up, he'll know we're on to him."
"He knows," I said. "Raphael is the smartest person I've ever met, be it angel, Fallen, or human. And Mary told us he's three steps ahead of us. This one I will take care of myself," I said.
With a snap of my fingers, I moved Vincent and myself to the barn at the back of our property back home. It belonged to Michael when he was human.
My guys popped in behind me. "We were able to follow your power signature easily," Michael said. "Any angel or Fallen in the Earth realm will know you're here."
"Good. Let them hear him scream."
With another wave of my hands, Vincent's clothes burned off of his body. I made his wings appear and extended them. "Vincent, I have to apologize. I would love to do this by hand, but there simply isn't time."
Using a sliver of power, I honed it into a blade and slammed it down on his right wing. It cut through like a lightning bolt down a tree, splitting the bone, muscles, and skin in half.
Vincent howled in pain.
Joel appeared to my left. "What is going on?" he roared. "You're torturing an angel!"
Laughing with glee, I sliced my power through Vincent's left wing. "Your angel," I yelled over Vincent's screams as blood spurted from the open wounds. "Likes his conquests under legal age and kill..." At a loss, I looked back at the howling angel. "What do you like to kill?"
His screams turned to sobs. "No, no. Keep screaming for me, Vincent. I like to hear your pain."
A true statement. His cries of anguish bolstered me and helped me remember exactly who I was. I wasn't just the Archangel that Fell with Lucifer. I wasn't just the wife of Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer.
I wasn't as involved these days as I once had been, thanks to bureaucracy, but in my very core, I was the Queen of Abaddon. I rebelled with Lucifer. Not behind him. Not in support of him. With him.
With a gleeful laugh, I twisted my hand, and my power grabbed Vincent's pitiful dick, ripping it from his body as more blood poured out onto the ground.
"His soul is brown, gray, and red," I explained to Joel as Vincent went white with shock. "It belongs to me." With a final burst of power—a drop in the bucket of the inferno inside me—I ripped Vincent's body apart into millions of pieces. His screams snapped into a jolt of silence.
As his soul tried to flee, I captured it in a bubble of magic.
"See?" I floated the bubble close to Joel so he could witness the despicable colors of Vincent's soul. "He's a bad boy."
Joel stared at me in utter and complete shock. "But you're human," he exclaimed.
9
"Dear Joel." I chuckled at the still-incredulous expression on our new friend's face. "Am I ever truly human?"
He mouthed a few times. "I guess not."
"It just took me a while to see it,” I said.
Lucifer cut off our conversation by grabbing my arm and pulling me close to him. "I need to speak to you alone." His low voice sounded urgent.
I nodded. "Joel, as long as I'm alive, his soul will not be able to leave that bubble, no matter what anyone does to it. Only God could save him now. Would you find a safe place in Heaven to keep him until we sort out Abaddon? I won't have this soul roaming free on Earth." He was one of the darkest I'd seen, rivaled only by Hitler and other men of his ilk.
Vincent's soul had more blood on it than most, because he may not have killed millions at once as Hitler did, but he'd killed or hurt unknown numbers over the thousands of years he'd been alive.
Joel's shocked eyes darkened as he looked at Vincent's soul, churning around in the bubble of power. "I will. It will await you when you are free to take it back."
"Thank you, friend." I patted him on the arm with a bloody hand. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I'd gotten so much of his blood on me." Looking around, I realized we were all covered in the blood of the dead angel. "Whoops."
"Now," Lucifer said.
I gave him a curious look. "Excuse us." I popped us into our bedroom, the one we'd shared as Lucian and Connie. "What is it?"
Lucifer didn't reply. He grabbed my shirt and yanked it apart. Buttons went flying across the room. His mouth crashed into mine, and he pushed