Page 11 of Demon's Mate
They would never find fated love. Lucifer had led them to eternal loneliness.
Their plan had been flawed. In hindsight, the council retaliating and keeping their mates captive was an obvious move, even if it challenged the council’s claim that everything they did was meant to look after the balance between realms and preserve the natural cycle of life. The Fallen would never find their mates, and they would never return home.
Ash gave up. What was the point of hope? He resolved to stick with his chosen brothers and make the most of their grim situation. But Dante and Lucifer kept searching, faith unwavering, dragging Ash and Onyx around the globe. That had been bad enough, but then things got so much worse.
Ash sighed.
Even now, Dante hadn’t given up. He was convinced he’d find his mate in Shearwater Landing, of all damn places. Ash wanted to shake sense into him. They were never going to find their mates. They didn’t exist in the Human Realm and never would. And if by some miracle they did, after everything, Ash and the rest of them wouldn’t deserve them anyway.
There was a time when Ash deserved love, but that was before he and all the Fallen had been damned. They truly were demons, no longer eternal guardians of magic and nature’s balance. Things had been irreversibly damaged when they’d let magic infect the Human Realm.
Ash never had children with a human, but other fallen Eternals had. Lucifer was the first to father a half-human child, even though he had convinced them all they could find their mates on Earth. He was the first to give up in an irrevocable way, lying and saying he was still searching.
That first child had damned them all. They were born the first witch, the first human to possess magic.
Magic wasn’t meant to exist outside the Eternal Realm or to taint Earth’s natural order. Mortality and magic were supposed to be separate, and when the council discovered the existence of witches—their population growing as more Eternals had children with humans, and those half-humans sired a second generation—the council damned them all.
The magic in a witch’s blood made it impossible for their souls to reincarnate after death. Magic was something only Eternals, who lived forever, were supposed to possess. The balance of magic and mortality had been broken, leaving witches no longer able to participate in the natural cycle of life, so the council banned all humans with magic from the Eternal Realm.
And so the Realm of the Damned was born, a Hell for all magical humans to spend their afterlife in, separated from their nonmagical loved ones forever.
The Realm of the Damned grew crowded with souls who couldn’t cycle back to Earth, and magic twisted in the Human Realm as witches looked for immortality and a way to escape damnation.
It was all their fault. Ash’s fault for convincing others to follow Lucifer. Lucifer’s fault for having that first child. Never finding their mates was their punishment for ruining the balance of magic in the universe.
“He isn’t here,” Ash said to Dante, trying to be kind but needing to be firm. “We can’t stay waiting around forever. Lucifer will know we’re here—I’m sure he’s heard of your birdsand will know what it means—I won’t let him drag us back to Hell. If we leave now, you can return to Shearwater Landing once we’ve dealt with Luc.”
“No.” Dante’s fingers flexed on the railing. “I can feel it. We’re close. I’m not leaving until I find him.”
Ash detected a deep sorrow in Dante’s stubborn words, which was much harder to argue with. He rubbed absently at his chest, just over his heart. “Then what do we do about Lucifer? If you won’t leave, we have to do something.”
Dante turned, facing Ash and resting an elbow on the railing, a hint of surprise in his raised brows like he’d expected Ash to continue hounding him for not leaving the city. But Ash wouldn’t be the one who broke Dante, no matter how many problems his hope caused.
Dante’s gaze turned calculated. “Lucifer might be coming here to look for us, but he won’t find anything. This house is close to impenetrable, and I won’t investigate any new triggers to the magic on my old place. It will be a dead end. I only showed up to meet you because my birds told me you were in the city. If you lend a hand in bolstering the illusions and protections here, Luc won’t be able to get in on his own. He’s not stronger than the two of us combined.”
“We don’t know he’s alone,” Ash reminded Dante.
Dante’s tail flicked. “Then we better get Onyx.”
“You know where he is?” Ash suspected tracking down Lucifer’s younger brother would be much harder than finding Dante.
“Yes,” Dante grumbled, almost a growl. “He’s here in Shearwater Landing.”
“Here? Why?” Wasn’t this city too boring for Onyx?
“I have no idea. It’s not like we see much of each other.”
“Right.” Onyx had always been hard to get a handle on. “We’ll go find him and make a plan. Lucifer might notrealize I sensed his entrance into the Human Realm, so hopefully, we can get ahead of him.”
Dante smiled, letting his fangs descend. His eyes blazed. “I wouldn’t mind capturing him for a change.”
They had to neutralize Lucifer somehow, and even though Eternals and demons could be destroyed, Ash didn’t think they’d kill him. “Imprisoning him would be satisfying,” he admitted.
Ash wanted to steal Lucifer’s power as Lucifer had done to him, Dante, and Onyx. He might never have a mate, but he could find satisfaction in turning the tables on his enemy.
This could be good. As long as they weren’t being foolish by staying here. Lucifer always seemed to have some trick up his sleeve.
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