Page 37 of Wicked Believer (Original Sinner #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Charlotte

We descend into the darkness, the stairs seeming to stretch on forever until I feel a warped sort of force pulling at me. Like I’m being bent and curled at the edges.

“Where are we—”

“Just a few steps farther,” Azmodeus says, not allowing me to finish.

Though I’m not certain I could have anyway.

The pressure inside my head is reaching an apex.

Like what I imagine it would feel like to go diving, if you hadn’t been trained in how to do it the right way.

Just as I’m about to tell Azmodeus that I want to turn back around, that I might not actually be able to go through with this, a veil is lifted, and the darkness of the staircase ends abruptly.

We’re standing in what appears to be an abandoned cellar, blue and green neon lights illuminating where two bouncers stand outside a door they’re guarding.

The sound of electronic club music thumps distantly.

“What is this place?” I turn back toward the stairs in search of Azmodeus, who’s been trailing behind me the whole time, but I can’t find him, yet when I face forward, he’s somehow in front of me, smirking.

“Welcome to In-Between, Charlotte.”

He nods to the bouncers, who open the doors, a wave of electric energy and sound rushing over us. The open cellar is packed with people, or what appear to be people, anyway.

The fast-paced club music plays on a nonstop loop at such a loud decibel, I can hardly hear myself think. I smile.

Perfect .

I squint in awe at the writhing crowd, the lights that paint them and their half-naked bodies. One of their heads snaps toward me, their eyes flashing an otherworldly shade of green. I inhale a sharp breath.

Where the hell am I?

I take a tentative step back, some instinctive, still-human part of me wanting to flee, but Azmodeus catches me by the shoulders, leaning down to me.

He has to practically shout next to my ear for me to hear him over the music playing. “I promised I would pop your celestial cherry,” he yells. “You didn’t think I’d disappoint, did you?”

I laugh, opening my mouth to say that this is more of what I expected from him, but I’m silenced by the sight of a small star-shaped pill balanced on his finger in front of me.

“Do you trust me, Charlotte?” he asks again.

I give a quick nod. I’m not sure it’s true, but Azmodeus hasn’t done anything to hurt me, and even though I know it’s a risk, it’s one I choose.

The power in that is heady. Intoxicating even.

Suddenly, the feeling of wanting to let go, of wanting to jump off this cliff into immortality and my God-given purpose until I’m in freefall, is overwhelming.

Azmodeus must read my face, because before I can change my mind, he grips the back of my neck like he means to kiss me.

My heart pumps feverishly.

Drunk on the feeling his touch creates.

“Open your mouth, Charlotte.”

I stick out my tongue like I did when I was a child and I’d try to catch a falling snowflake, and Azmodeus drops the little star-shaped tablet onto it. It melts instantly, the taste like an odd mix of pomegranate and freshly bitten apple.

“Stardust,” he says. “It’s celestial ecstasy.”

Ecstasy is the right word.

Already I can feel the pleasure of it coursing through my system. The beat of the music. The feel of Azmodeus’s touch. The light shining down on me.

Within only a handful of moments, I come alive.

More electric, more relaxed, more ecstatic, and just ... freer than I’ve been in weeks.

Every bit of the numbness I’ve been trying to shield myself with melts away from me.

I drop my head back, eyes closed, total and complete euphoria coming over me. I haven’t felt this way since, well ...

Since Lucifer cast the aurora borealis over the city.

I smile, the memory bringing with it a happy, joyful effervescence that I’ve been missing for what feels like a lifetime. Like hope in a bottle.

I open my eyes, only to find Azmodeus’s wide, devastating grin aimed at me.

“Dance with me,” I shout, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him out onto the floor.

The music overtakes us both, the beat of it coming alive inside my skull, each pulse in time with the sway of my hips and the wave of sweat-covered bodies pressed against me.

I lose track of all time, the rhythm and sway of the crowd eclipsing everything. It could be days, weeks even, as Azmodeus moves against me, the heat of the crowd and our collective joy erasing everything.

But I don’t care.

Not when I’m realizing how to keep the whole world from burning.

Not when I’ve finally figured out what my role in all this is supposed to be.

Somewhere during the light show the ceiling opens, and it begins to rain stardust, or glitter—I’m not sure which—until I’m giggling like a schoolgirl, Azmodeus laughing right along with me as we struggle to hold each other upright.

“I’m going to get us more drinks, lovey,” he shouts to me. His eyes lock on to the large Black man— er ... demon? Maybe? I’m not sure what some of these beings are—behind the bar as he weaves his way across the sea of dancing bodies.

I fold my arms over my head, closing my eyes as I sway, and try to catch my breath a little. The stardust is starting to wane, finally.

This isn’t so bad. This is fun, actually.

I can do this.

I can stay the course. Make Lucifer see how much this means to me.

But it isn’t until I open my eyes, my gaze snagging on the edge of the crowd, that the relaxed feeling of freefall into the abyss abandons me.

A large handsome figure looms at the edge of the dance floor, my gaze latching on to him.

He’s the only one who isn’t dancing.

I lift a brow. Where have I seen you before?

He stares straight ahead at me, his shadowed face unmoving, until someone walks past like they don’t even see him, and I freeze as his features shift.

Instead of a face, a skull leers back at me. Like those freaky masks guys wear on social media, only real.

A chill runs down my spine, an unsettled, familiar feeling. I’ve seen that face before.

Cold arms wrapped around me. Never-ending and infinite.

Death.

Suddenly, someone grabs my arm, and I jump, knocking into the drink Azmodeus just extended toward me. The glowing pink liquid of the raspberry lemon drop pours down the front of my shirt. “Fuck! I’m so sorry.”

I take the now-empty glass from Azmodeus, completely off kilter and feeling like I’m being watched, but when I blink and glance toward the edge of the crowd once more, the figure’s already gone. Like I imagined the whole thing.

Leaving me with a feeling of deathly dread.

“I ... think it’s time to go home,” I stammer.

Azmodeus and I decide to call it quits shortly after that, and the next thing I know, the cold night air is hitting me in the face as we both stumble, more than a bit drunk, and possibly still rolling, out onto the street.

I don’t see the paparazzo until the lens of his camera is practically on top of me.

“Smile, Charlotte.”

The flash goes off less than a foot from my face, nearly sending me sprawling onto the pavement, but Az catches me, his expression turning lethal.

He’s known for going toe-to-toe with them. According to Gerard, my favorite gossip on Apollyon’s legal team, apparently there’s a few different charges pending against him.

But Az’s expression ignites something inside me, and suddenly it’s me who’s launching myself toward the paparazzo, shoving my hand against his camera lens and shouting, “What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you vultures leave us alone?”

The paparazzo laughs. “If you enjoy this, you’re going to love the headline in the morning.” The constant shutter of his lens continues. More flashes. “Does Lucifer know you’re cheating on him with his brother?”

“Cheating on him?” I nearly shriek.

I blink several times, completely stunned by the accusation.

Rage wells up inside me, practically causing me to choke.

The insinuation that anything— anything —that’s gone on between me and Azmodeus tonight somehow means I’m not completely and utterly loyal to Lucifer infuriates me.

So much that I can hardly see straight.

My jaw sets, the dark thing inside me writhing.

So I went to a museum and a club with his brother without telling him. So what? He fucks off to Hell or wherever else it is he goes all the time without telling me. So Az and I flirted a bit. Who cares? Azmodeus flirts with anything and everything that moves.

Not to mention, he’s my future brother-in-law.

There’s nothing more to it than that and my pathetic bid to save humanity, except ...

Except that Az is a surprising new ally. Maybe even a friend?

But that’s it. End of story.

And I’m so sick and tired of me and everyone I’m close to being scrutinized for our every move when, meanwhile, the goddamn apocalypse is brewing yet no one seems to be noticing, that I ... I lose it.

The temptation and immediate satisfaction of showing this asshole what’s what wins out over reason, clouding my judgment and any consideration I might have once had for the long-term consequences.

I take the near-full water bottle I’d been drinking when we exited the club and chuck it him. Not caring who or what I’m aiming at.

To my shock, my aim proves true, and it clocks the paparazzo upside the head, sending him stumbling onto the pavement as I rush at him.

“Charlotte!” Az shouts at me.

But I don’t hear him. Or I don’t register what he says, at least.

All I hear, all I can feel, is the sound of my pulse thumping in my ears. My rage.

And that harsh, feral thing snarling inside me.

All those people. All those people.

My vision goes red.

My fault.

My fault, my fault, my fault, that thing inside me hisses.

“Get out of here!” I shout, suddenly finding myself standing over the paparazzo, kicking him over and over again with my heel. Anywhere I can reach.

“Charlotte!”

Az’s voice is closer now, practically on top of me, and before I can stop him, he’s locked his arms around me, hauling me up and off the now-bloodied and groaning paparazzo, like I weigh nothing. “Charlotte, get off him!”

“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 all any of 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.