Infernal God (Claimed By Lucifer Book 3) by Elizabeth Briggs (summer reads TXT) 📕

ground, his body weakened and battered by hosting Pestilence for so long. The Elder God hovered above me, a yellow spectral essence, a tainted cloud of putrid sickness. He spread his plagued fingers across the battlefield, searching for his next host, but I wasn't going to let that happen. I wrapped a swirling mass of air infused with light and darkness around him, then forced him into the portal. Pestilence screamed, a shrill, horrifying sound that made everyone on the battlefield feel queasy, as the portal to Void sucked him inside, like it too was greedy to lock him away.

Pestilence was gone—leaving only Adam behind. I was his judge, jury, and executioner, and I’d tried him and found him wanting. Today, I was his reaper.

My entire world narrowed to just me and Adam. I stepped closer to him, clearing his body of the remaining vines that still clung to him, leaving grazes and cuts where their thorns had started to burrow. His body was covered in Pestilence's boils, his hair almost gone, his skin still a sickly color, though his Fallen powers tried their best to heal him. For a second I saw Gadreel, who I'd thought had been my friend, but who had tricked me for numerous lives. A bitter reminder of all that Adam had done.

He deserved to suffer for his sins.

“Eve… My Eve.” His voice was weak, pleading, and it fueled the hate inside me. “I knew you’d come back to me. Heal me and we can be together finally.”

"No." He didn't deserve any more words, and nothing I said would ever get through to him. He'd been a possessive, abusive husband when I was Eve, and after I'd left him, he'd only gotten worse. He'd never been able to let me go, his obsession carrying across multiple lives—thanks to Death's curse—for thousands of years. I had nothing in my heart for him but loathing for everything he’d stolen from me. I was literally a different person because of him. A different person again and again, always losing everything I held dear, then having to search for it over and over, knowing I would only lose it again.

I didn’t plan to lose anything I loved ever again.

His face changed when he realized I wasn't going to help him. "Whore," he yelled, followed by a dozen other obscenities, along with, "I'll kill you!"

"No, Adam. It's time for your final death."

I plunged my dark-and-light sword into his chest, slicing him open with a hard slash of my blade. His eyes widened at me, and he spat blood from his lips as he tried to fight back, but he wasn't strong enough to do anything to stop me. I felt his life force flicker, and it would have been so easy to steal his life and end his suffering, to feed my eternal hunger… But I did not.

Instead, I hit him with all of my rage and suffering, with all of the love I felt for my family, and the grief from when he'd taken me from them over and over. Light and darkness, air and vine, truth and hunger—all of my powers mixed together to rip him apart, atom by atom. His face became a mask of pain as he was torn asunder, his screams echoing across the battlefield, and then he was no more. My power devoured him, wiping him from existence entirely.

Adam was gone, and only I remained.

Our eternal battle was finally over.

34

Lucifer

Even though I'd become War, my father still managed to overpower me. We wrestled like I was a child trying to move a man as I attempted to force him toward the Void portal. I was starting to think Death would be impossible to defeat. No one won their final war against him, though many had tried. How had I ever believed I might be the one exception?

I glimpsed Aurora behind him, now in Belial's arms but still reaching out toward us, her cries for her parents almost lost to the sound of battle. I couldn’t let my father take my daughter away and raise her. No good came of having Death as a father figure. If anyone knew that, it was me.

"Oh, Lucifer,” Death said. “You could have ruled all the worlds. I expected so much from you, my son. Instead you had to fall in love with that mortal woman. She made you weak."

Why was everyone always trying to convince me that loving Hannah made me weaker? "No. Loving her has only made me stronger."

"You're wrong." Death shook his head at me, then gestured at Aurora and Belial. Undead immediately surrounded them, trying to tear my daughter from her brother's arms, but Damien blasted them all back with a burst of air. Zel, Lilith, and Cerberus, now freed by Kassiel, all leaped into the attack too, easily slicing down the skeletal attackers.

"You see," I said, turning back to my father. "Love wins."

But I'd been so distracted by the attack on my family that I hadn't noticed Death lunging toward me, and he managed to rip the Void key right out of my hand. Then he let out a guttural roar as he clenched it within his palm. Rays of light of every color shot out of it, before he closed his fist and shattered it into a million pieces. The portal to Void immediately closed behind him.

Fuck.

“Careless, Lucifer,” Death chided. He wrapped his free hand around my neck and pinned me against him from behind. “Weak. Powerless. Useless. What a disappointment you are. Are you even my son? Or did that angel lie to me?”

"I guess I'm a mama's boy," I growled, as I grabbed his arm and flipped him over me. His back hit the ground hard, but then he slithered away, too fast for a mortal eye to see. But he wasn't getting away. I didn't know how I would stop him, but this had to end here. Maybe we could put him back in his