Lucifer spoke with a fervent heat, knowing even as he poured assurance into her that he was being selfish. He needed her to hold it together becauseshewas holding him together. Without her, this new thing searing life through him, he would be consumed by the bitterness, the rage of old grudges, that would erase the wonder of the new life he had made, and Heaven would win. They would win by taking over his mind again, by dragging his attention from his job and his people back to them and their bullshit, just like Deziel wanted to do with the hellgate, but with Galilee, he could build on what he’d started with his princes, something marvelous and new. With her soul, he’d never have to give up the scorching thrill of being able tofeelagain.
Lucifer bent his head and claimed Galilee Kincaid’s mouth, relishing the electric ripple of her taste dancing down his nerves. “I have you,” he whispered against her lips.
Galilee kissed him back fiercely. “I have you too.” She gazed into his eyes, and he saw flashes of white light burst in hers. “Let’s go handle your hellgate.”
One of Lucifer’s princes was guarding the carved wooden door of the vault. He watched Galilee with large amounts of suspicion as she approached, despite Lucifer’s presence, and the Devil bit back a sigh. He couldn’t blame his princes for their hostility, not if the hellgate was degrading as fast as Michael had warned. This was no time for variables, and Galilee Kincaid was a sure thing only to the Devil. He would haveto work on her soul as soon as the hellgate gave him a fucking minute tobreathe.
“Paimon,” he greeted. “Who’s inside?”
The prince continued tracking Galilee with cold eyes. “All the others,” he answered. “Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Belial. Mephis is out with Astaroth hunting, but we wondered if it would be better to call them back. The gate is... breaching.”
“I heard.”
Lucifer laid his hand on the door, and the protection ward that shielded it from outsiders exhaled to let him in. Paimon shifted on his feet, his hands brushing his weapons unconsciously as he watched Galilee step up to the door with Lucifer. They walked into the vault, and Lucifer closed the door firmly behind them.
Galilee huffed out a short breath. “I’m amazed I’ve lived this long around your princes,” she started to say, but then her words cut out as she saw the inside of the vault.“Holy shit.”
Lucifer felt his back teeth snap together as he looked around. Galilee was stepping in a slow circle, her neck craned back to take in the sight of a space larger than any room in the mansion had a right to be—endless, in fact. It was a towering cave made of stone, the ceiling swallowed up by darkness, the walls sheared straight down to meet a slick and glistening floor.
“Wherearewe?”
Lucifer forced words past his tensed jaw. “It shouldn’t look like this.”
Galilee scoffed. “Yeah, I think my friends would’ve had something to say ifthisis what they saw last night.”
“The hellgate’s bending reality around it.” Lucifer knew these kinds of caverns all too well, and it meant that Michael had been right. Hehatedwhen Michael was right. “It’s projecting one side onto the other.”
Galilee shot him a look. “Thisis what Hell looks like?”
Lucifer shrugged, already heading to the center of the vault, wherehis princes were gathered around a dark plinth, their heads bent and their arms extended out. Galilee followed behind him, and in a quiet part of his heart, Lucifer wondered if she’d ever walk into the real Hell with him,forhim. He could pull her there once he had her soul, but he’d never force her to do anything. He wasn’t that person anymore.
The princes murmured endless chants in a tongue unsuited for human mouths, and Galilee winced at the sound. “God, that makes my skin hurt.”
“It’s not the chants doing that.” Lucifer forked his tongue and flicked out the tip, tasting the air. He hissed sharply when the unmistakable clamor of Hell greeted his senses. It was still hard to believe that Deziel was behind all this, that she hated him enough to even touch a hellgate. Perhaps Michael was lying, but the princes had sensed an angel. Perhaps Deziel was a misdirection. Lucifer would have preferred to think that she was doing whatever she did in Heaven these days, not wandering earth with a vendetta as old as the hills. He glanced over at Galilee and his own voice slithered in his head, cold and unkind.How long will it take,it asked,before she hates you as much as Deziel does, as much as Leviathan tries to hide?You poison everything you love.Lucifer pushed it away. He had changed. He would continue to change, and the change would save him. There was simply no other choice.
Galilee was frowning at the quiet in the cavern. “Everythinglooksfine.”
“You’d need eyes from Hell to see the truth.” Lucifer flicked his fingers into the air, dropping the illusion so she could witness what he and his princes were truly dealing with. The vault glitched once, and Galilee choked back a cry, her hand clutching at Lucifer’s arm.
“What thefuck?” Her voice was almost lost in the guttural screams echoing through the cavern. Small portals were shredding open in the air before the princes chanted them shut, while visible pulses thudded out from the plinth that held the mask, stained red and veined with bitter black. Splashes of boiling darkness slammed against the wallsof the room, the agony of them redoubling as the room’s wards flung them right back. Lucifer’s princes were being flayed repeatedly, flaps of skin being peeled back from their flesh, revealing unbleeding muscle underneath. Their chants stitched the skin closed again, but it was clear they were fighting a losing battle. Lucifer felt a weight of grief deep in his gut. Whatever punishment Deziel sought for him would obliterate his princes, even as they fought to do Heaven’s bidding, forced into this work by virtue of existing as what they were. Leviathan was right there, as beautiful as ever, even with his dappled skin being taken and returned. They were all fighting for him, for the Morningstar, who had never done anything to deserve it.
Asmodeus looked up, and a passing scream took out his left eye in a slash of vitreous fluid. “Lucifer,” he bit out. “It’s getting worse.”
Something had to give.Someonehad to give. “Stay over here,” Lucifer said to Galilee. “It’s not safe for you to move any closer.”
He didn’t dare imagine how the hellgate would target her, how hungry it would be if it sensed the simmering roll of her power. Galilee nodded and folded her arms under Levi’s jacket, looking more human than Lucifer liked. He brushed his knuckles over her cheek, then turned away and strode over to his princes, pushing his shirtsleeves up past his elbows.
The artifact was shimmering in an illuminated glass cube on the stone plinth, its molecules unstable as it seized in and out of reality. To human eyes, it was a bronze mask, intricate and so very, very old. It was no one’s face, a broad flattened nose, a wide mouth with ivory teeth. There was ancient and dried blood on the inside ivory curve of the mask, seeping through the eyeholes, tangled in gold veins, and Lucifer could feel the sheer volume of the dead that had been pressed into it, packed and screaming.
Beyond the gate, Hell itself felt Lucifer’s approach and crooned hungrily for him. Lucifer could feel it tugging at him, calling him back home to that cursed throne. The gate’s fracture groaned, and Beelzebub staggered down to one knee.
“Anytime now, Luci,” she panted.
“I’m here,” Lucifer murmured to the madness beyond the gate. “I’m here now.”
Hell screamed and howled in response, but Lucifer funneled his power into a weave, placing it over the fracture, laying it over the scattering mask. The weave could barely hold from edge to edge. Reality had already started giving way, but Hell and all its damned inhabitants werehis, and if he couldn’t temper its rush for a few precious moments, then he might as well toss out his title.
“Fall back,” Lucifer ordered as he pushed more power into the ward, and then more, andmore. His eyes bled black and his wings snapped out, darkening the room. Screams ricocheted off the feathers and splashed into inky stains on the stone floor.
