Page 41 of Wicked Believer

“Astaroth, you fool,” I grumble in my fury.

I make my way toward it, my jaw clenching.

When I push through to the other side, I’m unsurprised by the sight that greets me.

A cavernous hole in the floor teems with lava, leading down into the pits where my hellfire flickers and gleams. My realm brought topside. And not onmyorders.

Several of my demons’ heads turn toward me, the expressions of the human bodies they’ve claimed as their own paling at the sight of me, despite their blackened eyes.

“My lord ...” One of them steps forward.

I slowly strip off my suit coat, making a show of rolling up my shirt sleeves to prepare for their punishment as I snarl, “It appears that you all have been busy.”

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte

I’m barely conscious, barely clinging to life, by the time Mark finally unties me.

The chair has splintered into dozens of pieces beneath me, and I let out a weak moan, trying and failing to use my elbows to crawl toward the door. I’m inside the old Brooklyn Navy Yard again, and already, Mark’s broken me. But this time, it isn’t Mark or even Lucifer who stands over me.

It’s Death.

His skeletal face stares back at me.

“Lucifer?” I rasp, searching for him, hoping he’ll save me.

But he isn’t there. “Forgive me,” Death whispers.

Abruptly, he shoves his hand inside my chest, burying it deep. I gasp and choke on what he’s just shoved inside me, but it’s not light that I see.

It’s darkness . . .

I jerk upright, my heart pounding and a cold sweat drenching me, only to find I’m still in the guest room. Lucifer didn’t carry me to our bed like he usually would, which means ...

He didn’t return home all evening.

My eyes fall to the closed bathroom door, to what I don’t want him to see, because he isn’t safe anymore.

Though was he ever, really?

The thought pains me, the feeling of Death’s cold embrace still gripping me.

I glance toward the window to where the curtains peek open, allowing some of the early morning light to flood in. So different from the darkness that tried to consume me.

Another night. Another nightmare. More hellfire.

It was just a dream.

A dream laced with memory. A memory that hasn’t stopped haunting me.

Along with the feeling of someone’s arms that I ... can’t quite place.

Death’s cold embrace.

I slip from the bed, stripping off the sheets, hoping that the maids take them to the wash quickly so that when Luciferdoescome home, he doesn’t discover I’ve sweat through them again. My nightmares worry him.

Or they did. Before we fought, at least.