Chapter Forty-Two Charlotte
Chapter Forty-Two
Charlotte
Astaroth slams the door of the limo, only able to wrestle me inside the vehicle after he was forced to restrain me. The rope cuts into my wrists, tighter and more painful than anything Lucifer’s ever used to bind me. I watch as Astaroth rounds to the passenger side, sliding into the seat.
Just then, a bomb goes off.
A second follows shortly after. The sound rings in my ears, even through the car’s closed doors. I stare down the block toward where the red carpet waits, to where fire and chaos now reign outside the Gala, listening to the sounds of the screams. People run in every direction, women, men, even a few children, all trying to escape. But it’s only a few moments later that I realize that one of those screams is coming from me.
Lucifer.
Was this his plan all along?
All those people. All those innocent people.
How many are hurt? How many of them are dead because of me?
All because I let my stupid pride convince me that I could somehow make the devil fall in love with me. That I was somehow special enough to change him.
God, how could I have been so naive?
Astaroth swears loudly from the front seat, like this isn’t at all going how he expected it to. He pulls the gun he keeps at his hip, aiming it toward Dagon’s head as he growls, “Drive.”
Dagon glances toward the other demon then, seeming to realize only seconds before I do that Lucifer isn’t the only one who’s been lying.
And if this was part of Lucifer’s plan, Astaroth didn’t know it ...
“No,” Dagon snarls to Astaroth, the look in his eyes telling me everything it needs to.
This wasn’t Lucifer’s doing. At least, not this part.
And apparently, even demons can show loyalty.
In the next second, the burst of Astaroth’s gun follows, and then I’m screaming again.
Blood and other viscera paint the windshield, and Dagon slumps against the steering wheel, his head turned to the right. Dead. His eyes turn cloudy, and I have all of two seconds to process his death before his skin starts flickering like a light bulb going out, causing all his veins to show. Suddenly his body is jerked upright with an unknown force. A cloudy black mass pours from his slack mouth with a demonic roar and smashes through the driver’s side window before dissipating.
Astaroth opens the driver’s side door and shoves Dagon’s lifeless body out onto the pavement as I struggle to process the insane question of whether demons are sent back to Hell when they die or whether they just sort of ... end. And what the fuck that black mass was.
Exactly whose body was Dagon even wearing in the first place?
I shake like a leaf in the wind, my hands still painfully bound behind my back as Astaroth slides into the driver’s seat. He swipes a bit of the blood from the windshield, enough that he can see, and maneuvers the car up and onto the curb, nearly hitting dozens of screaming pedestrians fleeing the Gala. A third bomb goes off just as he manages to finagle us out of the still-waiting line of limousines. We speed in the opposite direction.
Lucifer.
“Why?” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else. “Why would he do this?”
I don’t mean Lucifer.
But Astaroth still chooses not to answer me.
He pulls to a stop outside an alley a few blocks over. “He didn’t, you stupid cunt,” he says, nodding back toward the Met as the sound of another bomb echoes in the distance. “Hellfire’s more his thing. Think Sodom and Gomorrah, only worse.”
My mind is still processing. Still making connections.
Because if none of this is Lucifer’s doing, then ...
I don’t manage to say anything in response before the door to the limo is ripped open and, instead of the cruel eyes of my father that I expect, it’s Mark’s hateful face staring down at me.
“Hello, wife,” he growls as he grabs me.