Page 20 of All's Hell That Ends Well

All three of Venny’s heads snapped up, and she snarled. I paused in my scratching and looked over my shoulder.

One of the demons who’d tried to corral her stared at me with a put-upon expression. “Who are you?”

“Zoe,” I replied. “Lucifer’s ward.”

Yep, that’s right, throwing around the authority again.I was going to milk this for all it was worth. No matter how much I despised the guy, I wasn’t going to waste the edge his direct protection and association with him could give me here in this viper’s nest.

The demons shifted uneasily at my mention of their boss, and I realized half of that might be the fact that I’d called him by his name and not his title. Oops. Then again, that could signify I was on such good terms with the head honcho dude that I could get away with a more informal address, which in turn should make the other demons even more hesitant to treat me with disrespect.

“Is this your hound, my lady?” the leader of the group asked.

“Yes, she is. You will cease your efforts to corral her, and I will take her with me into the palace now.”

I stared him down and dared him to contradict me or mention the subject of compensation for the damages caused—from what I could see, Vengeance had already rammed or clawed her way through a couple of walls before reaching this one here. The whole staring-down thing was quite the feat, given the fact that I was drenched in dog saliva and had to keep blinking hard and fast to keep the slobber from dripping into my eyes.

I chalked it up to my surprisingly grown acting skills that I managed to come across as authoritative and regal while I probably looked like an unfortunate pet ferret that a misbehaving child had dunked in their bath water.

The demon in charge made a deep bow, and the others behind him followed suit.

“As you wish, my lady,” he said as he straightened, then nodded at his comrades.

They turned away and walked off.

“Can you let us back in?” I asked the demon who’d escorted me here from the palace.

She bowed her head. “Of course, my lady.”

“Come on, sweet girl.” I faced Venny again and gave her a signal to heel. “Let’s get you inside.”

With a yip, my own personal hellhound jumped up and trotted along by my side, her tail wagging happily.

CHAPTER 7

Azazel

“Ihave a bad feeling about this,” Azmodea said.

I glanced up from the blade I was currently cleaning to where my sister lounged on a divan across from me. I’d called her as soon as I’d let Vengeance run loose and explained everything once my sister had arrived here.

True to form, she’d appeared in the finest dress and jewels galore, looking for all the world like she didn’t care about anything but luxury and pleasure, blithely following her whims.

Yet now, here with me, she let her mask slip and showed the heart that ached and bled for those she loved. Her eyes shone with anxiety, and her lips were pressed into a fine line.

“You need to be more specific,” I murmured as I steered my attention back to the sword before me. “Which part of this overall worrisome situation are you particularly worried about?”

“I don’t think this is a coincidence. Or an accident.”

“That she fell sooner than planned?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, focusing on the slow glide of the cloth over the blade, while that fucking knot in my stomach grew. “I agree,” I eventually said, my voice quiet.

The biggest clue to that was the fact that Zoe had been claimed for Hell immediately.

An angel falling from grace wasn’t something that happened a lot. Centuries might pass between two incidents of Heaven banishing one of their own. And while a fallen angel was fair game to any demon who wanted to claim them, and the demons in charge were always interested in adding to their own numbers, with how uncommon a fall from grace was, it just didn’t pay off to station a lookout underneath Angelfall to wait for the once-in-a-millennium opportunity to grab a newly fallen angel.

The way it usually went was that the banished angel ran and hid on Earth for some time until they were accidentally discovered by a demon at some point.

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