Chapter 35

The library was just as she’d left it, with blood drying on the rug. She collected the grimoires, organizing them on the table. In one pile, she stacked the volumes that were way off-topic—the farming spells, and curses.

She flipped through the Picatrix, but it was a jumble of arcana, astrological facts, and descriptions of heavenly deities. Into the discards it went.

That left only one book: DAEMONS. As if its title wasn’t forbidding enough, the heavy volume was bound in a black leather that reminded her of Abrax’s wings. Dread whispered over her skin as she cracked it open. Someone had rendered a long-toothed demon in excruciating detail, his head capped with a blood-soaked conical cap, a pile of bones laying at his feet. Along the top of the picture were two words: Red Cap.

She flipped the page. Amongst a pile of gold and jewels sat a monstrous man with bull horns protruding from his temples. Above his head his name read: Raum.

With a shiver, she reminded herself that these were her people now.

At least this book was going in the right direction. It didn’t include any words—only pictures—but it appeared to be some sort of demonic guide.

She flipped through from the beginning: Aamon, Apollyon, Abezethibou, Abrax, Abyzou… She stopped. Flipped back one page. Even without the name Abrax emblazoned on the top, she’d have recognized him: black wings, talons sharp as knives, and the face of an angel. The incubus had his own page, and someone had written in the margin—Henry’s spindly scrawl, by the look of it.

Try as I might I haven’t been able to learn much about Abrax. He appears to have led the assault on Mount Acidale, but after the battle he disappeared.

Ursula shut the book. To say that he’d reappeared would be a major understatement. Bloody hell. The fact that he had his own page suggested she was up against one of Nyxobas’s most powerful demons. She gritted her teeth. She still didn’t know where to find him.

She glanced at the clock—two a.m. Her body burned with a mixture of adrenaline and exhaustion, and she scanned the shelves again, searching for Henry’s ledger again. She’d scanned through it quickly before, but maybe there was something in there about Abrax, considering Henry had been researching him.

She pored through the ledger, filled with page after page of conquests, starting in the 1830s.

Near the end, where he’d written about Starkey’s Conjuration, he’d written the name BAEL. Below, he’d scrawled:

“I have imprisoned him in my study. Despite my attempts at persuasion, he refuses to reveal the location of the New York lair. When my interrogations rendered him mute, I used Perrault’s Enchantment to put him to sleep.”

Bael.That was the beautiful man upstairs.

Her heart raced as she reopened DAEMONS. With a trembling hand, she thumbed through to the letter B. The sleeper’s perfect, wrathful face glared at her from the page, his features etched with sublime fury, lip curled back from his teeth. An enormous pair of golden wings jutted from his back. At the bottom of the page, written in Angelic, were the words Sword of Nyxobas.

She dropped the book, and the bang of the cover hitting the table shattered the silence.

She’d been calling herself an angel of death tonight, but the real deal lay on a bed just one floor above her.

Ursula stoodin front of the iron-studded door, the reaping pen in one hand, and a contract in the other. She wasn’t going in there without a plan, and for extra security she’d strapped a kaiken dagger to her belt.

After spending the last three quarters of an hour arguing with herself, she kept returning to the same conclusion: her only option was to wake Bael.

She’d read Henry’s journal entries from the beginning, starting from the time he first contacted Bael to the moment he captured him. He was a little sparse on the details, but she’d learned Bael was some sort of high-value prisoner. Henry had planned to use him as leverage in negotiations with the night god.

Even with this sketchy information, it was clear that all roads to Abrax ran through Bael, and the sleeping demon was her only connection to the incubus.

She just had to wake an ancient demon and convince him to tell her where to find the incubus.

Fear slithered over her skin. It wasn’t just that she had to wake Bael that turned her stomach—it was how she had to wake him.

Her grip tightened on the dagger, and she chanted the word Louisa. After the glow around the door dissipated, she pulled it open and stepped inside.

The interior was just as she remembered. Gold astrological symbols glittered against midnight blue wallpaper. Dusty alchemical glassware stood solemnly on the shelves. Yet this time the air held a strange tension, like the room was holding its breath.

She moved toward the bed, gripping the reaping pen. She had a plan to get a little leverage of her own, but the idea of it sent fear racing through her body.

Tendrils of inky magic curled off Bael’s body like smoke, and the air around him crackled with a dark power. Her gaze flicked to the crimson gore staining the sheets. She recoiled, bile rising in her throat. He’d had wings in the picture—beautiful, golden wings. Had Henry cut them off during his interrogations?

Her eyes roamed his chiseled features, his face perfect in repose. His arms, even after months asleep, still rippled with muscle. Despite his otherworldly beauty, the sight of him terrified her. Even unconscious and bound in iron chains, he exuded raw, dark power.

Clenching her jaw, she touched his hand, already feeling his dark magic flowing through her like waves of electricity. She slid the reaping pen into his enormous fingers, folding them around the pen until they loosely gripped it. She held the contract up to the pen’s nib, and in a haphazard scrawl, she scratched the letters B A E L. Bingo.

She had no idea if that counted as a legitimate signature, but it was at least worth a shot. He was immortal, so he shouldn’t care too much, but if he was pledged to Nyxobas, he’d surely want to reclaim his soul for his shadow god. And that meant he’d need to do what she wanted if he wanted to retrieve it.

Taking a steadying breath, she folded up the contract and shoved it into her pocket before drawing the kaiken dagger. Dread inched up her spine.

What she had to do next was even more horrifying than touching his hand.

According to the books, there was only one way to wake someone from Perrault’s Enchantment.

Tonight, Ursula would have to kiss the Sword of Nyxobas.

She clutched the dagger, her entire body rigid with tension, before exhaling slowly. I’ve got this. Surely demons like him were bestial creatures, and the scent of fear would only stoke his predatory instincts.

She leaned over him, somehow repelled and attracted at the same time to the shadowy tendrils of power coiling off his muscled body.

“Relax,” she reassured herself. “He’s bound in chains, and I’ve got his soul.” Still, she placed the tip of the dagger against the soft flesh between his ribs. If he attacked, it would take only one thrust to puncture his heart.

She leaned closer. He smelled of sandalwood, a scent both ancient and exotic. His eyelashes twitched. She almost jumped across the room, but then she realized it was her own nervous breath that had made them flutter. She eyed his lips. For a man made of pure muscle, they seemed oddly sensual.

Marshaling her resolve, she closed her eyes, leaning closer. Her heart threatened to gallop out of her chest as she pressed her lips against his warm, soft mouth.