Page 79 of Endless Terrors
“I need to get out of this tower. You can’t just keep me here the entire time. What kind of ‘visit’ is that?” I demanded, still moving. “I’ll tell you. It’s actually called kidnapping.”
Lucifer stood with his hands behind his back. He watched me with a calm expression. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Well, let’s see. Maybe I’m a little tense because I’m in Hell,” I snapped, tossing a glare at him. I kept pacing.
Lucifer didn’t react to the hard edge of desperation in my voice. He stayed silent while I did a few more laps. “Would you finally like to see my world, Lady Sworn?”
I’d reached the other side of the roof, and it took a moment for his words to float over to me. My head jerked up, and when I realized he’d extended his wings, I slowed. Flying together would require him to touch me. The thought only made my agitation worse. We hadn’t even kissed and I ached for him like we’d been doing this dance for years.
I was on the verge of saying no when another thought occurred to me—going with Lucifer would be a chance to ask more questions. To search for rain.
Swallowing the denial that had been rising to my lips, I managed to meet Lucifer’s gaze without flinching. Looking at him sucked me in, as it always did. I fought the magnetic pull and said, “Okay. Sure.”
He came toward me. He didn’t move quickly, but I still wasn’t ready when he bent and picked me up, one of his arms looping beneath my knees while the other supported my back. I wrapped my arms around his neck instinctively, bracing myself as he lifted into the frigid night. Air rushed past us, and I forced myself to let go of Lucifer once we were off the ground. I didn’t like how my body reacted to his proximity, his smell. It was the sandalwood scent I remembered from my dream.
I deliberately shifted my focus, and Lucifer’s wings were the obvious choice. The way the feathers moved was mesmerizing, like some strange, metal kaleidoscope. I followed the length of his wingspan, marveling at how huge it was, and that was when I noticed how small the tower had become. Lucifer took us up, and up, and up. Within a minute, we were so high that my nerves got the better of me, and I grabbed hold of his broad shoulders. I knew if I looked at him, he’d be watching me with a soft smile. I was determined not to give in to the urge. My eyes went up to those otherworldly flashes, which were higher than I’d thought. If we’d been in my world, only an airplane would have been able to reach them.
Lucifer took me into the heart of the storm.
At first, I flinched at every burst, convinced we were about to get fried and then plummet to the ground. I also found the silence disconcerting—there were no claps of thunder or echoing rumbles. It was just dim and quiet, almost like a room with the curtains drawn. Then the sky brightened again, and in those brief moments, I caught glimpses of the city below. The roiling clouds. The tip of Lucifer’s strange, beautiful wing.
“They’re completely harmless,” he told me, his eyes glittering with amusement. “We call them light storms.”
“Very creative.” I’d meant my response to be biting, but the effect was somewhat ruined by a nervous waver that slipped in. I still hadn’t let go of Lucifer’s shoulders. He didn’t point it out, and I pretended not to notice.
He was so much warmer than I’d thought he would be.
We soared through the flashes of red lightning that had seemed so eerie and ominous from a distance. Now I saw a strange sort of beauty in them. The wings Lucifer had forged for himself glinted and reflected the storm happening all around us, inside us. Or inside me, at least. I couldn’t pretend to feel nothing as he carried me through his world, my shoulder resting against his hard, broad chest as if I knew him. Trusted him.
Why did it feel, more and more each day, like I did? Like there was a piece of my soul that recognized him, just as it had recognized Collith in Creiddylad’s tomb?
I reminded myself that this was what the devil did—he was a master of manipulation. He’d had millennia to perfect the arts of deceit and seduction. The thought made a knot form in my stomach.
Lucifer glanced down at me. After a few seconds, the line along the right corner of his mouth deepened into a questioning smile. I didn’t answer, or even react, but my gaze lingered on him for another moment before I looked away, refocusing on the landscape far below. Jagged, black mountains clawed at the sky, and billowing columns of orange smoke burst from the cracked ground.
It struck me anew that Hell wasn’t what I’d always imagined it to be. The bible was hardly an accurate resource, but Collith’s fragmented memories had depicted a dark place. When I’d found out I’d be coming here, I had prepared myself for fire everywhere, the air full of screams, pain and blood in each encounter. And yet … I’d encountered kindness in this place. There were cities and histories, just like in my world. There was even beauty.
That didn’t mean Hell was all sunshine and rainbows, though.
Dark growths had appeared along the landscape below. My mind kept wanting to call them trees, but the name wasn’t accurate. They looked more like bone than anything living. Black bones, sticking up out of the ground, with craters in the center of a few. There was something ominous about this place, more than anywhere else I’d been so far. I held my hair back to peer down more intently. “What are those? Volcanos?” I asked.
Lucifer didn’t take his focus off the horizon. Without looking at me he said, “That is where Abaddon resides. He has been asleep for several centuries. It wouldn’t be good for my world if he ever awoke, not as he is now.”
“Why?”
Lucifer paused, and I felt my eyebrows go up in surprise. Since we’d met, he had made a point of answering all my questions. This was the first time he’d faltered in his efforts at transparency. I watched his expression closely, intrigued by his hesitation. His fingers flexed on my knee.
“As Fallen have evolved in your world, so they have evolved in mine,” the devil said vaguely. He turned his face away.
I wanted to ask what Abaddon had become, but there was a distance in Lucifer’s voice. I thought about pressing him. What did I care about his feelings, or his opinion of me? Something held my tongue, though. We tilted in the air, and Lucifer began the journey back to the First City. Neither of us spoke again.
Even after we landed, the Dark Prince didn’t say much. Once he’d set me back on my feet, Lucifer bowed and left the roof, his long strides urgent and distracted. He went down the stairs, and his golden head vanished through the archway. I watched him go, frowning.
It was late. There was no way to know the time, not up here, but I could feel sleep tugging at me. The agitation that had sent me up here in the first place was gone, leaving a hollow feeling in its wake. Tomorrow. I’d continue my search tomorrow. I waved wearily at the guards—the ones I could see, anyway—and followed Lucifer down.
I didn’t encounter anyone during the walk back. I thought I caught sight of Narfu’s tail once, but as usual, he was too fast for me to track. Even security stayed out of sight. I reached my room without talking to another soul, and when I shut the door, an unexpected pang of loneliness hit me.
I tried to distract myself by changing. Washing my face. Brushing my teeth. When I left the bathroom and moved toward the bed, my gaze flicked to the windows. I found myself wondering if Lucifer was restless, too.
