Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Melinda Thymes
I could feel fate’s wheels churning.
Around and around, they moved and flowed to a mad-demon’s lust to overthrow his very creator. Little did Harvest know, everyone was a pawn to fate. Including me. Every action had a consequence. Every demon held greed for power. Not all of them had the ability to claim it like Harvest had though.
At this point, there was no stopping the inevitable.
Well, there was a way. But I knew Sebastian Reaper would never let that happen. That didn’t disappoint me. I expected no less from the Grim Reaper’s son. The disappointment was in the future. The choices that had to be made weren’t fair, yet they had to be done.
Scooping up my long tan dress, I entered his domain without any trouble, which meant he was letting me come to him.
Coming here was a risky move. One could never be too cautious with the man who delivered sins onto the human world like the plague.
There was no safe way to approach the man that seduced countless people into sins right here in his darkened domain.
He was whoever you wanted him to be, which made him hard to resist for humans.
Sinners belonged to him, but I never wanted to see the look on their faces the day they discovered the Devil was real and every bad choice had a price.
And he made sure that price was paid after death.
Sins were just some of his creations. Harvest was proving to be his worst one.
As I rounded the empty cells, careful not to peek in them to see what lay there, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Devil was going to do. And that was the reason for my frown and the very reason I was here.
I paused at the steps, slipped my frail arms into my jacket, and started down the circular stairway. This place, these steps, everything here was just as eerie as its owner. The sound of rattling chains echoed around me. Glancing about the stairwell, I saw no one, but I knew I found him.
“You know I won’t be fooled by your mind games, so don’t even bother.” I gathered up my nerves and glanced down at my feet which were hidden beneath the edge of my dress.
Suddenly, candles lit one by one up the walls. Decay and the taste of rank flesh filled the room. The once empty space held a small table to the right of a large window. Standing in front of it, peering out into the abyss, was the horned Devil I sought.
For a moment, panic gripped me. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him in this form. Every time I’d encountered him in the past, he always wore the face of another, someone I held dear just to annoy me. It always worked.
Well, he had a true face of his own, but I doubted he’d worn it for a very, very long time. At least not since he was an angel.
“What do I owe the pleasure?” I wasn’t even accustomed to his voice this way.
I found myself taking a step back. How did one get so acquainted with evil and the dead to sound like death personified?
Grim was considered death but I knew hearing the Devil speak that was a lie.
Decay rolled off his tongue with a menacing crackle.
It was disturbing. “Why are you so afraid? Aren’t you the one that came to me?
” He had yet to turn around, but he knew everything that happened beneath the dirt.
This was his domain, and those small steps I took backward, were easily seen by him.
I stopped and straightened myself. “You know why I’m here.”
He chuckled deeply. “Yeah, I do.”
“And you’re not going to stop him?” I asked him.
“Why would I?”
“I know what you’ve seen because I’ve seen it too.
That, and more.” The Devil was the king of deception, but I had one on him.
I knew things he didn’t want others to know.
A smile spread across my face for a moment when his back stiffened, but it fell short when I remembered what was happening right now.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
” He lied, then finally turned around to face me with bright red eyes.
What was once the most beautiful angel in Heaven, was now the most hideous monster in the Underworld, and it was his own doing.
Burnt layers of skin covered him, charcoal winked beneath the deep cuts on him.
It was as if smoke might start seeping out from the cracks along his chest. “Tell me, Faye, why are you trying to stop the inevitable? You’re a fallen angel, act like one. ”
I dropped my head and sighed. “I no longer go by that name because I’m not an angel anymore.”
He smirked. “I noticed.” He walked over to the tiny table and poured himself a glass of liquor. I couldn’t tell you what kind. I didn’t drink to know any. “Any angel that comes into the Underworld risks being tainted, and you chose to come down here, anyway.”
“I don’t regret my decision,” I told him plainly. “Who I was doesn’t matter. You were a fallen angel, and now you’re not. You know by looking at me that my body has long since adapted and changed since my fall.”
He sighed, then propped himself on the table and rubbed one of his dark horns casually as if to remind me that they were there.
“Yeah, I see that you’re a witch, Melinda.
Is there a reason as to why you came to me about this?
Because quite frankly, I’m bored, and you don’t want me to be bored. It’s not pretty.”
This wasn’t working. Time to bring up the girl.
“So, you don’t care that Harvest plans to use Kitty as a power source, and if he succeeds, they all die. Reapers won’t exist in the new world.”
“Why would I give a fuck?” The fact that he got all defensive when he normally kept his composure said enough about the youngest Reaper sibling being his weak spot. Which made sense. I knew what was coming, and I also knew he believed he’d never let it happen.
“Hmm,” I paused a second. “I’m a witch with perks as well as visions, so falling wasn’t so bad when I think about it because…
How else would I have known about a certain someone knocking out a certain someone with a sleeping spell so that her family would have no choice but to take her away from what was about to go down? ”
A board on the table snapped beneath his fingers as he rose, but I kept on talking, unfazed by his anger. “It doesn’t make any sense. Your actions contradict themselves. Your stalking-slash-obsession with her has gone on this long yet you’re going to let this happen?”
He flipped the table, sending it shattering into the wall. I held my ground. “He’s doing my work for me,” was all he said to me as he turned back to the window.
My shoulders dropped. “You can end everything before it even begins. Those visions you saw are coming for you, regardless.”
He laughed. “Bullshit.”
“Will you be saying that when you’re on your knees?” I asked before I thought.
It was with those words that I should leave.
The Devil had made his choice. Besides, it wasn’t my job to break him. That one was for another.
And I prayed I lived to see the day.
“Leave before I end you right here and now,” he whispered. “Lucky for you, I’m waiting to see if he succeeds, and what’s left of the human world…” He chuckled darkly. “Well, you know how my story goes.”
I caught up to his ruse. We both knew the outcome of tonight, it was his future that remained unclear, and I knew it ate at him. Visions had long since haunted him about it.
“I’m gone,” I muttered sadly. “Just remember, beneath the monster… Beneath the Dark King there lies a man, and he wants out. Lucifer.”
I didn’t stay around to see what reaction saying his name had caused, but I knew my words were sure to provoke the Devil into a place he didn’t want to go.