Page 52 of Hell Bound

Chapter12

Lucifer

Icouldn’t watch anymore. Her back was rigid, head held painfully upright to prevent the metallic, rib-like cage from digging any deeper into her flesh.

Jovran hissed under his breath as I shoved back from the table, my claws refusing to recede.

The wolf inside me was roaring, furious at the sight of my Fire Lily bound in a cage—

A hand wrapped around my wrist, squeezing tightly.

“Bad idea, commander,” Deasley muttered, flicking his gaze to the dais where Asmodeus held Tavila in his lap.

I forced myself to take one breath, then another.

Last time I’d attacked Asmodeus at his own table, the room had been painted with blood by the end.

Only a few drops had been his, the smear on my claws from the only blow I’d landed.

But I had lost two friends that day, Fallen demons and friends from the Abyssian Guard in my own court.

They’d been nothing but a haze of red when Asmodeus was finished with them.

Lilith stared straight ahead, refusing to meet the gawking stares of the surrounding demons.

Somewhere beneath my incandescent rage, a plume of pride formed.

The mortal world had made her strong. She wouldn’t be broken by Asmodeus’s little tricks and torments.

Only, they wouldn’t stay that way. He would escalate until he broke her or killed her, and he wouldn’t care which.

It was a victory for him either way.

I flexed my arm, easily driving Deasley’s fingers apart, and spun on my heel.

Returning to pack quarters wasn’t an option. Odragir was no doubt already coming up with ways to infuriate me over Lilith’s treatment tonight.

In the mood I was in, I would kill him.

And I would enjoy it.

Instead I ascended the stairs, coming to a floor that was filled with guest rooms. Rooms that were almost always empty. Very few demons wanted to take Asmodeus up on his hospitality when they knew it wouldn’t take much for them to be added to his wolf pack.

Passing the closed doors, I went to the end of the hall where the servants’ store rooms were tucked away from sight. Since the rooms hardly ever needed cleaning on this floor, the storage spaces were dusty and disused.

In one of these rooms, through a large bureau with a hidden panel in the back, was a warren of rooms that were closed off to the outside world and filled to the fucking brim with relics of the human world.

I climbed through, stepping over something Deasley had called a ‘toaster’ and bashing my shin on a coffee table.

The young demon called this the Clubhouse, his secret refuge away from the prying eyes of Asmodeus, where he’d been amassing his human collection over the years.

A large, sagging couch was set up in front of a box with a glass screen, and a lamp with glowing neon bubbles lit the entire room in a horrible shade of chartreuse.

I know it’s here somewhere…

I tossed aside pillows and other random debris that Deasley and Pypentha left strewn all over the place. He had a stash of mortal food that he was quite protective of, but I had every intention to raid it tonight.

Cardboard boxes were piled in the corner, with a sheet half-pulled over them. I jerked the sheet aside, tearing open a box with my claws and finding more, smaller boxes.

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