Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,2

from Heaven and the death of the male she’d loved.

But Bael’s promise was taking too long.

Snarling, she twisted out of his grip and nearly collided with one of Bael’s Ramreel bodyguards. The odiferous, ram-headed beast stomped his hoof in irritation, but she ignored him.

It was a little harder to ignore his barnyard stench.

“Maybe if you allowed me to do what I’m good at,” she snapped, “you’d get better results and I’d be closer to getting justice.”

“I don’t give a hellrat’s ass what you’re good at.” A three-eyed raven landed on the railing, and Bael reached out to stroke his pet’s shimmering feathers. “What do I need an expert in demonic history for? I lived it. You learned it from books written by angels.”

She’d explained this to him a million times, so hey, what was one more? “At the Academy of Angels I also studied the various political factions in Sheoul,” she reminded him. “Later, I was one of the intelligence department’s top analysts. It’s why I came to you after I fell. I can help you build alliances with other warlords as we move toward a confrontation with Heaven. I know who supports Revenant and who plots a coup against him to seat themselves or to re-seat Satan—”

Pain went off like a bomb in her head, a sudden crack of agony that made her empathize with broken eggs. But instead of yolk, warm, sticky blood oozed from her nose and ears.

Bael’s voice scrambled her brain inside her shattered skull. “You do not speak of such things in the open, stupid whore!”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” she rasped, dropping to her knees as the misery wrapped around her entire body and burrowed deep into her bones. She hated submitting to him, hated being so weak and vulnerable, but she’d lived like that in Heaven too. She’d had a lot of practice. “I—I’ll do better.”

“Yes,” he growled, “you will.”

He grasped the top of her head and forced her to look up at him as he laughed, his fangs visibly throbbing as he got off on her pain.

And this, she knew all too well, was merely the foreplay.

Chapter Two

Cipher’s nightmares had teeth.

Lots of them. Hell, even the dreams in which he was living in a Heavenly palace of crystal featured gaping maws lined with rows of razor sharp fangs. The only difference was that in those dreams, the teeth were beautiful instead of dripping with saliva, blood, and bits of flesh.

And the only thing worse than the nightmares was waking up.

Cipher groaned as he came to, naked except for the threadbare blanket wrapped around him on the glazed-ice floor of the cell he’d called home for...how long now? Six months? Seven? A hundred?

Fuck.

But not to be a total whiner, he did get breaks from the cell. Sometimes he got to visit the Isle of Torture, which was exactly what it sounded like. Lord Bael, the fallen angel who ruled the region, had constructed an island in the middle of a lava river and dedicated it to the art of pain. The question, every time Cipher was put in chains and led from Bael’s glacial palace’s dungeon to the scorched island, was whether he’d be a participant or a spectator.

Cipher generally preferred being a spectator. But every once in a while Bael would drop him into the arena and force him to fight for his life, and that...that gave him a fucking rush. Who wouldn’t love a chance to brush up on fighting skills and let off some steam? Not to mention the fact that his change in status from an Unfallen angel into a True Fallen angel had given him an appetite for dishing out pain to his enemies.

Not that, as both a Heavenly and an Unfallen angel, he hadn’t enjoyed serving up some well-deserved death. But now he enjoyed serving his opponents their own innards before they died.

So yeah, the arena gave him a brief taste of pleasure in this realm of perpetual misery. But even during those precious moments of ecstasy, when his opponent grunted in pain or bled from a wound, two voices whispered in his mind.

The first belonged to his buddy Hawkyn, laden with disappointment as he uttered the words Cipher imagined Hawk would say if he knew how much evil was seeping into Cipher’s body with every new day spent in Sheoul.

This isn’t you. You’re decent. Honorable. An idiot, yes, but an honorable one. Fight it, Ciph. Don’t give in to evil. You know what it did to Satan.