Chapter 35

CHAPTER35

ZOE

Iducked and shielded my head with my arms, acting purely on instinct—it didn’t occur to me until seconds later that none of the walls or objects would hit me in my spirit form.

When the rumbling stopped, the air full of dust and smoke and lingering power that seared my soul, I looked around. The darkness was so thick, I wasn’t sure if I was caught inside a wall. But then my eyes adjusted, and I realized that I was cowering in between huge blocks of stone and concrete.

The building I’d been hiding in was reduced to piles of rubble around me. Nothing remained of the convenience store, flames fanning out over the ground, silver lightning crawling across the debris.

I looked up at the sky, unable to fathom how a building of several stories had been razed like this in a matter of moments. The amount of power that took…

Azazel.

My heart clenching, I searched for him—

A hand grabbed me by the throat and hauled me up in the air. I didn’t need to breathe in this form, but it hurt like a bitch to be lifted by my throat. Frantically, I clawed at the hand that held me, and my gaze snagged on the person who had caught me.

On the demon, his black wings lit by sparks of orange flame.

My eyes widened as I took in the sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, the eyes of emerald green. His brown hair pulled back in a bun, Inachiel glared at me with hatred twisting his features.

“You,” he snarled, “took my wings.”

My gaze flicked back to the beautiful display of black feathers and orange flame behind him.

“Oh, they grew back,” he said, having noted where I’d looked. “Painfully enough to make me scream for hours and days.” His fingers twitched against my skin, making me wince. “But I’d just love to share the experience of losing a few limbs with you. And now that I’ve got you in my grasp, I’ll do just that.” He pulled me closer, his face only inches from mine. “I will take you to Hell with me and hold you for ransom until all my titles and lands are restored to me, until Azazel bends his knee and submits to my authority. And while you’re in my tender care, I will cut off your legs and watch you scream and suffer and plead for mercy. Let’s see how much damage a hellforged blade can do to you in your spirit form.”

Panic exploded in my mind. Fear rushing through me, I tried to grasp for that spark of power that had saved me from Destatur. It had worked before—it would work again, right?

Nothing happened. I couldn’t grab that kernel of power inside me to wield it consciously.

Terror clouding my thoughts, I pawed at his hand and barely noticed how he pulled something out of his pocket. A small object, square and nondescript…a little box. I’d seen this kind of box before. From the swirling mess of my mind rose the memory of the moment when Azazel had released my father’s soul onto Earth…from a box just like this one.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” Inachiel wiggled the box, his smile edged with manic glee.

A soul transporter. Demons used it to store the damned souls they collected on Earth. It made it easy to carry a lot of them at once without being hindered or bogged down.

Goddammit, if Azazel’d had one of these on him, he could have simply stuffed me in it and taken me with him while he tried to reach one of the archangels.

Instead, it was Inachiel who held the box, flipped it open and then hurled me inside, compressing my spirit into a fraction of its real size.

My soul met the velvety black of the Box, stifling, dull, and all encompassing.

* * *

Darkness choked me.

Like a blanket of pitch-black energy, it lay heavy on me, its press on my spirit a constant push that seemed to condense me.

So this was the Box.

The impenetrable, unbreachable container used to carry damned souls toward their torture. Now used to carry me to mine.

I couldn’t move. My ghostly body didn’t even seem to exist anymore, all sense of dimension gone. There was no up, or down, no left, or right. No space outside myself. There was only the pulse of my soul, and the dull echo of my thoughts.

Panic raked me bloody inside my mind.

Disoriented, reeling in place, keeled over yet stuck, I tried to buck, to writhe, to claw and kick. I tried to scream and cry.

Yet no sound came. My spirit didn’t move.

I was lost in darkness, and no matter how much I struggled, I still choked on utter stillness and the silence of my black prison.

* * *

I didn’t knowhow long I’d been in the dark. Time had no meaning here, just like space.

I only knew, with increasing despair, that I was at my most helpless. Not even when I’d been lost in Lucifer’s palace during the Fall Festival and attacked by a hellrat had I felt this powerless, this utterly crushed and insignificant. Back then, I’d had a dagger, and I had used it to kill the thing that had threatened me.

And even when I’d crouched on the glass floor of the Hall of Horrors, crying and puking my guts out, I’d known, deep down, that I had a way out. After all, I’d walked into my punishment of my own free will, and there would have been ways for me to walk out again.

Not this time. Not here.

I had no means of freeing myself. I had no way of fighting back. This box was specifically made to hold spirits like me. What chance did I have to find a way out? I had no power here.

No power…except the one gifted to me by Lilith.

I’d tried to grasp it again here in the box, only to find it impossible to consciously take a hold of it and use it on purpose. It had saved me twice before, once by virtue of its nature when Lucifer wouldn’t physically hurt me, and the other time when it had exploded out of me as I’d thrown myself over Azazel, thinking we were going to die.

Was that the key, then? Had it been my fear for Azazel, my feelings for him that had activated the power?

Driven by an impulse, I dove deep into the maelstrom of emotions connected to him. Beside my love for him, the affection for this man who had earned the kind of devotion I hadn’t known I was capable of, there was my fear for him, my anger at being separated from him, my heartache and sorrow at possibly never seeing him again.

I dove deep, and gathered it all, balled it together and used it to dig for the spark of power it might activate.

Nothing happened.

I wanted to sob.

How? How was I just so incompetent at this? Why couldn’t I just wield this power?

If I’d had a voice in this bleak box of blackness, I’d have screamed my frustration, but alas, I still choked on silence.

My spirit vibrated with anger. I was so tired of being powerless. Of needing help, and rescue, of being on the lowest rung of the ladder, always prey and never the predator. Of always relying on Azazel to be my shield against a world that wanted to use me. I was so fucking fed up with someone like Inachiel waltzing up to me and thinking he could do whatever the fuck he wanted because I was weak and couldn’t defend my own sorry ass.

I was so done.

Pressure built inside me.

I’d had it with these fucking demons and their fucking games and their entitled arrogance and their need for dominance and the fact I was always on the other side of that fucking equation because

I

wasn’t

ENOUGH.

This time, when I screamed, something cracked within me. Light spilled out of that fissure, and without missing a beat, I grabbed it.

Heat shot through me. My soul ignited.

I molded that fire, fanned the flames—and then blasted it outward.

The darkness of the box disintegrated.