Page 153 of The World Undone

The Lodge.

Bile crawled up my throat, hot and stinging.

No.

He could not do this to them.

He needed to die.

Now.

It didn’t matter if his death meant that we’d never find the stone. We’d find another way to get to it, to complete the ritual.

He wasn’t touching them.

Something inside of me broke and all that I saw was red.

I screamed, rushing forward, my own flames licking along my arms and braiding with those around the cabin. I let my pain out, unthinking, as I killed every protector I reached.

There was no hesitation, no regret, only pain. Only rage.

When I spun around, ready for him, hungry for the prey I was really hunting, a series of darts hit me square in the chest.

Jarrod’s face, complete with that nauseating smirk of his, was the last thing I saw before the flames, and everything they consumed, turned to black.

31

MAX

The fresh scent of briney water clouded my senses, the taste of the air salty and sweet on my tongue.

“I thought we’d meet sooner than this,” a deep voice sounded behind me, “it’s been a long time.”

I spun around, my head dizzy with confusion, my thoughts slower than usual, like they were carving their way through molasses.

“Lucifer?” I blinked several times, taking in his appearance. He looked worse than I’d ever seen him, his hair a mussed mess, his beard an uneven shadow, his eyes rimmed with red and colored in the soft bruising colors that came from weeks—maybe even months—of little to no sleep. There was a greenness to his pallor that made him look sickly, and his frame was more skeletal than I remembered.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was seriously ill, maybe even dying.

The starkness of his appearance was so not Lucifer-like that I found myself holding my breath, a renewed sense of fear licking against my neck.

The still, iridescent surface of The Styx framed the landscape, and with a few deep breaths, I realized this was a dream. This was where we’d met the one and only other time I’d pulled him into a dream-walk.

I cleared my throat, feeling more disoriented than I usually did in one of my dreams. “What are we doing here?”

“You tell me.” He arched a thick, dark brow, somehow looking just as menacing and in control as ever, despite his appearance suggesting otherwise. “You brought me here. I have no control over this realm, it is all you.”

I nodded, then licked my lips, feeling suddenly parched. For a moment, I considered scooping up a handful of the mesmerizing water, sipping from it in deep gulps—but I knew this was no ordinary river, and I had no clue what kind of power it could wield over me, even in a dream.

“It’s peaceful here,” he said, his face relaxing a bit. “Things in my realm have not been this…soft in a long time.”

The tension in his shoulders deflated, his posture looking almost human in its ease.

“It’s getting worse?” I asked, even though I knew the answer, could feel it in my bones, in the strange static in the air that enveloped us all when I let myself linger on it for too long.

We were running out of time. I knew this was true in the same way I knew the lines and curves of my own hands.

He didn’t answer, but I read the depths of his confirmation, of his fear, in his silence.

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