MARGOT
Willow’s eyes were wide and panicked as the glass filled the boundary between planes, her hands frantically smacking against
the surface as if she could break through. I watched her nails claw at the window, her blood staining the glass.
The stone that slowly spread to cover the seal was tan, beige where it rested over the bloody smears she’d left behind. I couldn’t tear my eyes off that seal, couldn’t focus on the fighting happening around me. Beelzebub groaned, crying out as his wing jerked against me.
“Get her out of here!” Asmodeus shouted, swinging his hand and cutting through one of the demons who fought against him.
Beelzebub’s hands cupped my cheeks, cradling my face in his grip with a gentleness so at odds with the violence of the demons around us. “I need you to snap out of it, Songbird,” he said, that name striking me in the chest. It forced me to shake off the trauma, wincing when his wings tugged me in close.
Satanus grappled with Michael, the archangel struggling without fingers. It would take time for his magic to heal him in this place that was so far removed from the Father who provided him with it in the first place, but his wings flapped and smacked against Satanus.
I felt him shudder as something scraped down his wing, tearing through the fibrous tissue as I nodded up at him.
He nodded back, settling his hands at my waist. I flinched away from the touch on instinct, bobbing through the movement to encourage him to continue.
He gripped me tightly, drawing me into his enormous frame. Heat pulsed off those golden symbols scrawled into his chest, the light held within them glowing brighter as my hands brushed over them where they peeked out at the collar of his shirt.
I forced myself to wrap my arms around his neck, sandwiching Jonathan between us. The cat’s blood slowly leaked onto my arms, his wounds shallow enough that I knew he would be alright.
If we managed to survive.
Beelzebub crushed me to his chest, bending his knees as I clung to him. He jumped into the air, the massive expanse of those bat-like wings spreading wide. They caught the wind as demons reached for us—for me— I realized. They had no interest in Beelzebub, only trying to go through him to get to me.
His wings flapped, sending a burst of air toward the ground. The demons closest to where we had been fell to the ground as we went airborne. Beelzebub flew even as blood dripped down from his wing to land on the floor below us, that tear in his wing forcing us to fly a crooked path. He grimaced through the pain, never stopping, his path taking us past endless rolling hills of deep red earth.
Demons were rare below us as we traveled, the bodies littering the red earth changing as we put distance between us and the seal. Their mangled, red flesh stood out far less against the dirt below me than the lost souls who wandered aimlessly.
“The First Circle,” Beelzebub said, his voice loud enough to drown out the sound of the traveling air. He stopped beating his wings, settling into a smooth glide as the silence and peace of flight overcame him.
Some of the tension left his features, a calm I’d never seen on the tense male, making him appear so much less harsh. His square jaw softened as if he lived in a constant state of gritting his teeth, his dark eyes roaming the ground below.
“Limbo,” I said, nodding my understanding. I hadn’t known what part of Hell the seal opened into, but it made sense that it would be the outermost boundary. The circle for those who had not sworn themselves to God but lived otherwise virtuous lives, Limbo was the least severe of the Nine Circles.
It was a Circle I would not be permitted to stay in when I died, because the sin of my magic would condemn me elsewhere.
The ground below us became more hilly, the ebb and flow of the land feeling more natural than the even, flat plains of red earth beneath the seal itself. A building lingered in the distance, onyx stone jutting from the hillside. The tops of the palace were pointed like spires, reminding me of the Gothic architecture of churches like Notre Dame.
The windows at the front shimmered with the light of stained glass, reflecting off the red earth in the front. Beelzebub veered to his left in a sharp turn, gliding toward that palace. We descended gradually, crossing over the gate in front of the building. Beelzebub shifted me in his arms, drawing a startled gasp from me as he quickly shifted a hand behind my knees and cradled me in his arms.
He landed smoothly, not even pausing as he shifted into an even gait and strode toward the doors of the palace. A male demon thrust open the doors, his skin the same light brown as Beelzebub’s.
“Beelzebub,” the demon said, stepping aside to hold the door as the archdemon carried me in. Jonathan jumped down from my hold immediately once we were through the threshold, shaking off the dust that had settled on him during our flight. He twisted his body immediately, licking at the three slash marks on his chest.
“Stop that,” I scolded him as Beelzebub set me on my feet. Squatting down, I bopped him on the nose. “Bad kitty.”
He glared at me with those eerie purple eyes, a look of pure disbelief as he swatted at my finger in defiance.
“The cat needs stitches,” I said, interrupting Beelzebub, where he spoke to the demon. Reaching out with a cautious hand, I wrapped my fingers around the edge of Beelzebub’s wing, pulling it out so that I could examine the tear in the membrane of his wing. “As do you.”
He made a sound that was half-groan and half-growl—anything but menacing—and turned his head to look at me. I swallowed, pursing my lips together as I held his intense, dark stare.
The other demon cleared his throat. “Should I send for Raum’s healer?” he asked, eyeing the area where I still held Beelzebub’s wing in my fingers.
I released it, taking a step back and averting my eyes.
“Bring the cat to the healer,” Beelzebub said, his eyes never leaving my face. I felt it from the corner of my eye but couldn’t bear to meet it. Not when I had the distinct feeling I’d just committed some sort of fucking foreplay.
In front of another man.
“What about you, sire?” the demon asked, reaching down to scoop Jonathan into his arms. The cat hissed, sinking his claws into the male’s flesh.
“My songbird will tend to me,” Beelzebub said, those words sending an immediate pulse of panic through me.
I would tend to nothing.
“I’m no healer,” I argued, raising my gaze to glare at him. He smirked at the ire in my face, that weird response I always got when he finally pushed me past my limits.
“It’s nothing a few stitches cannot fix,” he said, taking a step toward me. He caught my hand in his, guiding me toward the stairwell at the back of the grand foyer. “Satanus and Asmodeus will be here shortly!” he called over his shoulder, leaving me with no choice but to follow as his too-long legs made their way to the stairs.
“I don’t know how to do stitches!” I protested, trying to slide my hand out of the iron of his grip.
“You could always heal me in other ways, Songbird,” he teased, both of us knowing that most Reds would merely offer him pleasure and use that energy to heal him.
“Stop calling me that!” I argued, tugging back on his hand. He guided me to the top of the stairs, stopping in front of a door. He tested the knob finally, ushering me into the privacy of a beautiful bedroom.
I tried to ignore how pretty everything was in spite of the darker color palette, feeling entirely at ease with the red that surrounded me. “Why? So you don’t have to admit how much you like it?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
He headed for the dresser, tugging open a drawer and pulling out a needle and something that looked like a cross between fishing wire and thread.
I swallowed, not knowing how to find the words to admit why I hated that fucking nickname so much.
The day he’d given it to me, the first time I’d laid eyes on Beelzebub, he’d caught me singing to myself. It had only been the faintest hum, thinking I was alone in the courtyard Willow loved so much. I loved how her flowers had strayed toward me as if they, too, couldn’t resist the magic of my song.
I couldn’t have imagined there was a demon watching, listening to me sing, and falling prey to my spell.
Every time he called me that, every time he referenced the magic in my veins, it was only another reminder.
He was caught under my spell, whether I liked it or not. And no matter what I did, one thing remained certain.
I couldn’t free him; I’d stripped away his free will as harshly as Itan had taken mine.
Beelzebub might not have felt any outright suffering from my violation, and he likely never would. Still, if I could only not sing to him and not touch him, then one day, the spell would wear off on its own. Then, he would be able to move on with his life.
Leaving me in fucking peace, finally.
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