Page 32 of Unholy Bond
I focused, not on suppressing the Void, but on making peace with it. The tendrils relaxed, their movement losing the hungry twitch, growing slower, almost languid. The wound in the wall stopped weeping. The veins faded, not gone, but dormant.
I opened my eyes.
Levi stared at me, mouth open. “You just—”
“It listens,” I said, not quite believing it myself. “It’s not a parasite. It’s—”
“Symbiosis,” Levi said, stepping closer. “You can control it.”
“Not control. Converse.” I pulled my hand away. “It remembers me.”
He took my hand, turning it over to study the palm. “Does anyone else know you can do this?”
“Not unless you’re planning to report me.”
He grinned, all teeth, and dropped my hand. “Fuck, no. But you should see the look on your face right now.”
I tried to glare, but he wasn’t wrong. I felt not just powerful, but alive in a way that had nothing to do with muscle or magic. It was ownership. The Void was part of me, not a chain or a prison.
“We should go.” I nodded back the way we’d come. “If the guards see this, Lucifer will shut down the whole wing.”
Levi offered his arm, mock-chivalrous. “You know he’s going to find out.”
I took the arm anyway, savoring the warmth where his skin met mine. “Let him,” I said. “Maybe it’s time he realized what he’s up against.”
He tucked my hand into his elbow and bowed to the empty hall like a ridiculous prince. “Your Majesty,” he intoned—then crossed his eyes just enough to be stupid. I snorted; I couldn’t stop it.
“That laugh,” he said, softer. “Mine to keep feral.”
The mark at my inner wrist pinched, sharp and mean. Levi turned my hand and set his thumb on my pulse. The hurt fizzed, then went to honey. The Void purred. So did I.
We left the corridor. Behind us, the marble glistened with a sheen of black, but the veins stayed still, the tendrils curled in, waiting.
I wondered how long it would take for the rest of Hell to catch on.
Not long, I hoped. I was getting tired of waiting for the world to break.
Chapter 17: Aziz
The walk from the palace heart to the barracks was a dead man’s sprint through every old haunt and nightmare I’d ever dragged behind me. In Hell, the architecture shifted to accommodate power, so after a few centuries of Lucifer in charge, we had walls that bent away from the main corridors like a punch-drunk boxer, always expecting the next blow. They never quite straightened up, and the stone always seemed a little damp with the memory of previous tenants. Every arch and ceiling bulged with the implication of violence. Spikes, hooks, notches for chains that rattled when there was no wind.
The Void covered me as I moved, not so much a cloak as a second skin. A sheath of nothing that made me smaller, quieter, meaner. The disguise wasn’t perfect, but it shaved off the edges, dulled the gold of my eyes to muddy amber, suppressed the barbs on my cock and tail, made the purple of my skin mottled and ugly instead of regal. I’d never pass for one of the truly low-level scuts, but among the barracks crowd, you could do worse than look like a half-breed thug who’d fucked his way up the ladder.
The soldiers in Hell weren’t the grandstanding generals of the propaganda. They were lifers, grunts, trash from the bottom of the blood barrel. Even the ones with wings kept them folded and patched. In the old days I would have killed every third one just to make a point, but this was a new game. I had a pouch full of gold, a belt loaded with sigils, and a knife etched with runes. I had a script and an audience and just enough rage to play my part.
The barracks rose out of the sub-basement like a tumor, the windows punched through with iron bars and the doors studdedwith bone. Someone had glued a plaque to the lintel that read “Loyalty Is Its Own Reward,” but I could see where the word “Punishment” had been scraped off and replaced. The place smelled like wet dog, brimstone, and cheap rotgut. My favorite.
I ducked inside and the Void constricted, pressing my muscles tight to my bones. I’d been here before. Not this exact room, but its ancestors. A thousand identical shitholes from a thousand identical wars, each one promising a different flavor of pain.
The main hall was packed with bunk beds, each one welded from black iron. A handful of demons lounged on the top bunks, most with helmets off and claws out, picking at scabs or sharpening whatever they had handy. The real activity was in the side chambers. The armory, the mess. The places where the real business happened.
I went straight for the armory. The door was open, hinges oiled, and inside I found four of them. Soldiers, but not the best. They had the eyes of men who’d been told to kill, then been told to forget. Two sat at a battered table, cleaning what passed for rifles here. A third had his back to the door, rummaging through a crate of helmets. The fourth was the dangerous one, half again my size with a strip of scale running from scalp to tailbone and a single, ugly eye embedded in his right cheek. He was sharpening a blade that looked like it had been designed for hacking limbs, and when I entered, he kept sharpening.
“Lost, are you?” said the one at the crate. His accent was old, deep-hell, and he didn’t turn around. “Auditor’s office is two doors up.”
I ignored him and leaned against the weapons rack. I picked up a barbed spear, turning it in my hand. The balance was shit, but it would do in a pinch.
“I’ve come with an opportunity,” I said, pitching my words so casually they slid right off the suspicion in the air. “Unless you’re the type who prefers the current arrangement.”
