Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

L ucifer was making his way over to the training fields for the hellhounds, located behind the kennel building. A few handlers were exercising their dogs there, and the mighty beasts ran with such force that the ground shook. I’d never been anywhere close to a stampede, but I’d seen The Lion King in a home theater with an excellent surround system, so that counted, right? Anyway, the effect was impressive and intimidating.

“Leave,” Lucifer barked, his voice magically amplified and rolling over the training fields like thunder.

The handlers snapped to attention, went onto their knees in greeting, and then signaled their hounds to withdraw. A few seconds later, the enormous space was cleared, and we stood alone on dark brown earth stretching miles in every direction, the massive wall encircling the estate towering in the distance on one side, the outskirts of the palace with the kennel building in front on the other. Above us raged the ever-present storms of Hell, painting the sky in all the shades of red, orange, gray, and black. Picturesque, in an apocalyptic kind of way.

When Lucifer faced me, I swallowed hard and said, “Thank you. Thank you for saving her.”

No matter what, I’d be eternally grateful for this. There’d been no reason for him to act. He could have just ignored my plea, wasn’t bound to help me with this. I’d be compelled to keep working for him anyway, and his intervention or lack thereof wouldn’t have changed that.

But it meant the world to me.

He made a dismissive gesture. “Her death would have been a waste. She is a fine hound.”

“She didn’t go berserk.” I lifted my chin. “She did exactly what she was trained to do—she protected me.”

His eyes were shrewd as he studied me. “Because you failed to protect yourself.”

My jaw dropped, and I wanted to argue, but…he was kind of right?

“You’re strong enough to repel several attackers at once,” he said, his voice hard. “They couldn’t all have been seraphim because their numbers are the fewest, so it stands to reason that some were of lower rank than you. You were fully armed, and you have the power of an archdemon to defend yourself, yet your hound had to dispatch the assailants for you. Given your previous display of uncoordinated use of power, I am inclined to believe you’re like a toddler who’s been handed a fire hose, and every time you turn it on, it tosses you to and fro.”

“Okay, first of all, can we stop it with the toddler comparisons?” I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. “That’s getting real old, real fast. I know I’m young in terms of immortal lifespans, but I’m not a child.”

The look he sent me was full of dark authority.

“Respectfully, Your Grace,” I added with a wince.

He raised a black brow. “Is there a second point to your monologue, or are you done whining?”

I held up a finger. “Secondly, I agree with you. I don’t know how to use my power because I never had this much and have never been trained.”

“And there it is,” he muttered. “A flicker of wisdom in a sea of impulsive shortsightedness.”

“Oy!”

Next to me, Vengeance shifted her weight, and a small sound of distress escaped her at the movement. Whipping my head around to her, I remembered she still wasn’t recovered from the injuries she’d gotten during the fight.

“Oh, Venny,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Turning to Lucifer, I bit my lip. “Could you please heal her?”

“No.” Before I could reply, he added, “You’ll do it.”

I grimaced. “I’ve never done that before.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve gathered that. Which is why this will be the first part of your lesson. It’s an excellent way to practice using your power in a small burst and with a limited target.” He paused and studied me. “You must have at least some experience with this. Has there ever been a moment where you were able to focus your energy and change it from simply existing within and around you into a concentrated effort, like a touch, or to move something?”

I pressed my lips together, my cheeks heating at the memory of the only time I’d managed to use my power in such subtle ways as Azazel had always been capable of. When we’d last had sex, I sure had been able to wield my energy in a physical way, and I’d done so very intuitively. Of course, I’d also been highly motivated.

“Well?” Lucifer asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, rubbing my nose. “There’s a…there was a situation…just…kind of… private .”

He sighed and rolled his eyes again. At this rate, they might get permanently stuck toward the back of his head. “Human prudery,” he muttered. Out loud, he said, “There, you’ve already practiced fine-tuning your power to only use a fraction and in a very targeted way. The same principle can be applied to wielding it aggressively or defensively, as well as on a molecular level to heal the body.”

I nodded, infinitely grateful he wasn’t further commenting on what his grandson and I were doing in private.

He gestured at Vengeance. “Lay your hand on her. Feel her energy. This here will be different from forming your power into touch, but you’ll still connect with her. When you focus on sensing her energy, you should notice where it flickers, which indicates her injuries. As demons, we have an innate sense of the presence of illness, pain, or wounds, even internal ones. Concentrate on the darker patches within her energy, and then send out your power with the intent to repair.”

I’d just placed my hand on Venny’s flank and was about to focus on healing her when Lucifer added, “Make sure to get the intention right. There are two sides to this. Our power can mend tissue and regrow flesh and bone, but it can also tear them apart.”

“What?” I snatched my hand back as if bitten by a snake, my heart pounding out of my rib cage. “Why are you telling me this? Now all I can think of is flesh ripping apart!” I flailed my hands wildly.

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“And you’re a bad teacher!” I flailed some more. “Don’t you know anything about human brains? If you tell us not to think about a pink rhinoceros, all we do is think about a fucking pink rhinoceros!”

“I’m not a bad teacher,” he hissed. “You’re just an incompetent student!”

“Ugh!” Frustration and anger boiled over inside me, and without stopping to think, I lashed out.

My power erupted out of me like a lightning bolt, aimed straight for Lucifer.

With a negligent wave of his hand, he deflected the blow, not even deigning to go for an evasive maneuver.

Breath going fast, I stared in dawning horror. I’d just attacked Lucifer.

But instead of ripping off my head—metaphorically, since he needed me alive—he said, “That’s a start. You focused your power on me alone and didn’t let it explode like a supernova. You’ll still need to work on your precision, though. Your aim was off. Not to mention you signaled your move so clearly that you might as well have shouted at me”—the next part came out in a perfect rendition of my own voice—“?‘Excuse me, good sir, if it might not inconvenience you too much, I’ll be attacking you shortly, all right?’?”

I gaped at him in outrage. “Now, hold up, I don’t sound like that!”

“Yes, you do, and it’s annoying.” He curled his lip.

“I can’t even,” I muttered and turned away with my hands on my hips.

“Now try to heal your hound again, or do you enjoy having her sit here in pain?”

I pivoted back with my hands raised and imagining I was throttling the fuck out of him. “That’s so not fair,” I ground out.

“I will not coddle you,” he snapped in response. “With your amount of power, you need proper training, and that means not cutting you any slack. You’re a walking, ticking bomb of epic proportions, and if you don’t learn to control your magic, you’ll end up hurting those you care about.”

My heart pinched as I looked at Venny, who was watching me and Lucifer with two of her heads. The third was eating dirt.

He was right, dammit. I knew that, and I knew this was not the time to be contrary.

“Okay,” I said softly and laid my hand on Vengeance’s flank again.

Her tail wagged happily, and one of her heads licked over my arm.

I could do this. I could concentrate my thoughts long enough to?—

“Just focus,” Lucifer said with a touch of impatience.

My fingers dug into Venny’s shaggy fur, and I sent him a dark look. “You don’t know what it’s like in my head.”

“Oh, I’m getting a good idea.”

I bared my teeth. “I want to choke you.”

“Save that for your private time with Azazel,” Lucifer said with irritating nonchalance. “I’m not interested in you that way.”

“Oh, my God.” Gritting my teeth, I laid my head on Venny’s back and closed my eyes. On an impulse, I said, “Samael thought you were.”

At the following silence, I peered at him. He was giving me a quizzical look.

“He assumed you and I were…” I waved my hand vaguely and grimaced. “Lovers,” I choked out, disgust crawling over my skin.

Lucifer gagged, the reaction so genuine that I almost laughed.

“I’d be offended,” I drawled, “if the feeling weren’t mutual.”

“Why would he think that?” he asked with a sneer.

“I don’t know, maybe because you’ve been giving me preferential treatment? Apparently, the only reason that would make sense to him is that I’m your new squeeze.” An involuntary shudder wrecked me at those last words.

Lucifer studied me with a pensive expression. “You haven’t told him about your mission?”

“Of course not.” I shot him a dark glance. “Do I look stupid?” When he opened his mouth, I waved him off. “You know what, don’t answer that.”

He shut his mouth, amusement lifting the corners of his lips. “Try to heal her again.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you need to stay quiet. I’ve got enough voices in my head already.”

Closing my eyes, I focused on the flow of energy in and around Vengeance. Life pulsed through her, a web of power suffusing her every cell. She was so strong. Strong and brave and beautiful. But there, amid the glowing network of energy paths, throbbed several patches of darkness.

I imagined lighting them up. Gathering my power, I thought of all things warm, whole, and hale, of Venny’s unconditional love for me, her unwavering loyalty, of how that made me feel, and I pushed that feeling into her.

Mend , I thought. Heal. Repair.

My power flowed into her, along the paths of her energy web, into all the spots where darkness had taken root. The brilliance of it flooded my mind, and in seconds, all traces of injury vanished.

I opened my eyes and beamed at her, then turned to Lucifer. “I did it!”

He clapped slowly, and to my unending surprise, it didn’t even seem sarcastic. “Good. Now attack me again.” He summoned a huge pile of meat and then proceeded to telekinetically toss it hundreds of yards away from us.

Vengeance was up and running within a second, launching herself at the meat pile with all of her doggie enthusiasm.

“So your hound won’t become collateral damage,” Lucifer said in explanation. “Now charge me at full force. Let’s see how you handle all of your power, and then we’ll narrow it down so you can manage more precise strikes.”

I nodded and turned my attention inward, trying to scoop up my magic, to drum it up into a raging storm, much like it had been every time I’d let loose in the past. Only, my power didn’t respond as it had before. It felt like I was trying to fan a dying fire back to life.

“What’s taking so long?”

Lucifer’s question pulled my attention back to him.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just having trouble getting into the mood, I guess.”

“This isn’t sex,” he replied flatly, his arms crossed. “You don’t need to be in the right mindset to wield your power. It should be like moving your legs to walk—your magic is an extension of your body, and it will respond to simple commands.”

“Yeah, but I’m just…not a very violent person?” I scrunched up my face. “Like, when I’m threatened or super mad, I can access my power just fine. It’s harder when I’m supposed to lash out without reason.”

“Didn’t you want to strangle me earlier?” He gestured at his neck. “Just think of that feeling. Tap into your anger.”

I blew out a breath and shook my arms, hopping on the spot.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting the hate flow through me, like a good little Sith apprentice.” At his blank expression, I muttered, “I don’t know why I keep trying with these pop culture references. Like throwing pearls before swine.”

“Focus!” Lucifer barked.

“Fine!” I yelled back.

And without giving my mind another chance to fuck it all up by having a squirrels-on-drugs rave, I grabbed hold of my power and blasted it outward. The earth shook, and the shock wave whipped up loose dirt into spirals of mini-tornadoes all around us.

Lucifer stood unharmed, dusting himself off with the same chill as Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi after Kylo Ren had shot at him with dozens of cannons. “Again,” he said. “And this time, narrow the impact to only hit me.”

I uttered a half groan but complied, seeing as I needed the training. He made me repeat the exercise until I was able to form my power into a confined, targeted blast instead of having it cast a wide circle around me.

We went from there, going through dozens of methods to improve what I thought of as my fine motor skills as they related to wielding my power. Again and again, he made me shape my energy and play with different levels of intensity, going from full blasts to exercises of delicate control like setting a teacup on a saucer without breaking anything—telekinetically, only touching it with my power.

Dozens of shattered porcelain dishes later, I slumped with exhaustion, swaying on my feet. My head pounded something fierce, and my insides felt raw from all this energy work.

“Can we stop?” I wheezed, holding up a hand and struggling to remain standing.

With a much-belabored sigh, Lucifer summoned a divan to pop into existence right behind me, and I sagged onto it, swinging my feet onto the cushion and lying down with the air of one of those long-suffering women in Renaissance paintings.

Summoning an armchair for himself, Lucifer sat down as well, and that was how I came to lounge with the Devil outside his palace, surrounded by barren dirt fields, the hellscape-ish sky above us churning with raging storms. Vengeance came happily trotting over and parked her butt next to my divan.

A small table appeared in front of me, with an assortment of fresh and dried fruit as well as a steaming mug of tea.

I eyed Lucifer over the offerings. “Awfully thoughtful of you.”

His smile showed a little too much teeth. “I take care of those in my service.”

Plucking a grape from the cluster, I plopped it into my mouth. “You don’t seem to take much care of your palace.”

Apparently, my filter had gone bye-bye for the day, and I was now voicing every thought in my head.

He gave a negligent shrug. “So?”

“It’s a bad look.” I sipped from the tea. “Like you don’t give a fuck anymore.”

“I don’t.”

Sighing, I set the mug down. “Even if you don’t, you need to keep things running. Like our lady and savior Taylor Swift said, fake it ’til it’s true, and all that. Do it with a broken heart. Otherwise, people will think?—”

“I do not care,” he snarled, “what others think.”

“But they care!” I glared at him with all the glower power I could muster while lying down. “Your reputation’s already suffered, your security is shit, and people are whispering that you’re losing your touch. If this keeps up, eventually, enough of the archdemons are going to band together to take you out.”

He appeared completely unconcerned, his face a mask of coldness. “I’d like to see them try.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” I ground out.

“My, my,” he said and laid a hand over his heart, “don’t tell me you’ve come to care about me.”

“I’d be more likely to develop sympathy for a cockroach,” I shot back. “But I am tied to you for the time being, and I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of a supernatural war.” I paused, then added, “Again.”

“Don’t concern yourself with politics,” he said, flicking his hand dismissively. “Just focus on finding her. That’s all that matters.” When I wanted to argue further, he said with finality, “Nothing else is of importance.”

I ground my teeth in frustration, knowing fully well I wouldn’t get through to him about this. At least not right now. He’d shut down that line of conversation and wouldn’t hear any more of what I had to say. Well, I’d just try again another time. Because I sure as shit wouldn’t let him circle the drain further, not when my fate and that of Hell as a whole hinged on him being stable and at full power.

I’d rather deal with him ruling than with anyone else who might usurp his throne. Better the devil you know, and all that. Literally.

I slurped my tea and studied him for a moment, his pitch-black eyes staring off into the distance, the wind whipping his obsidian hair off his face. “When you speak of her reincarnation,” I said into the storm-lashed silence between us, “you keep saying ‘her’ and ‘she.’ But what if it’s a he ? What if I find the person she’s been reborn as, and it’s a guy?”

Lucifer leveled that dark gaze at me, raising a brow. Right then, he resembled the lofty human idea of how an angel would carry himself more than he’d ever done before, the look he gave me equal parts condescension and endless patience. “You think I care? I appreciate all forms the same. My love is not contingent upon the shape of its target. Hers is the one soul I ever bonded with, and her soul is the spark that fills any shape with beauty. Whoever she will be in this life, her light will shine through. I could not care less about which form she takes.”

I almost choked on my tea.

“Do you need medical attention?” Lucifer asked dryly.

“No, no, just…processing the fact that you’re panromantic.”

He scoffed and looked away. “Humans and their labels.”

“Not throwing any shade.” I raised both hands. “I’m not judgy.”

After another moment, I quietly said, “I get that you want to find her desperately because her absence causes you pain…but you do know that, right now, she’s a child? She’d be seven or eight at most. So even if I find her soon…” I grimaced and waved a hand. “She won’t be of age for another ten-plus years, so why the rush? You’d have to wait for her to grow up anyway.”

His stygian eyes glinted darkly, and black lines feathered out from them, like some toxin was spreading through his veins. “Exactly that,” he said with a snarl. “She’s a child. I have been torturing men for millennia for the most heinous of crimes, for the most depraved sins. Believe me when I say I know a million different ways someone can hurt a child. I want her under my protection”—he bared his teeth—“as soon as possible.”

I gulped, partly intimidated by Lucifer’s ferocity, partly anxious thinking about how, indeed, Lilith might have been born into a horrible family. There were too many cases of child abuse or neglect, too many small victims who were failed by the very people who should have nurtured and protected them.

And even if her family was good, there were still a million things that could happen to her outside her home. Human predators, accidents, unsafe environments, diseases, poverty, war…depending on where she was born, the odds could be heavily stacked against her survival.

And if she died in this life before Lucifer could get to her—he’d lose her forever. As a child, her soul would go straight to Heaven, never to reunite with him.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, and I meant it.

This whole situation pulled at my heartstrings. Just the thought of what it would do to me to lose Azazel in this way was enough to make my chest ache with deep dread. And he and I had only known each other for a year—not counting the ones I’d spent in Heaven without remembering him.

Lucifer and Lilith had been together for millennia. I couldn’t fathom the depth of that kind of bond.

Muscles clenched in Lucifer’s jaw, some of the black toxin receding around his eyes. Voice like cold velvet, he said, “I heard you were the one to kill Destatur.”

Talk about a non sequitur.

I lifted my chin. “I cut off her head with her own sword.”

His laugh was silent and filled with dark appreciation. “And you said you were a nonviolent person.”

“Well, not with those who deserve it!” I threw my hands in the air. “And she very much deserved it. Actually, she should have gotten far worse.” I pointed my finger at him, grim need for vengeance throbbing to new life inside me. “That death was too quick for what she’d done.”

Black eyes glittering, he regarded me for a moment. Then he rose from his seat and jerked his head toward the palace. “Come.”

Frowning, I followed him, Vengeance padding after me.

He strode back inside the palace, past demons who whispered in agitation as he neared and then sank to their knees in deferential greeting when he walked by. I traipsed after him, feeling awkward with the way I basically strolled past rows of kneeling demons as if they paid their respects to me, too.

Well, as a high-ranked seraph, I would indeed be greeted similarly.

I’d probably never get used to being received with such deference and subservience.

Lucifer led me back into the private wing of the palace, past his regular room. He opened a door only a few feet farther down the hallway and gestured me inside.

Warily, I entered the room, unsure of what to expect. Inside, the same kind of gloom reigned that I’d come to know from my meetings with him, broken only by a few small candles around the perimeter of the generous space.

My breath got stuck in my throat when I saw what the light illuminated in the center of the room.

Strung up with chains fastened around her wrists and ankles, her arms pulled toward the ceiling and her toes barely touching the floor, was a demon. Her clothes hung in dirty tatters on her blood-painted body, and her dark hair fell in tangles around her lowered head.

It took me a moment to recognize her, partly because her once blond hair was now a bloody mess. But when she raised her head and looked at me out of pained eyes, I whispered, “Enaia.”

Destatur’s accomplice in the plot to murder Lilith. She’d been in on it, had worked actively to set up the trap that would see Lilith die that fateful day on Earth. After the lead angel had killed Lilith, Enaia had run off to Hell to report what had happened to Lucifer—at least, the fabricated version she and Destatur had concocted, so Lucifer would think Heaven had broken the truce and then unleash his forces on Earth.

Which he’d done, of course. Being delivered the news that his beloved soul mate had just been killed, he’d been too grief-stricken, too furious, to stop and think, and he’d taken Enaia’s word at face value.

Just like Destatur and Enaia had figured he would.

They had not only used Lilith as collateral, treating her like an object to achieve their goal, but they’d also played on the depth of Lucifer’s feelings for her. For all their professions of loyalty to him, of wanting to see him as lord and master of all realms, they’d been just fine using him as much as her, with a disregard for him as a person that was cruelty in and of itself. The callousness of that kind of cold manipulation was mind-boggling.

“Has she been here all this time?” I asked, my voice rough.

Lucifer came to stand next to me. “Yes.” He put his hands in his pants pockets. “I’ve been working on her on and off. Making sure not a day goes by that she doesn’t feel the consequences of her sins.”

Black feathers littered the floor, red dots sprinkling them, and it was only now that I noticed the gallery of chopped-off wings covering the walls. Hundreds of them.

All of them hers, no doubt.

“Good,” I rasped, dark satisfaction drenching my chest.

Lucifer leveled his fathomless gaze at me, something old and terrible staring out of those eyes. With a flick of his hand, a knife appeared in his fingers. He tossed it in the air and caught it on the blade’s side, then held it out to me hilt-first.

I studied the dagger for a moment before my eyes traced to Enaia. Still alive, when Lilith was gone. She’d been one of Lilith’s personal entourage, her friend and confidante. A trusted companion, for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.

Lilith had never seen it coming. In her last moments, she must have been so scared, abandoned by the very people who’d stood at her side for eons, who’d been tasked to protect her. What betrayal must she have felt? How much fear?

She’d died surrounded by enemies, failed by those whom she’d trusted…far away from Lucifer, whom she’d loved with faith that had weathered millennia.

Heat burning my eyes, I closed my hand around the hilt of the knife and stepped forward.