Page 46 of Cry for Help

The whiplash of emotions had left me cold from giddy arousal to bone-chilling fear in a single second.

Someone was going to die.

I couldn’t be there when they did.

I pushed past Malphas, mashing my palm against the elevator doors, my hair plastered to my face with sweat. My clammy fingers slipped over the buttons as I slapped the console.

Malphas didn’t ask the reason for my fear. He must have guessed it was something to do with Asmodeus—though he would be wrong.

It was happening again.

Like it always did when someone died around me.

The scream.

Chapter Twelve

Malphas POV

He thought it was a reaction to Asmodeus’s magic at first.

He’d seen people react that way when they were particularly repressed.

As the elevator door swished shut and Maddie slumped against the mirror, with her forehead pressed against the cool glass, he noticed the blood surrounding her nostrils. The nosebleed renewed, even with a stout door between her and the Lust Queen’s magic.

He didn’t have a chance to ask if she was okay. Maddie took a single shaking breath, her eyes rolling back in her skull. Her legs gave out, and he snatched her before she hit the ground—her body wracked with convulsions.

He lowered her to the ground, cupping her head as she continued to seize. He’d never seen such a thing. Was Maddie sick? Was it a reaction to the magic? The champagne?

Malphas wasn’t the planner. He wasn’t the best to have in a crisis. Malphas’s magic was the art of persuasion. You couldn’t persuade a seizure to juststop.

The bastarding elevator took its sweet time as it lowered to the first floor with all the urgency of a nun dropping her panties. Malphas mashed his hand against the buttons, but they did nothing to speed up the mirrored box.

Maddie was cold as the grave, her cheeks growing sallow as if she was dropping weight in front of him. Her hair grew darker and longer, reaching out like curling hands, and it tookeverything in him not to jump away.

Malphas held her close, protecting her head as she writhed. She spat blood from her mouth, biting her tongue. Silent, bloody tears rolled down her face.

He needed a hospital. Maybe the Tailor? Someone who could help. Who couldsaveher?

The elevator doors opened, revealing the empty concierge desk. Malphas pulled Maddie’s body closer to him, lifting her in his arms. She flopped like a dead weight.

He could see the car.

Just a few more steps.

Stolas would kill him if he let Maddie die on his watch.

He pushed through the doors, leaving a smear of blood on the glass.

Caim waited at the car, leaning against the ancient SUV with the relaxed demeanor of someone with something to hide.

Before Malphas could utter a single word, a heavy weight smacked against the pavement a few feet away. The sound was like a slab of meat colliding with the ground at high speed. A fine sheen of mist coated him.

Screams echoed into the night from the floors above. Malphas followed the sound to the upper floors of the Episilon building, lighting up the sky above the Red City.

The mist was blood.

The mess on the pavement was a body ravaged by the effects of falling fifty stories.

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