Chapter Two #4
“I just want my sister back!” I shrieked as loud as my raw, ruined throat would let me. “What took her! Why?!”
“You know what took her.” Another snap and we were in the living room.
“Eeep!” I dropped unceremoniously on the couch, blinking at the devilish swine kicking back on my couch, sipping from a teacup. A full tray loaded down with a pot, cups, and snacks rested on the coffee table between us.
“Demons,” he announced. “Your dear sister was taken by demons without a doubt. The stench of them is still all over this place.”
“Well, then, bring her back,” I cried. “Make them bring her back! You’re their ruler, or king, or leader—or whatever you are! Make them bring her here now, and you can have my soul.”
He was laughing before I finished. “It doesn’t quite work like that, my sweet. Rulers and kings are for societies that believe in order and hierarchy, and demons believe in nothing but power.”
“But...” My eyes darted this way and that trying to understand that. “But, aren’t you powerful? You’re an angel for flip’s sake!”
Lucifer preened. “So I am, but as sorry as I am to burst your bubble, I am not the only fallen angel in hell, dear one. I’m not even one of a few.
And although demons were once very weak, so weak, I was able to take over and subjugate them for a millennium—that is the case no more.
” His voice slithered in my ears. “Countless demon lords have grown in power over the centuries, fed by you.”
I whipped around. “What? Me!?”
“No.” He clicked his tongue. “Not you specifically. Fed by the human race. Your evil deeds. Your countless, almost daily atrocities. There are even a significant number among you who worship demons. All of that is power to the beasts, and that power has allowed them to push back against House Lucifer.”
House Lucifer?
“I tell you this, darling, so that you understand that unless the demons who took your sister have pledged their fealty to me, I have no means of making them return her to you—soul contract or no contract.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t know the ins and outs of hell politics, but he was making enough sense. “How will you know if they have pledged fealty to you?”
“You’d have to find them first.” He held out his hand and the patch appeared above his palm, gently floating in the air. “And although this tells you quite a bit about them, it doesn’t tell you enough. It certainly doesn’t tell you who they are.”
“Wait, what?” I surged. “Did you say that patch tells me quite a bit about them? How? What does it tell me?”
“It tells you,” he relayed, voice calm, “that whoever wore this patch is a student of Abaddon Academy, and that’s where they took her.”
I blew back, eyes as wide as my hanging jaw. “A... student?” I croaked. “You mean a child?” My mind rebelled thinking those oversized, powerful beasts were children.
“I do not mean a child,” he corrected, cutting my horror off at the knees.
“The attendees of Abaddon are adults by human and demon definition. Demon children are wild, chaotic, uncontrolled, dangerous creatures. Only a fool would put dozens of them in a room together. They’d kill each other, their instructors, and level the school within an hour.
“No. Demons do not attend school until they’ve grown up enough to master control of themselves and their magic, and when they have, the school they attend is Abaddon Academy.
” He flung the patch at me. “But since the school is constantly and relentlessly under attack, all students have to wear that patch somewhere on their person, or it’ll be assumed they’re an intruder.
This is why logic dictates they took your sister directly to campus after snatching her.
Anyone suspected of being an intruder is killed on sight,” he said.
“They couldn’t take that chance, so they wore their patches while doing the deed.
Otherwise, why wear something so identifiable? ”
I nodded slowly. “You’re right. That does make sense. But why take her to this place at all?”
He shrugged. “I can only speculate, but Abaddon Academy is considered neutral territory within hell. If they have plans for her that they can’t have connected to their people, they’d carry them out there.”
“Plans?” My throat closed up. “What plans could they possibly have for Dora!”
Lucifer’s gaze was steady. “Once again, I can only speculate, but whatever those plans are, I can assure you your sister won’t like them.”
I shook—tears filling my eyes. “Be honest with me,” I whispered. “Is my sister d-dead?”
He smiled at me. “I don’t know. My father is the all-knowing one, and he didn’t see fit to pass down that particular trait.”
“But what are the chances!” I burst out. “What are the plans? What would a demon want with a human?”
“If you want the list, very well. There are a number of demonic spells and rituals that require human sacrifice,” he bluntly dropped on my head.
“Everything in hell is—for all intents and purposes—dead. Even the beings walking, talking, and existing are dead. We do not have the thing that makes someone truly alive. Only the inhabitants of this world do.”
It took me a second to get it. “A soul,” I breathed. “That’s why mine is worth something to you.”
Lucifer inclined his coiffed head in agreement.
“So,” I tried to speak without trembling, and failed. “You think my sister has been... sacrificed.”
“No,” he replied, snapping my head. “It is a possibility, but no, I personally don’t.
If your sister was your brother, my top vote would be sacrifice, but since you human females provide another valuable use to demons, and you’re so hard to come by, I’d wager they won’t kill her until they get a few uses out of her. ”
“Uses?” I shot up, then fell right over. I was still too weak from seeing his true form to be jumping around. “Are you talking about—about—?” Pitching off the couch, I vomited right on the carpet.
“That’s right,” he chirped. “They’ll be making use of her warm, tasty womb if they’ve got any sense in their head.”
“Holy fuck, no!”
“There won’t be anything holy about it,” Lucifer mused, peeling my lips back from my teeth. “It’ll be filthy, horrid, and very much non-consensual.”
“But why,” I screeched. “You just said there are demon children. They can reproduce with their own fucking kind! Why do they need my sister?!”
“I also just told you how valuable souls are to demons. Demon spawn are soulless, but a half-human, half-demon bastard is not. Demons use souls to power their most dangerous spells and rituals, but imagine how much more powerful they’d be if they were already born with that little magical battery in their chest.
“Beneath your feet, a constant and relentless war for power rages. A House with human hybrids on their side is ever closer to winning that war.”
I cried—right there on the floor in my sparkling dress covered in vomit, I cried. “Oh, Dora,” I sobbed. “What have they done to you? I’m sorry. I’m so s-sorry.”
“Do not despair just yet, darling.” A strong, spine-chilling finger tipped my head. “I haven’t given you bad news. I’ve given you hope.”
“Hope?! What in the you are you talking about?! How have you given me hope!”
“Because if that’s why they’ve gone through the trouble of taking her—and I assure you leaving hell to kidnap her was no easy task—then they’re not going to hurt her before they’ve completed their goal,” he said.
“The hybrid creatures gestate for six months. You’ve only wasted one.
Even if the clock has already started, there is still five months left on it. ”
He had to repeat that for it to sink into my horrified and traumatized soul... but I understood. There was a better than slim chance my sister was still alive, and if she was, she needed me more than ever.
My voice came back after a long, agonizing beat. “Is it likely she’s still there? At this school?”
“Very likely. No House would want it to get out that they have a young, ripe, breed-able human within their territory. They’d immediately come under siege.
You are a very valuable commodity in hell, dear one.
” His whispered, slithering voice dropped the ambient temperature twenty degrees. “Very valuable indeed.”
Lucifer’s sudden and disgusting offer to impregnate me took on new and awful meaning. I backed away from him, not stopping until the wall stopped me.
“You’ve made your point. There’s a deal to be made here, and I’ll make it,” I swore. “Just tell me what you can do for me.”
“That’s not how it works.” Rising up, the fallen angel of the heavens towered over me. “You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if you’ll get it.”
I swallowed hard. Of course he wasn’t going to present all the options like an all-you-can-eat buffet. That would make it too easy.
“Okay,” I rasped. “I want entry into Abaddon Academy.”
He snapped his fingers and the soul contract and quill reappeared. Said quill flew across the pages, presumably writing my terms. “Done.”
“I want... the means to get around undetected,” I blurted. “Unnoticed. I want everyone I come across to think I’m just another demon.”
The scritch-scritch-scritch of the quill tickled my ears.
“Done.”
“And,” I cried, struggling to my feet. “I want to be as strong as a demon. I want to be able to wield magic and do everything a demon can.”
Lucifer clicked his tongue. “Now you’re reaching too high, dearest. I can bring your body to its absolute and optimal strength and performance.
I can even weave glamour magic into your pores that will make you look and smell like a demon, but if you want to be a real demon, you’ll need to make some spectacularly bad choices and then die.
You are what you are, human, and only Daddy Dearest has the power to change that. ”
I slumped over, holding my head in my hands.