Page 7 of Unholy Bond
He wept. I watched the yellow tears streak his battered face. “She’s in Hell,” he spat finally, the words burning in his mouth. “They took her below. My brother is her guard. In the North Tower, the palace. Nobody else can touch her.”
I froze. “Your brother.”
He nodded, once, twice, then collapsed into a shuddering heap, the chains the only thing keeping him upright.
“Thank you,” I said, and drove the knife up between his ribs and into the heart. Demons didn’t die like humans, but the pain was enough to render him useless for the next millennium or so. I twisted the blade for good measure, then withdrew and wiped it clean on the hem of his jeans.
I stood, ignoring the blood pooling in my boots. The warehouse was silent again, except for the buzz of dying streetlight outside. I checked my phone. Three new texts from Levi, two fromAziz, all urgent. I sheathed the knife, flicked the blood from my fingers, and left the demon to rot.
As I stepped out into the alley, the cold air hit my lungs and made me want to laugh. I’d been doing this for centuries, but the hunt never got old. If anything, the stakes kept getting higher.
The city lights shimmered through sleet. I kept my head down and walked fast, thinking only of the next steps: find Aziz, find Levi, and bring Lilith home.
Kneeling, I washed the blood from my hands in one of the many rain puddles, grinning a self-satisfied smirk as I did. If Hell wanted a war, they’d just bought one.
***
The penthouse sat thirty-seven floors above the Common, a glass-and-steel coffin wrapped in storm. Rain lashed the windows so hard it sounded like a million typewriters gone mad. The city below glinted with blue light, the old bones of Boston stitched together by neon arteries and the occasional flash of police sirens. I stepped through the private elevator and into the main room, already feeling the mood like static in my jaw.
Aziz stalked the perimeter, bare feet silent on polished wood. He’d taken off his shirt, and his skin caught the city’s bruised light, shifting from black to purple to something almost gold when the lightning hit. He paced in a perfect square, shoulders flexing, fists opening and closing like he was kneading dough made of rage.
Levi lounged on the couch, one boot up on the coffee table, twirling a crystal tumbler between his fingers. There was nothing in it but tap water and a single, melting cube of ice. His suit jacket lay in a puddle on the floor, his white dress shirt unbuttoned enough to show the tattoos that crawled uphis sternum. He looked bored, but his left leg bounced at a frequency that would have driven a human insane.
Neither of them said a word as I entered. They just watched. Aziz’s eyes burned holes through me. Levi raised his glass, as if toasting my return from the dead.
“Miss me?” I asked.
Levi flashed a smile, pure predator. “You look like shit,” he said.
“Still prettier than you.”
Aziz stopped pacing and planted himself by the window. He stared out at the storm, shoulders rigid, back to us. I knew better than to interrupt him, but I did it anyway. “She is in Hell,” I said. “It’s what we thought. She’s been taken to the palace.”
Levi whistled. “They don’t fuck around.”
“She’s got a guard,” I continued. “Demon I just carved up said she’s in the North Tower.”
Aziz grinned, and for a second, I saw the old Titan behind the mask. “Then we go get her.”
Levi frowned. “And walk into a trap? Lucifer’s palace is more secure than Fort Knox. Fuck all, it might be easier for us to get past he God damn Pearly Gates than into that place without an invite. Last time I checked, you couldn’t even get a Tinder date with someone inside the second ring.”
“Then we crash the party,” Aziz said. “Old-school.”
I laughed, but it came out hollow. “You think he doesn’t know we’re coming? You think he didn’t count on it? He’s using her as bait forexactlythis reason.”
Aziz bared his teeth. “You scared, Astaroth?”
I ignored the jab. “I’m not scared. I just don’t want to get us all erased because we let our dicks do the planning.”
Levi set the glass down, hard enough to crack the rim. “He’s right. We need a plan.”
“We need access,” I said. “First step: we breach the ring. After that, we improvise.”
Aziz’s gaze cut through me. “Can you do it?”
I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
They both watched as I knelt on the floor and drew the first glyph in chalk, a circle inside a triangle inside a diamond. The penthouse had hosted more summoning rituals than birthday parties, but I still got a thrill from the way the old words rolled off my tongue. I carved a slit in my palm and let the blood drip onto the center. The glyphs pulsed, then flared an angry red.
