Page 32 of All's Hell That Ends Well

“Uh…probably my yelling at him.”

“What?” He sat half up, his hands on my hips, the relaxation on his face giving way to alarm. The echo of his shock pinged through me.

I worried my lip between my teeth. “Yeah, so I might have called him a dick and told him Lilith would be disappointed in him if he didn’t let me see you.”

“And you walked out of there with your head on your shoulders?” His disbelief was almost comical. “Andhe relented and listened to you?”

I shrugged with my hands in the air. “What can I say? I can be persuasive.”

“Well, hell.” He stared into the distance. “If I’d known yelling at him would make him less of an asshole…”

I snickered, then sobered. “No, but for real, I had no idea he’d listen. The whole yelling thing was me losing my shit. It wasn’t planned. And considering the fact that he still sort of holds the fate of my father’s soul over my head, I really, absolutely, shouldn’t have talked back to him like that. He could have just as easily slapped me down by promising to hurt my dad for my insolence.” My stomach soured at the thought, at how much I’d lost control and not considered the consequences for my dad. “But then he just…deflated, kind of. Like all the fight went out of him.”

I quickly recounted the argument and what I’d said to Lucifer about Lilith.

“I told him that he could honor her faith in him,” I finished, “and then he just let me go.”

Azazel studied me with stormy eyes, his emotions unreadable. “You are very lucky. He has decapitated demons for far less.”

“Well, he kind of needs me alive and well, so any beheading or maiming is out of the question, I guess.”

He gave me a probing look. “What does he want with you? Mephistopheles was vague when he delivered your message.”

“I told him to be vague. Strictly speaking, I’m not allowed to tell anyone, but—” I halted Azazel’s impending protest with a raised hand. “I am not under another vow of silence. Lucifer dropped the ball on that one. I mean, he must know that unless he gags me with an oath, I’ll tell you everything that’s going on! Really, he can’t fault me for this. He only has himself to blame.”

“Impeccable logic,” Azazel murmured with a soft smile.

“Anyway, the thing he needs me for is finding Lilith’s reincarnation on Earth.”

He blinked, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He stared at me in utter bewilderment for a moment before saying, “That’s impossible.”

“I know!” I flailed wildly. “I told him! But apparently he is convinced that a) Lilith was actually reincarnated on Earth like a demon would be, and b) that the spark of her power inside me will somehow act like a homing beacon and respond to her reincarnation when I get near her. So now he’s ordered me to spend three weeks roaming Earth like a bona fide bloodhound trying to sniff out Lilith’s soul, then spend a week down here to recharge, after which I’ll have to go on my next three-week shift, playing GPS tracker, and so forth, until I find her.”

Azazel’s eyes were wide as he obviously processed what I’d just told him. “This is madness.”

“That’s what I said!” I made more flamboyant hand gestures to underscore my point. “He’s clearly lost it. He is so set on finding her again, and I tried to break it to him that it’s an unrealistic endeavor, but there’s no getting through to him on this topic. And, honestly, I’m afraid to keep pushing the point, because whatifhe indeed realizes that his plan is absurd and he accepts the fact that he’ll never have Lilith again? What will that do to him? If this”—I waved around me to indicate the palace and its sad state of neglect—“is him with the hope of finding her and bringing her back into his life, how much worse will he get if he loses all hope? He’s already one step away from a full-blown depressive explosion. I don’t want to imagine what will happen to him—and by extension all of Hell, and us—if the one thing that’s been holding him together the past years goes truly poof.”

Azazel’s expression was grim. “He does seem precariously unstable. I’ve been more privy to upper-level politics since working my way up toward and then becoming archdemon, and the things I’ve heard… He hasn’t been taking care of his territory. His security has been slipping. There are a number of day-to-day dealings that he should be involved in and make decisions about, but he’s been delegating more and more, or rather, he has not attended necessary functions and meetings, and his lieutenants have been scrambling to pick up the slack. Usually, there would be regular conferences with him and all the archdemons to discuss matters of importance to the upper echelon. The few I’ve participated in since becoming archdemon were held without Lucifer. He simply stayed away, and he didn’t even send a proxy.”

I grimaced. “That confirms what I’ve been seeing here. I’ve only been in the palace for a day or so, but that was enough to get the feeling that he’s been neglecting more than justthe repairs of this building. Apparently, he doesn’t even have advisers anymore? A council of demons who can discuss issues of importance with him? He seems to have killed or imprisoned more than half of them, and the last one quit and hightailed it out of here.”

Azazel rubbed a hand over his face. “And with Lilith gone, he’s lost the one voice of reason that would keep him in line. She held him together.”

“And now imagine if he loses the last sliver of hope that he’ll get her back,” I said quietly. Shaking my head, I added, “Which is why, as insane as it is, I’ll have to go and actually search for her. I mean, he ordered me to, and I have to obey him, so I don’t have a choice anyway, but even without coercion, I’d do it. I don’t want to risk telling him outright that his plan is doomed to fail.”

Azazel ruminated on that for a moment, his features drawn tight. Inside me, his concern pinged and heightened my own anxiety.

“What are you thinking?” I finally asked.

“That you’re right.”

I laid my hand over my heart. “Oh! Such high praise! Wait, I’ll have to record this for posterity.” I summoned a pen and paper that I’d seen lying around my suite earlier. “My beloved boo actually admits that I’m right. This is an event to be noted in the annals of my life. Let me just?—”

He shut me up with one hand over my mouth, his eyes dancing with humor. With his free hand, he took my writing tools from me. “You are not to speak of this to anyone. Can’t let you ruin my reputation.”

I giggled but quickly grew somber again, given the gravity of the things we were discussing.

“I think you’re right in your assessment of Lucifer’s mental state,” he said, removing his hand. “Confronting him with thefact that his search for Lilith will be in vain will only make him spiral more. And the last thing we all need is a ruler of Hell who is stumbling. As much as I despise him, he serves a purpose. He’s kept Hell more or less peaceful for thousands of years, by virtue of his strength and reputation. If his grasp on power is starting to falter, it will open the door for those who would overthrow him.” His stormy eyes met mine, lightning in their depths. “And if they succeed, it would spark an open war. If one of the archdemons makes a move, the other ones will want a shot at the throne as well, and at present, they’re all rather evenly matched.”

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