Chapter Eighteen Lucifer
Chapter Eighteen
Lucifer
“You’re late.” Astaroth’s mouth presses into a thin slash as I approach, making him appear uncharacteristically annoyed with me.
“You’re never late when you’re the most significant person in the room.”
Astaroth scoffs as he passes me a cigarette from where he’s leaning against the side of the brick building.
I place it between my lips and allow him to light it before I inhale deeply, the sweet smoke filling my lungs. “I had important business to attend to.”
“Toying with your little human?” Astaroth shifts where he stands.
His face betrays nothing, but it’s the way he says it that alerts me.
“Are you ... jealous, Astaroth?” I grin wickedly.
Astaroth grumbles as he waves a dismissive hand. “I find her annoying.”
“She’s a twenty-three-year-old human. Of course she’s annoying.” My gaze flicks over him. “She’d likely say the same of you.”
Astaroth grunts before taking another drag.
“And what you call toying, I call strategy.” My grin widens, knowing full well I’m baiting him. “I put her in the chair.”
Astaroth perks up, his eyes lighting. “And?”
“It was just a quick taste, really.” I take one last pull before stubbing the remainder out beneath my Louis Vuittons, but Astaroth lowers his chin. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, Astaroth.”
“In other words, you found nothing.”
“Rather bold tonight, aren’t we?” I lift a brow, and he looks away then, capitulating as I straighten the cuffs of my suit coat. “I’ll have to get more creative, it seems.”
Astaroth grumbles once more. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
I thump a hand onto his chest. “Save it for our guests tonight. Shall we?” I lead the way toward the door, Astaroth flanking me.
With Charlotte and I debuting, the paparazzi will be out in full force tonight, which means instead of a pleasant little jaunt to the Meatpacking District, where most of my brother’s businesses reside, Astaroth and I are outside an old, abandoned shipyard in godforsaken Queens.
We enter through the side, the rusted door creaking from where it now barely hangs on its hinges. The industrial beams of the old building reek of mold and decay, and a single light bulb hangs from an old drop-cap chain atop the ceiling. We make our way deep into the building’s belly until we reach the far side, where we exit out into the shipyard again, accessing a part of the yard where several old shipping containers wait. The brine of the sea rends the air.
My brother’s men flank one of the containers.
I nod, and one of them pounds on the door for me.
It takes several minutes before my brother finally emerges, his forehead damp and sweaty. He takes the cigarette I offer before he wipes the sweat from his brow with one rolled-up work sleeve. “You know I don’t like to share.” Gluttony’s gunmetal gaze meets mine.
“It would appear so.”
I only received the call that Beelzebub’s men had managed to get their hands on the hired thug who murdered Paris Starr this morning, but from the looks of it, he’s been holding on to the little rascal for far longer.
Z’s broad frame is underlined with a brawny kind of muscle that speaks to the long hours he spends toiling away in his many kitchens. The life of a celebrity chef isn’t exactly all glamour these days, but the connections it’s given him in the food and beverage industry have benefited me greatly.
Though most of his income comes from his large e-commerce investments, anyway.
“You should have called sooner.” My gaze flicks over him, taking in his disheveled appearance. It’s easy to guess why I’m the best torturer among us.
I’ve had considerably more practice.
Z takes a long, luxurious drag before exhaling. “It’s my club, Lucifer.”
“And yet, somehow, it’s still my name in the papers.”
Z grins darkly, as if that amuses him.
For all his many talents and Food Network appearances, my younger brother would much rather exist in the background than have his face in the media regularly. Z’s most at home in his kitchens or out on the streets, tempting humanity where they choose to eat and drink. It’s that fact that makes him far more insidious than the glitter and glamour of his twin, our beloved sister, Greed.
“Which is why I’m offering to share him with you.” Z shudders a little at the word before he claps me on the shoulder. “You know that doesn’t come naturally to me.”
I roll my eyes, stripping off my suit coat and slipping on the leather gloves that Astaroth hands me before I fasten the buckles over my wrists. “In other words, you’ve had your fill and now I get to dine on your leftovers. Or clean your mess, as it were.”
Z’s relaxed expression grows tense as I draw near.
“You forget, dear brother, that everything you are, everything you have, belongs to me,” I hiss. “Mind your leash.” I step back and finish strapping on my gloves, then nod to one of Z’s men. “Shall we?”
They glance briefly toward him, uncertain about taking orders from me in front of my brother, but I can hear their rapid breaths, see the beads of sweat on their foreheads.
They fear me.
My brother nods in agreement, and one of his demons white-knuckles the door as he opens it.
I pause, glancing one last time toward Z. “I look forward to seeing what culinary creations you and your staff have in store for us tonight.”
My brother inclines his head, lifting the flask he removed from his pocket in acknowledgment.
Astaroth passes my blade to me, and I slip inside the old shipping container without a second thought as he closes the door behind me. I prefer to do my work up close and personal.
It allows me to enjoy it more thoroughly.
The human strapped to my brother’s chair has already been worked over for several days, or so it seems. The air inside the shipping container reeks of excrement and vomit, and though there’s no physical signs of it, I know he’s been tortured. Deprivation of food and drink, Z’s signature, among other things. Humiliation. Starvation. Shame.
Torture is an art, and the best among us can do so without leaving a mark.
But I didn’t come here to be so restrained this evening.
I pull out the vacant chair Z left, placing the seat so its back faces me. I drop down into it and examine the knife in my hands before I look toward the sweat-covered human. His lips are parched, and from his gaunt face, he hasn’t eaten in nearly a week.
But that means little to me.
A vein in my neck throbs. My hatred for humanity runs deep.
“Another well-dressed thug,” he rasps.
I grin. “Your words. Not mine.”
“I would have thought this is below your pay grade.” He looks over my suit.
“I find a personal touch to be most effective, actually.” I watch him carefully. “You murdered a man in cold blood. He who casts the first stone and all.”
“What are you going to do?” He coughs, finally lifting his head toward me.
“A better question for you to ask would be: ‘What can you do for me ?’” I flip my knife about in my hands, its blade glinting in the single fluorescent lantern sitting in the corner. “That kind of initiative puts me in a better mood, you see.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what I can do for you or anybody. You’re gonna kill me either way.” His lip curls.
“See, that’s where you lack foresight.” I stand from my chair, circling my prey. “You see, what matters now is what I do before I kill you, and you’ll find I’m not nearly as generous as Gluttony.” I round in front of him again and give him a little glimpse of the knowledge he’s missing, of exactly where he’ll be headed once he and I are through here.
A look at my true face.
His response is pure animal. Making him rabid with fear.
Hellfire tends to have that effect on humanity.
His eyes widen, his nostrils flaring as he begins to thrash wildly, straining against his hold. “Please,” he begs. “Please! I ... I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know you’d be involved. I swear it.” A fresh sheen of sweat coats his clammy skin.
I tilt my head slightly, considering him.
“Would it surprise you to know that I believe you?” I step closer, using the smooth surface of my blade to forcibly lift his chin.
He slams his eyes shut, refusing to look at me. Like a child hiding beneath their covers in the dark. Though the true monsters answer to me.
“There’s few among your kind who’d dare cross me willingly, and you don’t strike me as having the kind of ironclad balls required for that.” I release him, my blade falling away from his throat, and he whimpers. The smell of fresh piss follows. “So, tell me, Antoine. What exactly did Azmodeus hire you to do?”
He shakes his head vigorously, still refusing to look at me. “It wasn’t Az who hired me, man. I swear it.”
My blade moves so fast that it comes as a shock to both him and me. Blood pools across his cheek as he screams, bucking wildly. I didn’t recognize I cared so deeply about exactly which of my siblings is responsible for this little situation—about which of them is using Charlotte as a means to tempt me—until now.
I don’t appreciate being fucked with.
“Don’t toy with me, or you’ll find out how little patience I have for humanity.”
“All right. All right,” he cries. “Like I told your brother, I’m on Az’s payroll. That much is true. But he ... he didn’t hire me to kill Paris Starr, man. I swear it.”
“Then who?”
He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, shaking his head at me. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a name. You know how it works on the streets. They call him the Handler. Said he worked for one of your siblings. Paid in cash. Didn’t say who. And Az was already gunning for your place. I needed to move up the ranks, you know? I figured two birds, one stone.”
Abruptly, I kick the vacant chair out of the way, and he cowers at the rough metallic screech. “Bully for you.” I flip the knife in my hands. “But unfortunately, I’m growing tired of this conversation, and today, I have places to be.”
His eyes fly open again. “So that ... so that means you’ll let me go?”
The flicker of hope in his eyes is tragic, really.
I chuckle. “Oh, no. I have no intention of letting you go. At least not while you’re alive, anyway.”
I move so quick he doesn’t have time to gasp or flinch before I have him pinned against the wall by his throat, the chair he’s still tied to dangling underneath him as he stares down the end of my blade.
“But whether I kill you now or you die gasping and alone in your bed when you can no longer stand in a mere thirty years’ time, what you humans fail to understand is that you belong to me either way.”
Antoine screams as my blade bites into the first bit of flesh I plan to remove from him today.
“All I have to do is wait.”