Page 88 of Dark Prince

Naamah assumes a fighting stance, loosening her shoulders and cracking her neck as the thing impacts the door for a third time. When the doors fly free of their hinges and slam to the floor, all I see is a shadowy blur fly through the air and connect with Naamah’s head. Naamah rolls with it, flying backward, the pair of them arching over me.

And in that frozen instant, I see him.

Lucifer, bloody from the fight, violent in his rage.

His talons sink into her back as they tumble over me, but he isn’t the only one with that idea. She’s tearing into his flesh, ripping muscle from bone.

They slam to the concrete, Naamah’s head hitting first. He doesn’t give her a chance to recover. With a monstrous roar, he hurls his fist into the side of her temple, making her skull bounce off the hard floor. But it doesn’t seem to faze her. She whips her leg up, slashing at him with the talons of one foot while pushing him away with the other. His back is barely beginning to knit itself together from her earlier strikes, and her kick opens a gaping wound across his ribs.

Once free of him, she hurls herself across the space, moving too fast for my eyes to track.

“Who are you fighting, Prince?” Her seething voice seems to come from everywhere at once. “Your loyal second for how many centuries? That’s who you’ve chosen to call your enemy?”

Lucas stands still as a statue, no part of him moving except for his eyes, which dart around the room following her erratic movements.

“And for what?” Naamah hisses. “Some human cow, not even worthy of your ire let alone your embrace. With all the worlds of Earth and Hell at your disposal, with me at your side, you choosethat?”

On her last word, she strikes, a streak of black cutting across the room as she dives for him. I gasp, terrified that I’m about to watch Lucas be murdered before my eyes, but he’s ready for it.

He retaliates, lashing out and sending her on an awkward ricochet into a nearby pillar. She connects with a sickening crack, although whether the sound comes from her bones or the pillar itself, I can’t tell. Likely both, I realize as she slides to the ground, her body twisted at a painfully unnatural angle.

The pillar is deformed where she hit, missing pieces and leaning in a way that makes me hope it isn’t the primary load-bearing structure down here.

Her red eyes are glassy, staring up at him as he approaches. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe. He’s won—she’s dead or dying.

Or not.

He’s drawing back to strike the killing blow when a vicious smile flashes across her face, and all at once, she’s moving again. Slower now, slowly enough for me to watch, but still faster than me on my best day. She sweeps his legs out from under him, using that momentum to spin herself back up on her feet. Droplets of blood rain across the floor, and exposed bones flash and glisten like lightning in the brief moments before flesh crawls over them once more as her body starts to heal itself.

Right. He said powerful demons are very hard to kill.Fuck.

The room rattles with the sounds of their battle as they resume the fight, the echoing noises building on one another, pounding against my ears. His roars of rage, her cries of dismay. His hisses of pain, her shouts of victory.

There’s so much blood. How are either of them still standing?

Her claws rake across his face, and as streaks of red pour down his cheek, she launches herself at him, using her wings to get even more lift. She lands on his back, her thighs locking around his neck, her hands scrabbling for a hold on his blood-slicked horns so that she can break his neck.

“No...”

I gasp out a word, a helpless denial, but the sound is lost in the noise.

He pitches forward, and my heart lurches.Don’t go down, please don’t.

With my chest rattling, I watch him roll over her, crush her beneath him, and find his feet, leaving her on the floor. She’s up in a flash, pulling back to strike a killing blow through his spine.

“Lucas!”I scream as time seems to slow down.

Fast as light, he whirls around. Blood splatters along the wall twenty feet away, and it takes my shocked brain a moment to realize that it’s hers. She slams to the floor, mouth working uselessly. The glow fades from her eyes, leaving a dull, foggy red.

Her throat is gone, torn messily out.

A crimson fountain bubbles and foams from the gaping wound, spreading across the floor in a slow wave. I’m shaking so hard I can’t breathe, and tears are falling freely from my staring eyes.

Even like this—demonic and dead—Naamah still looks like herself. Still looks like the woman I considered a friend. The image is seared into my brain, and I still can’t look away. Can’t get a sound past my ragged breath, can’t fill my lungs, can’t move, can’t stop shaking.

Then Lucas turns toward me, blocking my view of her as he strides over to where I’m sprawled. His body is in various stages of repair, but he doesn’t even wince as he pulls me against his chest. His fingers fly over the knots at my back, pulling them loose with firm tugs. One of us is shaking hard, but I can’t tell which.

As my arms come free, they flop uselessly against him, numb and swollen, striped purple where the ropes cut into me. My legs are freed next, and my back seizes, unable to deal with the sudden return to my natural position. Lucas tosses the rope aside and pulls me into his lap, rubbing my limbs as a sound vibrates in his chest.

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