Page 9 of Unholy Bond (The Corruption of Evelyn Adams #2)

The runes on my door snapped from dull red to a blinding white, flaring bright enough to cast afterimages behind my eyelids.

The air shifted from chill to stinging, and every dust mote turned to glass.

The hinges, if you could call the mechanisms grafted into the obsidian frame hinges, shrieked their protest and then the door yawned open.

The corridor beyond was already crowded.

Two creatures waited for me. They stood two heads taller than anyone I’d ever seen, and their bodies were a nightmare of interlocking plates, black-green and shining like beetle shells.

Their faces were almost human, but the mouths were too wide, and filled with teeth arranged not in rows but in a spiral.

Horns spiraled up from the brow, but the bone showed no inheritance from the old stock.

I’d seen enough demons to know. These weren’t my offspring.

It was the first thing that truly unnerved me since waking.

When I died, every demon in Hell shared at least a drop of my line.

If Lucifer had managed to birth new stock while I was out, it meant he’d found a way to breed without me.

The thought hit with a violence that dwarfed all the threats I’d faced on Earth.

If he didn’t need me, what the fuck was I doing here?

They seized my arms, claws digging into the flesh beneath my new skin.

The pain was immediate, sweet and sharp, and for a second I gave in to it.

Sure I could make them release me, but I didn’t need to let them know just how powerful I truly was.

If they expected resistance, they’d have to wait for it.

The floor burned cold against my bare feet as they half-dragged, half-carried me into the hallway.

The corridor stretched far longer than the geometry of the tower allowed.

The walls pulsed with veins of orange light, and I tracked the rhythm as they moved me through.

It felt like the heartbeat of something too big to see, maybe even the old city itself.

I wondered if the boys would like the upgrade.

Levi would call it gauche, Aziz would complain about the paint job, and Ian would find the fastest way to weaponize it.

The trip wasn’t gentle. Every third step, my captors would jerk me upward to keep my toes from catching on the uneven stone.

Each time, the tips of my toes grazed the floor and burned anew.

I focused on the sensation, let it anchor me, let it keep the panic from blooming.

The fear was not for myself, but for the world I’d left behind.

I remembered an apple in a Boston market, remembered the laugh of a child whose mother I’d helped, remembered the feel of Ian’s hand on the small of my back, possessive and gentle all at once.

The ache was immediate and raw. I missed them more than I missed breathing.

We moved through a sequence of gates, each one more ornate and crueler than the last. At the first, the bars were spaced with skulls and the guards standing at attention didn’t even acknowledge us.

At the second, the threshold was scored with runes that twisted as I tried to read them, deliberately occlusive, as if the words themselves were ashamed.

The third gate was a pair of mirrored doors that reflected not our bodies but our desires, or maybe our fears.

In mine, I saw Aziz and Levi kneeling at my feet, their faces blank, as if I’d lost the ability to bring them joy or pain.

The sight nearly buckled me. I wanted to turn away, but the guards forced my head forward, holding it steady until the doors groaned open.

“I demand to know where I’m being taken,” I said at last.

The only answer I received was a savage jerk from one of the demons, shaking my body like I was a rag doll.

The final passage led to the throne room, if you could call it that.

Hell didn’t believe in thrones; it believed in platforms, in hierarchies made manifest. This one rose like a tumor from the polished floor, a dais that looked grown instead of built.

The columns were carved from single pieces of stone, so tall they disappeared into mist. The ceiling was lost in shadow, but from time to time I thought I glimpsed something moving in the dark up there, a suggestion of wings or worse.

The floor itself was a nightmare of polished black, veined with rivers of red.

It looked as if the marble had been quarried from a single, monstrous clot of blood.

The demons marched me to the foot of the dais and threw me down.

My knees hit the stone with a crack that echoed through the hall.

I pitched forward, hands splayed for balance, chin grazing the floor.

I let my hair fall over my face, feigning the kind of crumpled helplessness I’d never allow myself in life.

The trick was in making them underestimate you.

Even the devil himself could be tricked if you played the character right.

His own hubris and overconfidence would be his downfall.

For a long time, nothing happened. The room was silent but for the low hum of energy pulsing in the walls. My captors stood motionless, each one a parody of patience. I stole a look up from beneath my hair, searching for a sign of my jailer.

He announced himself with slow, deliberate footsteps.

Lucifer never hurried. Not even when he was angry, not even when his palace was under siege.

He entered from a side arch, cloaked in his true form.

His skin was the red of a fresh wound, slick with oil and furrowed with old scars.

His horns curled back from his skull like the horns of a bison, thick and ridged.

His hands were too large, tipped with claws more like talons.

His mouth, when it twisted into a smile, was almost beautiful.

Almost. The eyes, though, were black, not the color but the substance, like the absence of light you got from staring too long at the sun.

He swept past the guards without acknowledging them, and as he drew level with me, he flicked out a single finger. The motion was so casual I almost missed it.

The demon on my right went limp and crumbled to the floor. The other demon didn’t move. Neither did I.

Lucifer turned, inspecting his kill like a chef might test a melon for ripeness. Then, as if remembering I was there, he stepped in front of me.

He crouched and dipped two fingers in the puddle of blood.

When he stood, he gripped my chin painfully.

He leaned in close, so close I could see the tiny bubbles of air trapped beneath the membrane of his skin, the way the light refracted around his features.

Every line, every proportion, calculated for maximum effect.

He smeared the blood across my lips, pressing the slick pads of his fingers into my mouth.

His talons gently clawed at the soft flesh around my mouth.

I hesitated. Not out of fear, but because I knew this was a test. I parted my lips, letting him push the fingers in, and closed around them.

The taste was salt, copper, a hint of sugar and something rotten underneath.

I licked them clean, slow and deliberate, suckling at them the way I would have with the cock of one of my men, then pulled back and met his gaze with all the defiance I could muster.

He grinned, and the air between us shivered.

“Good girl,” he said, and the room hummed in approval.

He released my face and paced a slow circle around me, leaving streaks of bloody footprints in his wake. The other demon knelt, head bowed, awaiting instruction. Lucifer ignored it, eyes locked on me as he made a show of inspection.

“Not bad for a mortal incarnation,” he mused.

“I’d worried you’d come back diminished.

But you wear her well, Lilith. The lines are cleaner.

The hunger’s truer. The sadness is new, though.

” He leaned in, sniffed at my hair as if searching for the scent of someone else. “Who did you leave behind, I wonder?”

I bit back a retort. Instead, I pictured Aziz’s arms, the strength in them, the comfort, the possibility of safety. I pictured Levi’s irreverence, his ability to make anything a game. I pictured Ian, the only one who’d ever understood what it meant to lose control and still want more.

Lucifer’s smile widened. “You’re thinking of them, aren’t you? The demons who fancy themselves kings.” He knelt behind me, pressing the hard shape of his chest against my spine. His breath was ice on my ear. “They’re nothing. Shadows. The only real thing in any world is us.”

I tensed but didn’t answer. His hands slid down my arms, lingering over the place where the claws had punctured me. He pinched the wounds, forcing blood to the surface. Then he traced a single finger along the vein of my wrist, as if contemplating how best to open it.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked and winced at how small my voice sounded in the cavernous hall.

He laughed. “Because you belong here.” He licked the blood from my wrist, tongue hot and abrasive. “You always have. You were made for this place, even if you never believed it. You were the first, and you will be the last. And when everything else is ash, you and I will remain.”

He pressed his mouth to my neck, biting, not hard, but enough to draw blood. I gasped, more in surprise than pain, and he used the moment to tilt my head back, exposing my throat. He spoke into my skin.

“The others want to use you. Corrupt you. Make you a tool.” He paused, tongue snaking out to catch the blood. “. You are no sheath for demon cock. You are made for greater things. I want to make you my queen”

The word was loaded, meant to wound as much as seduce. I let him savor the moment, then spat a single, bitter laugh.

“You could never handle me,” I said. “You had to make a new breed just to fetch me from my bed. Afraid the old stock wasn’t up to the job?”

His grip tightened, claws threatening to break the surface of my skin.

“They were soft,” he hissed. “Your children. My children. Weak from too much sentiment.” He let go, stood, and spread his arms wide, encompassing the hall.

“Look at what I’ve built in your absence.

A kingdom worthy of the name. A new world, Lilith. You should be flattered.”

I forced myself to stay still when what I really wanted to do was rip Lucifer’s heart out of his chest. That would have to wait.

The dead demon sprawled at my feet, leaking heat into the stone. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the taste of blood thick on my tongue.

“Impressive,” I said. “But you still haven’t answered the question.”

He smiled, and this time there was nothing human in it. Only a vast appetite waiting to be satisfied.

“You’re not here as a prisoner but as a vessel.

” He stepped closer, the air warping around him, the world itself bending to accommodate his desire.

“You’re going to carry the Void, Lilith.

You’re going to nurse it, let it fill you, let it devour all that petty mortal morality you picked up on the surface.

And when you’re ready, you’ll open the gate. ”

My heart hammered with a surge of forbidden hope. The Void was already a part of me. It pulsed inside me, a tide I’d tried to ignore. He wanted it to do what? Consume me? Control me? Then he was the fool, not me.

He circled again, running a single talon down my spine. I shivered, and it was not entirely unpleasant.

“Do you feel it?” he whispered. “The way it moves in you? The hunger?”

I closed my eyes, searching for the shape of the Void.

It was no longer an absence. It was a solid, coiled entity, ready to strike.

It waited for me, patient and sure, confident that I would welcome it when the time came.

For the first time, I realized it wasn’t a parasite at all. It was a partner. An old, old friend.

I opened my eyes and looked straight at him. “I feel it,” I said, and let a slow, wicked smile creep across my lips.

He blinked, surprised by something in my face. Just for a second, the balance shifted, and I saw the shadow of doubt. His confidence, for the briefest instant, was shaken.

The moment passed. He gestured, and the remaining demon seized my arms again, rougher than before. He bent down to the corpse, licked the blood from its cheek, then looked back at me.

“Rest up, darling,” he purred. “The next time you’re here, it won’t be in chains.”

He turned, walking back up the dais, his bare feet leaving wet prints on the black. The demon hauled me toward the doors, and for a second, I let it, let the pain and humiliation settle into my bones. Then I looked down at the blood on my skin, the red smears across my lips, and I tasted victory.

Inside, the Void churned. We should kill him now and find our mates.

We will wait. Our time will come.

And it purred, pleased.