The Devil's Daughter Page 15

  So, why was I blaming him now? Sure, his disappearance was the catalyst of all of this, but if anything, I should’ve been blaming the angels for that instead of King Victor. Still, that didn’t stop me from feeling the rage bubbling up in my stomach and rising into my throat.

  There was a whisper in the back of my mind, buzzing around in my ear and trying to convince me that killing someone was going to be the answer to all my problems. I didn’t have Schizophrenia, but I had just about the closest thing I could have without being diagnosed with it. Not that anyone would’ve bothered, anyway - I was a demon. Demons didn’t get diagnosed with things like that.

  “Come on, Wyatt, it’ll make you feel so much better,” the inner voice taunted.

  I tried to shut it off, I really did, but when I went to go find Lachlan to talk to him (he was one of the only people that could calm me down when I got into one of my moods, as much as we fought the rest of the time) and couldn’t find him, it only made matters worse. The moment that I found out he went to a party - when a year ago we both promised each other that we do everything we could to be better than we were then - I walked out of the house and out into one of the neighborhoods of Hell in search of something to calm myself down.

  As I kept walking, the voice seemed to get louder and louder until it was screaming at me.

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” The inner voice chanted.

  I looked around, feeling my vision started to grow smaller.

  I thought I saw Pierce and Sylas in the distance, but I didn’t go to them. I wanted to go to them because I knew they would probably be able to help me (and to try to help Pierce wake Sylas up because he was being way too gentle about it - the prince of Sloth was a heavy sleeper on a good day and this definitely wasn’t a good day), but I didn’t go up to them. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt them and I was terrified that I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself from doing so with the state I was in.

  As I continued to try to ignore the voice in my head, I heard someone coming up behind me.

  “Prince Wyatt?” A woman called from behind me.

  The woman’s high-pitched, whiny voice made me feel like she was running her nails down my spine. Usually, I would’ve been able to control myself enough to just ignore her, but the usual Wyatt wasn’t there at that point. Instead, the old Wyatt was here and I launched myself towards the woman, slamming her down onto the ground.

  She screamed and I went to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze the breath out of her as if I was squeezing a fresh lemon into a cup of hot tea. She stared up at me, but I couldn’t read what she was trying to get across. I was blinded by the inner voice that was now yelling at me again, but this time praising me and pushing me to keep going.

  I almost did when I felt two people grab my arms and pull me back. I tried to fight against their grip as I watched the woman get up and teleport away from the scene. I didn’t want to go after her, but the inner voice did and it was obviously determined to make me its servant today. I cried out as I struggled against my restraints until I felt one of the people behind me pull me into a hug. I knew it was Pierce, but I still wanted to kill him.

  “Get rid of him,” the voice ordered.

  I hate to admit it, but I would’ve done it if it wasn’t for Pierce’s (sometimes obnoxiously) quick thinking. He put his hand on Sylas’s shoulder before teleporting all of us back to the Palace of Sins where we were all forced to face the music.

  At the end of the day, we were all still the princes of Hell and, like the angels had been telling us for years, we would never be able to escape the titles bestowed upon us by them. As much as we all hated to admit it, Gavin and God’s words were gospel and if they said something, we had no option but to fall in line. If we didn’t, well... we all saw what was happening to Eddie and Victor, didn’t we?

  Thirty-Nine

  Elton Palmer

  Prince of Envy

  Palace of Sins

  I WAS ALREADY IN A BAD MOOD before I walked downstairs and into the kitchen to find that all seven of my brothers were together and Lucifer was giving them so much attention that he didn’t even notice when I came into the room. I knew I was already relatively well-known for always wanting company and attention, but it seemed to be worse today than it usually was. What was worse was that I found myself becoming jealous - actually jealous - of my brothers.

  It wasn’t fair to me that my brothers got to have the attention because they had their horns (and other extremities for those that had them) out for whatever reason and it certainly wasn’t fair to me that none of them bothered to greet me when I walked in.

  “Hello?” I pouted, watching the seven of them standing there, chatting amongst themselves.

  When none of them answered, I found myself growing even more jealous - despite the fact that I was trying desperately not to be - and I stomped on the far and growled at them. I yelled at the top of my lungs for someone to look at me, but when they all looked at me, that still wasn’t enough for me.

  “Elton, stop,” Lucifer warned, “I can’t have you losing control, too.”

  I could easily see the pleading look in his eyes and I tried to force myself to reel my behavior back, but there was nothing that I could do. No matter how hard I tried, the envy in my veins was taking over. I didn’t relent, but none of my brothers did either.

  Within an instant, the relationship and the progress that we’d all worked so hard for over the past century or so was gone and - though not for the first or last time - it was all Gavin and his angels’ faults.

  Forty

  Victor Sullivan

  King of Hell

  Celestial Palace

  I COULDN’T FIGHT ANYMORE.

  I was still trying ever now and again, but the fact that it had been a week since Lucifer and I first came to the White City and I was first captured was beginning to take its toll on my - well - everything. As Gabriel and Michael escorted me into the Celestial Palace, I couldn’t be bothered to make any snarky comments, though there was a little fire in my belly that was still begging me to.

  “Stand here,” Michael ordered, shoving me into the throne room and forcing me to stand in one particular place in the dead center of the throne room.

  I started to turn around to protest against him being so rough when I realized that the other archangels followed in behind Gabriel and Michael. However, that didn’t interest (or devastate) me nearly as much as the realization of who they were bringing with them.

  The Angel Hunters were there and they looked worse off than I did. Athena was being carried by Raguel, Koa by Remiel, Newt was being guided by Saraqael, Nine by Uriel, and Finn by Raphael.

  They were there and I had a good feeling that they were there because they went to look for me. They actually came to look for me and now... now they were involved in this mess ten-fold.

  I felt tears begin to form in my eyes, but I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth before I was distracted once again by the appearance of Gavin. He walked past the six of us and plopped down in His throne, gazing evenly at us.

  He at least didn’t seem even slightly fazed by our appearances.

  “Must be nice to be able to turn a blind eye to everything,” I mumbled.

  I tried to keep the comment under my breath, but I was sorely unsuccessful - as was made clear by the fact that Gabriel and Michael both slapped me in the back of the head and ordered me to “shut up if I knew what was good for me”.

  Now, why did I feel like I’d heard the saying at least a dozen other times in the past week? Oh wait, it was because I did.

  Man, it was becoming more obvious that these angels couldn’t call themselves creatives. They couldn’t even bring themselves to come up with better, more unique threats for their prisoners.

  “Satan, do you know where the Defect is?” Gavin asked me.

  His voice sounded far too light and cheerful for my liking, especially considering the fact that He still had the nerve to call my daughter by
her old “name”, if they even wanted to call it that considering it still wasn’t her old name. He wasn’t even calling her by Seven - at least then He could be calling her by the “name” that they gave her all those years ago.

  “Her name is Edelweiss,” Nine hissed.

  I was surprised to hear him speak, but I was more surprised by the voice that came out of his mouth. Not only was Nine usually too scared to speak to anyone like he just spoke to Gavin, but the voice was much deeper than I remembered Nine’s voice ever being. As I tried to piece together a solution in my mind, I was torn away from my thoughts by Gavin.

  “Satan, answer my question,” He demanded.

  “Sorry, I don’t know who you’re talking to,” I replied with a yawn, “My father isn’t here.”

  Gavin narrowed His eyes at me. “I thought you would’ve learned not to test us by now,” He complained.

  Again, I shrugged. “No, I have,” I mused, “I’m just not in the mood to entertain pointless questions when you can’t even bother to call me by my name, not the name of my father.”

  “You might as well be Satan anyway. You and him aren’t that much different from each other, you know?”

  I admit that comment dug deeper than I meant to allow it to. No, it wasn’t true... was it? I spent so long trying to make sure that I was as different from who my father was. My father was... well, my father was Satan and he truly lived up to the way that God always wanted him to seem like and the way the humans always viewed him. He wasn’t a nice demon - especially not to me. I was glad to see him go dormant because it meant that I could start trying to bring real, lasting change to Hell and the rest of the world.

  Sometimes, though, I could still hear him in the back of my mind telling me that my efforts were pointless. Not to mention, just like my father, I was willingly endangering every single one of my subjects every day so that I could continue to chase after my own selfish desires.

  I was starting to think that he might have been correct.

  “Well, that’s no matter,” Gavin sighed, “I don’t need your input - I just need you six here for another, very special reason.”

  I raised my eyebrow at Him, standing up a little straighter as I saw the excitement written all over His face. If Gavin was getting excited about something, it was almost never a good thing and the fact that He’d just mentioned Eddie and asked me if I knew where she was made me that much more anxious.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked Him.

  “Don’t worry about that, Satan,” Gavin cooed as He stood up and began to make His way over to us, “You’ll figure that out soon enough.”

  Forty-One

  Edelweiss “Eddie” Sullivan

  Princess of Hell

  Palace of Sins

  DESPITE THEIR ATTEMPTS TO HIDE it, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that something was seriously wrong with the brothers. Not only were they acting out of character (or maybe, they were acting in character - just the character that they were several years prior), but their relationship had deteriorated to almost non-existent over the past week.

  Lucifer was still trying to drown himself in work - work that he wouldn’t share with anyone - but when he wasn’t busy in the office, he was usually downstairs fighting with his brothers. All eight of them seemed to be becoming consumed more and more by their demon forms every day and that was probably the most concerning thing.

  When a demon was being “consumed” by their full form, it generally meant that they were becoming corrupted and meant that they were losing their ability to keep themselves from committing their “sin” (generally, their “sin” was also the prince that they served).

  When we were in middle school, Phoenix spent a full semester taking a class that was all about demon forms and how they worked, but she ended up having to drop it at the beginning of the next semester after she came to the Palace of Darkness, sobbing to her brothers about the horrific depictions of corruption that her teacher had shown.

  She was inconsolable for hours after that, though Cal, Zavian, and Dante all tried everything that they could to help her. At the end of it, she admitted that she was afraid of them becoming monsters, too. At the time, none of us understood that she was insinuating that she already was a monster.

  As I went downstairs to try to talk to the princes, I was stopped by the sound of them erupting into another argument. I groaned and headed back upstairs, walking into my bedroom and slamming the door behind me. This was at least their fifth argument today. What else was there to argue about?

  I sighed and looked up at the clock on the wall and decided that it was probably a good time to go to bed. I wanted to try to be asleep before their argument downstairs got so loud that I would have no hope of falling asleep anymore.

  After taking a bath and changing into my pajamas, I curled up under the covers and slowly drifted off to sleep, trying to ignore the sound of yelling and glass breaking downstairs.

  ❀

  At some point during the night, I found myself no longer in the Palace of Sins. I couldn’t quite pinpoint where I actually was, but I knew that I wasn’t anywhere in Hell. As I looked around, I realized that I was in some kind of throne room and my eyes soon fixated on the circle in the center of the throne room that looked down at the world below. I swallowed and backed up, narrowly dodging back into a pedestal that had some fancy glass statue on it.

  Was I... was I in Heaven? Was I in the Celestial Palace?

  As if to answer my silent questions, Gavin appeared in the room. He didn’t seem to notice that I was there, even after I called his name, and continued into the room to where six people were now standing. At first, I didn’t realize who they were, but then I saw the black wings with purple and blue tips on the feathers.

  I only knew one person with those wings.

  “No,” I cried.

  Still, no one answered me and I watched as Gavin turned the six people around and I realized further who they all were. Victor. Victor was there, too.

  I began to sob as I saw the blood and bruises that covered them - particularly Victor - and fell to my knees.

  I already felt like this war was my fault, so this wasn’t helping, but now I knew it was my fault. Why else would Gavin have taken the six of them? Sure, he had grudges against Victor, but he never would’ve dared to take Victor captive if it wasn’t for me.

  No, he was only doing this because he wanted me to come and seek him out. He only wanted them because he knew it would get him what he really wanted - me.

  As I begged for Gavin to release them, he looked at me.

  “You know what you have to do, Defect. So do it.”

  ❀

  Palace of Darkness

  WHEN I WOKE UP FROM my nightmare, I was covered in sweat and couldn’t steady my breathing for the life of me either. I knew that I couldn’t go to sleep when I was in a state like this, so I went back home. Not to mention, by going back home, I could find out how real that nightmare of mine was. I walked through the front doors of the castle, wrapping my arms around myself when the chilly air greeted me.

  I was used to being cold - I was eternally cold despite the fact that I lived in Hell - but this was a different kind of cold.

  I looked up at the sound of footsteps and realized that it was Casimir walking towards me. I only knew a little bit about Casimir (and what I knew wasn’t the greatest), but I did know he was one of Victor’s closest advisors, especially now with the Empyrean War looming over our heads. If anyone was going to know anything about Victor - and tell me what they knew - it was going to be Casimir.

  I hurried over to him and Casimir paused, bowing his head in greeting.

  “Your Highness, what an honor it is to see you in the palace again,” he mused, “This is an odd time, though, isn’t it?”

  I looked at him, noticing that his eyes seemed to be an endless void. It sent a chill down my spine.

  “Casimir, do you know where King Victor is?” I asked him.

>   Casimir furrowed his eyebrows at me, “No. I heard that he was ill and wasn’t seeing anyone for a while. Why?”

  Against my better judgment, I told Casimir about my nightmare and about my fears of both the subject of the nightmare and the war itself being my fault. I normally wouldn’t have trusted Casimir with that kind of information, but I always felt drawn to giving everyone the benefit of the doubt until I was proven otherwise and Casimir never really gave me a reason not to trust him.

  As I finished my story, I noticed that Casimir’s eyes weren’t nearly as blank as before. This time, they were filled with an emotion that I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  “Well, Your Highness, I hate to tell you this, but...” He paused and looked away from me.

  He looked like he was getting ready to walk away from me, so I grabbed his arm to keep him there with me. “Please, Casimir,” I begged, “Tell me what to do.”

  Casimir sighed and looked at me again, putting his hands on my cheeks. They were cold to the touch and the sensation sent a chill down my spine.

  “You know what you have to do, Your Highness,” he told me, “You need to go to the White City and get them back yourself - no matter the cost.”

  I nodded. That was what I would do, but I did have one other condition.

  “Casimir?”

  “Yes, Your Highness?”

  “Make sure no one knows where I’ve gone.”

  Forty-Two