by Meg Xuemei X
Loki grabbed me before I fell, knowing exactly how his father had wounded me—by melting my bones.
We teleported out of the bloody pit.
CHAPTER 9
The Demigod of War
__________________
A new war befell Earth, a war between my father and us. We now had to fend off old and new enemies from all sides.
The God of War was the biggest betrayer Earth had ever faced. The enemy had been among us all this time, had even led us for centuries. He’d played us for fools. If it hadn’t been for our mate, we’d have been forever blinded.
Hellbent on taking our woman from our warm beds, that fucking dick had dropped his superhero pretense, no longer interested in playing the role of the savior of the mortals.
His biggest treachery had been helping the devil break Hell’s seal so Lucifer could bring Hell onto half of the planet—all so Ares could play his war games.
Still, half of the mortals and Dominions on our Half-Earth continued to worship him.
They were too stupid to live, but for our mate’s sake, we wouldn’t erase them unless they joined Lucifer’s or Ares’s army.
Marigold, my Cookie—even the sound of her name burned a hole in my once uncaring heart—still considered herself one of them. She was less human than we were, yet she held the best of humanity in her. The light had shined so brightly in her until it all winked out.
We’d seen her die.
We would bring her back at all costs. Then we would place her in the highest ivory tower, bar the doors and windows, and guard her day and night, no matter how fiercely she protested. My Cookie was the fiercest female I’d ever met.
When I first encountered her, she’d been fighting like a fiend. Her ferocity and beauty were the most stunning things I’d ever seen.
Among all of my cousins, I’d spotted her first. I brought her to us, which had eventually led to her death.
The moment she was gone, our mating bond had snapped and broken. Everything in us had gone dark. We became lonely beasts mourning at the bottom of the abyss, trapped forever without our mate. We’d never be free and right again until we got her back.
She would live again. Her heart would beat for us, as ours beat only for her.
In the meantime, we’d gathered the generals who were loyal to us and declared war on the God of War, the traitor to Earth.
A week later, Ares had popped out and proclaimed us as traitors, too. Many had followed him. So Earth was now divided into three regions. After many brutal battles, we controlled North America but had lost Europe and Asia.
During the war, we continued diligently seeking a path to Hell.
Even though territories and borders had morphed on some parts of Earth after the Great Merge, the only two entries to Hell were still sealed or heavily guarded.
Even though Héctor was the Demigod of Death, he didn’t have an open path to Hell anymore. He was the true heir to the Underworld, but he’d given up the title after Hades, his father, had left for Mount Olympus, coveting his brother’s throne.
When Lucifer fell from the heavens, he’d invaded the Underworld. After he expanded the territory, the Underworld became Hell under his reign.
Enough of this history lesson.
Our contact finally hooked us up with the Duke of Deception, who was in the inner circle of Lucifer’s heir. None of us trusted Pythius, but we would work with any foe who could get us to our mate.
And Pythius brought us the most shocking news—my Cookie was alive. The knife hadn’t ended her life. The duke even let Héctor skim his mind, and the death demigod confirmed that the Duke of Deception was telling the truth.
Our mate was alive! Marigold was alive.
For a few moments, none of us could speak. And when we regained the ability, none of us wanted to weep for joy in front of the archdemon.
“How?” Zak demanded in a harsh voice.
Pythius shrugged. “She’s more than meets the eye. That’s why my prince sought her out.”
“What does he want with my mate?” Héctor snarled.
“Prince Loki won’t harm her, or I wouldn’t be here to negotiate a contract with you,” Pythius said. “As for His Highness’s intentions toward Princess Celeste, it’s not for me to tell and not for you to know.”
Like his prince, the Duke of Deception was a half-blood—part demon and part human. Our intel said that there was a great power struggle between the pureblood demons and the half-bloods.
Pythius had dark skin, gunmetal-gray eyes, and spiked hair fashioned like a human rock star. Even our highly trained Dominion officers had a hard time identifying his half-demon heritage, which made Pythius the perfect and dangerous spymaster.
“Where exactly is she?” Paxton asked.
“She’s been put inside an iron coffin in the Dome of Torture,” the duke said. “Your god and Lucifer cut her open every day, experimenting on her. They’ve sliced every inch of her skin and opened her veins for two months—Hell’s time runs differently than time here. She would heal after they put her back in the coffin, and then they’d repeat the process the next day, looking for her magic. They covet it.”
Lightning struck everywhere at once as Zak’s eyes burned with terrifying rage.
Paxton shook and roared, ice coating the walls and the ceiling. All of a sudden, we seemed to be in a freezer.
My hurricane power exploded like an atom bomb. The suffering of my mate pierced my heart like thousands of knives.
After ice, storm, and lightning destroyed the two-story building where we held our secret meeting, a fire broke out. Debris and concrete plummeted back to earth while we stood amid the rubble, shaking with uncontainable wrath and pain.
“I’ll find them,” I vowed while howling wind wheeled around us. “I’ll tear the hearts out of Ares and Lucifer, and then I’ll eat their fucking hearts.”
“Only after we cut them to pieces inch by inch,” Paxton said in a terrible, soft voice.
Héctor grabbed Pythius’s neck with his gloved hand, his obsidian wings flapping agitatedly, and death light swallowed his once sapphire eyes. He lifted Pythius until the duke’s feet dangled in the air. The death demigod seemed desperate to remove his glove and punish the half-demon with an agonizing death. But I knew he couldn’t kill the demon yet. We needed this duke to lead us to Hell if we ever wanted to find our mate.
Pythius knew it too. He looked unfazed, though his face paled. And to show he wasn’t concerned, he even crossed his arms over his chest as his eyes rolled up to watch the sky, now filled with dust and rain and lightning.
“Are you going to calm the fuck down and talk about business?” Pythius managed to get his sentence out.
For a demon, he had balls of steel. For a start, he’d come alone to meet us.
“Héctor,” Zak warned. “Let’s get out of here.”
Héctor nodded, and the five of us teleported to a warded safe house in Miami.
As soon as we landed in the basement, a sound barrier blocked out the noise of the ocean waves.
Héctor shoved Pythius against the wall, and the four of us faced him.
“Talk,” Héctor ordered.
Pythius rolled his eyes again. “I was talking before you fuckers interrupted me,” he said. “You won’t be able to get her out like this, acting like a bunch of juvenile hotheads.”
“Take us to her now!” I ordered.
“Then you’ll sabotage my prince’s perfect plan and get your girl completely locked up,” Pythius said. “If Lucifer catches wind of you coming to his realm, he’ll take her somewhere no one can ever reach, not even my prince. Loki has gotten her out for now. He’s buying time before Ares and Lucifer come to reclaim her as their perfect weapon and consort.” He sent me a blank look. “Your father intends to fuck her.”
I balled my hands, my knuckles white, and my bones made a cracking sound.
“I’ll cut the war god to pieces and feed them to a hellhound,” Paxton said without any emotion.
F
rom the looks in their stormy, half-crazed eyes, Zak and Héctor mentally promised an even worse fate for my father.
For our mate, we needed to stay sane. We needed to keep cool heads.
“We must turn off our emotions until we get her back,” I said.
“And only let our one purpose burn through—to get my lamb back,” Héctor agreed before he turned to the duke. “Where does Loki keep my mate?” he drawled.
“That’s a need-to-know for now,” said the duke, and I wanted to strangle him. “My prince will come to you soon and sign a contract, sealed in blood. We won’t let you betray us.”
“You’re one to talk,” Paxton snorted. “None of us bear the title of ‘Prince of Betrayal and Lies’ or ‘Butcher of Hell,’ unlike your prince.”
“He cultivated that reputation for a reason,” Pythius said tightly. “Either you’re with us or against us. Hell’s future depends on my prince, and I won’t let you hotheads jeopardize it.”
Suddenly I realized what Lucifer’s heir was angling for. He wanted to rule Hell. He wanted to oust his father. I could relate to the feud between a father and a son.
“Call Loki now,” Zak said. “We’ll swear a blood oath right now if he can lead us to my mate today.”
“Not now,” Pythius said. “A perfect plan takes time to formulate. If we screw it up, we don’t get a second chance. Everyone in my prince’s household, down to the butler, will suffer excruciating torment before death should we fail. Drop the wards now, demigods. I’m returning to my realm before anyone notices I’m gone.”
“How can we contact you?” I asked.
“You don’t call me. I’ll call you,” Pythius said. Over our furious looks, he added, “I have as much interest as you in Princess Celeste’s survival.”
We hated him for calling her that, but then we’d hate any demon calling our mate Marigold, too. They should just not call her anything; in fact, they shouldn’t even look at her.
Héctor lowered the wards, which meant that the half-demon duke had passed his lie test, and Pythius vanished in a plume of smoke.
“Did you put the tracker on him?” Paxton asked.
Héctor shook his head, his wings vanishing. “It won’t work in Hell.”
“So we just let a half-demon decide our next course of action?” Paxton demanded with displeasure.
“We probably need to show some good faith on our side if we want the demon duke to help us,” Zak said, silver lightning flashing in his eyes. “He’s our lifeline to our mate for now.”
“As I said, we need to turn off our emotions and follow only logic and facts,” I said. “That way we won’t screw up again and make our mate pay the price.”
Héctor nodded. “I’ve gathered some concealed information from Pythius.”
Zak, Paxton, and I focused our attention on him and, when he hesitated, snarled for him to spit it out.
“He didn’t know everything about his prince’s plans for my lamb,” Héctor continued, “but one thing works in our favor. Loki desperately wants to keep our mate alive.”
“What’s she to him?” I pondered, trying to be analytic. “She doesn’t share his bloodline. On the contrary, she’s a threat to him. She’s a princess, the second heir to Lucifer’s crown.”
“He wants Hell all to himself, and my lamb can help him defeat his father,” Héctor said. “And he needs us, so he wants to strike a deal.”
I gave him an appreciative look. The old boy was the most lethal, scheming one. That was why his territory was the largest in the former Half-Earth.
“Lucifer and Ares came for her because she’s the Living Flame,” Héctor added, “the ultimate weapon I’d been searching out for centuries. And she’s been right in front of me all this time. I never thought that the Living Flame could be a person. I assumed it was a magical, animated fire. I studied the prophecy again and finally pieced everything together after my lamb was taken.”
“If Rosebud were the Living Flame,” Zak said with an ounce of suspicion, “she could have vanquished Ares and Lucifer when they bound her in the Ever Realm.”
“It hasn’t activated in her,” Héctor said. “It takes time for the flame to bloom. Our mate has just come into her power. She lived as a human her entire life until Axel dragged her to the Academy and forced her to go through the Ritual of the Blood Rune.”
I glared at him, grief and guilt gnawing at me.
“The Runes broke the seal that had bound her power and rendered her a normal human,” Paxton said. He was smart enough to piece everything together, too. “We’ve all seen how fast her power developed. She wouldn’t have held Ares’s Glory if she hadn’t had the flame in her.”
“I think Loki recognized the Living Flame in her,” Héctor said, “and that we’re needed to help her activate it, or the last thing he’d do would be to seek an alliance with us.”
We swallowed, trading hopeful yet anguished looks, as we discussed our new plans.
Our mate was alive.
But she was in an even direr situation than before. We wanted to get to her this second, but we couldn’t afford to screw up the timing.
“I haven’t told you how I first met my lamb,” Héctor said, looking into the distance.
We then finally learned that the fucker had met my Cookie in a Dreaming, and the dream had been real, like an alternate dimension.
Then he dropped another bomb. “I saw our mate again in the dreamscape last week. I thought that I had her spirit in my arms.” He paused, his throat bobbing up and down. “If I’d known I had her in the flesh in that dream—” He recollected himself. “Our mate told me she was in Hell and she was cold to the bone. Our sworn enemies had cut her open—”
He was unable to utter another world. Death light shadowed his whole being.
Tears leaked from my eyes.
Paxton pounded his fists into the wall, denting the steel.
Lightning burned in Zak’s eyes.
We turned on Héctor with renewed fury that he’d kept this from us. We didn’t pound the fucker to meat pulp, but only because he offered to get us all into the dreamland to meet our beloved.
CHAPTER 10
The Demigod of Sea
__________________
We gathered in Héctor’s penthouse suite where he’d first met Buttercup in the Dreaming. He’d had her in his arms a week ago while she was in Hell being brutally tortured.
This place was familiar to her, a safe place in her mind, so according to Héctor, she always returned here in her dreams when she could.
North America was now under our control, but that didn’t mean our region was safe. Demons could still breach our territory through their portals. The Dominion’s mages had been traveling all over the country to seal any possible portals that might give the demons access to our realm, but they hadn’t found them all.
Our armies stayed on high alert. An invasion could occur at any time.
I looked out the window at the lush park in the middle of bustling Manhattan. It was deep into autumn now. I wondered if Marigold had enjoyed the view when she was here.
She and Héctor had bonded deeply. I no longer felt insanely jealous of him. She was my woman, too. She had given me a taste of her that had permeated my scarred soul, nourishing it. I’d felt her every raw need, her passion, and deep feelings for me, in the last kisses she’d graced me with.
I should have begged for more. I shouldn’t have let her go. If I’d kept her, she wouldn’t have been taken.
“In my bed now,” Héctor said harshly. “Don’t make me regret doing this. I want my lamb to be comfortable when she finds us.”
“Will she come?” Axel asked anxiously, holding his breath.
“I’ve been seeking her out every available second after the last dream with no luck,” Héctor said. “I don’t know how and why and when I can meet her in the Dreaming, but I’ll wait for her forever.”
“We’ll keep trying until we head to Hell,” Zak said. “Our sentinels will guard
this building for as long as we need while we try to get into the dreamland.”
After we lay down, we each sliced our palms with our daggers, and then we grasped hands, letting the blood bond between us strengthen our ties in the shared dream.
“Let me talk first if and when our mate comes,” Héctor said sternly. “Don’t screw this up.”
I tried not to huff. As if he never screwed things up. But then we were all alpha demigods, all extremely territorial. Only because of our mate had we been trying to get along and amended our recent rift.
Centuries ago, Héctor had found me and brought me out of a violent, impoverished neighborhood. He saved me from drugs and self-destruction, helped me discover my power, and took me into the demigod fold. We’d been mostly supportive of each other, for demigods, anyway, until I’d hurt Buttercup.
Héctor had broken many of my bones for what I had done to his lamb. He’d broken our alliance, threatened me with death if I laid a hand on her again, and left me on the cold ground.
I’d repented.
As cold a bastard as I’d been, I’d still gotten a second chance I didn’t deserve, only to lose her once more.
No, we were going to find her, and we’d never lose her again.
My eyelids closed, and I sank into slumber with my cousins.
~
She stood at the doorway, all red leather and black blood, her shaking hands holding two very different swords.
She looked fragile and steely and cruel at the same time.
Hell had changed our mate. Re-forged her.
The god and devil had tortured her for months. I tore my rage from my thoughts and my face. We shouldn’t show her our fury, or she would think we aimed it at her.
She thought we hated her for her demon blood.
Surprise flashed by her green eyes, which burned with a cold flame. She was used to seeing only that lucky bastard Héctor in the dreamscape. Joy and hope lit her gaze as it caressed and enticed us. But it dimmed the next second.
My heart broke for her all over again.
Shame, dismay, and self-loathing morphed her beautiful face until it seemed as cold and unyielding as ice.
