Alec
I smashed the very little unbroken furniture we had left in the lounge. “Katrina, find me a way to get into Hell.”
She shrugged in despair. “Only reaped damned souls and demons can get in.”
“There has to be something else!”
“Alec, calm down. What happened isn’t Katrina’s fault,” my brother said.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know it’s fucking mine?”
He bent his head. “Ours. But snapping won’t solve anything. We need to think.”
Katrina sighed, shrugging again. “Well, angels can go there, too, but the one we had is an asshole and long gone.”
I wiped my face with both my hands, my whole body boiling, Wolf desperate for a kill. To distract myself, I fetched my phone from my room and checked the messages. When I found nothing useful, I almost smashed it, too. “Why hasn’t anyone found a demon yet?”
“We knew it was gonna be hard to find one. No one wants to get involved or stand in the way of Damien since now he’s going for the win after the apocalypse,” Asher said.
“Well, Inferno should help now. His mate’s kids are in danger. Damien has Belle, and the Darkborns are next.”
“Maybe you should call him,” Katrina said. “There’s still hope Damien hasn’t made Belle the queen yet. There is a coronation ritual they have to go through first. That buys us some time.”
A sparkle of hope flickered in me as I grabbed my phone. “I’ll call him now.”
“What coronation ritual?” Kayden asked.
Katrina walked through the rubble, trying to salvage a chair. “First they mate in Hell in front of the Empyreal Demons, which I guess they’ve already done based on how they left.”
A growl escaped me, the ringing tone in my ear suddenly too unbearable. That son of a bitch put her under his spell with his magic fingers in her pussy right in front of us.
Katrina tossed the dismantled seat, giving up. “After that they bathe in the River of the Molten Fire to strengthen her demon, make her Belle’s most dominant side. They mate again in the Royal Domicile and feast with the Demons of the Seven Deadly Sins. In the end, they wash in the Blood of a Thousand Child River, walk to the throne where they have the final coronation mating before the Elite Demon Knights.”
“That’s a lot of fucking mating in front of a lot of fucking demons—”
“I heard the news.” Inferno’s voice chopped off my outburst. “But I still can’t go.”
“Why the fuck not? He’s coming for your girls next. You gotta—”
“Father put Hell on a lockdown until the coronation. Any demon who tries to enter will be burned on sight.”
My fist clenched as the four of us cursed in unison.
“I’ll be more useful here alive. We’ll be ready for him when he comes,” the bastard demon said.
“He has Belle. He’s turning the woman that saved those girls from him once into an evil creature that will bring down everything. When he comes for the babies, whentheydo, we’re all gonna be dead long before, and there’s nothing you can do then to save them.”
“The fuck you want me to do? Just go in there and burn for your mate? I have a family to take care of. You brought this shit on our heads. You fix it.” He hung up.
I hurled the phone at the wall where it shattered in pieces.
Kayden put his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Now what? No demon is gonna help us now. The ritual is happening as we speak, and every second is bringing us closer to losing Belle forever.”
“What about damned souls?” I suggested. “Isn’t that what we are? Does that give us access?”
Katrina stared at me. “They must be reaped, as in dead.”
“I’m ready to die right now if that gets me to her.”
