Page 5

It worsened as the being spoke, perhaps because he felt the honesty behind the creature’s words. Betial was not even intentionally needling him now. The pity there was real, the actualregretat the pathetic creature Faustus had become.

In the vampire’s eyes, it took the fun out of his demise.

Something about that fact infuriated Faustus beyond reason.

Not just at the vampire.

All of it. All of them. Every slight, every betrayal.

Those years he’d been left in that shithole dimension by his niece.

His own blood did that.

She committed treason to the race, to the One God… to him.

That they would put this final indignity on him, after everything he had done, everything he had tried to do for them, all the times he’d granted clemency, looked the other way. That his own kin would simply turn to his God, ask for him to beleft behindwhen that God finally came for him. That the same God would listen to Black… to his faithless niece, Miriam… over himself, the most loyal of all their servants… gods above.

It was unbearable.

It was fuckingunbearable.

It was a betrayal worse than death.

Perhaps like Betial himself, Faustus could not help but express some of it.

“I called him here. Me.” Faustus felt his hands clench hard enough to hurt. “I built churches for him. I conducted rituals. Ikilledfor him. I named him as the One True God. Theonlytrue god of our race. I brought him with me across worlds.”

Pain reached his chest, so intense he couldn’t breathe.

“And they tell him toleaveme here? To leave ME?”

He stared at the vampire, blind with pain.

Separation pain ripped apart his light. Heartbreak. Stark memory of all the the things he had sacrificed. Even his own mate. He had given her to the vampires as part of his initial deal with them. He hadgivenher to them.

But again, there was no satisfaction to be found here.

It was not the right audience for his complaint.

His words did not evoke anything at all from the vampire.

Not even pity.

Not even embarrassment for him.

Nothing.

If anything, it made Betial seem to lose interest in Faustus altogether.

Brick seemed done with this, tired of the back and forth.

Tired of him.

Even as Faustus thought it, the vampire exhaled in pure affectation.

Balancing the butt of thehiristick on his full lips, Brick used his newly-freed hands to straighten his sleeves and cuffs, without glancing at the seer’s eyes. He tugged on the edges to align them with his jacket, still looking at the ends as he spoke.

His voice grew openly bored, edging into impatient.