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Poe stood beside them, and his gaze slid to me, his eyes wild.He still hadn’t told Tarrant and Beelzebub it was me, that I was the one who blew everything wide open.For some reason, he’d decided to risk angering a lord of Hell to keep my secret.

Because he wants you to owe him, to be beholden to him.

I was fucked, either way you looked at it.My powers were still bound.I was in Hell.I had no idea how things worked between realms.Would Jagger still be able to sense me down here?Did the sigil Poe carved into my skin block me from him completely?

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Tarrant said, bowing his head in the face of the massive and powerful demon.“I let you down.”

“You got sidetracked with your own endeavors.These auctions you’ve been running, the drugs you have been selling, you forgot yourself.”

“I did that for you.”

Beelzebub leaned in.“Enlighten me.”

Gods, his voice sent terror down my spine.

“Every demon who came to our auctions, who bought and paid for a human, is now beholden to me…to you.I’m the only one who knows their identities, and if they were leaked, they would be dragged here to Hell.They don’t want that.They owe us.They are allies in the war to come, because they have no choice.”

Beelzebub stared down at him, his thick, leathery, muscled back moving in an odd way as he tilted his head to the side.“You have the next phase in place?”

Tarrant nodded enthusiastically.“We have a witch.”He pointed at me.“She created the potions we’ve been testing, to make sure of its effectiveness on as many different humans as we could, to make sure it’ll work on a high percentage of them.You see, I had a plan.”

Twisted asshole.

“We had another witch duplicate the drug she created, increasing its potency, then produced it in bulk.We have barrels of it now, ready and waiting, more than enough to poison the water supply.”

They’d had Luke copy my recipe.They were going to drug the entire city.

“Do you truly believe you can get the task done, Tarrant?”Beelzebub asked.“After your failings?Do you think I should put my future in your weak and incapable hands?”

“I can do this, my lord.I won’t let you down, not again,” Tarrant said.“This is the only way to shatter the path fate is currently on and set the forgotten prophecy into motion.It’s the only way you take Hell, my lord.”

“Are you telling me this drug will make the humans offer their flesh to us?It’s the only way to redirect the path.”

Oh goddess, what they had planned was horrific.

“Yes, I’ve already seen it happen.It makes them easy to manipulate, to control.I can give you what you need.I can give you that.”

They were using my drug to change fate, and to do that they needed something that was so wrong, something so against the natural order, that it caused a major shift.

Humans offering themselves as food to the inhabitants of the underworld would definitely do that.

Beelzebub stood silent for several long moments.“For now, here in my quadrant, we are relatively safe.But if Lucifer discovers who stole from him, he’ll know he was betrayed, and it will be only a matter of time before he summons all the lords for questioning.You have two days to set the next phase in motion.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Tarrant said, slumping when Beelzebub stepped back.

“If you fail in this, you will regret it, Tarrant,” the massive demon said, then strode away.Brick moved back, pawing at the ground as the demon strode past and out of the cavern.

“Come,” Tarrant said to Poe, then he headed in the same direction as Beelzebub.

Poe strode over to me, closing in, crowding me.“See how I protected you?You owe me your life now,” he sneered as he tucked my hair behind my ear, then pulled it hard.“I don’t know how long I’ll be away, but no one here gives a fuck about you except me.The only thing keeping you alive while I’m gone are the hounds guarding the entrances.If you try to leave, I will come after you, and if the hounds or the demons haven’t torn you to shreds, I will.”

I rattled my chains.“Where do you think I’m going?”

He smirked and shrugged.“Just reminding you of where you are.You are in Hell, witch, and every demon down here, including me, would love to make you scream.”Then he strode away.

Maybe, but if I got free of these chains, I wouldn’t be alone.There was no power vibrating through the iron around my wrists.I was marked with a sigil, but my cuffs and chains were not.I wasn’t a hound; they didn’t think I was strong enough to escape.I turned to the female curled up in her cage.“What’s your name?”

She looked up at me, terror in her eyes.“Lenny.”