A pleased noise rumbled from his throat. “It’s about time you displayed some awe in my presence.” A single blink and he was suddenly kneeling in front of me, trapping a scream in my throat as a single, smooth finger traced the outline of my jaw. “Take it all in, lovely. Everything you thought you knew of the world is laughably, pathetically, undeniably wrong.”
I swear my heart curdled in my chest when he laughed in my face.
“I don’t know that I had a single, fixed understanding of the universe and all life within it,” I hissed, injecting calm into my voice that I did not feel. “I don’t think anyone has a right to that claim. There’s just too much we don’t know. Just like you don’t know how little you scare me, and how you awe me even less. You’re not the first monster I’ve come across,darling. You’re not even the toughest.”
His smirk deepened so widely and grotesquely, it distorted his unnaturally handsome face. “Aren’t I?”
Gazing into my eyes, he changed. The skintight, charming suit he wore vanished. His red eyes lightened. Wings erupted from his back, and the nice, safe, human-shape wrapper around his true form melted away—
—and I screamed.
Loud, soul-wrenching, throat-shredding screams as my eyes dripped out of my skull, my brain liquefied, my body burned away in the blinding light—or at least that’s what it felt like as I beheld what no living human was ever meant to see.
I screamed for half an hour after he changed back. Cried for another hour, and then sat there curled into a ball, shaking for an hour after that—and all the while he laughed himself sick at me.
Snapping his fingers, my clothes disappeared and were replaced by a bloodred, sparkly princess gown and matching pumps. Shaking hands reached up and felt the neat, bejeweled bun suddenly styled on top of my head.
I’d have thought this was another disgusting, presumptuous move on his part... if not for the fact that my clothes were soiled.
Seeing him in his true form made me piss myself.
“There,” he chirped, “that’s better. Now we can conduct our business with the mutual respect it requires—for I like and respect you very much, Charlotte Marie Hunter. I would hate to think you don’t respect me.”
He didn’t change his bright tone one iota, but I picked up the threat loud and clear. This is the devil. He went up against the god of the universe. An insignificant little speck like me wasn’t going to dog him out and get away with it.
“I just want my sister back!” I shrieked as loud as my raw, ruined throat would let me. “What took her! Why?!”
“You know what took her.” Another snap and we were in the living room.
“Eeep!” I dropped unceremoniously on the couch, blinking at the devilish swine kicking back on my couch, sipping from a teacup. A full tray loaded down with a pot, cups, and snacks rested on the coffee table between us.
“Demons,” he announced. “Your dear sister was taken by demons without a doubt. The stench of them is still all over this place.”
“Well, then, bring her back,” I cried. “Make them bring her back! You’re their ruler, or king, or leader—or whatever you are! Make them bring her here now, and you can have my soul.”
He was laughing before I finished. “It doesn’t quite work like that, my sweet. Rulers and kings are for societies that believe in order and hierarchy, and demons believe in nothing but power.”
“But...” My eyes darted this way and that trying to understand that. “But, aren’t you powerful? You’re an angel for flip’s sake!”
Lucifer preened. “So I am, but as sorry as I am to burst your bubble, I am not the only fallen angel in hell, dear one. I’m not even one of a few. And although demons were once very weak, so weak, I was able to take over and subjugate them for a millennium—that is the case no more.” His voice slithered in my ears. “Countless demon lords have grown in power over the centuries, fed by you.”
I whipped around. “What? Me!?”
“No.” He clicked his tongue. “Not you specifically. Fed by the human race. Your evil deeds. Your countless, almost daily atrocities. There are even a significant number among you who worship demons. All of that is power to the beasts, and that power has allowed them to push back against House Lucifer.”
House Lucifer?
“I tell you this, darling, so that you understand that unless the demons who took your sister have pledged their fealty tome, I have no means of making them return her to you—soul contract or no contract.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t know the ins and outs of hell politics, but he was making enough sense. “How will you know if they have pledged fealty to you?”
“You’d have to find them first.” He held out his hand and the patch appeared above his palm, gently floating in the air. “And although this tells you quite a bit about them, it doesn’t tell you enough. It certainly doesn’t tell you who they are.”
“Wait, what?” I surged. “Did you say that patch tells me quite a bit about them? How? What does it tell me?”
“It tells you,” he relayed, voice calm, “that whoever wore this patch is a student of Abaddon Academy, and that’s where they took her.”
I blew back, eyes as wide as my hanging jaw. “A... student?” I croaked. “You mean a child?” My mind rebelled thinking those oversized, powerful beasts were children.
