Her Avenging Angel (Her Angel Romance Series Book 7) (12 page)

“Daddy will protect you,” she said to Dante and stroked his cheek before standing and facing the five angels again. “I really wanted to be nice to you all.”

They exchanged glances and the white-haired one called a burning white sword to his hand.

Erin sighed dramatically. “You just had to go there.”

“We will deal with you first, Demon.” He pointed the flaming blade at her.

Veiron definitely chuckled this time and whispered to Dante, “Watch mummy do her thing.”

“What was that? You want me to crush you like a bug?” She approached the group, fearless with her head held high and shadows flowing from her back, becoming wings.

The male laughed.

Erin’s expression went blank, she raised her left hand, and all five men dropped to their knees, grunting in unison.

“I really do hate it when people laugh at me.” Erin pinned each angel with a glare. “It’s so hard to get anyone to take me seriously at times.”

Veiron chuckled again. Erin gave him a pointed look and he fell silent.

She turned back to the five angels and walked in a circle around them, her hands behind her back and her gaze constantly on them. The shadows fluttered and flowed from her back, and tendrils curled around her arms, black where they emerged from her hands but turning red near their tips.

The five angels’ shoulders shook, trembling under the weight of her power. The pressure on Nevar disappeared as the angels withdrew their power, using it to combat Erin’s instead. It didn’t seem to help.

Nevar wished he possessed Erin’s power.

She was incredible.

“I think you should leave now.” Erin stopped in front of Lysander. “Before I really lose my temper.”

He edged his blue eyes up to her face. Sweat beaded on his brow and darkened his wild blond hair.

He managed to nod.

“Good.” Erin waved her hand again and walked back to Veiron.

The five angels stumbled onto their feet.

Lysander grinned wickedly and launched himself at Nevar.

Before Nevar could respond, Lysia was in front of him, blocking Lysander’s sword arm with her bare hand and driving him backwards. The male didn’t seem to know what to make of her as she fought him, slashing at him with long black talons and catching him at times, drawing lines of bright scarlet on his flesh.

The other four angels called their weapons and Lysia threw her hands forwards, hitting them with a telekinetic blast that only made them stagger back a few steps. Either she was growing weaker and so were her attacks, or the angels were powerful enough to withstand the full force of her abilities.

All five angels stopped and stared at her in stunned silence.

Why?

“I like this chick. She rocks,” Erin said, shattering the tension in the air for a heartbeat.

Lysander sneered. “This chick? This is no mere female.”

He raked cold icy eyes over Lysia and Nevar growled, warning the male away from her. He was about to step in front of her to shield her again when Lysander spoke, stunning everyone into silence this time.

“She is the Great Destroyer.”

N
evar stared at the back of Lysia’s head, his hand slowly coming up to rest on the centre of the violet-edged black breastplate of his armour. Beneath it, the mark on his chest pulsed, a steady rhythm that felt like a heartbeat, out of sync with his own but just as fast.

She slowly turned her head and looked over her slender shoulder at him, her fall of black hair obscuring part of her face. Her eyebrows furrowed and her hazel eyes implored him, filled with a combination of hope and fear, and incredible hurt.

Hurt that he felt sure was beating in his own chest through the mark there.

Her mark.

She was the Great Destroyer.

He had been looking for a beast, bigger than one of the dragons that resided in Hell, a gigantic creature with six horns, spikes down its back, a vicious barbed tail and enormous wings.

His gaze briefly dropped from hers to her wings and they drew closer to her back, no doubt responding to the pulse of fear that had shot through her when his eyes had shifted to them. She wanted to hide them from him, but she didn’t need to feel such a thing or be ashamed of them.

She had the wings and the talons of the creature carved on the door of her chamber, but she wasn’t a monster.

She was beautiful.

But he couldn’t move past one thought that stuck in his mind, sending fear in crushing waves through his body.

Was the attraction he felt for her and the electric rush of tingles he experienced with every brush of their skin, no matter how innocent the touch was, purely because they were bound to each other?

He was her master. He wasn’t sure what that made her though. Not a servant. She was so much more than that to him.

That revelation hit him hard, knocking him back a step.

She was more than a servant. More than an animal or an abomination. She was filled with light and shone so brightly it hurt his eyes at times. She was incredible. She was Lysia.

Part of him wanted to bark out a laugh at the suggestion that the delicate, pure and ethereal woman standing before him was the Great Destroyer, a beast that would ravage Hell, Earth and Heaven and bring about the end of the world.

Everything she had said to him rushed through his mind, making him dizzy as he lifted his eyes up to meet her hazel ones.

Angels had struck her down.

Her last clear memory before a battle was Thebes in all its glory.

A shiver trickled down his spine and his thighs and crawled over his scalp.

She didn’t know the modern world and all its inventions because she had been locked in Hell, held in a dormant state, waiting for the combined blood of the angelic destroyer and a witch that was a key to spill and awaken her.

“Say something,” she whispered, her striking eyes pleading him.

Eyes that matched Liora’s.

Hair that matched Asmodeus’s.

She had been made in their image.

He pulled in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled it just as slowly, seeking some calm amongst the raging storm of his thoughts and fighting to get the words he wanted to say, and she needed to hear, to line up on his tongue.

“I will take the creature to Heaven, into our custody where it will be safe.” Lysander stepped forwards.

Nevar’s eyes blazed violet and he snarled at the blond male through his fangs as they dropped. “No one is taking Lysia anywhere… especially not angels.”

A gust of wind battered him and suddenly Amelia was between Lysia and Lysander, shielding her with her half-feather half-leather silver wings. The sunlight reflected off her chrome armour and highlighted her silver ponytail, and glinted off her sword as she swept it in a sharp arc at her side.

“You won’t do to her what you did to me,” Amelia snapped and spread her wings, her power rising as she began to unleash it. “I won’t let you take her to Heaven just so you can kill her, you bastard.”

Amelia kicked off and barrelled into Lysander’s stomach, taking the angel down. He hit the sand hard, his blade almost falling from his grip. His fingers closed around the hilt of the curved golden sword and he brought his hand up hard, cracking Amelia across the side of her head. She grunted and fell sideways, and Lysander scrambled free.

Marcus was there before the angel could launch his own attack, shoving him backwards into the four angels of the apocalypse. The men parted to allow him and Lysander through and Marcus flicked his curved blade out at his side, extending the silver engraved handle into a staff that rivalled his six-foot-plus frame. He beat his silver wings to match Lysander as the angel shot backwards, his golden wings working frantically as he attempted to gather himself and gain some space. Marcus didn’t give him a chance and neither did Amelia.

She kicked off the sand, launching high into the air, and held her hands out before her. A swirling blue orb materialised between her palms, growing as it began to spin faster and faster, the different shades in it blurring together. When it was the size of a basketball, she moved her hands behind it and beat her silver wings hard as she shoved forwards with her hands. She jerked backwards and the orb shot forwards, heading straight for Marcus as he kept Lysander busy dodging swift stabs of his spear.

As if sensing the approach of the blue orb, Marcus dropped flat on his face and covered his head.

Lysander looked up, straight at Amelia.

The blue swirling ball struck him hard in the chest plate and exploded, the blast rocking the island as it created a crater in the sand and hurled Lysander through the air. The angel spun heels over head and lost his blade. It disappeared. He spread his golden wings, twirling two more times before he finally righted himself.

Lysander pressed a hand to his head and shook it.

Nevar snarled and dragged Lysia behind him, darkness rushing through his veins as he thought about what the angel had suggested. Amelia was right and he couldn’t allow Lysander to take Lysia to Heaven. Heaven would seek to destroy her in order to protect its realm, even if Lysia wasn’t liable to go nuclear and unleash hell on the three realms. It wouldn’t care, not even if the only pool in Heaven that recorded the future showed that she would live forever without raising a hand against any of the realms. It would view her as a threat regardless and would kill her.

Nevar would never allow that to happen. His life wasn’t worth much, but he swore on it anyway. He would keep Lysia safe. He would fight the forces of Heaven and Hell, and any army the mortal world could throw at him. He would never relent and never surrender. They would have to kill him if they wanted to get to her.

He snarled and darkness crawled over his skin, encroaching like shadows at nightfall, devouring the golden tone of his flesh as it gained ground.

He tried to fight it and hold it back, fearing how Lysia would look at him if she saw the form he despised, the one that shamed him and made him feel like a wretched monster. He had embraced it though, had allowed it to merge with him and had become the darkness, and now it was quick to come whenever he faltered, allowing the black part of his heart to dictate his actions.

That part screamed at him to protect Lysia and that he was strongest in his other form, when he was one with the darkness and unleashed it. Used it.

He snarled through his fangs and they grew longer, his lower canines beginning to sharpen too and cut into his gums.

His black wings took on a violet shimmer that matched the raised edges of his armour, and the skin around his eyes burned into darkness as they switched to purple. He growled, pain tearing through him as his skull ached, his horns growing despite his best efforts to contain them.

He felt Asmodeus’s gaze on him and Liora’s too, sensed her desire to come to him. He shook his head, warning her away, and snapped at Asmodeus, torn between fighting Lysander and attacking him. He wanted the bitter tang of blood on his tongue. He wanted to gorge himself on the powerful life force of his master and then take down Lysander in the most gruesome way imaginable to satisfy his dark hunger to see the male pay for daring to take Lysia from him.

To her death.

Nevar clawed his hair back and breathed hard, redoubling his fight against himself. He couldn’t go all out. If he unleashed that side of himself, there was a chance that he wouldn’t stop at killing Lysander and sending him back to Heaven with his tail between his legs. He would want to continue the fight, wouldn’t be able to resist the sick craving for more blood and violence, for the feel of blows battering his bones and flesh, and the sounds of the anguished cries of his enemies in his ears.

Calm yourself.
Asmodeus’s voice rang in his head and he screwed his face up.

You think I am not trying?
Nevar snarled back at him and wished the bastard could see the wicked things his mind was throwing at him, images of him taking down the King of Demons and finally having the vengeance that had driven him for so long now that he didn’t know anything else or any other way of living.

“You try to interfere, Nevar, and I swear I have an orb with your name on it.” Amelia’s voice, edged with all the dark rage lacing her incredible power, snapped his focus to her.

She glared down at him, her wings beating hard to keep her steady a few metres above him, closer to the fire. Her silver eyes swirled like mercury and he read her intent in them. She would follow through with that threat.

“Protect Lysia,” she said and turned her focus back to Marcus and Lysander where they were battling, both blocking more blows than they landed, carving up the sand with their weapons and their powerful wings.

Nevar focused on Lysia behind him and placed his hand on her arm, using the feel and the sense of her to calm himself. He had to protect her and that meant he had to keep his head and not go off the rails. She wouldn’t like the other side of him, but her dislike of it would be nothing compared with how she would feel if she saw him attacking people she believed to be his friends. She would never trust him if she witnessed that.

Amelia began forming another orb of energy.

The four larger angels who had come with Lysander armed themselves with weapons that blazed with white fire and turned their focus on her.

Erin tsked and shook her head, her black bob swaying as her golden eyes brightened and red edged them. “Why don’t we keep this a fair grudge match between Team Amelia and Lysander, and you all fuck off.”

She held her hand out, palm facing them, and the four males’ eyes widened just before they disappeared. She laughed.

Veiron snickered too, bouncing Dante in his arms as he began to change back from his demonic form, his skin turning from black to tanned golden and his body shrinking back to his normal build.

Lysia drifted past Nevar without him realising she had moved out from behind him, her hazel eyes locked on the fight unfolding before them.

Nevar moved forwards and wrapped his fingers around Lysia’s wrist. She gasped and shot to face him, and then blushed when she saw it was him. He drew her to him, tucking her against his side and clutching his sword in his free hand. If Lysander dared to come after her, he would deal with the male as best he could while retaining his normal appearance and he wouldn’t be alone. Something told him everyone on the island would fight to protect Lysia.