But what would make Katrina leave? What would steal her from sleep?
Visions of that fucker who showed up in the gym at Lakewood Prep flash before my eyes. Akor breaking every bone in that bastard’s body with pain magic wasn’t enough of a punishment. Especially not when we’d had to hustle Zolroth out of there so that he wouldn’t bleed out.
We hadn’t bothered to skin the angel, hadn’t stopped to take him prisoner. We’d been more concerned about our own murder. I hadn’t done more than stomp his face for good measure as we’d hurried Katrina and Zolroth out, on high alert for any other attackers.
Had that been a mistake?
Had the fucker not taken the hint and come back?
The idea that that asshole might have found my girl makes a growl rip from my throat.
We should have chained the bastard and dragged him through the realms, right to Hell. We should have put him in the killing pit, the deep canyon in the clouds that’s the color of sunset. The beautiful place is home to the worst atrocities of all…because Lucillania doesn’t believe in tempering impulses.
Those fuckers are given every weapon imaginable and allowed to go at one another again and again for as long as their soul resides in Hell.
I occasionally visit in order to get food for thought for my own magic, because those assholes can be creative bastards.
But that’s irrelevant right now. Everything’s irrelevant, other than ensuring that Katrina is safe.
I growl, irritated, sending a bolt of orange lightning at the snarling shitheads beneath me as my black wings explode from my back and unfurl, shooting me up into the sky. When I’m high enough, I let my hand morph into a claw, and then I rip through the veil that separates the realms, flying from the divine realm right into the human one.
The night sky on Earth blasts me with autumnal cold, one of the few obnoxious things about the human realm. The seasons never get this bitter in Hell. Or maybe all the random lightning fires there keep me from noticing.
The stars gleam merrily overhead, and the cars dance below me, oblivious to my panic as I catch a ride on a wind belt and coast above the town, eyes glued to the white building in the distance that houses my love, the Center of my existence. Why the universe chose to give my murder a human woman, I don’t know, but I do know Lucillania would laugh at the chaos it’s causing. She always loves when the universe throws out curveballs. It sharpens the point she tried to make with God before he cast her out—order always descends into chaos. Chaos is stronger than order, emotion stronger than logic.
She’s right.
Because ever since I met Katrina, I’ve become stupid and illogical. When I stumbled across her during her dreamwalking six months ago, logic dictated that I should have struck hard and fast. But I waited, fascinated by the sweet human girl who’d somehow met me on my own turf.
It’s not often that a nightmare demon sees someone lucid and aware. Typically, the sleeping mind is so malleable that I can play with it however I like. I can create monsters out of shadows and wave my hands to create glowing red eyes. With a flick of my wrist, I can fill a room full of busty women in short dresses that tempt… My kind are a key ingredient to Hell’s inner workings.
We allow people to experience their deepest, darkest desires each night, until the need to live them out becomes unstoppable.
So far, I’ve tempted two hundred forty-two thousand eight hundred and seventy-one souls into Hell.
But Katrina’s mind didn’t even bother with that dreaming bullshit. Six months ago, during a brief break I took in God’s garden to chill out between nightmares—Heaven’s far less crowded than Hell, and no one there dares to trudge through God’s precious gardens—I stumbled onto Katrina.
At first, I was completely shocked to see a human dreaming about the garden. That, in and of itself, is unheard of. But a second later, she turned and I saw her face, and my heart twisted in my chest.
I knew, right then and there, that she was our Center.
I knew it was my duty to kill her.
But then I heard her giggle, when a little tuft of cumulus cloud was blown off the strand it was growing on and swept over her cheek, tickling her.