Page 14 of Ruthless Demon

We turn down a hallway with inset displays lining the walls, each containing a small token. “Are these all battle trophies, too?”

“The palace is full of them,” he tells me with a nod. “It’s my father’s sole focus, and he won’t rest until it’s everyone else’s sole focus too.”

“Sounds like a difficult goal to achieve without direct mind control.”

Lucifer takes me down another hall, and the sounds of chaos—more controlled chaos, now—echo toward us from somewhere nearby.

“Difficult? Impossible, perhaps.”

He leads me around a corner and gestures ahead. There, through an archway the size of a loading bay, are the inhabitants of the palace. Although the room is so large it almost makes me dizzy, it’s still crowded. Long windows on two walls show nothing but darkness outside. I’m going to tell myself that it’s just because it’s night time, and not because Hell is permanently dark.

It isn’t, right?

I’d ask Lucifer, but there’s so much noise I’m afraid I’d have to shout my question at him, and I’m not quite ready to make a complete fool of myself at this juncture. Not that anyone would notice, I suppose. The room is clearly set up for a feast. Long tables, piled high with food, are placed strategically to allow movement. So much movement. I’ve never seen a feast quite like it—people are eating, but also fucking and fighting and Lord knows what else. There’s not a table manner to be seen—especially for the guy whose dinner is dripping down his chin.

Of course, his dinner appears to be demon pussy. The demon woman attached to it is propped against a table, holding her skirt up as the male demon kneeling at her feet fucks her with his tongue. Her eyes are half-closed and rolling with pleasure and her dark brown hair is cascading down to the table in waves. She rolls her head toward us and I try to look somewhere else, but her eyes snap open wide when she sees us.

Shit, lady, if you don’t want people looking, maybe don’t do that at the dinner table.

It’s not like I’m the only one, either. The man on the other side of the table is positively lurking, watching her get off. But when she pushes her lover away and drops her skirts, I realize she isn’t staring at me at all. She’s looking at Lucifer, with eyes identical to his.

“Lucifer,” she greets as she approaches. She says his name the same way I’d say ‘dirty sponge’ or ‘doing taxes’. She stops in front of us, looks me up and down, sniffs, and dismisses me with a glance. “And company,” she adds as an aside. “Well, brother, it’s been a while.”

“Never long enough, Diana. Sophia, this is my sister, Diana. Princess of the Hunt, for decorum.”

She smiles like a snake, chuckling low in her throat. “Charming as always, but perhaps not as charming as you should be.”

He raises an eyebrow and her smile widens. She gestures across the room at a small cluster of demons grouped around a tall, thin, handsome man. His hair is thick and wavy, black as the night outside. His long fingers and fine-boned face make me think of a classical musician, although the way he plays the crowd around him reminds me more of a con artist.

“Abaddon has come into father’s favor since your departure. He really has shown himself to be quite useful.” She gives Lucifer a cutting look. “And loyal. More loyal, one might argue, than his predecessor.”

“More loyal than Uriel?” Lucifer remarks blandly. “I find that difficult to imagine.”

She makes a sound that’s supposed to be a laugh, but sounds more likeah-ha. “Oh and there’s Meshach,” she continues as if Lucifer never spoke, waving her fingertips at a shirtless blonde man with steel-blue eyes and a nose that’s been broken once or twice. “He’s new to the court, so of course you wouldn’t have heard, but he’s impressed everyone with his fighting skills. Natural platoon leader is what they’re all saying, and quite possibly on a fast track to leading the armies themselves. Assuming, of course, that he turns out to be…” She pauses for dramatic effect and stares flatly into Lucifer’s eyes. “Loyal.”

“A fascinating update,” Lucifer muses tonelessly.

“Oh, there are plenty of other updates,” she says, arching a brow. “So many, in fact, that it would take days to get you caught up. Are you planning to be here for days, or will you be scurrying on up to Earth to play with your mud apes some more?”

Um, ow?

“Only time will tell,” he replies coldly. He tips his head, more of a dismissal than an offer of respect, and guides me away from her.Yeesh. He clearly does not get along with his siblings; not his living siblings, anyway. The way his face lit up and softened when he spoke of Uriel is a stark contrast to the way he interacted with his sister just now.

Lucifer brings me to a table which is slightly less crowded, and with one hundred percent fewer sex acts happening against it. At the head of the table, Cephalus—an older, less handsome version of Lucifer—is seated beside a woman with jet-black hair and green-gold eyes, possessing the same fine-boned aristocracy as Abaddon. The mother, I presume. She watches me with assessing, narrowed eyes as I accept the seat that Lucifer offers to me. She never blinks, her eyes glued to my every move.

I find myself moving a little more stiffly and awkwardly in response to the scrutiny, more uncomfortable than I was when we walked in. Lucifer takes the only seat between myself and his mother. While I’m glad for the barrier, I sort of wish we were sitting on the other side of the room. Or, you know, on the other side of the Hell-Earth barrier—which I’m only assuming is a thing, but it kind of has to be, right? I don’t know. If I ever get out of here I’ll take a class on theoretical physics, theology, or…something.

Other people slowly begin filling the table, clearly sitting in a specific order. Abaddon sits across from Lucifer, at his father’s left. Diana takes the seat beside him, directly across from me, which frankly doesn’t bother me at all, seeing as she’s trying very hard to pretend that I don’t exist. Demons I don’t recognize fill the rest of the table. The seat beside me remains empty. I guess Diana isn’t the only one who’s offended by my presence, but again, I’m pretty much okay with that. A little bit of space between myself and the members of Hell’s court is totally fine by me. Lucifer chooses food very carefully from the abundance piled all down the table to fill my plate.

“This should all digest well,” he tells me quietly. “The rest may not.”

“Thank you.” I memorize the look of the food before I try it. I have to assume that I’m going to be here on my own at some point, and I’d rather not poison myself if I can help it. Lucifer speaking to me seems to have earned him the ire of not only Diana, but Abaddon and several of the others on the far side of the table.

“Tell me, Lucifer, when did you begin keeping pets?” his sister questions.

“How many hell hounds do you have now, Diana?” he asks in return. “Six hundred? Eight hundred?”

She grins. “As many as it takes to get the job done.”

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