“This one looks like she’s already come through a scrape or two.”
I glared through the haze the storm had brought to the harbor city—or maybe that was just my eyes. Two more demons like the ones I’d fought with Lucifer were standing up ahead near a restaurant. I kept walking, hoping they were smart enough to leave me alone. The edge of the Long Wharf was so close, if I could just get there, that was where I needed to be. For whatever reason.
Predictably, they stepped into my path. The ice in my head flowed down into my shoulders, along with a cold fury. They were stopping me from reaching my destination. Who were they to keep me from it?
“Move,” I demanded.
Hungry smiles stretched across their faces and they moved apart, flanking me. “A witch? Or something more?”
“Power oozes from her,” the other said. “She would make a fine gift, perhaps after we’ve had our fun.”
My body gradually went numb as the cold spread down into my fingertips, my lungs. I exhaled, and the cloud of breath had nothing to do with Boston’s late fall temperatures. Power crystallized in my throat as I forced my hands up to either side, palms facing each of them. I shook as my body temperature plummeted, the ever-present heat snuffed out like a candle in a snowstorm.
“Freeze right where you are.” Tears sprang to my eyes as pain lanced through my throat, but the demons made no further movements. “Stay. Don’t follow me.”
I was so close, so close to my goal. The cold continued its path through my body, numbing every inch to the point where I could barely feel my legs, but they kept moving. The demons remained where they were, not so much as a flutter of their enormous wings. A roar echoed across the wharf, a cry so full of pain and anguish that I just knew it was what had drawn me there.
What I could do about it in my current state was beyond me, though.
Fog rose off the water, obscuring my view. Shadows shifted inside it, giving the illusion of some living being thrashing uselessly against the obstruction. I looked around, wiping the rain out of my eyes, surprised the water on my skin hadn’t frosted over like my insides.
What am I looking for? Why am I here?
The wharf was empty of people and demons alike, and though I didn’t have Lucifer’s gift for it, I didn’t get the sense that anyone was hiding nearby. So why had this… instinct pulled me here? What was I meant to do, to find? Where was the source of that roar I’d heard a minute ago?
Water churned violently, spraying me as it met the wharf. I leaned against the rail, studying the fog, when the shadows twisted again, darkened. A combination of horror and elation pierced through the ice in my head. Though I’d never met him, I knew exactly who I was looking at as he towered over the city, roaring his displeasure.
Jörmungandr, better known as Leviathan.
And one of my half-brothers.
But something was wrong with him. I could feel it, some foreign power attached to him. Closing my eyes, I stopped fighting that cold power and let it go. It led me here, it sure as shit needed to tell me why. My whole body shuddered, but my head cleared, and when I opened my eyes, I was met with Leviathan's enormous aura. The aura which was a muddy brown around his head.
A body landed beside me and electricity crackled along my arms. Thor’s shoulders dropped as he stared over the same scene I did.
“By the Bifrost,” he said, his voice hushed. “Why is Jörmungandr here?”
I glanced between Thor and my half-brother, dread pooling in my stomach. This wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter 16
Lucifer
Lexi’s current state was an incentive to take down the three Fallen quickly. None were of the status Astaroth held before I’d locked him away for his pathetic attempt at insurrection, but I was still outnumbered and they packed more punch than most demons.
In the end, though, the need to return to Lexi’s side had me ripping through them. Something was happening with her power, something I didn’t understand. The pained, panicked look on her face suggested she didn’t, either, and a cold stab of fear lodged itself in my brain. I followed the pulse of her power to—fuck. She was radiating energy like a beacon—a crisp, dangerous flavor that still carried her unique signature—which meant her amulet had been broken at some point.
Not good.
Space folded around me and I stepped through to her side, noting Thor’s presence. Then I looked up.
“What the hell is Leviathan doing here?” I asked no one in particular.
Leviathan was unique as one of the demon kings of Hell, considering he wasn’t actually a demon. After Odin’s curse on the siblings, Hela had carved out her own pocket to watch over the souls of the Norse dead and those who followed their ways. She was reclusive, but we were on friendly terms thanks to Loki asking me to check in with her occasionally.
I’d never managed to get the story from any of them, but something happened some years later that sent Hela to my door, asking me to shelter Jörmungandr. He was deeply traumatized by whatever Odin had done, but eventually asked if he could serve under me to repay me for taking him in. I told him that if he wanted to serve me, he’d have to earn his place like anyone else.
He chose to challenge one of the demon kings for his position, took on his nearly indestructible serpent form, and ate him. One terrifying fact about Jörmungandr was that anything he swallowed in that form ceased to exist. There was no rebirth in the depths of Tartarus, no Heaven or Hell, no Valhalla. Nothing. It was after his ascension to a demon king that he took on the name Leviathan, after the great sea serpents that once terrorized the mortal realm.
