by May Dawson
His grin widened slightly. “You don’t expect me to believe you were really that stupid, do you?”
If I told him that the boys wouldn’t help me to rescue Nimshi, it would be too honest and simple. Flat. He would expect me to lie. To have to force the truth from me.
“Does the devil keep his word or what?” I demanded. “You said you’d take my life for Nim’s freedom. Well, take me to him.”
“I can’t wait to reunite you with your demon lover-boy,” Samael said. “And to see what tricks you have up your sleeve, Lilith. Not that you’ve ever been much of a match for me.”
He reached over my head to pull the door open for me. For some reason, that made a memory rise, sharp for a second: Samael pulling away a branch from my path as we walked in the garden, which was green and lush and gorgeous. I didn’t remember where we’d been going, but I remembered the light in his eyes when he’d looked back.
“Do you remember anything from the garden?” I asked. “Besides murdering me?”
“Of course,” he said easily. “We named the animals. We looked at every one of them.” He held out his hands, cupped. “We held tiny ducklings and rabbits and baby tigers, and we gave them our blessing.”
“Do you remember that? Or is it in the Bible?”
“I don’t read the Bible. I wrote my own book.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did.”
Samael smiled. He seemed different in his own body, his own home, than he had seemed in the demon’s case. He was at ease now.
“You might think I’m arrogant,” Samael said as I walked forward, “But I’m not the one walking into the mouth of Hell, confident I can outsmart the devil himself.”
“We already covered this,” I said. “You’re not the devil.”
Light spilled out of the room ahead of me, so bright that it made me blink after the depth of the night outside. It took a second for my eyes to adjust as I squinted at the edges of the room, where the light wasn’t so bright, although it reflected off gilt surfaces and marble.
“But I am,” said the voice in front of me, which was warm and amused.
I shielded my eyes with my hand, trying to make myself look into the light, but it was just too painful.
“Sorry,” the voice said, not sounding terribly sorry at all. The light blinked out.
In front of me was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. I couldn’t quite make sense of his face, which seemed to shift, but it was always beautiful. Picture the man of your dreams, the one whose smile is infectious, whose eyes touch your heart, and that’s what he looked like.
“Lucifer,” I said, cold dread curling through my body. It was the Lilith in me who knew him and named him.
He took a step forward, and his warmth swept over me, alluring even from here. I took a step back, and Samael’s hands fell on my shoulders, his body pressed along mine. I gritted my teeth, resisting the impulse to turn and run him through. It wouldn’t help me right now.
“He told you I could bring Nimshi back to life,” Lucifer said. “And Samael may love to lie, but that… that is true.”
“He was struck with a Final blade.”
Lucifer nodded. Suddenly there was a blade in his hand, a familiar one, and he looked over it with a pleased smile. “Beliel brought it back with him.”
“That isn’t possible,” I said.
Lucifer held it out to me, his expression mocking. “Do you want to see for yourself, kitten? Think carefully.”
“Just because something is outside your reach doesn’t mean it’s out of ours,” Samael said. “You could only hope to save Nimshi from Hell. We can save him from the Far.”
“I have the blade that shed his blood,” Lucifer said. “And I have the boy. Now all I need is a willing sacrifice.”
“Take me to him,” I said, my voice strong.
Samael steered me toward the door, his grip on my shoulders light and sure.
I glanced over my shoulder at the doors, knowing my boys would follow me through them soon, whether I used the lantern or not.
Chapter 27
Lucifer led us into a long hallway. Fine art hung on the walls, some of the pieces familiar; he had Monets and Picassos hanging on the walls, and statues by DaVinci and other famous sculptors. The walls were a rich, warm shade of wood, and the air smelled faintly of incense. We passed rows of doors, all lovely etched wooden doors, and then he stopped in the hallway and turned to face us.
“Bring Nimshi to my office,” Lucifer said to Samael.
Samael gave Lucifer a look that said he was not convinced Lucifer was, in fact, the king of Hell. Samael certainly did have an arrogant streak.
Lucifer’s eyes were hard and flinty, but his expression was calm and pleasant.
Samael turned and opened one of the doors. For a second, I heard screaming, the sound of hundreds of people screaming out in pain. Adrenaline flooded my body, and I automatically gripped the sword tightly in front of my body, I took a step back to feel the wall against my back.
The door closed behind Samael. The hall was unearthly quiet now. The screams were still sharp echoes in my mind.
Lucifer regarded me steadily for a moment as my heart hammered wildly. His eyes on mine were curious. But they were curious in a way that I found unsettling, like he wondered what the Lilith was made of. Like he wanted to stretch me out and poke inside and see what he found in the gore.
“Hi,” I said, giving him a friendly wave hello. Like a nutcase. Hopefully, like a nutcase that was going to make it out of here alive. “I’m curious why you wanted to be alone with me?”
“I like pissing off Samael.” He turned on his heel and headed further down the hall. Further away from the exit. I glanced over my shoulder once again, but the door I’d come through seemed like it was a mile away now. “Come on. Come into my office.”
“Look at that, we have something in common.” I followed him, keenly certain that there was something evil at my back, even though whenever I looked back, there was nothing but the long hallway. Hell, maybe the hallway was the evil thing that made my spine crawl.
Lucifer opened a door and stepped through, holding it for me.
We were in a gorgeous library. It was the stuff of my dreams: books all the way up two stories, and a ladder that slid on a metal rail to reach them all. There was a crackling fireplace in one corner, with two plush leather club chairs. On the mantle above the fireplace were small paintings by famous authors, and a globe that looked just like the Earth, complete with small wisps of cloud floating around the continents.
“Take a seat, please,” Lucifer said, sitting easily in his own chair, crossing one leg over the other.
I sat on the edge of the chair. Fire always drew my eye—Ryker didn’t call me Firestarter for nothing, I supposed—and now movement in the flames caught my eyes. Sparks? No, not sparks.
Tiny humans writhed in the flames.
Cold dread settled in my stomach. I straightened my spine and squared my shoulders. There were worse things than death, and I hadn’t thought about them much before I charged into Hell to rescue Nim.
There was a small table between our two chairs—although I was still sitting far too close to him to suit me—and Lucifer indicated with one lazy hand the cups on the table. There was a whiskey on the rocks for him, and a white mug for me. “Make yourself at home. I believe this is your usual coffee—ish—choice?”
I picked it up, smiled, and said thank you to the nice demon, but even though it smelled like a tantalizing white mocha, I had no intention of taking a sip. I’d seen Pan’s Labyrinth.
“If you really love to antagonize Samael, than helping him kill me seems counterproductive.” I flashed Lucifer my sexiest smile, even though I could feel my legs shaking. Thank God I was sitting down; I set the lantern carefully on the floor before I could drop it. “If you let me and Nim walk out of here, I’m pretty sure Samael will spontaneously combust with rage.”
“You are right.” Lucifer smiled back at m
e, and the smile was so attractive, his voice so low and sexy, that I almost believed he couldn’t hurt me. How had this handsome man gotten such a bad reputation? He leaned toward me, his lips parting slightly. “I have no intention of killing you.”
And I had no intention of kissing him. I was taken. I sat back deeper in the chair, my hands still folded over the sword hilt. No one had even commented on my sword. Apparently no one thought I was dangerous, even with a weapon.
Something flickered in his eyes, something dangerous. “I’m going to let you live. I’m going to make you mine. And Samael is going to hate watching it.”
For a few long seconds, silence hung between us.
“That’s it? That’s the devil’s diabolical plan?” I asked. “You’re going to make Samael jealous? I expected a little more.”
He leaned over the arm of his chair, his lips brushing my hair, and I froze because I didn’t know what else to do.
“You’re going to wish I’d let Samael kill you,” he whispered.
I didn’t dare look at it, but I knew the Final blade was on his right; he’d set it on the arm of his chair, and it glinted faintly with its own internal glow and with reflected light from the fire.
I let the devil see me swallow hard.
The door opened, and Lucifer leaned back in his chair, as if nothing had happened.
Nimshi staggered in, with Samael behind him. Nim’s face was bloody, and I jumped to my feet, already reaching out for Nim.
Even through the blood and the dirt, the bruises on his cheek and the cut in his lip, he was gorgeous. Deep green eyes met mine, and he winked.
“I thought you were going to clean him up,” Lucifer said in exasperation.
“Hello, beautiful,” Nim said. “Thanks for the rescue.”
Samael snickered.
“Let the flames of evil be extinguished,” I said, lightly, as if it were nothing. Because that’s so easy to work into a conversation.
Everyone looked at me like I was a loon. The first man. Satan himself. And my half-demon boyfriend. They all stared at me with confusion written across their faces.
Then the flame in the lantern flared up, the room brightening exponentially more than such a small light should have created. Samael bellowed in rage, shoving Nimshi away and starting for me.
Lucifer dove for the Final blade.
“Always a surprise, sweetheart.” Nim kicked Lucifer hard in the back, sending him sprawling toward the chair. I jumped for the Final blade.
Lucifer looked at me with gritted teeth, fury blazing in his eyes. He was starting to fall into wisps of light, but he was struggling to pull himself back together, struggling to get the blade from me. Both our hands locked over the hilt.
“You’re not really surprised, are you?” I asked Nim, my shoulder against the devil’s, fighting him for the Final blade. “You knew I had a plan.”
Nim grabbed my sword from the floor, where it had fallen when I jumped after the Final blade, and slammed it into Lucifer’s side, through his body and into the club chair, pinning him there. Though I knew it wouldn’t hold Lucifer for long. Nothing would.
“I didn’t know you had a good one,” Nim said.
I wrenched the Final blade away from Lucifer and held it above my head, triumphant.
Triumphant, and ready to stab the devil himself to death.
Then I fell backward, pulled out of the Far, out of time. I once again saw the faces in the night between our world and the Far.
I screamed. Not because I was afraid, but because I was afraid to leave.
And I fell hard against the floor in the basement of the boys’ house.
Chapter 28
For a second, I was too shocked to understand what had just happened. The plain white ceiling seemed to whirl in front of my vision. All the breath had rushed out of my lungs. I drew a strangled breath.
“Wakey, wakey.” Dani had her elbows braced on her knees as she leaned over me. A sickening scent of iron hung in the air. There was blood on her thumb, and she pressed her thumb to my forehead once again, peppering blood across my brow. I yanked my hands up to stop her, and realized they were duct-taped together.
“Who’s blood?” I gasped. It was the one question on my mind, the one question that mattered. I looked around frantically.
She smiled at me with malice glinting in her eyes. “Blood calls to blood. You took my brother.”
I tried to roll up, but my feet were bound too. “I was taking your brother, yeah. I was taking him out of Hell when you dragged me back here. If he’s gone, it’s because of you, you miserable bitch.”
I couldn’t get up, so I rolled backward, drawing my knees into my chest. Her lips parted in surprise as she realized I was on the attack despite being bound. She started to get to her feet, but she was too late. I slammed my feet into her chest, knocking her onto her ass.
As I scrambled to get up on my knees, I saw.
Ash’s body was beside me. Dani had slashed open her arm, and it was Ash’s blood that was wiped across my face.
Levi’s head lay at an impossible stiff angle, his throat slashed into a deep red smile; blood pooled from his body, from all the bodies, covering the floor. Olivia was slumped lifeless on the stairs. The Council had fallen in different places across the room, fighting for their lives; my boys had been murdered in their sleep.
This was why my boys hadn’t burst through Hell’s gates yet to find me.
“Finally got my chance to visit you in your dreams,” Dani said. “Just like I watch you kill Nim in my dreams over and over.”
“I didn’t kill him!” I looked around desperately for a weapon, although the world was a sickening blur. I didn’t kill Nim, but I was going to kill her. That was for sure.
She scrambled to her feet, fear in her eyes for a second, and then it was as if she realized that even though I had struggled to my feet, my hands were still tied. I couldn’t hurt her. A mocking smile touched her lips, and she rested her boot on Ryker’s chest. “I didn’t kill every one of your boys yet, Ellis. You have the chance to save some of them.”
I watched Ryker’s chest rise, struggling to push up her boot as she ground her heel down. Wake up, wake up. How was it possible that we were so lost in the Far that we didn’t know what was happening in the real world? Had anything changed for Levi to alert the others that we were in danger? Was my sister still fighting in the Far?
“What do you want, Dani?” I looked at her, but in my peripheral vision was the doorway from the cell room. From here, I could see the weapons that hung on the peg board. But there were multiple bodies on the floor between me and that doorway—don’t think about the bodies, you can’t afford to think about the bodies right now—that I had to make it over while Dani herself went after me.
“I thought I wanted you dead,” she said. “But now I realize I want to see you suffer. Then I want you dead.”
I took a step toward her, trying to raise my hand to tell her to settle down, but really, I was trying to inch toward the door. She watched me warily, sword in hand.
“You know, he was all I had,” she said, her voice low as if she were afraid she’d cry otherwise. As if this bloody scene weren’t allaying her grief the way she thought it would. “You saw my parents. They made a good show of it, but they never loved either of us. They weren’t capable of love. Nim and I… we always only had each other.”
“Yeah, I’d be sympathetic,” I said. “If you weren’t a murderous bitch who tried to kill everyone I loved.”
“Tried?” she said archly. “I’m not doing this for fun, Ellis. I have a spell to resurrect my brother. I just need the blood of his enemies. The blood of one friend, but Beliel gave me that. And Nim’s body.”
“Did you find Nim?” I asked. “We’ve tried to bring him back to life already, Dani. Think about it. If we didn’t care about him, why did we bring his body back to the house?”
“You never stop lying, do you, Ellis?” She finally took her foot off Ryker’s che
st and gestured me in front of her with the sword. “Come on. You can carry my brother down here. You can watch me bleed everyone you love to bring him back to life.”
I stepped through the doorway. The faintest flicker of movement caught my gaze. My mother, hiding on the other side of the doorway, sword in her hand. Her face was bloody under her usual stiff blond blow-out, but I couldn’t see more than that because I had to keep my eyes forward and keep moving so Dani wouldn’t be alerted to the danger.
Dani stepped out behind me, and my mother swung the sword toward her.
Dani ducked back, throwing up an arm, and the blade sliced deep into her forearm. Blood sprayed out from her arm, but she was already throwing up her hand toward my mom. Dark sparks flew between them.
I slammed into Dani, my shoulder into her stomach.
“Come to the land of the dead,” I said, hoping like hell it would work. “See what you’ve done.”
The two of us fell together heavily into the ground.
And then we fell right through it.
Chapter 29
In the sickening blur between here and the Far, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine Lucifer’s office. The smooth leather chairs and rich flooring and the eerie fire, full of tiny human figures flailing in agony.
Dani and I slammed into the ground. I had a sharp headache, like a knife driving into my temple, and my vision was blurry. I kicked Dani off me, and then scrambled to my feet.
Lucifer was on top of Nim, the final blade in his hand. It glinted in the light from the fire, and a murderous light glinted in Lucifer’s eyes. I threw myself at the devil.
I knocked him off Nimshi. The two of us rolled across the floor. The devil was heavier than me, taller, and he rolled on top of me, holding me down. His weight on my chest seemed impossibly heavy, like I couldn’t draw a breath. The Final blade. Where was the Final blade?
“Ellis,” Nimshi called.
He flipped the Final blade through the air. Lucifer reached out, scrambling for the blade, but Nim threw straight and true. The blade struck into Lucifer’s chest.
