“The witches grow warier. They are concealing their magic.” Ashe kept his thoughts carefully blank. Indolex’s latest nasty trick was the ability to read surface thoughts.
“You should have anticipated that.” Indolex’s toe nudged the top of his head.
Keeping his eyes on the concrete floor, Ashe raised his torso. “Yes, I should have.”
“Hmm.” Indolex moved closer still, the fabric of his dark blue robe brushing Ashe’s nose. He smelled of the sickly-sweet bouquet of death and decay. “I am disappointed, Ashe.”
Ashe braced himself. A disappointed Indolex meant his death. He’d witnessed hundreds of demons end this way. The futility of the last few months threatened to choke him. All he had done, risked, lost, all his desperate actions and frantic maneuverings would count for nothing. He had given up everything, the very core of his being, and now it didn’t count. “I understand, Master.”
This was how he ended. He could mouth off in one final act of defiance, but that would be futile, and he wouldn’t be the one who paid the price. Even at the moment of his annihilation, Indolex owned him. “I know you comprehend the price for failing me.” Indolex’s voice scraped like metal over stone.
Even knowing it was futile, Ashe had to try. “Will you spare them?”
“You know better than that.” Indolex chuckled. “You do not beg for your life?”
“No, master. I accept the consequence of my failure.”
“Ashe.” Indolex tangled long, skeletal fingers in his hair, scraping his scalp. “You are making assumptions.” His grip tightened in Ashe’s hair, tugging the roots painfully. “Always so clever. Always thinking, scheming, planning and making assumptions. Ashe of the agile brain.”
Ashe had always thought Lucifer would be the one to end him. No, he had hoped it would be Lucifer. He owed Lucifer that much for his betrayal, and whatever punishment Lucifer could dole out would pale in comparison to Indolex’s.
“You do not ask what assumption you have made.” Indolex released his hair.
“Master?” Ashe looked up into the blazing black holes of Indolex’s eyes.
“Ask me.”
To the end, they played this Indolex’s way. “What assumption have I made?”
“You have assumed I have no more use for you.”
Shock ricocheted through Ashe. His thoughts hadn’t gotten beyond knowing what the consequences of his failure had been.
“I have a more important task for you.” Indolex turned and walked to his stone throne. The thing was so fucking ostentatious and straight out of a cheap horror movie. Ashe buried the thought deep. Then it hit him that he might not die today. Relief made him lightheaded. Not for himself. There was only one way this ended for him—obliteration, wiped from creation as if he’d never existed. If Indolex didn’t end him, Lucifer would. “You want me to recover the witch child?”
“No,” Indolex bellowed. “Still your mind, demon. Your thoughts are not welcome. You have only to obey.”
Ashe lowered his gaze. More time. He’d bought them more time.
“The final of the three has entered the earth plane.” Indolex smiled, revealing his rows and rows of serrated teeth. “Get her for me.”
Bianca couldn’t remember how she got out of that awful place, or even when she’d stopped screaming, but she felt numb as Lucifer drove.
“Raphael will arrange for them to be taken to their next of kin,” Lucifer said, glancing at her. “It’s not much, but at least they will know what happened and get some closure.”
Those witches—some of them hers—had been drained of their magic, and then their lives. Bianca couldn’t imagine the agony they must have suffered. Followed by the indignity of being left to rot in a large, metal room. She should have noticed what was happening sooner. Gone to the police. Gone to Shade. She should have done any of a number of things other than the nothing she’d fooled herself into calling caution. Now her coven sisters were dead. Leona’s crystal glowed in her hand. Bianca hadn’t been able to put it in her bag. As long as that crystal glowed, Leona was alive. “We need to find her.”
“Yes,” Lucifer said. “I was thinking we should contact your coven and see if they can strengthen the tracking spell.”
Thank God one of them was still thinking. She needed to think, not sit and wallow in self-pity. Leona and her children needed her to be smart and act quickly. “The grimoire will have something.”
Lucifer took her phone out of the cup holder. “Call them.”
She tried Patty first, but the call went to voicemail. Then she tried Lynn, and finally Christen. “Nobody is answering.”
Lucifer frowned, slowing down as they entered a quiet residential street. Two boys were playing street hockey like they were out of some nostalgic nineteen forties moment.
Bianca took notice of her surroundings for the first time. “Where are we?”
“Some or other small town.” He shrugged. “We need to stop for petrol and get you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
One of the boys shot the puck into the net.
“You will eat,” Lucifer said. “Starving yourself will do those dead witches no good.”
His insensitivity hit her like a kick in the solar plexus. “Fuck you.” Her heart sped, and blood pounded in her head. How dare he speak to her like that. How dare he be so callous. He needed to apologize for speaking about her people like they didn’t matter.
“Fuck,” Lucifer whispered but he was looking at the boys.
They were arguing, chest to chest, both red in the face.
“Rage demon,” Lucifer said and looked at her. “Ah!” His gaze narrowed on hers. “I see you can feel it.”
On the road, the argument had escalated to shoving.
It was disconcerting to see two young boys going at each other like bar toughs.
Bianca’s anger thrummed beneath her skin, and she clenched her fists.
One boy threw a punch.
“Is nobody going to stop them?” Bianca examined the houses for a concerned parent. The doors remained shut.
Bianca flung open her car door.
Lucifer came after her. “Bianca.”
The boy who’d been punched scrabbled for his hockey stick and swung.
“No.” Bianca broke into a run. “Stop.”
At the rate their fight was escalating, someone was going to get seriously hurt.
The door to the house on her left opened, and a woman charged for the boys. “Hit him. Riley,” she screamed. “Pick up your stick and hit him back.”
