Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,27

it off with his tongue. Too bad she was playing for the wrong team.

You’re playing for the same team now.

No, he wasn’t. He might be a fallen angel, but not by choice. And, until evil took him over completely, he wasn’t in league with them yet. And he’d never play for Bael the Seriously Unstable. Right now he had no choice, but once he figured out these new powers, he was going to get the fuck out of here.

“You can let me up anytime now,” Lyre said softly. “Preferably before one of your new powers incinerates or melts me.”

“Right.” He jumped up and offered her a hand.

“Thanks, but no.” Eyeing his hand like it was a viper, she pushed to her feet and backed away from him. “I’m just going to watch from...over there.” She pointed to a bluff in the distance. The far distance.

It was probably for the best. With little to lose, he was going to test his limits and push his boundaries.

And boundaries? Well, those were something he’d never believed in, and for once, that little personality flaw was going to work for him instead of against him.

Chapter Eleven

Lyre watched Cipher try to get his powers and wings under control for just over twenty-four human hours.

It hadn’t gone well. His wings, grotesquely veined with serrated claws at the tips, seemed to have minds of their own. His fallen angel gifts were powerful but unpredictable, like natural disasters spawned by a child’s imagination.

Finally, after he exploded a tree with a superheated stream of blue light and nearly fried himself with the blowback, she called down to him.

“You hungry?” she yelled. “Because I could eat.”

He let out a frustrated shout accompanied by a stomp of his foot, and a crack appeared in the ground under the sole of his boot. A deafening boom and a slow rumble started up, and within seconds the crack lengthened and began to widen as the walls collapsed and chunks of earth tumbled into the fissure.

That couldn’t be good.

“Run!” she shouted.

He sprinted toward her, away from the growing gap. And then, suddenly, he spun around and ran toward it.

“Cipher! No!” What the fuck was he doing?

She extended her wings, ready to go after him as he leaped across the fissure. He wasn’t going to make it to the other side of the sheer cliff face. Not if his wings wouldn’t work—

His great wings flapped, lifting him easily skyward. He banked and soared in a glorious, elegant arc. A shout of pure joy rang out as he flew toward her, reminding her of the excitement she’d felt the first time she’d tried out her fallen angel wings. Hers had taken a year to grow, but it had taken only minutes to get them working. Cipher had to be thrilled to finally have his under control.

Folding her own black leather wings against her shoulders, she watched him come in for a landing, but as he did, one wing went rogue, freezing in a closed position. He clipped a tree and went into an unrecoverable spin before hitting the ground and tumbling to a stop next to her.

She coughed at the resulting cloud of dust. “That was graceful.”

He eyed her from where he lay sprawled in the dirt. “Tell me you got that on video.”

She didn’t want to be charmed, but she laughed anyway. Humor was something she missed since entering Sheoul. No one had a sense of humor here. And those who did seemed to have found it puddled on the floor of a torture chamber.

“No such luck,” she said.

“S’okay. But I’ll bet it would have gone viral.” Wincing, he shoved to his feet and tried to push his left wing into the retraction position. “I don’t get it. I can’t control these things. It’s like they’re fighting me. They don’t feel right.”

They didn’t look right, either. Marred by what seemed to be scars and ragged edges, they weren’t like any newbie wings she’d ever seen.

“Hmm. Maybe they were damaged by the restraints.” She moved around behind him, silently admiring his broad, muscular back. It would look even better with scratch marks from her fingernails after a long, sweaty round of sex.

She blinked, surprised by her runaway thought. Yes, she’d been prepared to get down and dirty with him in his cell, but that had been nothing but a way to get the list of names from him. A means to an end.

Mostly. It wouldn’t have been a hardship, anyway.

But things were different now. She didn’t