The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,150

this wall, and then we’ll send them to one of the worst parks in this town, and make it all seem like nothing more than a bad joke pulled off by some drunk frat boys."

"Who also happen to be angels," Luke said, nodding to show he was impressed. "Okay, I‘m in. Just let me get these people all joined up and shielded, then you can do your thing."

"Go be a mighty angel," I teased.

He chuckled at that, but as he turned away, he flared his wings out behind him in the most impressive manner. Luke certainly knew how to put on a show, and damn did he look good doing it. The clothing he wore in the corridor seemed to be something straight out of ancient times. It definitely wasn't a robe; it didn't quite qualify as a skirt, but it was a little bit more than a loincloth. It was also white, and it looked exactly like what an angel should wear. The best part, though, was that it left his chest bare in all of its golden glory.

So when he approached the group of terrified humans, they began to relax. After all, this was an angel. He wasn't some horrible monster. He was the symbol of everything they thought was good and holy, safe and divine. And while quite a few of the faces looked like they were in a state of shock, not a single person leaned away from him the way I would have.

"Like Lady Death said," he told them, "none of you should be here. And while we aren't supposed to mess around in the affairs of the living, the pair of us have been tasked to make this right - but we need your help. Please, join hands, bow your head, and let us pray."

I almost laughed at how good he was at this, but it worked. One by one, the confused and terrified college students reached out for the hand of the person beside them. One guy looked like he wanted nothing to do with this, yet the girl beside him didn't seem to care. Instead of his hand, she grabbed his arm and held on. When he realized he basically had no choice, the guy clasped the shoulder of the person before him, completing the cluster of connection.

Then Luke bowed his head and began to recite words in his own language. I could understand them now, so I knew he was just talking gibberish, yet it sounded rather impressive. It also didn't stop him from pulling up his shield and creating a massive wall of little interlocking Luke symbols that would block the winds of the corridor.

"Do it, Sia," Luke said softly, the words in angelic.

"Then hold on," I told him in the same language.

I turned my attention to the wards. Another slap at the wall let me see the pattern again, and this time I didn't hesitate. The moment the symbol for Gabriel’s seal was visible, I grabbed it. But when I pulled, nothing happened. He’d woven his protections stronger than I'd expected. So I yanked, and still got nothing. A rush of panic hit me as I realized that the angels seemed to be learning how to work around me. Too bad for them, I didn't give up easily.

So I shoved. One hard thrust from my arm made the entire thing bow out, yet these protections were made to be elastic. Pulling wasn't working, and I wasn't strong enough to push the way I wanted to, so I had to do something else. I only had to think about it for a split second before I realized what I was doing wrong. I was trying to manipulate this like a demon, not a Muse. My power lay in creativity and destruction. I could create, but only to make change. To influence chaos, and chaos was the enemy of everything the angels were trying to do.

Instead of trying to remove this symbol, I needed to destroy the entire pattern - and that was easy enough. With one hand, I held Gabriel’s seal, and the other shoved the rest of the patterns into disarray. In my head, I thought about it like a house of cards. Each piece was stacked on the one below it, and all of them were flimsy. All I had to do was swipe at it, and the whole thing should come crumbling down. And when it did, the symbol of one of the angels I hated most