We cried out together, and I struggled to open my eyes, to watch her screams, to be sure she was here with me, and not some fucking illusion her demon planted in my head. “Belle?”
“The fuck, Kayden? Why is the door open and the salt scattered?”
“Huh?” The fog started to lift slowly, and Alec’s voice came from afar.
“What did you do?!”
Finally, I was able to open my eyes. I found myself still sitting at the door like I’d been before she called for me, the salt line broken, a big, wet stain covering the crotch of my jeans.
I jumped to my feet and darted inside the room. “Belle!”
“She’s not here.” Alec yanked the opened cuffs off the bed pole. Then he hurled them at the wall as they burned him. His glare fell on my jeans. Shame never covered me more than this moment. “Let me guess. She demon-fucked you?”
Yeah. She demon-fucked me. In the ass.
Now she was gone.
To Damien. To Hell. Where she might never come back.
Chapter 19
Belle
I was as sorry as they were, but as they thought it was necessary to shoot and cuff me formy own good, it was necessary for me to get out and find the answers Damien had.
The rock salt bullets were the first to fade away, and my demon breathed faster and stronger than my beasts. She got into Kayden’s head easily, playing on his guilt, sorrow and desire, feeding off him rapidly. She played him hard and well, and as she got stronger, my fingers elongated with her sharp nails and picked the cuffs.
Everything after that was easy. I kept Kayden trapped in his lucid dream as I found some clothes and unlocked the door the same way I did with the cuffs. Then I gathered my strength to break the line of salt and tiptoed outside the room.
The Vetala wore off minutes after I’d left the cabin. All the burns and the excruciating pain gone. The ugly coldness I’d long forgotten its cruelty but was reminded of today didn’t penetrate my bones as the snow dampened my hair. My body healed, and my beasts woke, ready for the inevitable meeting.
I ran as fast as I could and as far from the cabin as possible. I reached the woods and ran some more until I was under a thicket of trees that blocked the gray sky above.
My heavy breaths misted my eyes as I peered around me to make sure no one was here and summoned my courage to open a portal to Hell.
Thinking about the dark kingdom, I lifted my index finger in the air. With a sharp demon nail, I pierced the coldness and drew an invisible circle.
The portal lit with hellfire and seethed in my face. I stared into it, an abyss waiting to swallow me whole.
I could hear Kayden and Alec and Joshua’s voices, begging me not to go in, not to leave them behind, not to lose myself to Damien Pattison, beseeching me to wait while they found a way to fix things.
But I knew deep in my heart there was no fixtheycould find. The message from Heaven was clear. There was nothing any of them could do to give me a baby as long as Damien was one of my lovers. The twin shifters and the vampire weren’t strong enough to defy Heaven’s will.
And I couldn’t break up with Damien because that meant I lost them too.
I didn’t want to lose them. Or Damien.
My only chance to find a fix, if there was one, was with the devil himself. He had all the answers. He must have known about the prophecy, and he must have known how to undo it.
He was the only one strong enough to battle Heaven for our baby. He wanted us to be a family as much as I did. Why else would he steal those babies for me? To make me his alone?
I wished there had been another way than throwing myself into the darkness I’d been trying to resist for so long, risking everything, even my own soul, but there wasn’t. Even Inferno wouldn’t help. Even if he did, Damien wouldn’t tell him anything.
He did all that so I’d go to him. By choice as he always wished.
The devil wanted me. No one else but me.
I’m waiting, my queen.
