Chapter Six - Lucifer #3
“I’ll get her back,” I said. The vow came out low and rough, but it held. “And when I do, I’m not leaving anyone behind again.”
Az looked at me for a long time. Then he gave a single, tired nod and glanced up through the broken window into the glowing ruin of the penthouse.
“Well,” he said, voice wrecked and dry, “after you, Your Majesty.”
I snorted despite myself, then winced at the pain it caused.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
Together, we used our wings to climb back up into the wreckage and then walked deeper into the penthouse.
My ribs were almost healed, but I didn’t give myself a chance to slow down.
If I stopped moving, I’d start feeling, and if I started feeling, I’d start tearing the world apart with my bare hands.
I led him down the hall, past the glass and gold and the false calm of my penthouse, toward the one room that still made sense. My office.
It recognized me before I touched it. The locks clicked, and the door opened. Cooler air met my skin, the faint scent of leather and ink and something metallic beneath it, like old decisions.
Inside, the city’s glow bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but the room itself was dark with clean lines and a heavy desk. The shelves were arranged like I could organize chaos if I stacked everything neatly enough.
Azazael paused at the threshold, taking it in like he was cataloging more evidence.
I went straight to the desk and sat, the chair cradling me in a familiarity I didn’t deserve. The wood was cold under my palms and grounding. A place to put the storm.
I flipped open the laptop, and the screen lit up instantly, cheerful in a way that made me want to snap it in half. A login box appeared.
I stared at it, and it stared back. I hit one key. Nothing. I hit another. Letters appeared. That was… new. A password. Of course. Mortals had invented a thousand ways to lock themselves out of their own lives.
I typed what felt like something I would have chosen in a more pathetic era. It rejected me immediately.
I tried again.
Rejected.
Again.
Rejected.
The laptop made a small, polite sound, as if it were apologizing for inconveniencing me with my own incompetence.
I leaned closer like intimidation might work. “I own you.” And then I banged my fist on the keyboard.
The blinking line remained unimpressed.
Azazael had drifted into the chair opposite me, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sniffed. He watched me frown at the machine like it had personally insulted my bloodline.
He dropped his hand and said, “You’re fighting a rectangle.”
“It’s refusing me,” I snapped, jabbing at the trackpad. The arrow slid across the screen with a mind of its own, overshooting what I wanted, darting away, coming back, mocking me with its tiny obedience to physics instead of will.
Az’s mouth twitched. “Try stabbing it.”
“Don’t tempt me.” I glared, “And you… you couldn’t even get a television to work, so shut the fuck up.”
He raised his eyebrows and smirked.
I clicked something. A window vanished. Another appeared. A smiling paperclip popped up in the corner offering help. I froze. It looked too cheerful to be trusted.
“Absolutely not,” I muttered.
I clicked it away. It came back. I clicked harder. It disappeared again with the smug calm of something that knew it would return.
My jaw tightened until my teeth ached. “This is why I never bother with technology,” I said. “It’s insolent.”
Az leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing at the screen. “It wants tribute.”
“It wants me to remember a password I didn’t even choose,” I growled.
I slammed the laptop shut with more force than necessary. The room was silent except for the soft hum of the office lights. Vegas glittered outside like it had no idea the King of Damned was losing a war to a keyboard.
Azazael blinked at the closed laptop, then back at me.
I exhaled once, sharply.
His shoulders shook once, a contained laugh. “So,” he said, settling back in his chair. “We wait?”
I refused to sit still a minute longer, so I stood, heading for the door.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re going to look for… something. Patterns, staff changes, security logs, anything that seems off. If they’re inside this place, they’ll have left fingerprints they didn’t mean to.”
“And Sariel?” Az asked, still using the name like no time had passed at all.
I glanced back. “Topher,” I corrected. “That’s who he is now.”
Az absorbed that in silence.
“When he gets here,” I said, “we start pulling threads.”
He nodded once, accepting the answer even if the world had clearly changed without his permission.
Topher would be hours. I could do a lot with hours. And somewhere in this city, possibly even under my roof, two sleeping old gods walked around like nothing was wrong, tucked into ordinary jobs, ordinary smiles, with no idea what they were.
As we walked toward the elevator, the tether in my chest tugged again, faintly, like a distant bell. And somewhere, Evie was enduring Him.
“Just… a little longer,” I murmured, but I wasn’t sure who I was saying it to.