Lucifer’s laugh chilled Nicholas to the bone, started the pounding of his heart. Not fear, but survival instinct warning him of the danger, urging him to flee.
Lucifer spoke again.
Khavi shook her head. “She isn’t worthless to you. She has your Gate on her face—which I understand you needed because Michael won a wager that forced you to close your other Gates. You needed her because of Michael; now I need her because of Michael. Her worth to us is equal.”
Ash’s tremors ceased. Though her eyes didn’t glow, the look she gave Khavi was nothing short of murder. Furious, Nicholas saw. Suddenly so angry that it had smothered her terror.
Because she hated being the puppet, he realized. Just as she’d hated the Rules that prevented her from acting of her own will, she would hate anyone who jerked her around like a marionette on strings . . . and that was what Khavi did now.
Lucifer didn’t seem to mind Khavi’s use of a demon, however. After a long, considering look at her, Lucifer gave a short reply.
Khavi responded, “The bargain I propose is simple: If you release Michael from the field by sacrificing one of your demons, when it is done and Michael has been released from Hell—completely away from this realm—then before one day passes, I will sacrifice this halfling on Earth and open the portal for you. It is a sacrifice for a sacrifice, and we each receive something of value to us.”
No. Rage pushed Nicholas forward. Before he’d gone a step, Ash stopped him with a hard squeeze of his hand. Her lips moved.
Opportunity.
Waiting for an opportunity. She was right. Though almost impossible not to race forward, to tear both Khavi and Lucifer apart with his hands, it would be suicide. Surviving was more important than acting on his anger right now.
He hardened his rage, fought to toss it away. Fear, anger. He would not be controlled by either. Not when it risked their lives.
“Yes, with Michael’s release, you also lose something of value to you,” Khavi said to Lucifer. “So it is not completely equal. To balance that loss, I would also offer this novice Guardian. You lose one Guardian to torture, and gain possession of another.”
Him, Nicholas realized, and then it was his turn to clamp his hand around Ash’s wrist, to prevent her from reacting.
“No, he is nothing like Michael,” Khavi agreed. “But it will be an exchange of the oldest Guardian for the newest one. There is something elegant about it, is there not? His transformation offered hope and strength to the Guardian corps, belief that our future could be strong. I am giving you the opportunity to destroy that; even Michael’s return will not heal that injury.”
Lucifer’s powerful gaze swept over Nicholas. He spoke.
“His Gift has not yet manifested,” Khavi responded. “And I cannot see what I do not already know. His Gift might be useful to you. I cannot say.”
Lucifer regarded her silently for a long moment. When he spoke, she shifted uneasily.
“I’m willing to give you a day to consider it,” she said. “But I won’t leave them here with you without a bargain.”
He spoke again, and Khavi snorted a laugh.
“You don’t have any goodwill.”
His gaze moved to her hellhound.
Khavi went still. “I won’t leave Lyta.”
Lucifer’s smile said it all. Either she would choose to leave Ash and Nicholas, or the hellhound—but there would be no bargain if she didn’t choose one to stay.
“Let me take Ashmodei,” Khavi said. “She’s the more valuable to both of us. I’ll leave the Guardian here.”
Yes, Nicholas thought.
Lucifer turned away.
Khavi called out, “Both of them, then! But only four hours to consider my offer. And you’ll return them to me, unharmed, if you do not intend to accept our bargain.”
Nicholas didn’t know what Lucifer said, but the triumph in the demon’s face told him well enough: He’d agreed.
Her hand on the hellhound’s shoulder, Khavi didn’t even turn to look at them. She vanished.
The details didn’t matter. Bargain or not, they were dead.
Unless they got the fuck out of here.
Nicholas focused on that thought as they raced across the frozen field, surrounded by a troop of armed demons. Lucifer had finally called for them—not as backup, but as herders. No one but Lucifer could fly across the frozen field; their wings wouldn’t even form. Nor would Lucifer carry them. So running it was, his feet burning from the cold. Ash’s might have been, too. She’d vanished her boots after her heel had struck one of those frozen eyes, but her heated skin might save her some of the pain.
He didn’t think that mattered, either. In the frozen field, surrounded by silence and screams, Ash probably wasn’t thinking of her feet. But just as she had when Madelyn ordered her to kill him, Ash had concealed her emotions. Terror and anger had to be hidden behind her blank features. She wasn’t going to let the demons know it.
The black tower rose ahead of them, spearing into the red sky. With a base the width of a small city, Nicholas couldn’t see around it. They passed out of the silent, frozen field into a cacophony of flapping wings and demon tongues, the growls of hellhounds. Jeers and laughter followed them to the entrance.
Unharmed, so far. Lucifer didn’t have to keep them that way—his agreement with Khavi at the end hadn’t been a bargain. So Lucifer must be saving the pain up for something bigger than whatever a random demon threw at them.
They passed into the tower—obviously not through the main entrance. A small arch opened to a dark stair, and they were urged up, up, around and around. Nicholas counted steps until they stopped. Eight thousand four hundred and fifty-six. Thank God he didn’t tire anymore.
Pushed out into an unlit stone corridor, they were assaulted by screaming, sobbing. Not the screams of the frozen field, echoing only in his head, but of terror and pain.
“Torture rooms,” Ash said. “How fun.”
Nicholas had to laugh. A demon’s head turned sharply. Never heard a laugh in this place before? Well, he was sure it would be hysterical, sobbing laughter pretty soon.
Lucifer waited at the end of the corridor, a smaller demon at his side. No, not as his side. Just behind him. Clearly subordinate.
The second demon smiled and gestured to a stone door. “The honeymoon suite.”
The what?
Ash closed her eyes. “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and find this is all an absurd trick played by Khavi.”
“You won’t wake up tomorrow,” the demon said. “Go in.”
The small chamber had been constructed of the same black stone as the rest of the tower. But not even black stone, he saw—it was marble, corrupted and pitted, as if after thousands of years of smoke and fire. Not the medieval torture chamber he imagined. Instead of cutting instruments, Iron Maidens, thumbscrews, there were simply two pairs of manacles, hanging from the ceiling by chains, ten feet apart.
A spear at his back urged him forward. But not a spear for Ash, he saw. The armored demons used their hands.
Why the difference? Kinder to a halfling? Something else?
They lifted her. A demon flapped his wings, tightened the manacles—thick steel or something similar. Not much different than the collar Nicholas had used around her neck that first night, he’d wager anything it was too strong for a demon to break. The demons holding her up let go. She fell, hung—her feet suspended above the floor.
God. “You all right?”
“Fine.”
No. No they weren’t. But they couldn’t fight yet. They had to wait. An opportunity had to come.
They lifted him next—and no, it wasn’t bad. This couldn’t strain a Guardian’s muscles, or a halfling’s. Then they turned him around, positioning him to face her, and he knew:
It would be worse than anything he’d imagined.
“The honeymoon suite,” the demon said again, and a short, curving knife appeared in his hand. The others filed out of the chamber, leaving
only Lucifer and his subordinate. “Now and again, we’re fortunate enough to receive humans in the Pit who are a matched pair—who truly love each other. For those souls, the torture in the Pit is never as rewarding as it should be. They are able to put the pain away, to take their minds elsewhere. Except, of course, when the person they use to escape the pain is hanging right in front of them. The only sweeter sound than the scream of a human whose gut is being ripped open is the sound of his scream when we rip his loved one open.”
His gaze on Ash, Lucifer spoke.
The demon bowed and scraped before looking to Ash. “He cannot stand the sight of you. Change to your demon form.”
She almost obeyed. Nicholas saw it, the almost immediate acceptance. But Lucifer wasn’t her master; Madelyn had been.
“I don’t know how,” she said.
Not even a refusal. A lie. A clever lie. Because if they escaped this room, her demon form might allow them—her—to escape a little more easily than a human could.
And it was a test. Would Lucifer know?
If he did, what would he do?
“Halflings,” the demon said, and looked at Lucifer. He nodded.
Realizing he had to try, Nicholas said, “Will you consider a bargain that lets her go?”
The demon whipped his knife around, made a long, deep cut across Nicholas’s stomach. Oh, fuck. Painless, for an instant, and he only heard Ash’s scream, the rattle of her chains, felt the warm slide of blood. Then agony struck.
“Do not speak to him,” the demon hissed. “He will not answer. He will not foul his mouth with a human tongue for the likes of you, Guardian. Bad enough that you foul his tower by speaking it, by the spill of your blood.”
All right. Breathing shallowly, using the anguish tightening his muscles to still every other movement, Nicholas nodded. Best not to point out that Lucifer was the one who’d brought them here.
But Nicholas got that now, too. This was a room intended for humans. Just like Ash’s name, to bring them here was an insult. It said they were worthless, nothing, not even strong enough to escape a torture chamber made to hold humans.
And that was why they’d believed Ash. Halflings were stupid, incompetent. When she claimed not to have abilities, they took it as a confirmation of what they thought they already knew, compounded by their belief that a young halfling demon wouldn’t have the balls—or the skill—to lie to them. They only saw what they expected to see.
Just like Nicholas had, when he’d believed Ash’s every action was part of a plot to destroy him. God. The irony was a killer. But at least he understood it. He could use that knowledge . . . hopefully.
Lucifer spoke. The demon looked up at Nicholas, knife in hand. “Did Khavi ever tell you what your Gift would be?’
“No.” He’d have answered the same, even if she had.
The demon translated Lucifer’s words again. “Then we’ll find it.”
Khavi had said that. He will pull it from you.
She’d known this. She’d known. What did that mean? More than anything, Khavi wanted Michael out of the field. So what did it mean that she’d known this would happen—and that she’d hoped for his Gift to manifest itself?
A Gift that he’d never have had . . . except that she’d also left him with Madelyn. So was this some kind of fucked-up plan? Was this not about an exchange or a bargain with Lucifer at all, but using Nicholas’s Gift to free Michael? She couldn’t have warned him, told him what she was looking for—or even what his Gift would be?
And what the fuck did it mean that Lucifer would pull it from him?
Lucifer approached him now. Ash’s expression cracked, filled with horror. She pulled at her chains. Nicholas looked across the room, held her gaze. He’d make it through this. She’d make it through this.
He hoped his Gift would be the ability to tear demons apart with his mind.
Her eyes narrowed, her ferocity a bite through each word. “It’ll be something you can use to kill them.”
God, he loved her.
Pain ripped through his chest, as if his left pectoral had been shredded. He held Ash’s gaze, refused to look down—but he could feel, could feel what Lucifer was doing: carving symbols into him.
The demon said, “These will only encourage the Gift to come, to stay, to be easily controlled, of course. To actually manifest, we must produce trauma.” His mouth seemed to caress the word. “We must shock your body into thinking it will die, or shock you into saving someone else—”
Lucifer spoke sharply, cut him off. The demon fell to the floor, begging. Lucifer merely looked at him. The demon nodded, stabbed himself in the gut. Staggered to his feet.
“So,” he continued, and held up his knife. “I will create that trauma now.”
CHAPTER 20
She’d destroy them. With God as her witness, Ash would do everything in her power to see them dead.
She didn’t know the demon’s name but she would hunt him through the bowels of Hell, rip him apart with her teeth. And Lucifer, Lucifer . . . oh, death would not be enough. She would see him destroyed, beaten, crawling until he begged for mercy.
They had to be close to stopping. Nicholas couldn’t have much blood left, and if they drained it all, he would die. Lucifer still hadn’t gotten results. Just a few flares of Nicholas’s Gift, bursts of power that carried his emotions with them—pain, fear. So much fear, it sank into her mind, made her scream and scream.
Music to their ears, no doubt.
Finally, Lucifer stepped away. The demon cowered again—fearing that he’d be punished for the failure?—but the demon lord only turned to Ash. He towered over her even though she hung above the floor, forcing her to look up at him, allowing Lucifer to look down at her. Trembling, Ash stifled the impulse to stare defiantly into his eyes, as if to say she wasn’t afraid.
This wasn’t the time. She was afraid, and surviving—escaping with Nicholas—was more important than defiance.
Lucifer’s terrifying gaze raked over her body, and he spoke.
The demon translated, “He makes an offer, halfling. He will return your pathetic human memories of your parents, your childhood. He’ll return your life to you, if you will agree to kill the Guardian. Your life in exchange for the Guardian’s, and then he will let you go.”
Not at the price of Nicholas’s life. Never at that price.
For a moment, however, she let herself consider the rest. Rachel’s parents, and their love for her. Oh, how she wanted to remember that. To have all of those missing pieces, filled in. But those weren’t her memories; they were Rachel’s. And if Rachel’s past returned, so would she. Ash would be lost, ripped away on an incoming flood of memories.
Ash didn’t need her life returned to her; she had one. And she recognized the irony that, when Lucifer had been creating her from Rachel’s remains, he’d torn away the one thing that might have made her stop and reconsider, the one thing that could have left her uncertain as to whether she should sacrifice her life to save Rachel’s: guilt. She was sorry for Rachel, but Ash refused to die to bring her back, and couldn’t feel sorry for that.
In any case, Ash didn’t believe for a moment that Rachel would make it out of here alive—or manage to save Nicholas. Whatever the reason behind Lucifer’s offer, it wasn’t to let her go. His offer had to be part of a plot.
After all, Nicholas hadn’t been wrong about all demons. He’d just been wrong about her.
“No,” she said.
Terrible silence reigned for a long moment. Finally, Lucifer spoke and left.
That was it? No gutting, no screaming? Ash couldn’t believe that Nicholas’s pain had been enough. So why not do the same to her?
The demon waited until the door shut, and his cower became a gleeful grimace. “I’m to sew up the Guardian and wait for him to heal,” the demon said to her. “Then we start all over again. I am truly favored.”
Ash bit her tongue. She’d seen the demon’s reaction when Nicholas had spoken of Lucifer. Sh
e wouldn’t give him any excuse.
His eyes narrowed, and he stepped closer, examining her face. “We are not to spill your blood in this realm. Not even a drop. Do you know why? If your answer gives me power, I can reward you.”
So that was why she wasn’t being gutted. But she would not foul her mouth by answering him.
The demon shrugged. A roll of wire appeared in his hands—thin barbed wire. “So I’ll sew him up, then.”
God. And Nicholas was still conscious. He couldn’t always hold her gaze; he was still awake. His jaw clenched now as the demon moved in front of him. Pain.
She had to get free. She had to get free now, while the demon’s back was turned, while he worked. This might be their only opportunity.
The chain was fastened to the ceiling with some kind of big bolt. She wasn’t sure she could break either, not just by swinging or moving. She’d have to brace herself, use her full strength—her feet against the wall, maybe. She couldn’t swing that far. Pull herself up the chain, then, brace her feet on the ceiling—except the manacles held her hands too far apart. She couldn’t grasp the chain between them. She already knew the steel wouldn’t break.
. . . but her hand would.
God. Like a wolf chewing off his leg to get out of a trap? She would do it, she would do it.
But she didn’t need to. She only needed her hand to fit through a hole the size of her wrist. So there was just a choice to make: What did she need more, her smaller fingers or her thumb?
She thought of her weapons in her cache. Chose the thumb.
The first bone snapped. Ash held in her cry, watching the demon for any sign that he’d heard it. No, she’d been making too much noise, rattling and screaming this whole time.
And he’d never believe the halfling would get free, but she had to hurry. He’d almost finished sewing, would turn around, and the opportunity would be lost.
Now the second bone. Snap! Oh, God. But it was working. Her hand slipped a little in the manacle. Nicholas’s head came up. His eyes opened and met hers. His Gift flared.
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