Page 10 of Prince of Ruin
Jewels. Ancient knives. A small golden cask that made her left eye strain just to look at it.
“State of the art tech,” Tay whistled under her breath. “Look up.”
Sera looked up. She had to keep telling herself that until the spell in her necklace wound down, she’d be invisible to cameras.
Not the naked eye, though.
“Okay, I’ve got laser across the door. Laser on the cases. Pressure sensors by the look of it. Three cams that I can see. And probably a fourth in that corner I can’t see. The spells in your necklace will take care of the cams, but the protective spells on the room are the kicker. Sweet baby Jesus. Sera, this is some heavy-duty shit. You walk in that room and you might not walk out. They’re built to trap a fucking Prince of Hell. Or an arch. Someone’s loaded for bear. No. Someone’s loaded for dinosaur.”
“What’s the read?”
Silence. And then: “Power levels are on the astronomical scale. Something in that room is vibrating enough to make all my equipment hum, even from here. But… I have to admit I was expecting more. I was expecting my equipment to blow. How powerful is this shard? I was expecting off-the-charts, equipment-whining, can’t-calibrate, that sort of thing.”
Angelic power was like a surge of nuclear, but Michael had been on an entire other level. “You’d know if the shard was there.”
“Yeah, maybe. It’s a piece of Michael’s sword and therefore a conduit to his power, but itisbroken. My assessment is: Uncertain. Could be a decoy. You need visual confirmation.”
Sera flexed her knuckles as Plan A turned to shit.
Getting in that room was going to be like setting off a bomb and hoping it didn’t bring every demon in the building running. If Tay had given her two thumbs up, she would have legged it, snatched the shard, and then fought her way out.
But uncertainty….
Uncertainty would get her killed. A moment of hesitation would bring her down.
“Okay, let’s go with Option B,” she whispered under her breath.
She needed a look at all the cases.
Getting in was never going to be the problem.
“Sera….” Tay had never sounded so quiet.
“I’ve got this.” She’d known what the risks were.
“Sera, he’s a bad,baddemon prince. If he gets his hands on you….”
If he got his hands on her, then maybe she could distract him.If the shard wasn’t in that room then it had to be elsewhere, and suspicion said thatsomewherewould be his bedroom.
But every demon prince had their weaknesses.
And she’d just brought Azazel’s into play.
Time to look that fucker in the eye and deal with the past.
“Let’s kill Jilly Bean,” she said.
Silence.
And then she could hear the echo of Tay’s fingers on the keyboard. “Done.”
Somewhere back there, the naked angel on its knees was evaporating like clouds of mist.
“You’d better hope your wards are good.”
“They’re the best. See you on the flip side.”
“I love you.”
