Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Zoe

A fter I’d made it back to my suite unbothered—probably due in large part to the giant hellhound trotting at my side—I’d called for some refreshments, set up a corner in the main room with fluffy blankets for Vengeance, fed her a good, hearty meal, and then made a beeline straight for the bathroom. I hadn’t taken a shower since before I’d gone on the mission to free Azazel, and given that I’d been fighting, sweating, bleeding, beaten up, dragged around, crashed down on Earth, and then hauled into Hell and subsequently slobbered by a hellhound, I was horribly filthy.

God, I couldn’t believe all of that had only happened over the last day or two. It seemed like it’d been at least a week since I’d started the prison break, but no, it had been barely more than twenty-four hours or so.

No wonder my soul ached with exhaustion. It wasn’t a physical tiredness but one of the mind. Too much had occurred in too little time.

Inside the bathroom, I paused and took stock. As expected, this room was just as luxurious and spacious as the suite itself, with quite modern facilities, and overall in better condition than the rest of the quarters. Whatever destruction Lucifer’s rage had wrought must not have touched this room all that much. Cream-colored marble and rose-gold accents made for a harmonious look, and there was a large shower, with an even larger tub sunk into the floor.

A huge mirror took up one entire wall, and I stared at my reflection for a moment. Now that I had my memories back, I recalled what I’d looked like as a human. Before, in Heaven, I’d seen myself in the mirror thousands of times, of course, but never with another version of me to compare to.

Now that I had the image of my human self fresh in my mind again, I studied myself once more, noting the differences for the first time.

Even with all the grime and blood and half-dried saliva, and dressed in torn fighting leathers that hung half off me, the Zoe who stared back at me was an eerily new-and-improved version. I turned my face this way and that, stunned and intimidated at the same time by the changes to me.

My hair was a mess, but even so, I could tell there was a quality to it that had never been there before, almost as if the dark tresses shone from within. My fair complexion glowed, despite the dirt smeared across my face.

And my eyes…what had once been regular hazel now oscillated in an ever-changing mix of various shades of green and brown. I could virtually see how the hues morphed from verdant emerald to pastel jade, strewn with brilliant shards of amber and incandescent cinnamon.

I’d often thought Azazel’s eyes to be so incredibly changeable, as if real storms raged within their depths, all those shades of gray and silver so beautifully in motion.

And now my own eyes seemed to be just as oscillating.

But that wasn’t all that was markedly different about me.

My gaze tracked to the dark shapes behind me, my pulse stuttering as I beheld my new wings for the first time.

I’d never, ever get used to seeing those glossy black feathers attached to me.

They had been, were, and always would be a marker of those beings whose power level I’d never reach. Sure, I’d lived the past eight years with wings of my own and the magic that went along with that, but I couldn’t quite describe how different my perception of myself as an angel had been compared to how I felt about my new identity as a demon.

Having regained my memory of myself as a lowly human living among demons changed everything.

Those black wings were, to me, inextricably linked with those first moments when I’d learned about Azazel and his world and the connotations that had entrenched themselves in my mind when seeing that color of feathers—Azazel’s magnificent, fire-licked wings, that intimidating collection of his hanging in his entrance hall—would forever spell “other” to me.

But now that “other” was me.

I drew in a shuddering breath as my eyes glided over those wings— my wings—the light of the candles reflecting off the shiny onyx of the feathers. A beautiful, sleek black, deep as midnight…but for a subtle roll of flames. As I watched, sparks erupted here and there, licks of fire dancing over the plumage.

I spread the wings, marveling at how they felt and reacted just like my angel wings had. I’d been a bit afraid they might feel different, that they wouldn’t seem like “mine,” as irrational as that was. But these here were just as much a part of me as those wings I’d lost back in Heaven. An extension of myself—of my new self.

I let my fingers graze those feathers, enjoying the silken feel.

Man, if Taylor could see me now.

I grinned just thinking of the face she’d make when I’d show up with wings .

Which made me wonder… Eight years had passed since I’d last seen her. Did—did she even know what had happened to me?

My face fell, my stomach plummeting.

What if she’d never learned why I’d suddenly stopped visiting her? And what about the whole Belial situation?

Oh, my God, was Taylor even alive still?

What if the cantankerous demon she’d summoned with his true name had finally taken his revenge? If she’d lost whatever hold she had over him, he would have abso-fucking-lutely hurt her, maybe even…killed her.

I sank to the floor and hugged myself, my wings trembling. I had no idea if my best friend was dead or alive. I’d been gone for so long, not even remembering her because of that stupid mind wipe, and now I was completely out of touch with her reality.

If anything had happened to her…

My breath caught. Agony pierced my heart.

I had to find out. Somehow, I had to learn if she was okay, even if I wasn’t allowed to go see her.

With effort, I got up, divested myself of my ruined clothes—magicking my shiny new wings away in order to undress—and then I took a long, thorough shower. By the time I was scrubbed clean, I actually felt a bit better about everything again.

Incredible what a good shower could do.

I found new clothes in the spacious wardrobe in the bedroom, all to my taste and fit. Just another sign of how premeditated this whole kidnapping thing had been. Lucifer had definitely planned this well in advance.

I ignored the fact that he’d actually gotten me stuff I liked instead of just shoving a bunch of nondescript and ill-fitting basics on me. There was probably a nefarious motive for that as well, so best not to dwell on it.

Once dressed in a dark green tank and black jeans, I stood a bit forlorn in the middle of the bedroom, unsure of what to do with myself. Vengeance yipped and came over to me, and I scratched each of her heads while talking sweet nonsense in a high-pitched voice.

Oh, it was so good to have her here. The amount of comfort she gave me was immeasurable, fending off the waves of fear and anger and despair that would no doubt roll right over me if I were alone.

Planting a kiss on the top of her middle head, I cooed, “You’re my emotional support hellhound, aren’t you?”

Vengeance wiggled her butt so hard she shook me a little in the process, since I was currently framing her middle head with my hands.

A knock on the door made me flinch. What now?

“Come in,” I hollered while Vengeance stood up, staring intently at the entrance.

The door opened to reveal Gilarion, who sketched a bow. “His Grace has summoned you.”

What? Already? I needed a watch or something because it didn’t feel like a whole day had passed. Dammit, I hadn’t even had time to halfway come to terms with everything, and now I’d have to hoof it to Earth and play Lilith radar.

“All right,” I said with a sigh and followed Gilarion, who eyed Vengeance with a healthy amount of wariness.

My trusty hound, of course, decided to come along, and while I didn’t need her protection anymore, I wasn’t going to turn down her offer of company. I’d have to figure out what to do with her while I was away on my Locating Lilith missions. Someone would have to take good care of her during those weeks, and I’d have to make sure they treated her well.

And now my stomach fizzed with anxiety about finding a demon I could trust to be there for Vengeance. Here, in Lucifer’s palace? Yeah, right. I didn’t trust any of these fuckers here. Not even as far as I could throw them, because now that I was a demon, I could probably throw many of them quite far.

Ugh, I wished I could just take Vengeance with me, but that wasn’t possible, though it pained me to have to leave her back here in Hell when she’d just found me again after years of separation. But the fact was that she couldn’t fly, and I imagined a lot of my search would involve flying around while somehow trying to sense Lilith’s reincarnation—and I still wasn’t sure how exactly Lucifer figured this would work.

He seemed to be convinced that I’d sense her presence somehow, but to be honest, I feared he was like one of those out-of-touch-with-reality managers who supervised groups of engineers but had zero actual knowledge of engineering and subsequently demanded feats from their subordinates that basically violated a bunch of laws of physics.

Gilarion led me back to the room in which I’d met Lucifer earlier, bowed again, and left. I steeled myself, knocked, and then entered at Lucifer’s call. Vengeance traipsed inside on my heels.

I went down on one knee and lowered my head in greeting. “Your Grace.”

“Rise.”

I got to my feet again. Lucifer still lounged on the same armchair as before, his legs crossed with one ankle on the opposite knee. His cold gaze rested on me for a moment, then traced to my side, where Vengeance had taken a seat.

Lucifer narrowed his eyes. “You seem to have acquired a hound.”

“Astutely observed, Your Grace.”

He flicked his gaze back to me, and the malice in it made my chest cramp. One of these days, my smart-ass mouth would get me in huge trouble.

“Explain that,” the Devil said.

Fidgeting in place for a few seconds, I tried to phrase the whole thing in the least incriminating way. “My hound sensed my presence when I entered Hell and has run here to find me. I didn’t want her to get hurt, so I went outside to claim her.”

“So you left your quarters after I explicitly told you to stay inside?”

I grimaced and shifted from foot to foot. “She’s very loyal, Your Grace. She would have put up a fight against anyone trying to keep her from reaching me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of her being injured. I had to get her. And besides, even if they’d sent her back to Azazel, she would have run to me again at the next opportunity. She’s not his hound.”

His expression was unreadable as he stared at me for a moment. “What’s her name?”

I blinked in surprise. “Vengeance.”

His gaze on my hound, Lucifer snapped his fingers. “Come.”

Inwardly, I scoffed. Right, yeah, as if my doggie would just respond to some rando ordering her to heel.

Vengeance stood and happily scampered over to the King of Hell.

My jaw hit the floor. What? But! My dog!

“Venny?” I asked in a small voice.

Vengeance lay down in front of Lucifer’s chair and licked his outstretched hand with two of her heads. The third tried to chew the armrest. Her tail wagged with all the enthusiasm of a dog greeting a favorite person.

“What is going on?” I squeaked. “What are you doing to my baby?”

His eyes on Vengeance as he scratched one of her heads, Lucifer smirked, his features softening to something close to affection, an expression I’d only seen on him when he’d talked to Lilith. “All creatures of Hell are familiar to me. And I to them.”

Vengeance looked at him adoringly, and I stared in disbelief.

Did the Devil just steal my dog?

“Give her back,” I croaked.

Lucifer’s gaze slammed into me.

“Please,” I amended, my heart hammering.

“When you return from your first search.”

Vengeance had laid her right head on his lap, and he massaged one of her big, floppy ears. The other two heads tried to nibble on his boots.

I sucked in a breath. “You’ll keep her with you while I’m gone?”

“Just so.”

My chest felt like someone had punched a hole in it, reached in, and squeezed my heart. “Please don’t hurt her.”

He stilled, his fingers halting their scratching. His eyes were like black chips of ice. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”

I opened my mouth and flailed wildly. “Excuse me! You have a millennia-long history of torture and murder! You make visitors walk over a glass floor under which you have demons chained and eaten alive who angered you in some way. Your wing collection is so vast I can’t even see where it ends. You delight in cruelty. You’ve threatened me in every single conversation we’ve ever had. And you wonder why I’m wary of you seizing my hound?”

He curled his lip. “I do not hurt animals.”

“Well, there’s a difference to your son,” I murmured.

“What was that?”

I flinched and cleared my throat. “It’s just that I witnessed Samael torturing a hellrat earlier.”

If I read his expression right, his features twisted in disgust. Interesting .

“Your hound will be well cared for,” he said after a moment, not further acknowledging the info about Samael.

Vengeance had turned her belly up in the meantime, and since she was so huge, Lucifer could scratch her underside without even having to lean forward much. All three of her tongues were goofily lolling out of her maws.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” I said, my chest tight.

“There is another matter.” His chilling attention turned to me once more.

My fingers twitched nervously. “Yes?”

“Azazel is here to see you.”

My breath got stuck in my throat. My stomach couldn’t decide between fluttering excitement and roiling nausea.

“Right at this moment,” Lucifer went on, “he is but four rooms from here. Waiting for my response to his request to meet with you.”

So close. He was so close to me.

And yet he might have been miles away for all the good it did us both. If Lucifer didn’t give his permission…

My heart pounded so fast and heavily that I felt the drumbeat of my pulse in every part of my body.

“What does it feel like,” Lucifer asked quietly, his eyes holding canyons of darkness, “not being able to be with him?”

I drew in a sharp breath. Was this some kind of trick question? Honestly, every damn inquiry out of his mouth felt like one! Ugh, why couldn’t he be just a tad less terrible?

Reining in my rising temper, I replied, “Like being cut off from half of my soul, Your Grace.”

Something flashed in the stygian abyss of his gaze.

My voice trembling, I asked, “May I see him?”

Silence, but for the sound of my quickened breathing and the thumping of my heart.

“Do you want me to beg?” I whispered.

His unfathomably black gaze held mine for a long moment. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

Yes.

Immediately.

I’d get down on my knees and crawl across the floor if he wanted me to, if that was what it took to make him grant me this.

I didn’t even care about schemes or agendas anymore. About whether this was part of some fucked-up plan to hurt me. I had no mind to filter my response to play whatever sick game he’d set up—all I had in me right now was to give way to my true, genuine reaction upon hearing that Azazel was actually in the same building as me, that he might be just a few rooms over, that I was this close to seeing him.

I’d give anything, do anything, to be back in his arms.

“I don’t want your pleas,” Lucifer said, no warmth in his tone.

My heart flipped over in my chest. “Then…may I go to him?”

“No.”

Just like that, one word could shatter my entire composure.

My breath hitched, and I balled my hands into fists. “No?” The air rushing into my lungs felt like acid. “He’s right here, just a few rooms over, wishing, hoping to see me, and you just flat-out deny his request? For what reason? Just for shits and giggles? It wouldn’t hurt you one bit to grant us this! Please let me see him.”

He leaned forward and bared his teeth. “No.”

The air around me heated with the rage inside me that was reaching a boiling point. “If Lilith were here right now,” I said through gritted teeth, my fury erasing all thoughts of diplomacy or appeasement, “she would tell you to stop being a dick and let me see him.”

The temperature in the room dropped to freezing in the blink of an eye. Vengeance sat up and whined. Frost licked over the floor, and my breath steamed in front of me.

“You dare?” Lucifer whispered harshly.

My pulse echoed in my head, my limbs feeling numb. And yet, I wouldn’t back down. “She would hate to see you like this,” I hissed. “Do you think this is what she would have wanted? She gave me her favor. She was my friend.” My eyes filled with tears, the heat of them a stark counterpoint to the freezing cold in the air. “She treated me with kindness, and she explicitly told you not to be cruel to me. And here you are, ignoring her wishes and indulging in the kind of sadistic games that made her wither away!”

“Watch your tongue!” he snarled and shot up from his chair. Darkness pulsed around him. Thin black lines feathered out from his eyes as if some toxin spread through his veins. “You speak of things you know nothing about!”

“She told me!” I yelled back.

He flinched as if punched. That terrifying mask of death and darkness on his face slipped by the slightest degree. When he spoke again, it was a hoarse whisper. “What did she say?”

I was trembling all over, and a sliver of reason wormed its way back into my thoughts, some of the adrenaline-fueled bravado leaving me. Still, I had to see this through. In for a penny, in for a pound. “She said that you used to be different. Not as vicious and hard. That you had to kill all softer parts of yourself in order to establish your rule and protect her. And that as you became colder and crueler, she grew more and more numb. She felt like she’d been in a stupor for thousands of years, detached and depressed. Until she met me. I reminded her of who she used to be.”

Lucifer didn’t seem to be breathing. Ever so slowly, he sank down on his chair again, his gaze unfocused.

“The way she spoke of how you once were, in the beginning,” I went on haltingly, “there was a glow to her. Same as when she said she was among the few who still got to see the last parts of your kindness that you hadn’t excised. She still loved you. Believed in you.” I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat and added quietly, “You can choose to honor her faith.”

The silence that reigned was thick enough to choke me.

Lucifer sat in the semidarkness, the flickering candle casting an eerie shadow play on the walls, while Vengeance had laid all three of her heads on her paws and tucked her tail.

My mouth dry, I cautiously asked, “Your Grace?”

His icy power seemed to pulse in the room, like a stuttering heartbeat.

“Count your blessings,” Lucifer murmured so low I almost didn’t hear it, staring unseeing into the air.

“Pardon?”

Turning his head away, his expression as gloomy as the room that wrapped him in darkness, he rasped, “Go.” When I hesitated, he added, “He’s waiting in the fourth room on the right.”

My pulse stumbled into a hard gallop.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and then I dashed out of there before whatever mood had struck him would evaporate and he’d snatch this piece of happiness from me once more.