Once more he was before me. The Ley sight was a superb warning system, but it would never beat seraphim craftsmanship. Jerking from her prostrate position, Cathy’s body raised three feet into the air. My suppressed scream manifested in a flash of bone magic that attempted to hold onto her soul. Grinning like a circus clown, Lucifer flicked his wrist.
Cathy’s head popped completely off her shoulders. I lost the connection to her soul. As I forced my gaze to remain locked with his, I felt Rebecca’s magic leaching the anguish from my chest. The Hell dimension had reduced her healing powers to nothing, but her ability to absorb negative emotions was my saving grace.
As the panic subsided, I managed to respond. “Temper, temper.”
On the dais behind Lucifer, Asmodeus, his chief necromancer, shifted. That was his version of wanting to give me a backhand. Part of it was fear that my forked tongue would bring Lucifer’s wrath on all of us. The majority of it was envy. Lucifer’s acolytes despised me, because no matter how insolently I behaved, he still needed me. But as time bled on, that need was beginning to wane. Even I could only play the bungling human idiot for so long.
The only assurance I had that Lucifer wouldn’t harm Rebecca was that he was sure I’d retaliate somehow. My grasp on sanity was fraying to almost nothing. I’d thought we were at a crossroads. One of these days, I would get sick of constantly being wrong.
“I think you need a little reminder of what’s at stake.” As I stood there playing chicken with him, the air just behind his left shoulder rippled. A tiny crimson spark ignited and quickly expanded into a gaping portal. At its centre was an opaque mass so dark, I thought I was looking into the void of a black hole. The humanoid creature that hunkered through the portal, one emaciated limb at a time, was only partially corporeal.
Inside the cathedral, Lucifer had established a human-friendly ecosystem so the cold didn’t bother me. With every inch that the thing in front of me dragged itself into the Hell dimension, the temperature dropped five degrees. My breath began to fog the air in front of my face. The trails of Cathy’s blood stopped seeping from her torn neck and congealed.
My attention never left the progression of the creature through the portal. Its scrawny limbs were barely covered by an ash-grey cloak that was torn to shreds. Through the gaps I witnessed its mottled brown skin shifting over sinewy muscle. As it ducked its head through the portal, the hood of the cloak pulled free. Biting my lips together was the only way I was able to keep the gasp from escaping.
The thing in front of me should have existed only in nightmares. Its eyes were two unseeing, milky marbles at once blind but all-knowing. Nausea wracked my gut as its left eye swivelled in my direction while its right eye remained steadfastly pinned to Lucifer. Where its cheeks should have been, the skin was stretched so tight it had torn in places, gaping to reveal knife-sharp teeth without needing to open its mouth. But it was the way it walked that made my tiny hairs stand up. One foot first and then a drag of the other. Like it was only just learning how to stand on two feet. The sound made shivers crawl down my spine. Without meaning to, I recalled every nightmare I’d ever had where something demonic was chasing me but my legs wouldn’t work and I couldn’t run.
And then it opened its mouth. “Brother.” His ancient rasp spoke of old power. The thing was, it didn’t fit with his decrepit body. So the demon had chosen this broken vessel for kicks. Awesome. Up on the dais, the necromancers lowered their heads out of respect.
My heart hammered in my chest. Lucifer’s smile was disarmingly genuine. “Apollyon. You look well.”
“I don’t feel it.”
Lacing his hand behind his back, Lucifer balanced on the balls of his feet. “Why is that?”
“The bounty that was promised to me was stolen.”
“Ahh. Let’s see if we can rectify that.”
His eyes twinkled with delight as Lucifer turned back towards me. I smiled at him, showing teeth. So what if they were chattering? It was a miracle I hadn’t peed myself and started bawling.
Lucifer feathered the back of his hand in the air. Trailing behind it appeared a mural of transparent images. I planted my feet, every muscle in my body constricting as the image of Kai above the soul gate materialised in front of me. “Is this the one?” Lucifer crooned.
Apollyon’s dead stare was full of eternal hunger. “Yes.”
Lucifer’s gaze never left me as he asked, “How was he stolen?”
“Blood witch.”
Lucifer nodded. “Blood witch.”
The image rematerialised into one of Sophie snapping out the words of light a bare millisecond before my Angelical tore the world asunder. Where I had been too distracted before, now I saw a portal had opened up behind Kai. But Sophie’s quick thinking had thrown him away from its reach. A gnashing sound whirred in Apollyon’s throat.
“How can we make this better?” Lucifer asked.
Apollyon’s head turned up, his mouth ajar. A sandpaper tongue slipped between his parched lips. It scraped down his chin. “I want them both.”
Lucifer smiled. The left side of my chest throbbed. So this was what it felt like to have a heart attack.
“She was promised to you a long time ago,” Lucifer said. “But you haven’t been able to get hold of her soul. Why is that?”
Nope. A heart attack was the full-body spasm that sliced through me when Apollyon lifted his gaunt left arm and pointed his bony finger at me. “Alessia’s protection circles. And now another force that is protecting her that I can’t penetrate.”
Lucifer nodded. “That’s right. Three years of protection circles every night making it impossible for you to locate her again. But now she’s alone. Now
