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“Lady Sloane will require something non-alcoholic,” Tix announced with a sad shake of his head. “I sent over her dietary needs.”
Lucifer frowned. “Why? She’s a werewolf. I thought they all drank. Is something wrong with her? Gray, does your lady require a medical professional?”
“I’m fine.” I didn’t like how all the attention was suddenly focused on me. I let my hand drift up to the stone at my neck. It seemed warmer than it had before, likely a side effect of being near the big boss. “I’m just pregnant.”
“With a demon child,” Lucifer said as though that should change everything.
“A halfling. Not even a halfling since his dad is a halfling,” I pointed out. I started to follow him down the hallway. The walls seemed washed in red, our footsteps echoing.
“A royal isn’t really considered a halfling,” Lucifer explained in an academic tone. “That child you carry won’t be affected by alcohol in any way. You can eat whatever you like and the child will be fine. Demonkind are a hardy lot. For what it’s worth, so are werecreatures. While it can be hard for a she-wolf to get pregnant, once she is, the child is damn near impossible to harm. Ale is one of the things she-wolves crave during pregnancy.”
“I’m not exactly a she-wolf.” Sometimes it was hard to figure out where I belonged in the supernatural world.
“No, you’re something more,” he replied, gesturing to the big wooden doors ahead of us. They swung open without a single creak, exposing a den-looking room luxuriously decorated in reds and golds. Further ahead I could see the room kept going, the lines flowing out to a balcony that overlooked the grounds. It was the kind of thing that looked great in a magazine, but I wondered what happened when it rained and the rain didn’t recognize the inside-outside borders. Though it probably did here in Hell.
Lucifer led us out there.
It was a magnificent outdoor space. The moon was full and silvery, hanging low in the sky.
There was a big bar to our left and a well-appointed table in front of us. A buffet of what seemed like appetizers was off to the side. Night-blooming flowers crept up the walls and around the stone banister that kept us from falling.
I moved to the edge and realized how high up we were. My stomach lurched because I couldn’t see the bottom.
“Hell is endless, you know.” Lucifer joined me, his hands on the railing as he looked out over his kingdom.
“Is it? I thought this was merely your realm.”
“It is. This is a personal space, but I have dominion over every plane of Hell.”
“I never thought of Hell having distinct and different planes. I thought they were all one big torture scape.”
Lucifer raised a brow. “I’m surprised you’re so ignorant when it comes to Hell. I would have suspected your academic mentors would teach you better. After all, you were bred to hunt and kill my kind.”
“That’s not exactly true. I’m a specialized wolf meant to keep the powerful alphas in check. It was the academics who started training us as demon hunters,” I pointed out. “But only ever on the Earth plane. I wasn’t meant to be here. The only reason I am is my husband. I assure you, I have no intentions of starting a killing spree.”
“It might be fun, though only if you massacred the demons who bore me,” Lucifer admitted. “Otherwise, I might get quite cross.”
I wondered why I was here alone when Trent and Gray would normally be hovering. I glanced behind me and saw they were each speaking to a Lucifer themselves. We’d walked in with one, but there were three now. Nope. Four. The bartender looked like a Lucifer, too, though they were all slightly different. The one talking to Gray was as tall as Gray and wore a dark suit sans tie. Trent was talking to a shady-looking Lucifer wearing jeans and a T-shirt and piling a plate high at the buffet.
“I take it this is a good way to divide us up?”
Lucifer leaned against the banister, looking back at his other selves. “I simply send out the parts of me a person will respond to. The one talking to Gray is all business. They’re discussing some events that have recently happened that will affect the prices of crops. You know your husband is quite wealthy here.”
We hadn’t gone into the economics of being a Hell plane farmer. “He’s wealthy everywhere.”
“Yes, but his Earth plane wealth came from his mother’s side of the family,” Lucifer explained. “Such a deliciously terrible family. They’re all here now, of course. Serving Hell in one way or another. I believe his mother, in particular, is restless. Or so I’ve heard. Have you met your mother-in-law?”
My dead mother-in-law? “No.”
Lucifer shrugged. “Well, it’s not like she and Gray got along well.”
“She sold him.”
Lucifer tsked, wagging a finger my way. “Not true, Lady Sloane. You act like he’s some common legacy. You know it’s not like a parent can sell a child’s soul. The child has to have some bit of demon in order to be able to be called to serve the Hell plane. They’re bred specifically to a task. Your husband, for example, was born to become the dark prophet. His mother’s family was particularly good with prophecy, though they dabbled in all the dark arts. What no one likes to acknowledge is that you really can’t force a soul to come to Hell unless the person who owns it believes on some level they belong there. That’s what I find entirely amusing.”
I was confused. “I’ve known several legacies. They didn’t want to go to Hell. I have a friend who knew a witch who was a legacy.”
He seemed to search his memory and then nodded as though he’d pulled up the right file. “You’re talking about the obnoxious woman who calls herself the Queen of all Vampire. Her friend was raised a legacy. She believed she would be dragged to Hell, and from a young age she was made to feel there was a part of her that deserved it. It’s a trick we play to ensure we’ll get what we need. Consider it training.”
