Retribution (Redemption Series) (17 page)

~
Bezaliel
~

In the darkness there was a voice. It was
a low voice. It was reassuring. It was deadly. It was full of resurrection. It
was full of greed. It was full of hope. It was full of devastation.

"In
this moment, you are completely human. You will have no powers. You will be
able to bleed and die. You will be able to starve. You will be able to suffer
as you have never suffered before."

My hand was still in
Marcas
',
and I held on tight. He was a lifeline in a pitch black world echoing with the
voice of Satan.

"This
is my kingdom. This is my domain. You have agreed to a trial. During those
trials, you are mine. You
survive,
the hybrids are
yours to rule. If you succumb, you belong to me. The
Naphil's
soul will be mine."

There was nothingness beneath my feet
and then there was solid ground.

"This
is Hell. Let there be light."

I was suddenly on my knees, one hand
still in
Marcas
', the other covering my eyes as the
world went white. It was sunlight and it wasn't. We were in a desert, a bright,
hot, blazing desert. But it wasn't Earth. No sun on Earth could burn that
bright. And we were burning.
Truly burning.
The heat
was too strong. Even beneath the sweatshirt, I felt my skin smolder as if it
were ablaze.

Marcas
was quick,
moving behind me, lowering
himself
over me to block
the sun with his body as we looked out over the landscape before us. It was a
vast wasteland of nothingness. There was only sky and sun and sand, gritty sand
that was bone white and sharp where my palm rested against the ground. And it
was hot.
So very hot.
Even breathing hurt. My lungs
felt charred. There was
a rawness
in my chest and back
every time I attempted to breathe. Every lungful of air was a battle.
A raspy, greedy battle for survival.

I heard
Marcas
struggling with his own breathing, watched as the arm he held over me began to
redden, and I knew we were going to die. There didn't seem to be any way around
it. We had both heard Satan's voice.

"In
this moment, you are completely human. You will have no powers. You will be
able to bleed and die. You will be able to starve. You will be able to suffer
as you have never suffered before."

 
Even the amulet Monroe had given
Marcas
was useless. It only protected against Demon
possession. We weren't just enduring trials. We were enduring them as humans,
our Angelic and Demon counterparts temporarily stripped away.

"It will be okay,"
Marcas
whispered in my ear, his voice strained.

There was nothing we could do but wait.
I looked out from under
Marcas
' body, desperately
seeking any kind of protection from the punishing environment, but there was
nothing. There was only white sand, sun, and blue skies. It was blindingly
bright, and I whimpered as sweat beaded beneath my shirt. The moisture was no
relief. It hissed against my skin, steam rising from my body as it evaporated.

It had been only minutes, and the heat
was already killing us, wrestling as much moisture from our bodies as it could
in mere seconds. My skin crawled, and I knew it was because it was drying out.
The burning would come next.
Marcas
' skin above me
was already a terrifying shade of red. He kept his face averted, facing the
sand, and I watched as he gritted his teeth against the burn. He was shading
me, protecting me, and he was going to be the first to die.

"It's too much. Let me shade you
now," I begged.

My voice was hoarse, my throat on fire,
but I found the words anyway.
Marcas
shook his head,
and I knew that was the only response I was going to get. It was the only
response I was sure he could manage. I struggled beneath him, doing the next
best thing I knew to do. I pulled the pink hooded sweatshirt covering me over
my head and threw it up over his arms. It left me vulnerable and exposed, but I
wouldn't let
Marcas
burn to death.

The movement took whatever strength I had
left in me, and I faltered, falling flat into the white sand.
Pain.
There was pain everywhere.
Hot,
searing pain.
The sand was sharp. It dug into my skin the same way the
thorns on a rose would dig into a finger, and I knew when I saw the blood that
it had broken the skin.
Little cuts.
Only small beads of blood.
Tiny cuts, and yet the pain was
extraordinary. It was like a million paper cuts all over my body. I couldn't
breathe. I couldn't even cry. There wasn't enough moisture left in me for
tears.

Suddenly,
Marcas
had one arm wrapped around my waist, leaving it exposed as he kept me lifted
off the sand. I could see his skin continue to blister, but any attempts at
struggling was futile.
Marcas
would not release me,
and I wasn't strong enough to make him.

"I
could make it all go away.
Water.
All you need is
water."

Lucifer's voice was everywhere.
Around us, beneath us, above us.
I could even feel it in my
skin, and it felt cool. It felt safe. It felt like salvation.

I gritted my teeth, my jaw clenched to
keep from calling out.
Marcas
had not answered him,
his resolve obvious, and I knew I had to do the same. His strength was my
strength. My strength was his. If I faltered, if I showed how desperate I was,
Marcas
would end this in a heartbeat, and I couldn't let
him. I had volunteered to come with him. I had begged
Marcas
with my eyes. I could not imagine him doing it alone.

Once, I would not have chosen this. I
would not have chosen to save a lot of hybrid Demons. They were, after all,
Demons. They had stolen souls. They had murdered the innocent. They had
practiced evil. And yet, they were part human. The human part of them had a
choice. They had a dead blasted choice, and I was determined to give them one.

Marcas
sagged above
me, and I held him up. How I did it was beyond me. I had no power. I had no
strength. My vision was blurring, and I knew subconsciously that I was dying.
But, somehow, I held him up. I had read about human endurance, about what
people discover they are capable of in their darkest hours. And now, in this
moment, I was learning that endurance had a new name.
Love.

In that moment when I felt myself
slipping away, I managed to hold
Marcas
up and he
managed not to let me go. We were suspended together in death with Lucifer's
voice echoing through our heads.

"I
could make this all go away."

And together, somehow, we both managed
to say, "No."

And then there was darkness.
Wonderful, sweet, blessed, cool darkness.

Chapter 18

I need to let her go. I need to trust that when the
time comes, she will be wiser than the rest of us. I need to let her go.

~
Bezaliel
~

It's strange
that in death, I found myself thinking about words, about poetry that
ironically personified death. But there it was. In my moment of darkness, I
found myself mumbling Robert Louis Stevenson's
Death, To
The
Dead For Evermore
in my
head, as if his words would somehow make my death clearer, make the pain less.

"Death, to
the dead for evermore

A King, a God,
the last, the best of friends -

Whene'er
this mortal
journey ends

Death, like a
host, comes smiling to the door;

Smiling, he
greets us on that tranquil shore

Where neither
piping bird nor peeping dawn

Disturbs the
eternal sleep,

But in the
stillness far withdrawn

Our dreamless
rest for evermore we keep."

I mumbled the
words slowly, my throat burning, and my lips cracking. It was a painful
endeavor, and I wondered when the pain would end, when I'd find myself on that
tranquil shore.
Or if because I had begged to stay with
Marcas
, I would end up burning forever more in the eternal
lake of fire.

"It hurts
much less if you don't talk," a voice whispered beside me, and my eyes
popped open.

"
Marcas
!"

It was too much.
I only caught a glimpse of his pallid face before my eyes were closed again.
The pain was ridiculous.

"It seems
we survived the first trial,"
Marcas
said
slowly.

I grunted and
then regretted it.

"Are you
sure?" I asked.

The way I hurt
now, it didn't seem possible we had survived anything. But pain, in the long
run, was good. It meant we were alive. It also meant we were no longer in that
hot, burning world that Lucifer had placed us in. There was cool air against my
stomach, and I tensed. Not only was I alive and in pain, I was half naked.
Wonderful.

"He's
healed us some, but he won't risk healing us enough to be as strong as we'd
like to be. I'm sorry."

This time I
managed to open my eyes and keep them open. We were in a beautiful place, a
field at twilight. The colors were too vivid to be normal, the pinks too pink
and the purples too purple.
Marcas
was beside me, his
hand on my hip. If I was hurting, I knew he was in utter pain. Lucifer had been
kinder to me. The places on my stomach and side not protected by my bra were
covered in abrasions and scratches that were partly healed. Some of the skin on
my arms was blistered.

Marcas
, on the other
hand, had protected me from the sun, from the heat, and Lucifer had not been
kind enough to heal much of the damage. It was obvious his skin was blistered
and sensitive. His face was slightly pink but had received the least amount of
damage. There were abrasions on his hands where he had pulled me from the sand.
Some of them still bled.
 
There were rips
in his black tee, and beyond them were more abrasions, but these looked to be
in much better condition. His eyes were closed, and I hoped the next trial
would not finish him.

"I'm
okay,"
Marcas
said softly.

I rolled my
eyes. "I didn't ask."

Marcas
smiled, his
eyes finally opening.

"You were
thinking it."

"Oh,"
I said haughtily, lifting a brow as I tried to ignore the pain I saw in his
gaze. "So you read minds now, Craig?"

He chuckled, and
then winced.

"An
open book,
Blainey
."

Any other time,
I would have berated him with lighthearted sarcasm, but now . . . now, seeing
him in so much pain, I simply reached over and placed a hand against his cheek.

He brought one
of his hands up and held my palm in place as if he were afraid I'd let go. For
now,
Marcas
was human. For now, whatever it was that
made him a Demon had been stripped away, and he deserved the same type of
comfort the rest of us did. This
Marcas
, this human
Marcas
, was the man I loved. Most people couldn't see past
the beast within.

"Be
still," I whispered. "I'm here."

He closed his
eyes again, his brow furrowed.

"Are they
worth it?" I asked gently. "Are they worth this much pain?"

Marcas
sighed, his
hand still holding my palm against his face.

"They are
my brothers and sisters, not only by blood, but by circumstance.
Demon and human born.
We don't choose our parents, but we
should be allowed to choose our destiny."

I watched his
face, watched the lines at the corners of his full lips, lines formed from
gritting his teeth against the pain.

"You're
worth it. You and Luther are worth it," I said confidently.

Why I thought he
needed to hear this, I have no idea, but in that moment, it felt right.

Marcas
smiled against
my palm. It was such an electric feeling being close to him, touching him. It
made me feel different.
Whole maybe.
Or just simply more.

"I wouldn't
let Luther hear you say that. He thrives off his bad boy image."

I laughed.

"And you
don't?"

Marcas
opened his
eyes, his gaze finding mine, and the glint I saw in his gaze was enough.
Marcas
was stronger than anyone I had ever met. If Lucifer
thought pain would defeat him, he was dead wrong. He would persevere even when
the rest of us gave up. Maria's words from the Abbey came back to haunt me.
"When you feel like you are falling,
Naphil
, and you think you can't hold on any longer,
remember something. Don't let go. Let him pull you free."