Chapter Twenty-One

Malphas POV

The Behemoth had grown too large to be contained by his own home—a mindless creature lost to hunger. Only a single foot remained in the hallway; the rest of his body had disappeared through the hole in the ceiling.

Malphas had faced hundreds of armies. He had stood by B’ael, the King of Wrath, and gone into battle with the point of his finger. He had swung swords, he had commanded armies, and he had relished in the blood spilled.

But the Behemoth was too much.

A creature of endless hunger.

It had been for nothing.

The deal with Asmodeus wasn’t worth the Vellum it was written on. Not many demons would take a chance on someone who’d spent so many years in Lucifer’s garden of betrayers. Asmodeus had been risking her reputation by offering the deal, or maybe she’d known what she’d sent them into.

Maybe she knew they wouldn’t survive.

Hell sovereign could supposedly see the future. Maybe Asmodeus had seen this. The Flock broken like dolls in the rubble of Behem’s mansion.

Malphas knew the scream was coming but couldn’t prepare himself for the sound.

Until that moment, Malphas had told himself it wasn’t real. That the idiot Caim would open his eyes and grin, laughing at how he had fooled everyone.

But that didn’t happen.

The scream meant Caim was gone.

Malphas placed his hands on his ears, but they did little to blunt the sound. His ears began to bleed, and the rubble shook around them. The stones skittered across the concrete as a low rumble filled the air.

The Behemoth wrenched his foot free, letting out a triumphant roar that filled the sky like thunder. Every step he took shook the foundations of the city.

Stolas pulled himself free from behind a boulder, his face covered with blood and his forehead sliced to ribbons. His dark eyes were bleary until they rested on Caim. Though he couldn’t see him, Malphas heard Murmur, buried but holding on.

Maddie stood up, her dark hair somehow growing longer with every step. Her fingernails elongated, and she flexed her fingers as her attention was drawn to the hole in the ceiling.

Malphas raced to her, afraid she would fall. Something about her was broken, something much more profound than before.

Acceptance.

The scream had stopped, leaving the low rumble of the Behemoth’s footsteps. The creature’s shadow blocked the sun, leaving the world in darkness.

Maddie looked down at her hand like she hadn’t seen it before. She bent over, her arm curled over her middle.

There was something different about her. Something ethereal. Beastial.

Her hair, now long enough to touch her ankles, moved with a breeze he couldn’t feel. Her eyes were endless, hollow, and black.

When Maddie unhinged her teeth, every one was pointed.

She really was a banshee.

She screamed, but the sound was different than before. It undulated, becoming a song of pain, fear, and mourning.

Malphas’s chest hurt as if someone had wrapped a fist around his heart

The Claiming .

Maddie had told him that Bean Sídhe could claim spaces, but she had said nothing about people. Or demons.

But Malphas felt the empty space in his chest where his connection to Hell had once lived, filling up with the city's energy. The heartbeat of everyone inside of the walls.

Stolas clasped his chest, and Malphas knew he felt it too. Murmur jolted, biting back a scream.

Maddie’s feet lifted from the ground as if gravity no longer existed for her, and she disappeared through the hole in the ceiling.