Page 69 of Cry for Help

Maybe she knew they wouldn’t survive.

Hell sovereign could supposedly see the future. Maybe Asmodeus had seen this. The Flock broken like dolls in the rubble of Behem’s mansion.

Malphas knew the scream was coming but couldn’t prepare himself for the sound.

Until that moment, Malphas had told himself it wasn’t real. That the idiot Caim would open his eyes and grin, laughing at how he had fooled everyone.

But that didn’t happen.

The scream meant Caim was gone.

Malphas placed his hands on his ears, but they did little to blunt the sound. His ears began to bleed, and the rubble shook around them. The stones skittered across the concrete as a low rumble filled the air.

The Behemoth wrenched his foot free, letting out a triumphant roar that filled the sky like thunder. Every step he took shook the foundations of the city.

Stolas pulled himself free from behind a boulder, his face covered with blood and his forehead sliced to ribbons. His dark eyes were bleary until they rested on Caim. Though he couldn’t see him, Malphas heard Murmur, buried but holding on.

Maddie stood up, her dark hair somehow growing longer with every step. Her fingernails elongated, and she flexed her fingers as her attention was drawn to the hole in the ceiling.

Malphas raced to her, afraid she would fall. Something about her was broken, something much more profound than before.

Acceptance.

The scream had stopped, leaving the low rumble of the Behemoth’s footsteps. The creature’s shadow blocked the sun, leaving the world in darkness.

Maddie looked down at her hand like she hadn’t seen it before. She bent over, her arm curled over her middle.

There was something different about her. Something ethereal. Beastial.

Her hair, now long enough to touch her ankles, moved with a breeze he couldn’t feel. Her eyes were endless, hollow, and black.

When Maddie unhinged her teeth, every one was pointed.

She really was a banshee.

She screamed, but the sound was different than before. Itundulated, becoming a song of pain, fear, and mourning.

Malphas’s chest hurt as if someone had wrapped a fist around his heart

TheClaiming.

Maddie had told him that Bean Sídhe could claim spaces, but she had said nothing about people. Or demons.

But Malphas felt the empty space in his chest where his connection to Hell had once lived, filling up with the city's energy. The heartbeat of everyone inside of the walls.

Stolas clasped his chest, and Malphas knew he felt it too. Murmur jolted, biting back a scream.

Maddie’s feet lifted from the ground as if gravity no longer existed for her, and she disappeared through the hole in the ceiling.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I was drunk. That was the only explanation for what I experiencing.

I felt my body lift, passing through the hole in the ceiling as if it didn’t exist. I pinned my arms to my side, avoiding the broken concrete. The stench of rot filled my nostrils as I rose through the house, unable to control where I was going. The magic had a mind of its own, and I was inclined to let it do what it wanted if it took out the Behemoth.

I kept rising, and at that moment, I was incredibly thankful I wasn’t frightened of heights because the mansion grew smaller and the air colder as I rose up to meet the Behemoth.

The creature bore no resemblance to Behem, the spindly gluttony demon that had threatened to eat me more times than I could count. It looked like unmoulded gelatin. Its skin bulged and wobbled as the Behemoth reached down, plucking an unsuspecting car from the road. It tipped the Mercedes over, shaking it like a child trying to upend the last milk dud from the box.

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