Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
GRIM
“He’s a real twat, you know that?” Sin’s voice filtered into the hall as I approached the billiards room where they were all waiting for me.
“You’ve made your feelings known,” Chaos muttered.
I stood outside the room, listening in just so I could let Sin have his gripe. I’d earned it.
“Don’t act all high and mighty. You two agree with me. And he’s being even twattier than usual. Admit it.”
“So what if he is? It doesn’t matter. You’re focusing on the wrong thing.” Malice’s voice joined the others. I crossed my arms, resting my shoulder against the wall as I contemplated my entrance.
I was typically the one to call these meetings, the natural leader of our group, if you will. Never had I felt less than confident about striding into a room and commanding a situation. Until now.
“And what’s more important than a unified front?”
“Getting Merri back,” Malice deadpanned.
“What do you think the unified front is for, Sherlock?” Sin shot back. “He can’t even make it to book club on time.”
The children were fighting. It was time for me to make an appearance.
Pushing through the partially open door, I held my head high and put my mask of confidence firmly in place.
“Ah, look, it’s the king of the assholes, finally gracing us with his presence.” Sin’s face was always punchable, but right now, he’d never been more so.
“Why did you call this meeting, Mal?” I asked, ignoring Sin simply because we didn’t have time to fuck around, and as satisfying as breaking his nose would be, that would delay us longer.
“Merri came to me,” Malice said.
“Wow, man, way to bury the lede.”
All three of us glared at Sin.
“What did she say?” Chaos asked.
“Why you?” I said on his heels.
“Firstly, fuck you,” Malice said, eyes narrowed as they met mine. “Secondly, it’s not good news.”
“Oh, so you’re delusional now too?” Sin asked. “Merri is always good news.”
“She told me where she is.”
“See? Good news.”
Malice shot Sin a withering glare. “If you’d let me finish . . .”
Sin mimed locking his lips.
“She’s with him.”
Sin mimed plucking a key out of the air and quickly unlocking his lips. He gasped dramatically. “Him who?”
“Well, that was too good to last,” Chaos muttered.
Rage burned through me as I growled, “Lucifer.”
“Okay, but you found her. We can go get her.” Sin’s words were filled with a hope I couldn’t feel.
“Yes. She’s tried to escape but has been unable due to Lucifer’s magic. She hasn’t been feeding—”
“Whose fault is that?” I snapped.
The others all looked at me with varying degrees of incredulity.
“It’s yours, dumbass,” Sin sniped.
“She would have been taken care of if she hadn’t run off.”
“She wouldn’t have run off if you weren’t such a festering turd.”
Malice cleared his throat. “We’re getting off topic. I took care of her last night.”
“Does that mean she forgave you?” Chaos asked, his hope so pathetically obvious I couldn’t stand looking at him.
“No,” Malice answered with a slow shake of his head. “She’s absolutely furious with us. She called me a hamburger.”
Sin snickered. “Burn.”
“I’m sure you’d be a stale croissant.”
“Watch your mouth, hot pocket.”
“What the fuck is a hot pocket?” Malice asked.
Sin made a considering face. “They’re actually pretty good, to be honest. So I take it back. You’ve been demoted to a soggy, day-old french fry.”
Malice made the V sign.
“Don’t you British middle finger me.”
This was getting out of hand. The reality of our situation was bleak. Merri was with the enemy. Trapped with him and at his mercy. We were lucky he hadn’t taken her against her will and planted his seed inside her already. My stomach churned at the thought as jealousy raged within me.
Worse still was that I was the reason for all of it.
I might downplay my guilt in front of the others, but I couldn’t afford to appear reticent.
If I gave them even an inch, they’d never cease with their pestering.
The truth was, Merri couldn’t be my mate, and she was mistaken, but I should have handled my response to her confession differently.
I should never have been so cold and callous. She left because of me.
Which meant Lucifer’s capture of her sat squarely on my shoulders.
We had to get her back.
I had to get her back.
“Where is he keeping her?” I finally demanded as they continued their childish bickering.
Everyone stopped at the sound of my voice, then Malice turned his focus on me. “She gave me an address. A lakeside cabin in Illinois.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Sin demanded.
“We are not going in guns blazing without a battle plan,” Chaos snapped.
“That sounds like exactly what we’re supposed to do,” Sin countered.
“This is Lucifer. We have to be smart or we’ll lose before we step foot on the property.”
I nodded my agreement. “Chaos is right. No running about half-cocked.”
“Excuse me, I am fully cocked at all times.” Sin glanced down his front. “That should be obvious by now.”
“I will muzzle you if you do not get a hold of yourself. Things could not be more dire, do you understand?” I snarled. “This is not the fucking time for your dick jokes.”
“Shall we summon the horses?” Chaos asked under his breath.
He was always trying to summon them so we could ride into battle, but this time it was warranted.
“Horses, armor, weapons,” I said. “We’ll face Lucifer with all the power granted to us so we can take back our woman.”
That earned me a couple of raised eyebrows.
“A bit late to care about that, don’t you think?” Sin asked with a pointed glare.
“Not this again,” I grumbled.
“She wouldn’t be gone if you—”
“Enough of this bullshit!” I shouted, at my wits' end. “I admit it, all right? I cocked it all up. I’m the reason it’s all gone pear-shaped. I broke her heart and ruined everything. Now we have to fix it. We have to clean up my mess and bring her home where she belongs.”
“With her mates,” Sin pressed.
“With us.”
“Her. Mates.”
I heaved a sigh and dragged my fingers through my hair. “You know that’s not true. We don’t have mates.”
Sin shook his head in disgust. “Lie to yourself if you have to, but never say that to Merri again. You don’t speak for the rest of us.”
Chaos and Malice took up position behind him, silently echoing their support of his assertion.
“Fine,” I growled through gritted teeth. I was entirely too tangled up in my feelings. It was damn near impossible to reclaim my usual unbothered facade.
“Now that we’ve got that cleared up,” Malice said, “can we get back to the strategizing portion of this meeting?”
While we didn’t require an elaborate strategy for this recovery mission, we did plan for a few of the most likely scenarios. Each of them ending with Lucifer incapacitated and one or all of us escaping with Merri. Either way, Lucifer Morningstar would rue the day he crossed us. Mark my words.
Sin clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Okay, let’s get to summoning our steeds already. I haven’t seen my horse in too long. She’s such a pretty girl.”
“Not here!” Malice cried. “This house is not a stable.”
I nodded. “Outside then. Time is wasting.”
We shouldn’t have expended the energy to teleport to the main drive, but we did it anyway.
All of us shared a looming sense of urgency now that we finally knew where Merri was being kept.
It had been hard enough to focus long enough to pull together a strategy, but we knew what was on the line.
And who we were up against. We wouldn’t get a second chance at this.
No one uttered a single word. No one had to. We simply called for them in our minds and they came.
The clouds darkening and swirling until they boiled with frenetic energy was the first sign our loyal steeds were heeding their summons.
Elation built within me at the knowledge that we had all finally been restored to our full selves after that bitch Hel drained us.
If we hadn’t, our horses wouldn’t have been able to reach us.
As always, Pestilence’s arrived first, breaking through the clouds at breakneck speed.
His horse was a gorgeous animal, its white coat and mane pristine, almost gleaming.
War’s followed, its rust-colored hair reminiscent of dried blood, made only more terrifying once you realized its mane and tail were made of freshly flowing blood.
Next came Famine’s, a black-on-black nightmare of a beast that was garishly skeletal, the only life within it coming from the glowing white orbs in its eye sockets.
Bringing up the rear was my pale steed. Many believed that I was the one with the white horse, but she was actually a pale green, meant to mimic a corpse’s deathly pallor.
Her mane and tail were a soft, cloudy gray that flowed behind her like mist over a graveyard.
Beautiful, but eerie. Not a creature that belonged on the earthly plane.
“God, I’ve missed them,” Sin whispered, waiting for his steed to touch ground.
“As have I,” Malice agreed.
“We haven’t been ourselves without them.” Chaos strode forward, his red armor materializing and replacing his clothes.
The rest of us followed suit: Malice in his bone-white armor, Sin in his black, and me in my striking silver. Unlike the others, I also wore a cloak, its hood hanging low to obscure my face, the misty gray color an echo of my horse’s mane.
We took our mounts, weapons at the ready in the blink of an eye.
The weight of my scythe in my palm grounded me in a way I hadn’t realized I’d needed.
I was certain it was the same for the rest of them.
With a flourish, Chaos rolled his wrist, his sword materializing before he completed the move.
Malice’s bow appeared on his back, the quiver filled with never-ending arrows tipped in poison.
And Sin, the newest of us, watched on, anticipation on his face as he waited for his own weapon.
He held out one hand and manifested an ornate golden scale.
His shoulders slumped, expression twisting to pure incredulity.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
Chaos rolled his eyes. “Swing it, kid.”
Sin’s eyes narrowed with distrust, but he lifted the scale above his head and gave it a tentative swing. As the two plates of the scale moved, they stretched, and the entire thing lengthened into a two-headed flail.
“That’s more like it,” he said with a proud smirk.
“Ready?” Chaos asked, looking around.
We nodded as one.
“Let’s fuckin’ go, boys!” Sin whooped.
Locking eyes with Mal, I jerked my chin at him. “Lead the way.”
“I always do.”
We arrived at the coordinates between one step and the next. The ramshackle cabin had seen far better days.
“Are we sure this is the right place?” Chaos asked, staring at the front door, which was only half-hanging on its hinges.
“This is the address she gave me,” Malice affirmed.
Tattered curtains waved in the slight breeze, coming out of the broken window that had been infiltrated by vines and other foliage.
“There is no one here. Not a single spark of life.” That sense of dread in my gut I’d been nursing since the moment she left grew to the size of a boulder. “She was never really here.”
“Lucifer planned his trap well,” Chaos murmured.
My horse huffed and stomped at the ground, sensing my frustration.
“What do we do now?” Sin asked.
“We have to tell her she’s not where she thinks she is, and we keep looking.” Chaos brought his horse around to face us all.
“Where would Lucifer take her?” Malice asked.
“Nowhere good.”
“And in the meantime? It’s not going to be easy to find her,” Malice pointed out.
Chaos answered. “We keep her safe the only way we can. Feed her when she comes to us, help her stay strong. Strategize alongside her.”
He was right. As much as I hated the idea, dreamwalks were the only way for us to reach her. Merri would have to fight Lucifer on her own until we could find our way to wherever she was.
I could only hope she’d learned enough during her time with us to do so.
Unfortunately, hope wasn’t something I was overly familiar with.