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“No.” Yesterday jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I am a demon.”
“You said you were an imp.”
Yesterday rolled his eyes. “An imp is a type of demon.”
“And a hell prince is not a demon?”
“No.” Yesterday made a rude noise. “A hell prince is a hell prince.”
God, she wished Dee would return her damn call and she could get some straight answers. “I thought there were only demons in hell.”
“Demons are vassals to hell princes.” Yesterday counted his points off on his sausage fingers. “Hell princes guard the seals and keep what’s in them from leaking onto earth. Asmodeus is a hell prince. One of seven.”
“What are the seals…er…sealing?”
Yesterday screwed up his face. “The things.” He made an impatient gesture with his stubby arms. “You humans call the things behind the seals something.” He tapped his head. “Something like dangerous or fatal…um…sins?”
“The deadly sins?”
He slapped his scalp. “That’s them.”
“So, the seals are containing the deadly sins?” Unless she had missed a secret part of theology, this was nothing like how she’d understood hell to work. “And the hell princes guard the seals?”
“Yes.” Yesterday patted her shoulder and beamed at her like a proud parent. “Now you understand.”
Eddie went through a mental catalogue of the deadly sins. “And Asmodeus guards which seal?”
But she kind of worked out the answer before Yesterday said, “Lust.”
Chapter
Six
Eddie was in a castle, or as near as she could tell, it was a castle. Massive wooden beams marched in symmetrical rows down each side of an expansive hall and crisscrossed a ceiling that made her crane her head up to see. A gleaming stone floor reflected light from a roaring central fire pit. Her footsteps echoed on the floor as she crept forward. Outside soaring arched windows, a grassy expanse sloped gently away from the hall she stood in.
Despite its beauty, she didn’t feel safe. An air of menace hung about the gorgeous hall as she crept deeper into the space.
A pair of towering wooden doors burst open, and creatures swarmed the hall.
Eddie shrunk behind a pillar. Heart drumming, she peered out.
None of the creatures was paying any attention to her. Their aggression was focused on one being they tossed to the gleaming floor.
The second winged being, the one who had chased Shade in her last dream, strode through the teeming creatures. Many of them sported wings, or horns, strange variations of basically humanoid figures dressed in a variety of warrior garbs. Most of them carried weapons: swords, clubs, flails, whips, and daggers.
A huge bull-like creature lunged forward and kicked the one they had thrown to the floor. His steel capped boot connected with the poor being they were torturing and flipped him to his side so that he now faced her.
Shade.
Blood and saliva dribbled through broken teeth over his lacerated mouth. His nose canted at a painful angle and blood coated his nostrils.
Eddie wrapped her hands over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.
One eye was entirely swollen shut. Shade’s unharmed gray eye met hers. Recognition flashed in its depth, and then he frowned. “Leave.”
As if she had any choice in being here, and given what she’d encountered of him recently, she’d rather not be.
Piercing shouts and whistles rose from the enraged mob.
