Hell Bent

by Cate Corvin

  “I’m a gift fit for a princess,” he told me, laying me back on the bed.

  I knew he was hiding his rage and flickering eyes behind insouciance, but I knew him too well. There was no hiding from me at all.

  “You are. Which is why it was worth it. And even better… I have this room all to myself right now.” I let my fingertip trail from his lip to the sharp line of his jaw.

  I hoped he didn’t feel my deeper emotions: that I was terrified that even though I’d won him, Ereshkigal would renege on her word to me and take him again.

  Like I had with Lucifer, I needed to take advantage of every stolen moment with them, in case there was never a moment again.

  “We’d better make good use of it, then,” he said, a purr in his deep voice, and he bent his head to kiss me.

  As his soft lips melded against mine, I felt his emotions pour over me through the bond.

  He’d been terrified, and full of guilt. There was a sweeping wave of relief that I was alive, but the guilt was still there.

  I broke away. “Stop feeling guilty,” I told him sternly.

  He shut me up with another kiss, growling low in his throat.

  A moment later, the rip of silk filled the air. He tore my dress away, running his hands all over me, breathing my name as his mouth roamed over my skin.

  I shuddered as he rolled me over in the bed, his huge body covering mine completely. I was already wet and ready when he impaled me, his breath stirring my hair.

  He thrust in hard, gripping one of my wrists and holding it down. He fucked me like he wanted to leave his mark, one hand reaching under me to stroke my clit.

  It was a pleasure to give in to his ferocity, to ride against his pounding hips until the familiar shiver began to course through me.

  My new body, healing beyond anything I’d ever dreamed of, felt powerful again. I wanted to feel the desire he brought to the surface and drown in it. To pretend for just a moment that we were home.

  Belial’s cock plunged deep, stretching me around him, and I gasped when his fingers slid through the wetness and gently pinched my clit. The weight of him against my back made me feel vulnerable, but in a good way.

  He was determined to give me nothing but what I desired.

  Several more thrusts had me shaking beneath him, my hips arched against him. I moaned into the blankets, muffling the sound when I came.

  Belial let out another low snarl, his teeth grazing my shoulder as his cock pulsed. I felt him come in me, and when he finally pulled out and wrapped me in his arms, I was still breathing hard.

  This was another memory I’d cling to, one spot of brightness in the dark. A reason to do whatever was in my power to destroy her. If I could do that, they would all be mine again.

  I settled against his chest, hoping I could steal another moment soon.

  12

  Melisande

  I didn’t pull myself away from Belial until a soft knock sounded on my door.

  It took some finesse to climb out of the tangle of arms, legs, and bedsheets without disturbing him, but he needed his sleep.

  If we were going to get out of here, we all needed to be at full strength. I left him sprawled across the bed, the sheets tangled around his tan, muscled legs.

  One of Ereshkigal’s doll-like maids waited outside my door. “You are to serve our Queen at her table,” she told me, her voice mechanical. “I must prepare you.”

  I let her in. She didn’t so much as glance at my bed or the Prince sprawled across it.

  The maid brushed my hair and applied artful streaks of black paint on my face, similar to the makeup female Irkallans wore.

  My dress today was black silk again, with panels cut out of the sides so it showed most of my legs and ribs. Small chains covered in bells were fastened around my ankles, so they tinkled with every step.

  Before I left, I kissed Belial’s forehead.

  The maid and I stopped by the wine cellar. She chose two bottles with faded, peeling labels, and I was instructed to bring three goblets.

  I carefully held the crystal cups as we walked to the dining hall. On my second day in Kur, I’d seen Ereshkigal beat a maid nearly to death for accidentally clicking two cups together. The ringing sound of the crystal had driven her into a blind rage.

  It was unlikely she’d be beating me again, considering it wouldn’t make a satisfying game for her, but I wasn’t risking it.

  I nearly dropped the glasses on the stone floor anyways when I walked into the dining hall and saw who was seated with her.

  Only reflexes borne of desperation kept the glasses in my hands. I stopped dead in my tracks, my chest tight and painful.

  Azazel wasn’t in his black suit with the raven skull lapel pins, but in a pair of black pants and his bare upper body streaked with black Irkallan warpaint.

  The lines and dots continued up to his face, limning his sharp cheekbones and violet eyes. His dark curls were wild, brushing his neck.

  He looked like the memory of Azazel from a thousand years ago, savage and cold, more primitive than urbane.

  Those violet eyes looked at me, and there was nothing recognizable in them.

  Ereshkigal sat next to him, dripping with blood red silk, and the family resemblance was so obvious and uncanny once they were seated together.

  They had the same sharp features, the full lips, hair as black as pitch.

  I’d seen Azazel suck a Nephilim’s soul out of his body. He ate souls.

  But for all his darkness and the dreaded bloodline he came from…

  The High Priestess of the succubi had as good as told me who Azazel was and where he was from. I just hadn’t wanted to see it, had refused to countenance the idea after Ereshkigal had dragged me to death’s door so many times.

  He was who she had reminded me of the day she’d beaten me.

  The Eater of Souls looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. “You serve a very important guest today, little sister. Someone very beloved to Kur has returned to us.”

  She knew perfectly well who he was to me. That eager gleam in her eyes was pure hunger, waiting to see how I’d react.

  Azazel was leaning back in his seat casually, looking completely bored with everything around him. His eyes slid away from me and came to rest on Satan, his brow slightly creased.

  I gripped the crystal cups tighter in my slightly sweaty hands. “I’m pleased to serve you and your family, my Queen,” I said in my blandest voice possible.

  I put a cup in front of Satan, then crossed to the other side of the table and placed Ereshkigal’s, and finally… Azazel’s.

  I stood so close to him I felt the warmth of his skin through the thin silk of my dress. My hand trembled and I almost knocked the crystal into his gold plate.

  He said nothing. Didn’t even acknowledge me.

  My heart felt like a black hole had opened inside it, threatening to swallow everything. I considered allowing the sorrow to eat me alive, but…

  My mate mark was still on my back. It was still whole.

  I felt for the Chain, the little strands that connected me to my mates, and found the faint violet line that tied me to Azazel.

  It might’ve been faint, but it was there, intact and gleaming.

  I tugged on the bond between us, trying to keep my breathing even.

  Azazel shook his head a little, like he was swatting away a fly.

  “Are you going to serve the wine, songbird?” Ereshkigal asked, a dangerous tone in her voice.

  “Yes,” I breathed, my sadness becoming fury.

  How dare she take him from me? Azazel had told me he didn’t want to step foot in Irkalla, because he’d lived here before. The sand of the desert above was where he’d received blood sacrifices in his name, birds gutted on an altar to his dark glory.

  I took the wine bottle from the maid, blinking hard as I leveraged the cork from the bottle neck. I wouldn’t cry in front of this bitch.

  What I was going to do was take back what belonged to me
.

  I would eat her heart.

  I was smiling faintly when I turned around and stepped next to Satan to fill his glass. He stared at his wife across the table, but I felt fingertips touch the naked skin on the back of my knee.

  Suppressing a shudder, I gritted my teeth and moved away from him.

  Ereshkigal cocked her head when I leaned over her to pour.

  “You love my grandson, don’t you?” she asked, her lips pulled in a knowing smile. She was desperately trying to prod me into doing something stupid. “Azazel, Prince of Death?”

  She’d whipped the mark on my back until it was split in half, furious that her Prince of Death would ever dare to mark a lowly fallen angel.

  But more than that… grandson? He was a direct descendant of hers, but he was more than just an eater of souls.

  He was night and starlight, all the beautiful things that lived in the darkness. He was nothing like her.

  A memory swept through my head, there and gone: an angel with violet eyes and her dark lover, cradled in night.

  Azazel had inherited his ability to love, his inherent humanity, from someone else. I refused to believe that he was lost to me just because he’d come home.

  I also refused to disdain him, even if he wouldn’t look at or acknowledge me now.

  I stared down at her. “I do love him.” Then I swept away to pour Azazel’s wine.

  He watched my hands on the bottle, tilting his head to the side in that predatory way his past self had possessed.

  He looked up at me, his eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”

  I swallowed the pain of that question. How empty and flat his voice was. “You do.”

  Ereshkigal watched me over the rim of her cup as she drank. She’d become a crone while I wasn’t looking, her hands wrinkled now and a stark contrast to the crystal of her goblet. “Oh, unrequited love.”

  I kept my back straight and chin up. Azazel did love me and always would. This was just another one of her games.

  Azazel picked up his cup and drank, already having lost interest in my presence.

  “Come here, songbird.” Ereshkigal curled her fingers in a come-hither.

  Yet again, I walked around the table and stood at her side.

  Ereshkigal put a hand on my stomach. “Do you remember the days of sacrifice, Prince? The glory of old times, when blood ran freely over our altars?”

  Azazel swirled his wine in his goblet. “How much more glory do you need, Grandmother?”

  Ereshkigal’s brow darkened, but she tightened her claws. I held back a hissed breath at the few pinpricks of pain. “The songbird carries a child. We will feast on its flesh, just like those old days.”

  A strange thought occurred to me: she was desperate to have Azazel in the palm of her hand.

  But worst of all was that Azazel did nothing about the clawed hand over Sarai.

  Not so much as a blink.

  “There are thousands of other children out there,” he said, completely disinterested. “If blood sacrifice is so important to you, go fetch one of them.”

  I could almost hear Ereshkigal’s teeth grinding.

  “Has the outside world softened you, love?” she asked him.

  Azazel glanced at her and lowered his cup. His lips stretched in a sudden wolfish smile, so feral I felt Ereshkigal lean back a little when he turned to face her.

  “I feasted on thousands of souls in the outside world, Grandmother,” he said softly, leaning towards her. “I glutted myself on them, sucked them dry. I’m not the one who locked myself in a prison beneath the desert. Are you soft? What are you hiding from here?”

  His lips were drawn back over his teeth in a snarl. Ereshkigal raised a hand to her chest.

  “Oh, I know.” He let out a soft chuckle and sat back, amusement in his face. “You fear the blood you spilled. You fear her retribution.”

  Azazel stood up, so suddenly I almost jumped.

  He bent over Ereshkigal, close enough to both of us that I could’ve leaned in only an inch and kissed him.

  “The desert remembers,” he told her. “You ate her heart, but you didn’t eat her soul.”

  With that, he turned around and walked out, leaving total silence behind him.

  I realized there was only one thing Ereshkigal feared: the power of her own bloodline.

  As long as he was here, Azazel would be in danger of her jealousy consuming her. I couldn’t bear to let her rip his heart out and eat it. He was her grandson, but he was also a rival, and one who didn’t give a damn about her title or power.

  I stepped forward with the wine when Ereshkigal knocked her glass over. It was the first time I’d ever seen her discomposed.

  She waved her hand violently at me, catching my arm with her claws. “Get out!” she hissed. “Go!”

  Without questioning, I put the bottle on the table and quickly walked out, keeping my head down.

  By the time I reached the hall, the bleeding marks on my arm were no more than faint scars. The blood dried and flaked away.

  I paused a safe distance away and examined the marks, pursing my lips as I looked them over.

  The healing was growing stronger by the hour, it seemed. Soon it would take serious brute force to actually harm me.

  I started walking without looking up and almost ran into someone.

  Azazel blocked my path, looking down at me.

  I lowered my arm, my heart aching just to look at him like this, the same and yet different, as savage as his bloodline.

  It would’ve been better if he’d never come for me.

  I opened to my mouth to say something, my mind still blank, but he took me by surprise. Azazel pushed me into a dark alcove, in the small space between the wall and an ebonite statue of a snarling sphinx.

  His hands rose and cupped my face. “I know you,” he whispered.

  “Azazel?” If this was a trick, if his cruel, cold side just wanted to rip my heart out and crush it underfoot…

  He kissed me. I leaned into it, not caring if I smudged the paint on us, just breathing in his herb-and-sea salt scent and feeling the emotions emanate through our mate bond: love, trust, and a darker tinge of possessiveness.

  His lips were soft and warm, and his tongue flicked over mine, drawing a breathy moan out of me. I’d hoped so badly that he would come for me…

  Azazel broke the kiss and pulled away. He cocked his head, a feral light in his eyes.

  “I know you,” he repeated, sounding puzzled. “But how?”

  But the mate bond was intact and strong. Ereshkigal’s power wouldn’t hold him forever.

  “You know me,” I told him, my voice hoarse. “You love me. We are as one.”

  “I taste my soul in you.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “And I feel you in mine. Why… why are you here?”

  Did he really remember nothing?

  It was like there was a wall between his current self and his past self. I regretted not taking his warnings more seriously. The old magic of Kur had a tight grip on him.

  “I’m here to—”

  The sound of claws on stone echoed up the corridor.

  Ereshkigal swept into view, her gaze cold with fury as she took in Azazel’s hands on my face, the paint smeared on our skin like evidence of a crime.

  “The bird is beneath you, Prince,” she said, her voice icy. “If she wants to aim high, let her prove it in blood.”

  13

  Melisande

  In her anger, Ereshkigal had apparently forgotten that I was supposed to be her coddled little pet.

  Azazel, her own blood, was apparently the one aspiration that was off-limits to me.

  Her claws dug into my shoulder all the way to the throne room, where she shoved me towards a pack of guards. They looked down at me with cold eyes.

  “Arm her,” she snapped, and swept to her throne.

  Azazel had followed us. He leaned against the back of the throne, looking out at the arena over his grandmother’s head. Irritated pu
zzlement shone in his violet gaze.

  The guards glanced at each other, and one finally unsheathed his sword and handed it to me.

  It was a razor-sharp scimitar with a handle of polished bone. I weighed it in my hands, adjusting to the balance. I was used to straight-bladed swords, not ones that fanned out like deadly leaves.

  The gangway was lowered for me, and I stepped up to the edge of the balcony. The arena floor had been cleaned, all traces of fire and blood washed away.

  Before I walked down, I leaned down and sliced off the trailing bottom of my silk skirt and let the scraps fly down into the abyss.

  Behind me, Ereshkigal made a soft, disparaging sound.

  I strode down the gangway, spinning my scimitar.

  Whatever she put me up against, it would be a good test of my new healing abilities, to see how far I’d gone into the transmutation. My magic was still the same, the familiar dark and white fire, and I didn’t feel any different… except that I could now regenerate from horrific injuries.

  I wasn’t even sure it was an actual transmutation. Maybe it was just a lingering remnant of Inanna’s borrowed power.

  Sarai flipped happily in my abdomen, like she sensed the impending violence. Child of wrath, indeed. I ensured my shield around her was strong and turned to face the Queen, sweeping her a low, mocking bow.

  “Send your worst,” I called, letting my anger ramp up. “You can keep me here all night and all day, but I’ll never lie to you about this: I mean far more to Azazel than you ever will.”

  The click of a cage opening echoed from high overhead, and a meteor plunged to the arena floor in a burst of raging gold light.

  I mastered myself before betraying my surprise. “Michael?”

  The archangel rose to his feet, brushing off his shoulders. His blond hair was tangled and his clothes ragged, but his wings stretched wide, blindingly white in the darkness of Kur. They looked softer without the gold-edged razor blades in them.

  “Hey, sister.”

  I realized I was fine with Michael calling me ‘sister’, unlike Ereshkigal. We were kin in a way, both angels of Heaven. He sure as Hell felt a lot more like family than the Queen did.