The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,149

get in the middle of it.

So how could I get them to trust me? I knew that at least half of these people didn't believe in God. For them, they probably thought they were having the worst high of their life. Wait. That was it! That one rambling thought had just given me everything I needed to make this better.

"Luke," I said, making my way over to him. "How many of these people can you," and I lowered my voice, "mind-fuck at once?"

Confused, he looked back at me. "If, and only if, you can get them all to look at me at the same time… I don't know, maybe ten. On a good day. Why?"

"I just counted twenty-three. So, that's like three groups, right?" I asked.

His eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out what I was thinking. "Yeah… Sia, why?"

"Because these people were just at a party. Everyone knows that people slip drugs into drinks at parties. Considering that this was a fraternity that doesn't have the best reputation with the women, I think we can pull this off. All we have to do is convince them that they’re high and that Delta Phi fucked with them."

Slowly, he was bobbing his head. "Okay, that makes sense. But you're forgetting one thing. We're kind of stuck."

So I did the same thing he had. I slapped my hand against the wall and watched the runes. This time, however, I actually looked at them. Each symbol and pattern meant something. Yeah, angels worked with aether differently than demons, and I had been trained by a demon, but I still looked. It didn't take much to see how this was supposed to work. It was probably one of the most basic warding systems. Definitely the most common.

The best part was that it was all held together by one little thing: Gabriel’s seal.

I tapped it, making the icon glow. "I can break this," I told Luke.

"Yeah, that's great," he said, "but you're still missing the problem." He pointed back to the crowd of people behind us. "As soon as you rip down these protections, the winds are going to come in, and that means they're going to blow away. I know you've never seen it, but trust me when I say the winds of the corridor will be more than these people can handle."

"I believe you," I assured him, "but that doesn't mean I'm ready to give up." I paused for a second as an idea began to form in my mind. "So, how big of a shield can you make? Do they have to be touching each other to get the protections from it?"

"It's easier…" he said, sounding like he didn't quite trust what I was planning.

The smile was starting to take over my face. "Then we have them join hands and sing fucking Kumbaya. I don't really care. I already told them that they were taken by mistake and that Gabriel and his friends were fallen angels. Just use that? All I need is for you to keep them from blowing away long enough for us to get out of here and push them back to Earth."

"Push them where?" Luke demanded. "Sia, you may be the strongest thing I've ever seen in my entire life, but you can't just drop them in the middle of civilization and think this is going to work. That's going to raise a whole lot of questions, if not make everything harder. Not to mention that if we expose religion for the lie that it really is, then the angels have no more limitations on what they can do to us." He grabbed my arm and leaned into my face. "Right now, religion is their tool. It makes their lives easier, but it also limits them. If we prove religion is a lie, then all bets are off."

"I know," I promised him. "So the trick is to drop them somewhere that isn't in the middle of civilization. Believe it or not, Luke, those places exist. This time of night, they’re even easier to find. Gabriel screwed up bad when he chose my town. I may not know a lot about what goes on around here, but I'm a woman. I know the places that are not safe to walk alone at night. The places where you're vulnerable. The places where no one wants to go after dark." I tilted my head back towards the group of people. "So you keep them from blowing away, I'll tear down