Chapter
Twenty-Six
S erenity
The air burned with intensity, changing from cold to hot as if heaven and hell were in a battle. No matter how much Balthazar wanted to pretend he was some kind of billionaire, his luxurious living room was a prison.
Forget about the leather couches, the antiques, the crystal.
It didn’t matter. This wasn’t a mansion in Beverly Hills or Malibu. It was hell.
And I was being forced to do things that would burn my mortal soul.
Poison sat in the carved obsidian oak chair, still bound, but her celestial aura created a pocket of cool resistance around her bound form. I couldn’t look away from her face—the betrayal in her eyes cut deeper than any blade.
“Please, forgive me.” I reached toward Poison but stopped short, my hand suspended in the space between us as if caught in an invisible barrier. I wasn’t sure if I was begging Poison’s forgiveness or Angelo’s.
Balthazar paced behind me, his expensive shoes clicking against the polished black stone floor. Each step echoed like a countdown. “Drain her now,” he commanded, and there was something in his voice I’d never heard before—urgency, yes, but beneath that, a tremor that could only be fear.
That was strange since fear was something I never thought he would possess. Arrogance, hate, anger, those were all him… but not fear. Was my father coming? Could he actually penetrate the gates of hell itself? The very foundations of Balthazar’s mansion seemed to tremble at the thought. One of Raphael’s finest sat bound before me, and if he was willing to risk her life...
Poison shifted in her chair, the binding audibly straining as she sat taller. Her aura intensified, emanating outward in expanding ripples of silver-white energy. Where this light intersected with the hellfire from the wall sconces it created a strange boundary zone—neither fully celestial nor infernal. The conflicting illumination painted the chamber in discordant patterns, as if the room itself couldn’t decide which power it belonged to.
I glanced at the hallway, wishing I would hear Julienne’s footsteps. If only she would wake. We might be able to combine on our strength to rush Balthazar long enough for Poison to escape. But the dark spell held her firmly in its grasp.
I was on my own.
Balthazar seized my hair, his fingernails scratching my scalp. “Do it now or Angelo suffers.”
My blood turned to ice. Not just alive—captured. Balthazar’s threat wasn’t abstract; he had Angelo in his grasp. The nightmare was worse than I’d imagined.
He pulled harder, nearly pulling the roots out of my head. “Now, Serenity.” He leaned closer and then hissed in my ear. “You don’t want to make me mad.”
I remembered what he had done to Shannon, forcing me to heal her each time he ripped her throat out. I didn’t want to have any more throats ripped out—or be forced to heal them.
Angelo’s face flashed in my mind. At least he was alive—far away from here—and that’s all that mattered. It was too dangerous for him to come here. That’s why I reluctantly raised my shaking palm and aimed it toward Poison. I turned my head away from her as something stirred in my gut, something powerful. Then cold swelled inside as if I had gotten a brain freeze like when I ate ice cream on a sweltering day.
Poison strained against her restraints, her celestial form trembling with barely contained energy. Her luminescence began to pulse rhythmically, like a heartbeat made of starlight. Where her radiance met the hellfire from the sconces, the air itself seemed to bend and distort, creating prismatic fractures in reality—tiny rifts where neither light nor darkness could claim dominance.
Her power was a hundred times stronger than Rocco’s vampire power had been. His had been like dipping my toe in a pool. This? This was like being thrown into an ocean of raw celestial energy. Poison’s power crashed through me, threatening to shred my very essence, each pulse of her angelic force making my nerves scream.
Balthazar moved beside me, his presence a dark shadow at my shoulder. “Very good, Serenity. Very good.” His voice dripped with satisfaction, the words coated in a greed so thick I could almost taste it.
Poison’s light pulsed and flared against her bonds, a desperate constellation fighting extinction. Each surge of brightness felt like a wordless scream, her celestial essence battling against the drain with every fragment of her being. She wasn’t just fighting the drain—she was fighting for her very life.
Then, like a whisper of wind through dying leaves, a voice threaded through my mind. “Don’t let him win, Serenity. You have to hang on. They’re coming.”
My heart lurched. For a moment, I thought Julienne had broken free of her spell, that she’d found a way to reach me. But no—echoes of starlight and steel infused every syllable. Poison. She’d found a way into my thoughts.
I can’t. He’ll hurt Angelo.
My response was a mental whimper, the words tasting of defeat and shame.
“I’m sorry to do this to you, child,” Poison’s mental voice swirled through my mind like a whirlwind, heavy with regret and resolution.
The light surrounding her suddenly inverted, celestial radiance collapsing into a void darker than night. The force hit me like an avalanche of arctic ice, a cosmic fist that slammed into my temples with the weight of a falling star. The world spun as I crashed onto the polished stone floor. Black stars erupted across my vision, each one a pinprick of pain that threatened to tear my consciousness apart.
Through the encroaching darkness, I thought I heard Balthazar curse. But his words were distant, drowned out by the roar of power and pain flooding through my skull.
He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging in deep enough to leave bruises even on my Nephilim skin. With demonic strength, he yanked me to my feet, my vision still swimming with those dark stars. “You stupid, stupid girl.” Each word dripped with venom as his grip tightened. “Finish her.”
Through the haze of pain, Poison’s voice whispered in my mind again. “I’ve sent a message to Raphael. Hold on, child. Just hold on.”
“Let go of me,” I whispered, as another wave of her power threatened to split my skull. The celestial energy writhed inside me like living lightning, searching for escape. “Please... she’s too powerful. I can’t... I can’t contain it.”
His face twisted into something inhuman, all pretense of sophistication burning away to reveal the demon beneath. With a snarl that would have made hell’s hounds cower, he seized me and hurled me across the room as if I weighed nothing.
The leather couch—the one that had seemed so absurdly luxurious just moments ago—became a weapon. I crashed into it with bone-jarring force, my head smashing into the ornate armrest. The impact sent shockwaves through my skull, and this time the darkness that flooded over me had nothing to do with celestial power. Balthazar’s twisted face lingered in my sight as consciousness slipped away, his eyes burning with a fury that promised this was only the beginning of my punishment.
But beneath that rage, I caught something else—a flicker of pure terror. Raphael was coming, and even hell itself might not be enough to hide Balthazar from an archangel’s wrath.
Power burst through me as if a sun had erupted inside my chest, turning my blood to liquid fire. The pain hit next—a searing, splitting agony that ripped across my shoulder blades. I rolled onto the floor, my body convulsing as something pushed against my skin from within. The sensation was alien, terrifying—like new limbs fighting to break free from my flesh.
My mind screamed for unconsciousness, for any escape from this metamorphosis, but the power wouldn’t let me fade. It held me there, forced me to feel every excruciating second as my body reshaped itself. Whether it was my power or Poison’s, I couldn’t tell anymore—the boundaries between us had blurred into a storm of celestial energy.
I arched my back, a scream tearing from my throat as the pressure built to impossible levels.
“Your power has come, Nephilim.” Balthazar’s voice cut through my agony, thick with dark satisfaction. “You have wings. Now I will drain you.”
“No.” The word came out through gritted teeth, more growl than speech. Something inside me shifted, and suddenly I was airborne, my newly emerged wings spreading wide in defiance. They moved with a will of their own, powerful and strange and somehow perfectly familiar all at once.
Divine energy coursed through every fiber of my being as I hung suspended in the air. The words came to me then, not so much spoken as torn from my very soul. “Angelo, come to me!”
White light exploded from within me, so bright it turned the shadows of hell into nothingness. The boom that followed shook the very foundations of Balthazar’s mansion, shattering every crystal fixture in a rainfall of glittering shards.
As the power finally released me, I collapsed to the floor. But I wasn’t helpless anymore—my wings, opalescent and strong, wrapped around me like a living shield, a barrier between me and Balthazar’s wrath. Through the cocoon of feathers, I could hear him cursing, and for the first time since I’d entered hell, his rage held no power over me.
His fury manifested in pulses of corrupted energy that crashed against my wings, each impact like a thunderclap in the suffocating air of hell. The demon lord’s screams of frustration echoed through my sanctuary, words in languages too ancient and terrible for any mortal tongue. But my feathers remained unbroken, each one gleaming with a light that seemed to mock his darkness. I could feel him circling, searching for weakness, hurling both power and profanity at my shelter. The very ground beneath me trembled with his rage.
I pressed my forehead against my knees, gathering what strength remained to reach across the planes to Angelo. Even as Balthazar’s attacks intensified, turning the air around my wings to acid and flame, I focused on that connection. The demon lord might be able to trap me here, but he couldn’t stop me from calling for help. Not anymore.
One last time, I reached out for Angelo.
He’s losing control. Balthazar... his rage... I can’t hold him back much longer.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
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- Page 5
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- Page 9
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- Page 25
- Page 26 (Reading here)
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