Page 145 of Death is My Ride or Die

I ducked quickly behind the pillar, but not without peering around the corner. Sure enough, two empath demons rounded a marble wall and prowled around the tied-up reapers with seductive murmurs before heading toward Romeo. Talons outstretched, red eyes flickering, one of them spread her fingers through Romeo’s pink Mohawk while the other fondled his belt.

Romeo smirked and seemed to be forgetting about theplan. One of the demons managed to unzip his pants. His eyebrows shot up, and he pursed his lips in consideration.

Unable to see any more of this, I pointed a finger gun at a wall light by Romeo’s head and closed one eye to aim. The empath twins broke away, startled, as the light fixture exploded. Looking at Romeo, I jabbed a finger at the empath twins and made a punching motion, communicating my impatience, then I pulled back quickly behind the pillar again.

“Ha ha, sparks are literallyflyingwith us!” Romeo said loudly.

By the time I peered back around the pillar, the girls were back to climbing Romeo like a tree. He wiggled his pelvis out of one empath’s grasp while battling an aggressive French kiss from the other sister.

While Romeo had the twins distracted, I searched every corner of the room for an exit, but we were surrounded by walls with no doors. Even the way I’d come in had disappeared.

When I turned back to Romeo, his hands were free of the cuffs. One of the sisters lay gasping for air on the ground, her bronze skin a horrifying gray. Mid-kiss with the second sister’s skull clenched between his two palms, Romeo came up for air and crushed her head with a horrifying crunch.

I gawked at the whole ordeal, open-mouthed.

Romeo snarled; his normally playful pink eyes seethed around the edges with a ring of fire. Black markings similar to Death’s shifted over his left pectoral. He glanced down at himself and cursed, zipping up his pants. And just like that, his affect snapped back to normal.

“Oops!” Romeo chuckled. “Almost lost my grip and ate your face off there.” He held up a ring of keys and jangled them. “I’ll get to work freeing my brothers. You keep lookout, yeah?”

“Sure,” I said, uneasy over the way Romeo had crushed that girl’s head like an eggshell. “Try to hurry up.”

Romeo freed each of his brothers one by one, pressing his finger into their hearts. Each time, the empath’s venom expelled from their bodies in plumes of red smoke, and they awoke in a state of confusion.

“What happened?” Denim asked.

“When we entered the mausoleum, we were attacked and enchanted by empaths,” Romeo explained, glancing at the mutilated corpses of Layla’s sisters.

Wolf cupped a hand over his mouth. “Yo! They are dead as shit!”

“Do any of you remember seeing Death?” I asked.

“I thought he was with you?” Leo walked closer as he worked out a knot in the back of his neck.

“Death was enchanted. Like you guys. I don’t know where he is, but I know that Ahrimad needs a body, and Death was in a vulnerable state. So we need to find a way out of here fast.”

For some reason, Layla had led us into this room, and now we all had to figure a way out.

“Well, it looks like Ahrimad is going to have to come to us,” Wolf said. “This room is sealed tight with a ward. Anyone see my weapon?”

“Up your pretty arse and around the corner,” Blade replied, bending down to pick up a knife wedged into a secret compartment in his boot with a snicker. “They took our weapons.”

Wolf jabbed a finger at Blade. “Not for nothing, but I distinctly rememberyougetting us into this mess.”

“Those twins sucked up all his pent-up anger like leeches and strangled the rest of us with their power,” Gunner said to me. “We wouldn’t have been enraptured had he not gone rogue and attacked them before the rest of us were ready.”

Blade scowled at Gunner. “Don’t be a wee narky hole because I’m better at fighting. Always whining like a little babe when you’re ravening.”

“He has a point, Blade,” Leo said, taking charge. “Your wrath is spiraling faster than the rest of us. Focus on your patience. We all need to stay in control of our sins tonight.”

The ground trembled beneath our feet. Our heads turned in unison as a segment of the wall beside us vanished like a mirage, and an archway that hadn’t been there began to appear, revealing another room with a mirror-like object in it.

My heart pounded.

“The portal,” I whispered.

“Nothing gets past you,” commented a familiar raspy voice. Malphas appeared in the portal room, rounding the narrow archway and standing in the middle of it, bracing his arms on either side. “But apparently, many things get past me . . . ” He looked down at the dead empath twins and grimaced. “Ouch.”

The sight of him made my whole body shake uncontrollably. “You bastard!”

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