Page 131 of All's Hell That Ends Well

Lucifer sucked in air through his teeth, pulling the archdemons’ focus back to him. Raising his brows, he said with faux innocence, “Oh my, and here I was thinking our dear Ashtaroth was officially poised to become queen. Have you not actually agreed to that?” He glanced between Gadreel, Baal, and Abaddon, then smiled. Though bruised and battered, shackled and kneeling, he managed to look every inch the mischievous instigator. “Good for you,” he said with emphasis, leaning forward. “I would have thought either of you strong enough to put her in her place, not kiss her feet as your new ruler.”

“Quiet!” Ashtaroth barked and struck Lucifer right in the face.

His head snapped to the side, blood spraying from the hit, but his lips pulled into a small, sly smile.

“Highnesses,” the demon who’d showed up earlier said, shifting from one foot to the other. “I really must urge you to act. Without archdemon power to push back the dragons, we will be slaughtered.”

All four archdemons glanced at each other.

“You could take us with you,” Lucifer said smoothly. “Drag us along to the dragons.”

Gadreel rounded on him with her teeth bared. “So you can further incite them to fight us? Even bound as you are, your presence alone would make them double their efforts. Do you take us for fools?”

Lucifer wisely kept his mouth shut, but his eyes glinted ominously.

“I will not take the prisoners anywhere near the fighting and risk their accidental deaths,” Abaddon said with a slash of his hand. “Their execution must be a spectacle in front of the gathered court, to legitimize my claim to the throne.”

“Yourclaim?” Baal hissed.

Abaddon shot something back, but both Ashtaroth and Gadreel spoke at the same time, and the tense conversation devolved into a cacophony.

Along the bond connecting me to Azazel came a sudden surge of energy. More of that deathly power flooded my veins, pressing outward to the point where it felt that my skin was barely keeping it all inside. My eyes widening, I looked to where he lay only a few feet from me. He was stirring. His chest rose with a deep breath, then his eyes fluttered open. With a jerk, he sat up, rattling the manacles binding his wrists together. Frowning, he glanced at his hands, then took in the scene in the room within a second. Alarm blared across our connection.

The archdemons hadn’t noticed him waking, too absorbed in their bickering, though the demons standing watch near Azazel stepped closer with their weapons raised in warning. He stilled, face unreadable as he assessed the situation.

I breathed through the flow and ebb of the new surge of power coming from Azazel. Now that he was awake, much, much more of that primordial energy he’d taken on from Lucifer reached me through our bond. It was enough to make it hard to focus. The power pressed against my skin from the inside, like some barely shackled beast straining to break free.

With gritted teeth, I pushed it back down. I still had no idea how I might be able to use it. Right now, I felt like that dude in the duct tape commercial who slapped a piece of tape on a water container with a gushing leak, only that I wasn’t sure I’d be holding up quite as well as that piece of tape. And I was even less certain that I’d be capable of channeling the power once I let it loose. How do you turn a tsunami into a targeted stream?

Lucifer caught my gaze and subtly jerked his head from me in the direction of Azazel. I gave him an infinitesimal nod and then scooted ever-so-slowly on my knees, inch by inch, closer towhere Azazel sat on the couch. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I felt the need to be near him.

“Enough!” Gadreel shouted above the others’ raised voices, her face a mask of fury. “We will settle this right here and now!”

And before her fellow archdemons could utter a word of protest, she lashed out with her power.

This was not the kind of blow that had struck me and Lucifer earlier. It wasn’t meant to subdue with nonlethal force.

No, this was the kind of strike the archangels and archdemons had used against each other during the fight above New York. The sort of force that had leveled the city.

Ashtaroth screamed and threw up a shield, Abaddon and Baal did the same, and part of their protective sphere covered me. Still, I was blown backward and landed hard on my shoulder. The ground shook, a mighty crack sounded from above, and I looked up just in time to see the ceiling cave in.

With a choked yell, I rolled into a ball and covered my head with my arms. Debris crashed onto and around me, chunks of stone hitting me and causing pain to lance through my body.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ashtaroth screamed. “You’ll kill the prisoners!”

My whole body ached as I raised my head out of the rubble and took in the scene. The archdemons stood squaring off several feet away in the ruins of this part of the palace, with the lightning-lit sky visible through the hole in the broken roof, Lucifer lay half covered by a boulder-size part of the collapsed wall, and Azazel…my eyes scanned the debris for him, my heart beating wildly against my rib cage.

There.

He was crawling out from under chunks of marble, bleeding all over, but alive.

Ashtaroth’s warning had apparently fallen on deaf ears, because Gadreel gathered more of her power—the air thickenedand shimmered—and both Baal and Abaddon did the same. Their expressions were savage, as if some sort of violent mania had taken hold of them, and I heard Abaddon snarl, “The throne will be mine,” just before he loosed his power.

The wave of his blast collided with Baal’s and Gadreel’s, and Ashtaroth unleashed her own magic as well, and the force of the four archdemons’ energies crashing into each other caused a detonation that rocked the ruins with a near-sonic boom.

I braced against the impact, hiding behind a nearby stone piece. The wave of power flashed and surged around me, causing my skin to heat, and I looked down to check if I was actually burning. I wasn’t, but the demon soldiers who’d survived the first blast weren’t so lucky.

Apparently of lower rank and power level, they melted in the wake of the energy unleashed by the archdemons. Nausea churned in my stomach. If I never had to see a living body liquefy like that again, it would be too soon.

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