Was this his punishment? No good deed goes unpunished. It was a motto he’d lived by. Until he’d met Morrigan. Try to do something good, and it came back to bite you in the ass every time.
Morrigan was calling his name.
Impossible.
She was dead. Lucifer had killed her. Was she in Hell with him? He could work with that. He could damn work with anything so long as they were together. Forcing his eyes open, he surveyed the area around him. Where was she? He had to protect her.
They were still in the alley behind the abandoned gallery. Or maybe it was nothing more than an illusion. Lucifer liked to play those kinds of head games.
Maybe Morrigan wasn’t really Morrigan. He shook his head to try to clear his thinking. She had one hand to her mouth, her green eyes wide with shock, her auburn hair glinting in the light. There was blood on her shirt and dried onto her skin, but she appeared unharmed.
Not possible. It had to be a trick—some demon giving the illusion of being her.
Then Lucifer reached for her, and he lost it.
With a mighty roar, he threw his hands out in front of him. His blades had always been an extension of him, but this was different. They were more than an extension. They were him. The blades slammed into Lucifer’s shoulders, plucked him right off his feet, and drove him back until the tips of the weapons slammed into the wall.
“What the fuck?” Lucifer demanded.
Gabriel withdrew his blade of light and unleashed his wings, rising above them.
“No,” Morrigan screamed. “Leave him alone.” One of the knives she held flew toward the archangel, but he easily deflected it.
His heart expanded in his chest. It had to be Morrigan. No one else had ever tried to protect him. No one else had ever cared.
Gabriel didn’t go for him. No, that was too easy. He did the same thing the devil had done earlier. He went for Morrigan.
He was being given a second chance to save her. This time he wouldn’t fail. As he threw himself forward, something painful ripped down both sides of his back. Ignoring the excruciating agony, Maccus willed a sword to manifest just as he knocked her aside.
Sparks flew as Gabriel’s blade skated along his. The angel jerked back. “What trick is this?”
“Don’t look at me.” Lucifer was busy yanking at the blades, but they wouldn’t budge.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
“You have wings.” The awe in Morrigan’s voice had him taking a step back and risking a glance over his shoulder. Big, beautiful wings sprang from either side of his spine.
His angel wings had once been a brilliant white. These were black as pitch but shimmered with some kind of inner light. They were a replica of the ones he’d had tattooed on his back.
Like his blades, they were real.
He flexed them, and an incandescent joy filled him. A part of him had been restored, a part he’d never believed he’d have again. He held out his arm to Morrigan, and she came to his side.
“Is it really you?” he demanded.
“It is.” She pressed against him but kept her hands free, holding a gun in one and a bloody knife in the other. “I have no idea what happened. One minute I was dead, and then I wasn’t.”
It had been the same with him. What the hell was going on?
“You’re even more dangerous than you were before. You need to be put down,” the archangel insisted.
Not going to happen. If he was gone, Morrigan’s life would be forfeit. For whatever reason, he was alive and would use his last breath to protect her.
Gabriel attacked, sword slamming toward them. Maccus thrust Morrigan aside and easily countered. Frustrated, his former commander came at him again.
The sword in Maccus’s hand suddenly caught fire. Unlike the brilliant light of Gabriel’s blade, this fire was dark, glinting with blue and purple.