Infernal Games by Jenna Wolfhart

20

Iyelped and ducked behind the sofa. The mugs shattered on the wall behind my head, breaking several photo frames. Gasping, I threw my arms over my head to protect my face from the shards that rained down on top of me. A few slivers of glass sliced into my arms. A stinging pain tore through my skin.

Meanwhile, I could hear Az locked in a brutal battle with the grandma demon. I popped up my head to find his sword ringing when it slammed into hers. She held a big, monstrous thing lined in jagged edges. Like a serrated knife. The hilt was black with a pair of gleaming red eyes.

And I swore those eyes were looking right at me.

“Give up!” Az roared. “Yield!”

The demon cackled once more and threw all her weight behind her sword. It arced toward his gut, and the sharp tip of it sliced through his black shirt. Az stilled, his eyes flashing with rage.

I wet my lips. Now, while I appreciate his swordplay, I had to admit this wasn’t the terrifying, destructive force I’d conjured in my head. My imagination had gotten a little carried away, it turned out. He couldn’t rip her apart with his mind or shatter her bones with a single touch. If he wasn’t currently locked in a dangerous sword battle, I might have laughed out loud at myself.

“I’ve had enough,” Az spat, releasing his sword.

Abaddon clattered against a stack of porcelain plates. My mind screamed as I watched in horror. What the hell is he doing?! He couldn’t just drop the damn sword. Heart shaking, I pushed up from behind the couch to rush to his aid. She’d destroy him like this. She had a massive sword and enough strength to shove it right into his gut.

Az held his hands out on either side of him and threw back his head. He opened his mouth, letting out a terrible, all-consuming roar. His shadows shot from his skin, a great massive swarm of them. I slowed to a stop, jaw dropping.

Rebecca let out a little squeal and turned to run, but the shadows swarmed her before she could get anywhere. They flew into her mouth, a swarm of darkness so thick it looked like billowing smoke. Her head dropped back, and she stilled, frozen in place by the shadows.

They still pulsed around her, weaving in and out of her open mouth and nose. Horror twisting through me, all I could do was stare.

Az strode toward her with vengeance in his eyes. “Tell me where the item is.”

With a mouthful of shadows, Rebecca couldn’t speak.

He grabbed her arm and whipped her toward the mess. “Show me.”

Her eyes as wide as saucers, she shook her head. “Uh uh. Lmmiceffeer.”

“Lucifer,” Az repeated. “You’re afraid he’ll destroy you if you show me where it is.”

She nodded.

“Unfortunately for him, I got here first,” Az growled. “Show me where it is or I’ll destroy you before he even has a chance to get his hands on you.”

The demon trembled beneath Az. The shadows swarmed her. Every now and then, one would dart out like a knife and slice her arm. Shuddering, she dropped to her knees before Az.

She bowed her head low to the ground.

The shadows misted. The terror on his face cleared. With a heavy breath, I sat hard on the sofa, not daring to say a word. That had been intense. And as good as I knew Az could be, there was no doubt in mind he would have used his shadows to rip her to shreds if she had not surrendered to him.

Rebecca choked out the last remnants of the smoke and slowly reached toward a small black box just out of her reach. It was sandwiched between a pile of empty bottles and a stack of wooden squares. Az snatched it up before her fingers could reach it.

Az held it up before his eyes. “What is it?”

“It’s the thing you want,” she whispered. “And now Lucifer will come here and destroy me. Just like he destroyed the demon who had it before me. The one who signed the contract.”

My eyes widened. So, that was who the old man had been?

A deep frown pulled down the corners of Az’s lips. “What does it do?”

“It restores memories.”

I gasped. Az twisted toward me, his awed realization matching mine. No wonder Lucifer had tried to hide this from us. If my memories had been erased, this object was the one thing that could bring them back. This was better than a random contract outlining exactly what had happened to me.

I would be able to see the truth of my past.

My mouth went dry as our gazes locked. This was it then. No backing out now. With the little black box, I had to face my fears. I had to find out the truth. All of it. As bad as it might be.

“You need to leave,” Az said, pocketing the box. “Drop the glamor. Get a new scent if you think you need it. Head to another city, like Vegas. In a few months’ time, Lucifer will have forgotten all about you.”

Rebecca’s eerie laugh crawled up my spine and dug into my bones. It certainly didn’t match her old lady appearance, that was for sure. “Lucifer never forgets anything. He will make me pay for this one day, Asmodeus. You should put me out of my misery before I drown in his flames of torture.”

I shuddered.

The motion caught her attention. She gave me a grimace of a smile. “You don’t know what you’ve just done to yourself, girlie. You’re going to regret this.”

“How would you feel if you had no idea who you were or what your past was?” I pushed up from the couch, calling upon a courage I wasn’t sure I had. “And what if you knew the truth could change everything? Wouldn’t you try to find out?”

She shook her head. “I just don’t think you’re going to like what you see.”

Without another word, Rebecca leapt out of her open window. A cry of alarm hurtled from my throat, and I dodged the piles of crap to reach the ledge. Wings flared against a night sky, vanishing into the dark. I pulled back and turned to Az. He regarded me with a pained expression.

“You think she’s right,” I said.

“I think you need to prepare yourself for what we’re about to see. Whatever it is, it’s big. Are you ready?”

“Not really,” I said in a small voice. “But I have no other choice. I need to know the truth.”

* * *

Az and I didn’t stick around the demon’s apartment any longer than necessary. We’d use the little black box to unlock my memories, but not there. We needed somewhere quieter. Somewhere more familiar. Somewhere I felt comfortable and relaxed and safe.

We ended up back at his penthouse, even though we both knew Lucifer might come by there, eventually. There was no better place to go for something like this.

While I paced in front of the couch, Az did his little security check routine at each wall. I tried to psyche myself up for what was about to happen. There were forgotten memories inside my head. The box would unlock them and tell me things I knew would shake me. When Az finally joined me, he looked troubled.

“Has he been here?” I asked.

If I were Lucifer, it would have been one of the first places I would look. Of course...I probably wouldn’t have watched my enemy fly off into the sunset either. But he was the King of Hell. Our logic didn’t really operate in the same realm.

“No.” He scowled. “I don’t like it. He should have checked here by now. It’s what I would have done.”

“I think we’ve established that he’s kind of a psychopath. So, what we would do is probably not what he would do.”

“No.” Rubbing his stubbled jaw, he shook his head. “He’s biding his time for something, and I don’t like it. What if he wanted us to find this black box?”

“You think it doesn’t do what Rebecca said it does?” I flipped the box in my hands. It was fairly nondescript. Certainly didn’t look magical. “I guess I wouldn’t put it past either of them.”

Az held out a hand. “Let me try it on myself first.”

I snatched back my hand and clutched the box to my chest. “I’m the one with the missing memories.”

“Yes, but I’m...” He grabbed my fingers and slowly pried them away from the box. “The immortal demon. If it hurts me, I’ll heal.”

Sighing, I rolled my eyes and released my tentative grip. “Fine. But if it doesn’t do anything to you, then I get to try it.”

“And here I thought you were avoiding this whole thing. You didn’t seem thrilled back at the demon’s apartment.”

“I’m not thrilled,” I admitted. “And I’m scared. But I can recognize this as something that needs to be done. Maybe it will unlock some magic in me, as crazy as that sounds. And then I might have a chance of standing up to Lucifer.”

Az held the box up to his eyes and squinted. I knew what he was looking for. A symbol, a demon seal. Something to give an indication to whether or not this thing had been doused in some kind of destructive spell. I’d already had a close look, though, and there was nothing there.

He bounced the box in his palm. “I’m going to hold it up to my forehead and see what happens.”

With a deep breath, he lifted the square object up toward his head. For a moment, he held it frozen about an inch away from his skin. Tension pounded against my skull as my heartbeat picked up speed. I didn’t want him to do this. The problem was mine, not his. But I knew he’d never listen.

Az pressed the box against his skull. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumbled to the floor.

I screamed and slid to his side, soul rattling. Somehow, I managed to catch his head just before it slammed against his hard floor. I cradled him in my lap, pressing the dark hair out of his closed eyes.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to him, tears leaking onto my cheeks. “What did it do to you?”

I glared at the tiny object that had tumbled out of his open palm. It sat just beside his left knee, still and calm, like it hadn’t just knocked out a Prince of Hell. Or...worse? My fingers found the pulse in his neck. His heart still beat. He was alive. For now.

His voice echoed in my ears. A demon cannot die. The only way to stop one is to rip out his heart and bury it away from the body.

Okay, so that probably meant he’d recover from this. Whatever it was. If there was a spell out there that could end a demon’s life, he would have known about it. It wouldn’t just surface now.

Plus, I was pretty sure Lucifer didn’t want us dead. If we were dead, we wouldn’t suffer.

“What do I do, Az?” I pleaded with him.

My eyes cut to the box again. The best thing I could do was leave it there untouched. Find a way to rejuvenate Az and then toss the thing out of the penthouse window. Maybe it would shatter into a million pieces when it finally made contact with the ground.

But then I would never know.

Something inside me felt drawn to the box. A little voice whispered that I should use it, despite what had happened to Az. It wouldn’t hurt me. Somehow, I knew I would be fine. The feeling was so clear and certain that it could have only been put there by magic.

Muttering curses at myself, I snatched up the box and pressed it against my forehead before logic talked me out of it. The box seared my skin like a hair straightener on the hottest setting. I cried out and dropped the box, pain lancing through my head.

Suddenly, the world went black.

And then a strange light filled my mind.

I blinked, trying to make sense of it. Something felt...oddly, achingly familiar. Another time. Another place. Memories flashed through my mind all at once. They filled my head with laughter, music, and tears.

Horror and awe twisted around me like twin ribbons. I suddenly knew everything. I understood it all. I wasn’t actually a fallen angel. At least, not in this life.

I was the reincarnation of one.