Page 97 of Wicked Believer

“Let go of me!” I shriek. “That asshole was going to—”

“Any more and you’re going to kill him,” Az growls.

Sure enough, when I struggle and twist in Azmodeus’s fireman’s hold to look back to the scene, the paparazzo is lying there unmoving.

A shout comes from somewhere across the street a moment later. “There they are!”

A chill runs through me.

Another paparazzo.

No, not another. A whole group of them.

Someone must have tipped them off that we’d be here this evening.

I glance toward Az’s face as he sets me down, trying to gauge whether it was him. It’s not like he hasn’t pulled that kind of shit with me and Lucifer before.

But he looks just as shocked as me.

And thankfully, in a right enough mind to act on what I’m already thinking.

We need to get the hell out of here.

Now.

“Fuck,” Az swears. “Hold on tight, lovey.”

Before I know what’s happening, Az is shoving us both through the ether, but I don’t have time to close my eyes. The breath is ripped from my chest as I watch the whole world fade away and condense until we’re stumbling through what looks like a model of the very city we just left, made entirely out of stars. The buildings seem to zoom out until the city’s no more than a pinprick, until a model of the world sits before us. A projected map made of dust and glittering sand. Or stardust.

And I realize then that’s what we all are in the end.

Stardust.

And now with the apocalypse coming, that’s allanyof us are going to be.

A choked noise tears from my throat, and before I can fully comprehend what’s in front of me, I feel myself being sucked back in, that familiar tug at my navel coming at the exact moment Azmodeus touches one of the glittering particles like he’s selected our destination off a menu. That singular movement sends us whirling. My feet slam onto the rooftop of the penthouse seconds later, my knees buckling.

It all happened so fast. In no more than a blink.

Without warning, I turn and vomit the contents of my stomach into the rooftop’s empty pool, the heat from where it exited my body causing steam to rise into the cold night air.

Azmodeus drops down into one of the lounge chairs beside me, raking a lazy hand through his hair. “Well, fuck me, I haven’t had that much fun in ages.” He throws back his head and laughs in a way that reminds me all too much of Lucifer. “This makes us besties, now, right? I’m not above playing the gay best friend when it’s fun for me.”

And it’s not until that exact moment I realize the true danger Lust poses to me. It’s not the sexual innuendos or the horny feelings Az creates.

It’s the impulsive decision-making he inspires.

Shame constricts my throat. I’m unable to answer him as my stomach churns at the thought of the paparazzo, of the human man I nearly killed without consequence this evening, and I turn back toward the pool, vomiting again as Az laughs at me.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Lucifer

My wretched bitch of a sister makes her home in a refurbished carriage house on the Lower West Side in Greenwich Village, and when she finally returns from her hot yoga class for the evening, I’m there waiting.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She tosses her purple yoga mat down upon the sofa beside me, flopping into an armchair across from where I’m seated on the other side of her living room. She levels a furious glare at me as she uses a wide plastic straw to stir some of the sediment at the bottom of the green juice she’s carrying.

My eyes track toward it, one brow lifting.