Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
The portals were more cramped than usual today.
Demons lost in the darkness were grasping at my ankles, trying to get me to stop, moaning and groaning, as if someone had come through here and pissed them off.
I kicked them away and continued to walk with Everi through the portal until I reached Pride.
Thrusting Everi out of the portal, I watched her land belly-first on the stone ground in Pride’s portal room.
My guards looked at her, and I walked out after her, grabbing her by the back of the neck and dragging her toward the Chains. And while she told me that nothing was wrong with her, she began to squirm in my hold as we walked closer and closer to the prison.
Everi shook her head, screamed, cried, squirmed. But I held her still and continued to walk until the guards pulled open the door and the lights turned on in the Chains. It smelled like feces and vomit, sweaty feet and roaches.
I held my breath and pushed Everi into the room. She started freaking out, her claws digging harshly into my forearms, kicking and screaming and biting. I tossed her into the first open cell, slammed the iron bars closed, and locked her inside of it.
“What did you do?” I asked her through clenched teeth.
She shook her head. “Nothing! I did nothing!”
Some demons started to grumble beside me, saying how horridly pure she smelled.
And I could smell it too. There was an angel in Hell, an angel who had been masking her scent and hiding with demons.
And I needed to find out who the fuck it was and where the fuck they had gone before they had a chance to sneak that cross out of Hell.
“What did you do?” I asked her, stronger this time.
“Nothing, Lucifer, I promise!”
She grabbed the iron bars, which should’ve made her cower away. Her hands should’ve burned, but they didn’t … which meant one thing and one thing only. Whoever it was held a power so grand that they were able to sear off all the demon from Everi’s hands so she could grab the Crucifix.
She began shaking the bars like a madwoman. “Let me out!”
“What did you do?” I asked through clenched teeth. “And where did you go?”
Suddenly, as if she knew she had been caught, the center of her pupils turned green.
But instead of the usual Envy color, they turned the same color green that the demons in the Chapel Room had turned the other day before they blew to pieces.
Her cheeks turned green, and she shook her head, collapsing onto the ground.
“Lucifer …” She grasped her throat and heaved, as if she couldn’t breathe. “I-I don’t rem—”
Reaching into the cage, I picked her up by the throat and forced her to stand. “Where?”
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she vomited all over my arm.
I scrunched my nose and pushed her away. “Disgusting.”
She hit the back of the cage and shook her head.
“Where is it?” I asked again.
I needed information. Anything that she would give me.
“I really don’t remember …” she said, her voice getting weaker and weaker. “She said … she said …”
“What, Everi? Spit it out.”
She looked me dead in the eye, her entire eyes filled with green, and said, “Wrath.” And then her body smacked against the concrete and blew up into tiny pieces, green goo erupting all over the bars.