Through Flame and Blade

Ch. 44 Find the Angel

*Logan

Logan was lost under the drowning force of his daemonium's wrath. He knew Chiara was there, and she needed him, but he couldn't stop the Dark Flame hunting her. Rage blinded him from everything but the need to catch her. To hurt her.

The angel he desired darted from the room, narrowly escaping his grasp. He followed, fast and deadly. She was quick, though and smart. She tricked him again and again, hiding, flying, running on swift, silent heel.

Lust was a maze that was his home, however. She seemed to be following a trail that he didn't detect, unerring, but not towards the main exit. So where was she going, this bright, beautiful toy he wanted to break?

He passed through a dozen halls. A dozen more. All sex and wrath, fire and stone. This was who he was—the Dark Flame and the Wing Cutter.

The flash of a sword was all the warning he had of her attack, then a lancing cut across his thigh crippled him. Shimmering grey wings and her dark hair that blended with the shadows was all he saw as she darted out of reach.

He gritted his teeth, waiting for his leg to heal. Her steps whispered from behind the columns, but the dancing flames created movement through the whole room, dragging his eyes this way and that, never falling on her though. He held his breath listening for the shush of her wings or scuff of her feet. This room was empty except for the agonizing souls in the pit.

She was in here, somewhere.

Then, beside him—

"Come back to me, my love," whispered a sweet voice. It trickled through the thunderous rage in his head, all the way down to Logan.

He wrenched himself free. He clawed his way upward. The daemonium's control cracked, but didn't break.

The shift was only partial. "Chiara, run!"

Her wings beat, lifting her out of reach and in a blink, she was through one of the arched ways.

Logan held onto his daemonium. The beast inside him roared. He roared back at it. He, Logan, who had endured endless days of torture and pain in the dungeon was not going to be defeated by his own demon so easily.

He clung to his partial shift—it would have to be enough. Leg bleeding and dragging behind, he set out on a limping scuttle.

Chiara needed him, but she was going the wrong way, and if the lurkers in the tunnels hadn't lied to him, she would fall in their trap just as much as if he had led her there. He opened his mouth to yell, to tell her, when flames erupted in his gut.

The Dark Flame, his own daemonium, was setting him on fire, cooking him from the inside. He dropped to the ground, a mindless, screaming beast, body filled with agony.

His daemonium whispered to him. It dug claws into his brain, it stirred the embers in his chest.

Remember what the lurkers said. What they promised.

Find the angel.

To put out the flames, all he had to do was give in and do what he was made for.

Logan's orders were clear and simple. His reward if he obeyed would be generous—not only a pardon for his crimes against Zeigfel, but also for helping murder Lucius. He would have his own legions, his place at the table among the original fallen and the demon lords who ruled in absence of the Sleeping King of Hell. Women. Whiskey. Battles. Glory.

All of this would be his in exchange for delivering one single angel to the guards who would wait for them in Lust. He had to give her to them, and at the moment of delivery, he had to do one simple task. A task he had performed countless times on other angels in the battlefield.