Her smile vanished into a frown. “Don’t fuck it up.”
“Never.” He tugged her into his arms. “And maybe once you learn to trust me again, we can work our way up to some more mediocre sex.”
She giggled. “Sounds perfect.”
Epilogue
Indolex was on his way. Ashe could feel the fucker like a growing power tempest.
Belle was an important enough captive that Indolex wanted to make sure he got his hands on her before anything could go wrong.
Go wrong like Ashe making a run for it with Belle. It wouldn’t work. Nothing would. Indolex would find them before an hour had passed. If Ashe let Belle go, Indolex would kill him, kill those Ashe had sold his soul to protect, and capture Bella anyway.
No, he had to wait for Indolex to come and get her. At least this way, there was an outside chance of him staying close to Belle, maybe preventing Indolex’s smarmy guard demons from taking out centuries of resentment on her.
Ashe had never been this close to her before. At the one or two gatherings he’d attended as Lucifer’s second where she’d been present, she’d always stayed on the periphery.
She was exquisite. A delicate, fairylike creature spun from silk and sugar. Almost too ethereal to be real. Her platinum hair was so silky and pale it looked like moonlight. Her eyes a shade of azure that made him want to gaze into them and lose himself.
His protective urges were so misplaced and so pointless. He’d been the one who’d kidnapped her, and now he wanted to rescue her. Fucking pathetic.
She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d put the amulet around her neck. Ashe had been prepared with bespelled manacles, but she’d come docilely.
If he had to guess, he’d say she was biding her time, hoping to gather information at the least. Or perhaps waiting for a chance to take out Indolex. It’s what he would have done. It’s what he had done. Joined this clusterfuck of a rebellion and waited for the chance to get himself and his family away from Indolex.
Ashe applauded her courage and hated her wasted optimism. Ashe’s opportunity had never come. Indolex had only grown stronger and his hold on Ashe more relentless.
He’d done things for Indolex, awful things, unforgivable things that had stained his soul and steeped it in blood and death. Ironically, he’d become the sort of being that the family he’d done those things to protect would abhor.
“He’s coming,” he said. He didn’t want Belle to be unprepared.
She perched on the edge of their bland motel room bed like a tiny empress.
“He is called Indolex, and he has been gathering power from every being he has killed—demon, angel, and human. I’m not even sure what he is anymore, other than unadulterated power.”
Only the rise and fall of her chest assured him she hadn’t turned into a statue.
In case she might be listening, he continued. “You won’t be able to escape him. Even as strong as you are, you don’t stand a chance.”
She sat unmoving, impassive.
“He is prepared for your resistance.” He had a wild, improbable fantasy of plunging his onyx blade into Belle’s chest and sparing her what was to come. But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t destroy the most perfect being he’d ever been near. “He is capable of hurting you in ways you cannot imagine.”
She glanced at him, and he took comfort from the contempt in her eyes. Belle was a fighter.
“I’m not saying this to scare you.” He crouched at her feet, so absurdly dainty in their battered Converses. “I’m preparing you for what’s coming.”
Her gaze fixed on him, a question in their depths.
“If I could spare you this, I would.” No other heinous action he’d undertaken for Indolex equaled this one. “But he would find you, only seconds after he ended me. He will absorb my power, and with it, Torpidius’s tracking ability.” He could explain his reasons for being with Indolex, try to redeem himself, but that was his burden to bear. “Fight him, Belle.” His voice shook with the intensity of his emotions. “But keep that fight buried way down deep inside you. Be the smart being I know you are and give him no reason to hurt you.” He touched the knee of her worn jeans. “And know this. If I can, I will come for you.” The ground shook beneath them as Indolex materialized outside the door. “Whatever happens, Belle, know that you’re not alone, and I will get you out.”
Through the haze of pain, he could hear them whispering. They were talking about her again, the one like him.
He’d known no other home but these metal walls. He may even have been born here, but he didn’t know. He wasn’t like those that guarded him. He wasn’t a demon, and he wasn’t human. Under their pretense of controlling him, he could smell their fear of him. It thickened the air to the point where he could taste its metallic bite.
They were right to fear him. For all the pain they’d inflicted on him, he would make them pay.
Even though he knew nothing about who he was, where he’d come from, and how he’d come to be in this place, he could remember exactly when everything had changed. When he had changed.
She had come, the one like him. For one, glorious, terrifying moment she had been outside his door. Only a metal barrier had separated them. He had felt her, sensed her, recognized what she was.
His whispering captors named her, and thus him—Nephilim.
She had escaped this horror. She had gone into that dim other that he couldn’t even imagine. He had no reference other than the metal walls, the amulets, and the agony.
But when she’d escaped, a burning had awoken in him. If she could escape, so could he.
And when he did, he would find her, and together they would hunt the ones who had put him here.
The Hell Bound continue their mission in Avarice. Ava and Michael race to find the heavenly Nephilim, stumbling over each other all the way.
