Her Avenging Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 7) (31 page)

“I could calm him.” The Devil held his hands out, his claws shrinking back into nails, and smiled winsomely.

“Fuck off.” Veiron stepped back and her father snarled at him and raised his hand.

Erin stepped between them. “You be nice. No trying to squash my husband like a bug. Anyway, Dante protects him. He can withstand your power just like I can.”

She could almost feel Veiron poking his tongue out at her father from behind her.

The Devil’s eyes burned crimson and he bared his fangs, and for a moment Erin felt sure he was going to attempt to crush her husband anyway, just for kicks.

He huffed, folded his arms across his chest, and stomped back up the steps.

Throwing a hissy fit now?

What was with her father today?

He slumped onto his black throne and glared at Veiron. She could almost hear him slowly dissecting Veiron piece by piece in his head.

“If you didn’t take Nevar, who did?” she said and he turned his cheek to her.

Erin closed her eyes, inhaled slowly, and prayed for a modicum of patience. Just a sliver would do. She sighed and did the only thing she could to make her father help them, hoping she wouldn’t regret it.

She bargained.

“You can get a closer look at your grandson, but not touch him, if you help us.”

The Devil deigned her with his attention again and leaned back in his throne, crossed his legs at the knee and settled his hands in his lap.

“What do you desire to know, Daughter?”

It was a start. She just hoped he played nice and didn’t send them around in circles or speak in riddles. He had a tendency to make things drawn out and difficult for others in order to amuse himself.

“No,” Veiron snapped from behind her and she shot him a glare over her shoulder.

“We’re in a pinch and we need help. Nevar needs us, remember? I’ll let him look at Dante a little closer if it means we get Nevar back in one piece.”

Veiron muttered dark things beneath his breath and rocked Dante in his arms, settling the squirming bundle. The poor thing was probably too hot in all his layers of romper suit and armour. She would let him laze around butt booty naked later when they were back on the island. He loved that. Which made him just like his daddy.

“Now where were we?” She turned back to her father.

He was staring at her son again. “Dante? You named him Dante?”

She shrugged. “It started out as a joke name because he’s probably going to grow up traveling to and from Hell and he lives in paradise… on the island. It sort of stuck. We think it suits him.”

“Dante.” The Devil smiled, as charming and handsome as ever. “I approve of it. It is a strong name. It means enduring… and he will endure. I will be sure of that.”

“He’ll endure without your bloody interference,” Veiron snarled.

The Devil flicked him a bored glare. “Quiet, Maggot. I’m speaking with my daughter.”

“My wife,” Veiron countered.

“I will overlook the fact that you married her without my consent, and you will be quiet for the next few minutes and tend to my grandson’s needs… but in this instance, daughter trumps wife. She is born of my loins—”

“Whoa,” Erin interjected. “I really don’t want to get into that. The thought of coming out of you repulses me. I still like to think of myself as a test-tube baby, okay? Back on topic now… who took Nevar?”

“Some angels I do not want you near.” The Devil sobered, his expression gaining a grim edge that sent a shiver down her spine.

“Who were they? Lysia said they looked like the angels of the apocalypse we met, but when Asmodeus went to Heaven—”

“Heaven?” the Devil barked and turned red eyes on Asmodeus. “Who gave you leave to venture to that realm?”

“We thought Nevar was there.” The dark angel stepped forwards, coming to stand in front of Lysia with Apollyon.

Erin was never getting used to them looking like each other. If it weren’t for the fact that Asmodeus had shorter hair and golden eyes like her father, rather than the long black hair and blue eyes of Apollyon, she would probably have spent her entire life muddling them up and pissing them off.

The Devil huffed. “Of course he is not there, Maggot. The ones who took him were not the angels you met before, but their predecessors. The original versions… those who are now fallen.”

“Hell’s angels?” Erin said. “Command them to hand Nevar back and stop whatever they’re up to then.”

“I cannot.” Her father inspected his black nails. “They are not my angels.”

“What the hell is that meant to mean?” She stepped forwards, regaining his attention, and he sighed theatrically.

“None have dominion over them, just as none have dominion over me.”

“They are true fallen… like you.” Lysia moved out from Asmodeus’s shadow and her black eyebrows met above violet-edged hazel eyes. “You are wasting our time. Tell us what you know of these fallen. I wish to take their heads.”

The Devil’s lips quirked into a smile. “I like you. You have verve. I do not think you capable of taking their heads as you are though. Perhaps you can as you will be.”

Lysia glared at him. “Speak and tell us of these fallen so we might take back Nevar. You desire it too, do you not?”

He pulled a face of mock consideration. “Do not. I do, however, desire to make the acquaintance of my grandson, so I will help my daughter, but not you. If you interrupt again, I will personally hand you over to these princes of Hell.”

“Princes of Hell?” Erin didn’t like the sound of that.

He nodded. “You would think them a victim of Heaven and Hell’s cruel games if I told you of their origins and how they came to be in my realm. Do not make the mistake of feeling sympathy for them, Daughter. This time it might just get you killed.”

She didn’t feel sympathy for anything that came out of this realm, not anymore. Just as her father had wished for her, she had become hardened to everything and everyone except those she held within her inner circle. It took a lot for her to allow people inside now. He had made sure of that.

“Pay attention, Little Lambs, and I will tell you the story of Astaroth, Leviathan, Samael and Ramiel, the original four angels of the apocalypse.” The Devil stood and cast one hand out behind him and a flickering image appeared, a rectangle of light that spanned the width of the courtyard and rose high into the sky.

Upon the light rectangle, images began to morph into focus. The four angels she had met on the island, but they were different. They had no ink and their hair was different styles, and these ones smiled.

The movie of them flickered and leaped at times, jolting forwards to illustrate her father’s words, a replay of everything he told them had happened.

“In a time of darkness, when mankind seemed bent on violence and destruction, Heaven created these four to rule the apocalypse and carry out the end of days and cast judgement upon the mortal realm should it ever lose its way. That pathetic realm refused to listen to my advice—that angels were driven to fulfil their purpose, even to the point of making it happen.”

The scene shifted, revealing the four angels raining hell down on the mortal realm. It lay in ruins, an ancient city levelled and burning because of their might.

“Not long after their creation, these four angels grew restless. They stirred trouble in the mortal realm, driving men to war, unleashing divine judgement upon them, and spreading famine and plagues that ravaged the land.” The Devil smirked as the image behind him zoomed out to show the vast devastation caused by the angels in question. “Or, as they put it when Heaven finally reined them in and subdued them, they had done what they had been created to do.”

Erin could easily believe that. The four had been given the task of bringing about the apocalypse and they had.

“What happened to them?” she said.

“They were returned to Heaven, but were the source of so much discord in the mortal realm that they proved a constant pain to that realm. When they again created a war that destroyed many lives, both beast and man, they were judged for their sins and cast out of Heaven and into Hell.” The Devil grinned and the scene that flickered across the screen was so grotesque and horrific that she had to look away. “I stripped them of much of their powers, but it was not enough. They couldn’t have their true divine power and purpose taken from them. Heaven counteracted it by creating the angels you met on the island—Mihail, Gabriel, Rafael and Aryel.”

“Doppelgangers,” Asmodeus growled.

The Devil nodded. “I helped create them.”

Asmodeus’s face darkened and his power rose, growing stronger and pressing against hers. She could see in his sharp red gaze that her father’s words had hit a sore spot and she could understand why. The Devil and Heaven had scrapped the first angels because they hadn’t come out as planned. As a doppelganger of Apollyon, a creation of the Devil, Asmodeus no doubt feared such a thing happening to him.

“The new four angels serving Heaven had a slightly amended purpose though. The power of the original four was funnelled through a conduit to the new four, transformed along the way into a new divine purpose. They were built to save, not destroy.”

“So, Lysander hadn’t lied and these angels of the apocalypse are there to stop it?” Erin hadn’t quite believed him but her father nodded, confirming that Lysander had told the truth about the angels.

“The original four were unaware of this turn of events and settled far from this fortress. I let them be and they behaved themselves until you,” the Devil pointed at Apollyon, “rained divine fury down on Sodom and Gomorrah with the assistance of a young angel you probably don’t even remember, an angel who is now Gabriel.”

Apollyon’s blue eyes swirled brighter and he frowned, his gaze distant. “I remember him, but he did not appear as he does now.”

“No. The tattoos are new. A slight rebellious flair that Heaven evidently didn’t quite iron out in the new versions. It does somewhat irritate the originals, since I may have linked them via the conduit and now all that ink is appearing on their bodies too.” Her father’s golden eyes gained a satisfied glimmer. She couldn’t quite see how it was a good idea to irritate already irate angels who held immense power. He sighed. “I am digressing… where was I?”

“Apollyon blew the shit out of Sodom and Gomorrah,” she offered and he tsked.

“Should you be swearing in front of your infant son?”

Erin shrugged. “His daddy is Veiron. The kid will grow up swearing whether he learns it from us or not. It’s in his blood. Now, if you don’t mind, time is precious… tick tock… tick tock.”

He shook his head, a flicker of something like despair in his eyes, and sighed. As if he could do a better job raising a kid? He hadn’t even known she had existed until she was thirty, and then he had killed the man she loved in order to awaken her powers. He was hardly Father of the Year material.

“Astaroth grew restless and the others with him. They realised their divine purpose had been taken from them and they sought to set themselves up in positions of power within Hell, declaring themselves princes.” The scene behind the Devil changed to show a replay of a battle in Hell. “They tried and failed to seize power in an area of my realm. I personally defeated them, showing them just how powerless they were now.”

Erin called that rubbing salt in their wounds.

He sneered, as if he had heard her thoughts. He might have. Sometimes the telepathic link sort of popped open at the worst times, and it went both ways. She shuddered, still scarred by finding herself suddenly linked to her father at extremely disturbing moments. The glee he took from torturing demons and mortals she could handle. The times she got a headful of dirty thoughts while he was making out with a woman, that she could not handle.

“I sealed them in another crystal chamber far beneath my fortress. I discovered they were gone shortly after the Great Destroyer had awoken.” The Devil preened his black hair back and pinned Lysia with red-edged golden eyes.

Asmodeus shifted in front of her again. “They took Nevar. What do they want with him?”

The Devil smiled. “The same thing I want. To get out of Hell. Only, their methods may be a touch more destructive than mine.”

Lysia snarled and moved around Asmodeus. The dark angel caught her wrist and held her back.

“Say it straight and stop dancing around the subject,” Erin snapped, losing patience fast. “None of your cryptic shit today. Tell me what these four bastards are planning.”

“Very well.” The screen behind him disappeared and he adopted a dull flat tone, as if he was reciting something inconsequential. “They will seek to awaken her in order to set her on a rampage that will cause the apocalypse, at which point the gates of Hell will be destroyed as she attempts to escape this place and the princes of Hell will be set free.”

“How?” Erin didn’t like the sound of that.

He sighed and waved his hands around. “There are many gates in Hell. Each gate is part of the seal between this realm and the mortal one. They are each a barrier that allows passage of certain species only, fallen angels not included.”

Meaning, he couldn’t use the gates and neither could the four angels who had taken Nevar.

“Only creatures sanctioned by Heaven, who controls the seals if the original angel’s blood was last spilled in that realm, which it was, can pass through. The seals stop me from leaving, and therefore stop every other fallen angel too.”

Erin had passed through a gate herself when escaping Hell and it had been a strange experience, like passing through a wall of burning liquid that hadn’t quite wanted her to escape from it. Maybe it had been her father’s blood in her veins that had made the barrier cling to her, briefly mistaking her for him.

“How will destroying the gates help these fallen angels leave Hell?” she said and looked at the others to see if they were following. Her sister and Marcus had moved closer to Veiron, coming to flank him and Dante, leaving Asmodeus and Apollyon to protect Lysia.

“Each gate is part of the seal between this realm and the mortal one. You
were
following that part, were you not?” the Devil snapped and she huffed and folded her arms across her chest.