Cipher (Demonica Underworld #8) - Larissa Ione Page 0,39
a spell?” She grabbed his arm to get his attention, but he couldn’t look away. “What kind of spell?”
“I don’t know.” It was fascinating how the symbols unique to demonic computer language vibrated while the others were static. “I’m not even sure how I know it’s a spell. Or maybe a curse.” He remembered a theory he’d hashed out with Hawkyn, and he finally looked down at her. “You know, some people believe that everything in the universe is really made up of mathematical code, and if you could just see and access it, you could control it. Reprogram it. Delete it.”
“That’s insane.” She frowned, appearing to rethink that. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I didn’t,” he admitted. “But I also didn’t believe that active spells had source code, either.” This was so crazy. Was it his unique fallen angel ability? If so, it was majorly awesome.
“Well, what’s the spell you’re seeing?” Lyre moved toward a book shelf. “Maybe one of the books is enchanted.”
He glanced over at the books, and sure enough, tiny rows of code surrounded a leather-bound tome lying on its side. But that wasn’t related to the millions of lines of programming language floating in the room.
“Dammit, I need access to the internet. If I can just plug some of this into the translator I stored in my cloud—” He sucked in a harsh breath, his mind reeling at the sudden clarity. “It’s the spell that blocks internet access.”
Lyre wheeled around, and he cursed his stupidity at blurting it out. He kept forgetting she was the enemy.
She doesn’t feel like the enemy.
No, she didn’t. But Flail hadn’t felt like an enemy either...until it was too late.
“You’re kidding,” she said, and just as he was about to say that yes, he was full of shit, she added, “Can you break it?”
Well, that was unexpected. “Are you asking me to?”
“Yes, of course. You can put it back, right? Cipher, this is your gift.” Her excitement made him wonder what hers was. “You need to practice with it.”
“So Bael can force me to use it? Yeah, great.”
She hissed and grabbed his arm. “Bael can never know about this. Never tell anyone about your gifts. Especially not someone like Bael.”
“You’re not going to tell him?” He looked at her sideways. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you to report every one of my abilities to him.”
“He did,” she admitted. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Oh, yes it would. Cipher swore it.
“You don’t like your boss much, do you?” As he waited for her answer, he concentrated on a few individual characters in the code, using his thoughts in an attempt to rearrange them.
Nothing. Maybe the spell was voice activated.
Lyre plopped down on a fur-lined ice bench. “I hate him.”
They could start a club. “Then why are you working for him?” He studied the code and considered another tack. “And what’s the Sheoulic word for delete?”
“Altun. And I’m working for him because I want revenge on the people who got me expelled from Heaven.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “But why a deranged lunatic like Bael? Why not a regular lunatic like Revenant?”
“Because the people I want revenge on are in Heaven, and Heaven backs Revenant.”
He looked over at her as she kicked her slender legs up on the bench. Legs he’d been between just an hour ago.
Fucking Flail.
“They don’t back him,” he said. “They just prefer him over Satan.”
She gave a dismissive snort. “Same thing.”
No, it wasn’t. Heaven needed allies like Revenant, but from what he’d heard, the Powers That Be didn’t interfere with his rule. If Revenant wanted to help someone get revenge on an angel, Heaven might be miffed, but ultimately, they needed him.
Okay, maybe they backed him.
Not wanting to admit she was right, he focused again on the code, choosing a random ampersand as his victim. “Altun!”
The code just laughed at him. Well, not literally, but it felt that way.
Sighing, he turned back to Lyre. “So what happens after you get your revenge?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you want to do with your life? Spend it helping Bael torment Azagoth? Spend it preparing for Armageddon?”
She drew her knees up to her chest, her expression troubled. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“So you shackled yourself for all eternity to Bael and his empire of evil for the sole purpose of getting revenge and without any thought about what comes after? Seems a little shortsighted.”
She glared, the silver in her eyes glinting like daggers. “Well,