Page 9 of Hunted By Fear

“Talian, go collect her.” Bast opens his mouth, no doubt ready to argue with me, but I cut him off before he can.

“You two need to look for a way to free her. We have no idea what he did or how, but we might be able to separate her from him; she needs to be free from his influence. Keeping her safe from him is already hard enough, clearly. We don’t need her continuing to harbor a fake love and pull to him.” I struggle tokeep my voice steady, despite my best efforts. Everything about Rome pisses me off, but he’s never been a real issue, not like this.

Bast snaps his mouth shut before giving me a curt nod and promptly leaving the kitchen, without so much as glancing at Kai.

Fantastic.

I’m sure they’re going to get a lot done like this.

I shake the thought away to deal with later.

For now, I have someone I need to talk to.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been back, and it’s still just as gloomy and depressing down here as ever.

Not to mention the heat and howling souls of the damned.

“Asta,” Lucifer’s voice breaks through the howls, one of the few things that can quiet the unruly souls.

He’s in his demon form, considering we're in Hell, his domain, but not his full form.

I’ve only seen his full form once, and I’d be happy never to see it again.

Even still, in this form, he’s intimidating.

Unlike the rest of us, I’ve never seen him in an in-between state. He’s either hundreds of feet tall with molten lava for skin, horns bigger than I am, and wings that span across the planes of Hell, or a large human-ish man.

Lucifer stands at about seven feet tall. His hair is pure black, darker than a starless night, cut short on the sides and shaggy on top, falling on his forehead but not quite reaching his eyes. His eyes are red, but unlike humans, he lacks the white;instead, they're black. Though I have seen him with more human features once, he often doesn’t. Why would he?

He’s what most humans would describe as good-looking. I’ve been around them long enough to understand what they look for, and he checks all the boxes. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, messy hair, muscles carved into him.

But he’d also be their nightmares. His armor is built into him, and if he can make it go away, I’ve yet to see it. Huge spikes protrude from his shoulders and elbows; dark chains wrap around his waist and into the material that covers him from the waist down. I’m not sure what exactly it is—pants with a kind of cape woven into it—but it screams royalty. His chest is bare, but his skin is hidden behind blood and shadows. His left side is stained red, while the right is black. He is far from divine, but he is still a god.

Rumor has it he carries a massive sword that’s covered in hellfire, but I’ve never seen it firsthand. I intend to keep it that way.

I can’t imagine what he would need with a weapon, not when he is the ultimate weapon, the very definition of death and destruction.

Or maybe he’s not intimidating at all, and I simply feel this way because I’ve seen his true form both before the fall and after. Having seen how easily he can consume the souls of hundreds of thousands and bring divine beings to their knees.

“What brings you back so soon? I thought it would be a few hundred years before I saw you again.” He’s right, and he knows it. The smug smile on his face is enough to make me itch to leave again.

When he’d finally approved us to go topside, I’d told him it would be a long time before I came back. He laughed and told me he’d see the others enough that he wouldn’t miss me too much.

He’d been right about that, too.

Kind of.

Talian had been back recently.

Kai almost got his ass sent back down here, too, but I’d already been annoyed about waiting for Talian to crawl his way back out.

“If I had it my way, I wouldn’t be, but this is outside of my control.”

The smile on his face falls slightly as I close the distance between us, meeting him at the steps of his castle

“What’s happened?”

I might not love my responsibilities here, but Lucifer is one of my oldest friends, from long before the fall. It’s not surprising that he can read me so easily.