“No.”
The ground fell out from beneath my feet. “Oh.”
Az shot me a sharp glance. There must have been something in my voice that gave away my fear. Not that he’d have to be a mind reader to get it. I knew I was visibly terrified.
Suddenly, he was beside me so quickly that it was as if he’d moved through time itself. He gathered me into his arms and pulled me against his chest. His heartbeat thundered against my ear.
I knew he was trying to help me relax, but nothing about this soothed me. All I could think about was his lips near my cheek and his muscles hard against my breasts.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Mia,” he murmured, his breath tickling my neck. “I had no idea that you’d have to see something like that.”
Unshed tears flooded my eyes. I’d seen a lot of terrible things in the past couple of months, but nothing quite like this. The King of Hell had snapped an old man’s neck right in front of me, and he’d wanted me to see it. All part of his game. One clearly meant to terrorize me.
Sniffling, I pulled back to search Az’s eyes for answers I knew he didn’t have. “Why did he do that? What is all of this about, Az? We keep trying to find answers, but it makes less and less sense.”
“I don’t know, Mia.” He palmed my cheek, dropping his forehead to mine. “Did you know that man?”
I shook my head. I’d never seen him before in my life. He couldn’t have been younger than eighty, and while his salty hair reminded me of my own grandfather’s, they shared no other resemblance. Grandpa Martin was at least six feet tall, and he had wide shoulders and a sly smile. The victim in the window had been a slight, wiry man with glasses.
Now that I’d had a moment to process what we’d seen, I couldn’t get past the strangest part of it. The man hadn’t looked scared at all. Resigned, maybe. Like he’d expected this to happen. Maybe he had.
“Could he have been a demon, Az?” I asked. “Maybe I signed the contract with him, and he was the one who wiped my memories.”
“Demons don’t age, Mia. Not once they’re fully grown.”
“Oh, right.” I flushed as the hand on my cheek slid down to my shoulder. Even as we spoke about demon contracts and forgotten memories, I was hyperaware of his every move. “What does all this mean, then? What do we do now?”
This had been our only lead. The only hope we had of finding answers. Tears trailed down my cheeks. There was something wrong with me, and no one could tell me what it was. No one except for the most powerful demon in the world. The one who wanted to steal me away to the underworld.
I just felt so lost, like an essential part of myself was vanishing into the past. Mia McNally, the dancer, the pigeon lover. My mortal life had been next to impossible the past few years, but at least it had been mine. Who was I if I wasn’tme?
Az gently wiped my cheeks with his knuckles. Embarrassed, I tried to pull away, but he held me firmly in his arms. The warmth of him flooded my senses, chasing away the fear and pain.
“I’m going to kill him,” he muttered, pulling me against his powerful chest.
“I thought you couldn’t kill a demon,” I whispered back.
“Yeah, well.” Anger rumbled from his throat. “I’ll do the next best thing. Rip out his heart and bury it on the other side of the earth.”
Chills swept down my arms. His viciousnessshouldscare me, but it did the opposite. It made me feel safer than I ever had. As far as I was concerned, if he ripped out Lucifer’s heart, he’d be doing the entire world a massive favor.
“He doesn’t get to make you feel like this,” he continued, his voice rumbling against my ear. “I won’t allow it.”
I tipped back my head to stare up into his tense face. “What happens if youdiddecided to fight him? He’s the one in charge, isn’t he? I’ll admit, I know next to nothing about Hell, but he’s the King. Can’t he make you return to Hell if you try to go against him?”
He nodded, his jaw rippling with tension. “He can order us to return to Hell anytime he wants. But as powerful as he is, we could try to resist him…”
He didn’t sound particularly convinced.
“We’ll have to wait for the right moment,” he continued, his gaze growing distant. “We need to act as normal as possible. Pretend that we’re still playing along with his game. And then when the moment comes, the Legion and I will destroy him. I will never let him get his hands on you. Do you understand me?”
I shivered and dropped my voice to a whisper. “What happens when someone destroys the King of Hell?”
“The next in line takes the throne.”
“But that’s you.” I palmed his chest and stepped back. Horror and confusion and hope tangled together in my gut until I didn’t know where one emotion ended and the other began. “Does that mean you’d have to leave Manhattan? What about the game for souls? What happens then, Az?”
“It’s the only way, Mia,” he murmured, capturing my eyes with those flaming shards.
