The Devil's Angel (Devil Series Book 2) (32 page)

Lucien stepped out of the car. Squeaky Voice recognized Lucien and turned to run. Charlie tossed the stake in his hand. It stabbed the vampire in the back, and he exploded into a thousand particles of dust.

“Nice shot,” Alana said.

Lucien slid open a thick metal door. A sharp chemical smell accosted his senses. “I think we found the lab.”

“Should we rush in like this?” Charlie asked. “What if there are more of them?”

Lucien walked in. “There won’t be. They weren’t expecting us.”

Inside was a fully functioning, modern lab. Bright florescent lights shone on several white countertops lined in rows. At the end of each aisle were bulky machines, each with a long conveyor belt. Bodian Dynamic boxes were stacked in the corner of the room. Lucien guessed they were full of glass vials.

Charlie phoned in their location to Marshall, and then walked around in obvious awe of the facility. “I had no idea vampires could be so smart.”

“Excuse me?” Alana snapped.

Charlie turned around. “I mean, of course they’re smart, but who knew they liked science?”

“Why wouldn’t we like science?” Alana asked, folding her arms.

Lucien didn’t stick around to hear Charlie dig his way out. He moved around the metal building, looking for the room he last saw Eve in. He didn’t have to walk far before he picked up her scent.

“Over here!” he yelled to the others.

Lucien jogged down a short hall and into the same small room that had held Eve less than an hour ago. She was no longer there, but her blood covered the wooden table and floor.

“This is where she was tied up,” he told Charlie and Alana when they approached from behind. His stomach turned over forcing him to look away from the grisly scene.

Alana moved past him into the room.

“There’s so much blood!” Charlie cried. He put his hand against the doorframe to steady himself. “Is there any way she could’ve survived?”

Alana found the video camera and removed a tape. “We’ll know soon enough.”

“She’s alive. We don’t need to watch that,” Lucien said, his voice quiet.

He took the tape from Alana’s hands and looked down at his watch. He only had three more hours before he had to meet Aiden at the cliffs. It was highly unlikely he would get to her before then while Aiden was on the move.

Charlie seemed to be thinking the same thing. “We need a plan, Lucien."

“Then there’s only one thing to do—I have to go.”

“He’ll kill you,” Charlie said.

“Whose life means more, mine or Eve’s?”

Charlie didn’t hesitate. “Obviously Eve’s, but you dying doesn’t mean we’ll get Eve back, and you know it.”

Charlie was right. They needed to find a way to ensure Eve’s safety.

Charlie looked down at the tape in Lucien’s hands and cocked his head to the side.

“What?” Lucien asked.

“The tape. I bet Eve left us something we could use.”

“Why would she do that? She couldn’t have known we would find this tape.”

Charlie smiled. “Remember how you felt a presence, an entity, when Eve
visited
you in her dreams, but you didn’t recognize it as Eve?”

Lucien waited for Charlie to continue.

“Fortunately for us, Eve’s a lot smarter than you. I have no doubt she knew you were here. And if I’m right, she also knew we’d come here and find this tape. We need to watch it while there’s still time.”

Lucien stared down at the small video. He wanted to smash it, destroy it, remove its existence from the earth. It held his darkest secret. But ultimately, Eve was more important.

Lucien left the small room and walked toward the lab. “Is there a TV here?”

“Over here,” Alana said.

Lucien turned to face them. “Before you watch this, there’s something you should know.”

He paused as if waiting for a large boulder to fall out of the sky and crush him, sparing him from revealing his secret. But no boulder came. They looked at him expectantly.

“Aiden is my brother,” he blurted.

Alana’s expression didn’t change—hers never did.

Charlie gasped. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just watch the tape,” Alana said, before Lucien could answer.

“There’s something else,” Lucien interrupted. “Together, my brother and I did some horrible, unspeakable things. But I am not that same person.”

“So you raped and pillaged a village and then burnt it to the ground. Who hasn’t?” Alana took the disc from his hand and popped it beneath the TV’s screen.

“I’ll wait outside,” Lucien said.

Charlie watched him leave, looking both angry and confused.

Just as Lucien ducked out, Eve’s recorded screams echoed from the silo. He closed the heavy metal doors and his hearing to the voices.

Alone in the dark, he paced the dirt road, hands opening and closing. To avoid thinking of Eve and the torture she’d endured, he forced himself to figure out how he was able to fly. He’d never heard of vampires flying before. But it wasn’t really flying. It was more his body moving so quickly that gravity had no pull on him. The movement reminded him of hummingbirds who seemed to materialize like bursts of smoke, pausing for a few seconds before disappearing again.

Lucien wasn’t sure how his body had accomplished the strange transformation, or more importantly, how it was even possible. To prove his point, he leapt into the air. He obtained more air than a human ever could, but still returned to earth. He jumped several more times, but each attempt landed him back on the ground. He tried sprinting as fast as he could, hoping speed would somehow airlift him, but that didn’t work either.

Because Lucien was concentrating on his attempts at flying, he forgot about what he wasn’t trying to hear. Eve’s terrified cry pierced the night, causing him to stumble. He fell to the ground in anguish, knees in the dirt. His chest tightened, and he struggled to breathe. Eve had been captured because the sins of his past had finally caught up with him. She was paying the price when it was he who should be suffering.

In a crouching position, he leapt into the air. For just a brief moment, his body tingled and began to change. It was if his mind had exploded a bright energy to all the parts of his body, igniting it with power.

“What are you doing?” Alana asked below him.

He fell. “Jumping.”

“Whatever gets you off.” She turned to go back inside. “We’re done watching.”

She hadn’t noticed his brief pause in the air. Lucien brushed himself off and followed her through the doors. Charlie faced away from him, toward the black screen of the turned off television.

Alana spoke as if she’d neither seen nor heard anything devastating on the tape, but Lucien noticed she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “Eve definitely knew you were in the room with her.”

“How do you know?” Lucien asked.

“When you must have left, she’d said, ‘Don’t go’. Aiden thought she was talking to him.” Alana shuddered as if remembering what Aiden had done to Eve.

“Did she say anything that would help us?”

“She didn’t, but she got Aiden to. Eve did very well, considering the circumstances.” Alana picked up an empty vial and twisted it between her fingers.

Lucien glanced at Charlie. His face was pale.

Alana continued, “Aiden told Eve they were taking her to where the Devil’s Soldier first gave him new life. I can only assume he’s talking about the Cliffs of Moher. Then he plans on handing her over to the Devil’s Soldier. He says something big is planned for her. They also intend on killing you and making her watch.”

Lucien remembered now. Aiden had said it only once before when speaking about Boaz as if he was a God. “It’s Boaz. Boaz is the Devil’s Soldier. He’s going to turn Eve back into Alarica.”

Charlie finally looked at him.

“Why would he do that when the first time was such a disaster?” His tone was bitter and full of anger.

Lucien shook his head, unsure. “Did Aiden say anything else?”

She withdrew the disc from the TV. “There’s going to be a helicopter on the North side and at least twenty vampires guarding the main entrance to the cliffs.”

“Charlie, how many men can you round up?” Lucien asked.

“Within the next couple of hours and this late at night? Probably not more than ten. The Ireland Deific branch is small, and we don’t have enough time to send for men from London.”

Lucien walked toward the front door. “Get whoever you can, have them distract the guards at the entrance. You and Alana watch the helicopter. If I fail, then there’s a chance you can still save her.”

Charlie dropped Lucien off a couple of miles away from the Cliffs of Moher without saying a word. Lucien was grateful for the silence as he was trying to imagine every possible outcome and ways to prevent the one he couldn’t handle—Eve’s death.

Making sure he was downwind, Lucien raced up the steep hill toward the cliffs. It was a clear night, and the stars gave off just us much light as the half-moon hanging above him. The roaring of waves crashing against the cliffs below were like a growing crescendo in a deadly symphony. The air smelled of the sea with a hint of something darker. Lucien had smelled it many times before: evil. Evil always had a distinct smell. To him, it smelled like burning flesh.

He wished Aiden hadn’t chosen the cliffs to meet, though he knew why he had. There were no trees or thick vegetation to plan a surprise attack and one could easily see their surroundings from the top. But it wasn’t just the lack of hiding spots that had brought Aiden here. It was the romance of the cliffs that allured him.

Lucien had come here many times before with Aiden, always in tow with a human victim. Aiden would role play the night he was turned by Boaz, forcing his captured human to stand in certain positions and say specific things. All the while Aiden would hum a tune. Lucien never learned what song he was singing.

The first few reenactments, Lucien had watched with mild curiosity, hoping to find a reason for Aiden’s strange behavior, but he could never come up with one. Eventually, he refused to come anymore, despite Aiden’s pleadings.

Crouched low, Lucien made it to the top of a ridge, where he could see Aiden over a hundred yards away. Aiden stood on the next rise over, close to the edge of a cliff. He was speaking low to the same woman who’d been in the room earlier with Eve. The woman wore a long black gown that whipped around her body like an angry shadow. Her brown hair mimicked the gown’s motion.

Lucien searched for Eve until he spotted her crumpled body next to Aiden’s feet. She was wearing something red that shimmered in the moonlight. Her head was face down into the folds of the crimson material.

Unsure how many vampires Boaz, who had not yet arrived, would bring with him, Lucien decided to make his move now. He stood tall and walked down the paved path normally used for tourists. The trail led him down a small hill before it took him back up to the cliff where Eve lay. Both Aiden and the woman’s head turned in his direction. Eve remained motionless.

Aiden spoke first. “Sabel, I don’t believe you’ve ever met my brother, Lucien.”

The woman in black, Sabel, eyed him up and down. “There is a similarity, but I must say, he got the looks in the family.”

Aiden’s smile disappeared.

“I’m here, Aiden,” Lucien said. “Let Eve go.”

Eve’s head rose. She was pale, and her eyes were drained of all emotion.

“Stand up, Eve,” Sabel ordered. “Your black knight has arrived.”

Eve struggled to her feet. She stumbled into Aiden who shoved her hard.

“Don’t touch me! You reek of death,” Aiden said.

Lucien lunged for Aiden, but Sabel stretched out her hand, hitting him with an invisible blast of energy that sent him flying back several feet.

“Lucien!” Eve cried.

Lucien quickly stood, despite the pain. The last thing he wanted was for Eve to worry about him. He took a few steps carefully back toward Aiden.

Eve stood fully upright. She’d been dressed in a long red gown that exposed most of her breasts, and her hair was done up elegantly into a French twist. Though she was beautiful, Lucien did not like it. The outfit stole something from her.

Sabel glanced up at the moon. “He will be here soon. I think it’s time your unruly brother is contained.”

She twisted her finger in a circular motion. Aiden’s lips curled up as if he knew what was about to happen.

Something nudged Lucien’s feet. He looked down but saw nothing. He moved his foot away, but again a force pushed at his leg, harder this time. The pressure continued to wind up his body like a snake, trapping his legs. He fought it with his hands, desperately trying to push the invisible energy away, but soon it had engulfed even his arms. He stood motionless, arms by his side, unable to move any part of him except for his head. He grunted in frustration.

Eve stepped forward to help him, but Sabel jerked her back.

“If you try to help him,
daughter
, we will only kill him that much faster,” she told Eve.

Lucien’s eyes flashed to Eve’s in sudden realization. Sabel was her mother! Not only did Eve have to endure torture from Aiden, but she also had to endure the presence of the woman who had inflicted all the pain of her youth. Lucien fought harder, desperate to break free.

Eve stared at him helplessly.

“Why are you doing this, Aiden?” Lucien growled, trying to buy some time. He glanced around for anything that might free him.

Aiden’s face turned to one of confusion. “Why wouldn’t I do this? The real question is—why aren’t you doing it with me? When did you start thinking you were
good
? You are exactly like me, only stupid.”

“I am nothing like you!”

Aiden crossed over to him. “Remember those nights in London? You killed hundreds of plagued humans with your own hands. Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it!”

“I was sparing them …” Lucien’s voice became part of the wind. He knew it was a weak explanation, and Aiden did, too. Lucien couldn’t look at Eve, afraid of what he might see in her eyes.

Aiden snorted. “Say what you want in front of your girlfriend, but I know the truth. Together we killed millions, and we could do it again if you would only drop this ridiculous charade!”