He held his hands in front of his face. They were his hands, complete with the little scar trailing between his thumb and forefinger. It represented the one mistake he could never forgive of himself, so he had refused healing. He wished there was a reflecting glass so he could inspect the rest, because something had to be amiss.
“None of that matters,” he whispered to himself. Only finding Diana safe did. He shook off his unease and plodded ahead.
“Talking to yourself now, Lucifer?” Olivier’s voice was light and airy. One would think they were in the middle of a grand gala back on Mount Olympus without a care in the universe instead of here... wherever here was.
Lucifer was vividly aware of something being off with his physical self, but he also found he was more annoyed by Olivier’s cavalier attitude. It wasn’t as if the other angel had morphed into someone he no longer recognized, but he no longer seemed capable of tolerating such carelessness.
Was that because something was indeed off, or was he just being sensitive to his failures that had placed them in this predicament?
One—he and Olivier should never have allowed outsiders to come along on their journey. It was going to be incredibly dangerous. Although Diana was a goddess, he doubted her skill in battle against something that could do what had been considered impossible—kill angels. He should’ve put his foot down and refused.
Two—he admitted that he had been distracted when he had thought Diana and Olivier were flirting. The anger that had gnarled his insides into knots had made him careless. He should’ve been aware of the shooting stars erupting from the black hole. In truth, up until he had seen Diana hurtling toward it, the black hole’s presence had not even registered in his mind.
Third—oh, he didn’t want to contemplate the disaster he’d created by allowing himself to think and act on his topsy-turvy emotions when it came to the goddess. They had been mere moments away from ruination. He would’ve been cast out of the heavens, and she would’ve been damned along with him for being complicit in his sin. Not only would her own family punish her, but the Creator had been known to bring down entire civilizations for lesser evils than luring an angel into fornication.
So, at the very least he should be uncomfortable in his own skin.
Olivier grabbed Lucifer’s arm, jerking him around so they were face to face. “Brother, what are you so seriously pondering? I asked you a question twice now, but you never so much as looked my way. Has the lovely Diana made you deaf, too?”
He tried and failed to maintain eye contact. Apparently, Olivier was correct. But Lucifer refused to encourage him to continue his allusions to there being more between him and Diana. They could never be anything more to each other. It would be better if the subject was dropped.
“I’m scouring the barren landscape for signs she may have veered off in another direction than our current course. It’s not a sin to focus on the task at hand.” But it was a sin to lie about it.
“Fine. Fine. There’s not much to go on here. The ground is pebbly ash and rocks. It’s unlikely there’ll be a trail of footprints or broken twigs to show the way.” Olivier stepped around in a small circle, his gaze penetrating the surrounding area. He was speaking the truth. “Perhaps, she can utilize her vaunted tracking skills to find us again instead. That is why we brought her along, was it not?”
A scuffling noise to their left alerted him to danger. They both turned toward it, their swords drawn, icy-blue flames bursting from the hilts.
“I don’t believe that is the lovely prey we seek,” Olivier whispered. “I do believe whatever it is considers us to be the prey.”
A coy grin curved up the corners of Lucifer’s mouth. A beast. That, he could handle with ease. Besides, with all the pent-up confused energy coursing through his veins, the injection of adrenaline was just what he needed. “Then we show it the truth—it is the prey.”
Without waiting for Olivier, he bolted after the creature. Any other animal would’ve fled from the wrath running toward it. But not this one. Instead, it charged at him, snarling. From a distance, it had looked similar to a large boulder against the backdrop of the barren land. On closer inspection, Lucifer’s gut flipped over itself. The thing was enormous, black as tar, with the body of a 3,000-pound lion, the height of an elephant, and uneven pointy fangs in a mouth gaping open, ready to take a chunk of Lucifer and anything else that got in its way.
But it was the stench that hit him first. Dear Lord in the heavens! Nothing had ever smelled so foul, like a herd of rotting wildebeests piled on top of a meadow of corpse flowers mixed with the scent of decay left in the burning embers of a village wiped out by a volcano.
Lucifer’s eyes watered. Bile rose in his throat. But he forged ahead. Olivier exclaimed, then turned to retch, leaving Lucifer alone to battle the monster.
The creature continued to run for him, then pounced to land directly in front of him. It reeked of death. Lucifer was ready. His flaming sword cut through the air in a direct swipe at the thing’s throat, adding the putrid sizzling of flesh to the perfumed air. Still, it did not back down, it did not flinch. For most living things, a mere touch of the sword was enough to kill.
This was not a good sign.
It sure would be nice if Olivier stopped being such a weakling and jumped into the fight.
Lucifer backed up a couple of steps to gain some distance from the hulking creature. Smoke huffed out of its nostrils. With the air being so chilled, the atoms of moisture transformed into icy shards that rained down, making soft pinging sounds as they struck the ground. A nasally snort rumbled the smaller rocks and sent a tremor through the air.
By far, this place had to be the most unusual Lucifer had ever witnessed, and he’d seen quite a lot that qualified.
He traded the sword into his other hand, conjuring forth another from thin air, and bared his teeth in a snarl. They charged each other at the same moment.
His dual swords found their mark under the throat of the beast. The creature didn’t falter or slow down its attack. Its clawed hand swiped out, knocking Lucifer through the air, sending him crashing into the trunk of a wide, dead tree. Pain ricocheted through the back of his skull.
Where is Olivier? Damn him!
Lucifer scrambled to his feet, swords swinging in front of him. The creature barreled toward him again. Lucifer stood his ground, feet planted widely apart in a defensive stance. He stared the thing in its beady black eyes—at least he thought those were its eyes. It was difficult to tell with all the darkness around them.
Its stench hit him like a punch to the gut. He refused to blanch in the face of such primal viciousness. A split moment before it careened into him, Lucifer rocketed to the right, clear away from the tree.
The monster collided headfirst into the massive tree trunk, rattling the earth. By the sheer brutality of the hit, it was a wonder the tree didn’t break in two and crash down. Instead, it stood, not so much as a dent in its petrified bark. Lucifer didn’t wait for the creature to recover. He jumped on its back while it struggled to stand. He jabbed the swords into its sides. The beast roared and thrashed from side to side. Still, Lucifer held on, using his weapons as makeshift knobs, much like a two-headed pommel on a horse’s saddle. His hands burned with the effort to not let go as the creature bucked with the strength of a Kraken.
