fighting from the hallway. Shit, shit, shit. He’d yelled to someone earlier. He had backup.
My gaze fell on Naamah, still lying there with the dagger in her chest. I rushed to her, grabbed the handle, and yanked the blade out. That should speed up the healing, shouldn’t it? And when she woke, she’d be able to fight, right? Right?
Just then another demon ran into the room, sword raised. All the blood drained from my head, making me dizzy. Too soon. Naamah was still out. I hadn’t even raised the dagger yet when the demon stood over me, the tip of his sword under my chin.
No way could I repeat my earlier move now, not with me on my knees and him standing. I swallowed.
A rush of air was the only warning. The demon jerked, his chest bowed outward, and then the bloody tip of a sword emerged from inside him. Muscles loosening, he fell to his knees, then slumped to the side, the sword still embedded, the handle sticking out his back.
Behind him stood a dark-haired female demon in the black-and-gold livery of Lucifer’s guards, blood-streaked and half-shredded, a second sword in her hand. Her eyes took in the scene.
A demon with a dagger in his chest. Naamah on her back, the front of her dress bloodstained. Me, on my knees over her, a blade clutched in my hands.
My eyes widened. I dropped the dagger and pulled my hands up in the universal pose of surrender. “It wasn’t me!”
The guard’s brown eyes narrowed.
“Okay,” I said frantically, “I did him. But not her!” I jerked my head toward Naamah. “We were just talking. Then this guy ran in and knifed her. He came for me too, and I stuck him with my dagger. That’s all, I swear!”
“How did you get in here?”
“I was lost and there were these rats and I had to run, but there was no other way, so I used a sigil, it’s the only sigil I know, from Azazel, I had no idea where it would lead me, but then it opened up here and—”
“Stop,” the guard barked. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she added in a murmur, “Hell’s bells.”
Apparently dismissing me for the moment, she stalked past me to the first demon—still down for the count—hauled him up by the throat, and slashed off his legs with two horribly efficient strokes of her sword.
I winced and crawled backward.
The guard proceeded to chop off the demon’s arms at the shoulder as well, then dropped him unceremoniously. All through the butchery, the demon hadn’t moved, still unconscious. Swinging the sword in her hand, the guard strode to the second demon—also still knocked out—and yanked him up by the throat too.
I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to keep the bile from rising up. Averting my eyes didn’t help much. The sounds of her cutting off the limbs of the demon painted a vivid enough picture in my mind, given I’d just witnessed what it looked like.
Naamah stirred. Gasping, she rolled over and into a crouch. Her eyes roved over the bloodbath in the room, flicked from me to the guard.
“My lady,” the guard said with a bow. “Please excuse the mess. Someone will come by shortly to clean up. I suggest you retreat to your bedroom.”
Naamah frowned at the floor. “That was my favorite rug.”
“I apologize, my lady. It couldn’t be helped. I’ll be sure to ask His Grace to replace it.”
“Don’t bother.” With a disdainful sniff, Naamah rose and strode into the adjacent room.
The guard loosed a sigh and went to lug both demons out into the hallway just as another guard came running. They conversed in hushed whispers for a moment. When the female guard returned, she pointed her sword at me.
“You. Come with me.”
Oh, boy.
The guard easily hauled the two dismembered demons all the way through the palace and into the throne room by the cuffs of their shirts, intermittently barking at me to keep up. At some point the delinquents woke and began screaming, which the guard solved by re-stabbing them each to render them unconscious again.
I might have had a girl crush on her.
The throne room bustled with activity, though different from the exuberant and erotic revelry from earlier. The crowd was gone, instead hordes of lower-level demons like the merihem were scrubbing floors, pillars, and walls, and I blinked in bafflement at the few who were currently…hand-vacuuming tapestries, trying hard to remove the pink glitter that stuck to everything like