Page 33 of The Bell’s Toll (Wanderlust Emporium Presents, Season One)

chapter Twenty-two

Raziel

H aving Nasiah cry in my arms and tell me she couldn’t take anymore lit a fire under my ass. I refused to let another day go by without ending this shit. There were many things I could go without, but she wasn’t one of them.

Now, I’m sitting in this seat with my elbows on my knees, and my head down. My darkness is rolling off me so thick it nearly fills the room. It crawls underneath my skin like a den of serpents.

I no longer care about protocols. I’m not following the rules. I’ll stand before Khalid and the council and answer for my crimes. But I will not go another day with my beauty fearing for her life. Feeling her fear and exhaustion as she cried and refused to go back to sleep last night was too much.

She wouldn’t tell me what happened during that dream, and that’s probably for the best because I would have gone to the underworld and brought that muthafucker back just to kill him multiple times. Demons, forsaken, and fallen, are hard to kill.

When we die in this realm, we go to the underworld and within a few days are reborn. It takes a little longer to regain all your power. However, you can't return topside until you get approval, and getting approval after death is nearly impossible.

The only way to truly kill one of us is by extinguishing us completely. When I killed the incubus, I only killed his outer shell. I didn’t extinguish him completely.

Conah appears in the room. I lean up from my crouch and look at him.

“She’s on the way.”

I nod my head. He gives me a sad look before disappearing back into the void. I asked him to let me deal with this alone.

Last night, while Erazel and Tanisha were summoning Gadiel to get answers, Hamon and Conah were scrounging the underworld looking for Akathol’s estranged daughter.

Imagine my surprise when Conah came to me nearly an hour ago and told me they’d finally found her.

The door to the apartment opens, and Unina walks in. She startles when she sees me.

“Hey, Boss. What are you doing here?” She walks further into her home, placing her purse down on the table in the foyer.

She turns to me, taking in my appearance and my lack of acknowledgment of her. I see it. The moment she realizes I know her secret.

Before she could say anything, I ask. “How long have you been plotting against me?”

Her lower lip shakes, and her eyes water. I didn’t give a shit about her tears. There isn’t a being on my payroll that I don’t treat like family. Not one of them can say I wouldn’t go to war for them. Once I figured you were part of my family, you had my loyalty. This shit hurts.

Her gaze moves away from me to the wall on my right. “I can…. explain.”

“I’ve given you every fucking thing. You were a got damn call girl before I hired you and made you the third most important person in my district. I brought you into my inner circle and treated you like family, and you do this shit to me?” I roar my last three words, which causes her to jump.

The evidence was right in my face. The only other person who would have unlimited access to my portals and who crosses them is Unina.

When I put the heavy ban on who and what can come across my portals, she had to get creative. That’s why she brought her father over. Some low-level demon with no report and no record of passing through the portals. He was squeaky clean.

Had it not been for Khiva adding all the extra spells on the portals, Akathol would’ve been long gone before the damn thing would’ve started malfunctioning. We never would have found him.

And it made sense that he didn’t recognize Unina in that room because he’s been missing from her life since she was an infant. The plan was damn near foolproof.

“I’m so sorry, Raziel. I didn’t want to do it.”

I didn’t want to hear about what she didn’t want to do because she did it. There wasn’t an enemy she could’ve faced that I wouldn’t have been willing to stand ten toes down for her with. Even if that enemy was the king himself. Her bullshit lies meant nothing to me.

“How long?” I ask, gritting my teeth.

She wipes her tears. “From the beginning,” she whispers.

I shut my eyes to tamp down the anger and the betrayal I’m feeling.

“I needed a way out,” she goes on to say. “You’ve been away from the underworld for too long; you don’t know what it is like for a lirid child with no father.”

Lirids were female demons. They were usually the offspring of a lirid and some other demon. Demons desire lirids for their energy. Male demons feed off them, using them to damn near get high. There are entire brothels filled with lirids. Even human men seem to get a rush from them.

“I was lost working in that awful whorehouse. When he came to me with an offer of freedom and independence, I had to take it.”

She looks down at her hands.

“He fed me, was kind to me, and never used my body unless I offered it. It wasn’t until I got this job that I realized why he wanted me.”

She wipes at her face, but more tears fall.

“He knew you would offer me the job. Even told me to tell you my story about being an abandoned baby that didn’t know my parents. He said you would eat it up.”

My hands fist at my sides because she was right. She was a scrawny little female demon with no parents and no hope, and I immediately felt sorry for her. I offered her the job right on the fucking spot.

“I wanted to be loyal to you,” she goes on to say. “I tried so hard. But…I—”

It then dawns on me. “You made a bond with him?” I ask, even though I already knew the answer.

Her shoulders shake as she nods up and down. “I couldn’t refuse him.”

There is a reason the term unequally yoked is a thing in our world.

A mate-bond with the wrong being could be like a slave/ master situation.

It allows the dominant partner to control the other.

That was the problem I had with Abigia. She was the daughter of a duke, and I was a nobody.

It’s why I reached out to the angel to break the bond.

Part of me felt bad for Unina. I know what that mate-bond must have felt like. Hell, I even know why she would start one. It’s why I started one. She was caught up in something she couldn’t get out of.

Standing to my feet, I walk over to her.

“Come here,” I say, opening my arms. She plows into my chest, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. She buries her face in my stomach.

I ran a hand down her hair.

“I’m sorry, Raziel. I’ll do anything to make it up to you,” she pleads.

“Shhh,” I calm her. My wings spring from my back. “No need to worry.” Letting her go, I step back. Her tear-filled eyes stare up at me with a soft smile.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I will send that muthafucker to be with you soon.”

Her gaze widens. Crossing my wings over my chest, I then spread them back out.

My talons slice Unina in half. Pulling my scythe from the void, I rip an opening into the pits of the underworld.

The sulfur smell clogs my nostrils, and the screams fill the apartment.

I kick her corpse into the hole and then close it up.

Although I felt bad for Unina, she had ample opportunity to tell me what was going on. If she hated that bond so much, she should’ve come to me. In the same way I figured out a way to get out of mine before I was forced to do something against Khalid, she could have done the same thing.

Unina broke my trust and, if I’m honest, my heart as well. She had to go.

Conah appears in my office. “You didn’t find out who she was working for?”

I turn to him, with clenched teeth. “I already know.”

Pain erupts in my chest, causing me to clutch a hand to my heart.

“What’s wrong?” Conah asks, alarmed.

Looking over at him, fear and dread fill my veins. I don’t answer his question. Instead, I rush through the void hoping I will not be too late.