Light footsteps cushioned by the damp leaf litter made their way towards me. For a second, I brushed a sliver of hedge magic over the earth and felt its corresponding sweep of tenderness sinking into my bones. Life.
It was such a welcome sensation after almost six months in the Hell dimension that my eyes filled with tears before I could temper my reaction.
It made the hard note in Cathy’s voice all the more vicious. “You should have destroyed it.”
Uncurling from my foetal position, I stood, swiped the tear from my cheek, and glared at her. Standing, we were about the same height. “The riddle said the beast must grant me access. That means we were supposed to tame it. Not blast it off the face of the earth! If you hadn’t shouted, it wouldn’t have detected me in the first place!”
Her unremarkable hazel eyes blinked with a distinct lack of sympathy. Behind her bulbous head, the noon sun blared. It cast her too-wide features in shadows that made her skin seem tight over her harsh bone structure.
She lifted her chin so that she gained a fraction more height over me. “The master will be displeased.”
Away from Rebecca’s calming influence, all of my charming personality traits came slithering back to life. Pouting, I balled my hands into fists and pressed them to my cheekbones, imitating sobs. “Boo hoo. Lucifer can jump up his own ass and die.”
Throwing my shoulder between us, I was about to stalk away when she gripped my forearm. “I must tell him.”
Unrepentant rage ignited in my chest. Months and months of emotion control training with Rebecca and I was still constantly on the verge of going postal. With inhuman self-control, I scraped my teeth over my tongue and dragged the Angelical from its tip. It would be so easy. Too easy to obliterate her with a single word. But then I would be no different than my psychotic creator. If there was one thing that stopped me dead in my tracks, it was becoming anything like him. “Do what you have to do.”
It was big talk while we stood in the poised serenity of the jungle in the vicinity of Angkor Wat. As we trudged through the chill vastness of Lucifer’s throne room in the cathedral, my bravado began to morph into dread.
In keeping with his celestial moniker, the Morning Star was draped languidly over his selenite-crystal throne. Today, his perfectly proportioned everything was dressed in the ceremonial attire of pre-dimension-collapse Fae royalty. The Mithril diadem perched on his head threw off lights that made my eyes water.
Not a single being, from the demons constantly lined up around the arched doorway, to the supernatural inner circle, bought his placid act.
Cathy made a beeline for him, her legs scurrying like the stick-insect she so perfectly resembled. Trying to maintain my composure, I didn’t allow myself to catch Rebecca’s eye as I stepped past her. Rebecca’s hands slipped behind her back.
In spite of my promise not to give in to fear, thorns lodged in my throat. When I reached the edge of the steps leading to the dais, those spines turned into chainsaws.
Retreating into my training, I rifled through all the reasons why I would not let subservient instincts get the better of me. Kai would probably get a kick out of knowing that when fear had me in a choke-hold, my thoughts immediately conjured up his arrogant smirk. It challenged me to straighten my spine against the quicksand of terror that tried to drag me to an abrupt halt.
My heartbeat slowed.
Flowing up to his feet, Lucifer stood for a moment in the glory of the red light filtering through the stained-glass windows. I suppressed a groan. Around me, the denizens of the Hell dimension took to their knees until his royal bastardness and I were the only ones standing.
Cathy became a human puddle, prostrating herself on the marble floor. She quivered but didn’t make a peep as Lucifer sidled down the staircase, used her back as a stepping-stone, and appeared three feet in front of me. He swept those glacial orb-eyes of his to my empty satchel.
“Another failure.”
The room held its collective breath. Fear rippling in the air like heat-lines in a desert. When I could get my voice to work, it was equally icy. Two could play at this game.
“Your assessment is quite astute, my lord.”
Rebecca’s sapling-green aura flickered in the back of my mind. There was no need to slip into the Ley dimension to register her unease. Time and again she had tried to counsel me to be cautious. Hand on heart, I really did try. But whenever I was in his presence, the terror would warp inside my mind and come out the other side as snark. We’d decided that my best insurance was to keep my trap shut. Half the time it even worked.
Lucifer circled around me. “I’m beginning to think your heart isn’t in this.”
Taking pains not to allow my body to turn in his direction, I huffed. “My heart isn’t the weak link here.” On the floor in front of me, Cathy went rigid.
“It was her fault!” she wailed. “She was deliberately trying to be noisy to wake the beast!”
Ignoring the sorceress, Lucifer re-entered my field of vision. In an effort to forestall his psychotic reaction, I offered up a solution.
“We both know the answer is to cut these babysitters loose,” I suggested. “It’s impossible to concentrate on shielding their supernatural presence and search for the remnants at the same time. I’m much better equipped to do the raiding on my own.”
A thin smile stretched across his ungodly face. “So that you can continue stalling for time?” Rebecca had told me that time worked strangely in this place. Six months here would only be three in the earth dimension. Three months wasn’t long enough for the supernaturals to rebuild their defences. A single extra day was too long for me to spend in Lucifer’s company. But I would stay here forever
