Page 95 of Endless Terrors
“I want to fuck you, Fortuna Sworn,” the devil said, his voice silken and guttural at the same time. “When are you going to realize that it’s inevitable?”
“How about never? Is never good for you?” I shot back, even as my body said something very different. Lucifer was trying to distract me, I realized once I’d put some space between us. I swiped some sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm and circled him, breathing hard. He wasn’t even winded, of course. I faced my opponent in the starting position again and added, “Since we’re here, you may as well finish your damn story.”
Lucifer’s stance was loose and casual, but there was nothing casual about the way he looked at me. We kept moving around each other. “Many of the things you face won’t have eyes to gouge, or legs to kick, my lady. You don’t know their pressure points or where their vital organs are. What will you do then?”
“Guess I’ll just start stabbing and see if I hit anything important,” I countered, trying to pay attention to how he moved, rather than the words coming out of his mouth. Everyone had their own technique and range when it came to fighting, and if I could nail down Lucifer’s, it could give me an advantage.
“You’ve been studying in the best library my world has to offer,” he remarked. Before I could respond, Lucifer’s body blurred. He appeared right in front of me and swiped his leg under mine. I reacted just in time, and used the opening to get in a hit of my own. A cut opened on Lucifer’s cheek as he continued, “These books cover every species in the city, how they communicate, what their dietary preferences are, even where you can find their nerve centers. What have you been reading, my lady?”
The question broke my concentration. My eyes met his, and I managed to block a strike. I bounded away, working to control a spike of adrenaline. He knows I’m looking for something, instinct whispered. To hide my expression, I pretended to be out of breath, bending over. A second later, I felt a slight shift in the air, and I moved just in time to avoid Lucifer’s next attack.
“The Maker created the dimensions using a construct of magic and rules,” he said suddenly, watching me spin out of reach again. “Equations that can’t be changed or broken. Balance. And what Gabriel did—guiding Persephone’s soul back to her body—caused an imbalance. That terrible thing I felt, just before her death, became the price she paid. Fear. Every time she touched someone, she knew theirs. Lived it, like it was her own. But eventually, Persephone learned how to control that.”
My brows came together. I went still. “Wait. Are you saying she was the first Nightmare?”
“I am.” He feigned a hit. I dodged it, but I was too slow, and Lucifer yanked me against him again. I felt his lips brush the soft skin of my ear as he murmured, “You’re not ready for the First City, Lady Sworn. You have more skill than the average human, but not much more. Some of the things down there will eat you alive.”
“Fuck you.” I looped my arm around Lucifer’s neck and grabbed my wrist with the other hand. Just as his hands landed on my waist, preparing to throw me, I shoved my heels against the floor and used all my body weight for momentum. The hold was meant to snap someone’s neck or get them off their feet, at the very least. But Lucifer slipped free as if my arms were a flimsy scarf, and I was the one who fell. In a single movement, he rolled back to his feet and lashed out with a kick. It connected with my skull, and for a few seconds, I was seeing stars.
“Decades went by,” Lucifer went on, ignoring how I staggered. He walked around me, and it felt like I was being stalked by a lion as I straightened. “Persephone didn’t allow her grief to prevent her from living, and she went on to have children with another. But she never forgot me, and her love didn’t fade. She befriended a Time Walker. A faerie called Nym. She was so desperate for answers—for a way back to me—that she broke his mind with her requests. She also broke the rules of the universe, and caused an imbalance by using what he saw to get here.”
This was too much to process, too much new information while my head was still pounding. Nym had known Persephone? And she’d been the one to cause so much damage to him?
The pain subsided, and my feet settled more firmly on the floor. As I faced Lucifer, I wasn’t focused on our sparring anymore. My mind raced. I had to tell Collith about Nym. I had to relieve him of the guilt I knew he felt about Nym’s broken mind, because he was Collith and he felt guilty about everything.
There were so many other questions I wanted to ask. But then Lucifer was coming at me again, his blows landing like a hammer. I was going mostly off muscle memory. A minute ticked by. Normally my lungs would’ve been burning by now, my arms aching. I forgot to think about my body’s limitations, though. It was subtle, what Lucifer was doing. He was guiding me. Correcting me. Teaching me, just like he’d promised. God, it hurt.
“But Persephone did it?” I managed when we finally broke away again. “She actually got to Hell?”
“She survived for three days.” Even now, after all this time, the memory of Persephone’s death made Lucifer’s eyes darken. Then he fixed them on me, and I watched the shadows clear. “Would you like to join me on the roof, my lady?”
I blinked. The roof? Now?
Without waiting for a response, Lucifer walked over to the table and retrieved his shirt from the chair. He pulled it on as he went over to the elevator, and I scowled when I saw that he hadn’t even broken a sweat. Still struggling to switch gears, I hurried to catch up with him. I felt like a mess compared to Lucifer’s unruffled appearance. The elevator rose and brought us to the top of Hell.
More time had passed than I’d realized. After the doors opened, I took one look up at the flickering sky, and noted the beasts flying through the dark. There were fewer of them now, which meant they were returning to their nests for a few hours. Or so Roger had explained it. The necrool, he called them. Once the winged carnivores were gone, other scavengers and predators came out, albeit the less threatening ones. That meant the demons and souls came out, too—they were what I was hoping to avoid. I’d take my chances with the necrool. Odds were, I wasn’t worth their notice.
Lucifer and I reached the edge of the roof and stood there for a moment. I was about to peer down at the street below when he spoke again.
“As she lay dying, Persephone told me what else she’d learned. Before she came to Hell, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her children without knowing how they’d fare, so Persephone turned to the Unseelie Court and made one more request to the young faerie. The Time Walker traveled far. He saw how powerful one of her descendants would become.” His eyes met mine, and his voice was full of heavy meaning. “A power that could undo entire worlds.”
“And you think he was talking about me?” I asked incredulously. But then the warnings from Gwyn and Mercy echoed in my ears, and a knot formed in my stomach. I shook my head. “Even if he was, why does it matter? Why have you been trying so hard to find me all these years?”
Lucifer leaned over and propped his elbows on the ledge. A breeze played with his hair, giving it a tousled look. His voice was soft, hardly louder than the crackle of the torches behind us. “Persephone told me about her descendant because she wanted me to stop it. To save you.”
I frowned, studying Lucifer’s profile. She’s promised to him. That’s what his witch had said to my parents. “Stopping the apocalypse is not why you wanted to find me, though,” I said.
Silence.
And there we were, right back at the big question. The one Lucifer refused to answer.
Needing space to think, I walked a short distance from the edge and started pacing. “Let’s see if I can fill in the gaps. You wanted to find me, but you didn’t know how.”
I imagined myself as Lucifer. Peering out at the world from his eyes, thinking the way he would. I believed the devil’s love for Persephone was genuine. I also believed there was another reason he’d searched for her descendent so fervently. He claimed he didn’t want a host …
I shook my head. I was getting off track. My brows furrowed as I put myself back in Lucifer’s head. If his demons couldn’t get results, and his other resources had run dry, he would’ve turned to magic outside his dimension. I already knew that Lucifer liked his witches.
“Enter Goody,” I breathed, comprehension dawning. I stopped and faced Lucifer, slowly lifting my head. It all fit now. “You heard about a seer. You didn’t know how to find me, but a vision or a prophecy would probably help you figure out where to start your search, at the very least. That’s why you were so interested in Goody, and why you went through the charade of falling in love. She was the one who started all that ‘promised to him’ bullshit, wasn’t she? By the way, what happened to her?”
