My nieces had moved on, and wherever they were now, it wasn’t here. No one would be saving me. It’s not like I’d never been scared before. Ever since my father got cancer, I’d been scared out of my mind. But being frightened for myself wasn’t something that had ever been a thing.
Until now.
Now I was scared out of my mind that I would never see my dad again.
I’d never see Mel or Gabe.
Cerberus probably lay dead in the tunnel outside. And Lucifer...
“Lucifer.” I sobbed my mate’s name, my fingers ghosting over his mark on my thigh.
Do whatever you have to, Kitten. Do whatever you have to stay alive until I get there.
It wasn’t like he was actually talking to me. His telepathy ability didn’t work like that. Still, I knew that’s exactly what he’d be saying right now. Don’t give up.
And my beast was basically slapping me from the inside, screaming at me to do something, anything.“Fight,”she urged.“If not for our sake, for our mate’s.”
What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have my clutch on me, and even if I did, what good would a cell phone and a few sticks of gum do against a freaking demon shifter with thighs the girth of my whole damn body?
If I knew my date was going to turn out like this, I would have brought a flipping battle ax or a flame thrower. Or—or—a rock. My gaze clamped down on a big-ass rock that was probably as big as Abaddon’s head and maybe just small enough for me to lift.
So it might not kill him, but it would hurt like a mother.
Maybe it was just adrenaline, but I managed to haul the rock over my head, and I waited at the entrance of the cave, crouching behind a stalagmite big enough to conceal me.
Abaddon stomped in not a breath later, his murder-filled glower ripping apart the space in search of me.
“Don’t hesitate. He’ll find us any damn second,”my beast advised. “Now!”
9
As I followed Jessica’s scent down to the Eighth Circle, to the caverns nestled below the great mountain, I couldn’t help but wonder why’d she lead Abaddon here of all places.
Surely, she’d noticed the mark by now. She had to know I was tracking her, and leading me into a maze wouldn’t help my chances of finding them any sooner.
I didn’t think for a second that all this had been Abaddon’s idea.
He would have known to take her to the top immediately so that he could hand her over to Michael.
But Jessica was smart. She would know that her chances of survival were slim as soon as she stepped out of that elevator onto the surface. She would do everything she could to stay alive, as she should.
I knew the caverns beneath Devil’s Head Mountain once served as her and Nyx’s home before she’d met Abaddon or me, and The Fates had once lived there too… Shit. She didn’t still think they were there, did she?
They had made their way back to the archdemon’s layer to be with their father. But Jess wouldn’t know that. The existence of the Tenth Layer was something that had only become known to me after I’d lost her. If she expected them to help her, she was going to be sorely disappointed and very much in danger.
Blood and feathers! This was taking too damn long on foot.
If only Jessica had led him to the Third Circle, or the Fourth, where I would have taken the car and been on top of them in minutes.
“Find my mate. Fucking find her!”
My beast was going mad inside me.
Between the spirit’s incessant growls in my ear and the sick fantasy of pulling Abaddon apart piece by piece playing in the back of my mind, I was going crazy. Jess’s sunshine scent still clung to my nostrils, and it was the only thing driving me forward while my head went to a dark place fit for a devil’s fantasies.
Oh, Jess. I could still feel the softness of her skin beneath my fingertips, how responsive she’d been to every lick of my tongue and stroke of my cock. The thought of it made me go rock hard, knowing that she now bore my mark on her thigh. I slipped back into darkness when I imagined the possibility of Abaddon touching her, even now.
Even if I got to her in time, could I forgive myself for believing his act? After all, I had taken his crown and his mate. No matter how nonchalant he’d seemed about the whole thing a few hundred years afterward, I’d made him my bitch. I shouldn’t have ever allowed the snake to earn my trust. Me of all people. I should have known better to guard such a thing.
