X

DEATH

I lifted my cheek from the cold marble floor and took in the lifeless mortals strewn all around me.

The last thing I remembered was my soul returning to my corpse at the Halloween event. I'd woken just in time to catch Lucifer whisking Faith away. Hunger had torn at my insides like talons, and what happened next was . . . a blur.

Now satiated, I was covered in human blood. I'd obviously blacked out and had a feast.

Oops .

I staggered to my feet, four of Lucifer's Fallen coming into focus as they surrounded me. Their expressions showed various degrees of fear. Judging by their torn uniforms and wounded bodies, they must have tried to restrain me during my frenzy.

I felt humiliated. I'd lost control again, and so quickly after returning to my body. In my position, showing any weakness at all was unacceptable.

"What the hell are you all looking at? Show's over," I snarled at them. My gaze sliced across the disheveled ballroom, past overturned tables and a mess of food on the floor, to where a small group of mortals from the ball were huddled against a wall, glassy-eyed and brainwashed. "Get back to work wiping their memories. We can't risk exposure. And clean this shit up."

The soldiers bowed their heads dutifully.

Bending down to lift the limp wrist of one of the dead humans, I checked the time. Only about fifteen minutes had passed since I'd returned to my corpse and Lucifer had taken the girl. He was probably talking to her about the contract right now, and the fact that I wasn't involved infuriated me.

My unexpected snack gave me the clarity to focus on another urgent issue: I was naked.

Storming from the ballroom and into the lobby of the tower, I headed toward our D3 David Star" sweatpants. Ugh .

I thought about where Lucifer might have taken Faith. The logical answer was Devin's office, but there was a ripple of magic blocking off the elevators to get there. Wards had been triggered to protect the core of Hell. I shouldered open an emergency exit to get outside and concealed myself with my shadows. Sprinting down the middle of the street between cars, I leapt off the ground, wings unfurling from my back as I took flight and scaled the immense height of the tower with hard downward strokes.

I let the wind carry me down to the roof and landed on bare feet.

Pacing back and forth, I counted each minute that passed in my head. Lucifer and Faith would be done with their meeting soon. Him taking control of the matter of Faith's soul was his way of punishing me, and if I showed any annoyance about it, or barged in on them, it would suggest that I actually liked the girl. It pissed me off that he'd undermined me. I was the one who'd spared Faith's life. I'd drafted the contract for her soul. Those big fat tears that would slide down her precious face as she gave away her soul belonged to me .

Heat whipped at my back as Lucifer manifested on the roof behind me.

I waited for him to gloat.

Instead, he was silent, and I cocked my head to one side.

"She said no?"

"She said no," Lucifer confirmed in a grim tone. "She refused to sign."

There was a sharp pain in my chest that shocked me to my core. I stared out into the city. "Then she's dead. It's over."

"Oh, she's very much alive," Lucifer said, and tension released from my shoulders. "She refused to sign . . . anything ."

A smirk curved my lips. He hadn't given her the form to legally deny us. I turned to face him. "Then you still have time. Heaven isn't aware yet that we're behind on expiry dates of mortal souls. Hers may be overlooked for at least a few days."

"I won't be doing anything," Lucifer said. " You will finish this."

"What?"

Lucifer trod closer. "You got us into this mess, so you will get us out. Faith isn't just scared of us; she's scared of your father. Good thing your strongest illusions are of people you've killed. It's why you're so damn good at being David Star."

Asshole . Pressure built in my jaw from clenching it. "You want me to stage an attack as Malphas to traumatize her."

He nodded once. "Break her. Completely."

"I don't have my scythe, and I'm underfed. I'll need at least a week."

"Four days. No longer."

Goddamn it . Weakened and without my scythe, four days was impossible.

"Consider it done," I said.

"Excellent," Lucifer said with a slice of his grin. "While you're at it, you really should focus on recovering your scythe. You're looking frail. That just won't do for my second-in-command, now, will it?" He strode past me, clapping me hard on the arm as he went, and my fangs gnashed together.

He'd dislocated my shoulder.

"Four days, Alex," Lucifer repeated. Then he vanished into a surge of flames.

More than anything, I needed my scythe back. That conversation had been Lucifer's vindictive way of telling me he had no intention of helping me get it.

I grasped my injured arm and maneuvered it, popping my shoulder back into place. "Motherfu—" My vision momentarily went black, and I wheezed in a breath that my corpse didn't require. The pain subsided eventually, leaving me with an irrepressible rage and the urge to reap more blood.

My palms lifted and beckoned the night. Darkness consumed the roof in an instant, clinging to my torso and forming a new cloak. Dragging on a new pair of leather gloves, I sent a message to my reapers to meet me at the warehouse in thirty minutes.

Meanwhile, I had time to kill.

Shadows poured over my shoulders and launched at my target, clinging to his mortal frame and burrowing in like parasites. They rapidly ate away at his skin as he screamed and writhed against my hold in terror.

The beast inside me purred at the gruesome sight. Delicious .

More shadow wrapped around my gloved hand as I punched forward and plunged my fist inside his chest. I latched on to his life's essence and tore, ripping his soul and scream out clean. The body sagged lifeless against the brick wall, and I inspected the cerulean orb of his spirit hovering in my palm.

The mortal had lived his life practically a saint.

"What a loser."

I crushed his soul to smithereens in my fist and sent him to Hell anyway.

Perhaps that was a little too harsh . . . I laughed darkly at the thought. Nah . Let them straighten it out down there. I don't have time for this.

Pain radiated up the sides of my temple, promising another vicious surge of hunger.

Without my scythe as my guide, I had to collect souls the old-fashioned way, something I hadn't done since Lucifer had summoned a wizard to set up my scythe to organize the souls I need to hunt via Wi-Fi. We'd had Wi-Fi decades before the mortal world.

Growling under my breath, I held out my hand, summoning an absurdly outdated scroll. My to-kill list unfurled past my boots and almost flew into a rancid puddle on the sidewalk before I hastily reeled it back in with a curse.

"Ridiculous," I grumbled, uncapping a ballpoint pen with my teeth to manually cross off the mortal's name. "I feel like fucking Santa Claus."

But the dead had to be collected somehow. The time I'd been in Limbo had set me and my reapers back on soul collecting. The only thing keeping the shell of my human body from decomposing was my soul. My corpse had suffered significant malnourishment without me inside it.

I would have plumped back up in a week on my own, but I didn't have time for that. Brooding, I shoved my to-kill list into my cloak and stalked down an apartment alleyway alongside an orange cat. My legs bent as I jumped, propelling myself off a fire escape and scaling the building to the roof with ease.

Soon I was back in the air, rocketing past Manhattan. Hurling winds and rain carried me down onto an old industrial warehouse, where I landed with perfect balance on the peak of the iron structure. The old glass windows had been refurbished in places from ongoing renovations, but there was a gaping hole in one of them. I tucked my wings in and dropped through it, landing on an iron beam ten feet below that speared the center of the warehouse in two. I leapt off and flipped as I dove backward, plummeting from the forty-foot drop.

My boots smacked against hard concrete. I shook off the water from my cloak with a sharp tug. "Evening, boys."

Ahead, the Seven Deadly Sins stood in formation like lethal soldiers. They'd formed an aisle so that three stood on one side and three stood on the other. Clad in all-black armored uniforms, their faces concealed by cowls.

"Where's Leo?" I demanded.

"Driving your little girlfriend home." It was Blade, the Sin of Wrath, who delivered the snide remark. Lucifer had told Leo to drive Faith without informing me. He'd undermined my power again, and the message was clear: Your people are mine to command, and so are you .

I reined in my anger and composed myself. "We will continue without him."

Striding forward, I prowled down the path the reapers had created. My arms stretched out as I moved, my power lapping out like wisps of dark smoke toward their chests. The pendants they wore around their necks glowed as the mortal essences stored inside absorbed into me.

When I reached the end of the aisle, the euphoria of feeding heightened my senses, and desire flooded my body with a rousing warmth that made me shiver with pleasure. Wildly erotic thoughts suddenly surfaced, involving Faith wearing a sexy angel costume and straddling my lap.

I slammed the fantasy to the grave and whirled around with a growl. Sure enough, the other reapers were feeling this too as they all shifted anxiously on their feet.

"Romeo," I snarled.

Romeo, the Deadly Sin of Lust, grinned from ear to ear. "Apologies, my lord. Seems I overshared." He sliced his tattooed hands through the air, the dark-pink swirls of his power retreating into the gem around his neck.

I shrugged back my shoulders to reset once again . "It will come as no surprise to you that my strength has declined after tonight's events," I said, slipping back into my authoritarian role. "I commend you all on your efforts to gather these souls for me. You are all loyal soldiers indeed. Now, someone brave tell me how behind we are on the dead."

"We are currently fifty-four thousand, six hundred souls behind, my lord. According to the new Souls app, at least," Wolf, the Sin of Avarice, replied and held up his phone. "But Glenn noted there was a glitch in the system."

"I bet he did," I grated.

Speaking of those who'd betrayed me. I had a plan for Glenn's guillotine-style execution, but it would have to wait. I had more pressing matters to tend to.

"Our numbers should be the least of your concerns," Blade drawled, his Irish accent thick and his irises glowing a furious red. "Your scythe is gone. What's the plan to retrieve it?"

My own wrath fed off his like a leech, and I could feel the balance of our shared anger shifting more onto me. Damn it, the effects of my curse were already intensifying.

"The scythe will be recovered soon," I said, circling around the reapers as I spoke. "Ahrimad has relocated into one of the Otherworlds. He's in a weaker form, but we anticipate he's building an army."

"With your father?" asked Wolf.

"Yes," I replied tightly. "It appears Malphas is allied with Ahrimad."

"Will you send Lucifer's soldiers after them?" This time it was Gunner, the Sin of Gluttony, who chimed in.

I clasped my hands behind my back. "I will not be sending our own aimlessly into the Otherworlds. We will wait, keep collecting, and fully prepare ourselves for battle. Ahrimad will ultimately return to the mortal realm, and when he does, we will be ready."

"Since when do we take the bitch way out of things?" Blade lashed out. "I'm sure as hell not waiting around while your general father trains an undefeatable army for Ahrimad."

I shut my eyes, desperately trying to keep it together.

But Blade was relentless.

"The longer he doesn't have his scythe, the longer we all suffer," Blade reminded the group. "We all should have a say in what happens next." He turned to me. "You working alone got us into this mess in the first place. You let your guard down while trying to screw that little mortal slu—"

His statement never got to its end.

Shadow expelled from my body, firing into his mouth and choking him to his knees with rasping gasps. Prowling forward, I slammed my foot into his torso, shattering his sternum with a sickening crack. He collapsed to the floor and cried out in agony.

"I will remind you all that I am your superior, your master ." My voice thundered through the cavernous space, and I cut my seething gaze to each reaper. "I will not be disrespected. When I give you an order, you do it. The end. If anyone else has a problem with that, speak the fuck up now."

The reapers all bowed their heads, lowering their gazes. As Lucifer's second-in-command, it was my duty to maintain order and obedience in all subordinates. Especially the Seven, as their success at collecting was imperative to balancing my curse. The reapers were driven by their own individual impulses in connection to my Seven Deadly Sins curse, and failure to control them affected their duty.

Blade was slow to rise to his feet, clutching his chest. His ruby-red eyes were still ignited with power. He lunged to fight me when Denim, the Sin of Pride, simply placed a massive hand on the Irishman's shoulder and kept him back with a firm shove. Towering over the other reapers, Denim was built like a bulldozer. His deep ebony skin was tattooed with markings similar to mine, just like the rest of the reapers. His stoic gray eyes had an orange glint around the pupil.

"It's the curse, my lord," Denim said in an appeasing manner. "We're all starting to feel it. Some worse than others."

Behind him, Blade licked his curled lips. He slowly sheathed his knife and bowed his head in obedience.

His best attempt at an apology yet. I let it go.

Coming forward, I clasped Blade hard on the shoulder. "The Seven are stronger when they're unified," I said, "when they are balanced . And when you are all balanced, so am I. Keep your rage under control." I turned to speak to the rest of the Sins. "There are trials and uncertainties ahead, but I promise you this: I will retrieve my scythe and kill everyone who tried to stand in my way."

After the reapers left the warehouse, I lingered behind and walked the premises, my mind sifting through memories as I approached the metal table. Not too long ago, Faith had been strapped there by my shadows while I'd sucked demon venom from her veins to save her life.

I'd tasted her light on my tongue and let her keep it.

In four days' time, it would be mine again.