His desire to take over the underworld hadled to numerous battles and wars that my ancestors had led and diedin. I was the first varcolac to have fought him numerous times andsurvived. Thirteen years ago, our battles within Hell had beenthrust into the human realm when the humans had torn open anunnatural gateway into Hell. It had been the first gateway that Icouldn’t close on my own, and it had effectively ended the divisionbetween our two worlds.
When the gateway had first been torn open anddemons had spilled into their realm, the humans had panicked andtried to destroy us. They soon realized that their guns could slowus, and their bombs could kill us, sometimes. Other times they justpissed us off more.
Mac had been wise enough not to try to bombme when I’d first encountered him and his small struggling army ayear after the humans had ripped Hell open. We were the best helpthe humans would ever get against fighting Lucifer and keeping himfrom walking this land again.
Tilting my head back, I studied the clear skyand the midmorning sun already baking the landscape around us. Theheat of the sun was nothing compared to the fires of Hell. I hadbarely broken a sweat, but many of the humans around me were tryingdesperately to hide in what little shade they could find. River wassweating more than I was, but I’d noticed the heat had less of aneffect on her than it did her fellow humans.
Another demon trait.Another sign she might be able to withstand Hell enough to enter itif she’s unable to close the gate and we are unable to draw Luciferout.
It was bad enough I was taking her this closeto Lucifer and the pit of Hell, but I still held out hope thatshe’d never have to know what it was like to walk in there. It wasmy home. It’s where I had been forged from the Fires of Creationthemselves, and it was no place for her. If I succeeded in claimingmy throne, I would spend a lot of my time on Earth with herafterward.
Beside me, the truck creaked as it bouncedover the pitted road. Green grass had taken over the base of thebuildings surrounding us. Ivy climbed high to consume theirdilapidated façades.
Despite the new growth, signs of war anddevastation were still visible throughout. I knew River spotted theskeletal remains near the base of a fountain when she took a stepcloser to me. Everywhere I looked, more piles of bones could beseen laying in and among the new vegetation.
“So many lives lost,” River whispered.
When we passed another building, crowsbellowed caws of annoyance as their wings beat against the air.More birds soared into the sky from a crumbling building with a redmaple tree growing up through its empty center. Beneath the rubble,I spotted more remains of the dead, trapped and forgotten foreverin the destruction.
“Did anyone survive what happened out here inthese states?” she asked.
“Some did. Mac did.”
“He did?” she squeaked.
“Yes. Mac was in Chicago when the boundariesbetween our dimensions were ripped apart. He was part of themilitary there and was ordered to pull out almost immediately. Yourgovernment tried to evacuate as many people as possible when thegateway was opened, but when the horde spilled out from Hell, theypanicked. So did the countries on the other side of the world. Theyall bombed in the hopes of stopping the flow and saving the rest oftheir people.”
“But it didn’t stop the demons?”
“It killed some of them if they took a directhit. It helped to stem the flow by making them warier of humans.Radiation has no effect on us, but dropping a bomb on us can killus. The human leaders were smart enough to realize they couldn’tcontinuously try to destroy us though.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I would have slaughtered them allbefore I allowed such a thing to continue. Lucifer’s followers, theCraetons, have to be stopped, but I would not stand by and watchthe humans destroy my entire species because they screwed up.Badly.”
“And you think you could have gotten to ourpresident and all the leaders around the world in order to killthem?”
“I know I could have. It wouldn’t have beendifficult for me to do so.”
Her gaze ran appraisingly over me. “No, Isuppose it wouldn’t have. Not for you.”
“Besides, they didn’t know that Hell wouldabsorb most of the nuclear fallout. In the beginning, the onlyreason they stopped bombing was because they believed if theycontinued to do so, they would kill all of humanity with radiationexposure. By the time they realized they could drop more bombs,we’d already joined forces with them. We agreed to work together tobuild the wall, train the volunteers, and take down the Craetons.Then, after Bale’s vision, we worked together to search foryou.”
She frowned as she studied a sagging buildingbefore turning back to me. “It’s so weird to think you were lookingfor me for four years before we met.”
“I’ve been looking for you since the moment Ifirst rose from the Fires of Creation.” I hadn’t realized it untilmeeting her, but now I knew it to be true.
My heart clenched as she gazed at me in whatcould only be called wonder. This woman, with her demon and angellineage was far more fragile than me with her mortality, yet shemade me feel as weak as a human when she gazed at me like that. Ifsomething ever happened to her…
Nothing would, I would not allow it.
“I bet you never expected your Chosen to be ahuman, much less a descendent of Lucifer,” she said.
I’d come to realize she refused to seeherself as Lucifer’s daughter, but she was. I believed it was herway of distancing herself from the bastard who had created her.“You’re also part demon,” I reminded her.
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.“And part angel. Bet you didn’t see that one coming either.”
I leaned closer to her and pressed my mouthagainst her ear. “But you fuck like a demon.”
