The rare moonlight glistens against the blade and I look like a picture fading in and out of focus as the shredded linen I’ve used to cover the window billows softly.

I spread my wings for the last time feeling the wind blow through the feathers before I pick up the old leather strap and place it firmly between my teeth.

I cry out in muffled pain as I start to cut my wings off of my body.

One

I
had wandered around the provinces until I had passed out from fatigue.

I woke up and heard voices I didn’t know. There weren’t many but enough to make me wonder who had found me.

I tried to push myself up but I was still so weak from the pain and blood loss that I just grunted in effort.

“Don’t try to move, it won’t do any good,” a deep voice said in passing.

“Wha..?”

I was mumbling. Maybe I shouldn’t try to speak either.

My body started to tremble as the pain started to become very real again.

“Hold still, the pain will go away soon,” a female voice said to me. “I’m almost done, and then he will see you.”

He who?

“That should do it, she said again as she patted my arm.

I heard her footsteps retreat as she walked away and felt a breeze go by. I realized I was still naked when the breeze tickled my breasts.

“Come on then,” a male voice said to me grabbing me by the arm and half dragging me down a hallway.

I heard a door open. The man that had been “helping” me down the hallway gave me a gentle but firm shove and I fell to my knees.

“Well that’s different,” the initial deep voice chuckled.

It took all the energy I had left in me to lift my head and see who was talking to me.

To say he was a vision would be an understatement. Being that I was an angel I had beheld many beautiful things in my existence, but I didn’t know how I had never seen this man before.

His hair was as white as my wings were; smooth and straight. It was short cut and stopped below his ears. His eyes were as violet as amethyst and his smile was slightly mocking.

“My name is Deveraux,” he said with a small nod.

I stared at him still in awe of his beauty. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to respond anyway.

“What’s your name Pet?” he asked me slightly leaning forward.

I just shook my head slightly. We didn’t have names where I was from. Yes; the ones that were there the longest did but some of us who were born about a millennium after them did not. We had numbers.

He looked at me for a moment insulted, before he leaned back in the grand chair he had been sitting in, in this grand room and suddenly nodding with understanding. Apparently, he knew why I couldn’t tell him.

“You’re one of the ones that were born, aren’t you? Then tell me; what’s your number?”

I looked down at the marble black and white floor beneath me and with my finger I drew out the number thirteen. I was the thirteenth born so that was my number.

“Would you like a name then, Pet?” he asked me softly.

If he calls me ‘Pet’ one more time, I’ll find the energy and strength to kill him on his throne,
I thought to myself feeling anger for the first time.

Deveraux closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“Ah,” he said blissfully. “That’s one of my favorite emotions.”

I looked up at him again and he saw that he was smiling at me.

“Name me,” I said finally finding the will to speak.

“Hmm. If I name you this makes you mine,” he said drumming his fingers against the arm of the chair.

No, it doesn’t
, I thought to myself.

“But it does,” he said leaning forward in his chair again and reading my thoughts. “I think I’ll name you Lucy. I’ve always liked that name for some reason. You can be my Lucy.”

He stood up and walked over to where I was still on my knees and pulled his shirt off revealing a wide muscular chest and a carved stomach. His arms looked as if they were chiseled out of stone, but he wasn’t overly big. In one quick movement, he wrapped his shirt around my naked body and lifted me off of the floor.

“Come Lucy,” he said as he walked out of the grand room with the grand black and white marble floor, carrying me. “I have to put you somewhere where you’ll be safe for now until I’ve had the chance to explain to my family why you’re still alive.”

Two

D
everaux chained me in a room hidden beneath his home. I couldn’t believe it when he took his shirt back once he got me underground and put a metal collar around my neck with a chain that was looped through a giant jump ring on the floor.

“It really is for your protection, no matter what you may think right now,” he said before he left me there.

I wasn’t sure how long he left me there. Days, weeks, years. I had no concept of time so to me it could have been another eternity and I wouldn’t have known for sure.

I looked around the room and saw the stone walls and the scattered skeletons around the room. It was almost as if I were in a catacomb of some sort, but the steel door with bars on it to keep me in, made me feel otherwise.

I felt like one of those animals in a zoo.

His “family” as he called them would come by my room and stare at me. Some of them even threw things at me. I should have expected it. Our sides were always at war, which is why more of us and them were born; to make sure there would always be a balance and that neither side would have an unfair upper hand.

Even the small children who were half like them would come by and look at me curiously. I’ll never forget the little girl with the white blonde, curly hair and large amethyst colored eyes. She was the only one who didn’t taunt me. She would hold the bars with sad little hands and put her face against them and watch me for hours.

I remember the night that she came down with a small bundle in her hands. She looked around carefully before she set it down in front of her and pushed her little curls out of her face. I noticed she was wearing a white nightgown and was barefoot busily looking through what she had brought with her. Then she pulled out some bread and bottles of water and stuck them threw the bars toward me with a smile.

The hunger and thirst took over me harder than it ever had before and I instinctively reached for her gifts when I was pulled back by the chain. I looked at the food and water with tears in my eyes and then to the little girl and yanked dejectedly on the chain.

She looked over to see what I was doing and then understood. I watched her as she ran away into the darkness, her tiny footsteps sounding like a small round of applause as she left her bundle behind. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the stone wall. I was trying to go to sleep when I heard her feet smacking the cold hard catacomb floor as she ran back toward where I was.

Then I heard the sound of jingling which caused me to open my eyes again. She had a large hoop with a multitude of keys on them and she was trying to figure out which key would open the bars. When she finally chose the right key she let out a little gasp of excitement and then proceeded to repack her bundle. She pulled the bars open slowly so that the creaking wouldn’t be too loud and dragged the sack in.

I watched her stop short in front of me. She looked scared for a moment, like if she understood that she was now in a cage with one of my kind.

I reached a hand out to her to let her know that I didn’t mean any harm. Leaning over she sniffed my hand and looked at me carefully before the fear disappeared and she smiled again. She ran her hands softly over my light brown hair and then opened her bundle again. Pulling out one of the bottles of water she uncapped it and placed it to my lips. I drank down the first bottle in two gulps. She smiled happily and wiped away the water that had dripped down my chin, and then she reached back into the sack and took out the small loaf of bread and wiped it off on her nightgown before sitting next to me and breaking it into pieces to feed it to me.

When the bread was gone she reached for the other bottle of water and placed it in my hand after opening it then she turned the sack over and shook it out. As I watched her curiously, she fashioned it into a burlap wrap and with an incredible strength, managed to lift me slightly so that she could wrap it around my waist. She stepped back to admire her work and then reached back and pulled my hair over my breasts then smiled looking at me with hopeful eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered with tears springing to my eyes.

It was obvious to her that I was unhappy being naked and she did her best to cover me.

I finished my bottle of water and she took the empty container from me. I watched as she turned and picked up the other bottle and headed back to the bars. She hesitated for a moment before she turned and looked at me over her shoulder. Placing the bottles down, she came over to me and reached around the back of the collar to see how I was being held before she leaned her head back behind me. She pushed me slightly forward and I heard her grunting in effort following by the sound of snapping chain links. She stepped back again and leaned me back against the wall and placed a finger to her lips to tell me not to let anyone know she had just freed me. When she smiled again before she left, a piece of the chain fell from her lips and that’s when I realized this innocent looking child devil had just bit threw the chains to free me.

I watched her as she looked around me to make sure there were was no evidence of breadcrumbs and then walk outside of my room pulling the bars closed. She held up the keys as if though she was going to lock it again then she looked at me for a moment. Putting her fingers to her lips again, she slid the loop around her arm.

“I promise,” I said to her quietly.

Nodding she waved at me as her little feet beat the stone floor to return the keys and then echo down the hallway and up the stairs.

I pushed myself to my knees and used the wall to help myself stand up. I was very shaky on my legs but I knew that if I stayed on the ground much longer I wouldn’t be able to move very well ever again. I leaned back against the wall and decided to sleep standing up. I knew that when I felt the false heat of what would be the morning it would wake me up and I would slide back down.

But of course that would have been too perfect and too easy.

Three

W
hen I did finally wake up the next morning I saw Deveraux standing inside the bars with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Good morning,” he said to me evenly.

I stared at him.

“Can I ask you something Lucy?” he said dropping his hands and sliding them into his pocket.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you think I keep you chained in here, naked and hungry?”

“Because you’re evil and I’m your enemy,” I responded.

BOOK: Lucy, Fallen

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