33. Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

Belial

Mammon finally glanced up from the fire and turned to look at me. His line of sight went straight to the oar gripped in my fist, and as he struggled to identify the burnt heads impaled onto the bone, I released a dark, guttural laugh that shook the banquet hall.

“Don’t you recognize your own brothers?” I gestured to each brutalized and beaten head I’d collected as I made my way through the Nine Hells. “Asmodeus. Pine. Leviathan. We’re all here. One big, happy fucking family. Well, minus Belphegor…”

I strode further into the hall and grabbed a knife sticking out of a wheel of cheese, stabbing a chunk and shoving it into my maw. “And what I’m presuming was meant to be the main course.”

It might have been a trick of the fire, but for a moment, I could have sworn I saw a flicker of fear behind his infernal eyes.

I thought about burying the knife in one of their hearts for a beat before dismissing the idea. While it would be hilarious to kill one of them with a cheese knife, it wouldn’t be efficient. I needed to dispose of these bastards quickly.

“Just tell me where she is, and I’ll consider sparing all three of your miserable carcasses.”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mammon sneered. “The soup was the main course. Belphegor broke up with me and kicked it over, so eat what’s left and get out. Whatever else you’re looking for isn’t here.”

My fist tightened around my oar so hard, I was afraid the bone might snap in half.

Mammon was a pathetic liar. Even without Rayven’s warning, I could have seen straight through his words. The way he tensed, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he narrowed his eyes on me, told me everything I needed to know.

No matter what, I wasn’t leaving this room without three new heads added to my ever-growing collection to the family tree.

There was no denying I was being a cruel and selfish bastard for indulging in my rage.

I knew she wasn’t here. There was nothing stopping me from turning around and going straight to Belphegor’s realm, but leaving them alive would probably come back to bite me in the ass. Since my teleportation abilities didn’t work outside Limbo, we’d have to come back this way, and I didn’t trust these three not to ambush us on our journey back. I had to eliminate the threat now.

I took another stride closer to them, walking along the length of the table while pretending to peruse the food, occasionally stabbing a grape or bits of cheese onto my knife before stuffing it into my mouth.

The way Mammon’s eyes kept pinging between me and his giant war hammer propped against the side of the massive fireplace didn’t go unnoticed. He was determining how much space I’d have to close between us before he went for it.

Paimon and Baal tensed with my approach, and when I sat a few chairs down from them, I was sure they were all wondering the same thing as Mammon: should they kill me before I could add their heads to my oar?

None of them moved as I fixed myself a plate of food, but they seemed to relax.

“Shame about your human pet, Belial,” Baal spoke up, his voice a mix of garbled syllables and clicks. His attention slipped to my oar leaning against the table, the Lord of Lechery’s blackened heads gaping at him and Paimon. “Heard Asmodeus kidnapped her from your All Hallows’ Eve Masquerade, but it looks like you got your revenge. Mammon’s right—you should eat and go home.”

I swept a clump of what remained of Asmodeus’ flaxen hair off the table with a growl-laced chuckle. “Bullshit. I won’t be satisfied until my queen is back in my arms.”

“Your queen?” Mammon laughed with a snide grin that had no humor in it at all. “You can’t make a mortal the Queen of Death.”

I chewed my food, tamping down my anger as he just about gave away all the shit I already knew.

Brutes like him loved to talk, and if you let them talk long enough, they’d always tell on themselves.

Paimon shot Mammon a look of warning with his giant eye. Since the demon had no mouth, he couldn’t talk. Not that he needed to—everything he was thinking could be said with a look.

The fire demon, catching the Lord of Sloth’s gaze, started to backtrack. “Not that it matters anymore, right? She’s gone. Belphegor probably had his fun and disposed of her. Knowing that depraved bastard, there won’t be much left of her body, so might as well go back to your realm.”

“You’re right,” I muttered, fighting tooth and nail to keep my cool demeanor in place. “She was just a distraction anyway, right? So what if she’s dead? Mortals are supposed to die.” I twirled the cheese knife between my fingers, my voice taking a dark bend. “I say, good riddance.”

Perhaps I wasn’t such a bad liar after all. That, or Mammon was dumber than I’d given him credit for, because even under his garish armor, I could see his muscles relaxing. “Finally, you’ve come to your senses. Shame you had to kill some of our brothers before you did, but that means more for us to rule. We can divvy up the realms between us.”

There was a sudden shift in the room, and the other demon lords seemed to eat up the obvious lie. Was it easy for them to buy, since they couldn’t grasp the concept of loving anything other than their power?

That had to be it. They couldn’t understand my obsession with my mortal pet, so it was easy to believe my feelings for her were but a passing infatuation.

“Slave! Ambrosia for my brothers!” Mammon roared, his gravelly voice echoing through the hall. A second later, a soul with a chain around his throat shuffled in with an iron pitcher. By the time he finished pouring all four of us goblets of the rare liquor, Mammon lost his patience. As the soul took too long navigating the perimeter of the comically long table, he threw him into the fire.

He couldn’t shatter souls like I could, so the soul would live on, feeling every bit of the fire as it burned for however long it suited the Lord of Greed.

Mammon took a seat beside Paimon across from me and held his goblet up for a toast. “To mortal meat,” he said, his smile stretching from ear to ear as the soul’s screams from the fire added to the hellish ambiance.

Tipping my drink to theirs, I said nothing as the other two repeated Mammon’s words.

I knocked the goblet back, dumping the meager amount of ambrosial alcohol down my throat. There was a reason it was called the liquor of the gods. It was warm and tasted of heaven, unlike anything else in existence, in the underworld or otherwise. There was a time when I thought the liquor was the closest a demon could ever get to true paradise.

That was before I captured Rayven.

“Speaking of mortal meat,” I began, setting my empty goblet down, “have you ever fucked a human pussy while it still throbs with life?”

Mammon’s flaming brows quirked. “No, I haven’t, but I have eaten fresh mortal flesh. It tastes fucking delicious. When you cook them before they’re fully dead, you can taste the fear. Gives the meat a nice flavor.”

Disgust had my jaws snapping together, teeth clacking, but to the other lords, it seemed to come off as enthusiasm.

Rayven was right. These monsters were so self-absorbed in their own interests that they hadn’t learned shit about me, even after all this time.

“Shame. I was looking forward to tasting some. I’ve heard your feasts are the most opulent things in the Nine Hells, Mammon.”

“And what a feast it would have been today if Belphegor hadn’t fucked me over. I think you would have enjoyed the royal meat I had prepared.”

Mammon snickered as he took the last gulp of his wine. “In fact, I know you would have. Too bad she’s not here anymore. Imagine if Belphegor hadn’t ruined things. You would have walked in to see your human pet spread out on my dinner table, trussed and stuffed like a roast pig…”

There it was, the undeniable slip-up I’d been waiting for. A heavy pause settled over the hall, tension choking the room, and Baal exchanged a nervous look with the Lord of Sloth. Mammon, oblivious to the mounting unease, kept running his fucking mouth.

“I would have saved you the best part—her pussy—since you were such a fan of it while it was still alive.”

I couldn’t keep up the facade a second longer. My blood went cold then molten hot all in the same furious inhale I dragged in.

With a roar, I grabbed my oar and hurled it at Paimon in a blink. He was fast—considering he could bend time at his will—but the fates must have been on my side, because he wasn’t quick enough.

The handle speared his giant eyeball, but instead of blood, shining, liquid mercury gushed from the fleshy sack that had been his head a breath before.

The Lord of Wrath let out one of his infamous war cries as he watched his brother slump onto the table, dead in an instant, my oar poking out the back of his eye like a spear on the battlefield.

He leapt onto the table, his spidery legs chittering on the wood, sending plates and cutlery flying as he rushed me.

One of his legs lunged at me, the barbed carapace sharp enough to run me through. I grabbed it and wrenched it around until there was a sickening crunch, followed by a howl of pain.

I thought about using it as a weapon, but I tossed it aside and resorted to stabbing him in the eye too, burying the cheese knife into one of his many spidery eye sockets.

Seeing that Baal was seconds from going down, Mammon jumped out of his chair and went for his hammer. I shot at it with a blast of fiery blue magic, sending the war hammer flying out of his reach. It only bought me a few extra moments, but when one was locked in hand-to-hand combat with the demon Lord of Wrath, a few seconds was plenty.

I wrenched the knife from his eye with a spray of blood and fluid. No steel inside this body, just blood and bone.

Perfect.

Another screech. Some of his many legs, or at least the ones still attached, slammed into me and sent me skidding back on the table, plates and food clattering to the ground in a great havoc that had the goblins outside clamoring to get through the doors.

Skidding to a halt on the table, my attention locked on one of the few things that hadn’t been knocked off the table in the chaos.

An iron candelabra with half-burnt candle sticks, their flames still flickering.

Unlike Mammon, Baal was an experienced warlord and warrior. Still, he was cocky, too used to winning.

With me on my back, he made the assumption that I’d lost. The spider demon lunged at me again, another of his sharp carapace legs slamming toward my head—the easiest way to kill a demon lord—but he was too slow, and without Sloth to slow time for him, he had no chance of winning this.

I grabbed the candelabra and slammed the base into the small hole I’d already made in his head. It slid through like hot metal through butter.

It was almost too easy. I laughed at the shocked expression that would be frozen on his head forever before his body slumped on top of mine, lifeless. The Lord of Wrath was dead.

I dumped his body off the table and leapt to my feet, finding Mammon standing in front of the hearth, his great hammer held at the ready.

“All this for what?” he growled out, following my movements by shifting his hammer in my direction. “Has the Lord of Bones and Rot nothing better to do than obsess over an insignificant hunk of meat with a heartbeat?”

With a swipe of my tongue, I wiped a bit of Baal’s blood from my bony face, grimacing at the bitter taste. “No, Mammon. All this for a chance at a life I don’t fucking loathe.”

“Life? Life? What business does the Lord of Death have with life?” the fire demon mocked, his armor clanging as he started to close the distance between us with his heavy-footed strides.

“I’m the God of Life and Death. I may not breathe life into bones,” I said, positioning myself to lunge at Mammon, “but I decide who lives and dies, and you… you’re going to die.”