Page 116 of Wicked Believer

My power zeroes in, searching for the nearest available victim.

The innocent nun who has now cried herself hoarse at my brother’s feet.

Shewasn’t part of the plan, unfortunately.

With Michael’s final word, it crashes down like a tsunami toward her, the gnarled tendrils of fire and light and shadow converging at the last second to plunge down her throat. An abundance of radiant light bursts from her, and an inhuman sound tears from me, just as the nun releases an echoing, earsplitting scream. The pain of a thousand knives slashes through me, severing whatever twisted tatters are left of my wretched, blackened soul.

The agony is so intense it causes me to black out momentarily, my earthly power stripped from me. When I come to only seconds later, the nun’s spine is still arched forward with the force of what hit her, her body levitating off the ground as a beam of my uncontrolled light billows toward Heaven.

She was the sacrificial lamb in all this.

Nothing more than the vessel meant to contain me.

A corresponding crack of lightning splits open the sky as the earth beneath us begins to shake. A thundering rumble echoes through the heavens, louder than trumpets, the sign of the first seal dissolving.

The sound of the White Rider unleashed.

Pestilence will now lay siege upon humanity.

And I’m powerless to fight against it.

Fucking inconvenient, that.

Abruptly, the nun falls limp onto the garden’s bricks as I slump forward, blood pouring from her singed eye sockets, from where my holy light scorched her from the inside out. My siblings release me, casting my feeble and limp body onto the pavement.

I am as raw as the day our Father stripped my wings from me.

“Would you look at that.” Michael smiles like the fox who just found the door to the henhouse wide open. “How does it feel to be truly defenseless, Lucy?”

My siblings laugh.

I grip my bleeding middle, barely capable of staggering to my feet. My breath and my pulse echo like a loud rush against the ringing in my ears as I rasp, “There are no lengths to which I wouldn’t go to protect what ismine.” Slowly, I glance about the destroyed garden, my eyes landing upon each and every one of my siblings as I bare my teeth. “Remember that when you soon beg for my mercy.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Charlotte

My alarm goes off at 4 a.m. the following morning, and I groan, immediately hitting the snooze button, prepared to go back to sleep, only for a newly installed digital clock on my bedside table to begin screeching. Someone flicks on the overhead light, the sudden brightness searing my retinas.

What fresh hell is this?

I growl, lifting my head just enough to find Mia standing at the foot of our bed, a tablet in hand.

What. The. Fuck.

I glance to my left only to find Lucifer’s side of the bed looking pristine, which means he either didn’t come to bed or is already up for the morning and didn’t sleep. Again.

And me stepping off the edge of the building, asking for God to catch me, the cold arms that caught me somewhere halfway down, must have been—

All just a dream.

I flop back onto my sheets with a groan, using my bare arm to cover my eyes.

“Chop, chop.” Mia claps her hands in tandem. “We’ve got a tight schedule this morning.”

“We?”

When Lucifer told me he was going to be taking charge of my schedule yesterday, there was no mention of Mia and her freaking little tablet, not that there was much that could have made the moment worse, honestly. I remove my arm from my eyes, only to find she’s now standing over me.