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" — go!" Japhrimel shouted. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from Eve.
Her shape changed like clay under ru
She was beautiful, still, as only a demon could be. Her eyes were blue and her hair ran with snow-white flame. But there was no echo of Doreen in her face.
And no echo of me.
Then who the hell is she? It can't be, she has to be Doreen's, she has to be!
Japhrimel hauled me up, his fingers biting into my neck. My ears twinged with pain as they healed, twin nails driven into the sides of my head. The noise was still massive, but not enough to burst tender membranes. The wooden box almost squirted out from under my arm. I clutched at it, and my bag banged against my hip as Japh dragged me aside just in time, a chunk of stone nailing the floor right where we'd been standing. He whirled aside, yanking me into a lunatic spin like a dance move, ending with us both somehow facing the door. "Run!" he yelled through the noise.
I'd lost all my air again, screaming, adding my thin voice to the crashing and rending. Think about it later. Now run, run like hell and hope you get out of this alive.
I got my feet under me and pelted for the door, leaping a pile of rubble and almost slipping as I landed on unsteady ground, my unruly body once again going too fast for me. Disturbed dust rose choking-thick, and behind me, Velokel roared something in the demons' unlovely tongue that I didn't need a dictionary to translate. The other piercing cry was from the demon who had claimed to be Doreen's daughter, my daughter.
The demon I was going to kill Lucifer to defend. Japh's fingers closed around my left arm instead of my nape. He pulled me aside, the doorway we'd entered through crumbling. Its massive marble slabs teetered and swung before crashing down. I flinched, and the entire city shuddered again, a gigantic cracking noise like the world's hugest egg broken against the side of a red-hot city-sized skillet echoing through both physical and psychic space. What the goddamn motherfucking hell is going on? We made it through one of the smaller doors just in time. The ground quaked, and I had nasty, uncomfortable ideas about what exactly was going on. If one of those bridges had failed and we were even now falling —
Then, between one moment and the next, it stopped. The sudden cessation of noise was shocking in and of itself, but even more shocking was Japhrimel skidding to a halt, his fingers turning to iron and digging in mercilessly. He plucked the wooden box from me as easily as taking candy from a child.
I'll admit it. I screamed again. I was doing a lot of that lately. A complicated flurry of motion, his fingers lacing with mine, ended with me shoved behind him just as the one voice I never wanted to hear again broke the newborn stillness with its awful dulcet music.
"This is unlike you, my Eldest."
My ribs flared with starved heaving breaths. I blinked at Japhrimel's back, one of his hands behind his back holding my right hand with bone-crunching force, his knuckles pale under their golde
He inclined his head, and I sagged. This was it. It was over.
Because in front of us, his very presence staining the air with black fury, was the Prince of Hell. Again. My entire body turned into a bar of tension, Japh's fingers squeezing pitilessly at mine, small bones creaking. Pain bolted up my arm, exploded in my shoulder as I backpedaled, trying to rip my hand free and escape. The scar writhed madly against my skin, and my Fallen's aura clamped down over me like a frozen kem jar over an unlucky silkworm.
I knew it was Lucifer. I didn't have to see him and I didn't want to. Japhrimel held me in place, my arm stretched awkwardly as I twisted, my boots scraping against stone.
Japhrimel laughed. It wasn't the gentle, almost-human sound of amusement I'd heard from him so many times, or even the slight ironic hm he gave when I beat him at battlechess or otherwise surprised him.
No, this was a swelling demonic laugh, a harsh caw marrying delight to disdain, with a generous helping of pure hatred. He laughed like murder, in a cold alley at midnight.
The sudden idea that I could probably tear my own arm off and escape didn't sound as laughable as it might otherwise have. There was a black hole in my head, dilating with terrible force, and at any moment I would remember -
"And this is unlike you, Prince." Japhrimel's tone was terribly, utterly cold. I had never heard him speak so. "I thank you for your care of my hedaira. Your hospitality remains ever the same."
The silence changed, pressure shifting and sliding as I struggled to free myself from Japh's iron fingers. When Lucifer spoke again, the coldness in his voice matched my Fallen's, and everything inside my skull trembled on the edge of insanity.
"I used her as I saw fit. What else is a Right Hand for?"
"We are all toys for your pleasure, my Lord." Accusation boiled under the words. Japhrimel made a small movement, and something clattered. Wood, striking the ruined stone. In the terrible hush that small noise punctured my heart.
"Of course you are." The Devil didn't even give it a second thought.
Ogods Japh let go what are you doing let GO of me — Iswayed. It hurt, Japh's hand grinding mine into powder. The pain was a silver spike nailing me to earth even as the hole in my head widened, my psyche cracking under the strain like microtears in silk hovernets.
"That iswhat the rebellion was after, Prince. You should take more care with such trinkets."
Anubis, someone, help me. I bent back, my entire body a stretched-taut bow of longing, aching for escape; I could leave the arm behind if I had to, I just wanted away.
I have never, before or since, understood so completely an animal's struggle to free itself from the trap that bleeds it.
Lucifer said nothing, but the pressure of his rage was a storm front moving in, an eyepopping strain. Even the icy heat of this place between earth and Hell felt warm and fuzzy by comparison. Japhrimel drew himself up. He was a good bit taller than me, but he seemed even bigger now, and I was suddenly deeply grateful he was between me and the Devil.
Shame boiled up hot and vicious under my breastbone. I'd always fought my own battles before, hadn't I?
Not against that. Not that again. I can't.
My aura trembled under Japhrimel's, on the verge of locking down hard and crystalline. If that happened, if I went nova, I'd implode right before I did something stupid. I would die.
But we'd see just what my half of the Knife would do to any demon in my way first.
I heard the Devil take in a long breath, as if he was about to speak. The air hissed past his teeth, and I felt those teeth in my own flesh again, tearing at whatever remained of my sanity. They speared deep as I screamed, the world turning into shutterclicks as my eyelids fluttered, and Japhrimel's fingers gave one last terrible squeeze, the scar on my shoulder burning, burning.
Whatever Lucifer would have said was lost in a blur of hoofbeats and a cry rising from a demon's throat.
I slammed back home in my body, my head whipping to the side just in time to see Velokel the Hunter pound out of the Temple and across the dead plaza. He stuttered through space with the eerie graceful quickness of demons, his aura blazing. Blue fire veined his hooves and crackled between the points of his horns, and as he ran time stopped, slowed, and crystallized into a lattice of action, reaction, and sudden explosive motion.
Japh moved.
Kel collided with Lucifer.