The dragon tilted his head, sniffed my hair, my cheek, my neck. His hot breath seared my skin. Sweat broke out along my hairline.
Lingering over my chest, he placed his snout at heart-level.
My pulse beat rapidly in the base of my throat. My heart slammed against my chest, determined to escape its rib-clad prison.
I held still. “That’s my heart and it’s beating for you.”
Luc shifted his head back a few inches, his red gaze locked on my heart area. Hope rose inside me. He understood. My love had reached him.
Everything was going to be okay, even if I never saw the earth and my real life again.
And then the dragon reared back and slammed one of its giant horns into my chest.
Chapter Twenty-seven - …Or He’ll Slay You
The horn ripped through my ribcage, pierced my heart, and tore through the muscles of my back.
The horn did not stop until it lodged itself in the Tree.
Everywhere I looked, I saw red. Red eyes, red scales. Blood. Flames.
Purgatory had morphed into Hell. My own personal Hell.
A loud cry split the air…my voice, screaming in pain. The pain, not so much physical as emotional.
My magic cried, too, and in my ears, I heard singing. The singing of angels.
My angels.
Through the haze of pain, I glanced at the forest. Had the angels broken free from their marble prisons?
No. There was no one, angel or otherwise, here. Just me and Lucifer.
His second horn had grazed the right side of my neck and was also wedged in the bark of the Tree. He pulled back, found he was stuck, and surged forward again, driving both horns deeper.
I didn’t think the pain could get worse.
A loud rumble issued from his throat and his eyes rolled in their sockets. He arched both wings, sending flames into the already torched wasteland of the forest. The embers caught and flared to life, creating a circle of fire around us.
The left side of my body went numb. Images flashed through my head. They didn’t make sense, but I knew they were coming from the Tree of Knowledge.
Luc and I were connected to each other and to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so although everything in me insisted I fight for my life, I reached out with my right hand and stroked his forehead.
I trailed my fingers over his ridged jaw to calm him.
Stroked his neck and opened my mind and my magic wide.
Listen. Watch. Remember.
He stopped fighting, stopped growling. Rested his massive forehead against my chest. His scales scratched my neck at the base of my throat and puffs of hot breath rolled down my arms, waist and hips.
As the images came, Luc bore down harder as if trying to see them all.
My magic sang, but my heart clenched and burned from the pain. Sticky warm blood trickled from the scratches on my neck. More pumped from the wound in my heart where the dragon’s horn nailed me to the Tree.
A low-grade fever consuming my chest, burning in time with my heart and the ring of fire surrounding us.
My hips ached. No strength left in my thighs. Knees, shot. The only thing holding me up was Luc.
Vaguely I noticed shapes outside the ring of fire. Heard muffled voices. The singing had stopped and I missed it. Where had the angels gone?
Images of Heaven, the War and my love affair with the Devil swept through my mind. I pushed them through to his. Minutes, hours, went by. Several times he tried to pull away. I sunk my nails into the scales of his neck, forcing him to stay where he was.
He breathed faster, the exhalations wrapping me in a soft, warm blanket. My vision fuzzed at the edges, the flames around us doing little to keep the shadows at bay. I reached for my magic, hoping to jolt my body to keep from passing out, but everything felt sluggish. I wanted to give in and close my eyes. Sleep for a little while.
The image of me stepping off the edge of Heaven and falling to Earth flashed from the Tree into my mind and then on to Luc’s. A shiver started in his massive shoulders and worked its way down his elongated spine. Then another and another, until he was shaking from horns to wingtips.
The flames soared higher. I heard shouts. Overhead, a crack of lightning and rolling thunder, rising and falling, swooping low and dangerous over the valley, through the ruined forest and into my ears.
Rain fell. Slowly at first, then picking up speed until a torrential barrage of it hammered against us.
The mental picture in my mind switched to more recent memories. Human memories of me and Lucifer. His smile, his touch. Our latest round of lovemaking in my bedroom before Keisha’s party. Suddenly, I was there again, in the room. On the bed with him, but also floating above, watching us.
There he was, all love and heat and desire, totally consumed with me. Me. Can you imagine? The sin that had condemned us and so many other angels was a tangible thing.
A good thing.
As evidenced by the hair-raising, top-of-my-lungs-screaming orgasm toward the end, it was an incredibly good thing.