“Shame about your human pet, Belial,” Baal spoke up, his voice a mix of garbled syllables and clicks. His attention slipped to my oar leaning against the table, the Lord of Lechery’s blackened heads gaping at him and Paimon. “Heard Asmodeus kidnapped her from your All Hallows’ Eve Masquerade, but it looks like you got your revenge. Mammon’s right—you should eat and go home.”
I swept a clump of what remained of Asmodeus’ flaxen hair off the table with a growl-laced chuckle. “Bullshit. I won’t be satisfied until my queen is back in my arms.”
“Your queen?” Mammon laughed with a snide grin that had no humor in it at all. “You can’t make a mortal the Queen of Death.”
I chewed my food, tamping down my anger as he just about gave away all the shit I already knew.
Brutes like him loved to talk, and if you let them talk long enough, they’d always tell on themselves.
Paimon shot Mammon a look of warning with his giant eye. Since the demon had no mouth, he couldn’t talk. Not that he needed to—everything he was thinking could be said with a look.
The fire demon, catching the Lord of Sloth’s gaze, started to backtrack. “Not that it matters anymore, right? She’s gone. Belphegor probably had his fun and disposed of her. Knowingthat depraved bastard, there won’t be much left of her body, so might as well go back to your realm.”
“You’re right,” I muttered, fighting tooth and nail to keep my cool demeanor in place. “She was just a distraction anyway, right? So what if she’s dead? Mortals are supposed to die.” I twirled the cheese knife between my fingers, my voice taking a dark bend. “I say, good riddance.”
Perhaps I wasn’t such a bad liar after all. That, or Mammon was dumber than I’d given him credit for, because even under his garish armor, I could see his muscles relaxing. “Finally, you’ve come to your senses. Shame you had to kill some of our brothers before you did, but that means more for us to rule. We can divvy up the realms between us.”
There was a sudden shift in the room, and the other demon lords seemed to eat up the obvious lie. Was it easy for them to buy, since they couldn’t grasp the concept of loving anything other than their power?
That had to be it. They couldn’t understand my obsession with my mortal pet, so it was easy to believe my feelings for her were but a passing infatuation.
“Slave! Ambrosia for my brothers!” Mammon roared, his gravelly voice echoing through the hall. A second later, a soul with a chain around his throat shuffled in with an iron pitcher. By the time he finished pouring all four of us goblets of the rare liquor, Mammon lost his patience. As the soul took too long navigating the perimeter of the comically long table, he threw him into the fire.
He couldn’t shatter souls like I could, so the soul would live on, feeling every bit of the fire as it burned for however long it suited the Lord of Greed.
Mammon took a seat beside Paimon across from me and held his goblet up for a toast. “To mortal meat,” he said, his smilestretching from ear to ear as the soul’s screams from the fire added to the hellish ambiance.
Tipping my drink to theirs, I said nothing as the other two repeated Mammon’s words.
I knocked the goblet back, dumping the meager amount of ambrosial alcohol down my throat. There was a reason it was called the liquor of the gods. It was warm and tasted of heaven, unlike anything else in existence, in the underworld or otherwise. There was a time when I thought the liquor was the closest a demon could ever get to true paradise.
That was before I captured Rayven.
“Speaking of mortal meat,” I began, setting my empty goblet down, “have you ever fucked a human pussy while it still throbs with life?”
Mammon’s flaming brows quirked. “No, I haven’t, but I have eaten fresh mortal flesh. It tastes fucking delicious. When you cook them before they’re fully dead, you can taste the fear. Gives the meat a nice flavor.”
Disgust had my jaws snapping together, teeth clacking, but to the other lords, it seemed to come off as enthusiasm.
Rayven was right. These monsters were so self-absorbed in their own interests that they hadn’t learned shit about me, even after all this time.
“Shame. I was looking forward to tasting some. I’ve heard your feasts are the most opulent things in the Nine Hells, Mammon.”
“And what a feast it would have been today if Belphegor hadn’t fucked me over. I think you would have enjoyed the royal meat I had prepared.”
Mammon snickered as he took the last gulp of his wine. “In fact, I know you would have. Too bad she’s not here anymore. Imagine if Belphegor hadn’t ruined things. You would have walked in to see your human pet spread out on my dinner table, trussed and stuffed like a roast pig…”
There it was, the undeniable slip-up I’d been waiting for. A heavy pause settled over the hall, tension choking the room, and Baal exchanged a nervous look with the Lord of Sloth. Mammon, oblivious to the mounting unease, kept running his fucking mouth.
“I would have saved you the best part—her pussy—since you were such a fan of it while it was still alive.”
I couldn’t keep up the façade a second longer. My blood went cold then molten hot all in the same furious inhale I dragged in.
With a roar, I grabbed my oar and hurled it at Paimon in a blink. He was fast—considering he could bend time at his will—but the fates must have been on my side, because he wasn’t quick enough.
The handle speared his giant eyeball, but instead of blood, shining, liquid mercury gushed from the fleshy sack that had been his head a breath before.
The Lord of Wrath let out one of his infamous war cries as he watched his brother slump onto the table, dead in an instant, my oar poking out the back of his eye like a spear on the battlefield.
