“Don’t you know where baby demons come from?” Azoth scoffed.
“No, actually.”
“Well, now you can learn. Let’s go.” Azoth stepped forward and grasped his wrist through the crack. “Tarik is missing me.”
“Hands off,” Luc said, opening the door wider with a hand braced over Oren’s head.
Oren glanced over his shoulder to find Luc dressed in leather trousers and a leather harness that was buckled tightly across his chest. He looked mouthwatering.
Azoth pouted and released his grip, glaring at Luc. “He has to come!”
“To do your job for you so you and Tarik don’t have to deal with the hatching?” Luc asked dryly. “You try and wiggle out of it every year.”
Azoth scowled and bared his sharp teeth, the incisors extended.
But Oren was already sold.
“The baby demons are hatching?” Oren cooed, cupping his hands and putting them under his chin. “Can we see? Please, please, pleaaase.”
Luc sighed, and Azoth smirked.
10
Luc
“Are you sure you’re okay to come?” Oren asked a few minutes later after getting dressed. He was skipping—as much as he could after being railed by the devil—his way down the narrow hallways after Azoth, who was practically running ahead of them.
They’d left Beast behind, much to the hellbeast’s disgust, and Luc could have stayed too, but there was no way he was leaving Oren in the care of Azoth and Tarik.
“I have a few calls to return regarding some new torture devices we ordered a while ago that never got here, and I should probably take a look at those files you compiled on vacations. Zorun also slipped a note under the door after you passed out on my cock the second time to say the stuff you ordered is here, so I was going to put your shelves together,” Luc said.
“Oh, my things are here!” Oren bounced on the balls of his feet. “Awesome. I have the plan for all your paperwork mapped out. We’re talking color coding, binders, labels…”
“How are you this happy about it?” Luc asked.
“Nothing smells better than hot laminating pouches.”
“But brimstone is a no-go,” Luc deadpanned.
Oren stuck his tongue out at him.
“We also need to get the storage room completely cleared out before your new toys get here.” Oren changed the subject. “We talked about this. The storage room is mostly clean now, but you need to write some of the broken devices off.”
“But—”
“There’s memories there,” Oren said. “I know. You’ve been saying so all the time. And I told you you can pick a few favorite’s to keep, but hoarding unusable torture devices is what got this place so messy in the first place.”
Luc’s shoulders slumped, and Oren walked closer to put his palm just next to the root of Luc’s wing.
“It’s hard sometimes,” Luc said in frustration.
Oren gave him a sympathetic pout. “I know. You get attached to your things. But think of it this way—the more room you make, the more new things we can order, and you can find new favorites. It’ll be fun.”
Luc could think of a lot of fun things he could order forthemtoo.
Soon enough, they reached the cavern where they kept the eggs. It was an enclosed space with molten magma pits dotted around that kept the cavern at the exact temperature the eggs needed to be healthy.
Luc spotted Tarik lying forlornly next to one, his skin blending into the molten rock but his white hair giving him away. He was throwing pebbles in the direction of the clutch he was supposed to be caring for.
