirk.

He walked toward the front of the lawn, where a road led underground to the lower-level garages. The road hadn’t been used since the war, because fuel was a precious resource that couldn’t be wasted. Clark wasn’t going to steal the Descendants’ gasoline, but he did hear the familiar rumble of a ‘70 SS Chevelle. A black hood peeked over the ridge of the underground road, followed by the car’s slick, perfectly restored body. He wouldn’t steal from the Descendants, but this car had once belonged to his father and now him. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave it behind.

Zarachiel pulled the car up and parked it beside Clark. Maya jumped out of the passenger seat with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Clark sighed; he really hated the idea of her coming along, but there was little he could do about it at this point. Iris was the last to get out of the car.

“Whoa. That backseat brings back a lot of memories,” Clark’s mom said, looking flushed in the cheeks.

Clark rolled his eyes. “I really don’t need to know any stories about you and Dad back there, okay?”

“Understood.” Iris smiled and took his hand, giving it a warm squeeze. “Be careful, Clark.”

“I will.”

Iris stepped a little closer, and whispered in his ear, “You don’t have to save this whole world, you know. It’s not on you to kill Lucifer and right all his wrongs.”

“I don’t care about anything but Camille. All that matters right now is getting her back.”

“I get that.” Iris nodded before releasing his hand.

“You sure about this, Clark?” Zarachiel asked, propping his arm on the opened door of the car. In that moment, with his dark hair and quiet eyes, he looked at peace. Maybe this whole time, Z had only needed a little adventure.

“Yeah, but don’t get any ideas about driving—”