The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,80

Someone jumped, someone else ran, and the area in front of the bar became chaos. Not caring about any of it, I charged into the crowd, determined to make sure that nothing happened to my girl. This was my watch, and I was going to keep her safe.

The second hit pushed one of the assholes backwards. He slammed into Sia. She lurched forward a step, right onto the puddle of spilled drinks. I was ten feet away, still too far to even touch her, but I saw it happening. She slipped. The glasses she was holding were dropped as she instinctively reached out for something to break her fall, but when she thrust her other foot out for balance, there was nothing stable beneath it.

Her hands spread out, her eyes went wide, and I could see she was going down. There were too many people around, all of them getting in my way so I couldn’t reach her, and the only thing I could think about was how easy it would be for them to step on her - or worse. Then it didn't matter.

Her head slammed against a table, and I heard it. The snap was the type of sound that cut through the screaming and yelling all around us, piercing straight to my bones. Immediately, her eyes went blank, rolling up in her head. Sia’s body hit the ground, completely unconscious, and I was only a second too late, sliding to the floor beside her.

I grabbed her shoulders to move her out of the way, but something was seriously wrong. Her neck wasn't supposed to bend that way. I couldn't move her like this. Frantically, I looked around for help, but the fight had only gotten worse.

All around us, people screamed, and others cheered the men on, but they didn't notice us. There was no one to help keep people from stepping on her, so I had to do this here. I shoved one hand beneath her shirt and against her chest, finding her seal so easily, and I pushed aether into her.

"Sia?" I begged. "Come on, pumpkin. Wake up."

Nothing was happening. It was as if I was pushing aether into a corpse! I could feel it stop just at her seal, but this had nothing to do with her wards. I had access to those! She didn't stir, and her eyes were not focused at all. Beneath my hand, I could feel nothing. No pulse. No rising as she pulled in an unconscious breath. No signs of life at all.

"Sia!" I snarled, but when I shook her, I couldn’t stop looking at the way her head moved.

It was all wrong. Too many times, I'd seen a broken neck. If it was snapped hard enough, there would be no way for her lungs to move or her heart to beat. For a human, it was fatal - yet our Muse should not die in a stupid fucking bar fight! No. I would not let this happen. I couldn't! What would we do without her?

What would I do without her?

19

Lucifer

Frantically, I tried to do something to fix her body, but the lifelessness of it resisted me. Struggling to knit her neck back together, I had to work ten times harder than I would've if she was alive - but I didn't want to think about what that meant. I refused to give up. Even while people banged against me in their attempt to stay away from the guys trying to pummel each other, my complete attention was on her.

But she was fighting me. Not consciously. There was a line between alive and dead, and everything about her was saying she'd already crossed it. But I didn't agree. I would not let her go that easily. Even if I wove aether until I was unconscious, then at least I'd have tried my hardest. This was not the sort of thing I was willing to give less than my all, and I was fucking Lucifer, the mightiest of angels. I could fix this!

So I pushed even more, and beneath my hands, something changed. Aether began to flow out of me too fast, pulled from my contact with her, but it wasn't just me. Looking up, I could see the wafts of mist trailing from all the bodies in the bar. The fog of it was like a prism of colors, shifting to red as it neared Sia's body and all joined together - but the pull was only increasing.

In the background,