Page 12 of Grave Revelations (Prophecies of Angels and Demons #3)

Chapter 11

Rebecca

Rebecca flung her fists against the wall, beating with all her strength. “Azazel!” she shouted. “Let me out! I can help!” He had trapped her inside—as if she were useless in a fight—to deal with the threat alone.

A loud crack sounded outside, and she increased her pounding. Then she heard another noise she couldn’t make out, and she stopped. She could escape; she just had to open that well of power in her chest and let it out.

Pressing a hand to the compact earth, she cracked open the wall she’d built around the ember resting at the center of her heart. Pain flooded her, making her gasp, and she tamped it down. It hurt too much.

But Azazel needed her help. She closed her eyes. The crack widened, letting some of her energy trickle through. She shoved her fingers into the dirt lining the wall and imagined it loosening and falling to the floor.

It rumbled, the wall shuddering.

She pulled on the warmth inside her and doubled her efforts, shoving again. The wall blasted away under her palms, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the temporary house.

Rebecca stepped out into the chill air, wrapping her blankets tightly around her, and stopped.

“Raphael? ”

The angel looked up, struggling under Azazel’s hold. “Little lamb?”

Rebecca gaped at the angel pinned to the ground. “What are you doing here?”

Azazel released Raphael, climbing off of him.

Raphael shot into the air, spreading his luminescent wings wide and hovered just off the ground. “Begone foul creature, return thyself from whence you came!”

Rebecca stifled a snort. Good to know he was no less comical on the mortal plane than he had been in Alaxia.

He raised his arms overhead, and a streak of lightning scorched the earth in the exact spot where Azazel had been standing a moment before. Azazel had misted out of existence and was nowhere to be seen.

Raphael landed, marching toward her. “Make haste, human, before the creature returns to torment you.” He held out a hand.

Rebecca glanced down at his outstretched hand and back up at the golden-haired angel. “Aren’t you supposed to avoid demon interference as long as they aren’t inhabiting my body?”

“He is no mere demon; he is a Prince of Hell. As such, his whims upon this mortal plane are mine to govern.

Azazel had said something about ruling Primoria, hadn’t he?

She looked down at Raphael’s outstretched hand again and stepped forward. Pain lanced through her middle, and she doubled over, crying out.

Raphael darted forward, catching her.

Thick dark tendrils of smoke appeared and swirled around Raphael’s neck, squeezing.

Rebecca gazed up in horror as they snaked down his body, wrapping themselves around his wings and arms.

“Azazel,” she breathed.

Smoke materialized into the shape of a man as two of the tendrils wrapped around Raphael became arms. They tightened, pressing harder.

Raphael’s skin began to gleam, the brightness intensifying, and he grew, expanding his form .

Azazel grew with him, holding fast as he banded the angel in darkness. He pressed his mouth to the angel’s ear. “She’s mine.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t trying to steal me. I was leaving.” She leveled an accusatory stare at Azazel.

“You intended to leave with him?”

Was that hurt in his voice?

“You can’t keep me prisoner.”

“I am keeping you safe.” Raphael’s brightness intensified, only to be smothered once more by Azazel’s smoke. “You believe he will keep you safer than I could?”

He was acting like a child.

“He’s an angel. You’re a demon. Who do you think I’m safer with?” That hurt expression flashed across his face again. Then, just as quickly as he’d appeared, he disappeared.

“Azazel. Wait…” She stepped over branches moving into the darkness behind their dirt hut. “Azazel.”

Raphael spread his wings, lifting from the ground. “Come, little lamb. I will take you home.”

Home.

The word resounded through her, cracking more of the wall she’d built to cage the pain from all the recent events. Was there anything there for her? Simon and the others were most likely with Elizabeth, trapped by her. But her bed, in her house, sounded like heaven.

She took one step, then another, toward the angel.

He stretched his arms out toward her.

“I can’t.”

Raphael raised two golden brows. “He’ll corrupt your soul, little lamb.”

Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself and hoped it wasn’t true.

When the chill in the air had seeped into her bones, Rebecca climbed through the opening in her temporary house and crawled onto the bed of vines .

Had she made the worst mistake of her life by refusing the angel? Even if she'd wanted to leave, she couldn't have endured the pain.

Staring up at the night sky through the jagged hole in the side of her hut, her mind wandered to the first memory she had of Gabriel: the night Allie died on the gymnasium floor. It was a vague, dark blur of a memory, something so painful her mind had obscured it.

The next time she saw him, he’d come to train Allie for reash duty, introducing her to a world lying just beneath human notice. In those early days, Allie had had many confusing feelings about him. Gabriel was a father figure, a male role model, a hero. She’d fancied herself in love more than once.

But never in the six years she’d spent with him had it pained her to leave him. She’d also never been the one to go.

That couldn’t be right.

Their first sparring lesson, he’d taken her to the mat nine times before he’d stormed away, grumbling something about her inadequacies, and disappeared for days. When he returned, he brought her a practice sword.

“You’ll need to be good at hand-to-hand, not just swordplay, but let’s start here and work backward.”

She’d been miserably unprepared for a life of demon hunting, and he’d been horribly disappointed. The ache of that disappointment lingered even now.

Rebecca fast-forwarded through those early memories, snagging on one and pausing to replay it. He’d grimaced, tossed his practice sword to the floor, and left. Allie had thought she pegged him, injured him. She’d been so proud. But that wasn’t right. She’d never landed a blow.

Rebecca continued playing memories through her mind, focusing on each time they parted.

He always left her .

The realization was a punch to the gut. It couldn’t be true. She spun through six years of interactions, landing on tonight. He knew she wanted to leave with Raphael, and he had gone first.

To spare her the pain.

“No,” she breathed .

The cold bit into her arms through layers of clothes, and she pulled the blankets up, wrapping them tight. He couldn’t be that chivalrous. This was Gabriel. Stubborn, grouchy, stalwart, Gabriel. He didn’t put anything before his mission. But he had saved her from her father’s demon.

Condemning him to Primoria.

If everything he’d said was true, he truly was her soulmate. What about Simon? Simon had loved her for her whole immortal life, had been through one hundred years with her. Her jailer hardly acknowledged her existence, was constantly angry with her, and was a Prince of Hell. In what universe was that her other half?

A shiver stole through her as her eyelids drooped. It had been the longest day of her life. She blinked, straining to keep her eyes on the gaping hole overhead. With Azazel gone and limited access to her magic, she was a sitting duck if any of Elizabeth’s creatures came for her.

Rebecca blinked slowly, straining to open her eyes again.

As she peered at the expansive sky, it spun, settling on a wholly different constellation pattern. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. It had grown colder, somehow, but the chill air no longer bit her skin.

She was impervious to it.

Rebecca tossed her blanket to the bed, striding to the hole in the wall, and stepped over it onto snowy earth. Instead of being on the side of a mountain in some foreign land, she was on her estate, in her family’s plot at the back of the property.

Tombstones dotted her path, glinting silver gargoyles visible high atop the walls in the distance. She stretched her head back, peering up at the crescent moon, knowing what came next.

Orange and red orbs rained from the sky. Balls of flame crashed to the ground, scorching patches of snow where they fell. Far above, glowing white shapes flung their flames at the monsters scouring the earth—night-creatures. All around her, they screamed and cried out, no match for the army descending from the Heavens.

She spared the raging battle only a glance before settling her focus on the creature before her. Made of shadow, the girl slid between headstones, stopping when she reached Rebecca.

She raised her arms, and a wicked smile split her face.

“Welcome, sister,” she said. “I had wondered if you might never discover me.”

Rebecca lifted a hand, suffusing it in blue flame.

The girl across from her cackled. “You can’t harm me.”

“Perhaps not, but he can.” She tossed her flame to the shadow at her back.

He caught it, soaring high above, before he dove, slamming blue-wreathed palms into the girl’s shadow. Her unearthly screams rent the earth, and skeletal arms broke free from the soil, stretching for their maker.

Despite the streaks of orange and red continuously smashing into the surrounding earth, Rebecca kept her eyes trained on the being before her. As fire consumed the girl, she screamed for her shadow to save her.

A dark beast rose, chuckling with malice as its eyes lit with red flame.

“I am unstoppable. I am eternal!”

Rebecca gasped, her eyes flying wide open.

A cool hand caressed her cheek.

“You stayed.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a plea.

Her entire being responded. She wrapped her arms around Azazel, squeezing her eyes shut. It was the same dream she’d had so many times, yet it was new.

“Did you dream of the end?” His soft words caressed her ear.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her breath caught in her throat as she stifled a sob. It couldn’t be the end of their world. It couldn’t be that the battle she’d fought wasn’t the one from her dreams.

Azazel stroked her hair.

She tightened her hold, tears escaping her lashes and sliding down her cheeks. She tried to control her breathing—hold it in—but it wouldn’t be contained. The world was ending, her friends might be dead. Simon might be gone forever.

A damn broke, some invisible hold over her emotions shattering as everything she’d been holding back spilled free. Her lungs burned as she heaved in lungfuls of frigid air through her sobs.

Through it all, he held her.

Were they all dead? Rhea, Sophia, the witches who had taken her in? She might truly be alone in this world.

“You’ve never been alone, Light.”

She pressed back, gazing up at him. “You haven’t been here. I was alone for over a hundred years. I only ever had Simon, and now he’s gone, too.”

“He’s not gone,” Azazel said. “I found him.”