“I am a king, and I am through suffering cowardly peons like you. But there is a way you can help me.”
“Anything, my king. My lord, Lucifer!” he cried.
I leaned down close to him and grabbed his head. “Open to me.”
His eyes widened, and his memories joined with mine, engulfing me in all the raw emotion so I suffered it as my own.I was the one happy in the city of Heaven, I’d expressed fear and uncertainty in God’s creation phase, I’d discovered jealousy when He gifted his new human experiments the world He’d Created. Then there was so much fighting, the Holy Plains covered in angelic ichor, the devastating loss of so many of our brethren.
None of those were new feelings to me, but reliving those moments in Astaroth’s memories, they were so much more intense.
Pain burned through me as we fell screaming into the bowels of darkness itself. It was disorienting to watch myself taking up the throne, to feel both his awe and my own anger and resignation. When Lilith came, deeming only me worthy of her flesh, his jealousy threatened to overwhelm my curiosity and lust. When she left, he hated me for discarding her while I felt only pride in what we’d built and contentment that we’d separated amenably.
Then he rose against me with the pitiful handful of lesser fallen, his red-hot rage finally boiling over, and I’d cast him into the fiery pits eagerly, hoping for something to break up the monotony only to be disappointed with my challengers.
Another face floated to the surface, and Astaroth’s terror was mine as we looked upon the face of the betrayer himself.
“If you fail to bring him back, then you will rejoin Asmodeus in the pits.”Abaddon bared his teeth. “If you succeed, I shall let you test the next prototype on him.”
Reliving all those moments felt like hours had passed but had only taken an instant. I blinked back into myself and froze time around me, trying to process those last words. Asmodeus had been Abaddon’s biggest rival and now he was imprisoned, and Abaddon was making prototype weapons of some kind. What effect would they have on me, though? I couldn’t die by anything other than… an angel blade. Was that what he was after? My blade, or at least one of the Archangel blades?
Unfreezing time, I grabbed the now-mangled sword and held it between myself and Astaroth. It went up in a veritable bonfire in my red-scaled hand, startling the poor bastard, and as the flames died, his trembling increased ten-fold. His eyes widened in terror at the shining white sword, white fire still licking up the blade.
“You can still summon it?” he gasped. His thoughts bounced around chaotically as he realized what I was about to do. “No,please! Please, spare me and you shall never have one so loyal as I! Name your goals and I shall see them done! Please, King Lucifer!”
I curled my lip at the shameful display. “I have no need for opportunists who would betray me if they thought they could gain from it.”
Without another word, my Archangel blade cleaved his head from his shoulders with naught more than a whisper. There were only two others in the universe like it, carried by my Archangel brothers Michael, who led the host of Heaven, and Uriel, who guarded the entrance to Eden. If Abaddon was after one, that meant he was pushing for the destruction of all angels and the annihilation of Heaven. Even in our most heated days, my brothers and I had not pulled these blades on one another.
But Abaddon wouldn’t hesitate, and that was a dangerous mindset. I needed to—
“Lucifer?”
Oh no.
“Did he just call youLucifer?”
I turned slowly, shifting back into my human form, using a bit of magic to reform the clothes I’d ruined. Lexi was standing behind me, shaking and covered in…what in the Nine Hells was… was that demon blood?Black dripped liberally from her already dark hoodie, from her once-red hair, splashed across her pale skin. There was no red, though, which hopefully meant she was uninjured. Apparently, she was a much better fighter than I’d assumed.
And damn, did she look pissed.
Chapter 16
Lexi
Wait.
Did that guy just call him Lucifer?
And he answered to it?
Their conversation was drowned out by the roaring in my ears. All the signs were right in my face the whole fucking time and I was too stupid to see it. His sinful bakery theme, the jokes about his reputation, his magic, his family issues, hisentire fucking house!The way he always referred to humans as if he wasn’t one, because of course he wasn’t! Even his weird reaction to our discussion about the villains of religion made sense now.
Sam is Lucifer.
Lucifer is the devil.
He shoved me away. I stumbled and opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but the look in his eyes was heartbreaking. My anger dissipated for a moment, long enough to register the man in front of him. He was hunkered down in a battle stance, wearing some weird medieval-style armor, huge black wings protruding from his back. Fear and panic lanced through my chest at the strength of his presence.
Sam's—Lucifer’s—voice deepened with an urgency I’d never heard from him. “Run.”
