Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

W hen we’d gone to Tokyo to meet Metatron and Shekinah, we’d used the gate at Azazel’s new estate that led to the city of Nagoya, which was only a short flight from Tokyo. It was the nearest portal to the meeting place that we could access from Azazel’s palace.

On the way back, however, we opted to go through the Tokyo gate that Lucifer himself owned and which opened directly onto the premises of his palace, in order to get to him faster. It was the gate I’d jogged past when I’d collected Vengeance after Mephisto had told me she was trying to claw her way into the palace.

God, that seemed so long ago. So much had happened since then, so much had changed.

Not the least of which was the security situation and the general condition of the estate. For example, the gate was now flanked by guards who checked us as we stepped through the portal.

When they recognized Azazel, they sank down onto their knees and muttered a deferential greeting. I raised my brows. He must have really left an impression in the weeks he’d spent here doing cleanup at Lucifer’s side. They’d greeted him much the same way they’d address the big boss himself.

“Did they just call you Your Grace ?” I whispered as we walked on toward the palace proper.

Azazel frowned. “You heard that, too?”

I hummed in assent. “Maybe they got the title mixed up?”

He raised one dark brow. “They’re my own people. They’re part of the contingent I lent Lucifer to fill the holes in his ranks. They should know how to address me properly.”

“Perhaps they have a bit of hero worship going on?” I asked with a grin. Batting my lashes at him, I added, “Can’t say I blame them.”

Azazel laughed under his breath, and over the bond, a wave of affection rolled into me.

As we made our way through the palace, I noted once more the differences from when I’d first arrived here weeks ago. Before, Lucifer’s outburst after Lilith’s death—followed by years-long negligence—had thrown much of the building into disrepair, and there’d been this pervasive sense of despair and disorder.

Now, groups of demons worked on repairs of the palace, crews of merihem—directed by supervisors—were scrubbing the floors and cleaning the walls, and staff bustled to and fro again. Everybody seemed to have a job, a responsibility, and they were all going about their day completing those tasks.

I recognized a few demons from Azazel’s estate, not just as warriors who now acted as guards and security, but also those whose jobs were more on the administrative side. A palace needed a whole lot of management and organization to run smoothly, and Azazel had apparently reassigned some of his folks to take care of that in the absence of Lucifer’s own palace management.

And the demons we passed all sank to their knees when they spotted us, in a show of deference that was one step above what Azazel’s position as archdemon would demand.

“I detect a theme here,” I muttered.

Azazel remained silent, except for when he inquired from a staff member where the king was—we usually had to ask where Lucifer currently was inside the palace, with the whole place being so big.

The demon he’d asked did a double take, genuflected before Azazel, and then stammered in obvious confusion.

“Lucifer,” Azazel said and waved the demon up to standing again. “Where is he currently? We must see him about an urgent matter.”

The demon told us where to go, and we walked on.

When we reached the door to the room Lucifer was in, the two guards stationed in front greeted us similarly to everyone else, but before they could even get back to their feet, the door opened and Samael strode out.

His eyes widened for a second as he noticed us, then he sketched a smooth bow toward Azazel and inclined his head to me when he straightened—his greeting in line with our stations.

“Back again?” he asked with a raised brow, his dark red eyes on Azazel. “Are you here to stay longer? I can give word to prepare your suite if you wish.”

The hairs on my arms rose in visceral warning at his seemingly servile tone. Everything about him spoke of politeness, even obsequiousness, and yet I couldn’t shake the sense of some subterfuge that was going on.

“A suite won’t be necessary,” Azazel replied. “Though we have important matters to discuss with Lucifer and wish not to be interrupted.”

“Of course.” Samael inclined his head respectfully. “I will make sure you will not be disturbed for the next few hours.”

And with another bow, he glided off like some specter of evil tidings.

“There’s a promise he can’t keep,” I muttered as we turned back to the door.

Azazel shot me a sharp look. “How so?”

I shrugged. “I mean, with all the things going on inside my head, how can he make me not disturbed? That’s a tall order. Sure, I wouldn’t mind being un disturbed for a change, but have you seen my thoughts?”

Azazel exhaled on a surprised laugh, and as always when I managed to amuse him, my heart soared.

“Not for a long while, no,” he answered what had been a rhetorical question, his voice tinged with sadness. His eyes gleamed when he met my gaze. “I do so miss catching those unruly thoughts of yours.”

My smile was wistful for the things we’d lost throughout all the changes over the past years, but I focused on all the benefits my transformations had afforded me. Smile turning wicked, I pursed my lips and whispered, “But now I can do this.”

And then I reached out with my power and made good on all those lessons where I’d practiced handling my energy with delicate precision—and caressed him on his most delicate parts.

Azazel twitched and hissed. “Fucking Hell, Zoe.”

The guards shot us weird looks.

Snickering, I stepped into the room.

We sat once more across from Lucifer, the fire crackling in the hearth behind us, food and drinks spread out on low tables before us, and draped over my shoulders lay a hellcat who hadn’t even introduced herself before becoming a living shawl. And while her purr eased some of the tension in my neck, she did smack me in the back of the head with her wing when she twitched in her sleep.

“Out with it,” Lucifer said as he plucked a grape from the cluster and threw it in his mouth. “You’ve news from Heaven, and I can smell your trepidation about it from here.” He wrinkled his nose.

I glanced at Azazel and nudged him with my elbow. “You tell him,” I said under my breath.

Eyes studiously on his drink, he subtly shook his head. “You do it,” he replied just as quietly.

“Uh-uh. You’re his actual blood relative. This is your responsibility.”

“But you’re so good at slapping him upside the head with uncomfortable truths. You’re much more practiced in it than me.”

Lucifer cleared his throat. “This is your reminder that I can simply rip it from your mind.”

“Fine!” I threw up my hands.

My movement jounced the hellcat, who jerked and hit me with her wing, almost taking my eye out.

“Like a bandage,” I mumbled. Then I said out loud in a rush, “You’re Death incarnate. You personified yourself to be with Lilith and then forgot you’re the Grim Reaper, but your essence is still toxic to life, and that’s why you can’t step foot on Earth, because you’d kill all living things around you”—I sucked in a breath and added softly—“including Lilith.”

Lucifer stared at me with much the same intensity as when I’d told him I’d found Lilith’s reincarnation.

Azazel patted my knee and murmured, “Good job.”

I slapped his hand and glared at him.

“Who told you that?”

Lucifer’s quiet question drew my attention back to him. His face a mask of hardness, he pinned me with a stare that arrested my breath.

I shifted my weight on the couch. “Um, Metatron and Shekinah.”

“They spoke to you?”

I nodded.

“They personally came to Earth to give you that information?”

“Yes. Well, Metatron only wanted us to know that you can’t be on Earth, but he refused to tell us why at first. It was Shekinah who revealed the reason, and it seemed she was getting permission for that from God himself.”

Lucifer closed his eyes, and his power appeared to curl into him—that dark, dark power with a chilled note.

I’d sometimes wondered why that was. Why, when the energy of demons was of a fiery nature, and Hell itself burned and blazed, Lucifer’s power was icy at its core.

Now I knew. It was because death was cold. When life left a body, the warmth went with it.

And Lucifer had likely crafted Hell as a dimension of heat in order for its inhabitants to withstand the chill of death—even if he hadn’t been aware of it all.

“Tell me everything,” Lucifer whispered, his eyes still closed.

And so I did. Word for word, I relayed what Metatron and Shekinah had divulged, and the more I spoke, the more it seemed that whatever barrier or fog that had suppressed his awareness of his true self now slowly dissipated. As before, in those moments when he’d shown that unnerving eldritch version of himself, there was a change to his presence, a different vibration to his energy, and my heart stumbled at the realization that I was indeed breathing the same air as the personified force of death.

My bones ached at the pressure of a power so ancient, so primordial, it weighed like a ton on every cell in my body.

When Lucifer opened his eyes again, they held the fathomless darkness and freezing cold of the space between stars. The air around him bent and flickered, as if that energy he’d once poured into a body now fought its constraints. Ice crept out from where he sat, limning the fabric of his chair in intricate swirls of crystals.

“I remember,” he spoke in a voice that carried the echo of eons.

My breath escaped me on a shudder. Next to me, Azazel had grown still, his attention zeroed in on the primal force that had just unfolded its presence in front of us.

I swallowed and had to clear my throat to find my voice again. “And are you…still you?”

He took a moment to answer. “I am more.”

“But your identity as Lucifer isn’t gone, is it?”

A glint of light in those stygian eyes. “Miss me already?”

I huffed out a breath. “Okay, yeah, there’s enough of you left.”

“Who I was and who I became are one,” Lucifer said. “They always have been, but now I am aware of it. Remembering my beginnings does not change all that has shaped me since.”

“Well, great.” I clasped my hands and squeezed. “So, now that we’ve cleared this up, there’s still the matter of complication—you have two choices for how to move forward. Either you try to remove the power of death from yourself, which might , but will hopefully not, result in you ripping yourself apart somehow, and then you’re able to go to Earth. Or you remain as you are…but you’ll never be able to see Lilith’s reincarnation.”

Looking at Lucifer in that moment was like staring into an abyss where darkness shrouded the bottom, threatening to pull you under.

“There is no choice,” he said tonelessly.

“Well, I mean, you could choose to?—”

“Spend the excruciating length of eternity missing the other half of my soul?” he whispered harshly. “Drift through time yearning for that which I’ll never again have, with every passing moment chipping away at my mind until, at last, the final shreds of my sanity are all but worn out and I shall become naught but a shadow of myself and devour the world?”

I shivered, and not just from the frost that had spread out from Lucifer’s seat and now nipped at my toes.

“There is no choice,” Lucifer repeated. “If you think I would consider, even for one second, holding on to my power at the expense of the one chance to hold her again, you have not understood me at all. I have already declared that I am willing to surrender my privilege and authority in order to be with her. What is this but one more power I am ready to give up for her sake?”

I nodded, my gaze on the floor. “I thought so. Just wanted to mention it for clarity’s sake.”

“So, it is decided?” Azazel asked, his eyes on Lucifer. “You will remove the power of death from yourself and pass it to me?”

Lucifer regarded him for a moment. “You understand that the limitations of this force will transfer to you? That you may never set foot on Earth again?”

I jolted, which in turn jiggled the hellcat, and that earned me a paw to the face. I barely noticed the pain from the scratch, though, all my attention on that fine but damning detail I’d completely overlooked in all of this.

Wide-eyed, I turned to Azazel, my heart in my throat. “I hadn’t even thought of that…”

He met my gaze, his expression calm and collected. “I have.”

“But—that’s?—”

“Okay.” He took my hand and kissed it. “It’s okay. I am two thousand five hundred years old. I’ve been to Earth more times than I can count. I have seen civilizations rise and fall, have looked upon the wonders of this world, both those arisen from nature and those created by mankind. I have seen my fill. It is all right if I now remain here. And it’s not as if modern technology doesn’t work in Hell.” He cast a side-eye at Lucifer. “I will have access to media that will allow me to sample some of what Earth and humanity have to offer.”

My brows drew together. “But…what about your mom? You won’t be able to meet with her anymore.”

He gave me a sly look. “You do know we don’t have to meet on Earth ?”

“Huh?”

“Naamah and I can both fly.” He winked at me. “There isn’t much life at a thirty-thousand-foot altitude, is there?”

“Apart from the occasional airplane,” I muttered. “Will she be okay? Meeting with you, with the whole power of death thing, I mean. Since she’s an angel now.”

“I would reckon,” Lucifer cut in nonchalantly, “the fact that she is my blood would lend her enough protection. Angel or no, she is still my daughter.”

I blew out a breath, and Azazel squeezed my hand in reassurance.

“Okay,” I said and massaged my forehead with one hand. “So, what are the next steps? I imagine we’ll have to announce that you’re abdicating and Azazel is taking over?—”

“I already did.”

I stared wide-eyed at Lucifer, my hand slowly sinking down to my lap.

Azazel cleared his throat. “Pardon?”

Lucifer picked up a glass of amrit and swirled the golden liquid. “I sent an official letter to the archdemons a few days ago informing them of my abdication and naming you both”—he pointed at Azazel with the glass, then at me—“as my successors, and since my word is law, you are now king and queen.” He sipped from the drink and then held it up in a toast. “Congratulations, Your Graces.”

I was so utterly shocked I couldn’t even breathe. Azazel appeared equally speechless, his power frozen in surprise.

So that was why the demons here in the palace had greeted us the way they had—as the highest-ranking demons in all of Hell. It also explained the confusion of that one staff member when Azazel had asked him where the king was. That poor dude had to have been so bewildered, seeing as the king had been standing right in front of him.

“Opting for dignified royal silence, I see,” Lucifer said with a smirk at our continued speechlessness. “That is a good start.”

“You didn’t tell them in a meeting?” Azazel asked eventually, his voice still holding a note of shock.

Lucifer made a condescending sound. “I do not need their permission, nor do I seek it. It’s not as if they have a say in these matters anyway. And if I never have to see their faces again in one of those bloody meetings, it will be too soon. Present company and Daevi excepted.” He took a sip from the amrit and added in a murmur, “I am looking forward to not having to manage their bickering quarrels anymore.”

I shook my head to clear it and then asked, “Shouldn’t there be…I don’t know, an official event or something? Like a coronation, or inauguration?”

Lucifer waved that away and stood. “We don’t have a tradition for this. There has never been a change in leadership to warrant a coronation ceremony or the likes of it. But if you wish for one, you may organize it. Have Daevi crown you for all I care.” He gave us both a look . “You’re king and queen now. You make the bloody rules.” Rolling up his sleeves, he jerked his head at Azazel. “Take off your shirt.”

“The fact that we’re related aside,” Azazel drawled, “no, thank you. I’m not interested.”

Lucifer scoffed. “Fine. I don’t mind punching a hole through your tunic, then.”

“Excuse me, what?” I interjected, leaning forward on the couch.

Lucifer’s black gaze slide to me as he opened the buttons on his own shirt. “Do you not remember how you received that spark of hers inside you?”

“Whoa!” I rose from my seat, dislodging the hellcat in the process, which tumbled to the couch with a hiss of protest. Holding up my hands, I pinned Lucifer with a hard look. “Wait a minute! You’re going to play whack-a-mole with your chest and his to give him the power?”

“There is not exactly a manual for this,” Lucifer said between gritted teeth. “What Lilith did was a novelty, something not even I had ever heard of. There is no other precedent for a transfer of power, at least not for an internal one. I can pass the magical bonds of authority over demons or territory to someone else with nary a word, as I did with you recently, but this here is different. For the transfer of an essence, I know of no other way than what she did when she gave you her spark.”

My stomach turned at the thought of him actually ripping this power out of himself. Literally. And while I wouldn’t be the one getting a fist shoved up the chest cavity this time, I had to witness it happen to Azazel, and I honestly couldn’t say which was worse.

“But…do you have to do this now?” I wrung my hands, glancing at Azazel, who’d also gotten to his feet, and then back at Lucifer. “Why not wait a little?—”

“For what?” Lucifer’s eyes flashed. “Do you need a public invitation? Or would you like to prepare yourself with some kitten yoga or whatever it is humans do these days?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a kitten right now,” I murmured.

Ignoring my comment, Lucifer plowed on. “No, we will do this now. I have done my waiting. This is the last thing that stands between me and seeing her again, and so help me Hell, I will rip every last shred of that deathly power out of my soul to be free to go to her.” He bared his teeth, his energy an arctic breeze in the air. “Right the fuck now.”

I caught Azazel’s gaze, worry squeezing my chest. His expression unperturbed, he gave me a nod, then grabbed the hem of his tunic and pulled it up and over his head in that effortless, masculine way that never failed to make me sigh in appreciation. His muscles rippled as he tossed the shirt to the side and straightened his shoulders, exuding nothing but virile strength.

Lifting his chin, he looked at Lucifer. “I’m ready.”

“All right.” Lucifer shook out his hands, cranked his neck, and then took a deep breath. Without further ado, he rammed one fist into his own chest.

I’d thought I was prepared for it. The moment he’d mentioned the whole ripping-out thing, it had brought up the traumatic memories of when Lilith had done it to herself. I’d mentally steeled myself for seeing it happen, trying to put up a brave front.

The reality of it turned my stomach to the point where I almost retched. Doubling over, I grabbed hold of the couch armrest to steady myself.

God-fucking-dammit, I should look away.

But when I closed my eyes, the squishing, squelching sounds of Lucifer rooting around in his own chest—apparently trying to isolate and gather up all that power—became only louder, and my brain supplied the visuals for it anyway.

So I looked.

His entire torso was flecked with crimson, his face sprayed with red as well, his eyes closed in concentration as he ripped open his chest even more with one hand to better rummage through it with the other.

The cracking of his ribs made me flinch.

It seemed to take forever. The seams of his wound wanted to stitch themselves back together a few times, so he had to keep tearing the hole wider again, spraying more blood across his front and the floor. His features were tense as he focused inward, and I wondered what it must be like. Was he carving out the power as one would flesh from a pumpkin? Or was it like gathering threads of fabric? How much did it hurt?

The memory of the searing pain when Lilith had fused the kernel of her power with my soul was all too vivid, and that had only been a small piece.

Lucifer was garnering what had to be a huge part of his essence.

“Maybe this isn’t working,” I whispered to Azazel, my eyes glued to the gruesome display in front of us.

And what if it didn’t? What if Lucifer couldn’t actually isolate that side of his powers? My breath got stuck in my lungs, anxiety knotting my throat.

Just then, the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. Ice crystals formed in the air. The fire in the hearth went out with a hiss, and all the other lamps along with it. With a low growl, the hellcat flew up to the ceiling and vanished into the darkness.

Unblinking, my vision adjusting to the sudden gloom, I stared as Lucifer slowly removed his hand from his chest. Blood dripped onto the floor with wet splashing sounds, and he opened his eyes, a faint inner light gleaming in their depths.

From between his closed fist, a terrible power seeped out, a whisper of cold darkness so complete it froze bone and flesh and choked all life.

With slow, heavy steps, Lucifer approached Azazel, and every inch that brought him closer seemed to spread a tingling numbness in my limbs. I watched with mounting horror how Lucifer held up his hand, clenching the haunting power of death, and how Azazel squared his shoulders and widened his stance.

So fast I nearly missed the movement, Lucifer struck, breaking flesh and crunching bone as his fist slammed into Azazel’s chest. Azazel grunted upon the impact, his face contorting, and over the bond, sharp pain lashed out and made me gasp. Lucifer grabbed Azazel by one shoulder with his free hand and then shoved his other deeper into his chest.

Visceral memories of how that had felt surged up from the shadowy corners of my mind, though the agony that echoed across our bond let me experience that pain again anyway.

White light exploded behind my eyes. My entire being shook with the waves of pain that streamed over from Azazel. Clutching my own chest helplessly, I sank to my knees, my other hand blindly grasping for the couch to find purchase.

A flash of enormous power rattled my soul, made my energy ping and vibrate at such high frequency that I pressed my hands to my ears as if to shut out the sound—though it came from within me. Another sound tore the air, high-pitched and throaty at the same time, and it took me a moment to realize I was hearing myself scream at the top of my lungs.

Pain pulsed through me. I convulsed.

Across the bond came a surge of ice-cold darkness, and as it spread through my veins, my blood, my bones, it numbed the agony bit by bit. The roar of something primordial, born before the advent of time, filled my soul, and for a moment, I tasted true death.

Then my mind sank into oblivion.