Chapter 5
Chapter Five
H e’d been kidnapped. By. Humans. Hell’s sweaty crotch but that was a bitter pill for Lucifer to swallow.
And that was merely the beginning of indignities in a whole crap ton of mortification. He’d been carted around in a wheelchair and then shoved in a van like a sack of grain. This demanded special payback. The kind of retribution he was uniquely qualified to perform. And Bianca sat firmly at pole position on his scorecard.
Throughout what felt like an interminable drive, his abductors remained mostly silent. Some inane pop star grunted and crooned their approximation of music from the radio. Good hells, but when had human music descended to this? They weren’t even trying anymore.
Weaz-adj and Carmen had their heads together in the seat behind him and were whispering. After Carmen launched into yet another ego stroke for Weaz-adj, Lucifer tuned them out. He knew who the real power player here was, and all Carmen’s sweet nothings didn’t change that fact. Bianca was the real danger, thus the one who would suffer his vengeance most.
Bianca.
A witch.
Fuck, he despised witches.
She kept her gaze averted from him. Even with her attention fixed outside the van, Lucifer could almost see thoughts churning in her devious, witchy brain. Witches were always thinking, plotting, conspiring, devising, and brewing up mischief without any thought for how their actions might affect others. This witch was no different.
As human women went, she was good looking. Silky, pitch-black hair in a jaunty ponytail had succumbed to her night’s activities and now canted to one side. Her pert nose turned up slightly at the end and softened the patrician severity of her bone structure. Thick, sooty lashes blinked as she stared at the dark countryside outside the window.
Several piercings dangled from the helix to the lobe of her ear. All predictably witchy—skulls, a black rose, a dangling onyx orb, and what looked like a tiny dragon. She was dressed in head-to-toe unrelenting black with only the skin of her hands, neck, and face visible. He’d lay money on finding tattoos under her tight black shirt.
She must have eased up on the compulsion because he could now operate his own head. He amused himself by imagining what tattoos he might find—triquetra, perhaps a triple moon goddess, definitely a crow or two, and some arcane symbols.
They had left Clayton and were now traveling down a rural road that cut through dense forest on either side. His sense of direction told him they were traveling west of the town. He’d bet his best pair of bespoke loafers she had no idea all flying beings had an innate sense of direction—particularly useful when you were winging above a landscape.
The pretty hag thought him weak and overpowered because she’d slapped a trashy bauble around his neck.
Humans! He barely suppressed a snort. Arrogance and willful stupidity had long been their downfall. You would think with all the thousands of years of evolution that they’d learn a thing or two. But no. They kept tumbling headfirst toward their own destruction. As hell prince for pride, he knew all about arrogance, and it was only justified when you could back it up.
Sweet little hag should have done her research before she’d tangled with him. Or as one rare and more enlightened human had said, “Know thy enemy and know thyself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
Of course, terms like always and never were tossed about by humans as if they had even a glimmering of understanding of either of those concepts.
The van turned right onto an overgrown driveway, bumping them along like pennies in a pocket, until they came to a stop.
Lynn turned in the driver’s seat and looked at him. “Is he all right?”
“He is fine,” Lucifer said.
Bianca jumped and stared at him.
“Oh.” Lynn blinked. “Yes, of course, you can still hear.”
“And speak, apparently.” Bianca narrowed her eyes at him.
“Don’t.” He flicked a glance at the amulet. “You don’t have to render me mute and helpless. I can’t move much more than my head and neck.”
“See.” Lynn gave Bianca a look loaded with reproach. “He won’t give us any trouble.”
Bianca stared at him as she tried to make up her mind. “You planning on giving us any trouble, or do I make you a blob?”
So much trouble, sooo much fucking trouble, haglette, but not at this moment.
“ Speak not to the prince of darkness ,” Weaz-adj intoned from behind him.
“Jesus!” Bianca’s head snapped around. “Would you stop speaking like a B-grade fantasy movie?”
Lucifer was with her on that one.
“ Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour .” Lucifer thought he might add his two cents while they were tossing around the quotes.
Weaz-adj gasped and ducked behind Carmen. “He threatened me.” He pointed a shaky finger at him. “You all heard him threaten me.”
“He’s quoting the bible,” Bianca snapped and uncoiled from her seat. “And he’s doing it to freak you out.”
Lucifer grinned at her. They both knew it was working.
Leaning closer to him, her scent fresh and floral when he’d been expecting patchouli or sage, Bianca went eye to eye with him. “Behave or it’s blob time.”
Oh, she’d pay for every threat and every indignity, but he let his glare do the talking for him.
“Whelp!” Patty flung open the van’s sliding door. “We knew he’d be pissed. And to be fair, the whole abducting and binding thing would put anyone in a cranky mood.”
“Let’s get him inside.” Bianca clambered over and out of the van. “Maybe if we get him more comfortable and feed him, he’ll be in a better frame of mind to hear us out.”
Lucifer wouldn’t bet on that if he were them.
An unpleasant tingling started in his extremities as they manhandled him and his chair out of the van and up three wooden steps onto the porch of a log cabin.
Towering maple trees almost blocked out the night sky around them and stretched their leafy fingers over the fat, yellow disc of a full moon.
Ah, yes! How naive of him. The old full moon and witches symbiosis. A pairing as sublime as chocolate and chili or wine and cheese. It also told him his unfortunate haglette was now at the apex of her powers. It was all downhill from here, Bianca baby.
The cabin door creaked open on a rush of pine scented air mixed with traces of lavender and the tangy woodiness of dragon’s blood incense.
Bianca went ahead, switching on lights.
A juddering push over the door lip, and he was inside.
“Sorry,” Lynn whispered beside his ear.
The inside of the cabin was homey with old-fashioned kitchen cabinets painted cheery blue and yellow. A large wooden kitchen table held a chipped jug of wildflowers, and beyond that, a sofa and two armchairs snuggled up to the stone fireplace.
Patty dropped a capacious bag on the kitchen table with a thump . “If he needs the bathroom, I volunteer to take him.”
“Patty.” Lynn groaned. “You can’t say things like that. You shouldn’t even be thinking them.”
Bianca giggled and turned a mischievous grin on Patty. “Caught that too, did you?”
“Hard to miss.” Patty chuckled. “I’m old, not dead.”
Now they were objectifying him? Granted, he was well endowed, but this was too much. He revised his opinion of Patty. No way that crone was coming near the family jewels.
Weaz-adj huffed and went pink. “You are both disgusting.”
“We were joking.” Bianca drew a careful breath, and he could hear the eye roll in her voice. “He’s not that special.”
Yes, he fucking was. Especially if Weaz-adj was her point of comparison.
A shadow fell over him as Carmen leaned over him. She shared Bianca’s dark hair and blue eyes, but her features were softer and prettier. Where Bianca’s eyes were so deep blue they were purple, Carmen’s were more sapphire. Carmen’s frame was fuller too and didn’t exude the nervous energy, of who he presumed, was her older sister.
“Let’s get him more comfortable.” Bianca joined her sister in peering down at him.
“Now,” Weaz-adj thundered like a televangelist. “We shall attempt to reason with it.”
Murderous intent flashed through Bianca’s eyes before she schooled her expression into something more neutral. “He’s not an it,” she said. “And we’re not going to get anywhere with him if you continue to call him an it.”
“Bianca.” Weaz-adj shook his head. “I can see you have fallen beneath the beast’s spell. He is the great deceiver. Satan.”
Lucifer .
“Beelzebub.”
Lucifer.
“Belial.”
Lucifer.
“Asmodeus.”
“Lucifer,” Bianca yelled. “We’ve been over this and over this.” She counted her points on her fingers. “Asmodeus is lust. Satan is wrath. I don’t know who the fuck Belial is, but this is Lucifer, and he’s Pride.”
Belial had been a high order demon who got above himself and who Wrath had ended a few centuries back. Messy business, best forgotten.
Weaz-adj squinted at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Bianca bent down to Lucifer’s eye level. “I’m going to release the bind on you so you can move your arms, but if you try anything, I’ll snap you back to blob, and you’ll stay that way until I decide to release you. Understood?”
Doing his best to appear nonthreatening, he nodded. “Blob. I understand.”
She should have listened to Weaz-adj—and he couldn’t believe he’d entertained a thought that ludicrous—because he was the great deceiver and bind or not, the unpleasant tingling in his extremities had become definite signs of life in his limbs.
Bianca touched the pendant and feeling flooded into his arms.
He flexed his fingers and rolled his wrists, keeping his feet very still. Looking around the room, he said, “I believe someone was going to explain.”
Everyone but Bianca leapt back and out of his firing line.
Swallowing, Bianca squared her shoulders. “We owe you that much.”
And a whole hell of a lot more, but they’d get to that. Oh sweet hell, they’d get to that.
“As coven leader, I nominate Bianca to brief the prisoner,” Weaz-adj said from the far side of the kitchen table.
Bianca squeezed her eyes shut like she was in pain before looking at him. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“No.” Not unless you counted thirsty for his revenge and starving to have her at his mercy. “And I would like out of this infernal contraption.”
“You’re fine there.” Bianca folded her arms and stuck her chin out. Ready to do battle.
He kind of admired that. Not enough to defer his retribution, but she had guts.
“Actually, Bianca.” Lynn’s face screwed up apologetically. “I do have to get the chair back to the senior’s center before Mrs. Hall needs her middle of the night bathroom break.” She winced. “And also the van. I only said I needed it for a couple of hours.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I told them I needed it to take my mother and her friends to the theatre.”
“Well.” Patty stomped into the kitchen. “I need a godsdamned drink.”
Weaz-adj clicked his fingers and pointed to Lynn and Bianca. “Move the prisoner to the sofa.”
“Get me one, will you, Patty.” Bianca’s eyes went colder than tanzanite. “And if you ever click your fingers at me again, Christen, I’m going to rip them off and shove them down your throat.”
“Bianca!” Carmen gasped. “Christen is the coven leader and in charge. You can’t speak to him like that.”
“Get him out of here.” Lucifer had reached the end of his tolerance with Weaz-adj and his merry band. He locked gazes with Bianca. “Get them all out of here. I deal with you and you alone.”
“Unacceptable.” Christen threw back his shoulders and puffed out a chest that looked like it owed much to hours of bench press.
“Now.” Lucifer snarled. “Or there will be no listening to what you say. No help.”
Indecision crossed Bianca’s face.
She was frightened to be alone with him, and that was the only good sense she’d exhibited since this entire fuckfest had begun.
“Here.” Patty nudged Bianca’s arm with a tumbler full to the brim with red wine. “You look like you need this.”
Gaze locked with his, Bianca took a hefty swig. She swallowed, breathed deep, and nodded. “Right!”
The others jumped and stared at her expectantly.
“Let’s get him to the sofa. Then he and I are going to talk this out.” Her grim look was almost impressive. “And get him a glass of wine.”
Bianca wasn’t completely devoid of good sense then.
“I suppose you’ll need me to move him.” Weaz-adj flexed and preened to Carmen’s breathless delight.
Lynn scuttled closer. “I’ll hold the chair.”
The next three minutes made the entire operation thus far look like a smoothly executed military maneuver.
Weaz-adj’s attempts to move him ended with the other man red faced and sweating and Lucifer slumped ass teetering over the edge of the chair.
Finally, Weaz-adj bent and heaved Lucifer over his shoulder.
The amulet slipped over his head and clattered to the floor.
Everyone froze.
Lucifer’s power surged.
Bianca sprang, snatched the amulet up and tossed it over his head again. All without spilling a drop of her wine. Impressive and annoying. For one sweet second his power had crackled through him.
Still, he was much more comfortable on the overstuffed plaid sofa, and she did give him a generous sip from her tumbler.
They had an execrable taste in wine. But he lowered his standards and accepted a second sip. Wine, after all, was wine.
Weaz-adj hovered, and Lucifer turned his stare on him. Demons, hell princes, and archangels had all trembled before his stare. Weaz-adj folded like soggy toilet paper.
“Leave,” Lucifer said.
“I’ll…er…” Weaz-adj gestured to the door. “Leave Bianca in charge of prisoner liaison and just…er…go and…run the coven.”
Lucifer bared his teeth. “Smashing idea.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Carmen had the grace to look over her shoulder at Bianca as she followed Weaz-adj to the door. “Will she be safe with him?”
Not in a million years.
Patty wagged her forefinger from Lucifer’s one eye to the other. “Don’t like the way he’s eyeballing us.”
“I’m okay.” Poor, sweet deluded haglette drew her shoulders back. “I’m fine. I have him under control.”
“Well…if you’re sure.” Lynn backed out with the wheelchair. “I would stay, only I have to get the stuff back to the seniors’ home.”
“Hmm.” Patty squinted at him. “I don’t trust him.”
“Neither do I.” Bianca pointed to the amulet. “But as long as he’s wearing that, I can control him.”
She’d like to think that, and Lucifer was going to let her continue to do so.
“If you’re sure.” Patty dug in her enormous bag and produced a black security stick. She pressed a button, and it telescoped another three feet. Wrapping Bianca’s fingers around the handle, she said, “If he gives you any crap, you whack him with that.” She frowned. “Or would you prefer the taser?”
“No taser.” Bianca gaped at the stick in her hand. “Where did you get this? And the taser.”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.” Patty jabbed her middle and forefingers at her eyes and then at him. “I got your number, handsome.”
At least she acknowledged his striking good looks before the door clicked behind Patty.
And they were alone.
Lucifer smiled at Bianca. “Alone at last.”