Page 78 of Endless Terrors
Sometimes, mercy wasn’t for someone else’s sake. It was for your own. Collith knew that, too. Every time he’d intervened, and I’d thought he was judging that dark part of me, he was really just trying to protect me.
Damn it, I thought. Another sigh filled my throat. I was about to step back when the demon opened its eyes.
And that was when I finally recognized it.
It couldn’t hide its eyes that night, I realized, watching the creature focus on my face. They may have looked like Ian O’Connell’s, but it had been this thing behind them. This thing’s soul, its essence. Evaluating me. Watching me. Leering at me.
How charming. You thought I would want your soul. That’s not how it works, sweetheart. No, I take something that you value.
My hands curled into fists.
I wasn’t going to kill it, I told myself silently. I wouldn’t go that far. But … I didn’t see anything wrong with punishing it a little. Making this monster feel even a fraction of the pain it had made me feel, and the countless other victims that it had destroyed with its deals.
I wouldn’t use a knife to draw out its screams, I decided.
For the first time since arriving in Hell, I reached for the other part of myself. I closed my eyes and summoned the darkness.
Nothing answered.
I frowned and reached even deeper. Focused harder. It was just … empty. The place inside me, that vital, awful, wonderful, beautiful place where euphoria and energy lived, was like a barren desert or a forgotten attic.
My powers were gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Days passed.
I spent most of my time in Lucifer’s library, trying to make sense of the texts. Some of them were in Enochian, but most were written in languages I’d never seen before. There were also books filled with Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese, but I couldn’t exactly read those, either. I was looking for any references to rain, or any images of water falling from the sky.
And if I happened to come across a super-helpful passage about how to kill the devil, well, bully for me.
Lucifer, it turned out, was a gracious host. He extended breakfast and dinner invitations. His staff cleaned and restocked my room daily. When he wasn’t in a meeting or on a call, he offered to play games or go for a walk. I rebuffed most of his efforts. I acted like I was just running out the clock. I pretended to be bored, or annoyed, or outright hostile. But all the while, hour after hour, I couldn’t escape the terror. It had started as a seed, and every time I thought about the reality of my situation, it grew.
I was in Hell without any way out, and I was powerless.
How would it affect my Court, being connected to me, lending strength to me, for an indefinite amount of time? Would my body eventually weaken and deteriorate, like Damon’s? What if it killed my Court members instead?
I had no answers, no solutions, and no one to ask. And that was why I’d basically moved into the library.
One morning, I leaned over my usual table, brows furrowed in concentration. An atlas rested in front of me. Much like everything else here, it was vastly different from what I knew. I couldn’t figure out what the lines were supposed to represent—borders? coastlines? rivers?—and the writing was in one of the languages I’d never seen before. From the reading I’d done these past few days, I had begun to suspect there were as many species of demon as there were Fallen, and they’d created their own dialects.
But I didn’t care about demons or how they spent their eternity here. I’d been staring at this atlas in hopes of learning more about Hell’s regions. Lucifer couldn’t be trusted, and he might have lied about the rain. It was a big world with a lot of resources. There had to be different biomes, right?
I became rough in my desperation, and I turned the page so hard it made a snapping sound. Thankfully, the paper was thick and coarse, and it didn’t tear. I let out a breath of relief before I refocused, a tide of hope rising inside me. It sank right back down when I saw the page.
This map was even more confusing than the last one.
A blaze of frustration roared through me. Suddenly I wanted to push the table over and stomp on the atlas until it ripped and broke apart. I wrapped my fingers around the table’s edge, battling myself. Trying to breathe through the fear that my anger was really masking. I wanted to go home. I wanted to run through the woods and hear the crunch and crackle of snow and leaves. In another burst of desperation, I decided to do the next best thing.
I went up to the roof.
I was so distracted that I barely noticed the mazzikin. They nipped and batted at my ankles, but I just rushed into the center of the open space. I stood there for a few seconds, breathing. But the fresh air didn’t help as I’d hoped. It felt like a nuclear war was brewing in my head. Unable to remain still anymore, I began to pace the length of the rooftop, or what I had mentally started calling Lucifer’s landing pad.
It only took him a few minutes to show up.
I heard Lucifer murmur something to Dagan. One by one, all the guards went down the stairs. Even guards I hadn’t been aware were there, I noted with annoyance. I’d have to work on that. Their shoes made soft sounds against the stone, and all the while, my relentless pattern continued. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Once Lucifer and I were completely alone, the words spilled out of me.
