My heart and magic tugged me forward. “Are you an illusion too? Did I dream you up along with the rest of this?”
He didn’t answer, just continued to offer his hand.
Reaching for it, I closed my eyes and gingerly stuck my foot in the water, waiting for it to soak through my shoe.
The ground underfoot remained firm and nothing cold or wet touched my skin. I opened my eyes, saw utopia slowly slide away. The deer vanished; the flowers curled up and dropped to the ground. The stream became a thick line of burnt grass.
The leaves on my mother’s tree turned black and disappeared. The bark split into deep crevices. The devastated forest grew dark and ominous as the stars evaporated behind dark thunderheads.
Double damn. “This is what I get for calling God a traitor.”
Luc quirked an eyebrow but didn’t ask. Drawing me to him, he put one hand around my waist and guided me to the tree.
There, he pressed my hand against the trunk. My palm tingled and itched, making my magic fidget. I jerked away, but Luc commandeered my hand again and forced it back to the bark, pressing the palm against it. “This is the Tree of Knowledge. It’s time you remembered the truth.”
“Truth about what?”
He spooned his body behind mine, wrapping his free arm around my waist and bracing me. “This is going to hurt,” he murmured. “But I’ll be with you all the way.”
His mouth was close to my ear and goose bumps raced down the back of my neck. My nipples tingled and I instinctively leaned into him. “Why is this going to hur—oww!”
A powerful stinger poked my palm, ripping through the skin and prodding the tendons and bones. On its heels, a volt of very strong, very powerful magic rushed up my arm. I lurched backwards but there was nowhere to go. The solid wall known as Luc held firm.
I planted my feet and shoved. “Let go!”
“Open your mind, Amy.” Luc’s voice was liquid heat, filling my head. My legs went weak, my resistance dissolving as I floated for a moment in that heat.
“Remember,” he said again.
The volt of magic wormed its way through my system and stabbed my heart. The pain I’d felt when the Axeman was cutting down the tree exploded in my chest all over again.
It subsided as fast as it came, the volt moving on to stab my magic next. A new type of pain.
I cried out.
The sound drove the magic straight to my brain. A warm rushing sensation flowed through my system. Images flooded my mind.
Luc, with his flame-tipped wings as an angel, stood on a battlefield at the head of an army of angels—hoards of them, all with flaming swords and other weapons I didn’t recognize. From across the expanse, he looked at me for a long moment, his dark eyes seeming to soak me up. Satisfied, he smiled and nodded his head. I returned the smile and the nod and raised the sword in my hand over my head.
Wait, where did that come from?
I felt a fresh rush of warmth in my veins. The rush of knowledge.
This was it. The Great War.
Battle cries pierced the air, stabbing at my eardrums as the armies rushed toward a mountain. The opposing army descended in a flash of light and sound. As the two met, the clash of metal on metal set my teeth on edge. A putrid smell clogged my nose and I realized it was the smell of burning feathers.
Before me, angels dropped to the ground and bled gold.
The scene shifted.
No more cries of defeat or success. The ground under my feet was sticky with the blood of my fellow combatants. Those angels still standing looked at me for direction.
And then some of them fell. Pushed really. Thrown out of Heaven by a powerful force. They tumbled from the battlefield, through the air and down, down, down.
Instinctively I reached for them. “No! Wait!”
But they were gone. I stood on the edge of Heaven, my heart bleeding out as I watched those I loved being cast out from God’s presence.
And then I was falling with them.
Not falling so much as jumped. I jumped from the heavens and joined my brothers and sisters dropping toward the earth, and…
“Amo!” Lucifer’s voice rang out, shaking the air, slowing my fall as if he’d commanded it to pillow me.
I was there, in the memory. Floating, and angry that he would try to stop me, even as his arms felt right as they cradled me to him. Gritting my teeth, I spread my wings and fought against his hold. One of my wings was broken and refused to open. I struggled anyway.
I will not abandon them, Light Bearer.
Luc’s voice snaked into my mind. Then I shall go with you.
A bright reddish-orange light burst around me and I was wrapped in my lover’s fiery wings.
Together we fell from grace.
Chapter Twenty-three – No Witchy Way Boulevard
In purgatory, my magic roared, cutting off the tree’s probe and shoving it away.