Chapter 6 Lucifer
Lucifer
Lucifer had spent the night flying high among the clouds, his black wings merging with the night and a glamour concealing
him from human eyes. Ever since this assignment started with his princes, they’d all remained in the cloak of their human
forms for most of the time, but the storm currently raging inside him demanded more. It craved the cutting ice of wind and
altitude, so Lucifer had taken to the skies, careful not to slip fully into his truest form. It would be too tempting to simply
become that monster, disembowel the billionaire they were watching, seize his house with the artifact stored inside, and damn the
consequences. Levi had floated that exact idea at the start of the assignment, but Belial had pointed out that it would draw
too much attention. This was meant to be quick and easy.
In truth, the artifact was a hellgate and had been one for almost a century, ever since Lucifer had found it tucked away in a vault in the Vatican.
There had been so much blood packed into it, so many screams, nightmare after nightmare layered into the ivory inlay with the gold veins.
Every face it had been pressed to had become a corpse, the death mask smiling above their stilled flesh.
It had been easy for the Devil to borrow it and crack a one-way shortcut straight into Hell, creating a gate that had remained stable for almost a hundred years, until a few months ago when it passed into Elijah Onyearugbulem’s custody and arrived in Salvation.
Then the gate immediately began to malfunction, its seal compromised. All hellgates were meant to open in only one direction,
straight into Hell, but this one was trying to open in the other direction, threatening to slash a portal leading to Salvation. At first, Lucifer and his princes had warded it closed in
Hell, but when that didn’t stabilize it, he’d sent Belial up to take a look. She’d immediately sent back for them to join
her topside because her findings were dire—the hellgate was so compromised that the mask could not be moved. At any moment,
the portal could crack open, and Salvation would be eaten alive by demons. It was all incredibly inconvenient.
Fortunately, Onyearugbulem had no idea what the mask really was, only that it was spiritually powerful and very, very old.
It had been easy to compel him into accepting the elite security that the artifact needed, and Lucifer had remained in Salvation
with his princes ever since. The whole thing was a damned puzzle cut into a shape he disliked. No one could explain which
religious figure had smuggled it out of the Vatican in the first place, and Onyearugbulem had been tightlipped about the fence
who had helped him procure the piece. Lucifer didn’t give a shit about that part, though—humans traded endlessly, and the
gate was still a gate regardless. His problem was that no one should have been strong enough to tamper with a hellgate, let
alone change the direction it swung open.
Now, Hell was eager to get out, and that was a disaster he couldn’t allow to happen. The world, after all, was still a war that had never really ended. Lucifer had
a nasty feeling about the whole thing, an oil-black slithering that kept moving just out of range of his peripheral vision,
like there was something he kept missing, and by the time he caught it, it would be too late. If the gate broke, it would
be at the very least a localized apocalypse. It needed to be closed, but it wasn’t responding to a damn thing, not even Lucifer’s power, so they had settled for warding it endlessly while trying to find out who the fuck had tampered with it in the first place.
As if he didn’t have enough problems already, now he had to save Galilee Kincaid’s life and prove to his princes that she
had nothing to do with this shitstorm. Lucifer sighed and pulled all six of his wings close to his body, falling into a dive.
The wind howled past his face, cutting at his skin. He welcomed it even as he barely felt its sting—it wasn’t Galilee’s fire
carving through his marrow, and that was what he needed, that incinerating touch of the strange creature who smelled like
a horizon of catastrophe. Lucifer hadn’t decided how to get the truth out of her. Torture was always a solid choice, of course,
but there were so many ways to go about it. An image of Galilee naked and tied up flashed through his mind, and Lucifer groaned.
She would be so perfect with soft ropes knotted against her dimpled flesh, golden clamps on her dark nipples, more gold forcing
her lips apart in an open-mouthed gag.
He pushed himself into an even faster dive, hurtling toward the ground at a near-terminal speed, small cuts opening and instantly
closing on the skin of his face. One deal and a few minutes against a wall with Galilee wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He
wanted an eternity of burning at her hands, enough time to see if he could get bored, if she was as fascinating as her scent.
He wanted her to belong to him. Lucifer snapped out his wings, breaking his fall with a sudden wrenching as the solution to his problem washed over
him like a revelation.
It was so fucking obvious. It would keep Galilee alive and convince his princes that she wouldn’t be a threat to them, and it would make her his for as long as he wanted.
Thrilled at the possibility, Lucifer laughed into the empty sky, and it sounded like a city crumbling.
Galilee just had to be as innocent as he hoped, because if she was part of any kind of plot, then he’d have no choice but to keep his promise to his princes and rip her head off.
But that was a small risk far outweighed by the other possibilities, because if he was right?
If she had nothing to do with anything, if she was just a fluke of dormant power who didn’t even know what she could do?
Lucifer could save her, and he knew exactly how to do it.
All he had to do was make another deal with her, and that wouldn’t be hard.
He hadn’t even been trying to seduce her into the first one, so Galilee stood no chance against the true force of his desire. He was the dawnbreaker,
the radiant one, and he always got what he wanted.
This time, Lucifer wanted her soul.
An hour later, Lucifer was scaling the side of Galilee’s building, his glamour still in place. It had been easy to track her
down: Onyearugbulem’s daughter had sent a car to Galilee’s address to pick her up for the party, and Lucifer had simply pulled
the information under his persona as security personnel.
He was so far away from that now—perilously inhuman in this winged form—but it was important that he stopped pretending with
Galilee. He didn’t need to walk politely through her front door like he wasn’t all the horrific things that he was, like he
wasn’t a nightmare hunting her. She needed to understand who he was, understand that he could give her anything, whatever
she wanted, in exchange for her soul. He could already imagine what it would look like, a bursting incandescent star that
would reduce him to ash, and fuck if that didn’t make him hard with desire. Once he had her bargained into his safekeeping,
no one would interfere with them, and Lucifer would be free to explore Galilee. She could scream with pleasure, uninterrupted
for centuries, and they could explore whatever was coiled inside her, the scorching power he now craved. Lucifer stopped at
her large open windows, almost purring with delight at his plan. He was about to slide into her loft and materialize slowly,
but then he paused with a frown.
She wasn’t alone. In fact, she was currently being cursed out by her two friends, the spoiled princess and the storyteller.
Lucifer perched on the windowsill and watched with curious amusement, his glamour keeping him unseen.
“I’m clearly fine,” Galilee was saying, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Completely unharmed, very much alive. Y’all can go now.”
“Oh, fuck you,” the storyteller replied. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what happened with that Helel motherfucker.”
“I’ll have his balls if he hurt you,” the princess added, fuming.
Galilee growled. “He didn’t hurt me.”
A small smile pulled at Lucifer’s mouth. She was angry that they’d speak against him. She was defending him. Warmth curled deep in his chest, and he drank in her face, now stripped of makeup, the bare skin freckled and soft.
Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head, copper coils sticking out around her ears. An oversize T-shirt hung off her
shoulder and stretched around her hips before stopping midthigh, and Lucifer wondered if she was wearing anything under it
or if she was naked and already slick at the thought of him. He wanted to burst into the loft, throw her friends out, and
spread Galilee on the bed, putting his mouth on her until she was arching and begging again. Claws burst out from his fingertips
and carved small slivers of wood from the windowsill at the memory of her taste, but Lucifer dragged in a deep breath and
got his flesh under control. His restraint was always a little volatile when he let his other forms out to play, but he had
things to do before he could explore Galilee. He had deals to make and secrets to hunt.
“Galilee, you went off with him and then you were gone,” the princess said. “All we got was some weird voice note—”
“In which you may or may not have sounded like a hostage,” the storyteller added.
“—so we’re worried about you. And you’re going to have to give us a little more before you expect us to believe that everything’s
all good here.” The princess folded her arms with a stubborn set to her jaw, and Lucifer watched as Galilee made quick calculations
behind her eyes.
“Fine,” she said, flopping down on her bed. It was a performed capitulation, and it fascinated him no end. “We hooked up,
and I freaked out, so I ran. Y’all happy now?”