Conquest Of The Fallen: Dark Dominions

Chapter 204 His Cold Heart

[? Rehab – RIHANNA.]

Israfel moved for her. And he pulled her from the sink. He cradled her into his body. She held him tightly and shivered. Ravenna felt so delicate with him. So loved.

In his embrace, she wasn't repulsed or angry. All her sorrow and agony melted into his warmth and smell. In hugging him, she forgot she had come a smidge close to being raped—just ten seconds ago.

"I'm here. I'm sorry." Rafel hugged her back. Her head came up to his chest and he kissed her rich charcoal hair.

They stayed that way with no awareness of the passage of time. Not until the bathroom door crashed open and Corazón came barreling in. She was swiftly followed by the others.

"You didn't return and we were worried—" The words fell off her lips when she spotted the dead man on the floors and the bloody wings in a corner, near a stall. Cora almost tripped as the others filed in. She gawped at the deep gashes on the man's back. Right under his twin scapulae. Fresh wet-red blood was leaking from the cleaved flesh in an expanding pool on the otherwise resplendent floor.

The corpse looked like an odd barber surgeon had taken to it—or a bear.

"Holy shit. Is that an Angel?"

Cora's question fell on deaf ears as those in the space with her were equally petrified at the absurd body find. Ravenna stayed in the crook of Rafel's slung arm over her shoulder as the new girls in the bathroom padded to a circle around the dead Virtue, still staring. Aariel's two-star halo and inner luminescence were faltering.

His celestial shine was fading from his corpse. No longer alive, the luminous energy, like the sun, was rapidly leaving the stiff snow flesh.

His wings had stopped twitching like a gecko's cut tail. Eventually, all the light left the corpse and the angel, Aariel stopped glowing. His body lost all shimmer and shine, and it now looked like any other dead person on the floor. Save the torn wings to the side, no one would know this dead man was few minutes ago a holy [Brass Saint].

Cora leaned in, crouching to push the tufts of blonde hair from his face. It shadowed the sigil dormant on his forehead. Her fingers brushed the marking; the upturned V, that now looked like a mere tattoo.

It had once glowed with vibrant [Caelestes] mana when Aariel was yet alive.

"He was a Herald of the Brass Saint echelon." Rosa dipped down beside Cora. "A Virtue."

Rafel silently commended Rosa's finding. Despite the fact that Aariel's halo had completed vanished she was still able to put together his rank. Had to be her investigative mind at work. Rosamunde had, and would always be a detective. First before witch.

"Yes," gave Ravenna hollowly, "he was." She finally pulled away from Rafel, reluctantly. She missed his heat but he kept his hand on the small of her back. She took the littlest step forward and explained the mystery of the bleeding angel on the toilet floors. "His name was Aariel, and my mum sent him. My Seraphim mother, Yuriel Yellowstone."

She told the girls, their friends how the man had accosted and tried to coax her into returning to the hub of Titans Landing with him. How her refusal had angered him, and how he had tried to force himself inside her. Both Corazón and Rosamunde instantly pulled back from the pale corpse, as if it was a sudden rattlesnake, on hearing this.

"Impure fuck!" Cora spat on its empty face.

Rosa shrugged. "Weirdly, it doesn't surprise me that this. . .person was evil. After you told me Cora about the Highfather, nothing does anymore. I should question my faith, but no." She looked around the splendorous white of the bathroom to her friends, "I still believe," she said, her blue-grey eyes on Israfel.

"Rafel stopped him." Ravenna finished her telling.

"Gods! I'm so sorry. One of us should've come with you." Aya Naamah placed a comforting hand on Ravenna's shoulder and rubbed. Her voice slipped like the perfect blend of citrus juice. Even when she wasn't trying, her succubus allure still wove out. "Can your parents do nothing normal?" She spoke her thoughts aloud with her purple eyes on the dead angel.

She quickly caught herself, shifting her gaze back to Ravenna.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"It's okay. I'm used to it." Ravenna moved forward and kicked Aariel's body in his side. The skin didn't move back from the exposed ribs. She spat too on him. "I'm happy the bastard's dead. He pulled up on me in the toilet, fuckin' flapping right outside the door," she kicked him again, "that'll teach you, perv!

My mum will be missing a messenger tonight. But I don't care." She turned behind to her dark savior; he was solemly standing by the cracked mirror. She smiled wonderfully at him. "Thank you."

Rafel nodded as Cora said what they were all thinking: "What are we going to do with the body and darned wings? I would burn it but I lost all my darkfyre abilities when I was resurrected. I'm restricted to only certain Casting now that I'm a Ghost girl. Can someone burn this fucker?"

"I got you, girl." Aya stepped up. "INCINDIA!"

She put two fingers up and curled the others under it, casting her sorcery over the Virtue. Aariel's pale body smoked and went up in a flash of purple flames. The fire licked up his angelic snow-white skin—and for a second there Ravenna swore she saw a smiling face in the fire.

They watched the angel and his wings burn into nothing. But rather than incinerate into ash at Aya's spelled fire, Aariel's body turned into gold dust. Apparently, angels weren't created from mud like man.

It was funny.

Cora said over the strange pyre, "I guess the funereal term, from dust to dust and ashes to ashes, can only be said for mortals then, eh?"

Rosa chuckled. "Wait," Rafel walked up and put his hand in the fire. The flames licked up his forearm, catching his tunic sleeve but washing cool as water over his skin. He jammed his fingers into Aariel's chest and pulled out a sticky, wet heart from the caved sternum.

He let the rest of the body burn, as he turned and fished out his handkerchief from his front pocket. He put the angel's heart in it and placed it carefully inside his coat's damask inners.

"Who knows when we'd need an Angel's pure heart?" He offered with a slow smile.

The girls, used to his dark nature, laughed at his morbid joke. "This, I can do," Cora waved her hand in a passing gesture over the splintered mirror. The webby shards instantly fastened together and in a second of time, the glass was good as new. Clean as a lake's still plate.

Aya blew over the pile of gold dust—remnants of Aariel—and the dust dispersed up in the air like fireflies, following the path of air through little exits in the bathroom.

All signs of a murdered angel was gone! The ladies room of the theater was spanking as could be.

"Shall we leave this place now?" Cora sidled close to Rafel. So did the others. They took his sides, with him being the middle man. A most handsome chaperone. Ravenna added, "please, that wanker nearly ruined this night of the wonderful play we just watched."

Rafel led them out, the doors swinging behind them, no trace of death on the resplendent floors, enamel walls, nor bright ceiling. He praised Aya's debut acting in the fine corridors. "—with the soaring performance of our lovely dove here, a little murder has no chance. I will never forget you up on that stage. You were more than a miracle, my beautiful Naamah. Absolutely phenomenal."

Aya blushed the color of Israfel's hair. A deep, rushing red. Her [Dominus] rarely dished out compliments, but when he did—

He was a poet.

'More than a Miracle.' She turned over his words many times in her head. She did not know which turned her on more; him calling his slave or a miracle. She decided not to choose.

At the entrance of the theater dome, Corazón collected their snacks from the freckled lass by the selling booth—the shy girl they'd dropped it off with when they had gone to find Ravenna. She tipped again, and hurried back to her friends.

As they all descended the steps on the long, red carpet, the last remaining patrons of the night, conversing under the arches nodded to Israfel's beautiful company; many fine students tipped their dramatic hats.

Cora tucked her vat of popcorn with Aya's, loudly pronouncing, "Cheers to Jocasta!"

"To Jocasta. Yip! Yip!" The others recited in unison.

They kept toasting, chanting, "Go Aya! Go Aya! Go Aya," into the waiting carriage. Aya covered her hands over her face and tried to run off, but Rafel dragged her back, tickling her in his lap in the lavish interior of the wide buggy. It was a large make, pulled in front by six horses. The shiny cart tumbled onward from the theater's glimmery front down the lamplit campus streets.

"There goes my star! You're a star, Naamah. A fuckin' star!" He held the giggling girl tight. Both of them ignored the hard rise they could both feel between their joining; with a smashing chick like Aya sitting on him, a hard-on was a given. Rafel didn't even bother.

"TO OUR STAR!" Ravenna sent up a flute of her filled wineglass from the mini bar in the long carriage.

Everyone jammed to her toast. "TO OUR STAR!"

Rosa, Cora, and Ravenna sat opposite Rafel in the luxury ride. He kept Aya in his lap, and Bruna was beside them on his side. All of them relaxed in the plush innards. Ravenna loosened her midnight hair. It tumbled down. The night's wind stirred through the curtains and in the enchanting waves.

Corazón popped the buttons on her boyish suede jacket, granting consciously to Rafel a vision of soft, milky skin—obviously.

Rosamunde took off her witchy boots and crossed her legs, drawing attention to her goth toenails, painted lush violet. Brunhilda took Rafel's right hand and put it in the smooth heat of her golden silk gown, and clamped her hot thighs firmly on it. Aya generously rubbed her supple behind on his rager, massaging his 'stiff one' with her buttocks.

Rafel smiled in the carriage's wan interior.

"And I thought my cold, demon heart might scare you lovelies away."

Cora ran a delicate hand through her silver fade and her tongue over full lips of pink. "Not a chance," she grinned seductively.

Ravenna leaned forward on her seat and clutched to Rafel's free hand. "Yep. We love your cold, demon heart." Find more chapters on empire

And they all went laughing, their union of voices tumbling out the rolling buggy and into the magical, Corynthian night.