The Lord of Darkness

  The Lord of Darkness, The Horizon Chronicles Book 4:

  Copyright © 2018 by Kim Richardson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the written permission of the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover design by Damonza

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition, 2018

  www.kimrichardsonbooks.com

  BOOKS BY KIM RICHARDSON

  SOUL GUARDIANS SERIES

  Marked

  Elemental

  Horizon

  Netherworld

  Seirs

  Mortal

  Reapers

  Seals

  THE HORIZON CHRONICLES

  The Soul Thief

  The Helm of Darkness

  The City of Flame and Shadow

  The Lord of Darkness

  DIVIDED REALMS

  Steel Maiden

  Witch Queen

  Blood Magic

  MYSTICS SERIES

  The Seventh Sense

  The Alpha Nation

  The Nexus

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  ALEXA SAWED THE TOP DOOR hinge of her prison cell with a piece of jagged rock she’d kicked loose from the wall weeks ago. The shard slipped in her wet fingers and she hissed at the stinging pain as the sharp edges cut into her skin. She wiped her sticky fingers on her pants and went back to work.

  She’d managed to cut three millimeters through the steel hinge after working nearly every minute of every hour, taking only short breaks to let her hands heal before going back to work. Her skin would stich itself back together, leaving nasty white scars, which had now split open again after only an hour’s work. At this rate, she figured she would cut through the hinges in ten years.

  She didn’t have ten years. Milo didn’t have ten years.

  Alexa swore. Her ears rang, and she could taste terror in her mouth, like bitter metal.

  “Keep going, Alexa,” she urged, willing herself to calm down. “Don’t ever stop. We keep going. That’s what we do. We can’t stop.”

  Soft white light emanated from a hovering globe, illuminating the black stone in warm golden tones. It had shone brighter when Alexa first arrived in her cell, inside the angel prison Tartarus, but now it seemed her only source of light was growing fainter each day, mirroring her hopes of ever getting out. The globe flickered, its light dimming. Soon it would burn out, leaving her in impenetrable darkness.

  Alexa shook the thought away. Although time had an altogether different meaning in Horizon, she continued to mark the floor with a thin line each time she felt a day had passed. If her calculations were accurate, she’d been in her cell for about a month, but it felt like years. She had had no visitors. Not a single soul came to see her. Not even the prison’s own guards, the giant eagles, ever bothered to check up on her.

  During the first week of her confinement, Alexa perked up whenever she heard a scratch or the sound of nails scraping on a hard surface, hoping to see a white German Shepard bursting through the door.

  But Lance never came. No one came. She was utterly alone.

  The moans and wails of the other prisoners were her only companions, and most of the time she’d hum and sing just to keep their despairing cries from interfering with her work. She knew if she stopped, if she didn’t keep herself busy, she would fall into despair, succumbing to their cries just like the thousands of angels locked up with her.

  “Damn it.”

  Pain shot up her arm. The piece of broken rock, covered in white liquid, fell to the ground next to Alexa’s feet. She examined her right palm. White essence poured from a large cut in the soft flesh and dripped down her wrist onto the floor. The citrus smell rose up to her nose, so unlike the metallic scent of blood from her mortal life.

  “What’s the point of being supernatural if our hands are completely useless?”

  Alexa cursed again as she picked up the rock with her left hand and cut two long strips of cloth from her jacket. She then wrapped them tightly around both wrists.

  “I don’t have time to wait for these stupid hands to heal,” she whispered and began to cut through the hinge again. “Milo doesn’t have time.”

  Milo was all she could think about since her imprisonment—especially his kiss.

  It had been such a passionate, desperate kiss and had taken her by surprise, filling her with warmth and an overwhelming sense of joy.

  Joy. It was strange to feel such a sensation when locked away in a dank cell. But whenever she thought of his lips, his closeness, the look of longing in his eyes, butterflies fluttered inside her.

  Milo cared for her. That much was obvious. She had never realized just how much she cared for him until she saw him disappear through the black mist.

  It was a terrible ache, a searing pain that felt a lot like being stabbed by a death blade in the gut. The only way she could describe it was as an unbreakable bond—a bond that went beyond the realm of death and angels.

  At the very beginning of her training, Alexa had learned that love was forbidden in Horizon. Relationships that went beyond friendship were grounds for a visit to Tartarus. Angels were soldiers, and soldiers didn’t have intimate feelings. They obeyed orders. They obeyed the angel code.

  “Screw the code,” Alexa hissed as she dug harder. “I’m not a mindless robot. I have feelings. I care about things.”

  Milo was her mate, and she wouldn’t abandon him. She would see him again. She dug harder.

  But the flutter of fear stayed with her, just under her rib cage, along with an unexpected twinge of pain. What if she never got out?

  No. She would break down the door somehow. Whatever it took, one day she would be free.

  She sawed more fiercely.

  She was alone and now in the complete darkness.

  Alexa was also in the dark about events in Horizon and the mortal world. Whatever the Legion told themselves, she knew the balance hadn’t been returned.

  Lucifer was free.

  In her stupidity, she’d freed him. It wasn’t the first time Alexa had screwed up, but this was the royal screw-up of all time. She’d freed the devil, the Lord of Darkness, the Morning Star—Satan. He had played her, and like a fool, she’d fallen into his trap.

  That night in London, at the Victoria Gate in Hyde Park, Alexa had witnessed firsthand what Lucifer was capable of. She had seen archangels and angels on the ground, thrashing in pain as their insides burned. She remembered it well because she’d felt his power too, her mind swallowed up by darkness.

  Milo had saved them all with a selfless act, a noble one—one she didn’t think she could have managed. The pain Milo felt at leaving her was evident in his eyes, but
she also recognized another pain. He was about to join his daddy dearest, the devil.

  Alexa didn’t know much about Lucifer, apart from what she’d read and studied in Demonology 101. He was cruel to mortals and angels, but what of his sons? Would he harm his favorite son? She’d briefly met Milo’s brothers in another reality in purgatory, and from that experience alone, she’d recognized Lucifer’s love for his children.

  But what if purgatory changed him? What if his hatred of the Legion went beyond fatherly love? Milo had joined the Legion of angels, the very organization Lucifer despised and hated above all else.

  If Lucifer killed Milo out of spite, it would be her fault. Worse was the thought that she might never know. She might live out her days in this dank hole and never know what had befallen her Milo, her warrior, her golden angel.

  Then there was the chaos and apocalypse that would soon follow Lucifer. Alexa was certain Lucifer wouldn’t just go his merry way and live out his immortal life somewhere away from the Legion. She had seen the fury in his eyes, the anger at the Legion for being imprisoned in purgatory. He had said he would let the angels live—for now. And that meant his revenge would soon follow. Alexa was sure of it.

  Even worse, Alexa didn’t know if Lucifer and his army of fallen angels had already attacked the Legion. There was no way of knowing what was happening outside the walls of her cell. What if the Legion had fallen and she and the rest of the prisoners were left to rot in Tartarus for all eternity?

  If Lucifer hadn’t already taken his revenge on the Legion, it was coming. With the desertion of so many angels, the Legion would need all of the remaining souls to fight. But they’d thrown her in prison, and rightly so. If not for her, Lucifer would still be in purgatory.

  She could still see the archangel Sabrielle’s face as she lied to them about the so-called bone sword. If only she’d listened to Milo when he’d tried to warn her, none of this would have happened.

  Alexa slammed the rock against the hinge, pretending it was Sabrielle’s face. “I’m such an idiot.”

  Grinding her teeth, she hacked at the hinge with all her strength, creating a miniscule, barely noticeable dent. It was too late and completely useless to wallow in self-pity. The worst was done. All she needed now was to make things right again, to rectify her colossal mistake.

  Alexa had also regained her memories while incarcerated. Images rose up suddenly in her mind’s eye, like fountains of water pouring forth visions of her mortal life. She remembered an ordinary, plain girl with no real prospects, who had an absent father and a drunk mother. At first, as the panic set in, she took sobbing breaths, but then she realized her angel body had no need for such. Once she stopped retching, the crying began. When she stopped crying, the pain settled deep in her soul. Buckets of it. Until she collapsed to the cold stone floor in shivers.

  As crazy as it sounded, even to her, she missed her mother. More importantly, she feared her mother wasn’t eating properly and wasn’t taking care of herself.

  Alexa had been gone a long time. And once the memories came spilling back into her mind, she had an overwhelming desire to see her mother, if only to make sure she was okay. The mortal Alexa hadn’t been much in life. She had been ordinary. But in death, she would be extraordinary.

  With Hades’ death, the connection between them died as well, as did her soul channeling abilities. After her burst of emotions had passed, Alexa had felt that her special gift had been erased. It was as though she’d shed a layer of herself, a layer of skin, like tossing a new coat for the old one.

  She had stood up in shock at first, trying to home in on that familiar light, the pulsing of power in the compartment inside her soul. She found nothing. She couldn’t help but feel angry that she’d lost the part of her that made her different. It had made her special, stronger than the other angels. As much as it had scared her in the beginning, she’d come to understand her gift and had come to admire and even enjoy it a little. It had made her feel unique in a giant sea of angels.

  But now it was gone.

  A part of her had also thought her gift might have been the only way she’d get out of her cell. She hadn’t figured it out yet, as there were no souls in here but her own, but it had still been some false sense of security that she wasn’t beyond help.

  Without her abilities or anyone else’s help, Alexa had to rely solely on her ingenuity. That’s when she’d decided the only way out was through that door. If she could remove the hinges, she could then leave her cell.

  But how would she get off of Tartarus? It was a giant floating black cube in the middle of the sky. The only way out was to either jump and die or hitch a ride in an eagle’s talons, which she’d sworn was an experience she never wanted to experience again.

  “How the hell am I going to get off this cube?”

  A sound split the air, and Alexa’s hand froze in midair.

  It was a high, shouting cry, a sound of pure excitement. Nothing like the shouting wails of terror she’d gotten used to. This was a happy cry, almost too happy.

  Dust and pebbles fell on Alexa. She stared at the door of her cell as the ground trembled below her feet.

  “Now, that’s never happened.”

  And just when she went to take a peek through the small window above the door of her cell, there was a deafening boom… and then the door blew off its hinges.

  CHAPTER 2

  ALEXA WAS THROWN WITH VIOLENT force across her cell. She hit the wall with a crash and slid to the floor as the door slammed against the wall next to her. Her ears rang as she blinked through the layers of dust and debris. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the abnormal amount of light that shown through. Why was there light and where was it coming from?

  Through the clouds of dust, Alexa could see the shimmering curtain of light from beyond her cell. She blinked several times, her eyes now watering at the continued brightness. She’d forgotten how bright the outside world was, how glorious the color of the sky was with its puffy white clouds.

  What the hell had just happened?

  For a moment, Alexa contemplated lying there on the filthy, damp cell floor, savoring the free air around her and feeling the breeze against her face. Finally, she heaved herself onto her feet, her legs unsteady. It took only a few seconds before the sounds of boots scraping on stone floors reached her, and then she saw a figure move past her doorway, disappearing into the brightness of the light.

  Is this a raid? she thought.

  Closer now, she heard more rushing footsteps and shouts followed by the unmistakable high-pitched cry of eagles.

  Excitement pounded through her limbs as she crossed the threshold of her cell.

  When Alexa had first arrived inside Tartarus, the eagles had ushered her through a doorway onto a small platform. Beyond the platform there was nothing, only a bottomless black pit in front of her. One false move and she would fall into the abyss. There was no walkway. No stairs. There was only darkness between the rows of cells.

  But now she could see a solid walkway spread out in front of her. And there were angels everywhere.

  Light streamed through a great hole where the north wall used to be. It was as though Tartarus had cracked open like the shell of an egg. Through the giant gap, she could see the glorious blue sky and puffy white clouds. The sight lifted her spirits and she almost smiled. Almost.

  Alexa stepped onto the walkway and grabbed the wrist of the first angel who rushed past her.

  “What’s happening? Is the Legion attacking us?”

  The angel, a disheveled redheaded and bearded middle-aged male, looked at her with wide eyes. “Attacking us? Are you stupid or something? The Legion’s not attacking us… we’re breaking out!” With a wild and crazed expression, he shouted, “The Order of the First! The First creations! The First shall rise and kill all the flawed creations!” And then he dashed down the passageway and jumped, disappearing below the ledge.

  “Wait! Stop!” Alexa shouted. “There’s no ground be
low! You’ll die!”

  She knew there was nothing but air below the cube. The ground was not for many, many miles. Down meant instant death.

  “He just killed himself,” said Alexa bewildered.

  Another figure, a female angel with a long flowing white dress and golden tresses, reached the ledge in a mad dash and shouted, “The Order of the First!” She jumped, spread eagle as though she had leaped from a plane with a parachute.

  Alexa looked around. “They’ve all gone mad.”

  As Alexa made her way carefully across the walkway towards the north wall, angels spilled through the open doors of their cells by the hundreds, scurrying around like rats released from their cages. The closer she got, she saw their dirty, encrusted, shredded clothes hanging over their bodies like ribbons. It was as though the cloth had simply withered away with time, leaving only the immortal angel body intact. Lots of naked bodies rushed past her, and she tried hard not to stare.

  Then she spotted the giant-like angels. Their skin glowed as though they were illuminated by tiny lights from the inside. Archangels.

  Alexa stared at the two big male archangels. Both wore ancient-looking armor, similar to what she had seen on Lucifer. Their features weren’t delicate and handsome like the other archangels she’d come to know. They were hard and weathered but still a good deal more appealing than Metatron. Thick and heavily muscled, it was obvious these two were warriors. The larger of the two caught her staring and frowned at her with pale, watery eyes and huge gnarled hands made into fists.

  Months ago, she would have cowered at his scowl, but now she stood her ground and stared right back until the archangels moved away.

  The archangels and the angels were all here because they had committed crimes against the Legion and the angel code. She knew these were probably some of the worst, most evil angels that had turned as bad as they could go. There were no belphegor demons that she could see—only angels and the two archangels. For some reason, that made her feel worse.