Chapter 12 Lucifer
Lucifer
Lucifer was pulling the parlor door closed behind him when Belial stuck her foot into the doorway. “We need a minute,” she
said.
Galilee looked up at him with her sharp eyes, and Lucifer felt a pang of tenderness shoot through him. Timeline and risk be
damned, he was still going to fight for her.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmured, lifting her palm to his mouth and dropping a quick kiss on her lifeline. Galilee didn’t
respond, but he stepped back into the room and closed the door on her tight, unsure expression anyway. It was better than
keeping Belial’s eyes on her.
His prince immediately folded her arms across her chest and searched his face. “I thought you just needed to fuck her and
you’d be done, Luci. What’s all this?”
The other princes watched from their scattered seats, restrained but curious. Leviathan had slid his sword into his scabbard,
now that he was done intimidating Galilee, but he still looked to Lucifer, waiting for the answer. Their concern was a thorn
under his skin, hot and inflamed.
“I have it under control,” Lucifer replied coolly.
Belial raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“Did you find out what she is?” Levi asked.
Lucifer exhaled. “She doesn’t know, but her family does.”
He could feel their doubts. They thought Galilee had tricked him, played him for a fool. Lucifer almost wanted them to speak
the insult out loud—it would be a relief to incinerate someone for their insolence, to watch them scream and curl and blacken.
Maybe he’d feel more like himself then, not this raw and emotional creature with fear in the small of his back and desire
clouding his mind.
Levi shrugged. “Unfortunate that she has no answers, but it changes nothing. She’s still too dangerous to live.”
Lucifer felt his lip curl, but he kept silent.
Belial had been staring at him, and now she cocked her head to the side. “What’s your plan, Luci? I don’t see you letting
us kill her, as cooperative as you claim to be, but I don’t see us letting her live either. Not with this much at stake.”
Asmodeus slid a chair in Lucifer’s direction, and Lucifer took it, nodding his thanks. It wouldn’t take long to debrief with
his princes, if he could just control his temper and stop imagining a dead Galilee draped across his arms, if he could curb
the resentment that they’d leave him with nothing but a broken body to bury or burn.
“Galilee has no real interest in the artifact.” He rested his elbows on his knees and looked around the parlor. “She wasn’t
even familiar with Hell. She wouldn’t know what a hellgate was or how to tamper with one.”
“What if she’s lying?” Mephis asked, their eyes sly and flickering.
Lucifer pinned them with a cold look. “Ask me that again,” he invited.
Mephis paled at the challenge, and Asmodeus put a warning hand on their arm. “Stop baiting him unless you feel like being
dismembered.”
Belial cut a careful look at Lucifer. “Please don’t dismember Mephis,” she said dryly. “These floors are centuries old. The
gore would ruin the finish.”
“Mephis should watch their fucking tongue.” Lucifer could feel violence gathering in him like a hiss of dark clouds, and from
the way some of his princes edged away, they could feel it too.
“So she’s not after the hellgate.” Asmodeus exchanged looks with Belial and Leviathan. “It makes her less of a threat but no less of a problem.”
“We can’t afford a problem.” Levi leaned his hip against a credenza, and his shirt rode up to expose a strip of dark skin.
Lucifer could remember exactly how that strip tasted against his tongue. “Belial was right to ask,” Levi continued. “What
is your plan?”
It was probably best to tell them now and see if they would still insist on baying for Galilee’s blood.
“I intend to bargain for her soul,” he said.
A ripple of interest spread through the parlor, and Belial blinked several times. “You plan to cut another deal with her?”
Lucifer spread his palms out. “Galilee’s an innocent. Your concern is that she’ll move against us. With a soul deal, she won’t
be able to. Problem solved.”
Levi’s mouth twisted halfway into a sneer. “How do you plan on getting her to hand over her soul?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mephis let out a gleeful cackle. “He’s going to seduce her out of it, aren’t you, Luci?”
The princes all chuckled, and Lucifer bit back his irritation. “Do you object to this?”
“Nope.” Belial raised her hands. “Your solution is acceptable.”
“Levi?” Lucifer wanted to hear it from both of them.
Levi gave him a sharp smile. “Fine, Luci. Fuck her, blackmail her, threaten her, I don’t care. You have thirty-six hours to
get her soul before I do.”
Lucifer paused. Leviathan was openly taunting him now—a bold move on the prince’s part. Perhaps it had been a mistake to beg
for their accommodation in the first place. Mephis had turned to the minor princes, and they were already placing bets on
Galilee’s life—on how fast she would die and who would be the one to kill her, like she was a beast in a fighting ring, livestock
destined for a short life and an entertaining death.
“You need to hurry,” Belial added, with a rare note of worry. “We ran into a problem with the hellgate.”
What? Lucifer’s head snapped in her direction, alarms now blaring in his head. “The fuck are you talking about? You told me the
ward was reinforced.”
Belial straightened up and looked past his shoulder. “That status changed recently.”
Violence was indeed gathering in him, dark and certain. “By recently, you mean in the last twelve hours,” Lucifer bit out,
rising slowly from his chair.
Asmodeus cursed softly and took several paces back, but Belial stood her ground. “Something got out.”
Shock ricocheted through the parlor, and the princes burst out into a clamor. “When did this happen?” Asmodeus was yelling.
“How did we not feel it?”
“I warded the rip almost as fast as it formed,” Belial snapped back. “None of you could’ve closed it any faster!”
“That’s not the point, Belial!”
“It is under control!”
Lucifer closed his eyes. Everything had gone terribly quiet inside his head. “Something got out,” he echoed.
The parlor fell deathly silent. He breathed deeply and opened his eyes, fixing them on Belial. She stared at the blackness
that had spread over his corneas.
“Luci—” she started.
“You didn’t tell me.”
Her face went sullen. “You were busy.”
Lucifer’s wings snapped out, crashing a bookshelf from the wall. Glass shattered, and the floor underneath his feet groaned
as his density rapidly increased. His face warped, his form expanded, and Lucifer already knew the house wouldn’t be able
to take it, but he was so fucking tired of the bullshit. Perhaps he’d been wrong to be soft, wrong to bargain when he could simply take and destroy anyone who thought to stop him.
“One more pathetic excuse and I will rip off your wings, flay you, and chain you to the bottom of an acid well. Am I clear,
or would you like me to take some of your fucking skin to make my point?”
The skin over Belial’s cheekbones tightened as she fell to her knees, bowing her head. “Forgive me, Lucifer.”
The air smelled like clotted blood, and all his dark clouds were bleeding out from his pores, filling the parlor with a shadowed
fog. How dare they? The doubt, the withholding, the contempt toward Galilee that they didn’t even bother to conceal in his presence. He
was the fucking Morningstar, and if he asked them all to worship Galilee, they should be crashing to their knees. He was the
goddamned son of the morning!
An armchair close to him combusted with a scream, collapsing into a heap of ash. The fire behind the grate leaped and whirled.
Lucifer knew he was losing form and control, but so what? So fucking what.
“Perhaps I have been weak,” Lucifer hissed, scales dragging under his words. “Perhaps I have led you to believe that we are
equals, small demons running around on a mortal fucking playground.”
Asmodeus raised placating hands. “No, Lucifer.”
“Perhaps you think my affection for Galilee makes me vulnerable.” Lucifer’s voice was doubling and redoubling, legions of
snakes slithering over one another. “Perhaps we have been on this side too long and you have all forgotten who the fuck you’re speaking to.”
The parlor flooded with impressions: oceans of sulfur boiling with wrath, wet and bloody flapping skins, screams and screams
under a roar of magma. It was a melody in Lucifer’s ears, power singing down his arms.
“Perhaps you all need a reminder,” he offered, with razored teeth and wheels dancing from his eyes.
Leviathan stepped closer even as flames licked up from the walnut floors. He placed his hands against Lucifer’s face, long fingers brushing against the Devil’s temples. “Luci,” he said. “You promised. Remember?”
It would have been easy to forget, but Lucifer did remember. He’d made a choice, centuries ago, to not be this kind of king anymore. Levi was staring at him with calm golden
eyes, unafraid and waiting to see if the Devil would tear him to pieces. Lucifer had promised. Lucifer never broke his word,
but they were tempting him sorely. “Do not provoke me and expect nothing in return,” he growled.
Leviathan nodded. “You’re right. We fucked up. We’ve been disrespectful and remiss in our duties.” He shot Belial and the
others a hard stare. “It won’t happen again.”
A chorus of apologies and agreements rang from the princes, and Lucifer could hear the fear thrumming underneath it. When
it came down to it, their power was just a flicker, while his was a blaze. He took a deep searing breath and folded his wings
into his back as Levi’s hands dropped from his face, leaving his skin lonely.
“Give me a report,” he said, his voice flat.
Belial rose up from her knees and clasped her hands behind her back. “One of the wards faltered—I’m still not sure why. Something
shot out through the gate, fast as fuck. All I saw were dark flashes, and then they vanished into the wall.”