Page 82 of Blood and War
“Kellan you’ll be killed!” Eire cried out, silver lining her stormy eyes as she reached a hand toward him. He contemplated cutting off her limb, too. Kellan was so much more than the last time his darkness had taken over. The incessant rage. The bloodlust. He very nearly killed them all the last time. Now? He didn’t know if he could hold himself back. Not as that voice whispered for blood.
“Then so be it.” Kellan left them standing there before he disappeared into the mouth of the mountain.
Following the Dark King was easy. Blood trail aside, he couldfeelthe fear wafting from the male’s body. The metallic, iron tinge to the air, and Lucifer hadn’t gone far. Kellan ducked into a narrow passage, and the blood trail thickened. Fallen angel ornot, Lucifer would not come back from that wound without a healer. He’d lost too much blood. It smeared across the rocky ground and the walls around him. Dripping and pooling along the ground as it slushed beneath his boots. Another fifteen feet of the passage and he emerged into a shallowed cavern.
Kellan could sense him. Could smell Lucifer’s fear as he cowered. Alone, without another demon in sight. As he waited to die by his hands.
“You can still join me, Horseman. We can put the past behind us. Create a force that even the council couldn’t reckon with.” Lucifer stumbled back as Kellan advanced. His dark hair was plastered to the pallid skin of his forehead with blood and sweat. Lucifer’s lips trembled, cracked and dry as the irregular breaths fluttered through Kellan’s ears. Gone was the cocky, confident, fallen angel he’d served so many years under.
“You’re pathetic.” He laughed, the sound reverberating off the walls around them. Wicked, as it filled every inch of the cavern. “It’s over for you.” He stopped, waiting. Watching to see Lucifer’s next move.
“We can still beat them. Help me take what should be mine. Help me take this planet, and I will free you from their grasp.” Something in the fallen angel’s voice had his body begging for more blood, stoking that fire burning within him.
“I’d rather die than work for you again.” Kellan spat. He advanced a step, and the fallen angel flinched. Loose stones crunched beneath his boots, but his legs were steady. Nothing phased him when he was like this. Like the world around him no longer existed once he set his sights on his target. It was how not only the council, but Lucifer himself had groomed him. Had embedded it in his brain to tune every sound and movement out of his mind until it was nothing but him and his prey.
“Kellan you don’t want to kill me.”
“You’re delusional if that’s what you believe. I want nothing more than to absolutely obliterate you.” He laughed again, almost in a near manic state.
“She needed to die. What’s the life of one human girl? Surely my life means more than that slimy rat.”
Kellan lunged, his steps faster than Lucifer could comprehend. He swung, but held back just enough for it not to be a killing blow. He had vowed to take his time with Lucifer. To make him suffer like he had. Like so many before, and still continued to, suffer. He would have made it last weeks. Months. Even years if he didn’t have one last mission after he was done with Lucifer. He’d be brutal, but it would be faster than the angel deserved.
With the deadly point of his blade, Kellan severed the tendons at the back of Lucifer’s heel, and the male crumbled to the ground. Howling in pain as he tried—and failed—to get back to his feet.
“Kellan don’t do this.” Lucifer’s eyes grew wide as the reality set in. He knew he wasn’t walking away from this. Not this time. “Kellan, I have so much left to do. I’m not ready.”
Kellan reveled in that look as the being pleaded for his life. That sick, twisted part of it calling to him, and he enjoyed every fucking moment.
“How dare you plead for your pathetic excuse of a life.” With a flick of his wrist, another appendage fell free from his body. The scream that erupted from him was like so many Kellan had heard before. The wounded cry of a dying animal, and he grinned.
“Kellan!” The pool of blood thickened and expanded beneath him as he continued to bleed out. There was nothing left of the fallen angel's left arm. In sheer moments, Kellan had reduced it to nothing more than a hunk of flesh.
He palmed the dagger, striding toward the trembling being. “Begging will get you nowhere.” Down Lucifer’s chest he dragged the blade, plunging it into his abdomen before tearing into Lucifer’s flesh with his bare hands, enclosing them around whatever he could grasp, and yanking them from his stomach. Lucifer’s blood sprayed, and Kellan could feel it dripping down his skin. Tasted it in his mouth, but he continued on. Severing the tendons in his right arm,rippingthem from his body, and rendering him completely immobile.
Lucifer’s pained wails echoed throughout the cavern. Over the mountain where an entire army had fallen still at the ear-piercing sound. Kellan should have been disgusted, but he felt nothing. No remorse. Held no mercy for the being beneath him, despite him begging over and over again for his life.
Suffering. It was the only thing Kellan wanted Lucifer to feel. He wanted him to suffer. To beg for his death.
“Balance, Horseman. Killing me throws the balance.”
“Fuck the balance.”
Lucifer's severed head hit the floor, rolling a few feet away from his still body. Eyes glazed and unseeing. His mouth still hung open in a pained, silent scream.
Only then did Kellan let the weight of his actions fall heavy on his shoulders. Not with remorse. He didn’t feel anything for the dead angel. But relief. This world had been rid of the monster that had plagued them since the dawn of time.
Forty-Eight
KELLAN
His heavy footsteps were the only indication that he was returning. The three remaining Horsemen didn’t move, already aware it was him. Kellan saw the track Eire had worn into the ground with her pacing, but the sigh of relief hung heavy in the air. Gabriel and Kane didn’t speak, unsure of the state he was truly in. He had been enveloped in such darkness it was a wonder he even knew who they were.
Behind them, Jace had refused to set Demitria’s body down, Kellan had been gone long enough to know her warmth had begun to slowly seep back into the world as her skin grew colder and colder.
Kellan was covered in blood. So much that his siblings didn’t even know where his enemies ended and his began. Could see it in their eyes as each one looked him over. He was wounded, but none of the injuries were new. Not since her death. He was a force to be reckoned with before the rage, but once the darkness took hold? Kellan was untouchable. His siblings circled him in a rush of motion, weapons drawn as he prowled closer.
He was strong enough to keep himself in check.
