Oriak? frowned, looking very much like her father for a moment. “I think... we were...” She glanced around the loft. “We’re at Gali’s place?”
Leah was helping Bonbon to her feet, and the writer looked even more confused than Oriak?. “When did we get here?” she asked. “Where’s Gali? We haven’t seen her since last night.”
Oriak? pressed her fingers to her temples like a migraine was spiking through her skull. I could feel how she was instinctively bucking against Lucifer’s glamour in an endearing but useless attempt to reclaim her mind. The Devil was good at tricks, but he was always better at cages.
“We came to find Gali, but she wasn’t here,” she said. There was a slightly wooden note lurking in her voice, and several of the Kincaids homed in on it like it was a speck of blood on the floor leading to a trail. They exchanged looks, and Collette stepped forward.
“Do you have a key too?” she asked, her voice as soothing as water.It made you want to give her everything, all thanks to that persuasive resonance. “Is that how you got in?”
“Yeah,” Bonbon answered, but her eyes held just a hint of a glaze. “We had a key and that’s how we got in.”
It was a decent glamour for something Lucifer had tossed out casually while holding a conversation with Galilee, distracted by his arousal. I loved that he wouldn’t understand it—that attraction to Galilee, that pull. Not yet.
The glamour he’d created was one that picked up on suggestion and adapted to it, meaning to smooth the conversation away from any deeper questioning. Unfortunately, despite Collette’s gentle tone, this was actually an interrogation.
“Maybe you broke in,” she said. “You must have been very worried about Gali.”
Oriak? sighed. “We were. I didn’t mean to damage the lock, but Gali will understand.”
Collette’s mouth tightened. “I’m sure she will. Why don’t y’all sit down for a bit and drink some water, okay?” She watched as the girls were pulled away by Galilee’s cousins, then Collette turned to Darling and Celestial. “Someone’s tampered with their minds,” she said grimly. “I don’t think even Gali is strong enough to do that.”
Celestial growled. “Then it washim.”
“Most likely.” Collette’s hands were clenched into bloodless fists. “He could be doing anything with my baby. He could’ve taken over her mind by now, put her on puppet strings for all we know.” She looked at her mother, distraught. “Mama, what do wedo?”
Darling Kincaid adjusted the folded cuffs of her sleeves. “No devil could take over Galilee’s mind,” she stated firmly. “The girl is a Kincaid. But these her friends? We gotta get their minds back.”
Celestial stepped forward. “If y’all amplify me like you just did for Nana Darling, I think I could unravel it.”
All the Kincaids fell silent, staring at her with wide eyes. Sage whistled slowly.
“Damn, niece,” Shirley said, resting the tip of her machete on the floor. “You got it like that?”
Celestial bared her teeth. “Let’s find out.”
I left them there. A glamour is difficult to remove only if it’s been set with great intention, with power carefully poured into it, and Lucifer had barely been paying attention when he slapped that one on. Celestial Kincaid would find it to be a fun but eminently conquerable challenge. I might have stayed to watch, but from the other side of Salvation, the hellgate had bucked and spat, and a corresponding rush of exhilaration had flooded through me. That gate marked the veil between Hell and earth, and it could not be torn without grave repercussions. Lucifer’s job had always been to keep it intact, to hold dominion over the place of his banishment.
I was here to watch him fail.
Once the gate broke, the Morningstar would be forced to face a fresh judgment from Heaven. He couldn’t be banished again, but hecouldbe annihilated, and the very thought of it was deeply soothing to me. I’d spent millennia nursing my aged bitterness as I dreamed of Lucifer’s utter cessation, his holyobliteration. It’s what should have been done in the first place.
Outside Elijah’s mansion, a few dark shadows slipped out with howls ringing through the air at a pitch the humans couldn’t hear, the hellgate’s stench trailing off their tails.Demons!I clutched my hands together to suppress my joy. The gate had opened for just long enough to let them out! The warp on it was working, getting stronger. I could feel that it had been quickly warded again, but this was good, this was enough. Gateswantto open. The only thing that keeps them shut is the lock or the latch, and no prince of Hell could make one strong enough tocounter the warp that was currently damaging that hellgate with a slow, inexorable determination.
I followed the demons as they entered the woods separating the mansion from the rest of Salvation. One of the princes of Hell had left the hellgate—they would be trying to track the demons, and I couldn’t have that, so I turned the paths behind me in on themselves, confusing the land and blurring the air. A minor interference—surely it wouldn’t count, especially against a prince of Hell. I didn’t want whoever it was to get in the way, not when I was dying to see what the demons would do to the humans, the depraved acts that would finally give Heaven the right to intervene and penalize Lucifer for allowing this to happen. I had waitedso longfor this moment, and where was the King of Hell? Busy being distracted by my precious Galilee. It was so perfect I could scream. My soul felt light and airy—everything was happening as it should, as the will of God dictated,manifested. I almost danced through the trees as the demons skittered ahead of me, right until Collette Kincaid stepped out from behind a hickory trunk and blasted a demon full of salt.
I was already cloaked—it wouldn’t do for demons to notice an angel trailing them—but I still froze in place, irritation replacing my euphoria. This was what I got for placing Galilee with a family of hunters; they had an annoying tendency to do their jobs. I swung myself up to a low branch and watched with resigned dismay as the Kincaids did what they did best. Collette was a spectacular shot, and her sister, Shirley, was by her side, her machete cleaving through air and sin with a whistling deadliness. Peony wore iron knuckles, beating in the shadowed faces of Hell’s creatures with brutal blows. And, of course, in the center of it all was Darling Kincaid with her iron scythe, unstoppable and expressionless. The woman moved as if she’d sloughed off decades before stepping on the battlefield. Under any other circumstances, it would have been faintly pleasurable to watch a handful of demons be dispatched with such professional grace. Even sweet little Zélie was garroting a demon with an iron chain, her face turned away as it hissed and smoked.
Celestial wasn’t in the first line of attack, to my surprise, and it took me a moment before I spotted her well in the back, crouching in a hollow with Galilee’s friends, Leah standing guard a few feet away with her crossbow. Bonbon’s eyes were dark ponds in her face, wide and terrified. A cloud of bees hovered a few feet behind them in the air—Galilee’s swarm, tagging along.
“Demons?”Bonbon whispered loudly. “Are you fucking serious?”
Oriak? cut a look at her sideways. “We just got our memories back andLuciferwas in them, Bon. I think a couple of demons are the least of our problems.” She gave Celestial a glare that was almost as irritated as I felt. “Besides, sure seems like Gali’s family knowsexactlywhat to do with them, doesn’t it?”
Celestial grinned at both of them. “Sounds like Gali didn’t tell y’all shit about where she comes from, huh?” She sounded decidedly smug about it.
“Not sure I would’ve believed her if she told me she came from a family of demon hunters,” Bonbon replied faintly.
Celestial flapped a hand. “We just hunters. No demon specialty, really.”
