Page 3 of Wicked Believer

The God I still pray to every night, when Lucifer isn’t listening.

“May God have mercy on his soul.” I barely manage to choke the words out before I’m stumbling off the platform.

The crowd turns mutinous in an instant, the mixture of my father’s congregants, the Righteous, and the paparazzi pushing past the SWAT team’s barriers and shields with ease. They’re overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. I don’t look toward them or the other Originals to gauge their reactions as I rush into Lucifer’s arms. All I know is that he catches me, pulling me into his chest and allowing me to bury my face in the smooth Italian wool of his Armani suit.

My eyes sting with tears as he ushers me away. The crowd surges forward, and before I fully know what’s happening, Lucifer’s shoving me into the safety of a waiting Lincoln Town Car. The door slams behind us, locking instantly as the vehicle starts to pull away.

“Vultures. All of them,” he growls.

Harsh faces plaster against the Town Car’s tinted windows, surrounding us as they scream their hatred at me. Somehow Dagon, Lucifer’s demon chauffer—freshly topside in a new human-skin suit that’s taken some getting used to—manages to inch the vehicle forward without running anyone over as I bury my face in my hands. I clamp a cold fist over my mouth, stifling my scream. I can’t look at them. I can’t.

We pull free from the crowd, and finally I lift my head to look out the window, watching at the last second as my father’s casket ishurriedly lowered into his grave and the riot police fruitlessly attempt to regain control.

But it’s the sight of what’s beneath that chills me.

My face presses against the cool glass as I struggle to breathe.

From the hole in the ground, dozens of pale, shadowed hands reach up toward my father’s casket as if to pull him down into the bowels of Hell beneath, and as I glance toward Lucifer, uncertain whether it’s the gravediggers’ doing or the fallen angel beside me, my stomach drops, and I know that, not for the first time, my prayers have fallen on deaf ears.

Chapter Two

Lucifer

Killing Charlotte’s father felt ... different than I anticipated.

The Town Car pulls to a stop outside Charlotte’s childhood home—the dark, tinted windows blocking what little view I have of the uninspired two-story building. There’s not much to be seen out here in the dark—no neon lights or flashing cameras, which now stalk our every move—but I don’t need to glimpse inside my fiancée’s head to know what she’s thinking.

I haven’t changed. Not one bloody bit.

I’m still the villain in this story.

Only now she doesn’t resist me.

Charlotte’s stuttered breath tears through the cab, the shocked noise instantly reminding me of why I brought her here this evening. I’m not entirely certain what she anticipated following her father’s funeral, but clearly it wasn’t arriving here, with me.

All the more reason to tempt her.

“Shall we?” I offer my hand along with my most charming smile, and she takes it, the beat of her pulse fluttering against my palm like a wounded bird as she allows me to lead her from the cab out into the night. She braces against the wind before she presses into me, seekingmy warmth. My Father’s redemption may have changed her, made her immortal and mine, but it hasn’t made her any less breakable.

Not to me and my siblings.

“Search the grounds. Again,” I order Dagon. “Thoroughly.”

He nods, turning to direct the security team that now lives within our shadow.

The police’s poor handling of the funeral has left me particularly on edge this evening.

When we reach the front door, it’s unlocked and waiting, the premises and its surrounding acreage having been searched by my team prior to our arrival. Inside, the interior is painfully drabber than I anticipated, with sponge-painted walls, mismatched architecture, and beige, well, everything, which speaks to the poor taste of the nouveau riche and a bygone human era.

Charlotte doesn’t say anything as Dagon shuts the door behind us. Instead, she creeps further inside, her footfalls so quiet in the silence that they’re deferential. I watch as her gaze darts about the empty room. Like if she moves too suddenly, she might disturb the ghosts and memories which haunt her here.

Though that’s exactly why I brought her here this evening.

To lower her guard. Make her vulnerable to me.

Even more so than usual.

She stops at a narrow console table, her fingers falling to a photograph of a gangly, long-limbed child beside a woman who, based on the uncanny similarity, must no doubt be her mother. Her fingertips hover near the frame momentarily before her hand slowly falls to her side.