Page 4 of All's Hell That Ends Well

And they were torturing it for fun.

“Stop!” The shout was out of my mouth before I’d registered the impulse to say something.

CHAPTER 2

It wasn’t that I liked hellrats all that much. In fact, considering that I’d almost been killed and eaten by one, I certainly harbored no warm feelings for the large rodents. They were pests, and when I’d been a human, they’d posed a real threat to me, which was one of the reasons I’d been in need of a guard dog like Vengeance to keep me safe.

But that didn’t mean I wanted to see them suffer. I’d gladly let Mephisto or Vengeance hunt them to keep the population controlled, but at least they weren’t cruel about it.

Well, that wasmostlytrue for Mephisto and his ilk, because cats did like to play with their food a bit.

That was the difference, though. For cats and dogs, the rats were food. There was a purpose to the violence of killing them.

For these demons, on the other hand, the cruelty and violencewerethe purpose. Not to mention that a single cat hunting a rat that was half its size was a hell of a lot fairer than three adult demons ganging up on one rat. The rodent here didn’t stand a chance, whereas with cats and dogs, the rats often did get away. Even the best predators in the wild only had about a fifty percent success rate in hunting.

At my shout, the tall, silver-haired demon paused his attack and glanced my way. The other two demons also looked up. As soon as their attention was off the rat, it scurried away, impressively fast for the number of injuries it had suffered. Its fur was scorched, the skin blistered, the tail half missing, and it was bleeding from several open wounds.

My chest drew tight, hot anger pulsing underneath my skin. What these demons had done to it was beyond barbaric, and I was glad the rat had gotten away. No matter my feelings about these rodents, no animal deserved to be hurt that way.

“We should go,” Haniel muttered from beside me, a note of urgency in his voice.

But it was too late. I’d caught the attention of those bastards.

“And who would you be?” the silver-haired demon said, sauntering over to me, his two cronies trailing him.

He stopped in front of me, his power a cold shock against my senses. Like all of his kind—my kind as well now—he was ethereally beautiful, his features perfectly aesthetic, an enthralling blend of masculine hardness and smooth elegance. Yet, whereas Azazel’s beauty stoked a fire deep within me, making my knees go weak with awe, this demon’s good looks caused something inside me to recoil. The hairs on my arms and neck rose in primal warning even before he reached out a hand to snag my chin. Revulsion pulsed through me at his touch.

I yanked my chin out of his grasp and wanted to slap his arm away, but he caught my wrist with the speed of a striking snake.

“A new demon, hm?” His lip curled into a mockery of a smile as he squeezed my wrist hard enough to hurt. “And claimed for this territory, I see.”

I had no idea how he could tell all of that. Maybe something in my energy?

He spoke again before I could ruminate on it further. “Wait, aren’t you that human? The one from the Fall Festival?”

God, that shit would haunt me forever, wouldn’t it? I cringed, remembering just how much of a fool I’d made of myself under the influence of amrit.

“But you’re not a human any longer,” the demon mused, still holding my wrist in his grasp. “Curious.” He leaned in, the feel of his power making my skin crawl. “But even if you’re now a cherub, I still outrank you, and you should have greeted me with the proper respect. Not to mention you just lost me my current entertainment. Seems only fair that you’ll replace it.”

Wait, what? A cherub? That couldn’t be right. I’d been a throne in Heaven. How?—

Next to me, Haniel cleared his throat. “Lord Samael, I request that you unhand her.”

I froze, my eyes widening.

Samael. The charts and family trees Azazel and Azmodea had made me learn prior to the Fall Festival flashed before my inner eye. In preparation for my presentation before Lucifer, they’d insisted that I study the hierarchy of his court to know who was who and how they all related to each other, lest I get into trouble by not greeting someone properly or speaking out of turn to someone I should avoid.

Samael had been pointed out to me as such a someone to avoid.

He was Lucifer’sson.

One of three, to be precise, but the only one who was part of the Devil’s court. The other two lived with their mothers, in other archdemonacies. Samael was a powerful seraph, his mother the archdemon Ashtaroth, and from all I’d heard, his penchant for cruelty more than matched his dad’s.

Family connections down here among demons were complex and muddy and super important all at the same time. Of Lucifer’s six children—all with different mothers—only three lived in his own territory. Or rather,hadlived.

Naamah, after all, was famously gone.

Besides Samael, the only other offspring residing in Lucifer’s domain was Safrit, his daughter by the seraph Fureas. That alone showed that they held Lucifer’s favor more than the others, though no one had ever come close to how much Naamah had meant to him.

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