Chapter 4 Lucifer #2
Lucifer still marveled at it, that even as he stared into Belial’s face, there was true concern there, and it was for him. He might never really deserve it. She was right about Galilee—he needed to give Belial all the information he had available
because something was going on with Galilee, something serious, and it was dangerously unpredictable, especially in such proximity to the artifact.
“She’s not human,” he said.
Belial went silent in a way that was too quiet.
Lucifer didn’t blame her. It sounded bad when he said it out loud too. What were the chances of something inhuman showing
up and trying to gain access to the artifact, to the point of cutting an unnecessary deal with him? He probably would’ve let
the spoiled princess in eventually, but Galilee had jumped in with a bargain, like she couldn’t lose the chance to see it.
Lucifer had known something was off then, so he’d deliberately separated her from the others. Belial would pick all that up
from Asmodeus’s report, but what Lucifer had done afterward had . . . complicated things. He reported it back to Belial as
starkly as he could: the burning of her touch and his eyes going black in response, that he’d kissed her and called up the
smoke, that he’d eaten her out, that he’d given her his name.
When he was done, he opened his eyes and turned to look at Belial. She was completely motionless and staring away from him,
but her eyes were aflame, and Lucifer knew she was barely controlling her rage.
“I know Levi will want to kill her,” he began.
Belial whipped her head around. “Levi is going to kill her,” she clarified with a snarl. “And I’m not going to do a fucking thing to stop him.”
She was adorable when she was furious. “Belial, come on.”
His prince sprang up from her chair. “Are you out of your fucking mind, Luci? You gave her your name.”
“I give everyone my name.” He’d been going by Lucifer Helel among the humans for years now. “None of them take it seriously.”
“Because we avoid anyone who might know enough to notice that you’re the fucking Devil!” Belial was roaring now, and paint shook down from the ceiling. “You don’t see us walking into the Vatican with demon eyes
and clouds of smoke, because that would be a fucking problem, Lucifer! And they are mostly humans. She is not. She wasn’t surprised by a goddamn thing you did, which means she knows far more than she should, which means she shouldn’t be
anywhere near the artifact. And she cut a deal with you just so she could see it? Luci, she is literally a breach waiting to happen.”
A silken voice cut in. “Who are we talking about, exactly?”
Lucifer winced. “Leviathan.” Fuck. “We didn’t hear you come in.”
Shadows skittered in the corner, and a tall man with pale patches scattered over his dark skin and bone-white locs stepped
out to join them. He moved like a large stalking cat, slow and predatory, dressed in the matte black they all wore but with
a sword hanging in a scabbard from his hip. The pools of pale skin spilled over his left eye and the right corner of his mouth,
the flesh of his lip pink where one fell. His gold eyes were as flat as a snake’s, and power thrummed out from his skin, pushing
insistently against the air.
“Who is a breach?” he asked again.
“A girl came by,” Belial answered, ignoring the look Lucifer was giving her. “Not human. Luci struck a deal with her—a dance
in exchange for seeing the artifact.”
Lucifer threw up his hands and flopped back in his chair. “It was a harmless fucking deal!”
“And then,” Belial continued, her voice acidic, “she touched him, and it burned so badly that his eyes went black without his control.”
“You’re making this sound really bad.” Lucifer let his voice slither low. “It was also immensely arousing.”
“Which is why Luci then went down on her in the middle of the hallway after calling up a wave of darkness to cloak them. It
was effective, as none of us heard her screaming his name, which he gave her.”
“I didn’t give her my name till afterward,” he corrected. “She hasn’t screamed it yet.”
Belial looked like she was about to tear him into small pieces. “Yet?”
Lucifer grinned at her. Anything to not look at Levi’s face.
“Don’t look at me like you were joking,” Belial snapped. “I know when you’re joking and that wasn’t it.”
She fell silent as Levi walked around her. Lucifer kept his head turned away, but it was impossible to ignore Levi looming
over him or the sound of him unbuckling the scabbard to lay it aside before he crouched in front of Lucifer’s chair. It was
a mercy that he didn’t kneel. The sight of Leviathan kneeling before him was something Lucifer never wanted to see again.
“She burned you, Luci?”
Levi’s voice was a whisper of breath, silk falling over the fresh edge of a new blade, oh so dangerous. Lucifer didn’t reply
at first, and then Levi’s fingers were on his jaw, gently turning his head so that Lucifer could no longer avoid his second’s
eyes. They gazed at each other for a moment, Levi’s fingers warm against his skin. Lucifer didn’t want to answer, but he never
lied to his princes, and they needed the data. If someone had the power to hurt him, then they could hurt the others too.
Gali hadn’t been flexing her power—in fact, she’d seemed totally unaware of it—but they had no idea what they were dealing
with. Lucifer couldn’t even tell them what she was, because he had no fucking idea.
So he told Levi the truth. “To the bone.”
Belial flinched.
Levi just nodded and stood back up. “I’ll take care of it,” he said, picking up his scabbard.
Fear yawned deep inside Lucifer, and it was so unfamiliar that he froze in shock. If he had ever felt it in the past, that
part of his memory was a distant void, too far away from any of his corporeal forms. Yet now, at the thought of Gali dying,
of Levi taking her head from her shoulders with his blade, fear curled around his entrails. Levi was already walking away,
speaking quietly to Belial. Galilee was going to die. Galilee was going to die. Lucifer forced himself to his feet.
“Levi, don’t.”
His princes stopped in their tracks and turned slowly back to him, shock mirrored on their faces. Levi drew in a soft breath
and put his hand on the hilt of his sword, as if he needed the weapon to ground him.
“Don’t take care of it?” He took a step toward Lucifer. “Tell me why not.”
Lucifer didn’t have a reason. “It’s not time yet,” he said.
“It was time when she touched you,” Belial countered.
Levi was frowning. “You’re asking for mercy on her behalf? With everything we have at stake?”
Lucifer walked toward them, spreading his palms out. “She can’t die. Not now, not yet.”
“She can burn you.” Levi said it like a judgment, and it was.
“She doesn’t know what she can do,” Lucifer argued. “I need to understand what she is, what she knows.”
“So what if she doesn’t know? We need to kill her before she finds out!” Belial was staring at him in betrayal. “Luci, no one should be able to hurt you—you’re stronger than the rest of us. All of us are at risk.”
“And what if she’s none of what we’ve been thinking? What if she’s an innocent?” The term sounded foreign on his tongue, and
sure enough, his princes were wide-eyed, even more horrified than before. Lucifer didn’t blame them. This fear was generative—nearly
everything coming out of his mouth was a surprise to him.
Levi spoke and his voice was harsh. “It doesn’t matter if she is an innocent, Luci. She dies anyway.” His mouth twisted. “What is one mortal to the son of the morning?”
What indeed.
Galilee wasn’t human, but she could die and it would be easy. No new variables, no unfamiliar threats to the artifact. She
would never touch him again. Lucifer would never burn like this again; that much he knew. He would never feel the thrilling
excruciation brush against his bones and sing through his flesh. The infinite future would stretch out before him, cold and
unfeeling.
Levi was staring at him with those chilled gold eyes, too controlled to show the betrayal that was still raging on Belial’s
face. There had been a time when Lucifer hadn’t been numb, when the prince with the sword had loved him more than any sin.
Levi would never touch him like that again, and he would kill Galilee, and Lucifer would feel nothing because there would
be nothing left to feel.
He took a step closer and did something he hadn’t done in centuries. He placed his hand on Leviathan’s arm.
“Please.” Lucifer’s voice was hoarse, a stranger to his ears, and Levi’s pupils snapped into vertical slits. He stepped back
and drew his sword at the same time, and then the blade was at Lucifer’s throat, cold as moonlight, and Levi’s teeth were
bared.
“How dare you,” he snarled. “How dare you beg me?”
Belial reached out a hand. “Levi, put the sword down.”
“He is the King of Hell. Begging us for some mortal’s life. What is happening?”
Lucifer didn’t take his eyes off his prince. “I’m simply making a request for time.”
“Leviathan! It’s Luci, for fuck’s sake. Put the goddamn sword down.”
Levi’s nostrils flared, but he removed the blade from Lucifer’s neck and sheathed it in one fluid move. Belial rolled her
eyes and turned to Lucifer.
“I want to be clear. Are you commanding us to spare her?”
He couldn’t do that, not when Gali’s power was such a threat. He’d made promises to his princes, and Lucifer always kept his
promises.
“No,” he answered.
Levi glared at him. “When I move to eliminate her, will you stop me?”
Lucifer sighed. “Leviathan . . . of course not. I’d never put the life of a mortal above your safety, and I’d never jeopardize
the security of the artifact.” He took a deep breath. “I am asking you for time. If Galilee needs to die at the end of it,
then she will die.”
The other two stared back at him impassively, but Lucifer knew they’d made note of her name. He clenched his hand into a fist
and exhaled. “I will kill her myself if the time comes. I swear it.”
Belial relaxed a fraction. “When the time comes,” she corrected. “We’ll hold you to that oath, Luci.”
He nodded, unable to say anything else. The thought of ripping off Galilee’s head felt almost as wrong as she smelled.
“If you can’t do it, I’ll step in,” Levi warned.
“I’m sure you will.”
The three of them stood in a weighted silence for a bit, then Belial cocked her head at Lucifer. “Why does she matter so much
to you?”
It was a genuine question this time, not an accusation, and Lucifer didn’t reply for a moment. Sometimes he missed the days
when they obeyed him with fear and no questions, but this was a different gift. The princes saw Lucifer wholly as he was—brutal
or fleetingly tender, monstrous or as brilliant as his name. He was bare to them and they to him. It was what he had chosen.
The answer he had was difficult to say in front of Levi, but it was true, so Lucifer said it:
“I haven’t felt in lifetimes.”
Levi’s face smoothed out into implacable ice, but Lucifer continued.
“It might be an end, but a whisper in me wonders if it could also be a beginning.”
Belial laughed. “That’s a fool’s dream,” she said. “There are no more beginnings for us, Luci. Walking through an inferno won’t find you one.”
Levi turned away. “You have forty-eight hours.”
Lucifer nodded. It was nothing in the span of their lives, but he would take it.
“And then she dies.”
“I understand,” Lucifer bit out. He’d chosen this. It was something he had to keep reminding himself, especially when Levi
got cold and curt like this, a love that cut and cut and kept cutting.
Belial stepped forward and grabbed the back of Lucifer’s neck, forcing their foreheads together. Her gaze was pitying. “For
what it’s worth,” she told him, “I take no pleasure in this now that I know you want to burn.”
Lucifer closed his eyes and exhaled. “Thank you,” he replied. His grace period was already trickling away, a draining desert
of sand.
It was time to hunt Galilee Kincaid.