The book was sitting so innocently on the table. I wanted to get my hands on it so bad. The answers were in there, I just knew they were. That book held all thewhys.It would tell mewhythey were doing this to me, and even though knowing why wouldn’t make a difference, I still wanted to know. Just then, the door opened, and Art walked in. His frost-white hair shone in the green firelight, and his ice-blue eyes stood out against his dark skin.
“Hey, Lilith,” he grinned at me, and I scowled at him.
I still hadn’t forgiven him for betraying me, but I was beginning to realize that demons thrived on torture, humiliation, and betrayal.
I was not the only one who was publicly tormented at meals. Over the last few days, I had seen demons do so many depraved things to one another; it was beginning to just feel normal. None of them ever seemed to hold grudges. It was like they needed to hurt one another, and there was a mutual understanding that they were just helping each other meet their needs.
They were little torment junkies, and they couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I supposed when you lived for eternity, things would get boring after a while, and you would need to find increasingly depraved ways to spice things up. It felt odd and foreign to my mortal mind, but I was beginning to understand that thesebeings were not human. They were just behaving in a way that was natural to them. Nothing was ever personal.
With that in mind, I decided to accept Art for the company he was, considering I had no other choice.
“Hey, Art,” I grumbled, and he chuckled.
“I was sent to keep an eye on you while Ram and Shem are off negotiating with the man upstairs.”
“I can see that,” I replied coolly. He sighed.
“Look, I would say I’m sorry for the other night, but I’m not. You need to get over it. It was for your own good.”
“Everyone keeps fucking saying that,” I snapped, and he shrugged.
“Maybe because it’s true, Lil. There’s a ton of stuff going on that we can’t explain to you, not because we don’t want to, but because we literallycan’t.You’re just going to have to trust that we have your best interests at heart.”
I felt a wave of indignation roll through me. I snapped my head around to face him, and he frowned at what I was sure was a look that could kill.
“Trust you?”I spat. “I willnevertrust you, Art. I did that once, remember? You’re fucking delulu if you think I’m ever doing that again.”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Lilith.”
I opened my mouth to respond when the walls suddenly shook with what sounded like an explosion. Art’s face paled, and he leapt to his feet.
“Fuck,” he hissed, and I screamed as he shifted into a massive cobra-like demon. His body was easily forty feet long and led up to his human torso, a large hood expanding out from his back and beneath his arms.
I dove to the far side of the bed as he thrashed out of the room, heading toward the sound of the explosion.
Holy fuck. That had to be the scariest fucking thing I had ever seen!
My heart was hammering in my chest as there were more explosions. I heard the screeches and wails of what I assumed were more of the Fallen preparing for some sort of battle.
It suddenly occurred to me that we were under attack. We were under attack, and I was chained to the fucking bed! My blood boiled with fear and fury. I was completely defenseless! What could I do? I yanked on the chains so hard my wrists bruised, but there was no use. I could do nothing but sit here and hope Art was able to fight off whatever was coming for us.
My mind was still racing when suddenly there was a creature in the doorway, and I let out another terrified scream. If I had thought Art’s snake-man form had been scary, whatever the fuck was now in my bedroom was ten times worse.
It was all wings and eyes. I counted nearly ten wings that all joined together at the center. There was nothing connecting them, only massive lidless eyes thatbubbled out from the joints. A booming, echoing voice filled the room around me, and I held my hands over my ears, worried that my eardrums might burst at the sound.
“Do not be afraid, Lilith, for I have come to free you from sin.”
I cowered away from the monster, kicking as far to the other side of the bed as my chains would allow me to go.
“Get fucked, feathers! I’m not going anywhere with you!” I snapped. What the hell was that thing? It was so damn freaky!
The creature morphed and changed, and before I knew what was happening, Rafael was standing in the monster’s place. He looked just as clean-cut and well-groomed as the day I had met him. He pushed his thick glasses up his nose and smiled at me.
“Hello, Lilith, I’m sorry if I frightened you. I assumed that your captors might have warned you about what angels really looked like.”
I scowled at him.‘Get fucked, feathers’had not been on the list of approved responses to archangels that I had worked on with Shem, but I supposed it did the trick. Shem and Ramel had been so worried I would want to leave with one of them if they offered me a chance to escape. They should have just shown me what angels actually looked like. That thing had been terrifying. As scary as Ramel was in his Reaper form, I would take his inky death fingers over feather face any day. There was no way I was willingly leaving with Rafael now that I had seen his true form.
Suddenly, Art exploded back into the room, attacking Rafael from behind. Raf manifested what looked like a long, golden scepter and slammed it into the great snake’s chest. With an inhuman screech, Art was forced back into his human form, and I gasped as the scepter pulsed with a horrible, godly power. Art fell to the ground, pale and writhing. I violently pulled on the restraints, attempting to go to him, but he held up a hand to stop me.
