“Demon trap,” Samael says. “The bastard.” He crouches by the cage. “Lilith, my love. Can you hear me?”

The figure in the cage slowly raises her head, long dark hair falling like a waterfall to frame her pale, elfin face.

She’s too pale, and her eyes are dark smudges in her face, dazed and confused.

“No more…” She whispers. “Mammon, no more.” She hugs her arms to her, and I see the red angry welts for the first time.

“What is that?”

Samael growls low in his chest. “The lash of Dante, the only weapon that can leave a scar on an original fallen. It belonged to Satan. Mammon said he destroyed it.”

But he didn’t. He kept it, and he used it on my mother.

“Lilith… Mother… We’re here to get you out.”

Lilith looks my way with a frown.

“It’s me, Azazel.”

Her lip trembles. “My son… You have come for me.”

“Lilith!” There’s a snap to Samael’s tone now. “You’re stronger than this. Wake up, woman. Wake up and greet your husband.”

Lilith flinches as if slapped and then it’s as if a veil lifts and her expression clears. Her gaze zeroes in on Samael, and her mouth parts in shock.

“My love,” Samael says tentatively.

“Yes!” She lunges for the bars then screams and falls back, clutching her smoking hands. “That bastard. That bastard needs to die.” She blinks rapidly. “You must release me, my love.”

Samael’s expression is earnest. “Of course.”

We have Lilith, but my soulmate is out there, running for her life, and it takes everything I have to not go running after her.

She’s with Mal.

They’ll be fine.

Fee, please be safe.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Fee

I ran through the corridors with Mal at my side. We skidded around corners, ducked through arches and barreled down stairs to put distance between us and the specters. We passed several rooms, all with black doors, and then a couple of red doors like the one on the second floor. But going into a room wasn’t an option. We couldn’t risk getting trapped.

I had no clue where the fuck we were, and I was pretty sure Mal was just as clueless. Doubling back had been a great plan, but which way was back?

Samael and the others would be through the red door by now. They would have found Lilith if she was there. That was some consolation. We just needed to shake our unwanted entourage.

We entered a chamber with a high vaulted ceiling and a checkerboard floor—some kind of reception room with fancy chaise lounges, and shit, I didn’t have time to check out the décor. What mattered was that this was a dead end. Except—

“Look!” Mal grabbed my hand and propelled me across the room with him toward a red door.

It looked exactly the same as the one on the second floor and the few we’d seen scattered about the place during out mad dash.

“I have a theory,” Mal said.

Cackles and howls filled the air behind us.

“Okay, spill it then.”

But Mal shoved the door open and a strange energy stung my skin, drawing a yelp. He made a muffled sound of protest before crossing the threshold and taking me with him. Needles pricked my skin.

Power.

Some kind of energy field.

Mal slammed the door and drew me away from it.

We stood in silence. Waiting.

“You think they can’t get in, don’t you?” I glanced up at him, noting the tick in his jaw. “You think red doors are safe zones.”

“If I’m wrong, we’re fucked,” he said.

Long seconds ticked by and nothing happened. “You were right.”

He ran a hand over his face. “I figured if Mammon was using this place, he’d have safe zones.”

“You think he warded rooms.”

It made sense.

Mal scanned the room we were in. “I think he may have done more than that.”

I followed his gaze. The room was smallish and unremarkable—a study with bookshelves and an antique desk. There was nothing special about it, so why ward it?

Mal approached the bookshelves and started to run his fingers over the wood. He touched the books, brow crinkled in a frown.

Wait a second. “You think there’s a hidden passage.”

“I do. Help me find it.”

The next ten minutes were spent fiddling with the bookcases and pulling out the books until the floor was littered with them, but nothing clicked or whirred, and no hidden passage was revealed.

“Urgh.” I flopped into the desk chair. “This is hopeless. I think we might be wrong.”

Mal gnawed on his bottom lip, his emerald eyes speculative. “I can’t believe that. There has to be something.”

I reached for the paperweight on the desk, just wanting something to fiddle with but it wouldn’t budge. It was stuck to the wood. Wait a bloody second. I twisted it and it turned with a click.

There was a soft whirring sound, like cogs turning, and then the bookcase we’d spent ages examining parted to reveal a slender passage and a set of steps.

“Bingo!” Mal said. “This is it. This is how Mammon and his cronies got about without running into those things. I bet there’s access to every red door room in this place.”

He grinned, triumphant.

I hugged his waist. “You’re a fucking genius.”

“I’m your fucking genius.” He took my hand. “Down the rabbit hole we go.” He led me into darkness.

Mal, my beautiful, clever Mal was right. The stairwell was part of a network that spat us out into several rooms. Dining room, a kitchen, a couple of bedchambers and the entrance hall where we’d first come in.

It was all connected like a fucking warren.

“We need to find our way back to the second floor,” Mal said. He closed his eyes for a long beat.

“What are you doing?”

“Visualizing. One second.”

We were standing in the narrow passage in the warren, which was dimly lit by slender bulbs stuck to the wall at regular intervals.

“I think we go this way,” Mal said and doubled back the way we’d come.

“Up the stairs we just passed?”

“Yeah.” He took my hand and laced his fingers through mine. “Can I just say, real quick, that I fucking love you?”

I smiled at him. “You can, and I love you too.”

He tentatively touched my face. “You can’t do that again, okay?”

There was no need for him to clarify. I knew what he was referring to. “I couldn’t let him die, Mal.”

“I know why you did it, but Fee…you were willing to leave us behind.”

What? “No. that’s not true. I… I never meant that.”

“I know you didn’t, but that’s what you did. You could have died, and some part of you knew that, yet you still jumped in after him. You risked your future with me and Azazel for him.”

My stomach quivered. I’d acted on instinct. I’d acted with my heart, but I hadn’t thought about what my death would do to my guys. Had I been selfish? Reckless?

“Fee…” He stepped down toward me and cupped my face. “Your heart is like the ocean, vast and deep. I get why you went after him. I understand how you feel about him.”

“I would have done the same for you or Azazel.”

“I know.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “But you can’t lose your life for one of us. Because if you do, then you kill us all.”

I nodded mutely. “I’m sorry.”

He tipped my chin up and kissed me so sweetly that my eyes pricked with emotion. He broke the kiss and brushed the tip on his nose against mine.

“We need you, Fee. All of us need you.”

“I know. I need you guys too.”

“Now, let’s find the others.”

We started up the steps that wound in a spiral as if we were climbing a tower. We didn’t get far before a red door appeared on our left. It was just there, cut into the wall, but this door was different, there were silver markings on it. Words I couldn’t read.

Mal traced them with his fingers and then cursed softly under his breath.

“What?” I tugged on his hand. “What is it?”

Mal pushed open the door and bright light streamed into the stairwell. My eyes took a moment to adjust, and then a fist punched me in the chest.

“Fuck,” Mal whispered.

I grabbed his arm. “We need to find the others, right fucking now.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Azazel

“You need to hurry,” Lilith says.

She’s frantic now.

Samael circles the cage, looking for a way to disable it.

“You need to disrupt the runes,” Lilith instructs. “I couldn’t from the inside. I can’t touch the bars. Hurry, my love.”

Samael scans the runes as if he understands them, which he probably does. And then he slides a dagger from the holster at his waist and reaches for the bars.

Movement catches the corner of my eye as Samael slashes across the runes. I spin, scythe at the ready, as Mal and Fee tumble out of a hole in the wall.

What the fuck?

“Stop!” Mal cries out to Samael.

Samael stares at Mal in surprise. “Where did you come from?”

Mal holds up his hands, his gaze shooting from Samael to Lilith. “Step away from the cage.”

“What’s going on?” Keon asks.

But my attention is on my mother. On the way her eyes bleed to black and the way her mouth stretches into an impossibly wide grin containing way too many teeth.

“No…” Samael staggers back, his face draining of color.

“That thing isn’t Lilith,” Mal says.

The thing in the cage licks its lips with a slimy black tongue.

It tilts its head to the side. “Not Lilith,” it says in a croaky voice. “But hungry.”

Samael draws his sword as the runes on the cage begin to glow and it hits me that he’s just let this thing free.