She wrapped her arms around my neck; her mouth turned into my shoulder, and she bit down hard enough to break my skin. I growled as she marked me. Her legs encircled my waist, and sparks of life flickered across her fingers as she lost complete control.
From past experience, I knew she could use her ability to harness life to fling me across the room. Now it warmed my skin as power flowed between us and she met my increasing demands of her body.
When she released her bite, my hand entangled in her hair and I pulled her head back to expose her throat to me. I sank my fangs into her, marking her again. Her nails raking my back as her muscles clenched around my shaft nearly caused me to spill my semen within her.
I pulled out of her just as I began to come. The hot rush of my release lashed across her belly and chest as I kept my cock trapped against her stomach. I wanted River to bear my children, but that couldn’t happen until Lucifer was dead. I’d spilled myself in her twice now; during our first time, and when I’d been out of my mind with lust in the Forest of Prurience. There was a possibility she carried my child now, but if she didn’t, I couldn’t increase the chances of her becoming pregnant.
I inhaled a ragged breath as I kept myself from collapsing onto her. Kissing her neck, I reluctantly rolled to the side and embraced her in my arms. With ease, I rose and returned to the pool. She cuddled against me, smiling while she nuzzled my chin with her lips. I carried her into the water and settled her on my lap.
“We’re going to survive this. No matter what happens, we’re going to get through it,” she said.
“We are,” I said as I ran my hands over her silken flesh and lifted the lava bar to cleanse her.
When I was done, I carried her from the pool once more. Her exhaustion beat against me as I returned to the fire. She was asleep before I settled her onto the furs again. Lying beside her, I gathered her close to me, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind spun with everything Caim had revealed.
The angels were trying to communicate with River, trying to guide her, but what were they trying to guide her into doing? To them, she was only a pawn, a means to the end of the mistake they’d made when they cast Lucifer from Heaven to live on Earth.
When Lucifer figured out a way to enter Hell, he’d become the demons’ problem, and now he was once again the humans’ problem, even if he wasn’t on Earth yet. River might be able to stop him from taking over Earth, or she may be the key to him somehow returning to Heaven and the angels would do whatever was necessary to ensure Lucifer never saw Heaven again.
Before I’d met her, the progeny had only been a pawn to me too, a thing that could possibly be used to close the gateway or to help defeat Lucifer. When River had been brought to the wall,everythingabout the progeny had come to matter to me.
I know what I’d been willing to do with the progeny before meeting her, so I also knew what the angels would be willing to do with her. Her survival would not matter to them if she did what they needed her to do.
Running my fingers through her hair, I breathed in her angelic scent as I cradled her against my chest when she murmured something in her sleep. No matter what it took, I would destroy Lucifer and every angel in existence to keep her safe.
CHAPTER 12
River
“There are so many of them,” I murmured as I gazed at the sea of demons gathered below us. The chamber Kobal’s followers stood in was the size of an auditorium, but there were so many that they spilled out the archways branching off from this central room.
There had to be at least a thousand of them within the chamber. I had no idea how many stood beyond it, but laughter, cheers, and moans of ecstasy drifted throughout and continued down those side tunnels. A girlish giggle trailed behind a tree nymph as she weaved her way through the crowd. An easily eight-foot demon with yellow skin and hair the color of a clear, summer sky followed her.
Beside me, Lix puffed out his chest before taking a swig of mjéod from his flask. “Ah, tree nymphs,” he sighed as he recapped it.
The remaining skelleins chattered as they raised their flasks and clicked them together in the center of the group.
“There will be time for nymphs later,” Kobal said. “We have business to attend to first.”
Lix’s skeletal face fell before he took another drink. “Of course.”
I returned my attention to the demons below. They all looked so different from one another, yet there were similarities between some of them. Those similarities marked them as either the same kind of demon, or they were at least part of the same type of demon. Some of them could be siblings.
All the demons bore some resemblance to humans, even the red and green ones with horns and tails, or the blue one in the corner, and the woman who had four arms. Some were short, others were so tall they had to stoop to avoid hitting the ten-foot-high arches of the side tunnels.
I’d seen my fair share of demons at the wall and while camped by the gateway, but nothing had prepared me for the variety of the ones here, or the number of them. On the far side of the room, I spotted Morax and Verin speaking with a group of demons. Verin stood with her hand on Morax’s chest and her ear resting over his heart. Morax leaned casually against the wall while he ran a strand of her hair through his fingers.
“These are your followers,” I murmured.
“They are yours too,” Kobal said and took my hand in his.
On the walk here, I hadn’t stopped to think about what would happen when we met up with Kobal’s followers. I hadn’t allowed myself to consider what they would think of me.
The demons I’d encountered so far had been accepting of me. Bale and Corson were my friends; Lix was my drunken philosopher who made me think about who and what I was. I liked Magnus far more than when I’d first met him. Morax and Verin had never been unkind to me. Hawk had resolutely remained my friend throughout all the crazy twists and turns thrown at us these past months.
I had no idea what to expect from the demons below, no idea what they would think of me and my relation to Lucifer. These demons had remained in Hell to fight the battle here. They hadn’t dealt with people, and they more than likely hated humans for opening a gateway into their world. Mankind had thrown their world into a tailspin as much as Lucifer, and I was a reminder of humansandLucifer.
Kobal’s Chosen or not, their queen or not, they may hate me for it.
