“Can I wait and ask for my favor later?”
He nodded. “You have one year to claim your favor. Just prior to the time running out, I will call you here again for a last chance, and you will be given a method of transport here in case you come up with a favor in the meantime.”
It wasn’t ideal, but at least I’d have time to think.
I opened my mouth to tell him my choice, that I wanted to wait, when a scream echoed out from behind me.
He lifted his gaze, a quick motion that showed the first real moment of surprise from him.
I twisted to find chaos engulfing the people behind me. The crowd shifted like something alive, and the movement was so varied that I couldn’t identify what was happening at first.
It was violent, fast and coated with splashes of red.
After a moment, my eyes narrowed in on one grouping, on a tall female demon who raked her claws against the throat of another. She moved from one to the next, her motions fluid and lethal.
Her eyes, it took me a moment to realize, were black. They were the same as Olin, as Paul, as Troy when he’d been taken over. The only explanation was that the shadow was here and infecting immortals.
That was the piece I needed to fit the rest together. At least twelve other immortals in the group were in the same frenzy, casting chaos through the crowd, forcing others to defend themselves.
Still, in such a small area, there wasn’t much of a defense any one person could put up.
I backed away until something grabbed my arm. I twisted, fist drawn as if a punch from me would do anything, but Troy grabbed my hand.
The time to worry about what he thought about my revelation could come later as the screams increased.
“Let’s go,” he said, yanking me backward.
“Their eyes.”
Grant came up and nodded. “I saw. We need to go, now. Lucifer has already bolted and when the devil leaves a party, it’s time to go.”
And, for once, I couldn’t agree more. We rushed backward, past the thrones, past the tree, away from the bloody chaos of the immortals.
“Can’t you create a portal now?” I asked Grant.
“Lucifer hasn’t removed your tracer yet.”
“Of course he hasn’t,” I griped, feeling like it was yet another time Lucifer had screwed me over.
He was on my list of least favorite people.
“Gran,” I said, trying to pull to a stop.
Troy would have none of it, my useless objection nothing to his strength. “Gran can take care of herself,” he reminded me.
Which was true, I guessed.
We took the staircase up to put distance between ourselves and the violence, but as we turned a corner, a vampire I didn’t recognize but had seen with Kase and Colter appeared. Those eyes of his made me shudder, especially when they locked on me.
Kase moved past me, nothing but a blur, before he hit the vampire.
Troy didn’t give me time to watch or worry. He pulled me the other way, but our paths of exit closed quickly. A demon with wings landed on the edge of the walkway and Hunter took on that one. A creature stood farther down that Grant incinerated on the spot. A man who looked like the one who had tried to plant me forced Troy from my side.
Everywhere we went, more of those immortals with the black eyes stood in our way until only Grant and I rushed from one spot to another. He seemed breathless, and I recalled what he’d said about how magic worked.
What happened if he ran out? He could do away with most of the things that opposed us with a flick of his wrist, but his words became slower, clumsier, and when we turned a corner, he stumbled.
Two lumbering, twisted beings blocked our path.
Grant cursed, then opened the closest door and shoved me in.
I tried to go back, but he was quicker, closing me in. He uttered a quick spell and a shimmering light engulfed the wood. I knew before I even tried that he’d barred it, but I pulled anyway.
The idiot had put himself on the wrong side of that spell!
I knew, of course, that he’d done it on purpose. Grant, despite his failings, would have kept himself on the outside to give it every last bit of fight he had.
I screamed his name against the spell, the door, the frustration of being locked in with nothing I could do about it.
I tried to reach for my other form, for the power I’d found, but it didn’t work. Was there a limit when I could use that? Was it my fear?
All I knew was I couldn’t seem to grasp for that burning sensation that had consumed me before.
I slammed my fist against the door when I had nothing else to do, nothing else to try.
“Well, well,” came a voice from behind me, one I’d heard but didn’t immediately recognize.
I twisted to find Lilith there, a smirk on her lips that was exactly like Lucifer’s.
I could have thought it was a coincidence that I’d ended up in her room, or that she was hiding like me, but there was no way to believe something so innocent.
I took one look into her eyes, into the sadistic pleasure on her face, and got the same feeling as I had when I’d faced her—or the pieces of herself she’d left in others.
Lilith was the shadow, the thing that had been stealing spirits, that had driven the immortals mad, that had nearly killed me in my dreams, and here I was, stuck alone in a room with her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So it was you?” I asked, not bothering to play dumb.
“You can’t be as surprised as I am about you.” She walked with a confidence and gait that was downright impressive. If I didn’t hate her so much, I might have liked her. “I couldn’t see you before, just glimpses of this dark mist, just
